Well, hard to top that description! The Dude makes everything better, with more attention to detail and imagination per square inch than anyone else....

Not to mention, breaking the fourth wall in the last panel and pointing the rifle directly at the reader! Great job, "Bob Kane"!

That was such an odd, interesting series -- I remember finding issues of LL lying around, and skipping the main story to get to the backup. This exact page, with the gangster tossing the number into the coffin, is burned into my brain....

Colors for that series of illos were by Lee Moyer, who also colored Kaluta's "Starstruck." Himself a noted sf artist, based in Portland!

Thanks, Jason, I always appreciate your thoughtful takes. This one to me really shows MWK's debt to Roy Krenkel -- how even his sequential, narrative art looks like it might have been doodled with one continuous pen line. Interesting to compare to his earlier, more fully rendered Studio-era stuff (e.g. the Shadow), but I think later Kaluta interiors are highly underrated and just as masterful.

Double plus good. 

Just spotted this gem! Reportedly a Kanigher script and Giordano inks, see https://www.comics.org/issue/23187/

You've gotta be kidding me -- still more from some hidden stash of indie goodness. Congrats, on several counts!

Wash what -- the t-shirt, or the hair?

Jason, you've got the same impeccable taste in 80s-90s indies as, well, I do. ;-p But I can't top that story (or the hair). Thanks for sharing!

The Dude is The Best, in my book. Enjoy!

It's white paint, not tape, very carefully applied after the inking stage (which I guess would be easier than trying to align all the little hatch strokes on either side of a border). Some of Cerebus' ziptone between 1&2 is underneath it, but it also veers around a couple of ink strokes in that "PUFF", so those were deliberate decisions as well.

On the other hand, a little bit of ink peeks through in the borders between 1&2 and 2&3, so the effect isn't quite perfect. Hey, it's a stained-glass window. Take what you can from it. 

Jason, thanks for your (typically) insightful comment. Yep, for all the attention -- and money -- spent on High Society through Church & State, later arcs are the sweet spot for me, at least art-wise. Those two had become absolutely seamless by that point, and "Guys" in particular revisited a lot of the old humor -- "buggid o' scodge," indeed!

This page's layout, balance of figures and architecture, Sim-ian lettering and fx, and above all the monologue really grabbed me when I saw it. I go back and forth on their decision to rule the "panel" borders in white -- wouldn't it work just as well as a single large montage, since we all know there's only ONE Cerebus? -- but find it striking either way.

As Doug Wolk wrote: "A serious, ambitious, completed large-scale work, no matter how deeply flawed it is, beats a perfectly envisioned but unrealized project every time. At the very least, Cerebus is worth reading for the same reason a grand, half-ruined cathedral of a religion not your own is worth spending time in: it's a cathedral. Take what you can from it." 

Gotta love those signature Wood shadows in panel 4!

Score! About time you filled that Nexus-shaped hole in your gallery....

Beautiful. Many of these pages were in fact printed straight from the pencils, sometimes partially inked and/or enhanced with marker.

Oh, you nailed it with this one! The Dude is pure joy -- equal parts Kirby, Toth, Romita, and Dr. Seuss.

Always love covers with the vintage trade dress. But 1976 Batman, with that logo and that banner? Just stellar.

Wow!

Sim still doing his best BWS impression at this point -- other than the, uh, zip-a-tone aardvark!

Fantastic composition by MWK!

Exactly -- it was the shadows that grabbed me about this one, both their story function and the way they pull the eye across the page in the classic "Z" pattern (see the Corben interview linked here). By this point in his career all that stuff must have been purely intuitive.  

Got your Robbins piece, congrats! His craftsmanship is off the charts....

I always used to wonder about them smoking pipes while on board a spaceship....Very nice!

Kirby meets Toth, tinged with Romita -- that's the perfect description of The Dude's body of work. Nice find!

Compare with the published page, and you get a pretty good idea why this didn't get used. "HMMM..." indeed!

Damn, Benno, that's nice!

I had that same thought -- if Wilson grew a mohawk!

Amen, brother. Preach it!

Steranko effect! I love stuff from circa '68.

Ha, they arrived! Enjoy!

Looks like Toth’s own hand-lettering, too. Nice.

Thanks! I picked this page specifically for the lettering -- one of his key contributions to the medium. This story line also was a return to form.

I love these — as Woody as it gets!

This is from 1983, and I'm seeing a huge influence both from and on Dave Sim's Cerebus: the animated split-panel dance, the way the B&W art stands on its own, the close-ups in the bottom three panels. Also recalling that Marshall did one or two Cerebus stories for special issues.

Isn’t that just the Woodiest of touches? These two made a great pairing. 

Pretty sure this is from the cover story to Beyond the Grave #2, Charlton (1975]. Possibly got chopped up for a later reprinting?

Picked this up from a dealer, not sure of the circumstances. I do know Chester has been taking the occasional paid sketch or commission, I was just happy to find this!

Great example!

Ha! I wondered if you had spotted this -- almost sent you a DM. Congrats!

Thing looks like Shade meets The Creeper, no?

That is utterly fabulous. 

Just don’t ask what Harlan Ellison thought....Great splash!

Love the drawn logo here.

Very nice page. Mike Royer inks, I believe.

What, no Alfred?!

Seriously, very nice Jones page.