I am terribly sad to learn that Mark D. Bright has died. I will have more to say later this year or in 2025, but for now, I’ll send out some positive vibes to his family and friends, and reflect on my favorite artist in or out of comics.
The first comic book I ever bought with my own money featured a Mark Bright cover and Mark Bright interior art. I didn’t realize how well he drew everything, like weird toy vehicles, villains with capes, municipal stairs, swords; or how clear his storytelling was with high angles and low angles and everything in between. To this novice, it was just cool and pretty. Had anyone else drawn that issue, I may not have purchased it! Within a few months I’d decided, without realizing it, that I would follow him anywhere. His departure from G.I. Joe was a blow, but Green Lantern, and then Valor, and Icon, and Quantum and Woody followed, and they were all great. I was always excited by and careful to grab any and all fill-ins and side projects, like that one issue of Superman: The Man of Steel, or that second half of the Predator 2 movie adaptation. Or that fill-in of Firebrand, a DC title few remember. Or that Aquaman Annual. And hunting for back issues, scattered work Mark had done from before I read comics, like that 1982 issue of Avengers. And after all of that and more, he added another kind of credit to his name, as a year into Milestone, Mark started writing comics, too.
And all along he’d played music, a whole part of his life that comics fans didn’t know! I never experienced that firsthand, although the writer (and music producer) Priest has posted some at that well-known news and rumor site, and Larry Hama’s YouTube page has some live clips from the early ’90s.
I’ve always thought Mark Bright’s artwork resembled a mix of John Byrne and Neal Adams. There’s something about the warmth of his eyes and the bulbous shapes of his musculature that reminds me of those two artists. I’m less attuned at picking storytelling lineage, but surely there’s Kirby in there, right? Foreshortened arms and energy blasts, and well, Kirby crackle? But looking at the sci-fi book covers that Mark painted, I have to wonder how John Berkey gets mixed in. And examining how well he drew vehicles, I start to think of automotive design, a realm about which I know nothing. Was Mark a Syd Mead fan? I mean, everyone for two decades was a Syd Mead fan, but was Mark specifically one? His website is pretty comprehensive, he might even specify. It’s a little hard to click over there now, emotionally, but I will again soon. Wonder if Mark Bright was an influence on anyone who drew comics after him? To my eye, the answer is yes.
Mark Bright just had a knack for comics. Beyond his appealing faces and warm eyes, his dramatic storytelling, and his intense sense of action, there was his flair for “soft” things like clothing folds, clouds, and explosions. Though he drew some beloved stories (like “Armor Wars”) and runs (like G.I. Joe in 1989 and ’90), he was off a lot of peoples’ radar. He drew covers, but many of his issues featured cover artwork by someone else. And a lot of his covers are unsigned. He didn’t attend many conventions and he didn’t say much on social media. I very much appreciate that he built himself a thorough website, and included sections for just about everything: comics by publisher, which becomes a kind of autobiography; his self-published strips; and work for television and film. There’s that one-page Wizard magazine profile on him from 1995, but I don’t know of any podcasts where he guested, or websites with Bright Q&As. I think Mark might be a sleeper fave for a lot of readers who don’t consciously make lists of favorite artists. There is a warmth to his drawings, his characters, his faces, and that he touched so many different series and publishers, and that so much of his oeuvre is reprinted, his work stays current. I think the more you look at his art, how he drew the shine on a metal suit, or blasts from a machine gun, or a dislodged city on an alien planet, the more you realize it wasn’t just technical chops, but artistic ones, too. (One detail: I always appreciated that he drew Black features on Black faces. John Stewart and Augustus Freeman don’t look like white guys with brown skin.) Mark could both handle whatever a writer threw at him, all the difficult things like three-point perspective looking down at a city, or cars, or tech labs, but he also liked to draw comics, liked to draw people and weird tanks, and was always trying to do a great job, even though drawing comics is difficult. But Mark didn’t do a lot of promotion and he didn’t have a larger-than-life presence, so his work sinks to the background for a lot of folks. Over time, I am confident that more and more readers will come to appreciate Mark Bright’s skills.
My comics collection is of course categorized by title. And in a few cases, by family, like a few assorted X-titles are with the handful of X-Men and Uncanny X-Men issues I own. (You think I have a huuuge collection, but I don’t.) But did you know I have a dedicated Mark Bright box? Icon and Quantum and Woody are there, of course, but also those four issues of Valor. And his one issue of The Dark. And his one issue of Primortals. And his one West Coast Avengers Annual. And the second-to-last issue of Force Works, and that one issue of War Machine, with only Mark Bright cover art. Ack! Where do I file his X-Factor issue? In the Bright box, or with the X-titles?
I find Wikipedia pretty useful, although I have mixed feelings about it because it’s easy to vandalize. And somewhat related, I tend not to comment much on internet websites or social media. It can be fun to get into a big conversation with a stranger that you can perhaps convince to your way of thinking, but I decided long ago two internet-things: that I would never edit a Wiki article, and that there are major websites I visit daily on which I won’t post comments. And that is because those are holes I might fall into and never crawl out of. But there’s one exception. Years ago I found Mark Bright’s Wikipedia page to be a little lacking. There was a nice paragraph, but no comprehensive list. So I fixed that. I mean, there’s a Wikipedia article with a typo about me, and I didn’t fix that. But typing up everything Mark ever did in comics, including reprints? That felt great.
Fun fact: You know how a few top artists were honored by drawing an entire month of Milestone covers? Walt Simonson, John Byrne, and Howard Chakyin? Mark Bright, too. Maybe it didn’t seem like a surprise because he was already “there,” but that’s some great company to be in.
Jumping back to 1990 for a moment, a few months into buying G.I. Joe, buying comics at all, I wrote a long letter to the Joe letters page, four typed pages. Too long, so I didn’t mail it. Most of the letter lauded Mark’s artwork and storytelling. In 2001 I started researching my G.I. Joe history book, in 2006 Mark kindly answered a few interview questions by email. He was surprised anyone would be interested in anything he had to say, and was modest, if not self-effacing. I was and am still happy that a snippet from that interview is in my book, in Chapter 8.
Fun fact: Mark Bright didn’t just paint that famous Transformers cover! He also drew the three after!
When I was a freshman in college, my 2-D Design teacher assigned an artist presentation. We could choose the artist. I assumed my classmates would pick people like Hokusai, da Vinci, and Cindy Sherman. Comics weren’t cool in 1997, and libraries hadn’t discovered them, much less high schools and grade schools and Barnes and Noble. I picked Mark Bright. My college had a world-class slide library, a giant room of wooden drawers with 35mm slides, all photographs of famous art. This is from where the art history teachers loaded up their carousels at lecture time. I called to see if they had anything by Mark Bright. Unsurprisingly they did not. To triangulate, I also asked for Jack Kirby and Bill Sienkiewicz. No dice. I went to the comic book shop up the hill and bought two issues of Iron Man and an issue of Green Lantern. Redundancies, but I needed them fast. At the library (the actual book library, not the slide library) sat a copy stand. I loaded some 35mm slide film in my camera and shot a few covers and panels, and a week or two later, presented to my 2-D Design class on Mark Bright. I mentioned how he drew clouds. No one draws clouds in comics as pretty as Mark Bright.
Thinking back on Mark’s faith — we never spoke of it, but I know his church was important to him — I wonder if there’s any connection there. Heaven is up in the clouds.
I always wanted to meet Mark. At around the same time, 1997-ish, my pal-from-middle-school (later my editor and creative partner) Nick Nadel attended a comics convention in New York. Nick already lived there, so it was easy for him to go. A smaller regional con, not a mega show like New York Comic-Con — this was before that. Mark Bright was a guest. Nick told Mark that he liked his work, and as a thank you, Mark signed a Quantum and Woody issue and gave it to Nick. And Nick continued, that he particularly liked Mark’s G.I. Joe work, and Mark replied something like “That was a fun book to do, but I spent too long noodling on the vehicles,” and also something like “well, this proves you’re a particular kind of fan,” and so Mark signed a Quantum and Woody graphic novel and gave it to Nick. And Nick gave it to me.
I thought that was as close as I’d get to crossing paths with my favorite artist. Bright didn’t do many cons. And then, after Q&W was canceled around 2000, Mark left comics for the perhaps more lucrative and perhaps less stressful world of storyboarding for commercials, television, and film. He came back a few times, such as for a(another!) Shockwave painting for a Dreamwave Transformers calendar in 2003, a Milestone reunion in 2010, a Quantum and Woody reunion with the writer Priest in 2014, and even as late as a page in Marvel Comics #1001 in 2019 and an 8-pager in Noir is the New Black, an anthology published by Fairsquare Comics in 2021. (Which was republished two months ago in a slightly modified edition — your comic book shop can order it.) I always hoped Mark would really come back to comics. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
Fun fact: Even though Megatron is the villain threatening Ratchet on the cover to Transformers issue #7, that’s not who Mark Bright originally drew!
I’d like to claim credit for Mark drawing the 2006 Transformers Spotlight: Nightbeat special. I said to Chris Ryall, I think at BotCon, “Hey, you should get Mark Bright to draw some Transformers. He did that famous cover, but has never done Transformers interiors.” Unspoken and understood: “That amazing Iron Man artist who also drew G.I. Joe, this guy has the chops to draw shiny toy-people.” IDW had just started rolling out TF books, and this was in the wake of Dreamwave folding, so IDW was trying out a bunch of things. “That’s a good idea,” I recall Ryall saying. Later, I think at the next BotCon, when the comic came out, IDW had a fun cover variant: Mark’s artwork without the colors. I don’t much go for variant covers, but this was too cool to pass up. That whole one-shot was a particular thrill because it was a rare case where M.D. Bright not just penciled, but inked his work as well. Randy Emberlin was my fave Bright inker for obvious reasons, but Romeo Tanghal and Greg Adams did lovely work over Mark over many years. A fun, unusual combination: Mark Bright and Klaus Janson. They drew seven covers together. You can really see it on Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn issue #1 and the original collection of that miniseries. The former got reused for the 2017 Green Lantern: Hal Jordan TPB.
I find it a little funny that this post on my G.I. Joe blog has no G.I. Joe art. Look at this metal, look at that water (and that low angle), look at those clouds, look at that city:
And the writers he worked with! Steve Gerber! Dwayne McDuffie! Priest! Certainly that he was often paired with thoughtful scribes elevated his drawing approach.
In the 2000s I was able to buy some Mark Bright original artwork — a Power Man and Iron First cover, which hangs in a frame near where I type this, and a Transformers cover, which hangs across from the other. A year into the pandemic, I’d stopped buying original art — fixing my house and my store has taken the thunder out of art purchases, but I made an exception for two Bright G.I. Joe pages. But not the obvious ones, like Snake-Eyes in the numbered mid-90s. Rather, this was from a G.I. Joe fill-in, issue #35, long before Mark was the actual series artist. No one’s in costume, no marquee Joe or Cobra vehicles appear. I waxed about this once here on the blog.
I always feel a surge of warmth when I see a drawing by Mark Bright. That might be bagged and boarded cover art at a shop, an interior page if I’m re-reading a favorite issue, a scan of his artwork on a collector’s page at Comic Art Fans, one of the aforementioned originals in my own collection, or just any jpeg or gif on the internet. I get a similar surge of excitement as I’m flipping through the monthly DC and Marvel catalogs when I see something of Mark’s is getting reprinted. In fact, this happened last week! Here’s page 77 of the newest Marvel Previews, with a tome coming out in May!
You see what I see?
And then one page turn later, it happened again! Here’s another book, also out in May!
Zoom in! Endorphin surge!
And then I play a little mental game, what issues reprinted are Mark’s? Is it something well known, or a little obscure? Is it, dare I say, a Mark Bright comic I didn’t know about? Is it one of the few I’ve still never tracked down? And then I imagine Mark getting a comp in the mail from the publisher a few months later, and hoping he is pleased.
When the compact and modestly priced Marvel-Verse: Monica Rambeau – Photon book was released last year, and at the same time, the heftier Captain Marvel: The Saga of Monica Rambeau streeted, I was particularly enthusiastic. I love having Mark’s work available at my shop, whether it’s a big chunk, or just a sliver. “Lucky you,” I think of our customers, “you’re going to get a bunch of Mark Bright art if you buy this book.”
In 2010, Mark and I converged on Larry Hama’s home in New York. This was the first time I’d met Mark in person, and I’m sad to say it was the only time. We emailed many times before and after that, and spoke by phone occasionally. Dinner was lovely. Larry told funny stories, as always. I appreciated that these two had a history together, that they’d drawn comics together, that they’d played in a band together, and that they’d both hustled for art jobs in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s and 00’s in New York City. That a few times when a freelance gig came Larry’s way and he was too busy, he recommended Mark. And that time Larry was at a convention, and had a hard time, and his pal Mark Bright, who happened to also be guesting there — what were the odds? — stepped in and helped save the day.
I had suggested the dinner, and I’m very glad I did, and I wish I’d done so again. At least I was smart enough to set my camera up for a couple photos. Some day, the world will really know how much Mark Bright’s work meant to me. For now, I’ll just say that I wish I had spoken to him one more time. I look forward to meeting his family and saying a little of this in person.
A Real American Book! 