As I do more to keep all you kiddies up to date on what the Bear likes and don't like, I wanted to point out my current obsession with Ryan Ottley's work. He's the regular artist for Invincible and has just been killing it lately. I went back to the beginning of the series to see if his work has always been this good or if I was just noticing it more.
As you know, he didn't become the regular artist until Trade 2 of the series. Even though his earlier work was solid, it was not nearly what it is today. Nothing is better and more fascinating than to see an artist grow. We are truly lucky that he's been able to work on this book for as long as he has and that he's become (and probably strives) to be one of the great comic artists of our generation.
I looked back at his work and it was definitely raw. You can see that he was holding back. It really wasn't until Trade 5 or 6 when you see him really taking off. Now not only do you pick up Invincible for the great story but I can't wait to see what Ottley has created this time around. He shines when it comes to detail but doesn't give any less effort to when he's doing a two page splash either. In fact it seems with the more confidence he gets the more intricate and bigger pictures he challenges himself and us with. With a recent two page splash he not only has a huge picture of Invincible defeating Conquest but in the background he's got box after box of Invincible head butting Conquest into submission. I find myself taking more time to stare at pictures like these than I would to read a regular page of comic. His simplicity of line and his use of the thickness of those lines, he's able to create detail in a very unusual but simple way. His art is so clean but delivers such detail, it proves you don't need a bunch of cross hatching to create the illusion of detail.
If you're not reading Invincible, start. It's a Kirkman book and it's great, so you'll want to start with Trade 1. But take note of the growth of a great artist in Ryan Ottley. He's going to be around for a while and I certainly won't complain about that.
He can also be found recently doing the pencils for the first few books of Haunt where McFarlane does the inks. Very interesting.
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