STRIPS & HARDBALL
strips & hardball
Rip-Off Press (1989-1997)
Austen began his career as an artist in the 1980s. Due to not knowing many comics fans he developed a habit of inking his own pencils. After working on Eclipse Comics titles such as Twisted Tales and Alien Worlds, his work came to the attention of Alan Moore, who selected him to take over from Alan Davis on Miracleman, recently added to the company’s portfolio.
He met Moore for the first time at the 1985 San Diego Comic Con, where he was also announced as the new artist on the title.
Wow, what a refreshing contrast to ‘good girls’. However, in researching these comics and their author for content on the pages I found out how maligned this guy is. Apparently he committed sacrilege on the holy comic X-Men, a true piece of shit title. Some of the keyboard critics charges are bullshit though, they emphasize he was “fired” from Marvel, after working on dozens of titles and a years-long run on X-Men, and from DC after being given his own tltle. He worked for Disney for a while on Little Mermaid. This doesn’t sound like a guy who is incompetent and unable to hold a job, but a talented guy who can work on any genre and the normal churn of artists in the comics industry. His tenure was longer than a lot of celebrated artists but they don’t get smeared as “fired”. Anyway, my only criticism is he claimed to aim to clean up and finalize his Strips series with the final 2 “special” issues but all he really did was add some art he was denied and completed the first issue, then rehashed the 2nd issue, leaving his main character with the big-titty floozy after taking a break and busting Shari’s cherry then callously leaving her, and totally ignoring the intelligent Kenna, the one girl with which you can imagine a future, instead he goes for the big tits. How he gets so much trim is a mystery since he apparently sucks in bed and is a premature ejaculator to boot, but writing “autobiographical” comics you are allowed a lot of license.