Matthew Skiff

Alex Ross is probably one of the biggest comic book artists working today. However, calling him a comic book artist is kind of an understatement, he does things in a little bit of a different way. His final result isn’t something that is inked over pencil’s and colored on a computer, he does things a bit more traditional. Alex Ross is a comic book painter, and every single piece he has done is nothing short of a masterpiece. Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross is basically a showcase of all the work he has done for DC Comics, told from his mouth and put into book for by Chip Kidd and Geoff Spear. The Book even has a forward from M. Night Shyamalan (Ross did the concept art for Unbreakable).

This book is a very interesting read, not only does it tell some important stories and show some amazing sketches behind Alex Ross’ biggest and most important DC paintings and stories, but is also gives some background into who Ross is and how he got started is art. It’s amazing to read about his mother, and it even shows some of her paintings, and it’s obvious where he got his artistic talent from. There are even pages showcasing artwork and projects Ross did as a kid, and it’s very interesting to see. When reading this, I almost compare myself to what he was doing when he was a kid, and I wonder how many of us “artists” did the same things as well.

Everything in this book is beautifully representing. It is a fairly large “coffee table” book, and all the images look amazing and colorful. There is some art in here that I have never seen before. There is also a ton of behind the scenes sketches and notes for each piece and it’s awesome to see the process behind it all, it’s obvious it takes a lot of work to do what he does. The book starts out with the main 3 DC characters; Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman and how he went about designing each of these characters as well as some of the more famous pieces he has done with them. It also goes into a bunch of smaller characters as well, pretty much everything you would want to know is in this book.

There is even more behind the scenes stuff behind one of my all time favorite comic books, Kingdom Come that was only touched upon in a lot of the collected editions. The book even goes as far as showing how he designed a lot of the toys that were based off of his art, this is truly an amazing book for not only Alex Ross fans, but also comic book and art fans in general. If this kinda thing peaks your interest, I would suggest tracking it down!