She was also writing a series of very nice short pieces for the back pages of Classic X-Men . Eleven, if I can count. Including one of my very favorite comic book stories ever printed, “Her First and Last”, from Classic #44. Penciled by the inimitable Kieron Dwyer at the height of his talent as a master of expression and emotion. I even wrote an essay about that story. I’ve already attested to its greatness.
This was a weird time, however, to start reading Daredevil .
When I started reading Daredevil , it was being written by Ann Nocenti, in the home stretch of her run. It was a long period - seemed long to me, at least, I was a kid! I didn’t have any baseline for what Matt Murdock’s life was supposed to look like, so the long period when he was roaming around upstate New York letting his facial hair grow a bit seemed like a natural role for the character. I had no idea at the time that it was such a rare treat. Daredevil works as a traveling hero, and heroes that travel can do interesting types of stories. It’s traditionally a productive theme in superhero books. Certainly one of Chris Claremont’s deepest themes, thought not often remarked as such. The X-Men got the see the world.
And so, for a time, did Daredevil, hanging out with Gorgon and Karnak. Of all people! Yeah, they hung out with Daredevil for a while, they had a whole traveling show number. With a genetically-altered laboratory woman named Number Nine, who has never shown up again, inexplicably, despite being a leggy blonde in a Daredevil comic. Anyway! That was the year Daredevil fought Ultron in "Acts of Vengeance", undoubtedly the strangest Ultron story that has ever been, and perhaps the best. Led into the sequence with Daredevil in Hell, fighting Mephisto, which is about as good a Mephisto story that has ever been done. This sequence was also Nocenti's swan song - not on the book, but with her primary collaborator of a couple years, John Romita Jr. Her run would be go on to be finished largely by a pup by the name of Lee Weeks, whom I believe I may have had occasion to mention .
But go back to the tail end of Romita. There’s a fill-in, undoubtedly intended to give him a breather between the Ultron and Mephisto arcs. Shipped December, right after the "Acts of Vengeance" crossover. Drawn by that fellow I mentioned briefly, Mr. Rick Leonardi.
From Daredevil #277 (Feb. 1990). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by Al Williamson, colors by Max Scheele, letters by Joe Rosen, written by Ann Nocenti. Digital color restoration by unknown parties has been performed at the behest of publishers upon images throughout this article. Click any image to enlarge.
Now, I will go so far as to assert that in Nocenti’s significant tenure writing Daredevil , nothing else went quite as far as issue #277, in terms of any reader’s expectations of what could actually happen in a Daredevil comic. I think it does bear more than a passing connection to another notable issue of the comic, #219. That was the throat-clearing exercise Frank Miller wrote in 1985, about a year before returning to the book for "Born Again". Miller writing for John Buscema, which seems like something that should have happened more than did. It’s another issue of Daredevil where Daredevil never puts on his costume. It’s customary when mentioning #219 to point out that it reads very much like an early stab at the genre and thema that would eventually cohere as the Sin City franchise. Which it totally does, no argument.
What the Miller story shares with the later Nocenti issue is its determination, on the part of someone who had already written a lot of Daredevil stories, to be as unlike a Daredevil story as it could be while still remaining, somehow, a Daredevil story. Issue #277 is a story where Matt Murdock encounters a problem that has nothing to do with a villain being punched. You may want to punch the villain, but the story gives us, essentially, a pointed conversation over dinner. In practice, not very dissimilar in tone and theme from a great many independent films around the turn of the '90s. Although it’s kept below the chassis, so to speak, there’s a great deal of sexual inference in this story, not in the form of innuendo but as an obvious and absolutely crucial aspect of the plot. This is perhaps the only superhero comic to ever use sex, lies, and videotape as its springboard.
It’s a difficult story for an artist. The plot, such as it is, concerns itself with a woman suffering from near-constant severe hallucinations. She encounters Matt Murdock out shopping, and he becomes concerned because he can see more than anyone just how distressed the woman is after a destabilizing vision in an art gallery. He follows her home to make sure she’s safe, and he finds her living with an absolute monster. Not a violent thug or a supernatural terror, however - the nature of the monster is simply that of a smug domestic tyrant. A preening narcissist in the form of a psychiatrist who has built his career on writing about her illness. While also marrying her.
From Daredevil #277.
Suffice to say, over the course of the story, Daredevil manages to contain any proclivity for violence. The resolution consists of Matt, sitting at the dinner table in normal people clothes and everything, telling the woman’s husband, I see what you’re doing even if you don’t, so cut it out you unmitigated sack of shit . And that’s what he does, and then he... leaves. Looks over his shoulder one last time, and walks into the night. He doesn’t break the guy’s jaw. It’s unclear what Matt Murdock could have done better without risking an assault charge, truth be told, which I suspect is very much the point. It’s also left to the reader to wonder as to whether Matt does enough.
One of the more interesting aspects of Nocenti’s run was her willingness to let Matt Murdock make mistakes. It’s bedrock, foundational, baked into the premise at Stan-level, that Matt Murdock has the worst judgment of any superhero. Where Nocenti excels, I think, and where she blazes a trail for later writers, is showcasing the degree to which Daredevil can be flat-out wrong in his own stories. Or at least implicated in the eyes of some readers. No excuses, just questionable judgment calls that hurt other people. If you recall the excellent Wolverine team-up that actually preceded Romita’s tenure on the book, #248-249—coincidentally, also drawn by Rick Leonardi—it’s always stuck in my mind that the story itself comes down pretty hard on ol’ Matthew for not letting Wolverine kill Bushwacker, when Bushwacker otherwise got back up and went right on killing people. It’s hard not to think Wolverine isn’t a little bit right when he castigates Daredevil for being someone all too willing to allow the nicety of principle to obscure necessity when lives are on the line.
It’s not a story very many artists could draw, or at least not well, our Daredevil #277. A poignant domestic drama with a foot in the surreal and a heaping spoonful of sexual tension. And not the good kind! The only other person I can think of who could have really sold it was Sienkiewicz - but he would probably have oversold it, truth be told. This needed to be intimate, a quiet story. When we open to the front page and see those dreadful horrifying horse-skulled demons working in the art gallery, it’s simultaneously fantastic and distressingly intimate. Downright claustrophobic. We’re seeing something very private. “Of Crown and Horns” is the rare superhero comic with a foot in the real drama of domestic environments, in no way contrived by the circumstances of the hero. (Not my favorite title, but you can’t win ‘em all.) Murdock is a stranger who drifts into a fraught household and finds a unique problem. It’s not even a particularly ambiguous problem - it’s clear who is in the wrong and why. But it’s also probably not a problem that you could figure out how to fix in the space of a dinner, either. In fairness to Matt.
From Daredevil #277.
The reason why only Rick Leonardi could have drawn this story is that almost anyone else would have made it boring as fuck. If you want to write a quiet story where people resolve their differences with terse conversation, you need someone who can make domesticity seem kinetic. Someone who draws characters always moving, even when they’re standing still.
It’s a shame that Nocenti and Leonardi only worked together a handful of times. Seems like something that should have happened more than it did. The evidence of his handful of Daredevil stories attests to the fact they brought out the best in each other as collaborators. To say nothing of the Colossus storyline in Marvel Comics Presents , of which we might speak at more length a bit later - why, I didn’t even tell you who inked it! But then, Nocenti brought out the best in a number of artists; made her artists better. It’s a significant skill for a writer to have, the ability to push artists in specifically productive directions. Claremont has it. Gaiman, too, when he cares to roll out of bed.
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Daredevil #277 was nine years deep into Rick Leonardi’s storied career. He didn’t start off quite so strong. Promising, certainly, but there’s lots of promising people across comics history who drew half a dozen comics and then never again. His first published work was actually in another Marvel comic, Thor #303 from January of 1981. He started at Marvel and stayed at Marvel for a good many years.
Now, is that a good comic book?
I will not lie to you, friend , Thor #303 is not a good comic book .
From Thor #303 (Jan. 1981). Art by Leonardi & Chic Stone, colors by George Roussos, letters by Joe Rosen, written by Doug Moench.
The best that can be said of Thor #303 is that it is barely publishable. Notice I said “barely”. It’s the roughest work he ever turns in, almost certainly salvaged by classic Marvel inker Chic Stone; the two are jointly credited as artists. Leonardi's next book, Spectacular Spider-Man #52, inked by Jim Mooney, is better. Significantly better, actually, but in fairness he had set a low bar for himself. Some of the staging here is pretty good, a few of the sequences manage some distinctive imagery. Very much the kind of improvement you’d hope to see.
He comes back for another issue of Thor , #309, and you can see, once again, he’s loads better. Still rough around the edges, but getting more comfortable. Beginning to lean in to his strengths, which mean in this instance a proclivity towards motion as the primary driver of story. You think that’d be obvious for anyone making their living drawing comic books, but you’d be surprised!
His fourth published comic was Incredible Hulk Annual #10, from 1981. This is an important book for Leonardi, not necessarily because it’s good, but because it’s clearly a book that challenged Leonardi. It looks like he used every trick in his bag to get to the end of the story. His longest assignment to date, inked by an all-star crew of Al Migrom, Bob Wiacek, Chic Stone, Dan Green and Frank Giacoia. It’s a Captain Universe yarn, of all things - Bruce Banner becomes Captain Universe so he can fight the Hulk on top of a nuclear missile. Not actually a bad elevator pitch for a comic that takes all of 10 minutes to read. The most interesting aspect of the story is actually the writer: a man by the name of Bill Mantlo.
Mantlo had also written Thor #309. Apparently the two men liked working together, since they did quite a bit of it over the next few years. It would be a very fortunate partnership.
After that Hulk Annual , Leonardi doesn’t have anything on stands for over half a year - from September 1981 to May 1982. That’s when he pops up again drawing Amazing Spider-Man #228, a fill-in during Roger Stern and John Romita Jr’s run. Right before the famous Juggernaut two-parter. In truth, being a fill-in, it could have been drawn well before that May, and, in truth, this Leonardi bears a lot more resemblance to the rough work in those early Hulk and Thor jobs. When he appears again, in October of 1982, it’s been a year since that Hulk Annual . He shows up for Spectacular Spider-Man #71—written by Mantlo, again, and again inked by Jim Mooney—and is practically a different artist.
Whatever he did during that year with very little output—at least according to comics.org, which I’ve never found anything less than reputable in these matters—when he returned to Marvel to draw that issue of Spectacular he made a measurable leap in ability. You can see more ambition in terms of panel angles, action choreography, composition. To put it as simply as possible, he’s just far more in control of the look of his panels. You can begin to see more confidence with elements of design. There was nothing in those early four issues to indicate that Leonardi was going to be the guy to buckle down and improve so markedly. But, whatever he was doing in 1982, it worked, and not just for that one Spider-Man comic.
From Vision and the Scarlet Witch #4 (Feb. 1983). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by Ian Akin & Brian Garvey, colors by George Roussos, letters by Janice Chiang, written by Bill Mantlo.
From here he starts getting higher-profile work. He drew the first Vision and the Scarlet Witch miniseries, again for Mantlo, which shipped its first issues at the end of 1982. There is no doubt: not only has Leonardi’s ability to tell a story improved dramatically, but he’s also become significantly more interesting in terms of his layouts. A few pages throughout are downright striking, as inked by the team of Ian Akin and Brian Garvey.
Strange as it may seem if you’ve come up in recent years, they only ever made two attempts at Vision and the Scarlet Witch : both minis, in the middle of the 1980s. The first by Mantlo and Leonardi in 1982, the second by Steve Englehart and the underrated Richard Howell in 1985-86. As a franchise it was significantly ahead of its time, decades too early to meet the comparatively recent demand for stronger domestic elements in fantasy across multiple mediums. People sure loved that WandaVision show, with a vociferousness none of that company’s other recent television projects have elicited. Definitely a comic that preceded its audience by a significant amount of time. And not the last time Leonardi would be called upon to exercise a facility with domestic drama.
After Vision and the Scarlet Witch wrapped, there’s another gap in the record: no work from November 1982 to July 1983. That was when the first issue of the first volume of Cloak and Dagger hit the stands.
From Cloak and Dagger #1 (Oct. 1983). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by Terry Austin, colors by Glynis Wein, letters by Joe Rosen, written by Bill Mantlo.
Now, if the first gap in the record represents a significant improvement for Leonardi, it really can’t be stressed how much this second gap represented not merely a significant improvement, but a creative rebirth in every significant way. Vision and the Scarlet Witch is a well-drawn comic - professional, occasionally interesting, and never less than competent. But Cloak and Dagger is in a completely different ballpark.
My question to you is - why the fuck don’t we talk about Cloak and Dagger being a goddamn significant book? Because it’s a goddamn significant book. We talk about Michael Golden on Micronauts , and Art Adams on Longshot , we talk about Simonson’s Thor - books that galvanized the generation of artists who followed immediately after. Some of whom would go on to found their own companies. But there’s something missing from that genealogy, a book for the years in between. Adams was then still trying to break in at the time, working at a pizzeria in between early jobs for indie publishers. Longshot is published almost two years after the first volume of Cloak and Dagger , in June of 1985, and it’s inconceivable to me that the one could have been created without the significant influence of the other. Look at all the interesting, inventive, wild stuff Adams did in Longshot , and find perhaps its closest antecedent in the team of Leonardi and the slightly more experienced hand of Terry Austin.
I’m not always one for Austin, I’ve made no bones about this. He’s a very dominant presence, as an inker, and the approach doesn’t always work for every penciler. Sometimes he overshoots the mark in terms of fussed-over detail. His drawing isn’t always relaxing to look at. The approach worked for John Byrne on Uncanny X-Men . After leaving that book, Byrne retained some of the tightness and detail that Austin had given him. That’s how a good inker can help a penciler. Imagine having someone whose job is to follow you around and make you look better! When you trust your collaborator you learn how to bring the best out of your own work. A good artist gets better by learning from the people around them.
From Cloak and Dagger #4 (Jan. 1984). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by Terry Austin, colors by Glynis Wein, letters by Joe Rosen, written by Bill Mantlo.
What Leonardi needed from Austin was to see just how a thin, sinuous line could work on the comics page. When he gets that, when Cloak and Dagger #1 hits the stands in 1983, and he sees how good his work starts looking when he goes for that clean line, Leonardi is unlocked. As simple as that. He goes from someone capable of drawing a decent comic book to someone incapable of not drawing a striking comic book, and drawing it distinctively. A journey of about three years. And you can see Leonardi in the people who come after. Mike Mignola starts for the company in 1983, two years after Leonardi, and follows a similar path from bare competency to mastery, just by refusing to sit and learning how to foreground motion in composition. Using the opportunity to draw monthly comic books as a means to make yourself learn how to draw better. How to draw comics the Gil Kane way.
Cloak and Dagger were created by Mantlo and artist Ed Hannigan, for the pages of Spectacular Spider-Man . They had no less than four series over the course of the 1980s: the initial four-issue limited series, 1983-84; a second ongoing bimonthly series that lasted 11 issues, 1985-87; a slot in the 1987 revival of Strange Tales , sharing that book with Doctor Strange for 19 issues until 1988; and finally another headlining series, from 1988-91. Leonardi drew the entirety of the first series, a good chunk of the second, and another chunk of the third solo attempt. He’s paired with Terry Austin for the great majority of that time, and Austin writes a few issues as well after Mantlo leaves the franchise.
Since 1991 there have been only a handful of attempts at a Cloak and Dagger revival. As much as I have a fondness for the characters, it’s not hard to see why they never made a larger impact. The duo lack any kind of rogues gallery, their origins are steeped in poorly-aged drug war paranoia, and their stories tend to lean dark, occasionally morose. Their one singular virtue as characters is that they are visually distinctive, with indelible designs. Dagger is a lithe blonde woman with a background in dance. She’s light on her feet, always moving, and moving like no other character in comics. Oh yeah - her costume is also a skintight white leotard. There’s absolutely nothing to fake. Either you can draw the human figure really well in extremis of motion or you can’t.
For illustration of this principle, as well as a handy primer on Leonardi’s work with the character, I highly recommend a specific text: Marvel Fanfare #19. One of the era’s more artistically significant single issues, I think, published in the gap between the first Cloak and Dagger mini and the ongoing. It consists of a new Cloak and Dagger story, written by Mantlo and split into thirds, shared equally by three teams of artists: the middle portion by Leonardi & Austin, the third by period mainstays Kerry Gammill & George Freeman, and the first by the great Tony Salmons. One of the most beautiful things Salmons ever drew, but also significantly different from either of the other two entries, themselves quite accomplished sequences in completely different idioms. Fascinating snapshot of an era’s cutting edge.
From Marvel Fanfare #19 (Mar. 1985). Art by Leonardi & Terry Austin, colors by Glynis Wein, letters by Rick Parker, written by Bill Mantlo.
After the second Cloak and Dagger series, Leonardi enters a different class of artists. For the space of a couple years, he bounces between fill-ins for Uncanny X-Men , New Mutants and Amazing Spider-Man - a truly enviable run by any measure. His first issue of Uncanny , #201, continues a tradition of Leonardi stepping in specifically to help John Romita Jr. catch up with a big schedule. It’s a significant issue all around, seeing an early inking credit for Whilce Portacio, who had inked Art Adams on the aforementioned Longshot , alongside Scott Williams. And of course, it’s also the birth of the baby who would one day be Cable, which is why the issue costs so much on the secondary market. Change was on the wind, in more ways than one.
Leonardi’s first issue of New Mutants , #38, sees him working with Bill Sienkiewicz. I think it’s a rare misfire - the two artists seem to be fighting each other, Leonardi’s work demanding from its finisher a special kind of grace that was alien to the Sienkiewicz of 1986. Leonardi returns to New Mutants for issues #52-53, the first of which was inked by Dan Green and the second by Terry Austin. Seeing these two inkers next to each other highlights the confidence of Leonardi’s technique at this point in his career. Green isn’t always my favorite inker in some respects, but he’s usually a fairly loyal one, in terms of replicating the penciler's mark. He also put no small consideration, I think, to just how badly the books he inked would look with the godawful printing of the period. One reason Uncanny X-Men was as popular as it was in the second half of the '80s: Dan Green managed to look great with the absolute shittiest reproduction conceivable. It wanted to be the best-looking book in the line, even if it was printed like shit. Leonardi drew a fair stack of X-Men comics over the period - clearly, he was someone Claremont liked working with, since they do it so many times throughout his period and later. But in any event, Leonardi inked by Green at that point didn’t look all that different from Leonardi inked by Austin. Leonardi’s line was by then sure enough to dominate the conversation.
From The New Mutants #52 (June 1987). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by Dan Green, colors by Petra Scotese, letters by Tom Orzechowski, written by Chris Claremont.
Nowhere is this more evident than in one of his issues of Amazing Spider-Man from that period, #279. Proof positive that Vince Colletta could, in fact, ink his way out of a paper bag. Weird fact about Vince Colletta! He actually turned in some decent work in the mid '80s. He inked a lot of Dazzler , and some of those books look pretty good. Here’s the secret to getting a good performance out of Colletta: put a pretty girl in your comic. That’s it. That’s the secret. Put a pretty girl in your comic, and he’ll put just a little bit more effort than usual, into making sure the girl looks good. Sure enough, this issue of Amazing is a Silver Sable spotlight. A perfect character to showcase Leonardi’s skill: a woman wearing a skintight leotard in highly athletic situations. He gets good work out of Colletta simply by presenting him with a drawing style that leans heavily on thin, even lines.
From Amazing Spider-Man #279 (Aug. 1986). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by Vince Colletta, colors by Bob Sharen, letters by Joe Rosen, written by Tom DeFalco.
Around this time Leonardi did a few—only a few—assignments across town. He’s got a few pages in Batman #400, one of the more enviable invitations in comics history. He’s got an short Starfire story for New Teen Titans #22, inked by Romeo Tanghal. And one piece that I would label as truly essential: Secret Origins #20, from 1987, the origin of the Barbara Gordon Batgirl. A truly gorgeous job, inked by DC staple Dick Giordano from a script by Barbara Randall (later Barbara Kesel). The last conceivable moment in time when Barbara Gordon was still Batgirl, and still the only Batgirl. Bittersweet, if you have any affection for the character at all, to see her looking so good, right before - well, you know.
From Secret Origins #20 (Nov. 1987). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by Dick Giordano, colors by Carl Gafford, letters by Duncan Andrews, written by Barbara Randall.
By 1988 Leonardi, is almost exclusively concerned with being Marc Silvestri’s fill-in artist on Uncanny . Silvestri never had any problem hitting monthly, but Marvel double-shipped that title as much as they could. They may not have gotten as many spinoffs out of him as they wanted, but they made Claremont write the damn thing twice a month for considerable spans of his last stretch. He was writing a lot of books for a while there, a pretty intense workload for the last years of his first tenure at the company. Leonardi and Silvestri made a good match, for those periods they were passing off with one another. Both very kinetic storytellers, both men who believe that oftentimes the sum of panel design can be found in understanding how to draw dynamic motion.
* * *
All of which leads us to the aforementioned Colossus feature in Marvel Comics Presents in 1989.
From Marvel Comics Presents #12 (Feb. 1989). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by P. Craig Russell, colors by Glynis Oliver & Mike Rockwitz, letters by Ken Lopez, written by Ann Nocenti.
Now, in hindsight, I think MCP is probably less well-remembered than it could be. It’s easy to remember it as a book that published a lot of rough, rookie work from people who weren’t ready for primetime, with Barry Windsor-Smith’s "Weapon X" sticking out like a zit in the middle of the run. And that title did publish a lot of rough, rookie work, to be fair. But the other part of the equation was the fact that every single issue had four stories, save for a couple times they tried a four-part adventure. So that meant, even if one of the stories might be someone’s very first, barely-readable art job, the other stories would include people like Paul Gulacy or Gene Colan, to name a couple of artists who did more than one memorable turn in the magazine. Steve Ditko showed up all the time. The first run featured Steve Gerber’s return to Man-Thing, even. The series took advantage of its unique format - eight slots a month had to be filled, so some of them were going to be filled with crap, and a few would be sublime. Not a bad batting average for a Marvel anthology.
And so too for the aforementioned Colossus story. Although the magazine began with a Wolverine lead feature—Claremont and John Buscema, the beginning of their collaboration on the character—the lead slot bounced around for the first couple years after. Both Colossus and Cyclops received rare solo turns before the title defaulted back to Wolverine as the lead, after Marvel figured out Wolverine on the cover might just sell better than a run of stories featuring the main characters from Excalibur . He did, sad to say.
From Marvel Comics Presents #13 (Feb. 1989). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by P. Craig Russell, colors by Mike Rockwitz, letters by Ken Lopez, written by Ann Nocenti.
And that’s why "Weapon X" was serialized in bite-sized pieces, and what it maybe wasn’t even that unusual for there to be at least one or two stray living legends jostling elbows in those pages. So too for Leonardi’s and Ann Nocenti's Colossus serial, "God's Country", which ran concurrent with the tail end of Gerber’s aforementioned Man-Thing and the first chapters of Ron Lim’s bid on Cyclops, as well as the first chunk of Don McGregor’s “Panther’s Quest”, with Colan inked by Tom Palmer. To say nothing of incidental work from the likes of Ditko, Don Heck, Frank Springer, Dwayne Turner and Bruce Jones (with a rare Marvel art job, no less). Not a bad crowd to be seen in.
Believe me when I tell you, however, that this Nocenti/Leonardi collaboration was the most beautiful strip in the magazine for every week it appeared. It was gorgeous, and it was good too. Nocenti did the one really obvious thing with the Colossus character, which at the time no one had thought to do for the first decade and a half of his existence: actually explore the cultural experience of a Russian living in America in the high evening of Cold War paranoia. Claremont really only mentions it a couple times, never seemed interested in touching cultural differences for most of his characters. While it makes sense, considering the aspects of those character’s lives Claremont did want to emphasize, it’s also maybe in hindsight a missed opportunity.
From Marvel Comics Presents #15 (Mar. 1989). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by Al Milgrom, colors by Mike Rockwitz, letters by Ken Lopez, written by Ann Nocenti.
But someone was going to get there eventually, and for all our sakes we can be happy Nocenti was the first writer in a position to answer the question of just what Peter Rasputin thinks about this kooky country of ours. Is this story politically charged? Hah! One of Nocenti’s most strident, a sharp dart aimed straight at the rotten heart of Reagan’s America in the final days of the Gipper’s second term. Gun culture, ecology, chauvinism, the pernicious effect of the country’s intelligence agencies on foreign and domestic policy - all are implicated in the ideological trickle-down of a ruinous capitalism. They let her get more than a little bit polemical in her stories. Can’t argue with the results, however: while this is a dense story, a dialogue-heavy story, a story with a lot more panels on the page that you might be expecting, it nevertheless reads like a dream.
From Marvel Comics Presents #13 (Feb. 1989). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by P. Craig Russell, colors by Mike Rockwitz, letters by Ken Lopez, written by Ann Nocenti.
A big contributing factor to that was the primary inker, P. Craig Russell. Alright, now that you’ve spit out your coffee, I should point out: Russell actually did a fair amount of work for the company through this period. Primarily but not entirely as an inker. Although it’s not the work for which he is best known, he was, nevertheless, one of the best inkers to ever do it. In Leonardi, he finds a uniquely rewarding match. Leonardi needs an inker who can meet the looseness of his line with precision, without sacrificing spontaneity. Russell possesses one of the most controlled lines in comic book history, and his translation of Leonardi’s pencil counts as among the best work attached to either of their names. It was most recently collected with some other issues back in 2016: X-Men Colossus: God's Country . Definitely a work you need on your shelf. One of the highlights of that era in the company’s history.
* * *
After “God’s Country” concludes in spring of 1989, Leonardi's on fill-ins for New Mutants , and his last regular issue of Uncanny X-Men , #252. The latter features rare inks from Kent Williams, who didn’t do that much work for mainstream Marvel, but probably still more than you remember. Around here Leonardi does his first of a handful of assignments for Excalibur , both on the main series and a few specials, but 1990 is most notable for his final work on Cloak and Dagger (the third so-titled series, remember), initially alongside Terry Austin. Leonardi and Austin also worked together the following year for two issues of Jim Starlin’s post- Infinity Gauntlet Adam Warlock revival (issues #3-4 of Warlock and the Infinity Watch ), but rarely thereafter.
And then, once Austin bows out: a very brief collaboration on the last stretch of that volume of Cloak and Dagger , with the aforementioned Steve Gerber, working alongside another name I have so far scrupulously avoided: Al Williamson.
From Spider-Man 2099 #1 (Nov. 1992). Pencils by Leonardi, inks by Al Williamson, colors by Steve Buccellato, letters by Rick Parker, written by Peter David.
Williamson’s first work with Leonardi was, I believe, the Wolverine team-up in Daredevil #248-249. They meet again for #277, with a handful of other issues as well— Cloak and Dagger (third series) #14-16, New Mutants #78, Sleepwalker #4—before finally beginning what would become their signature collaboration, Spider-Man 2099 : issues #1-25, November 1992 to November 1994, with only a handful of fill-ins throughout. It may seem strange this far into any outline of the man’s career, over a decade after his first credits, but Spider-Man 2099 represents the longest sustained monthly commitment of Leonardi’s career.
Not since the first Cloak and Dagger mini had he so much leeway to establish the look and feel of a series - and since Spider-Man was the launch title of the 2099 imprint, he had a hand in establishing much of the look of the line as well. By the time he and Williamson began their collaboration in earnest, Leonardi was already a stylish and distinct presence on the page. I don’t believe Leonardi’s period with Williamson is as crucial to his evolution as Williamson’s presence was for John Romita Jr., or even to Lee Weeks. There’s a tentativeness in early Romita that you might not even notice until you see him blow past those limitations on Daredevil . It’s similarly hard not to see that for Weeks; his collaboration with Williamson provided a necessary grounding, an aesthetic focusing, the evidence of which can still be seen in his work today.
From Spider-Man 2099 #1.
By the time Spider-Man 2099 begins, however, Leonardi is already well into what I would call the prime of his style - if anything, the main factor behind the artistic success of that series is that it was simply Leonardi’s longest period sitting still and tilling the same field. He was matched on that book with Peter David, inarguably Marvel’s biggest draw as a writer in 1992, as well as one of the industry’s most outspoken presences. There’s no question that outsized presence helped him sell a lot of comic books, but that’s only a small part of it: his books kept a devoted readership largely because people liked his writing. Strange, I know! Turns out when you devote time to developing supporting characters, and give those characters distinctive senses of humor, and even some modicum of wit, people will respond. So too with Spider-Man 2099 : as much as it should have been a silly gimmick with a short shelf-life, people loved that book, and still hold a lot of affection for that character and his milieu. The character is going to be in a movie soon, or so I hear, which is how we know people like something.
