Jeff Smith

#8 Jeff Smith

The best thing Jeff Smith did was collect Bone into a one-volume brick edition.



Now, this is just personal opinion. There are no numbers to PROVE this. However, if Bone hadn't been released in the brick format, I would have never picked it up. Had I never picked it up, I would not have read it and in turn avoided pursuing a career making comics.



With Bone, there are very few things you can critique Smith for, because for the most part, it is perfect. Smith has proved himself as a master of chiaroscuro. The choices he makes in drawing a night scene in a forest are akin to Edison discovering the light bulb.



The emotion being conveyed in each page is pure and unfiltered by the gritty screen that many comics from the 80's and 90's abused. Instead, Smith gives us Fone Bone, a character reminiscent of Tolkien's Bilbo Baggins, if Mr. Baggins were more dapper. Overall, the characters, though innocent, still make mature decisions when faced with genuine evil. Even Gran'ma Ben doesn't let her dark past force her to be brooding.

The Bone brick is what countless artists and writers wish they had created and kick themselves for being beaten to it.

Lesson Learned: A story doesn't need to be dark and gritty to be mature.

Masashi Kishimoto

#9 Masashi Kishimoto

Kishimoto is author/artist of the globally popular ninja comic, Naruto.



Though lacking a wide breadth of work, Kishimoto makes up for it by going the distance. Naruto has been published weekley in Japan for the better part of a decade. His dedication and drive show up in every weekly installment of the manga, which is evident in its immense popularity.





Admittedly, the cartoon adaptation of Naruto was my first exposure to Kishimoto’s work. Though the earlier episodes were light and childish, I was encouraged to continue watching by friends. Even their encouragement would not have been enough had Kishimoto not devised an ingenious plot point, revealed immediately in the beginning that would shade the entirety of the series. Later, when the episodes caught up with Kishimoto’s original storyline, they entered a period of uninspired and tiresome stories that relied more on showing the characters fighting than developing. It was during these “filler arcs” that I fell out of Naruto fandom. However, a couple of years later debuted the release of a translated Kishimoto art book.





I paged through it while at work. The beauty of Kishimoto’s lines and the juxtaposition of fantastic elements within those few pages were more gorgeous and inspired than anything I had seen in the cartoon. Shortly thereafter, I returned to Naruto, but this time I would only read the comic work. After letting his work fall off my radar for so long, Kishimoto was able to trap me in a story of betrayal, friendship, and dedication, with characters I cared about and lessons I could learn from. Whereas the cartoon had lost some of its original momentum, Kishimoto never let his comic drop any of the passion or energy it began with. Instead, he was able to infuse it with even more power as the story progressed.





Lesson Learned: Character drama trumps total action in the long form narrative any day, but a balance of the two creates a masterwork.

Moebius

A few weeks ago, my friend Dan decided to create a list of his top ten musicians who had influenced him the most. He then challenged me to do the same. Since I am NOT a musician, I took this to mean he wanted me to focus on comic creators.

So I did.

Here is the first of ten posts outlining the ten comic creators to influence me the most, and the lesson I've learned from them.



#10 Moebius

Moebius, aka Jean Henri Gaston Giraud, aka Jean Giraud, aka Gir, is the French comiker best known for writing and illustrating a gritty western comics serial known as Blueberry,






as well as a series of time and space spanning adventures called The Airtight Garage.






Though the work of Moebius didn’t come into my life until after college, it came at a very influential point. The work of Moebius, aside from being gorgeous, is also completed over years. Jean Giraud did not rush himself while making any of his best stories. In fact, some stories feature pages of work that jump back and forth between decades.





Lesson Learned: Great work takes time. You can’t rush genius.