Elsewhere

This week, I've got two columns at other sites: a piece for PopMatters on the struggle between loving specific characters and loving specific creators, and one at The Chemical Box about the 1987 issues of Vigilante. Both of them were kind of short, which is sot of a bummer, but what can ya do?

Something I Failed to Mention
A number of different artists contributed to the twelve issues of Vigilante that I discussed, but the two most regular were penciler Tod Smith and inker Rick Burchett. I'd call them the primary artistic team on the book, as when geust artists did step in, the seemed to stay more or less in line with what Smith and Burchett were doing. Unlike the maniacal main character, the art of Vigilante is very connected to reality. There's a lot of violence, and therefore a decent volume of blood spilled, sometimes in rather graphic fashion. Smith and Burchett never make it garish, but they always make it count, so that the pain and consequences of all the fighting are felt by the reader in full. The costumed characters always fit when standing next to the regularly-dressed humans, so that Vigilante's brand of masked guns-and-fists street justice is always at home, no matter how outlandishly he and/or his foes are acting. Smith and Burchett do a good job of adding some realism to the world that surrounds Vigilante, making his delusions all the more striking by comparison.