Excess: The Art of Michael Golden

For me growing up in the 80's,going to art schools all those years, Michael Golden was the best in the bizzas far as i was concern. Problem was his work was hard to come by..... as he was usually doing one a year comic annuals most of the time. Michael golden was a phenamonal technician with his fantatic pen & ink stylings..This book shed light on Michael i previously didn't know...... with beautiful repros of his works.It bought back memories on my years in high school; while most went for John Byrne or john Romita etc. i stuck with michael golden...... he was my 'guy'.The book was a worthwhile read for me and shed new light on an obscure comic book artist that i grew up loving so much....you can't go wrong if you're familiar with Michael Golden.

I picked this up and read it in one night.Pros:-Gorgeous, full color pages.-Captions accompanying pictures are informative for any fan who wanted to know just a little bit more about a particular drawing.-Great anecdotes about MG-Foreward from Todd McFarlane succinctly encapsulates all of Michael Golden's fans experience with discovering Golden's artwork. But in McFarlane's case, inspired him to be the artist that he is. Very compelling because he remembers exactly the page, issue and scene distinctly-and they included the actual artwork too! I spent almost an hour on this part alone, reading McFarlane's words, then examining the pictures to see what McFarlane was describing-the moment he decided to become a artist. I have never read anything so forthcoming from a successful artist. And its just the Forward!-About 1/4 of the pieces I had never seen before. This is amazing because I consider myself a huge Michael Golden fan and thought I had seen his best work so far.Cons:-This may not be a con but I'll state it anyway under that heading. This is not a critique or in depth analysis of Golden's body of work. It's more of a celebration of the influence specific pieces of work Golden had, i.e. Micronauts, The 'Nam.-Marvel Fanfare #47, the legendary Hulk v Spiderman issue I think deserved more pages than it did. The anecdote and samples included are great don't take me wrong. But I think that was a seminal piece of work and truly a fine example of art and storytelling that needed more attention(I'm just splitting hairs at this point)Any fan of storytelling and art needs to get this book. Michael Golden's philosophy on both aspects is unique. I now have to go back over his body of work to look harder, examine closer, the story telling fundamentals that he has infused in his covers, panels and posters. Its a amazing tapestry and a testament to his popularity. Michael Golden is a preeminent illustrator who has decided after all these years, to finally come out and have the spotlight shine on him. He deserves every single accolade, award, interview and mention. Fans such as myself have waited years for this to happen. Now that it has, we could not be prouder to finally have our devotion and fanhood confirmed by Mr Golden's acclimation these past several years. I await Mr Golden's next project, but in the meantime, inspired by this book, I am drawing on my own again. My love for drawing re-kindled by this book and I have him to thank for it.Who Dares Wins, to quote the SAS. Mr Golden has pushed the envelope his whole career and we are all richer for it.

Lots of "puff" text... it was embarassing to read at times. But most importantly it is a nice, thick volume with lots of his work, and it is organized with plenty of informative text.

I was hoping for more from the Marvel side of the comics he was working on more of the 12 issues of Micronauts or the Avengers annual. His covers on Rom Spaceknight were fantastic. I had hoped for more of that.

Great interview and good representation of art from the Great Michael Golden--

I give Michael Golden's artwork 5 stars, but this book was a pretty big disappointment. The text is all filler, there's a lot of it, and if that weren't enough, it's even poorly edited. The print quality is not particularly good and the selection is not well curated. Furthermore, the laconic Mr Golden does not make a very interesting interview subject, so that section is basically filler as well. I wish I'd saved my money for when a better collection came out and recommend that you do just that.

I wasn’t surprised that this book had shortcomings – since I’d read the reviews here before getting it – but I was astounded at the sheer number of outright errors, sloppiness of organization, and unavoidable sense that, much (most) of the time, the authors were paying absolutely no attention to what they were doing!However, since this is a book about Michael Golden, known primarily as a comic book artist, let me talk first about that aspect of the book.One reviewer had issues with the print quality of the artwork, but it generally seemed fine to me, excepting numerous images from the series The ‘Nam, which are very “pixelated”, undoubtedly due to printing from poor scans of the original artwork.The authors, in fact, mention that much of the work that they reproduce was submitted to them as scans. It would have been nice to have everything shot for publication directly from the original art, but surely not realistic given the book’s probable budget and, again, not really necessary, as, to my generally not uncritical eye, almost everything looks fine.As well, the paper stock is of nice quality and the colors on the color pages – of which there are *many* – look very good, although sometimes I’m less thrilled with the images chosen for this treatment!On that point, the selection of artwork, as others have noted, isn’t as varied and interesting as it could be. This is partly due to the book’s stated focus: on what the authors call Golden’s “groundbreaking contributions”, i.e., the work and series for which Golden is best known: Micronauts (of course), Marvel Fanfare, his issue of Doctor Strange, his Avengers Annual, Bucky O’Hare, The ‘Nam, Spartan X. While this approach makes sense to a degree, the problem with it is that it is likely to mostly show the work with which someone who would pick up a book on Michael Golden is already most familiar!Still, even given that, there is a lot of work reproduced not from those series, often on full, color pages, so clearly it would have been possible to provide a more varied and interesting sampling of Golden’s many works.So don’t expect to see any, e.g., Rom Spaceknight covers, Mister Miracle, Lady Daemon (Golden’s collaboration with Chris Claremont from Bizarre Adventures), or Howard the Duck, even though showing some of this last would have made sense in the context of discussing Golden’s “talking animals” work on Bucky O’Hare!Also, for all the talk in the book of how great a storyteller M.G. is – and I don’t disagree – there are very few reproductions of sequential art, i.e., comic book pages! There’s a definite preference for showing colorful, flashy full-page illustrations, which, while nice enough perhaps, don’t really showcase the full breadth of Golden’s talents.For example, on page 71 we have these comments about The ‘Nam: “The craftsmanship in this series is best explored by looking at the art page by page. In The ‘Nam #4, page 20, we can see the exquisite detail Michael incorporated in the art. The story flows effortlessly from one panel to another, and clearly shows the storytelling mastery for which Golden is known.” Etc., etc. And: “Readers consider this series one of Michael Golden’s masterpiece works, and it’s easy to see why.”Except that, for us the readers, it’s *not* easy to see why because this artwork is not reproduced. Instead there is a quarter-page sized image of the cover from The ‘Nam #79, with the preceding four pages being taken up by the line art from three earlier covers and a poster. (The earlier page 8 is also taken up by line art from another The ‘Nam cover.)Even the slight bits of interior art from his work that are shown in the book seem somewhat odd and arbitrary. (Actually, many of the decisions made in putting this book together seem odd and arbitrary!) For instance, one and a half pages are devoted to reproducing pencils from Strange Reflections, which, frankly, are kind of bland and weak for Michael Golden. But at least the graphics match the text on these pages, which is far from always being the case in this oddly thought out and assembled volume!Here is an interesting example of artwork selection in the book: Most of page 21 is made up of a completed full-color image of Captain America fighting his way out of the center of a sea of green-clad, gun-toting Hydra goons. A smaller image on the same page shows the same image partway through the inking and coloring process. Perfectly nice piece, very Kirby, all well and good.However, later in the book there is a brief chapter titled “The Creative Process” which walks through the production of an entire (again very Jack Kirby-like) piece of artwork from initial sketch to its final completed stage. This features a hero, called “Agent Silver”, fighting in the center of a sea of green-clad, gun-toting thugs who look an awful lot like Hydra agents! Golden is even quoted as saying that the “art direction was that this character was to be an iconic Captain America-like figure, and that all of the bad guys were similar to Hydra agents...”!My question is: did the book really need to include *both* of these almost identical images? Which clearly were drawn at almost the same time period?(Actually there is also a *third* illustration, on page 86, with again a similar layout, of Spider-Man being surrounded and engulfed by multiple Venoms. Apparently Golden really likes this layout!)Another thing the book is not good about is giving credit to other artists, mostly inkers, whose work is reproduced. E.g., several pieces are clearly inked by Terry Austin, but no mention is made of him in the captions. And the cover for the first issue of Micronauts, which is reproduced twice, was drawn by Dave Cockrum rather than Golden (and inked by Al Milgrom), but this fact, which the more casual reader might miss, is not mentioned.Noting the dates of the comics and artwork reproduced would also have been useful to put things in context, since, despite the somewhat linear stated scheme of the book, the art is far from being shown in any kind of temporal sequence, which would be perfectly fine if things were dated.And while usually the artwork has captions, odd and inconsistent as they often are, sometimes there are none at all and, as is usual with things in this book, for no apparent reason, such as in the case of page 91, a full page reproduction of red-toned image of a curvaceous, lingerie-clad woman pointing a pistol. The image on the facing page, of Bucky O’Hare, gets a caption, but not this page!Another interesting caption is one on page 29, which refers to a drawing on the previous page as an “Early Batman sketch”. The artwork itself, however, clearly shows a date of 2007! (Golden started drawing Batman in the 70s.)My last comment is on the artwork itself, and comes from my perspective as someone who is much more familiar with Golden’s “classic” work in the 80s than with what he’s done in more recent times, and it is this: I just don’t like the new stuff as much. It’s slick, it’s competent, it’s well-rendered, computer colorized/blurred, etc., but it doesn’t grab me the way the older stuff did (and still does). And I don’t think this is just my being nostalgic: the newer stuff just seems to have less of a unique personal style and appears more generic. If I had been shown the seven examples of his work which appear on the front and back covers of the book, with no context, I wouldn’t have been able to identify the artist as Michael Golden.It’s hard for me to form a complete impression since, for one thing and as noted above, there is precious little sequential art in this volume and almost none from his more current work.But, judging from the art chosen for inclusion – which could be somewhat non-representative of course – he seems to have Kirby-ized himself a bit too much for my liking!Which is somewhat ironic, because in the text he talks about how when he went to work for Marvel that’s what they told him to do (as they told just about all of their artists for at least a good while it seems) – “It was constantly ‘do it like Kirby, do it like Kirby, do it like Kirby’ so I finally gave in and did it like Kirby and everyone seemed really happy and pleased” – and he jokes about how good he got at it, and he also mentions how he learned to draw like Neal Adams when he started working for Adams, but says, “I didn’t like aping somebody else’s work.... I just wanted to stick my style into my work, and really, that’s just easier than trying to look like someone else.”However, I’m not intending this really as criticism of Golden, as I fully acknowledge his tremendous competence and ability, both past and present. I understand that artists of all kinds make choices and change and “evolve” (or something!) as they move through their careers, and won’t necessarily stay the way we best liked them, much as that might tend to annoy us! But I wanted to comment on the changes in his work for those who might be coming to this book from a background similar to my own.And now some comments on some of the book’s previously alluded to minor, and not so minor, shortcomings:The worst offender has got to be the writing. Far too much of it for the actual amount of information conveyed, although much of that information, particularly on Golden’s life, pre-comics art (not available to be reproduced unfortunately, as it was often done on vans, surfboards, and, at least occasionally on “some girl’s tummy”!), and approach to his work is, of course, interesting. And as to the quality of the writing, well, the word “sloppy” doesn’t come close doing it justice. In places “illiterate” might be closer to the mark. It’s hard reading it not to be reminded of the fabled “monkeys at typewriters”, and I don’t mean the ones who reproduced the works of Shakespeare!It’s difficult to get through a page, and sometimes even a paragraph, without encountering some careless error or other. Or multiple errors.If you purchase this volume, prepare yourself to encounter such gems as “story archs” and “Not that I’m negatiating...” (both in the same caption by the way) and, on that very same page, one of my favorite neologisms in the book, though far from the only one: two references to Micronauts writer Bill Mantlo’s, “staple of characters”.Then there are the less creative errors such as “to great affect”, as well as “shear genius”, “that many of tried to emulate”, “two fold” (on the very first page of text, followed a few pages later by its correct version “twofold”, consistency being, apparently, the hobgoblin of small minds), “an old base drum”, the frequent confusing of “its” and “it’s”, etc., etc.Another one of my favorite coinages here is “chop-saki”, as in Spartan X “was not a ‘chop-saki’ stereotypical type comic.” Undoubtedly not. But was it, perhaps, a “chop-socky” stereotypical type of comic? Who knows.This from a writer, Renee Witterstaetter, who both collaborated with Jackie Chan on Spartan X, visited his sets in Hong Kong, and wrote a book about him! One would think that maybe, just maybe, someone with that amount of contact with the martial arts world – not to mention the average person walking down the street – might have been able to figure out that perhaps “sock”, as in punch, ought to appear in that word along with “chop”, as in karate chop, but in this case, not so.Or how about this sentence about Avengers Annual #10: “What he wasn’t looking forward to was drawing that one big fight scene between Thor, Iron Man, and Cameria...” Cameria? At first, after a little Internet searching, all I could come up with was that they had misspelled the name of Kamaria, the daughter of Drax the Destroyer. But even though it’d been some 30 years probably since I last read that comic book, I knew that just didn’t make any sense. Eventually it dawned on me that what they had been trying to write was, in fact, “Captain America”! (No, I’m not making this stuff up! I really wish I were though. And btw, didn’t these guys have spellcheck? My 11-year-old copy of Word catches pretty much all of these mistakes.)I could go on (and on) and fill this review with countless more examples of these “oversites”, as Ms. Witterstaetter perhaps might put it, but that would be tedious and would deprive you of the dubious pleasure(?) of finding them for yourself!I guess it could be argued that I’m being overly nitpicky here (although it is abundantly clear that there are lots of nits to pick): after all, this book is supposed to be all about the art, isn’t it? But given the quantity of text it’s clear that it’s not *all* about the art. And the sheer quantity of errors gets kind of tedious after awhile, especially given that the authors describe themselves as a “[w]riter, editor, and publisher” (Renee Witterstaetter) and a “freelance writer” (Patricia Snodgrass). Also, presumably – although maybe I’m assuming too much – there was an editor and/or copy editor and/or proofreader involved in the production process who should have caught at least most of these gaffs.Furthermore, the sloppiness doesn’t stop with the language and is reflected in numerous other aspects of the book.E.g., the text is frequently vague for no comprehensible reason. For instance, page 65 talks about Golden finally getting the chance to complete his work on the Hulk story that eventually appeared in Marvel Fanfare #47 and says, “Michael reunited with the writer he had collaborated with at the time and worked together to finalize the storyline.” Why not simply name the writer? Don’t they know who it was?Then there’s page 77, which contains extensive discussion of Doctor Strange #55 and, at the bottom, comments from several fans on how amazing the cover of that issue is. The facing page contains a full page reproduction, not of that cover, but of the art from what the caption calls simply “another wild Golden cover” and which features Doctor Strange along with Ghost Rider. Was it so difficult and would it not have made sense to state which comic book and issue that cover was from?Which brings us to another recurring issue (no pun intended!): why not reproduce the artwork being written about near the text that is referring to it?In this particular instance it’s clearly not a matter of, for instance, being unable to get reproduction rights, since a small image of the cover is shown way back on page 17. But that’s not so bad: sometimes they don’t reproduce the artwork being written about at all and, again, for... no... discernible... reason.Or how about the caption on page 65, which talks extensively about Marvel Fanfare #1. It appears directly below a quarter-page image of Marvel Fanfare #47 and across from a full-page image of Marvel Fanfare... #2! Why not put this information four pages earlier, next to the full page image of issue #1 itself? Would this be asking too much?Also, somewhat distressingly in a book about comic books and a comic artist, sometimes the authors seem to have no basic knowledge of the field they’re writing – so very gushingly and enthusiastically – about.For instance, to return yet again to Marvel Fanfare, there is this description of how editor-in-chief Jim Shooter lured Golden, who was doing pin-ups and covers as well as outside commercial work, back into doing interior art for Marvel:“This time, the project he [Shooter] pulled from his sleeve was something very straightforwardly entitled Marvel Team-up. ...Team-up was subsequently co-oped [sic] by Al Milgrom to incorporate into Marvel Fanfare...”It is clear, very clear, abundantly clear, that the authors have *absolutely no idea* what they are talking about here, and lack even a modest familiarity with Marvel comics of the 70s and 80s. Otherwise they would have understood that Marvel Team-Up had been around since 1972 and was not some “project” of Jim Shooter’s and neither was it “co-op[t]ed” in any way by Al Milgrom.While it does seem abundantly clear, from scans of some of the original artwork viewable online that this story was originally created for MTU – e.g., there is a scan of the first issue cover that has the title written at the bottom as “Marvel Team Up” and then “Team Up” is scratched out and changed to “Fanfare” and another scan of the splash page that has on it, both stamped and in handwriting, “Marvel Team-up Inventory” – this simple point of fact is not what is described by the ignorant and uninformed babbling on the subject in the book!Aside from being uninformed, they often make almost inexplicable mistakes. Such as a caption referring to a Doctor Strange convention sketch on page 71: “Golden, in the past, never attended conventions, but in 2006/2007, he decided to do a brief tour in order to meet fans, and do a few select sketches.” Now as soon as I read that I knew it was wrong, simply because I had been in the room when Michael Golden make a very nice appearance at a convention in New York City in the early 80s, and remembered very well him talking about, how he had been influenced by some classic illustrators such as Alphonse Mucha, among other things. So, clearly and once again, the information provided has no connection with reality.But what made this mistake even more ridiculous than a simple case of being misinformed or getting the facts wrong was that when I looked a little further down, at the text on the page it says, correctly, that “after a ten-year absence from the circuit... he finally started to attend comic conventions again in 2006”! I can only imagine that the captions were written by someone other than Witterstaetter (the main author), someone who didn’t read the main text very carefully, maybe by Patricia Snodgrass who is credited for providing “additional text”, and that Witterstaetter didn’t subsequently read them, at least not very carefully. But then care, as must be abundantly obvious by now, is not the hallmark of this book!Early on the book, rather self-aggrandizingly, refers to itself as “this, the grandest Golden package to-date”! Thus we may, perhaps, also remove “modesty” from the list of virtues possessed by its compilers, although we might also argue that they are honest, that is if we interpret the word “grand” in just the right way: it is in some ways “grand”, but “grand” does not always denote “great”!And one could say that the title “Excess” is also accurate and truthful. Unfortunately in many cases the book provides an excess of the wrong things!Yet, despite all of my copious criticism – with which, my apologies, maybe I got a little carried away; but, with a target like this, it was too much fun to resist: kind of like taking potshots at the side of an old barn! – and my frustration with the incredible lack of attention to detail that clearly attended the book’s production, I nonetheless gave it three stars.Why? Because Michael Golden is a damned good artist, as well as quite an interesting character as the text reveals, and it reproduces, pretty nicely I think, many examples of his work, even if too much of it is flashy, single-image, full-page, iconic, recent work. (Which is, once again, kind of ironic, since they quote Golden saying how he doesn’t like to do iconic covers, i.e., ones that just showcase a character with no reference to the particular story in the book.)It could have been a lot better had it been done with just a little bit more care and attention – and organization! – but it is probably still worth reading if you are a Golden fan.On the other hand, you might get at least as much appreciation for the man and his work – and maybe have a lot more fun! – if you instead spend your money on a few back issues of his work and read those instead.At least that’s what I’m going to do next time I feel a “Michael Golden jones”. After all, I never did quite get around to picking up a copy of that renowned famous Hulk story he did for Marvel Fanfare...‘Nuff said!

A pesar de que el libro no abarca una enorme colección de las ilustraciones y portadas del maravilloso Michael Golden, por el precio está muy bien. Otras opciones más completas son mucho mas caras.

Amazing artist but the book is made with poor scans (probably taken from internet) and the important pieces of his career are missing.

A really good overview of Golden's work. Lots of colour photos at an affordable price.Learn about a true master storyteller.

En páginas y portadas detalladas o en bocetos mucho menos trabajados, me encanta su trazo, un tanto caricaturesco y con mucha fuerza. Compré la edición en tapa blanda y es de muy buena calidad.Ojalá se dedicaran a reeditar sus trabajos como hacen con los de otros autores de mucha menos calidad

Im a big fan of Michael Golden art and this book its great but I think there is too much text and not as many pictures of his work as expected. For example there isn't a single cover he did for The Punisher comics. Even so if you like Goldens work you must have it.