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Popular Artist on Unexpected Books
The longer you dig the better your chances are you will find a book with an unexpected artist for an issue or two. Today it is common to find some of our favorite cover artists on a book we read. Between every special book having 15-20 covers to stores doing exclusives for any indie book coming out, I think Hughes, Sienkiewicz, and even Lashley can be found on a cover for a series you might like. That’s why we should start collecting artists’ early works. It is more powerful in a collection to have some obscure copy of Spongebob than the latest store exclusive.
Mike Mignola
This was the book that made me think of the article. I randomly came across an issue of Nexus. There are some fun covers in the series, but the reason I stopped was the store I was at had put out some copies bagged and boarded for a nickel. At that price, it was worth it even if I trashed the book. and kept the bag and board. But before you trash a book you look it up and almost all the covers and interiors are by Steve Rude accept this one issue was by Mignola (Mr. Hellboy himself). I have come across his work before on Classic X-men and other DC and Marvel books, but he always does a short run of the books. In this case, he only did one book in the entire 101 issue series.
Bill Sienkiewicz
I found this book a while ago. Sienkiewicz did one random cover for Spongebob. Not only did he randomly do a kids’ book cover, but he also homaged a classic McFarlane (Hulk 340). This book is harder to find and for those Sienkiewicz fans and 340 homage fans, it is a must-have.
David Nakayama
This is not your typical Nakayama cover, but it is his style. I would have never known about it if I hadn’t been chasing those beautiful Jeff Dekal covers. If you haven’t checked out some of the covers in the forgotten publisher, Double Take’s Zombie series, you should. Dekal does 3 amazing covers. Rise 5 is my favorite.
Adam Hughes
This might be cheating a little. Most Hughes fans know about his early work on X-men Classic and Legionnaires. In fact, it was Morello who got me looking through any run of Legionnaires for Hughes covers. I randomly came across this book digging one day. A forgotten issue of a forgotten DC series from the 2000s. Hughes did a few incentives during this time period for DC that are very popular and expensive, but this is just the cover for issue 35, nothing special and a little more affordable.
Wrap Up
After last week’s fun controversial issue, I decided it was time for a breather and throw out some forgotten or more likely unknown books to you. These are not issues outrageously priced, these are books that only the biggest die-hard artist collectors know about. The reason I highlight these issues is that these are all artists that have a unique enough style to pick a book out of the box even if you aren’t sure. I might not always be right, but when I pull out a book from these artists I can usually tell it at first glance.