Greg Land
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (June 2009) |
| Greg Land | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 1956 |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Penciller |
Greg Land is an American comic book artist best known for his work on X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong and Ultimate Fantastic Four. He is also known for his comic book cover art.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Land was born and raised in Indiana, eventually attending Indiana State University. During his junior year, Land began working at a screen printing company, and subsequently worked there for ten years.
[edit] Career
Land created a comic art portfolio in the early 1990s. After impressing people with his art at the Mid-Ohio Con comic convention, Land got a job with an independent publisher as the artist for StormQuest.
[edit] DC Comics
With work on StormQuest completed, Greg Land went to Chicago and did his first major comic book convention. There he met with DC Comics' editor Pat Garrahy, who liked his work. In 1999, Greg Land was doing covers of Birds of Prey based on the sketches of Brian Stelfreeze. He also had runs as interior penciler on both Birds of Prey and Nightwing before signing an exclusive contract with CrossGen Comics.
[edit] CrossGen
Later, Land began to work at CrossGen Comics, on a series called Sojourn. The series ran from July 2001 through May 2004, for a total of 34 issues. It could be best described as a classic fantasy epic. The story dealt with the resurrection of an Undead, sigil-bearing Mordath, who had nearly conquered the entire realm centuries before. A woman named Arwyn, an archer whose husband and child died in an onslaught of Mordath's troops, is in search of the 5 shards of a mystical arrow which killed Mordath the first time.
Greg was responsible for the art in all but a few of the issues, which were done by visiting guest artists, often during his annual vacation.
[edit] Marvel Comics
Greg Land was able to move on to Marvel Comics, along with his inker and colorist from Sojourn, after the fall of CrossGen. Originally at Marvel, Land did covers to various series. This led to a collaboration with Greg Pak as the main artist of X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong. Next, Land became the penciler for Ultimate Fantastic Four. He did the artwork for a crossover between Marvel's Supremeverse and the Ultimate Universe, entitled Ultimate Power, which was written by Brian Michael Bendis, J. Michael Straczynski and Jeph Loeb. He is scheduled to draw Marvel Zombies 3 covers.
Land is currently serving as the artist for Uncanny X-Men, a position he shares with artist Terry Dodson. Land and Dodson will be changing places on the title's regular art duties with Land drawing the first arc and Dodson doing the next one and so on. His first official stint as regular artist began with issue #501.
[edit] Critical reception
Commenting on Land's work on Uncanny X-Men #510, Brian Cronin of Comic Book Resources remarked that the issue "possibly has the most harmful art to a story that I’ve seen in a comic," saying that the Land's limited supply of poses and use of the same models for multiple characters "results in terrible art and particularly terrible storytelling."[1]
Although the use of photographs as models is long established in comic book art, Land has been accused of going beyond the accepted bounds of photo use.[2] Land’s layouts and poses were so distinctive, detailed and repetitive that critics suspected that Land was lifting photos into his pages outright and using minimal Photoshopping to alter the picture and make the work appear to be an original drawing.[2] Land says that he does Google searches for references, but denies accusations that he does digital manipulations.[3]
[edit] Bibliography
Interior pencil art includes:
[edit] CrossGen
- Sojourn #1-33
[edit] DC
- Birds of Prey #1-6, 8-10
- Nightwing #41-43, 45-46, 48-50, 52, 54-56
- Nightwing and Huntress #1-4 (miniseries)
[edit] Marvel
- Ultimate Fantastic Four #21-32
- Ultimate Power #1-9 (miniseries)
- Uncanny X-Men #500-503, #508-511
- X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong #1-5 (miniseries)
[edit] Other publishers
- StormQuest #1 (Caliber Press)
[edit] References
- ^ [1]
- ^ a b "Reinventing the pencil: 21 artists who changed mainstream comics (for better or worse)". Onion AV Club. July 20, 2009. http://www.avclub.com/articles/reinventing-the-pencil-21-artists-who-changed-main,30528/. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
- ^ "CN Expo Tie-In: The Mechanics of Greg Land: An Introduction". Silver Bullet Comics. August 17, 2005. http://www.silverbulletcomics.com/news/story.php?a=667. Retrieved 2006-11-04.
[edit] External links
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
