We’ve been doing a second pass on some comics I read early on in this project, and so here are a few more guys who I chose not to include but absolutely should have: Henri Duval: A series of men have been murdered in unlikely-to-impossible scenarios, with the only common denominators being that they were all judges at a recent art exhibition and that they all have the initials “HD” marked on their foreheads. This is a case for Doctor…
(Jackpot Comics 004, 1941) An otherwise-unnamed portraitist, the Artist finds himself down on his luck because he refuses to flatter his clients by painting them in anything but complete realism. After his latest client, a banker, literally kicks him out onto the street, he continues to work on the man’s portrait in a hate-fueled haze until he unlocks a power within himself: once he has painted someone’s portrait realistically enough, their soul becomes trapped inside and the husk of their…
(Captain America Comics 009, 1941) The Black Talon is honestly such a disappointing character. Two-thirds of him is composed of concepts that I love, but that remaining third is very rough. A hard character to endorse. First good Part: The Black Talon, aka Pascal Horta, is a mad artist who kills both as a way of eliminating his rivals and as a means of deriving inspiration for his series of horror-themed portraits. I always love seeing the mad arts represented…