Favorite Comic Artist Countdown #47 - Berni Wrightson!

Berni Wrightson (I just like his name without the final "e") came of age in the early days of my collecting career. He was the "horror artist" supreme, taking the stylings of Graham Ingels and the shadowy shapes of Frank Frazetta and pushing them forward into a new era. Wrightson made his bones, so to speak, on Swamp Thing, a comic about a muck monster and so much more. While Swamp Thing today is so much more about philosophy and such, back it was about Wrightson's lush artwork and classic monster tropes. I first tumbled onto his work in the Showcase trilogy starring Nightmaster. Wrightson joined with Mike Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Jeff (later Catherine) Jones to form The Studio, a desire on their part to become The Beatles of comics sort of. Wrightson was always the odd man out in that quartet, his stylings lurking more within recognizable horror notions and less with once fashionable illustrators of days gone by. I always felt that Wrightson was the most "comic booky" of the Studio guys. Wrightson's masterpiece is not a comic, but his illustrated Frankenstein and it is genius through and through. It was a sad day when Berni Wrightson left this world 

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