Okay, Bill has fallen behind a little this past month, and he's under the weather at the moment, so the odds are he would fall even further behind if left alone, so we've decided that I will pitch in for a bit to give him a breather (and I'll also be filling in the empty spots, as I am able, in the Archive).

This week, I'll be looking at some great artists of the present.

10/1/07

274. Joel Priddy

Probably the thing that impresses me most about Joel Priddy's work is the sheer amount of ideas that he seems to go through when he comes up with approaches to his artwork.

For an actual example, take a look here, where Priddy takes the reader through his thinking in his re-design of Supergirl's costume. The drawings are each distinct from each other, and are each good ideas in an of themselves, demonstrating the aforementioned surplus of ideas Priddy brings with him to his work.

Take this page from his Eisner-nominated work, Pulpatoon: Pilgrimage...



The way that he takes a medium, comics, which is an interrelation of words and pictures, and actually goes so far as to depict an ACTUAL interrelation of words and pictures, in service of the story, is very impressive to me.

Of course, Priddy also can handle more straightforward sequential work, as seen here with this page from a short story about a bomb shelter...



While his creativity is what I admire most about his work, I also am highly impressed with the way he knows how to use art to dictate speed and motion and how a scene is read, as seen in, well, this scene....



This very skill is evident in this following nice short story, where Priddy essentially controls our reading of the scene with barely any effort at all, as he can do so with practically stick figures, that is how able he is. It serves to set up his punchline beautifully.



Priddy is a frequent contributor and commentator on Project Rooftop, the costume redesign site from Dean Trippe (who was also a recent Reason to Love Comics here).

Check out his redesign for Stephanie Brown's Robin costume (for a bonus, he tosses in a drawing of Hal Jordan and Metamorpho).



Joel maintains a real cool blog, where he often shares drawings and short stories. The following is a hilarious take on his short-lived (VERY short-lived) acting career as a background character (the polygraph attendant) in one of those Skinemax cable films (titled Forbidden Sins).



His blog is called Beeswax and can be found here. Be sure to check it out! It's well worth a read.

Also be sure to check out his work in the awesome AdHouse anthology collections, Project Romantic and Project Superior! Ad House also sells the aforementioned Pulpatoon Pilgrimage.