On behalf of my good friend Brian Koschak's birthday today I am going to make an appreciation post dedicated to his amazing talent.
I have been lucky enough to be good friends with Brian for just shy of a decade now. I have learned a lot from him, and he helped me early in our friendship after a really low experience I had at the first Cincinnati Comic Con (I think I may share that story in a later post, it's actually quite an adventure). Through our friendship I have gathered a pretty decent collection of his original artwork. When I moved to Chicago, he gifted me the original painting for the doom metal band Egypt's "Become The Sun" album, which I cherish deeply. I also acquired some of his work through a trade for concert tickets! I am always happy to take this amazing work off of his hands.
Brian (or Kojak as he goes by in the comics world) has quite a back catalog of work which includes album covers, concert posters, big name and indie comics along with countless other projects. Some of the work he has been well know for is his run on the Dark Horse Star Wars series. These comics were geared more towards younger readers and traverse every era of the Star Wars universe. Brian's style lent well to these stories. He has always had a strong fascination with the 60's era psychedelic posters, and his style has reflected that for most of his career. Here are some examples of artwork from the era I am referencing:
While his style is not a direct copy of these, you can definitely see the influence in his line work.
So let's take a look at it! Here are the covers for the four books Brian worked on for Dark Horse (the covers are different artists except for Clone Wars with the Storm Troopers on it):
And here are the interior pages. The black and white images are the direct scan from the original pages I have, and the colored images are the scans from the physical books.
As you can see, he is insanely talented. And this work is his more pulled back, reserved stuff as Dark Horse was pretty strict on what they were looking for. He has something in the works now that is probably one of the most ambitious projects I have ever seen in comics. Be sure to keep an eye out for what he has coming.
You can find him on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/briankoschak
And on Instagram at:
https://www.instagram.com/briankoschakart/
And while your there, check out his page dedicated solely to the history of comics and comic art!
https://www.instagram.com/museumofintlcomicart/