Lukas nominated; Brandon praised
July 11th, 2009I have been horribly remiss in not pointing this out sooner — but Witch Doctor artist Lukas Ketner is up for the 2009 Russ Manning “Most Outstanding Newcomer” Award! Previous recipients of the award include David Peterson, Alex Maleev, Jeff Smith, Arthur Adams, and a hell of a lot of other amazing artists. The Manning Award will be given out during the Eisner Award ceremony during Comic-Con in a couple of weeks — so cross your fingers for Lukas!
We also never got around to pointing out that Rantz Hoseley — editor of Comic Book Tattoo and head of the Longbox Project, the “iTunes for comics” program that’s been getting a lot of buzz recently — name-dropped Brandon in an interview he did with the Word Balloon podcast.
On the podcast, Rantz was talking about the mindset of some creators who feel like worrying about the business side of comics makes them ‘sellouts’ — and he uses Brandon as an example of someone who, in his words, “gets it.”
I can tell the people who ‘get it’ right away — and if they don’t understand the nuances of it, then they’re open to, I don’t want to say the experience of it, but the kind of mindset-difference that it takes.Brandon Seifert is a perfect example. He does a book called Witch Doctor which he’s been putting out independently. And I think he’s going to end up being a massively huge success, as a writer and as a creator. He’s got really unique, brilliant ideas that touch on the same kinds of themes and standards that people love in comics, but he does that wonderful thing of bringing his own unique flavor and twist to it in the same way that people like Brubaker and Fraction and Bendis do, in making it identifiably and distinctively their own.
I think people like that — at the risk of sounding all Whitney-fucking-Houston here — are the future.