Worlds' Finest #21 Preview

WORLDS' FINEST #21
Written by PAUL LEVITZ
Art by RB SILVA
Cover by RB SILVA
"First Contact" part 4, continued from BATMAN/SUPERMAN #9. Kaizen Gamorra unleashes a plot to depower Power Girl and unlock the secrets of Superman of Earth 2.
MARCH 26 | RATED T | $2.99 | PRINT | DIGITAL

NOTE: This issue is part of the First Contact story arc.

Worlds' Finest #20 Preview

WORLDS' FINEST #20
Written by PAUL LEVITZ
Art by RB SILVA, SCOTT MCDANIEL
Cover by EMANUELA LUPACCHINO
"First Contact" part 2, continued from Batman/Superman #8. Power Girl and Huntress come face to face with the Superman and Batman of the DC Universe for the first time. Continued in Batman/Superman #9.
FEBRUARY 26 | RATED T | $2.99 | PRINT | DIGITAL

NOTE: This issue is part of the First Contact story arc.

Batman/Superman #8 Preview

BATMAN/SUPERMAN #8
Written by GREG PAK
Art by JAE LEE
Cover by JAE LEE
"First Contact" part 1! With Power Girl's abilities on the fritz, see what happens when her long-lost cousin Superman approaches her. Plus, a major threat returns. Continued in WORLDS' FINEST #19.
FEBRUARY 26 | RATED T | $3.99 | PRINT | DIGITAL

NOTE: This issue is part of the First Contact story arc.

Worlds' Finest Annual #1 Preview

WORLDS' FINEST ANNUAL #1
Written by PAUL LEVITZ
Art by DIOGENES NEVES
Cover by EMANUELA LUPACCHINO
In one of their first adventures together, Earth 2's Supergirl and Robin team up to face their world's Wonder Woman.
JANUARY 29 | RATED T | $4.99 | PRINT | DIGITAL

NOTE: This issue is part of the First Contact story arc.

Earth-2 Annual #2 Preview

EARTH-2 ANNUAL #2
Written by TOM TAYLOR
Art by ROBSON ROCHA
Cover by ETHAN VAN SCIVER
The origin of Earth 2's new Batman is revealed. But after he tells his tale, will any of the other heroes trust him again?
JANUARY 29 | RATED T | $4.99 | PRINT | DIGITAL

NOTE: This annual story recounts the origin of Helena Wayne's grandfather, but she does appear as a child in the flashback sequences with her parents.

Worlds' Finest #19 Preview

WORLDS' FINEST #19
Written by PAUL LEVITZ
Art by RB SILVA, SCOTT MCDANIEL
Cover by EMANUELA LUPACCHINO
Desperate times call for desperate measures as Power Girl and Huntress reveal their true origins to this world's Superman and Batman.
JANUARY 15 | RATED T | $2.99 | PRINT | DIGITAL

NOTE: This issue is part of the First Contact story arc.

01 Jerry Ordway | Top 10 Favourite Huntress Artists

Now that we've spent the last week discussing some of the fabulous talent in the industry, we now get to my #1 favourite Huntress artist of all time. Some have probably wondered why Joe Staton isn't holding the #1 spot on this list, and it is a legitimate question given his own history with the character. After all, he is the man who designed, formalised, and established the look of the character in both of her incarnations. He was even active in developing both versions very early on in their publication histories. But as a comic book fan, as a fan of a particular character, and especially as an artist myself, this list has been more personal to me than most 'top ten' lists that get made. In particular, this exercise has been about the artists who have been the most influential to me.

As someone who no longer gets to draw as much as I used to because of the work that I do, I'm always looking for new ways to improve and often take to other artists for inspiration. Specifically, I tend observe the way other artists handle anatomy (yes, there is a reason I focused on it so much in the previous posts), and I tend to favour ones who have a thorough understanding of how the human body looks and functions. When an artist of this calibre ends up drawing a character I like, I notice them right away and spend a great deal of time observing every detail of their work. I've even spent hundreds in the past buying the original pages from them to get a closer look of the work that they did. All of this factored into the artist I chose as my #1: Jerry Ordway.

In many ways, Ordway has been more than just the man who introduced me to the comic book version of the Huntress, specifically the Helena Wayne Huntress. He was the second American mainstream artist since Terry Dodson to inspire me to start drawing again. For a little bit of background, I have been drawing ever since I was three, and most of my life I've experimented with different drawing styles as a way of improving already existing skills. You can basically say I am self-taught. Prior to becoming a science major, I was originally going to school to become a professional artist. Biggest mistake of my life. Not only did I not like having art teachers tell me that my style was wrong because it wasn't up to their standards, but I especially did not like them telling me how to do something I've already been doing most of my life. Worse yet for me were the deadlines and the long hours I spent doing the work, which often hampered my creativity. After a while I could no longer put forth my best work, and I burnt myself out on the one thing I enjoyed most to the point where I called it quits. I changed my major and pretty much retired my pencil and sketchbook for a long, long time. Then I read the JSA Annual from 2008, and I fell in love with wanting to draw again.

One of the first things I noticed about Ordway's drawing style right away is how very detail-oriented he is. It's not just the way he draws human bodies (which I've primarily focused on in these posts) but there's even a life-like quality to the way he draws the cityscape. His Gotham City, for example, has a very New York feel to it and does not at all possess any of the gothic architecture of the mainstream version, except for a few gargoyle statues. His version of Gotham looks a lot less grimy and feels a lot cleaner, which in a way, makes it feel less dangerous. He's also very detailed in the way that he draws the skyscrapers, which actually reminds me a lot of George Pérez since he also draws very detail cityscapes.

On the front of drawing characters, if there are two words to describe it, it is 'absolute perfection.' I can't tell you how awe-inspired I was to see how realistic his characters looked from the way that their bodies were drawn, right to their body language and facial expressions. He really does excel at drawing life-like people who look real and express real human emotion. That to me is a really big deal because it truly does help to suck me into the story that's being told, and even moreso when there is a very strong script. All of this was evident in the way he drew the JSA Annual and its two main characters of Huntress and Power Girl.

Before we get into the details, it is worth noting that like George Pérez and Joe Staton, Ordway also has a long history with both of these characters. He drew the very first incarnations of Huntress and Power Girl in the pre-Crisis continuity and he drew them again for the post-Crisis continuity when the parallel world of Earth-2 was reinstated. It is also important to note that given the very different tones of these two eras of comics, he didn't draw these two characters the same way in the post-Crisis continuity as he did pre-Crisis. An excellent case in point is the way he drew the Helena Wayne character between these two continuities.

In her original incarnation, Ordway drew Helena as someone who is very compassionate, reasonable, and confident in her work. She was often drawn as serious and mature, and she was also very calm and collected. The post-Crisis version of her, however, was a lot more shaken-up. In huge contrast with the way she was previously drawn, the post-Crisis Helena Wayne was depicted as angrier, more withdrawn, and a lot less trusting of others. In terms of characterisation, she very much resembled the post-Crisis Batman if he was a woman. The only difference here is that Helena was at least willing to kill the Joker if meant saving the lives of the people around her (and many more) whereas the mainstream Batman would never think of crossing that line.

In terms of anatomy, Ordway's handling of Helena's body has been very consistent between the pre and post-Crisis continuities. Obviously his art style has improved since 1984, the overall look of the character has stayed the same. His Helena Wayne has a very anglo-saxon look to her and she has a very natural looking body for a young woman in her late 20s, possibly early 30s by the time she appeared in the JSA Annual. One noticeable difference, however, between the two continuities is that the post-Crisis Helena has more of a build to her whereas the pre-Crisis one had less muscle tone. This was also noticeable with Power Girl as well who was skinnier and less busty in the pre-Crisis continuity than how she was depicted post-Crisis.

In the New 52, Ordway almost had the chance to draw Helena Wayne again when he was assigned to draw eight pages of Worlds' Finest #5. I'll be honest and say it was a huge let-down that Ordway wasn't given all of the flashback pages to draw, especially since José Luis García-López ended up backing out of drawing his sequence (in this case, the Huntress sequence). While I don't think Wes Craig is a bad artist, his art style is also drastically different from that Perez, Ordway, and García-López, which really stood out. But what was most disappointing to me is that we didn't get see how he would have drawn the New 52 version of the Huntress who is wildly different from her previous incarnations.

Since Ordway is the man who (for me) best captured the Helena Wayne version of the Huntress in both of her previous incarnations, I am still very curious to see how much different or similar he would draw this same character in a newer continuity. The closest we got to seeing his version of her was in a sketch that he drew for the Worlds' Finest #5 cover, but a final version of that never saw the light of day. I do hope he eventually gets the chance to draw her in the New 52 with the current costume, otherwise I may have to shell out a good several hundred for a commission. :P

Well fellow readers, this is it! The conclusion of my top ten favourite Huntress artists of all time. I have to admit, most of these were very difficult to write because I never know how to begin a discussion on very talented people. But I nevertheless found this writing exercise very rewarding, and this last entry was particularly special to me.

At this point, it's time to grab a sketchbook and start drawing now that I have some free time before I have to start going back to work next week. :)

That being said, I hope everyone has a very happy holiday season, and I'll have another post up soon just before the year ends, and the new year greets us. Stay tuned! :)

02 Marcus To | Top 10 Favourite Huntress Artists

Undoubtedly one of the best talents to surface in recent times, Canada's very own Marcus To is a well known name in DC Comics fandom for his work on Red Robin, and more recently the Huntress miniseries, Batwing, and Cyborg 009.

Admittedly, To was off to a very bad start with the Huntress, not because of any creative decisions he made as an artist being tasked with reintroducing the character in the New 52, but because of the uneven ground that exists between the character's staunchly devoted fanbase and DC Comics' own treatment of the character.

To be very specific, there is a tendency on DC's part to subject the Huntress to drastic origin changes following a major continuity-shifting reboot. Worse yet, they even have a history of deceiving fans of one particular version of the character into buying a book that features a character that looks like the one they want to read about, but isn't. This first happened in 1989 when fans of the original pre-Crisis Helena Wayne character bought the first iteration of a Huntress solo series expecting to see their beloved character again, only to quickly learn that the Huntress fronting that book was a new character named Helena Bertinelli. The same thing happened again in 2011 when DC Comics reintroduced the character via another Huntress series, only this time DC Comics delayed explicitly outing the real identity of the Huntress until they felt the timing was right.

As you can imagine, both incidents have led to massive shake-ups within the fandom to point where there is considerable division between fans of both Helena Wayne and Helena Bertinelli in the year 2013. Given all that was put on the plate there, I can't that I envied Marcus To's position as the guy who had to deal with the constant fandom bullshit despite just doing his job. Nevertheless, To did remarkable work on a character that started off as Helena Bertinelli and was eventually revealed to be Helena Wayne of Earth-2. So remarkable was his work on the Huntress miniseries that it landed him the #2 spot on this list.

Let's start with the first thing I noticed about To right away: he had a ridiculously good handle on the character despite being (initially) in the dark himself over whether the Huntress he was drawing was Helena Wayne or Helena Bertinelli. One of the things I noticed immediately from the first issue was that the Huntress looked a lot like Helena Bertinelli in appearance but possessed the personality traits of the original Helena Wayne character. The fact that he was able to capture the distinct traits of two characters into one person was in itself pretty fascinating. Though at the time, I was more fascinated by the revelation that this was supposed to be the Earth-2 Helena Wayne, a character I recalled being a lot more merciful than this current version, which gets me to my next topic:

His Helena Wayne is layered, but she is also cunning and brutal in her methods. When she is alone and the Huntress mask is off, she is often shown to be very pensive and at times demonstrates thoughts that border on sociopathic. When she is around other people, she presents herself with a charming personality, she's flirty, and is even idiosyncratic in her behaviour. But once the Huntress mask comes back on, her personality transforms to that of a relentless crime-fighter who harbours no sympathy for sex traffickers and is very casual in the way that she hurts and even kills them. Long story short, this is a Helena Wayne who doesn't give a shit for established law and will enforce her own version of it as she sees fit. This is obviously a very huge change from the previous version of her, enough to possibly even horrify the pre-Crisis Helena Wayne if she was see to how her own future turned out. But the bottom line here is that To never misses a single character beat with her, and nails each one flawlessly.

On the front of art style, To also has a very clean and crisp look to his pencil work. Like many of the previous artists discussed, he has a very good sense of lighting and knows when to use shadow and when not to use it. As such, he doesn't overdo it on the line work and maintains a very good balance between light and dark. He adds shadows where needed, but leaves enough room for the colourist to fill in the rest of the details that a scene requires without making the images look too heavy.

On anatomy, To definitely strives for anatomical correctness but doesn't go for the same level of perfection that some of the previously discussed artists strive for. This isn't a bad thing of course, and it does add to the unique look of his art style. His human bodies look natural and don't look too ripped or exaggerated in anyway. On that note, he also doesn't sexualise the female body to appeal to the male gaze and always treats his female characters with respect. His Huntress is always drawn with a natural athletic-looking body for a young woman who is physically active and is never drawn in any cheesecake poses. This is true even in the scene where she beats a pimp unconscious in her lingerie in the first issue of her miniseries. Occasionally he'll give the reader a glimpse at Helena's butt and only once did he actively draw a butt shot of her, but for the most part, To is respectful of her character and doesn't try to sexually arouse the reader with her posing, which is always great to see.

All in all, the Huntress miniseries continues to be my favourite Huntress story of the New 52 so far, and that is in part due to To's fabulous artwork on the book. Even though he's over at Marvel right now, I do hope he gets more opportunities to draw the Huntress (and Power Girl) in the future. I think out of my top five, he's definitely an artist I would like to see again!

Tomorrow....we finally get to discuss my number #1 favourite Huntress artist of all time. He or she may or may not be who you expected to be.

Stay tuned! ;)

03 Emanuela Lupacchino | Top 10 Favourite Huntress Artists

If there is one artist who has drawn the Huntress in the New 52 that I wish would've continued drawing her, it is Italian artist Emanuela Lupacchino. Residing in the capital city of Rome, Lupacchino has been making a name for herself in the comics community for her various works at Marvel, DC Comics, IDW, and more recently, Valiant.

While Lupacchino has regrettably been relegated to cover artist for various DC works, she did get the chance to draw the Huntress for one full issue of Worlds' Finest, (issue #15 to be exact), and 'breathtaking' doesn't even begin to describe the impression it left on me. To fully understand the extent with which her work left me feeling awe-inspired, let's start with the first thing her artwork reminded me of: Terry Dodson.

Anyone who has interacted with me or known me long enough knows how much I love Terry Dodson's work. He was the first American mainstream artist I became familiar with after picking up the first twenty issues of Harley Quinn Vol. 1, and his drawing style was one that had the most influence on me as an aspiring artist. Taking into account how much Dodson's work contributed to my developing my own art style  growing up, it should come as no surprise that I immediately gravitated towards Lupacchino's work when I first encountered it and noticed similarities.

In terms of style, Lupacchino has a very clean and crisp look to her pencil work. Her contours are very fine, solid, and smooth, and she doesn't oversaturate the page with line to give the perception of depth. This is one way that her work reminds me of Dodson. She also has a very good sense of lighting and knows when and where to place shadow, which admittedly is something I've always struggled to get right. In the same way that her contours tend to be very fine, solid, and smooth, her shadows are exactly the same way. There are never any rough edges to her shadows, and if any additional lighting and shadowing needs to be done to fully capture the feel of the piece, she leaves that to the colourist. And of course, under the right colourist, her work really stands out even more.

When dealing with human anatomy, Lupacchino is also something of a perfectionist. I often observe that some artists tend to take 'shortcuts' with anatomy, particularly in very complicated scenes. Lupacchino, however, never takes any shortcuts with anatomy and she makes sure that every single body part--from each individual digit right down to a single lock of hair--looks right. If there are five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot, she will draw every single one. She will not draw 'bundles' that give the illusion of fingers present, she will outright draw them. On drawing muscle, Lupacchino also demonstrates a thorough understanding of skeletomuscular physiology, and as such, her muscles tend to look very natural on page. She doesn't exaggerate their appearance to give her characters the standard 'body builder' look that is often given to male superheroes in the industry. On posing, Lupacchino admittedly draws her fair share of cheesecake and has been known to even sexualise the female body in ways that draw your eyes to their breasts and butt. Yet, despite this, Lupacchino also avoids posing her characters in back-breaking poses that could not be achieved by even the most flexible person on the planet.

When dealing with faces (and more specifically facial expression) Lupacchino excels at capturing emotion and is quite versatile at it. If her character is feeling confident and fierce, both of those emotions will reflect on the character's face. If that character is also feeling sad and lonely, it will show in a way that differs from depressed and mourning. On drawing facial features, this is yet another way Lupacchino's style reminds me of Dodson's, particularly in the way that she draws eyes, eyebrows, the nose, and even the shape of a character's face. There is a simplicity to the way she draws each of these things while keeping them expressive and life-like. Once again, she doesn't overdo it on the line work and if any additional details need to be filled in to capture the character's full expression, she leaves that to the colourist.

Now that we've spent a considerable number of paragraphs discussing her art style, let's now talk about how well Lupacchino captured the essence of the Huntress. I'd honestly go as far as to say she was one of the very, very few artists in the New 52 who has successfully captured Helena Wayne's, personality, attitude, and body language in full. Admittedly, Lupacchino's Helena Wayne looks very Helena Bertinelli in her appearance (namely in that she's drawn in a way that screams 'fiery Italian' to me), but there's also whole lot of Selina Kyle in there as well, which is very believable for a woman who is her daughter to begin with. Like Selina, Lupacchino's Helena is fierce and carries herself with a fearless demeanour that embodies a very bold confidence. She embodies the kind of confidence that says 'this is someone who's been through a lot in her life and doesn't expect any surprises,' but is also not the type to go down without putting up a fight. She also successfully captures Helena's playfulness in her facial expression and body langauge, which is just as equally important because despite her rather dickish behaviour most of the time, Helena is in fact very playful and loves to mess around. When drawing her action sequences, Lupacchino also successfully captures her momentum and energy, and is often presented as very agile, flexible, and rough which works for a character that was raised to be a fighter all her life.

All in all,  Worlds' Finest #15 was a pretty rewarding experience for Lupacchino's art alone, and it definitely left me desiring more. I actually found myself wondering why she didn't continue drawing the book after that issue, especially since I felt her style was a perfect match for both the Huntress and Power Girl. While it saddens me that Lupacchino is back to being cover artist again and has since moved on to other projects (including the Superman: Lois Lane one-shot that I'm planning on getting in February), I do hope that this won't be the last we see of her! She's awesome!

Tomorrow: Marcus To!

04 Nicola Scott | Top 10 Favourite Huntress Artists

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, Nicola Scott is a fan favourite artist famous for her work on Birds of Prey, Secret Six, and currently Earth-2 for DC Comics.

Like DC legend, George Pérez, there are three things that stand out to me right away about Nicola Scott: DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS! To make a case about how detailed Scott is with her art, even when she draws a single character on a blank page, she doesn't leave out a single hair, let alone a single muscle and strives for anatomic perfection. You read that correctly. She doesn't strive for having correct anatomy, she takes it a step further: she literally strives to make the human body look perfect in a way that makes me think of Greek and Roman sculptures from times long past. This is most evident in the way that she draws men who are always bulking with muscle, they all have a six or eight pack, and Scott especially never leaves out the bulge if they are wearing skin-tight leather or spandex.

In addition to drawing some very gorgeous looking lads with perfect hair and nicely padded gluts, Scott also draws her women with athletic bodies. In huge contrast with the industry standard of making comic book women look either like supermodels or porn stars, Scott combats this standard by presenting her women with the same idealised bodies that are often reserved for male superheroes. They may not pack the same amount of muscle mass as their male counterparts, but the women are nevertheless presented with bodies that are feasible for women who engage in physical combat and perform manoeuvres that require a considerable amount of strength. On a similar note, Scott is also famous for reversing the use of cheesecake in order to appeal to the female gaze. In the same way that male artists often draw female superheroes in poses that often place focus on their more sexual parts (that is their breasts, butts, and vulvae), Scott herself applies those same kinds of poses to the men that she draws and often poses her women in the same kinds of majestic poses that are often reserved for men. For excellent cases in point, look no further than her work on Secret Six and Earth-2.

When it comes to drawing the Huntress, Scott has a considerably long history with the character. She has mostly drawn the Helena Bertinelli version of the character in both Birds of Prey and Secret Six, but she also got the draw the Helena Wayne version (as Robin) in the pages of Earth-2 #1. While it is unfortunate that it was decided at both the management and creative levels to inexplicably remove the Huntress from her native world of Earth-2 (or she would still be drawn by Scott), she has nevertheless seen great treatment under Scott's pencil. In the few panels that she got to draw the young Helena, we saw how confident and happy this teenage girl was to be able to work alongside her father before abruptly losing him from her life. In the scene where Bruce began to say his goodbyes to his young daughter upon realising (in advance) that he wasn't going to make it out of the Apokolips War alive, we saw how quickly Helena went from being the enthusiastic assistant to her superhero parent to a very scared child about to lose her father. In just three panels, Scott successfully captured Helena's emotional vulnerability and sorrow to the point where even those panels brought me to tears in a story I didn't even like.

Again the loss of Helena Wayne from Earth-2 is something I've strongly lamented in part because her removal did not help her narrative or character in any meaningful way, and also because Nicola Scott hasn't drawn her since. Drawing from her past experience with Helena Bertinelli (who in my opinion was characterised very similarly to the pre-Crisis Helena Wayne in Birds of Prey), I have no doubt that Scott would have continued to do her justice should she have been allowed to continue to draw her. In the same way that Scott was able to capture the emotional vulnerability of a child losing a parent, she could have similarly captured the fierceness and anger of a young woman who no longer feels like she has anything else left to lose in a world that's been broken beyond repair. She could've also easily captured Wayne's idiosyncratic behaviour and charming personality (when she's not being a dick to anyone that is), given her versatility and attention to detail.

It is of course still possible for Nicola Scott to draw this version of Huntress (and Power Girl) again in the future if returning to Earth-2 is in the cards for this character, and if Scott plans on staying on the Earth-2 title for a lengthy period of time. Since the Worlds' Finest characters are already set to appear in a crossover with Batman/Superman starting next month, the possibility for an Earth-2 crossover is starting to look very likely. Given the tease that we got with the latest solicit for Worlds' Finest #21, I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing them on future solicitations for Earth-2.

Tomorrow: Emanuela Lupacchino!