FAMILY REUNION

Written by Sean Stewart and Drawn by Steve Lieber

Ask for one from Steve Lieber
 
Some comics automatically make me happy, just by existing. Many of those comics are drawn by the great Steve Lieber.
 
Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t believe that Lieber puts out genius level work every time he puts pencil to paper. Like many artists, he has his quirks, and (in my opinion) Steve’s biggest quirk is one of the stranger ones in the business.
 
Mason’s Law Of Lieber: The more Lieber is paid, and the more high profile the gig, and the more characters the story contains who wear costumes, the lesser the work from Steve. Jobs where there are no costumes and superpowers = Lieber at his best.
 
I swear to you: I know this sounds goofy, but compare Lieber’s work on something like WHITEOUT to his work on BATMAN. It doesn’t even look like the same guy. The throw in the fact that someone else is usually inking his stuff, and there’s a colorist getting in the mix, and it just looks like Lieber-lite.
 
Now that we have that out of the way, I can point to this charming little exercise as more proof of my theory. In this lovely mini-comic, Lieber gives us eight wonderfully drawn pages of just people. People like you see every day on the street or at the grocery. Oh, and some dead people, but even they look normal.
 
Adapting and promoting Sean Stewart’s new novel PERFECT CIRCLE, “Family Reunion” introduces the reader to William “Dead” Kennedy, a fellow with the unfortunate and somewhat unpleasant ability to see the dead, and those dead have some unfinished business. Plus, he’s unemployed, having lost his job at Petco for eating cat food. He isn’t exactly a lucky man.
 
This is a pretty slight eight pages, but we’re given enough of Dead’s background to make him interesting, and those family members we meet, living and dead, show some literary promise. I suspect that the novel will be quite good. But the real star here is Lieber; I put my mind to it, and I honestly couldn’t think of anyone else I would rather see illustrate a tale of this type and length. His ability to animate real, breathing people on the page is a thing of wonder, and you never get the sense of him working from model in any way, shape or form. They’re unique, from their clothes to their features, and you always feel like you know them.
 
Steve Lieber, without a doubt, is the one man I would want to draw my comics. Sean Stewart has both my admiration… and my jealousy. “Family Reunion” is definitely worth your dollar.
 
review materials may be sent to: Marc Mason, P.O. Box 26732, Tempe, AZ, 85285