Tony Puryear—screenwriter, designer, comics artist, and author of the graphic SF novel Concrete Park, now being serialized in Dark Horse Presents—has posted a glowing and very encouraging review of Hand of Fire to his blog.
I’m thrilled that Tony has found so much to admire in my book. Here is an excerpt:
… Hatfield takes us deep into the artist’s process and struggle in prose that’s always involving and rich. Hatfield knows his way around the semio-jargon, but makes it accessible to non-academics; you’ll feel smarter for having read this book.
As an artist, one thing I appreciated in particular was Hatfield’s explication of Kirby’s actual drawing…. Hatfield is sensitive to the way an artist’s style is an act of performance, but also the ways in which the marks that make that style create a rhetoric, a vocabulary of signs and references. In this book, Kirby becomes literally the textbook example of an artist whose very strokes, squiggles and yes, dots carry worlds of meaning. Hatfield is alert to the development of Kirby’s style, and his writing on the artists who influenced him, Foster, Caniff, Hogarth, is the best I’ve seen on this little-explored part of the Kirby story.
… When they teach Kirby in the schools, and they will, this book will be a vital part of the curriculum and I recommend it very highly.
I’m glad Hand of Fire has made such a strong impression on such an accomplished artist. Thanks, Tony, for this high praise!
Kirby Studies 