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Eva Ink Artist Group and Pros & Cons Celebrity Booking will be in force at Baltimore Comic-Con with Mike Zeck, Michael Golden, John Beatty, and Renee Witterstaetter. |
John Beatty is a veteran comic book artist, best know for his inking work for both Marvel and DC Comics. Developing into one of the industries top inkers over his career, Beatty has worked with top pencil artists, such as Mike Zeck, Kelley Jones, and Michael Golden. Working on almost every major comic character in the industry at one time or another, titles for which he is best known include many fan favorites, such as: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, Captain America, The Punisher, Thanos Quest, and many Batman projects, including a highly regarded fan favorite 3-year run on the monthly Batman book. Being picked, or carefully picking titles and peers with whom to work has resulted in many of these series still remaining highly regarded and collectible in today's current comic culture. |
Artist/writer/creator Michael Golden is a legend in the comic book industry, but one that has never stopped adding to his legacy as a storytelling professional. Co-creator of the X-Men's Rogue character, Spartan X, and Bucky O'Hare, Michael is known worldwide for his groundbreaking work on The 'Nam, Micronauts, G.I. Joe Yearbook, and Dr. Strange, among much more, and is counted as one of the best cover designers and illustrators in the business.
Golden's work can be seen on covers from The Walking Dead, the new Marvel Civil War, the new Rom, the new Micronauts, Spawn, Nightwing, Iron Man, Heroes for Hire, Exiles, Demon's Regret, Spider-Man, Vampirella, Captain American, The Punisher to The Hulk, as well as numerous other titles for about every company out there. His zombie art is routinely used in conjunction with popular properties on television and in print.
It's no wonder that Golden has been one of the most influential creators around for the last several decades:
"....unless you can actually draw yourself, it is very difficult to understand the exact mind-blowing impossibility of what he does," said writer/artist Larry Hama, of Golden's work.
"Michael blithely puts down on paper exactly what he sees in his head. It's like he's got a cosmic opaque projector that shoots a laser beam from his brain through the kundalini eye in his forehead straight down onto the drawing surface where all he has to do is trace it," continues Hama. "The result is hard-edged and fully realized in every way. No fuzzy impressions here. No using the side of the pencil. No squiggly space-filling lines blocked in on automatic pilot. To paraphrase Neal Adams (who was referring to Golden), there is not a single millimeter of line on the page that is not directed by conscious thought."
Recent books covering the colorful life and amazing art of Michael Golden include a Manga version of the Bucky O'Hare series, as well as the top-selling art retrospective Excess: The Art of Michael Golden, written by Renee Witterstaetter, which sold out and has gone into a second printing, as well as his recent sketchbooks Heroes and Villains, MORE Heroes and Villains, and Michael Golden: Alchemy.
His newest art book, currently being offered at 2018 shows is: Michael Golden: Dangerous Curves.
Michael has served as an Editor at DC Comics as well as Senior Art Director at Marvel Comics, and has worked on scores of movie production projects, some currently in development. His art has been the focus of gallery shows in places as diverse as Gijon, Barcelona, New York, Antwerp and Brussels, while his class on storytelling has been conducted from Spain to Brussels to France to Canada to the United States... and most recently China.
He has recently been awarded with Lifetime Achievement Awards from The University of Maryland Eastern Shore and the Lille Arts Festival. with gallery shows of his work in Spain, New York, Maryland and Moscow, and many points in between.
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Writer, editor, and color-artist Renee Witterstaetter is the author of Nick Cardy: The Aritst at War, Excess: The Art of Michael Golden, Tex: The Art or Mark Texeira, the children's book Kerry and the Scary Things, Dying for Action: The Life and Films of Jackie Chan, and Nick Cardy: Wit-Lash among many others.
Renee began the comic phase of her career working on such titles as Guardians of the Galaxy, Thanos Quest, Superman, Silver Surfer, Conan The Barbarian, The Punisher special projects, and Conan Saga, then going on to spearhead the reintroduction of She-Hulk at Marvel as well, as part of that legendary run.
She then moved to Topps Comics where she was the editor on X-Files, Jurassic Park, Xena, and Hercules, and is the co-creator -- with Jackie Chan and artist Michael Golden -- of the successful series, Spartan X, which will be made into a trade paperback featuring new material.
She is also the colorist on hundreds of comics from The Avengers to Spider-Man to Captain America to Jurassic Park, among many, many others. "I must have colored a thousand pages of comic books," she says.
Film work was a natural progression for Renee after this storytelling immersion in comics, and she has since worked on dozens of music videos for Madonna, Seal, Ben Harper, and Usher, as well as the feature movies Rush Hour Two, Red Dragon, To ease the lose, and Swimming With The Virgin, among others.
In addition to on-going film work, she is the President of Little Eva Ink Publishing and Eva Ink Artist Group, which represents artists and writers in comics, storyboards, fine art painting, and more. Renee is also one of the producers of the Creator Chronicles DVD series with Woodcrest Productions, featuring interviews with major industry creators such as George Perez, Bill Sienkiewicz, Michael Golden, Joe Jusko, Matt Wagner, Joe Sinnott, and many more.
Current projects also include new books Michael Golden, Dangerous Curves, Santa Confidential with Hagar the Horrible artist Chris Browne, and Mark Texeira: Tempest.
Renee will be available to autograph the thousands of comics she has worked on in her career, film DVDs, and her newest books available at all the shows.
In her not so abundant free time, she lectures on storytelling, most recently in China and Russia, fishes, dances, travels, and is also curating several major art exhibits featuring U.S. and European talent.
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Michael J. Zeck, renowned comic book illustrator and storyteller! Creator of the black Spider-Man costume!
A heavy-hitter in the comics industry, and influencing generations of artists, one would have to argue which of Mike's series has been the most influential, or which is embossed most deeply in our pop culture:
Zeck's epic six part story Kraven's Last Hunt, with J.M. Dematteis and Bob McLeod, springs immediately to mind. This groundbreaking series took the Spider-Man character to a whole new level, and has been touted by readers as the "Greatest Spider-Man story of all time," in recent polls.
Considered one of "the" Punisher artists, Zeck's work with writer Steven Grant on the character -- collected as Circle of Blood -- sets the standard for the look and feel of the Punisher and propelled him to flagship character status at Marvel. In fact, along with air-brush artist Phil Zimmelman, Mike has created some of the most recognizable painted images of the Punisher ever made.
The Limited Series Secret Wars set the comic book readership on their ears, and brought a new black-and-white costume design for Spider-Man (designed by Zeck), which is still recognizable and indelible to this day. Spider-Man wore the costume temporarily, and it still lives on in the form of the super-villain, Venom.
In short, when you stop and think of the t-shirts sporting Zeck images, the homages to his covers, the lineage of his storytelling, you need a long sheet of paper to start writing them down.
Michael J. Zeck, it seems, always knew he would work in the arts. Born in Pennsylvania and growing up in South Florida, he later attended the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, his eye always on working in the sequential art field. He began that career at Charlton Comics with their animation-related line of comics, leading to horror titles, and later moving on to Marvel Comics. Some of his first work at Marvel included Master of Kung Fu and Captain America, with many more titles at numerous companies to follow from there.
Zeck's work has graced the pages and covers of Aquaman, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Green Lantern, G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe: Special Missions, Lobo, Deathstroke The Terminator, The Eliminator, and too many titles to mention here.
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