#138 Frank Quitely

Click the above image to see the full-size version on the site I found it on.

Frank Quitely’s work is usually wild, fast-paced, cinematic and detailed… with a strong dose of trippy cartooniness bending it at the edges. He is a frequent collaborator with author Grant Morrison, and they do great stuff together. My favorite thing they have collaborated on is the brilliant Flex Mentallo, which tragically will probably never be reprinted due to legal pressure from Charles Atlas, if you can believe that.

Click here to see the entry on Frank Quitely at lambiek.net.

#139 J.H. Williams III

J.H. Williams III collaboration with writer Alan Moore on Promethea was beautiful and mind-bending… some of the most gorgeously drawn meta-comics ever attempted. Being a super-genius, Moore gets much of the (well-deserved) credit for the success of Promethea, but few other artists could have done so much with his psychedelic scripts.

Click the above image to see the full-size version on the site I found it on.

#140 Archer Prewett

Archer Prewitt‘s Sof’ Boy is hilarious and beautifully drawn and designed… Sof’ Boy is perpetually the victim of extreme violence, but to our semi-oblivious hero, this violence comes as naturally as the breeze going by. Sof’ Boy is kind of like if Casper the Friendly Ghost couldn’t figure out how to die, and was forced to walk among the living as a goony ball of dough in limbo, with bowery bums, prostitutes and hungry sewer rats. Like his friend Chris Ware, Prewitt has a great eye for design, and the Sof’ Boy books always look beautiful. Unfortunately, a new issue only happens every couple of years or so… they are always worth the wait, though.

Click the above image to see the full-size version on the site I found it on.

Click here to read the entry on Archer Prewitt at lambiek.net.

#141 Al Hirschfeld

Pictured above: Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Duke Ellington… click the image to see a larger version on the site I found it at.

Al Hirschfeld did more with a few lines than any other cartoonist in history. His caricatures captured the essence of people perfectly, simplifying them and stripping them down to the bare essentials. They were always immediately recognizable in spite of this extreme distillation. Anyone who has attempted caricature knows how difficult it is to do well at all, let alone using so few lines. His ability to do this consistently regardless of the subject is nothing short of amazing… that he did it that well for 70 or so years is mind-blowing.

Hirschfeld has no competition as the greatest caricaturist of all time.

There’s an excellent gallery of some of his work here.

Here’s a video of him drawing at age 99…

Click here to read the entry about Al Hirschfeld at lambiek.net.