Several years ago, when dedicated comic book shops were still viable businesses, Ron, the owner of the venerable Silver Snail, here in Toronto, commissioned
the amazing Adam Hughes to make an Anniversary Poster for the store.
I ran across the image above and realized that the poster, which I had long taken for a painting, was in fact line work with a colour layer over it!
I should have known but I am pretty slow witted, sometimes!
Here is a wonderfully large image, of the rather impish looking Mister Hughes, busily crafting another masterpiece.
When I first ran across his earliest artwork, probably in the long defunct, "The Maze Agency", I remember thinking that his style was awfully similar to the, at the time "Hot Artist",
Alan Davis.
In a similar fashion, to the way I had dismissed the first issues of Cerebus, by Dave Sim, as being a poor copy of Barry Smith, I ignored this new kid on the block, Adam Hughes.
By the time Adam was drawing the Justice League, I was smitten and scouring the back-issue bins for anything that he had drawn.
As the years rolled by and Mister Hughes segued from being a chronically late penciller, on the monthly books, into being a stellar cover designer and artist... I stopped being overly in love with his style.
Sometimes, his women are just a tad too skinny and lacking in girlish hips and like all good artists, he continued to evolve, to a point where he is probably, technically, a better artist than he was but I am less taken by what he draws.
Never the less, when I learned that, late last year, he was going to be drawing a complete issue of Hellboy... Wooo Hooo!
"Hellboy: Krampusnacht"
was a delight and I loved every page of it.
I bought my copy at The Beguiling, here in town and I was a little bit surprised that it was still hanging around, on the new issue shelves, a week after it's release but then again, it is hardly a part of anything that the mass of Fandom would see as being potentially valuable....
Lucky for me!
