SOLO: THE DELUXE EDITION
Various
2013
DC Comics
When I was in high school I discovered Heavy Metal Magazine at a local Walden’s books and was immediately a fan. I went out and collected back issues and spent a lot of time pouring over the art. It was such a fun comic and always felt cutting edge and “grown up”. Well a few years back DC Comics brought some of this magic to their stables and picked 12 artists and basically told them they had 48 pages to do whatever they wanted. Some wrote and drew, some brought in guest writers. The result was a series of amazing looking books with a diverse array of stories, romance, westerns, crime and some fun takes on DC superheroes.
The artists involved were: Tim Sale, Richard Corben, Paul Pope, Howard Chaykin, Darwyn Cooke, Jordi Bernet, Michael Allred, Teddy Kristiansen, Scott Hampton, Damion Scott, Sergio Aragones and Brendan McCarthy. The whole books is great, wonderful art in many styles. My favorite stories were a wonderful haunted piece about a treasure hunter by Corben, a story by Chaykin which talks about his being a comics creator, another piece about becoming an artist by Darwin Cooke and Michael Allred did a crazy story about the Teen Titans having a party.
This whole book is astounding and something I will be going back to reread again and again. A wonderful collection and something I think any fan of comics would do well to own.