Strange Pairings: A Creative Wish List
Today's rapidly changing industry means you can never guess from year to year what creators might be working for which companies -- Alan Moore went from essentially Image to DC a few years back without missing a beat and without having to even really acknowledge the change, after Jim Lee sold his Wildstorm imprint to the company Joe Quesada refers to as "AOL Comics." Last year, it appeared Warren Ellis's output would mostly be coming from Image, but then, stuff happened, and suddenly, most of his upcoming work is coming out through DC's Wildstorm imprint...where Ellis really began to get attention in the first place.
What these sometimes head-spinning changes mean is that you can never really predict what combinations of writers and artists will be producing work together just a few months down the line. Was anyone really expecting to see Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely together as a creative at Marvel when Morrison was writing JLA and Quitely was drawing The Authority? And yet, it wasn't that long ago that that was the case. Now, Morrison and Quitely are the regular creative team on Marvel's New X-Men...well, sort of. Maybe that isn't the best example. But, you know what I mean.
I almost always prefer and most strongly support works by a single creator, as I truly believe the most unique, visionary and artistic statements are best (and most likely only) made by a single creative voice. This is why it's always most ideal for creators to work on creator-owned books, even if they are working with creative partners. But books from the Lee and Kirby Fantastic Four to the more recent Powers and The Authority demonstrate the potential for multi-creator works to capture the imagination and engage the senses with nearly as much power as more iconoclastic single-creator works.
With that in mind, I've put together a wish list of creative teams and projects I'd like to see someday. Feel free to discuss your wish lists on the Comic Book Galaxy Forum.
Alan Moore and Mike Mignola
Moore is one of the few comics writers who understands human nature enough to even begin to be able to craft stories truly capable of generating complex emotions in readers, and Mignola has shown a similar power in both his writing and art on Dark Horse's Hellboy series. I'd like to see Moore write and Mignola draw a horror series for Moore's ABC line. Mignola's elegant, economical and truly moody artwork is perfectly suited to communicate Moore's darkest examinations of the potential for human evil.
Warren Ellis and Michael Avon Oeming
We've already seen these guys work together briefly in the Ellis-assisted script to Powers #7. It was a funny, tense police story that had me hankering for a more lengthy partnership between two of my favourite comics creators. I'd be more than happy to see the other guy involved in that issue -- writer Brian Michael Bendis -- make a contribution, too.
Grant Morrison and Tom Raney
Raney stopped drawing X-Men fill-ins just before Morrison arrived, which is a shame. A quick flip through Raney's Stormwatch run shows that he's the perfect artist to convey Morrison's perversity-meets-21st Century-tech style. I'm enjoying Raney's run on Thor well enough, but I still feel he's a bit wasted on what it clearly a second-tier Marvel title. Raney is an underappreciated superstar among mainstream comics artists, and a creative teaming with Morrison might provide the engine that could drive him to the top of the industry.
Paul Dini and George Perez
Dini has an unofficial doctorate in DC Universe history, as his work on the various animated TV series and his series of graphic novels with Alex Ross demonstrates. He brings a respect and majesty to the characters that few other writers seem capable of. Perez is always at his best when working on quality scripts involving iconic, mainstream superheroes, and I have to believe a pairing of these two top talents could result in some real sparks that could ignite reader interest. Mark Waid wriggled out of his CrossGen contract, so maybe this could happen someday. I'd be right there to read it if it did.
Walt Simonson and Alex Ross
Speaking of a sense of majesty...Simonson has demonstrated that in almost everything he's ever done in comics, from the Alien graphic novel (better than the movie that inspired it) to Thor to the soon-to-be defunct Orion. Recent experience has shown that the majority of readers are failing to support Simonson's work, so I suggest pairing him with an artist also steeped in respect for the work of Jack Kirby, who readers tend not to ignore. Whether it's about the DC Universe or Marvel's, or hey, a creator-owned project, I can't see any way that the two of them together wouldn't generate sales and do amazing work together.
Brian Michael Bendis and Gilbert Hernandez
Bendis's Alias series for Marvel's MAX imprint is a good read, but if we're gonna see superheroes getting it on in the dirtiest of all possible ways, I want to see Hernandez drawing it. He won't pull any punches like we saw in Alias #1, and he could illustrate the hell out of any script Bendis comes up with. This one is a no-brainer.
Tony Millionaire and James Kochalka
Two of the most talented alternative cartoonists alive today, and two of the most divergent and incompatible creative visions imaginable. I'd like to see one of Millionaire's gin-soaked misery-fests illustrated by Kochalka, whose optimistic outlook on life would undergo a fascinating transformation as it processed Millionaire's twisted comedy into new and unpredictable forms. This could easily be one of the most brilliant comics ever.
Ed Brubaker and Bruce Timm
Timm's comics output has been low in volume but absolutely top-notch in execution. Brubaker's Catwoman shows that he understands and can work in the same animated vein that Timm has so brilliantly laboured in. I'd love to see the two of them create a new detective series without capes or superheroes, one that just plays to their strengths in areas of mood, character and dialogue. And I don't care of it's on TV or in comics. Actually, preferably, it would be nice if it were in both.
Charles Burns and Barry Windsor-Smith
Burns and Windsor-Smith are two stellar talents with unique, visionary styles that have mostly worked solo in recent years. Windsor-Smith had the unfortunate experience of being hooked up to one of the worst writers to ever work in comics, Frank Tieri, on Wolverine and Deadpool (covers only) during his recent, abortive dip back into the House of (Bad, in this case) Ideas last year. Readers of BWS's Opus know that he has experienced some mind-bending moments that have redefined reality for him, and Burns's Black Hole has seen a dark, new vision of reality that is almost too horrifying to contemplate. I think a limited series written by Burns and Windsor-Smith and illustrated by BWS could test the limits of the comics artform in conveying the bizarre layers of reality that are seemingly always around the corner, but always this close to shaking our comfortable lives without notice.
Conclusion
I know most of these pairings will likely never see the light of day, and many of them, such as Windsor-Smith and and Mike Mignola, are strong enough creative talents that they don't need a new partner or probably even want one. But I've seen that re-contextualizing a thing, any thing (even creative talent), can and often does result in startling new ways of looking at that thing. I'd like to see that theory applied to the work of some of these creators. I bet we'd all be surprised, and delighted, by the results.