Bill Sienkiewicz

Coming soon, a new documentary from the people who brought you The Legend of Kingdom Come.

Bill Sienkiewicz, That Polish Guy, examines the remarkable life, groundbreaking career, and dazzling artwork of one of comics' most influential creators.

Featuring observations from luminaries like Jim Lee, Kevin Smith, Dennis Cowan, and many others.

Coming soon, Bill Sienkiewicz, That Polish Guy.

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Let's go on to Uncanny X-Men number 288, Time and Place.

Uh, Portacio and Lee plotting, Byrne and Lobdell scripting, guest pencils by Andy Kubert, and guest inks by Bill Sienkiewicz.

Uh, let's do a little background here.

Uh, Andy Kubert is the son of Joe Kubert and brother of Adam Kubert.

Uh, Kubert began his career as a letterer for DC and then an illustrator on several of DC's books before making the jump to Marvel in the '90s, uh, mostly working on the X-Men titles and a couple of fill-in issues for, um, Uncanny X-Men, and then a run on X-Men volume two after Jim Lee departs when he goes to find, found Image Comics.

Uh, Kubert did a number of notable X-Men works, including Age of Apocalypse and Wolverine Origin, but then he returned to DC in 2005.

Uh, Bill Sienkiewicz is an American artist who showed his portfolio to then DC editor Vince Colletta in the late '70s, and though DC didn't have any work for him, Colletta contacted Neal Adams, who in turn spoke to then editor-in-chief at Marvel, Jim Shooter, who got Sienkiewicz some work at, uh, Marvel on The Hulk magazine, and then the new Moon Knight title.

Uh, from New Knight, uh, Moon Knight, excuse me, Sienkiewicz would then illustrate the Fantastic Four and then the New Mutants, and then he began experimenting with his style and mediums much more, and doing a lot more, uh, uh, cover work for comics.

It's-

Yeah, like a Bill Sienkiewicz meets Neil Adams.

Yeah, it does.

It does look like Bill.

Yeah.

Like who?

Bill Sienkiewicz, the, uh, comic book artist.

He did Mutants-

And, you know, I mean, I, you know, I bought those issues.

I got those Sienkiewicz, you know, storm Dracula issues.

And we will wink at that like crazy, of course.

Yeah.

Coming soon, a new documentary from the people who brought you The Legend of Kingdom Come.

Bill Sienkiewicz, that Polish guy, examines the remarkable life, groundbreaking career, and dazzling artwork of one of comics' most influential creators.

Featuring observations from luminaries like Jim Lee, Kevin Smith, Dennis Cowan, and many others.

Coming soon, Bill Sienkiewicz, that Polish guy.

If you like Word Balloon and want to support the conversation, join the League of Word Balloon listeners today.

Patreon.com slash Word Balloon.

and a few hundred people came out to see them.

We were hosting artist signings on a regular basis around this time, and I seem to remember that Bill Sienkiewicz made an appearance right before their signing.

Looking back in 1982, people just weren't self-publishing.

For anyone wanting to make a living writing or drawing comics, the dream was to work for Stan Lee at Marvel Comics.

And I was figuring we could stop that at the point where I respond to him, yeah, I'm glad you said that and not me.

And this is on page 167 of the prototype.

Kim Thompson asking about, how about anything in the last 10 years? And I replied, Bill Sienkiewicz, I admire greatly for throwing off the constraints of the Johnstone and Cushing illustrators inking style that Neil had and going straight to a kind of quote, I'm going to get in there and jump on the board and just let it leap off my brush, unquote.

That takes a great deal of integrity because you know what people are going to say.