4.56 avg rating — 259 ratings

"J.H. Williams III
With The Sandman: Overture, JHW3 produced one of the most stunning examples of Seq-Art virtuosity in the history of the medium, moving effortlessly between styles & techniques. The Absolute edition gives readers both the standard, computer-colored version as well as JHW3's original art, a combination of flawlessly executed line-work, grey-tone washes, and full-color gouache painting. The original art is arguably more spectacular than the computer colored end-product, though the colorist did an amazing job, and long-time Sandman letterer Todd Klein once again is called upon to produce an insane number of character-specific fonts. "

4.44 avg rating — 4,361 ratings

"Mike Mignola"

4.56 avg rating — 2,042 ratings

"Mike Mignola"

4.50 avg rating — 1,782 ratings

"Mike Mignola"

4.53 avg rating — 717 ratings

"Mike Mignola"

3.74 avg rating — 3,668 ratings

"Geof Darrow"

3.61 avg rating — 971 ratings

"Geof Darrow"

3.65 avg rating — 584 ratings

"Geof Darrow"

3.44 avg rating — 478 ratings

"Geof Darrow"

4.03 avg rating — 232 ratings

"Geof Darrow"

4.66 avg rating — 441 ratings

"Darwyn Cooke"

4.29 avg rating — 2,806 ratings

"Darwyn Cooke"

4.11 avg rating — 1,672 ratings

"Darwyn Cooke"

4.08 avg rating — 3,609 ratings

"Frank Quitely"

3.92 avg rating — 25,908 ratings

"Frank Quitely"

4.15 avg rating — 34,185 ratings

"Frank Quitely"

3.61 avg rating — 1,006 ratings

"Farel Dalrymple"

3.63 avg rating — 5,185 ratings

"Steve Skroce
"

4.29 avg rating — 605 ratings

"Tyler Crook"

4.23 avg rating — 341 ratings

"Tyler Crook"

4.26 avg rating — 278 ratings

"Tyler Crook"

4.30 avg rating — 271 ratings

"Tyler Crook"

4.69 avg rating — 931 ratings

"Duncan Fegredo"

4.58 avg rating — 781 ratings

"Duncan Fegredo"

3.99 avg rating — 339 ratings

"Jordi Bernet"

4.03 avg rating — 180 ratings

"Jordi Bernet
Bernet's mainstream US work on Jonah Hex & American Vampire is enough to put him on this list, but Torpedo is still his masterpiece. In a medium - fuck all the chatter about the 'industry', and 'IP's, - that remains dominated by a nostalgic fandom, one intrinsically & egregiously conservative, unwilling to accept the state of flux that an artform must attain to avoid stagnation & irrelevance, the best artists rarely get the attention & appreciation they deserve. "

4.05 avg rating — 155 ratings

"Jordi Bernet"

4.06 avg rating — 117 ratings

"Jordi Bernet"

3.84 avg rating — 101 ratings

"Jordi Bernet"

3.98 avg rating — 1,960 ratings

"Paul Pope"

3.77 avg rating — 5,978 ratings

"Paul Pope"

3.69 avg rating — 3,456 ratings

"Paul Pope"

4.08 avg rating — 133 ratings

"Lee Bermejo"

4.32 avg rating — 27,692 ratings

"Steve McNiven"

4.24 avg rating — 2,979 ratings

"Guy Davis
BPRD is the series that introduced the mature, instantly recognizable & seemingly anomalous style of Guy Davis to the comic-book masses. I'd discovered his unique, artfully sketchy approach in the back-issue bins several years earlier, via his true mainstream debut in 'Sandman Mystery Theater'. But somewhere betwixt the shitty paper, the less than stellar inking by Vince Locke, and the bizarre palette choices of colorist, alt-cartoonist & Rubber Blanket contributor David Hornung, I was left with an unfavorable opinion of Davis' work.

Somewhere around 2003-4, Mignola, editor Scott Allie, & Dark Horse decided to expand the Mignolaverse. They decided on an ongoing BPRD series that would emulate the Hellboy approach, eschewing the monthly assembly-line, and releasing each story-arc as a 4-6-issue limited series. After an anthology-type introduction that allowed a number of artists and writers to contribute & surreptitiously audition, Mignola surprised many by choosing Guy Davis as the regular artist on the epic 'Plague of Frogs' storyline, with writer John Arcudi.

While artists like Ryan Sook, Gabriel Ba & Fabio Moon had artistic approaches to comic-making that made it easy to effectively & naturally incorporate Mignola's brilliant high-contrast style, the comic pages that Davis created for BPRD are in many ways the opposite of Mignola's Hellboy. Instead of the tight, clean lines, spot-blacks & negative space of Mignola's increasingly spare chiaroscuro, Davis favors a loose, flowing line, busy compositions, and almost frenetic hatching; if Mignola is stone, Davis is water.

With Dave Stewart - one of the greatest colorists working in comics - handling the bulk of the Mignolaverse titles, Davis found a collaborator who appreciated his style, and understood the best way to color it. Without the endless pressure of the monthly publishing schedule, Davis had the time to get his pencils and inks finished to a higher standard, and the results were outstanding."

4.39 avg rating — 1,991 ratings

"Guy Davis"

4.47 avg rating — 1,651 ratings

"Guy Davis"

4.37 avg rating — 1,446 ratings

"Guy Davis"

4.29 avg rating — 815 ratings

"James Harren
(& Tyler Crook, et al)
Where the fuck did James Harren come from? His first BPRD story-arc, 'The Long Death', was as close to comic-art perfection as you're likely to see. Mike Mignola isn't just an all-time great himself, he's also got an eye for artistic talent that's made The Mignolaverse home to the best line-up of comic creators around, from barely-drinking-age kids to grizzled old motherfuckers like the late, great John Severin: Duncan Fegredo. Guy Davis, Richard Corben, Jason Shawn Alexander, Kevin Nowlan, Gabriel Ba & Fabio Moon, Ryan Sook, Peter Sneljberg, Tyler Crook; that's just a few of the many mighty names to appear on BPRD & Hellboy-related covers. Even working beside legends like those, James Harren immediately stood out. His art is totally his own, using physiognomic distortions that exaggerate emotional signifiers without becoming caricature. His ability to create convincingly brutal violence is unparalleled, his hyper-detailed renderings of architectural & natural environments are stunning, and his page compositions are aesthetic marvels. "

4.31 avg rating — 638 ratings

"James Harren
(& Tyler Crook, et al)"

4.22 avg rating — 565 ratings

"James Harren
(& Tyler Crook, et al)"

4.41 avg rating — 555 ratings

"James Harren
(& Tyler Crook, et al)"

4.17 avg rating — 69,308 ratings

"Frank Miller"

4.40 avg rating — 2,185 ratings

"Frank Miller"

3.54 avg rating — 921 ratings

"Frank Cho"

4.25 avg rating — 11,191 ratings

"Esad Ribic"

4.28 avg rating — 6,526 ratings

"Esad Ribic"

3.64 avg rating — 1,620 ratings