DARK LADY LUMIYA BY STEVE LEIALOHA

When Steve Leialoha was invited at my local Facts convention, I was very excited as he’d always been a super interesting artist and cartoonist in my view. He was always an inker whose inking anyone meant for quality art however you regarded the source material (i.e. Secret Wars II over Al Milgrom). But above anything else he’s been associated with, it’s his super run on Spider-Woman who cemented my love for his art.

I knew I would be commissioning him but which subject to chose ? Being the lucky owner of 3 Spider-Woman pieces (including a published one), I thought I didn’t need a fourth one so I gave Steve several choices and we agreed on Dark Lady Lumiya since Steve inked Cynthia Martin during the original Marvel series.

Part of the explanation of my choice is that Cynthia Martin positively burned her art in my young memory as a kid. I had never seen anything like it priorly, and both the coldness and elongated elegance of her line was a strange fit for SW in my young eyes. And yet, I could not stare away and kept coming back to it. Especially that fight between Luke and Dark Lady Lumiya (or any of her appearances) for her insane(ly cool) lightwhip and the choreographic/composition options it allowed.

I’ll be (hopefully) tactfully honest, while I like the result, I don’t love it (which was my profound hope in that I love Steve’s art so much that…you get my point. It was not a random commission for me). It’s all Steve indubitably and yet his line is a bit thicker (reminding me of an older French artist J.Y. Mitton, strangely) and his style too far a way from Martin’s in that hers was always infused with a perpetual sense of motion. On the other hand, I really like how he compositionally played with the whip here.

That being said, the experience of meeting Steve (after a long wait in line) was absolutely delightful. I brought a lot of stuff for him to sign, including one he’d never seen before, and out of his own volution, he took a lot of time to discuss everything, telling me stories and pointing to many details (to the point that I was embarrassed that the people behind me had to wait for a long time for their turn). And being the generous person he seems to be, he did that with every fan, so thank you, Steve 😊

In case it’s not obvious, this is my late SW Day post (as I’d forgotten I had something suitable to present).