Simon Bisley

Don't know if there are other fans of the Bix on here, but recent uploads of Bisley on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BIZtvSimonBisley/videos

the Bix. I'm a fucking idiot

Have been wanting to ask somewhere since recently reading through Nemesis/ ABC Warriors where his first mainstream appearance as an artist occurs. His credit on the first appearance is to Steve Bisley. Is that his real name which was changed (possibly to avoid confusion with an australian actor?) or was it a miscredit? Anyone know?
Just puzzled me cos I couldn't find any reference to it. So should I assume that 2000AD messed up?

Anyway did really like his work on that ABC Warriors run and I'm not familiar with his work elsewhere which I should possibly remedy.

your answer:

http://www.capcom.co.jp/newproducts/consumer/heavymetalgeomatrix/design.html

Not a big fan of him generally, maybe because I associate him too much with Lobo and "90s edgy stuff", but his recent run in Hellblazer was very good (and looked quite different from his signature painted style). Has he done any other major comic work lately?

your answer:

http://www.capcom.co.jp/newproducts/consumer/heavymetalgeomatrix/design.html

― Summer Slam! (Ste), Monday, February 27, 2012 1:08 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

great thanks, that explains it then.

Was talking with Matt Wagner at the Image comics show yesterday and apparently Bisley is illustrating the next thing that Wagner's writing, out later this year, Aug or September. About a supernatural bounty hunter or somesuch. I'll certainly give it a look.

I remember loving his freaky Doom atrol covers during the Morrison run

http://simonbisleyart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/p_0001.jpg
http://simonbisleyart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/p_0007.jpg
http://simonbisleyart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/p_0009.jpg
http://simonbisleyart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/p_0014.jpg
http://simonbisleyart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/p_0016.jpg
http://simonbisleyart.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/p_0021.jpg

I like his covers a lot more than his sequentials. And those covers were what got me reading DOOM PATROL midway through Morrison's run back in the day.

37 is particularly good.

I dunno, some of those covers look nice on their own, but I always felt their style was kinda in disconnect with what was going on inside the comic. As if Tim Burton had designed posters for Terry Gilliam movies or something.

I mean, obviously they're meant to look a bit surreal, but Bisley's surrealism is in the pink elephant cartoon tradition, whereas Morrison's & Case's surrealism comes from superhero tradition, which is a totally different thing.

always saw him as Sienkiewicz played through a Danzig filter

but I always felt their style was kinda in disconnect with what was going on inside the comic

I loved that Bisley was (usually - some of them are a bit dumb and blasted out) taming and tailoring his style to the content. They're usually amplified and overblown versions of something going on inside the book, but this is what superhero comics are for! (Weisinger/Schnapp 4eva) And it's not an insensitive mscle version of internal scenes - Bisley seems to have read the script and be really interested in portraying something of the tone or setting. 37 and 42 above show how thoroughly he'd subsume his style in service of the content when appropriate. That five-part space story was so different, so (ahem) alien to the preceding issues that he was doing a great job of heralding the change with the icy blue abstract aliums -- and tbh I love the one three or four issues along where he instead goes COMPLETELY "Biz" OTT and off-model with Cliff's new body.

There's no way that series would have lasted 40-ish issues with mannered, stiff Richard Case covers. God bless his pink elephants.

Also have loved his enthusiasm for working on Milligan's Hellblazer, where he's again so obviously reading the scripts to do his covers from, that he keeps sticking his hand up to draw half an issue or more of interiors, when they're set in punk 1970s flashbacks and so forth. The terrible Vertigo colouring then shits over whatever wash or tone stuff he's doing, but his issues are still such a leap above the fairly awful Italian artists doing the rest of the art that it's helped keep me buying the series a year or three past when I started wanting to drop it.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBR8gYSco18/SH9Us7kswmI/AAAAAAAAAU8/9aAeCvAm3_0/s400/termAC0349_Simon_Bisley-Terminator.jpg

http://simonbisleygallery.com/art/biz00150.jpg

two of my favourite pieces, I'm a big fan of his earlier Judgement on Gotham work. Love how fast and spontaneous he produces his work. He's the rough arse of comic artists.

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=603089&GSub=93596

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=833289&GSub=93596

His best actual strip work (as opposed to covers) was Slaine the Horned God.

love those covers, espec the second-to-last one -- they're the main reason i've been buying up old back issues instead of just buying the reprint books.

Biz paints a huge goddam Joker. long vid but freaking awesome.

http://youtu.be/V1dUdkIUuAc