Comic Book Resources

365 Reasons to Love Comics #277

If I ever get around to doing another Judging Books By Their Covers, you will rest assured that this artist will be mentioned in positive terms (the Archive should also always be mentioned in positive terms).

10/4/07

277. Ryan Sook

When Ryan Sook first burst on to the comic scene, he was mostly compared to Mike Mignola, which comes as no surprise, as Sook himself admits that he was greatly influenced by Mignola's work. In fact, Mignola even got Sook INTO comics, helping him show his samples to DC, which snared Sook a fill-in job at DC on an issue of Challengers of the Unknown (the one that was part of the Millennium Giants storyline, actually!)

After that Sook actually worked WITH Mignola over at Dark Horse, working on a Dark Horse Presents story together.

Sook used his Mignola-esque style on a number of Buffy the Vampire Slayer stories for Dark Horse....

an issue of Superman with J.M. DeMatteis that led to him working with DeMatteis on Spectre for DC for a year...

But by the end of his Spectre run, he had moved beyond simply Mignola-esque artwork, with a more rounded art style...

He used this style in launching BPRD, where he was handpicked by Mignola, becoming the first artist to draw Mignola's Hellboy creations in a series other than Mignola....

Sook's style continued to develop, though, and soon, he had an even newer style of art.

Here is the new style, from an arc he did on Hawkman...

Here is Sook talking about the change in an interview at Comic Book Resources...

My drawing style seems to continually evolve for lots of reasons, time, practice, inspiration. Mostly though I am trying these days to rely less on other comic art to influence my decisions and allow the story and the scripts to dictate the art direction. Trying to convey the emotions and mood of a scene (none being more or less easy) is really important to telling a story well, that's usually what I'm thinking about when I'm setting a scene. Everything else is purely trying to draw something in a beautiful way.

Sook used this new style on an Arkham Asylum series, X-Factor for Marvel, and a Seven Soldiers mini-series for DC starring Zatanna.

Since he finished work on X-Factor awhile back, Sook has mostly been working on comic book covers and advertisements. His expert sense of design and flair fits this line of artwork perfectly.

Here is a series of ads he did for DC...

Remarkably cool, huh?

Here are a number of his covers for Dark Horse Comics and DC Comics...

He is one of the best cover artists working in comics today.

All these images are courtesy of Sook's amazingly thorough website. Here is his website, where you can see even MORE of his amazing artwork. He is a couple hundred peoples shy of cracking 40,000 visitors - let's put him over the top!!