I've been recently on the hunt for comic book auteurs, i.e. authors who both both write and draw their own comics. It doesn't necessarily mean the books are better than comics that include a writer/artist duo or a team of creators, but it does mean that the entire vision of the work does belong to one sole creator, which allows me to see the authorship behind the work. It's strange how auteur th]eory is affiliated with filmmakers, but rarely with comic book creators. I'm of the mind that film directors and comic book creators are basically one and the same. Of course the methods of making a film vs a comic book is different, but in the end it is a visual storytelling medium which requires an ability to write and think visually at the same time. It always catches me off guard when people make the two mediums mutually exclusive. I once told somebody that Katsuhiro Otomo is a filmmaker and a manga creator and I got a "yeah, right" reaction. It was as if once you become good at something there is no way you can learn anything else, i.e. once you learn how to run, you can't go back to walking.
And so I'm making a list of comic book auteurs to check out. At the top of that list is Gabriel Hardman, whose book, Invisible Republic looks pretty badass (check out the image below from the book). I'm going to try to get a copy of it and post a review here sometime in the near future.
