WAITING
FOR TOMMY: IGOR KORDEY
By
Richard Johnston Igor
Kordey is an East European artist, who worked through Europe
and is now living in Canada. Despite much acclaim for his work
in both in Eastern and Western Europe, through the seventies,
eighties and nineties, I only became aware of his work in comics-culturally-deprived-UK
in association with Darko Macan, in a number of European anthology
publication, then making the jump with Darko to the USA, with
Cable.
Their
run on Cable, coinciding with major changes at Marvel and
Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas' inheritance of the throne, was
re-launched as Soldier X, which told tales of internationalism.
Carefully researched and well told stories that fulfilled
the Reithian objective to inform, to educate and entertain.
Kordey's work was spectacular. As Darko moved on from Marvel,
Igor stayed and seemed to build himself a good reputation
on a number of titles.
His work
on New X-Men was not as well received by the audience. With
shorter deadlines, and already working on two other books,
Kordey's X-work was not as detailed or as obsessive as that
of Frank Quitely or Ethan Van Sciver - but for Marvel, it
was on time and schedule. The work was muddy, and dark, yet
showed incredibly storytelling skills. The scenes in the Channel
Tunnel and with Fantomex were perfectly suited to his style,
if not the intergalactic fight with the Shi'ar (which seemed
to have Quitely written all over it). The internal monologue
of Xorn was incredibly well reflected and remains a high point
of his run, especially given the context of a later plot twist.
Since
then, Igor Kordey has been drawing X-Treme X-Men and was recently
named the new artist on Excalibur, with Chris Claremont, stating
this was another of the core X-books that would be formed
by X-Men Reload. And then yesterday, it was announced on ComiX-Fan
that Igor Kordey had been fired from the book.
ComiX-Fan
reported Kordey as saying "I'm fired completely - no replacement
books for me"
Later
the site would update, with Kordey saying, amongst other things;
"I was
officially assigned as artist for Excalibur about four months
ago (and during that period of time turning down other business
offers, considering that Excalibur is an ongoing project with
biweekly rhythm of production). Last Monday I was informed
about a cover assignment being taken away from me, as a sudden
decision, and the cover for #1 that I already did was cancelled
too. It was very humiliating when, two days later, I saw a
new cover by Mr. Park during this 'Reload leaking' fuss."
"It takes
at least a few weeks from the moment a company enlists an
artist for the job to finished artwork, to supplying solicitors
with that artwork. In other words, this decision was not 'sudden'
and I was treated like an idiot and kept in the dark. Last
Tuesday I got an e-mail telling me to stop any further work
on Excalibur because 'the whole book is under a reviewing
process'."
"I called
Chris Claremont (to check out if they're reviewing the script
as well) and after he reacted with surprise I realized they
were actually reviewing my art. And then I knew that everything
was going wrong for me, especially seeing other new covers
for Reload. New management politics are now to obviously 'purify'
the Marvel Universe and put the heroes back in diapers (my
nickname for spandex costumes). After all the censoring they
did with X-Treme X-Men ('Arena' and 'Intifada' arcs), and
remembering that all those outstanding artists with DIFFERENT
approaches (like Corben, Risso, Zezelj, etc.) are not around
anymore and that I'm the last DIFFERENT one working on a 'core'
books I realized there's no place for me anymore."
"So much
for globalization!"
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