I have all four StarBlaze volumes, autographed by the Pinis to boot.

Cei-U!
I summon one (four?) of te crown jewels of my collection!

Whoops. Gotta do a big catch-up. Bloody holiday stuff. Anyway... I've been looking back over my selections so far, and I'm noticing a common ingredient, which is an emphasis on setting and world-building. As a kid, growing up in the early to mid 70's, I was surrounded by messages telling me that the world was a terrifying, dangerous place. I was horrified into a kind of paranoid dread by 'Stranger Danger' warnings at school, and to add to it, there was that rash of interest in the paranormal and mysterious that hit in the 70's, which crystallized for me in the sonorous voice of Leonard Nimoy on 'In Search Of...'
By contrast, comics offered a different world. A world where heroes were friendly and smiled, and always won, a world of aliens and magic and myth and weird science and monsters and all the wonders and terrors you could imagine.
The idea of a WORLD of adventure appeals to me.
It's the reason why my favourite Godzilla films have the big guy teaming up with Mothra or Anguirus. Or why my favourite Luchador films feature a bunch of Mexican Masked Heroes. It's because it tells us this isn't just one anomalous individual - it's a world that's both wondrous and strange. It's probably why I'm so hung up on Philip Jose Farmer's 'Wold Newton' setting. It's the same instinct that sends kids scurrying into wardrobes looking for Narnia.
To this day, I love stuff with a strong sense of setting. That it's not just a story of adventure, but a world in which these stories can and do happen all the time.

So with that in mind, let us venture down some narrow, winding streets where mysterious figures cast long shadows and duck furtively down alleyways. Where mad scientists in basement laboratories mix dreadful alchemy or animate shambling corpses. Where masked figures in evening dress lurk deep within the shadows, sinister, wild-eyed madmen clutch bloodstained cleavers, and twitching madmen dream terrible dreams only to awaken to discover that their dreams were real all the time... it's the expressionistic, sinister world of ...

#9. RICHARD SALA.

Like so many others on my list, Richard Sala's work builds a world. It's a sinister, expressionistic fever dream combining elements of Fritz Lang's 'M' with Murnau's 'The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari', the psychological thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock, the Universal Monster Movies, Pulp master criminals like Fantomas, Irma Vep et Les Vampires, Diabolik et. al., Sinister Fairy Tales, B-movie science fiction... It's essentially a delicious gumbo of all the things he likes to draw and write about all tossed into a bowl and stirred and tossed about until a narrative forms.

One of the other things I love about him is that he rarely gives us the whole story. Often, his viewpoint characters will be thrust into sinister situations or macabre mysteries without the foggiest idea of how they got there. They'll have taken a walk down a wrong street, or knocked on the wrong door and all of a sudden, they're trapped in a sinister web of intrigue where they know that something horrible is happening, but they can't see the shape of it from where they are. Sometimes, he gives us characters who already exist in these strange world, who seem to blithely ignore or just not see the things happening around them. He'll bring us in halfway through a narrative... or move on before its resolution.
The idea is that his is a world where stories are ALWAYS happening, and the one we're watching is just the one the camera happens to be trained on right now. If, instead, the camera followed that furtive man in the goggles carrying the oddly-shaped package in the background there, we'd get an entirely different story... or that slinky woman in the widow's veil climbing into the limousine behind a skeletal chauffeur with a grinning rictus smile... or the nervous, twitching man scanning the rooftops for something he can't quite see but that he's sure is still following him...

The thing I love is that, for every story he actually tells, there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, which sit in your brain and fizz and roil away on their own, constructing eerie spider-webs of imagination and shadowy labyrinths of mystery all on their own.

As far as I know, he's never illustrated a Batman story... not even as a 'Batman: Black and White' back-up? Inconceivable!
But he's done some Batman-related art...



And this Doom Patrol picture is almost impossibly ginchy!

Making time for this today, and not looking at anyone else's choices (yet).

I know I'm leaving some "big" names off, but (blasphemy): Kirby, Ditko, Jeff Smith, Los Bros Hernandez,etc. . never really did it for me.

So my list is gonna be MY favorites that affected me over the years. .although I absolutely acknowledge that the above mentioned, as well as many others, vastly have influenced the medium over the years.

ok.

#4: Terry Moore

"Strangers in Paradise"

oh, yes, I've enjoyed most of his follow up work ("Echo" was very good, and "Rachel Rising" is phenomenal, to note two). . but really:

Realistically drawn women, interacting with cartoonishly drawn men (tho to be fair, the guys got more realistic looking as the series progressed), about very real, and very deadly things.

This fantastic soap opera drew me in immediately, and because I knew he was a fellow Texan, who I bought the first 3 issue series from personally -- at the Dallas FantastyFair (his pitch to me when I bought the first issue from him to try was "most people end up coming back to get the other two issues" LOL). . . yeah, that gave me a personal connection to the creator, as well as the characters.

that has stuck to this day.

(I have a LOT of SIP merchandise and original artwork obtained from Mr. Moore over the years at conventions).

I had been reflecting on who had not been picked, trying to think of any names I thought of as well-loved but that weren't evidenced here. Terry Moore came to mind as a noticeable omission from the lists. An omission no longer.

Gary Larson for... well, you know...

Always big fun and weird humor.

'Nother quick tale bout how a comic affected my life...

When my son was in school, we knew he was smart.  Teachers always know which kids will excel and those that need help.  We just didn't know HOW smart he was.  His third grade teacher was mightily impressed and glowed at the parent-teacher meeting when he told us he had tested at an 8th grade level for all his classes, but what impressed him most was he would post "Far Side" cartoons and my son would be the only one sometimes to laugh at the postings.  He asked him why they were funny, and he was impressed that he got the humor and the science or language behind them to find them hilarious.

With the aim in the proper directions, he graduated with honors from Webster University with a degree in Communications.