Back In The Day

After 12+ hour nap, I woke up and felt compelled to google two of my favourite comic book artists from back in the day...Joe Madureira and J. Scott Campbell. I'm not sure what made me think about them, but I've spent the past two hours getting all nostalgic. While I started drawing at a young age (far before I saw work by or even heard of either), these two have heavily influenced my style and been a source of inspiration and motivation. I aspired to not only be as good as them, but to be better than them. Silly dreams, but I was young.

The very first comic book that I discovered (in a box out in the garage...I have no idea how it got there, as nobody in my family bought comics...ever!) was in the late 80's, but the issue itself was Uncanny X-Men #192 from 1985. Oddly enough, while I always remembered the main enemy being the Phalanx, after googling it, I've discovered that it was actually Magus. I was going to say that it was very fitting that my return to Uncanny X-Men would than also be an issue that revolved around Phalanx, issue #312. This issue, which did involve Phalanx, was purchased for two reasons: my love of Storm (which started with the aformentioned issue #192 - all mohawk punkish, and I loved it) and because I was attracted by the art...which was by at-the-time guest artist Joe Maduereira. And there began my love affair with both Joe's work and X-Men.

Gen13 would come later. I instantly fell in love with the art. Very manga influenced, but still heavily grounded in the Western style. Which was perfect for me. I already had a very stylized drawing, but it became far more evident after seeing J. Scott Campbell's work in this comic. I became very obsessed almost. I wish that I had some of my work from back then to show you. I still have no idea what happened to it all. I thought that I had saved it in my portfolios with the rest of my work, but none of it was in there when I brought it back from my parents'. Oh well.

Looking back now, I left the comic world just before it began collapsing at a rapid pace. When I stopped picking up GEN13 (drawn by Campbell), it quickly began to struggle and has never been able to recapture the height of popularity it reached in it's heyday. Of course, this had less to do with me than it did with Campbell leaving the series.

Anyway, here is some of their work:

Joe Madureira



J. Scott Campbell

Thundercats! Yeah baby!