Original Art Friday!!

For the last few months I've been quite busy producing the upcoming Swamp Thing live action series for the new DC streaming network, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been other nonsense on my mind. One of those nonsense bits is looking through some of the original comic book art I've collected over the years, in a feature I've been doing on Facebook called Original Art Friday. Knowing that not everyone is necessarily in the Facebook family, I'll start sharing those posts here as well.

As time goes on and I can reveal more Swamp Thing goodness, I will, but just to prime the Famous Mark Verheiden's Of Hollywood pump, here's my lastest, unfortunately acronymed O.A.F....

ORIGINAL ART FRIDAY 12/7/18

Facebook asks, "what's on your mind, Mark?" That, my friends, is a loaded question, having gotten in at 3:00AM after a full day and night of f****** S**** T****, and the "f" word over there is "filming", so knock that off right now... however, f****** takes a back seat in my brain this A.M., because it is indeed again time for ORIGINAL ART FRIDAY, the special day of the week when I unveil another masterpiece from the gallery of glorious comic book art amassed over the centuries by your humble author...

Today's piece is another beauty from one of my all time favorite comic book artists, Gene Colan, taken from issue #69 of one of my all time favorite characters, Daredevil, The Man Without Fear. Here, Mr. DD converses with a certain Black Panther about varied and sundry (including the Panther losing a shot at joining the Avengers -- it's okay, pal, your movie did just fine) while some nurses admire their good.... deeds.

It's not an action packed page and boy howdy there are a lot of words (as a reformed comic book writer, I apologize to artists everywhere for my verbosity), but it's still packed with angles, lovely figure drawing, and emotion conveyed through body language. I LOVE the panel with the Doctor in the center... even masked, you see the Doc's concern radiating.

This page was inked by the equally incredible Syd Shores, whose career went from the golden age and a long run on the 1940's Captain America series, into the silver age and work like this. Old school silver age fan that that I am, George Klein will probably always be my all time favorite Colan and Buscema inker, but Mr. Shores, at least here, is a close second. He captures Colan's pencils without totally overwhelming them, which is about all one can ask...

And remember this immortal line: "Daredevil's not exactly chopped liver himself --" Have truer sentiments ever been expressed?