Green Lantern – Mike Grell/Bruce Patterson

It was because of the impact of Marvel UK titles at the beginning of the 1970s which reprinted most of the major Marvel US titles from the start albeit in black and white or duotone that I was from the early to mid 1970s a diehard Marvel Comics fans. The first US title I bought from the spinner rack of the local newsagent was the issue of Sub-Mariner which cover-featured Subby with Thor, which I still own although the cover has long since separated from the rest of the comic. I was a Real Frantic One, but I never attained any of the other honorifics.

However, by the end of the 70s I gravitated more towards the DC titles. I am not sure why; perhaps it was the first Superman movie, or maybe siding with the underdog because by this time DC were lagging way behind in sales to Marvel. I would concede that Marvel had the best comic artists, whereas at the time DC had only a handful of standout artists; most of them were good but unexceptional. Therefore it was always sad when Mike Grell who I considered one of DC’s best artists was often paired up with an inker who, let’s say, never showed his pencils to their best effect. The Warlord was according to the sales charts that ran in The Comic Reader for a long time the best-selling DC Comics title. It started off as a bi-monthly title which allowed MG to pencil and ink. If you want to read a fantastic standalone issue then issue 13, The Hunter, was in my opinion excellent – the best of the entire run. When the title was promoted to monthly status something had to give when MG had to work with an inker but it was always a breath of fresh air when a fill-in inker such as Bob Smith stepped in. Mike Grell has sometimes been called a Neal Adams-clone but I never saw that myself. Maybe it was because he took over on GL/GA when the numbering continued from the Neal Adams issues. One of my favourite issues was 106 which was the second part of a two-parter featuring Sonar as the villain. The first part was drawn by Alex Saviuk who was more than competent but I never thought was as good as or had anything like a similar style to Mike Grell. The art on 106 was inked by Bruce Patterson who I think is one of the great under-rated inkers; you could always be sure that his inks would be true and respectful of the penciller’s work. He inked Mike Zeck on Master of Kung Fu under the name of “Bruce D” and he had distinguished runs on a number of DC titles most famously inking George Pérez on Wonder Woman. Even though it might sound like comics heresy to say this but I even thought his inks over Brian Bolland in the early issues of Camelot 3000 were marginally better than those of Terry Austin in the later issues. Those later issues were a bit too flashy whereas the early issues seem truer to what Brian Bolland’s work on Judge Dredd looked like. As I was saying, the art on issue 106 of GL really stood out; so much so that I swiped one of the panels in it for my O-Level/High School Art and Design coursework. If you are interested, it was the panel featuring the bespectacled and moustachioed judge yawning with a hand held over his mouth. I got a pretty good grade for the subject but that was as far as I ever got in the world of comics drawing.

Obviously, when the above illustration pencilled by Mike Grell and inked by Bruce Patterson popped up on eBay back in the early twenty-teens I jumped on it as a reminder of that issue of GL I was so taken with.

It says on the internet that Bruce Patterson pretty much retired from comics back in 1995 to pursue other creative endeavours. Thirty years. “You don’t realise how quickly times goes until you get there,” as a house painter once said.

Thanks to Henry Itzi from whom I acquired this drawing on eBay back in 2012. Sorry I did not leave feedback for you at the time; it’s a long story.