The Four Color Media Monitor

Montclair Local reports the veteran artist Mark Bright has sadly passed away at 68:

Mark D. Bright of Montclair, a comic book and storyboard artist for DC Comics and Marvel Comics, died on March 27, 2024. He was 68.

Mr. Bright was born in 1955, the fifth of seven children of Joan and James Bright. He spent most of his life in Montclair. He graduated from Montclair High School in 1974, where he was on the wrestling team and in a band for several years.

I think it's very sad he's gone now. He did have some good items to his resume, like his Iron Man run in the mid-1980s. However, there's something else regrettably in his portfolio that's best forgotten, and yet, the press saw fit to highlight here:

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Bright was best known, among other things, for penciling the Marvel Comics Iron Man story “Armor Wars” and two “Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn” miniseries for DC Comics.

His IM work is fine, but to cite his GL work in the early 1990s, most noticeably with that ED miniseries? I'm sorry, but that's a serious mistake, based on who's mainly known for writing it - the notorious left-wing pioneer wokester, Gerard Jones. Ytech, also reporting on Bright's passing, is another site that's fluff-coated this part of his resume. And it's decidedly wrong, because while Bright's artwork itself is impressive and competent, it was throughly wasted on what happened to be a very poor "update" of Hal Jordan's background, as I'd noted before a few years ago. One of the most incongruent, slapdash storylines ever written, if you consider the inconsistencies and disconnects between both the 2 ED miniseries that were published back in the early 90s. And, lest we forget, there's a reason why Jones' writings like those won't be reprinted again for a long time (both miniseries were reprinted in paperback in the past 2 decades, and have likely gone out of print since Jones' arrest and imprisonment). And why rely upon Wikipedia, which can be edited by anybody? Also, look how the left-leaning Bleeding Cool is describing it:

Born in 1995, he is best known in the comics field for drawing the Iron Man comic book story Armor Wars, about to be turned into a movie. As well as drawing the iconic Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn miniseries, co-created Icon for Milestone and Quantum and Woody for Acclaim, all with Christopher Priest, a personal comic book highlight for me, and the pinnacle of their partnership together.

"Iconic"? A story that sloppy, right down to the bizarre way secret identities were handled there? Please. It was made to look like Hal didn't try erasing anybody's memories of him in the costume (though in the 2nd, Sinestro did), was made to look absurdly confused, and in any event, the story was so inconsistent in how Katma Tui was portrayed along with almost everybody else, that as a result, if it's remembered at all, it'll only be for how the whole story served to set up a disastrous run that led to another where Hal was forcibly replaced with Kyle Rayner, and worst, turned into Parallax. On which note, ComicBook says:

Bright also drew the Spider-Man vs. Wolverine one-shot, and served as the primary artist on the 1980s Green Lantern series, which started with Emerald Dawn and ended just before 1993's Emerald Twilight. He returned to the character of Green Lantern briefly in the 1990s to draw part of the Parallax View storyline with Emerald Twilight's Ron Marz and Darryl Banks. Later in his career, he worked on Damaged and a story in Untold Tales of the New Universe.

Good grief, so Bright did have some involvement in the tasteless direction taken with Hal Jordan? Sigh. This is sad. Considering all the harm that resulted from Emerald Twilight to the coherence of the DCU, it's a shame Bright had to have any participation in that artistic fiasco.

Bright made some great contributions to comicdom when he was active for at least 2 decades. But his work on GL from the early 90s decidedly isn't a good example to cite, and it sure is bewildering how it's been sugarcoated, considering Jones was main writer. The GL stories by Jones, Emerald Dawn included, were so awful, and I would not recommend buying/reading it to anyone sensible. It's a shame Bright's legacy has to be tainted with such a pretentious product, and his artwork wasted on those. It would've been preferable if the press just focused on the more positive items from Marvel/DC, along with the independent publications he drew. Interestingly, from what I know, Bright was a Christian adherent, and will probably be one of the last of his kind in the industry, based on the woke direction they're going in these days. His religious faith is something that likely won't appeal to modern leftist wokesters in all their secular paganism. But it's surely something to admire in itself that Bright was a guy with more inspiration faith-wise than most other creators in comicdom seem to have nowadays.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of villainy, good artists, Green Lantern, history, indie publishers, Iron Man, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda