Independent comic book artists draw Marvel's superheros

Tony Millionaire's version of Iron Man in the forthcoming Strange Tales mini-series by Marvel looks amazing.

Other contributors to the series include Paul Pope, Peter Bagge, Molly Crabapple & John Leavitt, Junko Mizuno, Dash Shaw, James Kochalka, Johnny Ryan, Michael Kupperman, Nick Bertozzi, Nicholas Gurewich, Jason. Wow!

The philosophy of the book was to have these creators from ‘indy’ or ‘alternative’ or “literary” or ‘art’ comics come in and do what they do best. I think Marvel readers will really dig seeing radically different versions of their favorite characters, and the fans of these cartoonists will get to see the creators work in a milieu they never thought they’d get to see.

Independent comic book artists draw Marvel superheroes

• [Brainspore]

  Bill Watterson didn’t compromise either but I don’t consider him “indy.”

• [Maddy]

  Tony’s best was “Batty” about the thoroughly-soused baseball reprobate … found in the pages of MURTAUGH in the 90s …

• [Halloween Jack]

  There’s a big difference between the Not Branc Echh/What Th’ type comics, which are really just classic Mad/Cracked type parodies, and this concept, which isn’t necessarily parodying a character as much as it’s letting people who do unconventional comics show their unconventional takes on the characters. Some of the stories were quite affectionate, in fact. (Bizarro Comics made another interesting editorial decision: it paired up indy cartoonists in interesting and never-before tried artist/writer combos, i.e. Ariel Bordeaux would write a story that Ellen Forney would draw, and vice versa. The results were mostly successful and at least usually interesting.

  The last time that Marvel tried anything like this, as far as I know, is when Jim Mahfood drew it, but the high hopes that I had for it were dashed when I realized that people like Brian Bendis and other Marvel types were writing… mostly about themselves. There are few people in comics more boring and irritating (often at the same time) as the current crop of Marvel “superstar” writers who really do think that they’re stars and that they’re somehow intrinsically interesting to anyone beyond a small group of suck-up fanboys. Let’s hope that Twitter has stroked their egos enough that they get out of the way of genuinely interesting creators on this project.

• [Doctor Popular]

  stellar! Can I wait until the TPB or will I just end up collecting the individual series? Hopefully I can wait.

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden]

  Halloween Jack, have you ever looked into how Marvel’s writers get their gigs in the first place?

• [Anonymous]

  This is just Marvel’s rip-off of the DC Bizarro books. I remember back when Bizarro came out, Marvel said it would never treat it’s heroes with such irreverence.

• [Takuan]

  I loves the little Maakies, I love them lots.

• [adamnvillani]

  Marvel published Not Brand Ecch from 1967 to 1969… that was pretty irreverent.

• [Brett Burton]

  @11
  I’m not sure when DC did the Bizarro stuff, but this isn’t exactly Marvel’s first forray into “treating it’s heroes with such irreverence”. They had the long running Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider Ham parody comic, Obnoxio the Clown vs. The X-men and plenty of other non-serious funny books going back to the early 80s at least.

• [Tdawwg]

  Tony Millionaire is one strange cat, that’s for sure!

• [Anonymous]

  I want to see Bob Burden of the Flaming Carrot and Mystery Men do an issue! That would be AWESOME

  Philip Nelson
  NewTek

• [Bionicrat2]

  Finally! It’s been over 2 years since this was announced and samples were put out:

  http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=117317

  I was really hoping it would just come out as a collected TPB from the get go.

  This link has more examples.

• [minTphresh]

  reminds me of the old ug comic :”Milk and Cheese:Dairy Products Gone Bad”( Milk,”I’m a carton of spite!” Cheese,”I’m a wedge of hate!”) tak is right, maakies rulez! the drinky crow show is just priceless.

• [EeyoreX]

  I remember back when Bizarro came out, Marvel said it would never treat it’s heroes with such irreverence.

  Irreverence seems to be the norm rather than the exeption for Marvel these days. Aside from the “What The…” books, haven´t you seen Marvel Zombies Or (shudder) the recent Marvel Apes? They have a Spider-Monkey and everything!

• [devophill]

  Marvel has done this sort of thing recently, see Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple’s Omega: The Unknown. This new book will even include the long-awaited follow-up to Peter Bagge’s 2002 “Megalomaniacal Spider-Man”, “The Incorrigible Hulk”.

• [Anonymous]

  @14
  I think after mainstream comics spent the period from the mid 80s to now revising and reimagining their characters for an older audience, they were left with nowhere to go but parody. I mean how many times can you hit reset, put Spiderman in a black costume or kill Superman? How many crises on Infinite Earths can you have? And how long can you keep adults interested in costumed heroes? They’re bored and their gonna grab alt comics, or stuff with zombies in it. Especially if they’ve were reading Batman when they were 5 and are now in their 30s.

• [Spencer Cross]

  People who dig this may also appreciate illustrator Mark Todd’s recent work:

  http://www.marktoddillustration.com/gallery%20html/art1.htm

  Much better appreciated in person as a lot of it is multi-layered and collage-like. Fun stuff.

• [Brainspore]

  I love Maakies, but once you become an actual millionaire for your syndicated work I think you have to relinquish your “indy” status.

• [Takuan]

  nope, he hasn’t compromised.