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| Dave Mckean | ||
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According to Time Out, a leading British news and pop culture magazine, "Dave McKean is the most absurdly talented British artist in years." Certainly, along with Sienkiewicz, Miller, Muth, and Williams, the English artist has been at the forefront of a movement that has redefined our expectations of the look and texture of the comic book. McKean hones his craft with a style that is at once unique, innovative, refreshingly bizarre and wildly provocative. A prodigy of sorts, by his early 20s he was already a sensation on the London art scene, having been accepted for the prestigious Images Exhibition, and doing numerous covers for Granada Books, Titan, Unwin Hyman, Isao Tomita, and many other publishing houses. Then in 1986, McKean teamed up with an obscure British journalist named Neil Gaiman to illustrate a strange story about a little boy and Al Capone's osteopath. Violent Cases was born. Dave's alluring, mysterious, and eccentric style perfectly evoked Gaiman's childlike sense of wonder, dark sensibilities, and black humor. The U.K. edition published by Escape Books and Titan in 1987 garnered McKean and Gaiman critical applause from such as Alan Moore, Clive Barker, and numerous critics in the British press. But for economic reasons it was black and white and was very difficult to obtain stateside. Dave went on with Neil to nurture the lustrous Black Orchid miniseries for DC. He painted amazing covers for DC's Hellblazer series. Then, with Grant Morrison, he redefined the dark, sinister underworld of Batman's foulest nemeses for Arkham Asylum. He continues to push the boundaries of the comics medium with his current venture, Cages -- an intriguing 10-part tale from Tundra which Dave is for the first time both writing and illustrating. |
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