Favorite Comic Artist Countdown #41 - Jim Starlin!

Jim Starlin is one of those artists I liked but never really appreciated enough in his heyday. I was already a Captain Marvel fan when the reins of the sputtering series were handed over to Starlin with a writing assist by Mike Friedrich. Starlin came, guns blazing, with a coherent miniverse and Captain Marvel became the home. Embers had glowed in Iron Man and in Marvel Two-In-One,but in the Kree Captain's adventures the hellish menace of Thanos was confronted for the first time. And Cap won, though not without considerable help from many if not most the Marvel Universe. While battling Thanos, Mar-Vell became a blonde and cosmically aware. He became the hero who we knew for many years thereafter, a template at last created which caught hold with the fans. Starlin went to do the same thing for Adam Warlock and later over at DC and with his own characters in a book called Dreadstar. Eventually Starlin created his masterpiece, the telling of the last story of Mar-Vell, a hero who had survived many battles and even wars, only to fall victim to the inevitable in the form of Cancer. He died and as far as I know has never been truly brought back. But Thanos has many times of course. Jim Starlin is one of those artists I liked at the time, but he's one of my absolute favorites now.

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