Blame the fact that somehow, I didn't know who he was.
I was digging through my earthly possessions looking for something to distract me from recent horse-puckey in my life when I came upon a tattered copy of Superman - The Dark Side, a story that was the inspiration for a really good episode of the Superman animated series, the two-part finale Legacy. I hadn't read it in a while, so I sat down and did just that. (I also read Raab and Justiniano's Shogun of Steel, but I'm not going to write about that.) My first observation about the story was that it was a fairly typical Superman elseworld (for all their 'imaginary story' angle, elseworld stories in my experience usually fall into specific patterns: the original heroic origin story is displaced in time or space in some fashion, so that Superman's rocket lands somewhere other than in Kansas ala Speeding Bullets, Red Son, The Nail or Batman's parents are killed not in Gotham City of the 20th century but rather it's Victorian analogue, etc etc) with the infant Kal-El's rocket ending up in the hands of Darkseid instead of on earth. (To a degree I think Legacy was an improvement in that instead of Darkseid knowing that an alien baby would somehow be useful to him, he got his hands on an adult Superman who'd demonstrated his powers, but like I said, typical elseworld.) Anyway, the story itself aside (not that it's a bad comic... any book where Kalibak looks like Doomsday, and gets his head torn off for it, is okay by me) what I first noticed was how much I enjoyed what Dwyer was doing with the art.
It was clearly aware of and even proud of the Kirby inspiration... this is, after all, a story set square in the middle of the search for the anti-life equation and the war between Apokalips and New Genesis... but Dwyer doesn't seem intimidated by it at all, and that's apparent from the opening scene of the infant Kal-El's craft landing, or the scene of Forager and the bugs raiding New Genesis and evading Orion's wrath... it's really well done, lively and expressive. Dwyer manages to convey the varying nature of characters like Scott Free, grown bitter over a spinal injury that traps him in a crippled body, or angry Orion, or confused yet determined Kal-El, who destroys New Genesis only to become the savior of the New Gods. It's not the absolute best art I've ever seen, but it's to my mind very good and moreover it doesn't detract from the story, which is something a lot of artists could benefit from learning.
And the design for the armor that Kal-El wears, with the red double lightning bolt up front, is really quite stunning and does a lot to emphasize the nature of Darkseid's regime on Apokolips without hitting you over the head with it. (This is in sharp contrast to, say, Kirby's original design for Virman Vundabar, who appears in this story... I love the King, but seriously, first he has Hitler as a Fantastic Four villain, and after that he had Hitler join up with Darkseid. It's not subtle.) It's a well-drawn series, I think, although some of the last few pages seem rushed in comparison... maybe they were, I don't know.
Looking at his website, I was struck by the power and fluidity of his more recent work on Avengers, which I had not seen before. (I wasn't digging the stories so much during the big Kang storyline.) Pictures like this and this do a good job of combining frenetic action and a clear sense of what's going on. I kind of wish I'd paid more attention to his art at the time. It turns out (and I didn't know this) that Kieron Dwyer was also handling the art on Mark Gruenwald's run on Captain America during the infamous John Walker/The Captain storyline, and while I read and enjoyed those comics, I had no idea that the same guy who'd illustrated the Bloodstone Hunt also didSuperman - The Dark Side.
Funny how a talented artist can impress himself upon you while you somehow manage to not notice that he's done so... or maybe it's just me. Anyway, Mister Dwyer, your art helped me stay sane another night, so thanks.
Posted by Matt Rossi at November 22, 2004 2:51 PM