Well, there it is, my #1 artist is Ted McKeever!

His first published comics came in the mid 80ies and soon caught the eye of soon to be super star Mike Mignola. McKeever is all about revealing reality through a distorted light, one mostly cast at our urban life environements. The cities are monsters, the vehicules parasites, and the humans just are meat packs about to be infected by it all, if it's not the other way around. His early indy material was almost all the time written by himself before he found regular collaborators in Peter Milligan for a few superb horror comics for Vertigo, a series of elsewords with the DC trinity writen by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier, a Doom Patrol run with Rachel Pollack. He now favors again his own stories and has seen his style evolve in a less cartoony direction, with thin ink lines and a still strong graphic style. As showcased in his Lydia Lunch penned Toxic Gumbo, he has a strong interest in music as well, on the more leftfield/dark side of things.
He really is my fave horror artist since his kind of horror is less in your face and much more in the global atmosphere than in te topic itself, in a similar fashion to David Cronenberg, probably my favorite horror director as well.

















I mean, he even did a comic with Thomas Ligotti (greatest contemporary horror writer?)

I loooooooove Wolverton. I always find him more funny than scary, but those pages are good exemples on his disturbing "seriousness" as well!

Graham Ingels at Number 1





To me, Graham Ingels is a Master at his Craft and I'm a big fan of his work because he incorporate FEAR into his art in a masterful way of sheer horror! This image above you showcase it in a very big way every way you turn - this frighten lady in a red dress is out of her wits seeing a ghoul in the background rising above her and some unknown force scaring her out of her wits a long sharp knife coming straight at her is frightening at his very best. Graham is sheer madness and that's why he is the best at his craft! 

I'm very familiar with his work and one of the BEST that I've seen!


Here's two more examples of his work with the Haunt of Fear!

Graham Ingels Week 5 (#1)

Yep, I agree with our big Kaiju friend above... Graham Ingels it is. You gotta go with the one what brung 'em all. Ingels was the first comic artist to truly understand the horror mood. The first modern master and progenitor of so many descendants, among them are many already posted on this board over the past few weeks (Wrightson, Colan, Bissette...). Ingels could draw the hell out of rotted corpse or a fetid swamp or just a stark look of pure terror. EC's premier horror artist abides to this day as one of the whole of comicdom's best ever.

Thanks Shax... this was a lot of fun!

Week #5

For my #3 choice, I mentioned that what I loved most about Wrightson was his ability to manipulate primary and secondary focus in order to tell a full story on a cover, your eye slowly uncovering the sequence of events by shifting from the first thing it was drawn to over to the second. It's the very same reason that Neal Adams makes my #1 for this list. Not only does he have an amazing technique to begin with, but he's the only cover penciler I know who can repeatedly manipulate primary, secondary, AND tertiary focus, drawing your eye across three different sections of the cover in the right order in order to make a complete story unfold -- and he did it all the frickin' time.


Example 1:



Primary focus: Batman looking down
Secondary focus: Terrified girl running
Tertiary focus: Who is that chasing her?


Example 2:



Primary focus: A terrifying looking Talia and accomplice
Secondary focus: She killed Batman?
Tertiary focus: Uh, nope. Turn around, Talia!


Example 3:



Primary focus: What's that guy burying?
Secondary focus: Why are the kids watching him so scared?
Tertiary focus: Uh-oh. This is about to get interesting.


Example 4:



FOUR areas of focus on this one. Quite a visual mystery.


Example 5:



My favorite cover of ALL time. Tells an almost complete horror story in a single image.

There was a time when I was insane and I didn't care that much for Wrightson's art. I always thought that he was the weakest of the Studio artists, believing Jones, Windsor-Smith and Kaluta were his betters over all. But I have overcome my insanity and agree with the praise my knowledgeable colleagues have lent him. He is such a giant I left him off my list to allow some lesser known artists to shine outside his shadow. I still give the edge to Ingels, who excercised a lot of influence over Wrightson, but I could easily have gone the other way.

Again, when championing Bissette's Swamp Thing run, one shoudl aknowledge John's Totleben as much as him as he was an equal parner in this run, and Bissette's art would never look the same without him.