DC Comics Plays Musical Chairs With Four ‘New 52′ Artists
It's been over a week since DC Comics announced any creative team changes on their New 52 superhero line, so we were pretty much overdue when the publisher's The Source blog announced several pencil artists coming and going in a series of posts Thursday. The affected books are Animal Man, Birds of Prey, Resurrection Man and Suicide Squad; three artists are simply moving to new books, while one artist is left without an assignment, and another artist new to the New 52 takes over one of the above. All of this will go down in May. Go grab a pencil and you're Who's Working On What in The DC Universe program, and we'll break it all down for you after the jump.Animal Man artist Travel Foreman, whose idiosyncratic style has been among the factors that have made the book one of the relaunches best-reviewed titles, is leaving to take over the regular art duties on Birds of Prey. Foreman explained why he was leaving Animal Man in a post on the Comic Book Resources forums. It turns out it was more personal than professional:
"The change on Animal Man boils down to the reason I was on the book to begin with, which was that I needed to take on a job after my mother died (to deal with the financial end of someone being sick for a while and then passing) and Animal Man was the only thing DC was going to let me do. Which in any other time frame would have been perfect. But really the context of me dealing with the death of my mom and drawing the kind of content in Animal Man just burned me out sooner than I thought."
The plot of the series thus far has revolved around the lead character, a sort of totemic avatar for all animal life on earth, combatting an entropic force called The Rot.
Replacing Foreman on Animal Man will be artist Steve Pugh, who's no stranger to the character, having already been solicited as a fill-in artist for the upcoming issues #7 and #8 of the series and and having illustrated a chunk of the previous volume of Animal Man when it was part of DC's mature readers Vertigo imprint in the 1990s. Pugh's first "official" issue as the regular artist will be May's issue #9; the other artistic changes will also be reflected in that month's books, which will also all be the ninth issue of their series (a result of DC relaunching all of their titles with new #1's in the same month).
If Foreman's going to start drawing Birds, what then becomes of its current pencil artist, Jesus Saiz? He moves over to Resurrection Man, starting with May's issue #9.
Resurrection Man's current artist, Fernando Dagnino, then moves to Suicide Squad.
And Suicide Squad's artist? Well, there was no announcement, so presumably the Suicide Squad penciller is going to be the one left standing in this round of New 52 musical chairs. Federico Dallocchio has drawn the bulk of the series so far, although he was joined by other artists on the first few issues. Dallocchio is the artist solicited for April's Suicide Squad #8, Clayton Henry was solicited as the pencil artist for March's issue #7, and Tom Raney drew the issue that shipped this week.
And those are probably the last creative team changes we'll hear regarding DC's superhero line. For at least another week.
[Via The Source]