spectacular shocker wrote:
Note that there have been a couple of MG Art books over the years, and I've read at least one of them.  However, IIRC, they were fairly thin & weren't that comprehensive...
Here's my review of one retrospective of Golden's career.

Excess: The Art of Michael Golden HC
by Renee Witterstaetter

Not a terribly good book, lacking any depth or analysis and displaying the same kind of gushing fan boy enthusiasm one would expect from a fan publication rather than a ‘serious’ career retrospective. The reader doesn’t really learn much about Mike Golden and there may not be much worth knowing about him, but in my experience, most interesting artists have something worth saying besides stating their name, rank and serial number. The bios of Dave Stevens and Craig Russell for instance give the reader some insight into what drives their artwork and their personalities and this enhances my enjoyment of their work. Besides the lack of depth or any attempt at criticism, the book is riddled with annoying typos and mistakes. 

There are some nice art samples but many of his best covers were missing, while others are reproduced far too small and/or in b&w. I would’ve liked to see more covers produced full page and preferably without logos. Some of his colour work was reproduced in b&w which does a disservice to the material. In this case, less prose and more pictures would’ve been preferable, particularly because it was completely superfluous. As it is, I don’t really feel this material warrants a hardcover or the expense. 

One thing the book made clear to me is that I don’t particularly care for the second phase of Golden’s career, when he went from his early, soft, organic style to his later angular, caricaturist style with bright, day-glo almost fluorescent colours, which I feel are too bright and work against creating any kind of mood. The demarcation line seems to be the mid 80s. I love most of his artwork up to and including the Nam but after that not so much. There is good work in there but in general the style is too unrealistic and the colours too unnatural.

GoldenStarWars38coverdetail.jpg

Anyway, prompted by this book, I picked up two universally acknowledged Golden masterpieces, reflecting both phases of his career; Star Wars #38 and GI Joe Yearbook #2, written respectively by Archie Goodwin and Larry Hama. Both were practically unreadable (in fact I abandoned the Star Wars tale half way through) but they’re great artwise. I do, however, much prefer the Star Wars issue, which shows all the strengths of his original style. Beautiful, sumptuous stuff, stylish and expressive with great facial expressions. I love the cover too. The second offering is from the early part of his second phase and his new style was still developing. The artwork is over-the-top, almost cartoony but it works in this tale. 


 Irony and subtly are the first casualties in the eternal battle of wits between people divided by a common language. So read between the lines or you'll fall through the cracks...

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Last Edited By: deejayway Nov 9 14 3:55 PM. Edited 1 times.