Image Comics's Joseph Michael Linsner collections
   Girls & Goddesses - The Pin-Up Art Of Joseph Michael Linsner
   The Art Of Joseph Michael Linsner
                                             ( 2007 / 2002 - Image Comics)

Girls & Goddesses - The Pin-Up Art Of Joseph Michael Linsner (2007) Looking at the details below, clearly, this is the best Linsner collection, so far, on The List. Someone made the design choice that all pages were to be full-bleed, making this a beautiful book to hold and flip through. Not all the art extends to the edges, but those that don't are framed with strikingly saturated colors & patterns. No page displays more than one art piece, though three are turned sideways. Conversely, they took five other long pieces and rather than turn them, presented them as double-page spreads, which allows you to enjoy the halves of the enlarged images, but when the subject is a single human body (and the book is bound in this way), the crease in the middle is not an enhancement. To be fair, in one of them, the crease breaks only the expressive flow of a girl's mane and lets the whole piece still work. Linsner was most well-known at the time for his creation of Dawn, the mercurial representation of the idea of 'Goddess'. His theme allows her to be "draped" with different forms, but her few unchanging characteristics make her quite recognizable - again and again - throughout the book, 37 images in all (35%). Another large proportion is given over to his devil-girl, Sinful Suzi, and there are also a handful of his depictions of Barsoom's Dejah Thoris. With that said, the book does not suffer from a seeming lack of image diversity. The little text there is is some commentary by the artist about his own being drawn to drawing the female form early on and one or two needed explanations about certain pieces. Nudity ? Yes, the full female form is on display here. Salaciousness ? There's no argument that half of the fictional women here are teasing, taunting or otherwise seductive - there's no missing the adult communication that's happening to another adult - and I've no doubt a child's going to remember the attitude they saw here when they are no longer a child, but let me say that I don't think there's anything graphic here (maybe a few extreme poses) and for the other half of the book, the artist has captured an ethereal innocence in his subjects' apparent lack of self-consciousness at their wearing hardly a stitch of clothing.

The Art Of Joseph Michael Linsner (2002) (edited by Eva Hopkins & the artist) A gorgeous book, with almost all of its 176 pages, those that are not full-bleed presentations of the work, being backgrounded by colored texture. Do know that a little more than half of the 151 art pages have images of Linsner's character Dawn, a personification of the goddess of birth & rebirth. Admittedly, the buxom redhead is presented in so many guises and variations, it would be hard to characterize her repeated appearances as "same-old, same-old." Nudes are scattered throughout, as well as a little beefcake. There are four double-page spreads with only one being a disappointment due to the book's middle. Most of the images come from the world of comics and there are many captions that include a short explanation, or anecdote, about the origins of a piece. Other text pages are introductions by the artist and another, along with a 5-page, 12-image, step-by-step explication of the creation of one piece. There is also a few pages of a photo montage of statuettes, conventions, costumes & character look-a-likes. The work canvases the world of fantasy, superstition and mysticism, but the predominant focus on a single male or female form might lend this the atmosphere of a pin-up book. Note that there were a 1000 copies released of a Limited Edition which contain an additional 16 pages of material, reportedly in full color.

other Image Comics releases

The Art Of Greg Horn vols.1 & 2

Frank Cho: Women - Selected Drawings & Illustrations

Image Comics's Jay Anacleto collections

Art Of Chiodo

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