I recently picked up two volumes of the "Modern Masters" series published by TwoMorrows. For those not familiar with the series, they are in-depth interviews with some of today's (and yesterday's) hottest comic book artists. But the beauty of the books is that they don't solely cover the comic book careers. Yea, that is a big part of it, but the volumes also cover how the artists got their start, what other art jobs they have had, and some nifty behind the scenes insight on the working of comic book companies.

Of the selection my local comic shop had, I picked two of my all time favorites, Bruce Timm and John Byrne. I picked John Byrne because he was such a huge influence on me back when I started collecting comic books. His work on The X-Men and Fantastic Four were pivotal in developing my love of comics. And I picked Bruce Timm on the influence he has on me now. His ability to simplify character designs cleanly is rivaled only by Stephen Silver. But where Silver has an almost Hirchfieldian grasp of the line of a character, Timm adds a certain dynamic to his drawings that really make them "pop".

It was quite interesting to read John Byrne's thoughts on the comic book industry, the collector's market, and such infamous characters as Jim Shooter and Rob Liefeld. It's always been know that John is quite opinionated and this book is not a let down. Along with great artwork and stories about this work, we get this solid gem about Rob Liefeld (in relation to bad work being published):

"...For example, everybody knows that I think Rob Liefeld is one of the worst artists ever to crawl out from under a rock, but I believe, I hope, I pray, that Rob sits down at the drawing board genuinely believing he is doing good work, and trying to do good work, and not trying to suck as much as I think he does."

Yea, I gotta agree with John on that one.

As for Bruce Timm, one of the most interesting things I learned about him is that he used to be a storyboard artist. Wow! Just another reason to love the guy. His stories about working at Filmation and Warner Brothers are just inspirational. It just makes me want to draw more and more.

It does sort of get me down a little bit how good these guys are and how much of their lives they have dedicated to their art and how I’ve sort of meandered around with my art background and have been diddling around with web coding for far too many years. I can take heart though that I am not a novice and at least I'm not learning to draw from scratch, I just need to dust off the old skills and get back to the business of drawing for a living.