J.H. Williams III

Yesterday was my friend, Scott's 30th birthday and his good friends Jim (or JH as he's know in the comics industry) and his wife Wendy suprised him by driving eight hours for the occasion! So Kate and I got to spend some time with Scott on his birthday and catch up with Jim and Wendy.

JH Williams III (I'll be calling him Jim for the rest of this post), is of course one of comics finest artists, with some of his contributions being Chase, Justice Riders (a Justice League Elseworlds story), Shade (fom Starman), Batman (with Grant Morrison), an issue of Detective (with Paul Dini), covers for Crossing Midnight, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (with his artist friend Seth Fisher), Seven Soldiers Of Victory, Desolation Jones, and one of my favorite comics of all time, Promethea (with Alan Moore, of course).

Jim is especially highly regarded amongst fellow comic book artists (make that all artists that see his work), but I feel that he's not as appreciated by comics fandom as he should be. I can't reaslly put my head around that because really, just to look at Jim's art is to understand what great art is: beautiful, challenging, engaging, and emersive. Well for the hold-outs to the wonderama that is Jim's art, I'm going to say that they are going to be in for a splendid visual treat when they see his next book, which we got to see original pages of last night with narration by Jim himself. I can't say what this title is because DC hasn't made the official announcement yet or scheduled it, but seriously it's all a person could want from great sequential art and then some!

Jim, throughout his career, has always pushed his art to new levels, he doesn't take shortcuts, and he has a passion for this artform that is almost without parallel from my experience. For those of you unfamiliar with Jim's art who would like to check out more fantastic illustrations such as the three I've posted here, go to his website: www.jh3.com/ and click on his gallery over on the right.