Today’s Friday Favorite may seem a bit off the beaten path from my more recent artist features and yet it hearkens to one of my great loves, the comic book. In the mid to late 90’s when I was introduced to the world of ‘funny books for adults’ it wasn’t long before the work of Michael Turner began to catch my eye. Over the years I haven’t collected much of his work and yet I have always appreciated the unique look of his characters, particularly his female characters.
Michael Turner died on June 27th of this year from complications resulting from treatment for bone cancer. He was only 37 years old.
Though a bit late, I decided that it was the right thing to do to honor his memory with a Friday Favorite post.
Michael Turner exploded onto the comics scene in the fashion that every wishful convention-attending young artist dreams of: he showed up at a convention with a small sampling of his work and was snatched up by Image Comics co-founder Marc Silvestri. The rest, as they say, is history.
It is perhaps unsurprising that his drawings of women were what caught everyone’s eye! While I don’t deny that Michael Turner had the ability to draw sexy female characters, I always felt like his work stood above and apart from the tremendous glut of physics-defying ginormous-breasted women featured in comics during the 90’s.
His female, and as I later discovered, his male, characters all have a very distinct, Michael Turner look. His drawing talent, combined with the efforts of his long-time colorist Peter Steigerwald, has had a long and lasting impact on the comic book universe.
Even without the color, his pencil work is absolutely amazing. I can honestly say that Michael Turner’s rendering of Wonder Woman is by far my favorite out of the many wonderful artist renderings of the same character that I have seen over the past several years.
Michael Turner’s best known creation is probably Witchblade (not pictured in this tribute mostly becuase of the poor quality of Witchblade images I was finding), a character he co-created with other members of Top Cow in 1995.
In 1998 he unveiled his creation/series Fathom which grew to be one of his fan-favorite comic book creations. It was only a few years later that he was to be diagnosed with bone cancer, requiring radical surgery and long months of radiation therapy.
In 2002 he branched out to create his own comic book company, Aspen MLT. After a year of legal wrangling over his creation Fathom, Michael Turner began launching titles under the Aspen name.
One of his creations for Aspen was a comic book series called Soulfire, which as it stands is the only Michael Turner series that I collected regularly. It was a beautifully rendered series with the some of the most gorgeous covers that Turner ever created.
Michael Turner had two reputations in the comic world, one which began to make perfect sense once he became more open about his illness: he was very gracious with the fans and his books were often extremely late.
(a favorite Turner cover for an issue of Identity Crisis)
And yet despite his ongoing issues with his cancer and cancer treatment he managed to amass quite the collection of comic work, including hundreds of covers for a myriad of different comic books.
If memory serves Michael Turner was to be a guest at a comic book convention that I attended several years ago but he had to cancel…my guess now is that it was probably for health-related reasons. I sincerely regret not having had the opportunity to stand in a line to tell Mr. Turner just how much I appreciated his talent.
I honestly do not have a great deal more to say. Michael Turner was a fantastic artist. In reading his art book, Michael Turner: Wizard Millenium Edition, a few years ago I learned that Michael Turner was a guy who loved life. He was active, absolutely loved video games (which made me smile!) and had a natural talent for rendering amazing characters.
I believe the best way to remember Michael Turner and to share his work with you is to simply do that. I sincerely hope that all of you have a wonderful weekend filled with beautiful sights.
(this is one of my absolute favorite comic book covers. I just love the viewing angle and the way it was rendered. Quite powerful!)
Michael Turner truly created some remarkable, iconic images. He will be missed.
Keri and I have been following Michael Turner’s carear since he burst onto the comics scene with Witchblade ( he actually started doing background assits for Silvestri even before Witchblade and work on a Ripclaw mini-series as well I think ). We even met hime twice up at Wizard World Chicago and he was a wonderfully nice person to his fans ( and I think my wife would add quite good looking as well ).
I’m not sure you thought of this Carl with your chosen post for today’s Friday Favorite but tonight my family and I will be walking at an American Cancer Society Relay for Life event. Cancer took Mr. Turner too early in life as well as my mother. My Mother, Barbara Smith, passed away from breast cancer over 5 years ago now and for the last 5 years my Dad, my family, and many of our relatives have walked to raise money for the American Cancer Socitey so that one day hopefully we all won’t lose so many people so early in life like Mike and my Mom. Thanks Carl! RIP Mike and Mom.
That is a completely wild coincidence Jeff as I was not thinking about that at all. I’m glad it worked out that way as a token of remembrance for your mother as well. I wish you all the best in the relay for life tomorrow night.
I do believe I read that Ripclaw mini-series now that you mention it!!!
it’s not a surprise to me (since I hang out with 2 fantastic artists) how this type of artwork is so incredible… and how much of it they have to do just for one comic book. I’ve watched James A Owen put up drawings he does for his books (knowing he did comics before becoming a book author) They draw so much I don’t think they realize how it blows us who can’t draw away!
Such a talent.. life isn’t always fair.
Wow. Amazing artwork. Thank you for posting this.
Great post!
It kind of creeps me out a little bit. Michael and I were born the same year. It’s a little creepy to see 1971-2008 over someone’s head like that.
That kind of creativity just amazes me.
Very, very sad – way too young.
It appears these characters were real people for him – the emotion shown in the last Batman above is a good example. The identity crisis one is so funny.
I am not a comic book person, but I appreciate what a talent we have lost – Michael Turner.
In what has turned out to be another sad coincidence, I was listening to NPR today and they did a brief report on Carnegie Melon professor Dr. Randy Pausch. He became famous for giving a speech in what had previously been a series of speeches in which the speaker was asked to prepare the speech as if it was their last speech ever. Given the advanced stage of his cancer this was more than just a quaint idea for Dr. Pausch and was actually a reality. This speech had been placed on line and evidently gave Dr.. Pausch a degree of fame in his last days. Late last night Dr. Randy Pausch died at the age of 47. Here is his final speech:
And of course I have to tie this in to the whole geek nature of my site: Randy Pausch was a devoted Star Trek fan and was invited to have a small role, one speaking line, in the upcoming Star Trek film. He donated his small day’s pay to charity.
i really can’t believe it.
its terribly sad. he was so young and had so much more to offer…
It’s so sad to lose these young and very talented people. Thanks for the lovely tribute to Michael Turner, and also for posting the video of Dr. Pausch’s final lecture.
What a beautiful tribute to two beautiful men. Thank you for telling me of them, Carl. I wish I had only known of them as they lived.
What a beautiful post, Carl. I hadn’t heard that Dr. Pausch had died. Two men with so much to offer. So sad. For the world. And especially for their families.
What a beautiful tribute.
I know little about comic art, and the examples you give here are impressive. I’d like to see more.
Jim, you can see a ton of examples of Michael Turner’s art work here:
http://www.comicartcommunity.com/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=148
So sad he passed away so young!
Great, great friday post!
I have always been a comic book fan and Wonder Woman was always my favorite.
(I think I still have that magic lasso around here somehwere!LOL!)
I had no idea that Michael Turner had terminal cancer, this comes as a bit of a shock for me…many of his covers are among my favorites – his take on Wonder Woman was iconic…
Paula: Yes it is. And oooo, the magic lasso!!!
Ken: I only knew because of reading the art book that Wizard put out a few years ago. It was still very shocking that he died, especially at such a young age. Cancer is just such a devastating disease!