We’ve gained a lot of new fans in the last few months so I’ve decided to rerun all the old Practitioners articles that I’ve written. Over the next year or so more writers and artists will be added but otherwise, The Practitioners will appear here every Tuesday. Some of the articles will contain updates, corrections or new artwork for those who followed them first time round. You can find them all on the tab at the top of this page if you like but hopefully this way a few more people will get to enjoy them. Starting this week with Brit bad-boy Simon Bisley.
Blackheart claims a guardsman 2000AD ABC Warriors: The Black Hole
Simon Bisley, born March 4, 1962 might have well have been born toking a mighty cigar made out of dragon skin and playing an electric guitar made of human bone and bits of broken tank. Simon Bisley is the ultimate British artist thanks to his work on 2000AD (ABC Warriors, Judge Dredd) Lobo and Heavy Metal.
Simon Bisley is a fine artist gone nuts. Much imitated, he inspired a generation of artists to draw the extreme in intricate detail. His work relies entirely on an intimate knowledge of human anatomy. He uses this to stretch, distort and excensuate in equal measure. He is a practitioner in the purest form. One that learned his trade intimately so he could turn it on its head and rape it silly.
Its hard to come up with enough superlatives about Simon Bisley’s work. His artwork looks like a methadone freakout in a schizophrenics wet dream. Muscles and sinew stretch across blood drenched and eyeball bursting panels lined with delicate and sumptuous colours or intricate crosshatched fine inkwork. Whether capturing an embattled mecha or a languishing nymph in minute (or no) clothing, Simon Bisley ruled the 90s in British comic books. No artist came closer in that period at capturing the grit, the savagery and the downright wild untapped sexiness and humour that the British comic book reader wanted.
He is a rock god with a pencil. Said to now be drawing for European magazines and having lost the legendary mojo of his youth I would have to say that there was little or no way he was going to keep the work he was doing without setting his right hand on fire and trying to paint with the stub of his finger while wanking crude oil into a cup. This is how I think when I’m faced with Simon Bisley’s work.
Slaine: The Horned God (1988) by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley
Beyond the Bunker 