Broken Frontier

There’s good news and there’s bad news: the bad news is that super-star artist Alan Davis is leaving UNCANNY X-MEN…the good news is that he’s sealing the fates of the Fantastic Four instead!

Heading into a new, shiny future means leaving the group of heroes Davis has enjoyed working with so thoroughly, fan-favorites The X-Men. Alas, the artist puts his patented bright face on the whys and wherefores of the move. “I was playing Scrabble with my Uncle Xander when his pet hamster leapt onto the board and kicked the tiles around. It was weird . . . the letters were rearranged and spelt out 'UNC X QUIT NOW'. Well, Uncle Xander's pretty self-centered so thought the hamster intended the message for him but I knew it was for me... And you just can't ignore that kind of advice from a literate hamster.”

What is that shiny future, though? What could Alan Davis do to top Wolverine, Cyclops, & Co.? “FANTASTIC FOUR: THE END. Nuff said,” he reports, with appropriate finality. “I'm pretty damn excited about getting to draw the FF again.”

Davis is no stranger to dynamic projects in the larger-than-life super-heroic world, having kept up an incredible artistic pace through his professional career, beginning in 1981 with the famous “Marvel UK” imprint of the House of Ideas. He has since gone on to explore every single corner of the Marvel stable of characters and he has gathered a résumé to make others in the comic field green with envy. Davis’ past projects include NEW MUTANTS, EXCALIBUR, UNCANNY X-MEN, CLANDESTINE, FANTASTIC FOUR, AVENGERS, and the adjective-less X-MEN.

“Alan Davis has worked on the entire freakin’ Marvel U!” quips Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada. “He’s probably drawn every single one of our characters, from Ant-Man to Zemo and all parts in-between! Figured he liked us so much we better keep him around, keep him off the streets, livin’ clean, working on our premier heroes, the FF, and give somebody else a chance to draw UNCANNY…now if we could only get Alan to stop talking so funny!”

He may talk “funny” but British Isles-born Davis is also characteristically humble about his past work in the four-color medium. “There are odd pages, covers, sequences of storytelling but I've never been totally happy with anything I have worked on. I always hope the next job will be better.”

His inspirations in terms of themes and creators are also incredibly varied.  “My favourite character(s) is(are) usually the one(s) I'm working on, having said that, I do have a preference for certain visual incarnations or versions of characters. Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four, Wally Wood or Gene Colan's Daredevil, Gil Kane's Spider-Man, George Tuska's Iron Man, Barry Smith's Conan, John Buscema's Thor, Avengers and Silver Surfer,  Neal Adams’ Inhumans and early X-Men and John Byrne on too much to mention.”

When asked what being exclusive with industry-leader Marvel Comics means to him, prolific penciller Alan Davis doesn’t mince words: “Regular work in an uncertain world,” sayeth he.

All the latest on Alan Davis’ new good works and other upcoming Marvel Comics projects can always be found at Marvel.Com.