My friend and her fiance:

Hawkeye?

I'm at a complete loss with the (lovely) girl, quite possibly due to eating ice cream too quickly

Hawkeye and Mrs Hawkeye, aka. Mockingbird.

Ah! I'm a bit out of touch with Marvel these days

There is a massive comic strip tradition across the channel which no one here seems to have bothered with I am truly horrified. I will attempt to redress the balance.

I really like the Blake and Mortimer covers. This one is excellent:


Here is Hergé’s eponymous hero dangling from a rope infront of a waterfall.



No bulging muscles here, or spandex, or robots. No need for complex lines either - Hergé’s ligne claire style is pretty minimalist, but gets the message across: a boy and his dog in peril.

Quicke et Flupke showing that you can really fly with minimal building skills:


10 miles notice needed for turning:

Love that one

Bottom pic isn't showing at this end though...

Silver Surfer has long been a fave comics character of mine.
I didn't think the version of him in that Fantastic Four film was half bad, either.

Mark

Hmm - odd that as it did show up when I previewed it. Must check.

But I posted three images by one of the most famous French illustrators, Moebius, on the first page!

There's no doubt in my mind that European illustration supersedes the American output on many levels, possibly because they are not restricted by having to do superhero comics all the time. I'm going to post a couple of my favourites here but I've had real difficulty finding acceptable material in a couple of cases due to their subject matter

First up, here's RanXerox by Gaetano Liberatore. He uses marker pens to get his unique effects.



Druuna by Paolo Serpieri. His technique is wonderful but you'll have to Google his work if you want to see what he can do as there's a lot of nudity in his work.



And a couple of illustrations by Milo Manara. His drawings are exquisite but again I can only show a couple of mild examples here:

And not forgetting...

Here you are then:


Tank Girl:

Recent drawing duties taken over by Rufus Dayglo, who seems to have done a good job in capturing Jamie Hewlett’s style pretty well.

But most were of American characters - which kind of lets the side done a bit. A lot of European cartoon artists have headed state side to draw spandex clad super heroes with varying degrees of success.

My point is that there seems to be less known about what’s available on the European continent which, as far as I can see, is far more mature and developed than the American market. There are book shops in Belgium and France which treat the medium like fine literature. Comic books there are real, genuine hard-back bound tomes printed on decent paper. It’s a far less disposable medium.

Ypu really want to go here:
http://www.trabel.com/brussel/brussels- ... cstrip.htm

and here:
http://www.museeherge.com/ (apologies for the Flash - it seems that Moulinstart is fixated on the stuff)

to see what’s what.

True. American artwork does tend to be of a particular style (as does the writing) which doesn't gel very well with the more idiosyncratic technique you can find in European illustration. Here's a painful example as Marvel try to shoehorn Milo Manara's style into the confines of an X-title. It's a mismatch but quite funny in that all 4 women seem to be to be in various stages of sexual excitement