Every day this month I'm going to feature a current comic book art "star," someone whose work I absolutely love.

I'm mostly going to try to keep from the biggest names as much as possible, because, really, do I need to talk more about the awesomeness of JH Williams, Frank Quitely and Darwyn Cooke? Here's the archive of the artists mentioned so far!

Here's an artist who has impressively moved up the ranks from "the guy you get when you can't get _____" to "the guy you get."

Enjoy!

Mike Perkins worked in British comics for a number of years, but first came to people's attention when he began to do some inking work at DC Comics.

One of the places he got attention was Crossgen Comics, which paired him with Butch Guice on Ruse (Perkins inking Guice).

It soon became clear that if you wanted someone who could draw in a similar style to Guice, Perkins was your man - as seen on this Ruse spin-off cover.

Soon, CrossGen was down to almost zero books remaining, and Perkins was basically their last good artist, and he and Tony Bedard got together on a great spy comic called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Sadly, CrossGen was in a Death Spiral, so Kiss Kiss Bang Bang died an untimely death.

Perkins then began a long and fruitful relationship at Marvel Comics, starting with a job as Steve Epting's tag-team partner on Captain America.

Again, though, Perkins seemed to be here because he could draw in a style similar to Epting (especially because Epting, by this point, was drawing like Butch Guice - all three guys were together at CrossGen).

Soon, though, everyone realized Perkins was a really, really good artist on his own right, and he began to get outside mini-series (he had worked on other stuff in the past at Marvel, like co-creating Spellbinders with Mike Carey).

His work on Union Jack was particularly impressive, with his highly detailed artwork never sacrificing storytelling or dynamism for the sake of photo-realism.

Perkins is also a masterful designer.

Here are some designs he put together for MacBeth, Lady MacBeth and MacDuff...

Here is some nice work he did on a recent House of M mini-series...

Recently, Perkins really solidified his position as one of Marvel's top current artists when he was given the plum assignment of adapting Stephen King's The Stand.

It is a well-deserved assignment, as Perkins is a great artist.

Here's his website, where you can find a bunch more art samples by Perkins (just not very large ones, which is why I didn't use any of them).