Paging through Top Cow's "The Art of Marc Silvestri'," a new hardcover selection of works from throughout the Image co-founder's career, my first thought was whether the title should more correctly be, "The Art of Female Exploitation by Marc Silvestri," or simply, "Marc Silvestri Draws Nekkid Women!" However, I'm pleased to say that once you get past the first chapter, highlighting the artist's Witchblade phase, the book settles into a varied set of characters, with a nice emphasis on Silvestri's pencils, often accompanied by smaller reproductions of the inks and colored pages.
For Silvestri fans, there's no doubt this is going to be a nice book to have. It's always fun to see the stages that your favorite artists go through in creating a finished work. Silvestri is one of those overly-accomplished artists whose pencils look so good that you hate to see them disappear under the ink... and then the inks and colors make them look even better.
It's fun reading the end-of-chapter commentaries by various artists who have been affected by Silvestri, and getting some idea of how their art is influenced by his. But the best thing about the book is the pencil drawing for the cover of X-Factor #26. Not because the drawing is better than any other, but because it's on a sheet of Image Comics full-bleed comic paper. To me, that says a lot… not just that Silvestri uses Image papers when he's drawing for Marvel , but that he chose to put that image into the book and to include the full-bleed page so the world would know. Yeah, he'll still draw pictures for Marvel when they pay him, but his heart belongs to Image.
Or, more precisely, Top Cow. Those chapter-break commentaries I mentioned are all by Top Cow artists, past or current, and every one of them makes clear the dedication Silvestri has to his studio. As much as the selection of images in this book reflect his work for Marvel and DC (and Image apart from Top Cow), you can't get away from the fact that Top Cow is the guy's life's work and legacy.
I have to admit that I am not personally a huge fan of Silvestri's work. I used the phrase 'overly-accomplished' earlier, and I mean that. Sometimes he produces truly beautiful images, but much of the time there's too much detail, too much perfection for my eye. Not to mention too many women in degrading costumes and poses. But I do admire his dedication to craft and what he's done in creating a great little publishing house. The book may not be for me, but if you've been following the man's work for years, you'd pretty much have to pick it up.
