Of Swords and Parasols

 I bring a picspam of Stjepan Sejic's Top Cow art.  Because it is pretty.  And involves awesome armor.  And even though a LOT of it is shamelessly fanservice-y, I don't mind as much because Sara, Dani and Magdalena look like they'd make you suffer a lot if you mentioned it.  Jackie looks badass too, of course, but that's normal for him.




Also, icons:

    

 In my last xXxHoLic(someone will have to explain that title to me one day...) post, I meantioned liking the art a lot, so I bring examples.  These pics are almost completely random, as opposed to scenes, like I usually post.

Brian Froud is one of the first artists I started to go around getting books for just their art (and the number of artists I do that with is very few.)  He's largely regarded as the premiere modern faery artist, largely for his book, Faeries, cowritten and illustrated by Alan Lee (which, incidentally, should be read by anyone with an interest in faerie lore, as it's very extensive and well researched.)  He and his wife Wendy are responsible for pretty much all things visual in Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, and had a heavy hand in other JIm Henson productions.  Wendy Froud also designed and created the original puppet for Yoda in the Star Wars movies.

Note: a lot of his art includes nudity (of the "I really doubt these creatures ran around with dresses and breeches" variety) but I haven't posted any explcit one.  There are, however, several with side  views(with certain parts still obscured) and a couple of back views.






Hmm...more of the ones I uploaded had nudity than I thought did. Here's the photobucket gallery if you want to see all of them.  There are 39 pictures total and they're all mixed together.

One of the big things that got me into comics was Mark Schultz's Xenozoic Tales(or rather, the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs cartoon based on the comic)  Schultz's art and the book itself are heavily based on 1920s pulp fiction.  The series is set in the future, when a great war set  the world back centuries, redid the landscape and somehow made it possible for dinosaurs to return(hey, I DID say it was based on 1920s pulp fiction...)  Most of the general New England area, where the story takes place, is deserts and swamp, primarily just outside what was NYC.  There a mechanic named Jack Tenrec who also spends his time working on classic cars when not serving as a reluctant troubleshooter, survical guide and all around fixit guy for the politicians he hates finds himself butting heads with Hannah Dundee, an ambassador from the swamplands that used to be DC who's more than intellectually capable of keeping up with anyone in the series and is more than capable of handling herself in a fight.  She's clever, capable, cunning and far to curious for her own good, and really everything Jack hates.  Of course, she's also one of the only worthwhile people around, and they soon become allies, and then more.

For an idea of what these two are like...well, you can pretty much take Mal and Inara from Firefly/Serenity's personality and stuff them into those roles.  I have very few comic book otps(not even 10, I don't think) but Jack and Hannah are WAY up there...Rugged outdoorsman survivalist who hates politicians and corruption and has a hero complex and a strong, intelligent, capable heroine who can more than take care of herself-physically and verbally-against anyone she faces, icluding him? Talk about made for me.  Of course, I love ALL of it, Jack/Hannah is just one of the main draws.

Unfortunately, Schultz is a slow artist(makes Jo Chen and Bryan Hitch look fast) so he eventually had to drop the book and focus on writing and the occassional cover.  The series as whole, though, has been collected into two VERY nice trades by Dark Horse(though they only collected the stuff he wrote AND drew, which means several backup stories that he wrote but didn't draw aren't collected) and there are rumors that he'll be putting out a Xenozoic Tales mini series once he's through drawing it, but I haven't heard anything on that in over a year(though, with Schultz, it could just mean he's still working on it.  When you look at the pics, keep in mind that he does EVERYTHING...the man does not know what the word "assistant" means)





Cover to the first Dark Horse trade: