When Skinner wonderful burst forth from his grave to wreak bloody havoc in the pages of American Vampire, it was difficult not to get the sense that artist Rafael Albuquerque was likewise breaking out of his own constraints.
At the time, he was finest understood for his work in the superpowered corners of the DC world as a routine artist on Blue Beetle as well as the pencil behind some excellent problems of Superman/Batman. In 2010, though, Albuquerque handled his new function as chronicler of the supernatural flipside of the American Dream, bringing Scott Snyder as well as Stephen King’s world to life with his menacing, cinematic flair. many of his pages offer the unsettling experience of drawing you in with their kinetic composition, then slowly exposing the nightmares lurking in the shadows.
Since then, Albuquerque has not only stayed the program as American Vampire artist extraordinaire, however likewise challenged himself to constantly raise the bar for his art—in more methods than one. Today marks the debut of Ei8ht, a sci-fi miniseries he’s not only drawing, however likewise co-writing together with Mike Johnson.
Ei8ht complies with the adventures of chrononaut Joshua in a place called the Meld, a quantum physicist’s wet dream where cast-off people, animals, as well as things from different times exist side by side. If that seems like a departure from AV’s more grounded, gritty setting, that’s no accident. “[I] wished to work in a genre that I hadn’t yet as well as that’s why I decided to do sci-fi,” Albuquerque told iO9. “The motivation for this came from my preferred movies as well as books from the ‘80s as well as ‘90s.”
Albuquerque is no complete stranger to shifting genres. As a routine penciller on DC’s Blue Beetle, he utilized a more animated style to chronicle the superpowered hijinks of teen hero Jaime Reyes – “less heavy blacks, as well as ink splats,” as he mentioned in a Newsarama interview. His work on American Vampire shows a more cinematic style, starting as a interesting blend of dust bowl desperation as well as Hollywood beauty that evolves with each new era.
Below is a gallery of a few of Rafael Albuquerque’s most stunning work to date. Ei8ht #1 is on sale today.
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