I started this column this week thinking I was going to review an issue of “The Incredible Hulk” drawn by Dale Keown. Things didn’t quite work out that way.

Artists Don’t Last, But They Should

I’ve been thinking lately about how artists don’t stick around on books anymore, and how often that’s part of the design of the publishing program. The bigger the name and the hotter the artist is, the more likely they’ll show up to launch a book and then disappear.

A few years back, a publisher would announce a hot artist as the series penciler for some new #1 issue. By issue #4, a new series artist would be announced. It was a classic bait and switch tactic.

It’s only gotten worse. Now, these hot artists can’t draw two issues in a row, even with multiple months’ lead time. They’re probably too busy drawing commissions and making posts on Instagram to get a comic drawn. In a way, I can’t blame them. Those commissions are easy money. Lots of artists can make hundreds of dollars in an hour or two with a single random drawing. Why bother with all the tedium of backgrounds and storytelling? Why force yourself to draw four to six panels when a single splashy image will make you more money? Art is business and business is art. Feed your family.

I thought of Dale Keown. Eventually, with “Pitt”, he’d fall off the publishing schedule. Issues would come few and far between. After “Pitt,” he’s drawn one- and two-issue specials. He’s done some covers. That’s been his career.

Nowadays, he’s strictly on covers, and who could blame him? Do the math and you’ll likely find that he can make far more money doing one-off images.

All of that only happened because he made a name for himself first as the regular artist on “The Incredible Hulk.” It was his first “mainstream” job, and while he wasn’t there every single month, he made it more often than not, and drew a lot of memorable issues.

He grew as an artist in those days. He hadn’t yet gotten to the point where people came to expect so much from him that he needed to spend too much time perfecting every issue to have any time left to breathe.

Today, that cycle to “hotness” would come quicker and he’d be launching a couple #1s a year and drawing some of the 100 alternate covers the major publishers need every month to keep the doors open.

I picked up my copy of “Hulk Visionaries – Peter David” volume 5, which has the first issues of Keown’s run on the title. But something else in the issue caught my eye.

Now, we make an abrupt turn:

Sam Kieth Moves to Marvel

“The Incredible Hulk” #368 was the first issue of the series I ever bought. Sam Kieth drew it as a one shot.

I asked myself this week, as I do so often with older issues, “Does it hold up?”

So I read it, quite possibly for the first time since I picked it up on a newsstand in 1991.

Peter David’s story is good. Sam Kieth’s art has flashes of his brilliance, but is otherwise very very rough.

It’s the least Marvel Comics-looking Marvel comic of the time. It’s even more jarring than Mike Mignola filling in on an issue of “X-Force.”

Kieth’s art style is not your standard superhero house style, though it is suited, in a way, for a monster book like The Hulk. If you were trying to fit Kieth in anywhere, this or maybe a “Doctor Strange” issue would work.

(I include this image because Peter David won the wordplay award of the year from me for that last word balloon…)

Sam Kieth was fresh off launching a little title over at DC called “Sandman.” So drawing “Hulk” made perfect sense. He’d follow this issue with a story line in “Marvel Comics Presents” that David also wrote. It featured Wolverine, a hot dog truck, and a paper airplane, amongst other memorable imagery.

It should come as no surprise to you that this issue is a little weird.

It’s also relatively simple. It’s Hulk meets Hyde. The similarities between the two characters is obvious, and Peter David wrings every drop out of that for this issue, with plenty of discussion between the two characters while they trade blows atop a moving train. It’s an interestingly cerebral tale told on top of a visceral fight scene.

It’s what superhero comics should more often be: People having serious conversations with a backdrop of action to make it visually appealing. It’s visually more interesting than 20 people chatting at Avengers Tower in the living room. For example.

Kieth’s work is not at his strongest here. I don’t know it that was because of a tight deadline or unfamiliar material for him, or just youthful inexperience. Or, perhaps, it was from being inked by Kelley Jones. Kieth’s signature flourishes are drawn in in the ink stage of his art, and I wonder if that’s why the art sometimes looks a little soft or unfinished. But, then, the worst of the art comes often from anatomy. What is going on with this Hulk?

But then you also get neat moments like this, where Hulk’s weight cracks the gutter. I love that gag.

The story is mostly in the darkness of a train box car, and Kieth’s work does its best job when he’s in the shadows with it. It’s creepy and moody. In broad daylight, it’s a bit more uneven.

In the end, I enjoyed the issue, though mostly due to the context of its time and where Sam Kieth was, as an artist, yet. It’s not going to be in my Top 10 Hulk Issues of All Time or anything, but it’s enjoyable and I didn’t regret spending my time reading it.

Also, that Dale Keown art, even in the early days with its bits of awkwardness, is still very very pretty.

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