Joshua Middleton has been working in comics, book illustration, film, and animation since 1999. I first noticed his work in the critically acclaimed creator owned series Sky Between Branches back in 2002. His clean lines, and lushly painted art helped to land him a gig at Marvel, where he drew the first four issues of the mega-hit series NYX, which introduced Wolverine’s daughter, X-23. He has produced many covers, and occasionally interior art for DC Comics over the years, including this week’s special Flash variant cover for Detective Comics. He will be doing all of the artwork for two issues of Wonder Woman, coming up in April, and May.
Middleton served as a concept artist on the cult-favorite science fiction film Serenity in 2005, and was a character designer/art director on the 2009 series, Green Lantern: The Animated Series for Warner Brothers.
There’s a lot more artwork to drool over at Joshua Middleton’s website here.
For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates
Due to the sheer proliferation of book jackets featuring photographs rather than illustrations, I think the time is right to offer a little ode of praise to our brave illustrators who work so hard to give us great illustrated chapter book covers. In an age when it feels like all the teen covers are dedicated to giving us variations on the same theme, it’s refreshing to consider that some artists do more than just Photoshop a girl’s dress from pink to blue.
That said, sometimes it’s hard to tell who the cover artist is on an individual book. A lot of galleys and advanced readers copies may refuse to mention the jacket artist’s name, perhaps because they are reserving the right to choose a different cover at any time. As for the artists themselves, they’re not usually all that prompt with their online portfolios. With that in mind, these are the only artists I could think of off the top of my head that are doing more than one chapter book cover in the year 2010. If you can think of someone I’ve missed (or can identify another 2010 cover that is by an artist listed here) please let me know and I’ll add them as time permits.
Scott Altmann
Here’s a guy that sneaks up on you. You don’t notice him for a while and then BLAMMO! The dude seems to be everywhere. This year Altmann’s been impressing youngsters with …
The Smoky Corridor by Chris Grabenstein:
The Death Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean:
The Shadow Hunt by Katherine Langrish:
The Ring of Five by Eoin McNamee:
On the other side of the pond Altmann gets his own fair share of work. I was pleased as punch, for example, to see that they had reissued Astrid Lindgren’s Ronia the Robber’s Daughter over there this year.
Not that I don’t still love the original Trina Schart Hyman illustrations from over here.
While fellow artist Brandon Dorman does the Fablehaven books in the States, Altmann is doing them in the UK. He’s also doing the Charlie Bone series over there as well. All the more interesting that he didn’t do the UK versi
Thresholds
By Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Viking (an imprint of Penguin)
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-670-06319-2
Ages 9-12
On shelves August 5th.
I like to characterize trends with great all-encompassing, massive statements that fail to take into account exceptions to the rule. For example, after reading Thresholds by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, my instinct is to throw my hands wide and pronounce to the world, “2010 is the year of young adult authors writing for children and finding that in doing so they acquire a whole new audience and fanbase.” I root this statement in only one other 2010 book (One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia) but one is good enough for me. Nina Kiriki Hoffman has at least twelve YA books under her belt, but until now she has shied away from middle grade fare. With Thresholds she changes her game, offering a fantasy (or is it science fiction?) that taps into the dual early adolescent desires of bonding with something friendly and powerful and befriending the outcasts that prove cooler than everybody else.
You should probably know three things about Maya right from the outset. First off, her best friend Stephanie recently died and Maya’s family has moved so as to help their daughter cope. Second, Stephanie has found herself living next to a house where the denizens come and go in odd fashions, play strange instruments, and speak in tongues she doesn’t always understand. Third, there was a fairy in her room recently. It happened one night when Stephanie probably should have been asleep. No one would think much of it either, were it not for the fact that because of the strange fairy’s scent an odd boy decides that he can trust Maya. Next thing she knows she has a strange magical egg embedded under the skin of her wrist, and her neighbors are the only ones who can help her. Now Maya, like it or not, has gotten caught up in their world. The only question now is what’s in that egg and what will happen when it decides to hatch?
The blurb for this book that caught my eye is “Ingrid Law’s Savvy as seen through the eyes of a young Ray Bradbury.” I love that they had to put that “a young” in there. Old Ray Bradbury would be a whole different ballgame, of course. Mind you, it’s an interesting statement above and beyond the age designation of one of the nation’s greatest science fiction writers. First off, the blurb pairs two different genres together. Savvy is a Newbery Honor winning fantasy about a girl who receives a special power (like the rest of her family) at the age of thirteen. Ray Bradbury, on the other hand, is a master of science fiction. Put the two together and you would expect to find a book that appeals to both sci-fi and fantasy fans equally. No mean task. To my mind, I suppose that Thresholds could be characterized as sci-fi. Everything has a logical dimension. Just the same, as a general rule, when you open your first chapter with a girl discovering a fairy, folks are going to label you fantasy whether or not there’s a scientific practicality to that fairy being there.
The real reason I think they decided to compare this book
wonderful work