Sienkiewicz (un)covered

Lately, I've been re-reading my New Mutants: Classic collections and one of the things I have realized in re-reading these is that I really like Bill Sieniewicz covers. Now, I'm not a big fan of his work. In fact, the only stories I enjoyed his interior work in where the Demon Bear and Legion story lines. For those stories and the whole metaphysical angle of them, I think his art works really well in creating the vibe of these stories taking place in a bit of a dream scape. However, his work on the other New Mutant stories just really bugs me. I'm not quite sure why, but it does. The one place where I feel he was really good on all the issues he worked on were the covers. Something about that painted style of his really clicks on the covers of The New Mutant books. My personal favorite of his covers is issue #21, entitled Slumber Party! the cover of that issue was really what got me interested in reading The New Mutants again when I was working at the Mile High Comics warehouse. When I was a kid I read a few New Mutant comics but, that was around the time of the Fall of the Mutants crossovers. So, I hadn't read any of the early issues and then I was walking around the Mile high Comics warehouse one day and I see this table in the back corner near the area I worked in. This table was decorated in a collage of all kinds of covers and other pictures and stuff. The first one that caught my attention was the VHS cover of that movie Melissa Joan Hart did with the guy from Entourage (it stuck out in my mind because in Jr. High, when she did Clarrisa Explains It All I had a huge crush on her). Anyways the second image that I noticed on the table was the Slumber Party cover Mr. Sienkiewicz did for New Mutants #21 and after that I really wanted to check out those old stories and along the way became a huge fans of the team. All because of that cover and just to have everything come full circle at Comic Fest this year I bought that issue along with a ton of other X-Factor and New Mutants comics.

Comic Fest 2010: A Fantastic Spring Day

So, last week was Comic Fest here in Denver and it was a blast. I got some awesome prints of Zatanna and Matilda (Natalie Portman in the Professional), I also picked up a big chunk of the original New Mutants run including a copy of Marvel Graphic Novel No.4 signed by Claremont and McLeod and the issue Cypher died in. Besides the cool raid of the quarter bins and finding out there's a cool little comic shop in Cheyenne. I also got to hang out and have a cigarette with Matthew Sturges (after he signed my copy of JSA: All Stars(which of course, cuz it's me was the issue with Stargirl on the cover). I even made him laugh while doing a bit of monologuing on Power Girl's outfit and the frequency of having to tie Chuck Taylors(which we agreed was a worthwhile cost of wearing cool shoes). Then I got an issue of Madame Xanadu as well as a sketch, and make it even cool was when she told me she remember the review I did here at Monkey Knife Fight of her manga Fool's Gold. She and Matt Sturges are(from my meetings with them) super nice and awesome folks. Oddly, enough while I was there I kept running into Scorpio Steele and Zach Howard (also really neat guys) and I also said "Hi" Armando Durruthy how did an awesome Guy Gardner sketch from me last year and we've kinda been keeping in touch since then. Oh and before I forget I also got a way cool Avengers print done in a style that kinda reminds ya of Bruce Timm's style. though, I didn't have any work critiqued this year I was able to scope out some of the panels. Which for whatever reason, I ended up missing all of the panels last year, which really sucked. All three of the panels I went to were all pretty DC centric and the Marvel panels honestly seemed kinda lame so, I opted for raiding Quarter Bins instead. Well, that's about it had a really great time and hopefully next year they'll move it to a bigger room as it's starting to get really crowded in the space they hold it. I even managed to find a copy of the Marvel Team-Up featuring Spiderman, The New Mutants and Cloak & Dagger, in which Sunspot and Wolfsbane are injected with the drugs that gave Cloak and Dagger their powers. All in all I had a really fun time.