The Fantasy Art of Charles Vess

Dark Horse's Drawing Down the Moon Showcases Eisner-Winner's Work

Oct 20, 2009

Charles Vess has been a noted fantasy illustrator since the late 1970s. His love of comics has led to collaborations with Neil Gaiman and Jeff Smith, and many awards.

Charles Dana Vess was born on June 10, 1951, in Lynchburg, Virginia. Drawing full-length comics since age ten, Vess enrolled in Virginia Commonwealth University, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

At school, Vess demonstrated an interest in fantasy illustration and comic books which he says was frowned upon by his instructors. The influence of English artists like Arthur Rackham and Aubrey Beardsley is evident in Vess's early work, and he was also an admitted fan of such disparate comics legends as George Herriman and Jack Kirby.

Vess moved to New York in 1976, freelancing for such magazines as Heavy Metal and National Lampoon. In time, his love of fantasy artwork and comics was vindicated, as he was able to establish himself as an illustrator within that particular niche.

Charles Vess Teams Up With Neil Gaiman

Though Charles Vess landed modest comics work throughout the 1980s, he rose to prominence in 1989 when he began working with writer Neil Gaiman on Gaiman's Books of Magic miniseries and his Sandman series, both for DC/Vertigo.

Vess illustrated the story "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Sandman #19, which told how William Shakespeare first staged that play for real-life fairies. It won a World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story (1991), the only comic book to ever win the award. Vess would go on to illustrate Neil Gaiman's "storybook" novella Stardust, published in 1998.

Charles Vess's Eisner Award-Winning Comics

Charles Vess has also won a number of Eisner Awards for his comic book illustrations. His first came in 1991, for his collaboration on the one-shot Concrete Celebrates Earth Day. Six years later, Vess was named Best Penciller/Inker for his own self-published series, The Book of Ballads and Sagas, and for his work on the final issue of Gaiman's Sandman (#75), which revisited Shakespeare's life.

Vess won his most recent Eisner Award, this time as Best Painter/Multimedia Artist of 2002, for his work on the miniseries Rose. Written by Jeff Smith, Rose is a prequel to Smith's epic fantasy series Bone and is set a generation before the Bone brothers' adventures.

In December 2009, Dark Horse Comics will release Drawing Down the Moon: The Art of Charles Vess. The 200-page hardcover volume features a retrospective of Vess's thirty-year career. An added incentive for Charles Vess fans is that Drawing Down the Moon showcases various early works, mixed media projects, and other miscellany, which have not been previously published.

Seen through the lens of Drawing Down the Moon, Charles Vess' style and subject matter is reminiscent of the golden age of book illustration in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. The period, not coincidentally, is known for producing classic fantasy works such as Peter Pan.

So it's not surprising that some of Vess's most successful comics collaborations have been with writers – such as Neil Gaiman and Jeff Smith – who love fairy tales and understand the fantasy genre's peculiar sensibilities, just as Vess himself is a master of fantasy's visual touchstones.

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