Indie Edge December 2010: Kathryn & Stuart Immonen

This month’s featured creator is…

Kathryn & Stuart Immonen

Kathryn Immonen has written stories for both DC and Marvel, including the sleeper hit mini-series, Patsy Walker: Hellcat.  She has recently completed a run on the fan-favorite series, Runaways and the X-Men mini-series Pixie Strikes Back!, both with Sara Pichelli; Heralds, with Tonci Zonjic; and is currently working on a Wolverine and Jubilee limited series, with art by Phil Noto.

Over a span of more than 20 years, Stuart Immonen has worked for virtually every comics publisher (extant and extinct) and is best known for such diverse and critically acclaimed work as Nextwave and Superman: Secret Identity. After a successful two-year run on Ultimate Spider-Man, Stuart is currently the artist on Marvel’s top-selling New Avengers.

Their creator-owned Never as Bad as You Think was given the hardcover treatment by BOOM! Studios in 2008, and their web-serialized OGN, Moving Pictures, was released by Top Shelf in June 2010, with two foreign-language editions in preproduction for the European market. While working on their next graphic novel project, Russian Olive to Red King, they live in Toronto with their very tall son and their very bad dog.

Recent & Classic Works from Kathyrn & Stuart Immonen…

· Moving Pictures GN (MAR101136)
· Never As Bad As You Think HC (OCT083926)
· Outlaw Territory Volume 2 TP (AUG100457)

Kathyrn & Stuart, What Are You Reading?

ALEC: THE YEARS HAVE PANTS
(Top Shelf / HC—FEB098160 / SC—FEB098161)

A massive undertaking, both for reader and creator, Alec is surprisingly, endlessly inventive despite the formality of presentation, with nearly each of the 600+ pages locked in a nine-panel grid. Eddie Campbell's raconteurial gift is never pedantic, and the variable subject matter is disarming; art, sex, feces, drunkeness, literature are all presented as equally valuable in the autobiographical mosaic. It's fascinating to at once see his artistic growth over the decades and to bear witness to his early mastery of the form.

T-MINUS: RACE TO THE MOON GN
(Pocket Books / FEB094446)

There's no disguising Jim Ottaviani's enthusiasm for his material, whether it's dinosaurs or scientists (or dinosaur scientists).  And with T-Minus, the story of the space race, he delivers the facts seamlessly on the back of some very fine story telling. Like all good 'history comics', it leaves you feeling smarter than when you started and satisfied in a way your school texts never did. Zander Cannon's judicious use of schematics and chalk board drawings are delicious treats and the panel where Von Braun shows up with the giant cast on his arm makes me laugh every time.

THE ACT-I-VATE PRIMER
(IDW Publishing / AUG090968)

As webcomics continue to migrate to print (and back?), I think we'll see more landscape format publishing, but readers will be hard-pressed to find a superior collection of strips than those in this anthology. Indeed, if it didn't say webcomics on the cover, one might be forgiven for thinking that none of it was ever meant for electronic consumption, as the design and execution of each of the sixteen original comics so naturally seems at home on paper. And the variety! Some creators successfully experiment with layout; others deliver impeccable, well-crafted original cartooning; while still others play with homage. Something, as they say, for everyone.