Yesterday, I was perusing twitter, when I happened upon an article by Emily Nussbaum in The New Yorker in praise of the currently airing HBO adaptation of Watchmen. It’s a well written piece, as Nussbaum-written articles tend to be, particularly in how it highlights Damon Lindelof‘s (and his fellow writers’) aims at forefronting racial trauma at the center of the American experience through its current most popular genre, that of the superhero. But with every mention of the comic book that inspired the above-mentioned, rather excellent, series; I couldn’t help but notice a staggering omission. Not once was the name Dave Gibbons uttered.
This isn’t an isolated occurrence, just go on Google and search the names Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore separately and see how many results you get. Spoilers: It’s around 62,000 for Gibbons and over 5 million for Moore. Now admittedly, some of these articles are related to a wholly different topic, but its frustrating to see artists like Gibbons again and again be forgotten behind the rather outsized shadow that their creative partner has cast, in this case, arguably comics’ greatest scribe.
This, of course, is an ongoing concern in the comic book industry currently. All too often, you’ll find twitter threads by artists frustrated by the lack of attention and acknowledgement they receive in comparison with their writing peers, despite the time and physical toll, the actual drawing of a comic takes. Oliver Sava at the AV Club wrote an article about this subject four years ago, so that gives you a sense of just how widespread this problem is among mainstream outlets, and frankly, even many purveyors of comics journalism. Comics are a visual medium, they always have been stretching back to the days of the Yellow Kid and Little Nemo, and while writers are an essential part of that medium they are not a monolith. It’s simply not a comic book without them, or the letterers, or the colorists, or the inkers. But let’s get back to Dave Gibbons for a moment…
It’s become somewhat clear to me that many of you who aren’t terribly familiar with comics don’t even know who Gibbons is, so here’s a quick primer:
Dave Gibbons is the co-creator of Watchmen. He drew every page of that comic, established its visual identity, designed the characters working off of some of Moore’s initial concepts, and painstakingly paced Moore’s famously verbose scripts into the beautifully presented (and highly influential) nine-panel masterpiece it is today. And this statement isn’t meant to diminish Moore’s contributions in any way, instead, I’m simply trying to make clear that on this project they were perfect collaborators and together created the only comic book to appear on the Time list of the 100 Best Novels since the magazine’s founding.
But his career didn’t just stop and end at Watchmen either, in reality, Gibbons is one of our great cartoonists and should always be thought of in those terms. Here’s a few other highlights to keep in mind:
- His career actually precedes Moore’s ever so slightly, as he was one of the founding artists of 2000AD, drawing a number of strips for that influential anthology even before its most well-known character, Judge Dredd, debuted. Gibbons was one of the magazine’s most popular artists in its nascent days.
- For 2000AD, he also created Rogue Trooper, with Gerry Finley-Day, and as you can see below, even then his line was one of the cleanest in adventure-based storytelling. Rogue Trooper is now in development for a feature film to be directed by Duncan Jones and it’s probably the third most recognized property from that still-running strong anthology.
- He began working for DC in the early 1980’s, following Moore’s breakthrough on Swamp Thing with Stephen Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch (among others), with his most notable long-term assignment at that point teaming him with Wolverine and Swamp Thing co-creator (and future Watchmen editor) Len Wein on Green Lantern. His work brought a clear beauty onto that title and made its cosmic scope truly sing. Gibbons and Wein also brought John Stewart to the forefront of that title and in the starring role for the first time.
- Watchmen wasn’t even the first collaboration between Moore and Gibbons, as they had first paired on a number 2000AD strips, and then they co-created the character of Mogo (a living planet that is a Green Lantern) in a short story within the Green Lantern ongoing following Gibbons’ run, and then came the iconic “For The Man Who Has Everything” tale in Superman Annual #11, a story which is consistently called one of the best Superman tales of all time.
- While there’s tons of things to say about Watchmen itself, one of my favorite tidbits is that the world’s least favorite font, Comic Sans, was based in large part on Gibbons’ lettering in that comic. It’s true!
- And after Watchmen, Gibbons had another masterpiece in him, this time teaming with the other meteoric 1986 comics figure, Frank Miller, for the Martha Washington series of comics at Dark Horse starting with Give Me Liberty, a towering political satire that may be even more prescient than Watchmen. It’s a world that Miller and Gibbons returned to a number of times over the last 25 years.
- Gibbons then transitioned into writing, penning the popular World’s Finest miniseries with the equally iconic Steve Rude on art, as well as taking a center role in some of the biggest DC crossover comics of the 2000’s, particularly returning to Green Lantern as the writer of Green Lantern Corps, which was the sister title of Geoff Johns‘ extremely popular run on that property.
In all, this is nothing you couldn’t read on Wikipedia, which is a fairly easy thing to do. But you know what’s even easier? Featuring Gibbons’ name right next to Alan Moore. It’s only a few keystrokes and it’s giving proper credit to one of our greatest living artists. Also, pick up a copy of The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the 21st Century, it’s far too under-read these days and you might find a new favorite comic.