03/19/2018

Caleb Orecchio here with thoughts on a temporary comic book artist, Jeff Purves, and other news.

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I really liked Sally’s report last week on Paty Greer/Cockrum. I had a similar experience with a comic book artist’s name I did not recognize. For me it was the name “Jeff Purves” in a copy of The Incredible Hulk #349–I found that Purves, after some digging, had a 19-issue run on The Hulk in late 80’s with Peter David. He’s taking over after the McFarlane run, which is self-evident in the contrived effort of maintaining a McFarlane-y looking Hulk. That’s not a knock on Purves, just something I noticed. This is work-for-hire comics after all.

When I initially read the issue, the layouts and action were interesting to me because the clarity and simplicity of the images wreaked of professionalism (as opposed to fanboy-gone-pro, though I’m not ruling that possibility out), which to me meant he had to be some sort of successful illustrator trying his hand at comics. I was more or less right. According to Lambiek and IMDb, he’s an animator. I mean, look at that Spider-Man above, the guy is clearly an educated drawer.

 

I found Purves’ style to be bit stiff at first, but I think it had more to do with the inking of Terry Austin of issue 349; I eventually warmed up to the drawing and am now rather impressed by Purves’ professional, hired-gun vibe. I have a feeling Purves was pretty dependable schedule-wise due the successive amount of issues he contributed to. The work has both a sense of urgency and careful calculation like he knows how to bust out the good stuff that kids love, but ultimately understands that the issue must get out on time.

Just thought this was interesting. I’m interested in these weird here-today-gone-tomorrow comic book artists (though nearly 2 years is not an amount of time to sneeze at), because it adds to the wacky history of comics. This guy probably wanted to draw comics as a kid but needed something more financially stable as an adult, so he quits comics and goes to work in animation on such titles as The Simpsons and Mulan.

 

 

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