The Sienkiewicz Experience

Time was, buying a Sienkiewicz book (preferebly plotted/scripted by Miller) was like getting your hands on that rare rock album with the killer album cover. That was before trade-reprints and hardcover-omnibuses. My first encounter with Sienkiewicz was seeing some of his panels reproduced in magazines and books. I never had any complete book showcasing his artwork. Then one day I was in Pltypus' place in SIN. He showed me "Daredevil: Love And War". The EPIC original (he's fuckin' smug that he still owns this masterpiece). The visuals blew me away. Kingpin drawn not as a human juggernaut (ala Romita) but as a huge mass of something that blends into the rest of the room, swallowing up everything. The feeling was like this was Kingpin's world and we're just living in it. He did not just eat up the scenery. He was the scenery. Daredevil floated over buildings carrying a girl in his arms. You could almost feel the wind in your eyes. Bill's art wasn't about realism (Neal Adams), cartoony (John Byrne) or mere psychedelia (Jim Steranko). Bill's art was all his own. A cornucopia of madness, genius and well, whatever he could get his hands on (many panels looked like he built it from spiderwebs and strings, rather than drawn with pencils!) Pltypus took me to Tower Records and introduced me to the Jimi Hendrix Biography by Bill Sienkiewicz. I picked up the book not long after, along with "Daredevil: In Love And War" (that reprints both "Love And War" and "Elektra: Assassin"). Like I said, it wasn't the usual comix experience. It was like getting a ticket into the coolest rock-festival in the universe. It was like owning a piece of poplorica. It was, for lack of a better word, cool... [read an interview with Bill Sienkiewicz]