Artist of the day: Carlo Barberi

As I’ve noted in the past, my son Sam’s favorite TV show is Justice League Unlimited.  The problem is, there are only a couple dozen episodes of Justice League Unlimited, and there are 365 days in a year.  This creates a gap for Sam of Justice League Unlimited stories.

This gap is filled, somewhat, by the existence of Justice League Unlimited comics, which keep coming out even though the TV show ended its run last year.  These comics, more often than not, are what I read to Sam at bedtime.

I know relatively little about the superhero comics biz, but I’m guessing that the job of “imitating the character designs of a TV show for a superhero pamphlet” is not the prime job for most comics artists.  And it often shows in the sloppiness, abrasiveness and lack of coherence in these titles, which may seem like simple product to many artists and readers, but which form a vital link to another world for people like my son.

An exception, I’ve found, is Carlo Barberi, an artist I’d never heard of before buying Justice League Unlimited for my son, but who has quickly become one of my favorites.  Click for larger views.

There’s something about the “plastic” qualities of the characters that matches the subject matter well, invites the reader in.  It’s light, brightly lit and colorful.  The poses are dynamic without being emphatic.  There’s something a little “freeze-dried” about the line that makes it fun and pliable.  And I like his page layouts; they have a fluidity and spareness of design that makes the action clear and lucid.  Look at all that blank space; and yet it doesn’t feel “blank,” it lets the reader follow the action swiftly and easily (believe me, I’ve gotten such headaches from trying to follow the action in some comic books myself, much less trying to explain what’s going on to my son).

I love this panel of Dr. Fate in his office, the camera angle, the big blank ceiling, the magical, mystical objects floating in air, the colors, and then the humor of it being sold with Dr. Fate’s petty concerns.

Even better is this page where Blue Beetle is left on monitor duty.  Bored to tears, he tries paddle-ball, trying on the other hero’s outfits (note that he’s already tried on Wonder Woman’s clothes before moving on to the Flash’s), and, finally, the purest expression of superhero boredom, googling himself.  Again, the elegance and cleanliness of the designs helps sell the action.  This page made me laugh out loud, even if Sam didn’t quite get all the jokes.

Speaking of action, here are two terrific pages.  I love how Parasite is flinging Wonder Woman clear off the page (Barberi will often have characters’ faces disappear off-panel to create tension) and how he’s tilted the camera to make the action more chaotic.  Then, at the other end of the story, the dry, unemphatic line and empty space provides an ironic counterpoint to the cataclysmic action of Steel crushing Parasite with the Daily Planet globe.

Finally, he seems to be a master at these moment-to-moment kind of exchanges.  Sometimes for comic effect, sometimes for silent, understated drama, all these exchanges leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks (no small feat in this often frantic, overstated genre, believe me).  Best of all (and I realize these are script issues, not drafting issues), all these beats work for character reasons — these beats arise out of conflict between personalities, not machinations of plot.