In a first-of-its-kind collection, award-winning illustrators celebrate the lives of the visionary artists who created the world of comic art and altered pop culture forever.
Sixteen Graphic Novel Biographies of:
• Walt Disney • Dr. Seuss • Charles Schulz • The Creators of Superman • R. Crumb • Jack Kirby • Winsor McCay • Hergé • Osamu Tezuka • MAD creator, Harvey Kurtzman • Al Hirschfeld • Edward Gorey • Chas Addams • Rodolphe Töpffer • Lynd Ward • Hugh Hefner
The story of cartoons—the multibillion-dollar industry that has affected all corners of our culture, from high to low—is ultimately the story of the visionary icons who pioneered the form.
But no one has told the story of comic art in its own medium—until now.
In Masterful Marks, top illustrators—including Drew Friedman, Nora Krug, Denis Kitchen, and Peter Kuper—reveal how sixteen visionary cartoonists overcame massive financial, political, and personal challenges to create a new form of art that now defines our world.
"What better way to pay tribute to groundbreaking cartoonists than in cartoon form? Top contemporary illustrators including Drew Friedman, Peter Kuper, and Nora Krug chronicle the breakthroughs of iconic forbears such as Charles M. Sculz, Dr. Seuss, Robert Crumb, and Jack Kirby."
“What a joy to see the raw, unvarnished insides of these handmade lives finally placed in the right hands: their heirs in art—masters who learned from the masters. How smart of Monte Beauchamp to cast their stories in the visual structures, color palettes, and signature rhythms of the very art forms that our strangest and best-loved supermen originally expanded to worldwide glory.”
"At long last, someone has taken a refreshing and diverse approach to profiling the giants who shaped the cartoon medium. Penetrating, intimate, entertaining, and bittersweet... Beauchamp has given the world a masterful work."
“Inspiration is cyclic – every cartoonist has a hero, a visionary colossus who ignites their own creative journey. Reading Drew Friedman’s account of how R. Crumb became his spiritual father is, in itself, inspirational, as are the many other memoirs contained in Monte Beauchamp’s celebratory collection of cross-generational comics creativity.”
