I ran across a listing for this the other day
a new book about Robert McGinnis and I hadn't
heard a word about it!
Titan Books of the U.K. are the publishers and they
brought out the Artist's Edition of Walt Simonson's
"Alien", a lovely piece of work, last year.
I think that I first took notice of the art of Mr. McGinnis after reading an article about him in Greg Theakston's "The Betty Pages".
And then, there is Carla Speed McNeil...
I discovered her "Finder" stories in the original collections,
at a comic store in Kingston, Ontario. I had never heard of the series and I was amazed to discover a "New" talent who had already published a large volume of work!
I am very happy to see this new collection appearing on the market, it has been too long. The stories are collected from their original appearances, in the new Dark Horse Presents, a fine publication. Unfortunately, as an anthology, it simply contained too many strips that I wasn't interested in, to justify buying it as it came out; despite the presence of Finder.
Finally, there is Barbara Bode.
The image bellow is the only one that I could find on the Web and I was surprised by that. Barbara was the wife of Vaughn Bode (the creator of Cheech Wizard and a whole universe of other colourful characters) and Vaughn always sited her as the model for his "Bode Broads".
The life of a muse is never easy and from all reports Vaughn was not the easiest person to peacefully co-exist with. Mark Bode, Vaughn and Barbara's son, said, "...we had just ridden on the tail of a space cowboy comet, which was Vaughn's life with us."
Vaughn died in 1975, as the tragic result of a consciousness raising experiment and in that same year, she met Rick Falcon. From all accounts, Rick was a exactly what she needed after the turbulent years with Vaughn and they were very happy together.
Barbara passed away in 2007.
