Comics / Comics News

George Perez Treasure Book

By The Editor
August 31, 2005 - 19:55

Dynamic Forces presents “Storyteller” the definitive retrospective on legendary artist George Perez, written by Christopher Lawrence and featuring over 200 pages in full color as well as an all-new cover by Perez.

An excerpt from the book is available at the end of this release.

George Perez started his comics career as an assistant to Deathlok creator Rich Buckler. In fact, George's first work was a two-page humor piece which appeared in Marvel's Astonishing Tales #25 which introduced Deathlock the Demolisher. George was given fill-in jobs on two low-selling series, Man-Wolf in Creatures on the Loose #33 and The Sons of the Tiger in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #6. The writers of these two series, David Kraft and Bill Mantlo, respectively, were impressed enough with the newcomer's work to have him become the regular penciller on both series.

The rest is history.

“It’s hard to imagine that George Perez has been gracing the comics world for 30 years now. George has been an idol of mine since I first started reading comics and I’m fortunate that he’s grown to be a close friend as well over the years I’ve been in the business,” explained DF President Nick Barrucci. “We’re honored that the first in our series of historical and archival works, featuring the masters of the form, will start with Storyteller, spotlighting George!”

The book is featured in the pages of the new Previews (pages #276 and #277) and is available for PRE-ORDER now from your local comics shop, or direct from Dynamic Forces.

Over 200 full color pages highlighting the magnificent career of artistic legend George Perez! This is THE George Perez book.

From the early days at Marvel and work on such titles as the Fantastic Four the and Avengers to DC landmark titles including the New Teen Titans and Crisis plus “independent” work for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and so many others, along with his own creations – Sachs and Violens, Crimson Plague and his work at CrossGen, this book covers it all…. And more!

Featuring an all-new cover by Perez as well as an extensive and exhaustive career-spanning interview with Perez conducted in his home by Lawrence.

$29.99 suggested price.

The following is a short excerpt from the book:

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS

… The far-reaching scope of the project made it ideal for the character-loving, detail-obsessed artist, and Pérez proved up to the task, packing panel after panel, issue after issue, with some of the most magnificent linework of his career.

“Thanks to Jose Garcia-Lopez, I tried to give Crisis a little more,” he admits. “Jose followed me on Titans, and when I saw his first issue, how incredibly great an artist he is, I knew I had to kick butt. So when I worked on Crisis, I put every bit of blood, sweat and tears into those pages, adding details and using interesting panel design and body languages.”

The workload was, on its own, substantial, but Pérez—fervent in his desire to progress as an artist—took “substantial” and turned it into “tremendous.”

“For me, the biggest test was when they told me they only needed certain characters in a specific image,” he says. “Then I asked myself, ‘How many characters can I draw in the background here?’”

Though the format of the story may not have been ideally suited to Pérez’s style—Crisis averaged 7-8 panels per page, leaving few opportunities for big, “wow” shots—the artist excelled.

“No one else could have done what George did,” Wolfman exclaims. “His basic storytelling was so superior to anyone’s at the time…no one else could have come close to doing what he did.”

Since there were relatively few places within the issues for Pérez to, as Wolfman says, “do what George does best, which is draw big pictures of incredible stuff,” the artist brought his “wow-able” abilities to bear on Crisis’ covers.

Based on a request from Pérez’s wife, who felt her husband was pushing himself too hard on the series, Wolfman suggested his artist draw a simple cover for Crisis’ fifth issue, an uncomplicated image featuring only three faces and two merging Earths.

The cover Pérez submitted did contain two merging Earths—along with 96 faces. Once the artist got started, he simply couldn’t stop drawing; if he saw sufficient open space, he added another character’s head. He was having too much fun to stop.

“This was a once-in-a-lifetime project,” he says. “I was having a hard time going to sleep because I didn’t want to leave my drawing board.”

Because Pérez didn’t follow all of DC’s individual titles, the sheer number of characters involved in Crisis meant there was a larger learning curve on the project than, say, Titans; an actuality that resulted in the need to do reference work. A lot of reference work.

“It wore me out—it still takes time to draw that many characters in that many locales in that many pages, but I was having the time of my life,” he admits. “I knew that if the DC Universe wasn’t going to be the same again, this was going to be my one shot to draw some characters I would never have an opportunity to draw again afterwards. I got to draw the Metal Men. I got to draw Dolphin. I snuck in the Secret Six—who even remembers the Secret Six? I drew characters I had never heard of before.

“It was a lot of fun.”

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12