NeoText

I remember distinctly when I first saw Bisley's work. It was the cover of the first issue of the Lobo mini-series. The portrait of Lobo grinning, his tooth biting his lower lip drawing a single drop of blood. My local comic shop had the issue on a stand right by the register. I didn't buy it because the cover sort of scared me. After seeing that image though it was impossible to ignore Bisley's presence now that he made the leap across the pond from the UK to the North American comic market. His covers had a planetary gravitational pull on the spinner racks. Nothing else looked like them. Or maybe his paintings looked like a crazy amalgamation of fantasy art influences. I didn't buy the issues of Doom Patrol he painted covers for because I didn't like the interior artwork (I was pretty young at the time, now I think the interiors are amazing on those books), but his artwork, just from glances at those covers, stuck in my brain and started to influence how I drew and what I understood about cartooning. I did buy the issues of Grendel: Warchild he did the covers for and stared at those paintings, internalizing them. His painting approach became my own approach when I started to know enough about paint to reverse engineer his process. But no one can paint like Biz. And his paintings have never lost an ounce of power from that first time my eyes met Lobo's on that cover long ago.