TS: Sienkiewicz-clones Royal Rumble

Ashley Wood distracted by drawing naked ch1x0r, especially their genitalia, runs himself out of ring, leaving the two Davids and Bill as the main contender.

McKean cops out, preferring photo collage and computer manipulation and jumping out of the ring altogether.

Mack gains initial upperhand on basis of own abilities as writer (after all, "Stray Toasters" = DUD). But overconfident from early success, he gets too cute and attempts to incorporate fancy flights of filosofy instead of focusing on his strengths, taking overly wrought routes and detours to possible win. Moreover, over-reliance on watercolors/painting to elicit, "Oooh that's pretty!" rather than the edgier stuff of his black and white work lessens the oomph of his punches.

The only way this match can avoid ending in the "They both fell out at the same time!" dispute is that Sienkiewicz's women don't all look the same pouty-lipped, ?ber-nubile Japanese gurls and isn't afraid of diving into parody.

A REAL Royal Rumble would involve everyone revolving around the Jim Lee / Marc Silvestri axis, except they'd all be trying to out-boob & out-six-pack each other. (BTW - Jim would probably win re: his current jonesing of Frank Miller & David Mack.) (Or maybe Marc will bust out a box filled with unsold copies of Cyberforce and beat everyone into submission.)

But, anyway ... is Stray Toasters REALLY crap? (& how's Cages?)

Cages is really great. But enormous.

Aside from various pinups and passing THB covers when I browse the local shoppe, not familiar with Paul Pope.

How I see it: Sienkiewicz ushered in the surrealistic painted collage deal, which McKean initially took off with re: Sandman covers and Arkham Asylum, but then his line-art stuff really was a departure (I'm getting the chronology of all this terribly confused I'm sure), and finally going into photoshop/photography. And it's from McKean's line-art that most of the other artists reference.

You forgot to mention Barron Storey as the wellspring for that entire movement... Your chronology for Mr. McKean is pretty much sound, though.

kinda shocked at how conventional his Moon Knight debut style was - has he ever talked about what prompted his stylistic growth?

great revive

I hadn't thought about him in awhile but they had the Moon Knight epic collection at the library.

was his New Mutants run the most bizarrely idiosyncratic art to ever grace a superhero comic, up to that point? that shit just did *not* look like anything else in the Big 2 catalog.

Sienkiewicz was a major Neal Adams imitator/swiper for the first five or so years of his career. He drew a rather puffed up Comics Journal cover that had Moon Knight pushing aside Batman, that prompted this cartoon from Adams, even:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/92/30/7c/92307c10bd00318d1edcdc073cbf5251.jpg

Fairly recently, on his busy and interesting Facebook page, Sienkiewicz did talk about how he managed to shrug off the Adams copying - I think his cat was involved, somehow!

True story - I helped guide Sienkiewicz around London when he visited the UK for a comics convention I was co-organising, at the time that the first few issues of Elektra: Assassin had come out. Sienkiewicz had with him all the original art from Elektra #1 - gorgeous, full colour, although surprisingly small. He very kindly offered me a lower price on any page I fancied - I mean, my memory is £150? a go - but I was too broke to even afford that, sadly. And of course I continue to kick myself about that now.

yeah the early Neil Adams debt is quite clear - lol @ that cartoon

Hah, here's that Sienkiewicz cover: https://seanhowe.tumblr.com/post/158956044762/bill-sienkiewicz-and-neal-adams-mix-it-up

After all this time I'm still not familiar with Neal Adams's work, so all of the stuff about being BS being an Adams clone early on goes well over my head.

Moon Knight in general is a pretty clear rip of Neal Adams' Batman

https://scontent.ftup1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/133569361_3510483255655072_1072175297541565996_o.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=2&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=Df7i3wHrei0AX8vywMc&_nc_ht=scontent.ftup1-1.fna&oh=2e38dce7704ca6801965cb6f964100fd&oe=600E900E

makes no sense, lol'd anyway