Cam Kennedy non 2000ad stuff.

[Kerrin]

Been having a trundle round amazon and ebay etc and noticed that Cam has done quite a few Star Wars stories and also a series called "The light and darkness wars". Now I've always liked Cam's work, in my opinion he's one of the most natural draughtsmen in comics but apart from his artwork are the non 2000ad titles any good? I'm definately going to get Kidnapped and Jekyll & Hyde but not sure about the others.

[+rufus+]

Well worth buying all of them!  

Cam's Star wars work is gorgeous, amongst his best(And Star Wars's best too...), and L&D War, while definitely a product of the 80s, is a nice mix of Slaine, and Platoon.

Kidnapped and Jekyl and Hyde are both fantastic.

Enjoy!
Rufus

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Didn't he do some Knights of the Old Republic stuff too? (I know that's Star Wars, but it isn't really).

Kidnapped was bloomin' good.

[Dr Feeley Good]

Only seen his Star Wars Boba fett stories,but they were great,though so were Henry Flints.....

[Bolt-01]

The Light & Darkness war is stunning. Cam was the perfect artist for that. The story is not the greatest, but the artwork is beautiful. Sepia toned Helicopters in the 'Nam.

[worldshown]

Didn't he do some Knights of the Old Republic stuff too?

Certainly not from the current run, that's mainly Brian Ching and Dustin Weaver.

Cam did do Dark Empire 1 and 2 though and I think he did an issue of Star Wars:Empire.

[TordelBack]

Cam's the definitive Star Wars comics artist for my money, more so even that Jan Duursema, but he hasn't done much lately.

On the other hand fellow alumnus Colin Wilson has had some great recent Star Wars gigs, including some fabulous stuff from the Legacy and Rebellion titles, as well as a terrific series of speech-bubble covers.

Check it out:  

//http://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/Previews/14-909?page=0

and here's a Wilson cover for KotOR (which BTW is more Star Wars than the Prequels could ever be):

//http://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/14-399/Star-Wars-Knights-of-the-Old-Republic-17

[Ignatzmonster]

One of the less well known works is one he did for DC with Alan Grant and John Wagner I believe called The Outcasts. I'm always waiting, illogically I know, for Rebellion to reprint it because essentially it is a tooth comic. Which is why it did fuck all for sales in the states.

[Proudhuff]

Don't think Cam will be doing the Star Wars gig again... I believe he ended up disliking drawing the characters and has mentioned once or twice how he feels about Lucas. Cam has his own website with art for sale and a listing of his work, tis its here somewhere... rummage, rummage


http://www.camkennedy.com/

He's a lurvely man, just don't take him seriously if he asks to marry you...

[TordelBack]

...just don't take him seriously if he asks to marry you...

Aw crap, don't tell me I got my bikini area waxed for nothing.

[Richmond Clements]

I only saw a few moments of Cam's interview at Hi-Ex last year, but I managed to catch some nice nuggets about working for Lucas.

Man, he can talk! (Cam that is, not George.)

[Kerrin]

Cheers for the advice peeps, managed to find all 6 of the Light and darkness war on ebay last night for a tenner including postage, so they're on the way.

Cheers for the link to Darkhorse Tordelback, Colin Wilson looks like another artist I'm going to have to check out. Just received volumes 1 and 2 of Hellboy in the post today so I think I'll be putting some more money Darkhorse's way in the near future. Mike Mignola's artwork is just wunnerful.

Cam's site has changed alot since the last time I looked at it (must be 2 or 3 years), much slicker now. Cheers for that Proudhuff. How the hell I'm going to resist buying some original artwork I don't know, though being skint will probably help.

With regard to the Star Wars titles, are Dark Empire 1 and 2 self contained stories if you have a working knowledge of the Star Wars universe? Or, do you need to read any preceding stories to lead into them?

Off to peel the silly "Now a major motion picture" stickers from my Hellboy aquisitions and settle down with a nice cold beer for a good read. It's a hard life.

[TordelBack]

Dark Empire I is totally self-contained, representing (IIRC) the first post-RotJ tie-in fiction of the '90s,
and written by Roarin' Rick's brother Tom Veitch.  In fact it's so self-contained that it totally contradicts huge chunks of the same-period novels that Timothy Zahn was writing at the same time, right down to the names and birth-orders of Han and Leia's kids, which makes for a fun Introduction to the collection.  It's great dense-yet-zippy stuff,dripping with superweapons and OTT Force powers and epic destinies, but the real pleasures are Cam's battlefield splash-pages and junk-filled panels that look just right for the original SW universe.  I think it's about the best piece of post-Trilogy fun ever produced, and I've read most of that crap.

Dark Empire II is still beautiful to look at, but a bit all over the place storywise.  It's still well worth a look. Unfortunately, the most recent DH collection includes Empire's End, the 'conclusion' to a story that clearly wasn't meant to have one, a Lucasfilm-ordained wrapping-up of all Tom Veitch's contributions to Star Wars, an epic little personal universe of superlatives and final showdowns that was obviously overstepping the bounds of the more 'sustainable' (i.e. boring) continuation of the movies that was evolving in the novels.  This piece of cack is half-heartedly drawn by the otherwise-great Jim Baikie, who plainly lost the will to live a few dozen pages before the end and sort of doodled his way to one of the worst concluding splash-pages in comics history, hauntingly reminiscent of the final scene of the Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show.  I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that it ends with [spoiler]Han Solo killing the resurrected Emperor with his trusty blaster.[/spoiler]  Or at least I think that's what that particular scribble was meant to represent.

[Kerrin]

Well that's that then, cheers again Tordelback, I'll get both of those. Is the Boxtree book with a mainly yellow cover that I've seen several of on ebay the collected Dark Empire 1? It's got a picture on the front of Luke with a giant flying Robbie the robot sneaking up on him....to my untrained eye.

[worldshown]

This one?

http://www.rebelscum.com/photo.asp?imag ... %20Version)

Actually, it's not a robot it's a world devastator, but it certainly does look like the body, arms and shoulders of a robot.