The most under rated Marvel artist Ron Frenz

Let me just talk a little bit about THOR 383 first because it's really an excellent tie-in to the original Secret Wars 12 issue series. In the Secret Wars story line at one point The Enchantress temporarily magically transports herself and THOR off The Beyonder's Battleworld only to return there right in the middle of Dr. Doom's army of super villains. Not only in THOR 383 do we find out where they went for a while but we also get to see a recap of the entire fight between THOR and Doom's forces played out (as seen in Secret Wars 4) with new art work by Ron Frenz.

As you can see the art work kicks ass I mean seriously this is Sal Buscema level quality and that's pretty high praise coming from me as you all know. This is exactly what is meant when you hear about comic book art being done "The Marvel Way". It's very strange how Frenz doesn't have more notoriety in the industry like I said a really under rated artist.

It's rather sad that many of the same people who would practically drop to their knees upon hearing the name of a certain other artist who's work was out dated and woefully inadequate back in the 80s would probably be all but clueless about Ron Frenz and his fantastic work. That's just wrong.

Commission art by Ron Frenz

Drawing the Marvel Way

I think 288 (1983) was the first Incredible Hulk issue I ever had. My mother grabbed something for me from a gift shop to help pass the time at an airport. So when I saw it at my local comic shop a couple of days ago for a few bucks I bought it in order share some of the best panels in it. I remember being blown away by the art work it was so dynamic you could practically feel and hear the action in it. That kind of drawing style is a good example of what's known as "the Marvel way". Little did I know at the time that it was written and drawn by the same two guys who were working on ROM which I already had had a few issues of.

Now it so happens that Incredible Hulk 288 had a Bullpen Bulletin page which included a Mighty Marvel Checklist that had Rom #47 listed among the other titles out that month. That's ironic given that I had mentioned #47 in the previous posting in reference to Shang Chi The Master of Kung Fu.

Left click to enlarge

So that tells us at least some of what else Sal Buscema (and Mantlo of course) was working on at the time. But unlike The Hulk title Sal's penciling was complimented by the beautiful inks of the dynamic inking duo Akin & Garvey. Look at that line work in those Rom 47 panels, it's like the brush strokes of a master piece panting. That Mighty Marvel Checklist also included a small feature about the debut of the Cloak & Dagger mini-series so we see that Bill Mantlo had plenty of work on his hands at the time as well.