Mr. Hyde by Simon Bisley

Art by Simon Bisley

Above, an intense Mr. Hyde by legendary artist SIMON BISLEY. 

More art by the artist: HERE.

 

Bisley was indicated as the possible artist for The League of The Extraordinary Gentlemen back in the day. I admit that I'd love to see Bisley doing a special or a short story featuring The Leaguers. I know it already happened in Idea Space. Maybe...

Excerpt from Khoury's The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore (TwoMorrows, 2003), page 183.

George Khoury: [...] you were going to do this book originally with Simon Bisley?
Alan Moore: Originally, I’d put the idea forward without an artist attached to it, to Kevin Eastman, I think. And at that point, I think Kevin Eastman had advanced me some money on the understanding that I would do a 64-page graphic novel for him at some point. And he wanted me to work with Simon Bisley. So that was the original idea, that we’d perhaps put together this League of Extraordinary Gentlemen thing.

But then I think I got a phone call from Kevin saying that he didn’t want me to do the graphic novel with Simon Bisley, he’d rather that I’d work off his advance by doing the Spirit stories for the Spirit comic that he was going to be bringing out. So I did those for that first issue of The Spirit with Dave Gibbons, which was great fun. So the other stuff never happened with Simon Bisley, and the idea was still around.

Then when I started thinking about it seriously, Kevin O’Neill was the artist that was right at the forefront of my mind. It just seemed, once I thought of Kevin, he seemed to be the perfect artist. He would allow the strip to evolve in a completely different way. Kevin’s work is meticulous, but there is an exaggerated and cartoony quality, which is part of its genius. And that kind of almost cartoony flexibility allows you a much greater emotional range in the strip. With The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, partly because of Kevin’s art, we can span comedy, horror, and pathos in a couple of pages. Often in one page, sometimes in one panel. The emotional range that Kevin’s artwork lends to the story is fantastic. It’s one of the main assets of The League. There’s some scenes in there which are going to be horrible, silly, and all sorts of other things. Quite erudite, intelligent. It’s an interesting mix that we can get away with, regarding The League.