Ma, Simon :: Comic Art

Ghost – Jill Thompson

Artist: Jill Thompson (All)

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Jill Thompson at UKCAC 1993

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Artwork Details

Title:	Ghost – Jill Thompson
Artist:	Jill Thompson (All)
Media Type:	Ink Wash
Art Type:	Illustration
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	221
Likes on CAF:	3 4
Comments:	2
Added to Site:	11/20/2024
Comic Art Archive:

Description

Andy Warhol famously said, “… good business is the best art”. This may mean that Vincent Van Gogh is simultaneously one of the greatest in the history of art, but amongst the very worst – anyone going to London to see the once-in-a-lifetime blockbuster Vincent Van Gogh exhibition currently on in The National Gallery and hoping to get a ticket on the day will be deeply disappointed as it is booked out not days but weeks in advance. But it is also said that in his lifetime Van Gogh managed to sell only one painting. Other historians claim that this is an inverse exaggeration to highlight how underappreciated he was whilst he was alive, but they tend to agree that the number of works he moved during his lifetime did not reach double figures; still a tiny fraction of the 900+ works he finished. I am not sure that there is a direct comics equivalent but you might point to Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, who created/co-created some of the brightest stars in the superhero firmament but who did not reap the massive financial rewards that others did from their creations. We all know that without the lobbying of a number of artists, most notably Neal Adams, who shamed National Periodical Publication/DC Comics into providing pensions for the creators of Superman then Siegel and Schuster may have otherwise spent their final years in desperately straitened circumstances. Is it any wonder that a number of comic artists now have agents negotiating their contracts and fees, and even more comic artists have reps who will maximise the financial potential of their artwork whilst they will get on with doing what they have spent their lifetime practicing for and then practising – drawing comic art.

I do not know what happened to result in Cadence to fold – it is literally none of my business – and even though I have heard some views on them I can speak only as I found, and generally I had good communication and service except for one instance with the much-delayed delivery of a commission, but Andrew and Corey (I never had any direct correspondence with Paolo) managed to turn this around by offering me free postage in the art-sale promotion in the run-up to the last Christmas they were operating. I know nothing about how to run one’s own business but I can imagine that to really make a go of it then one really has to put in the hours, and if it is not quite 24/7 then one would have to be on call day and night. It does not surprise me that so many businesses fail; what astonishes me more is that any can survive and prosper when you hear of companies that have been around for decades calling in the administrators. It is a shame about Cadence because they represented an eclectic range of artists from established Big Two stars such as Rafael Albuquerque to recognised Image talent such as Wes Craig to Euro-stars Leomacs, Gabriel Bá, Fábio Moon to upcoming alternative darlings such as Zoe Thorogood. Another comic artist in the Cadence line-up was Jill Thompson.

Jill Thompson is probably best known for her creator-owned Scary Godmother and also her run on The Sandman comic. I have read neither of these – an oversight I hope to rectify one day – but the above image on the Cadence website one day really caught my attention. JT has taken the trope of a white-sheeted figure to represent a ghost and made it genuinely a bit scary by removing the traditionally humanising aspects you normally get: the feet protruding from underneath the sheet and the eyeholes in the sheet a corporeal form would need to see where they were going. You can imagine that if you were to see a mysterious figure hidden under a shroud hovering a foot or so above the ground then it would be truly frightening. I remember a story our primary school headmaster told us – it must be 50 years or more ago – about a group of young friends who planned to give another one of their mates a scare by having one of their party dress up as a white-shrouded ghost and jumping out at their mate as they were going home late one night. The mate’s hair turned white overnight. I think it was a cautionary tale about the perils of playing juvenile pranks.

Just like her visual counterpart, Jill Thompson is far from scary and the photograph I took of her one UKCAC attests to this – it is one of my favourites out of all the pictures I took during my years attending that convention. What I especially like is the ostentatious hand-flourish which recalls the theatrical training that her Wikipedia page states that she underwent. Ms Thompson is ready for her close up.

My thanks to Messrs Belfiore, Christman and Greene for providing me with the attached ink wash drawing; I hope that you are all doing okay.

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About the Owner

	Simon Ma ( 2 ) Premium Gallery Owner
Joined:	April 2013
Last Login:	September 2025
Country:	UNITED KINGDOM
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Marcus Wai
Member Since 2005

Posted on 11/21/2024

The ghost of art reps past! Some will never be allowed to find a place where they will given peace. They will forever haunt the hobby as there will always be whisphers for the reasons of their demise.

Simon Ma
Member Since 2013

1 - Posted on 12/11/2024

Marcus Wai wrote:

As is happens so often you have managed to find an angle to the drawing that would never have occurred to me. Thank you. It seems like the appropriate time of the year to invoke Marley’s Ghost, who lamented “Business!”

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