The Killing Joke by Federica Ferraro

Art by Federica Ferraro

Above, a stunning homage to seminal story The Killing Joke by Italian illustrator and comic book artist FEDERICA FERRARO. 

Illustration included in Francesco Pelosi's essay, Alan Moore: Mappaterra del Mago. 

 

For more info about Federica Ferraro, visit her Instagram page: HERE.

Brian Bolland 1986

Above and below, pages from IT'S ABOUT TIME: A Memoir in Pictures and Words by Brian Bolland, due Spring 2023. Shared by Bolland on his FB page. 

Don’t know whether this is of interest. Pages 27 and 28 of my memoir part 2 “Where Was I?”  I’m in 1986 here I think. Bolland

AI vs Moore

DALL·E: Alan-Moore anchoring Fox News with lion-headed serpent drawing.
Well, not the best Moore portrait I've seen, I confess...

On Rubik's Code they tried to recreate The Killing Joke book - well... just the first page - by using the script written by Alan Moore as prompt for Dall·E 2, an AI system that can produce images from a description in natural language.

Skipping the process steps, the final result of this experiment is... pretty rude (see below). So, Brian Bolland you have nothing to worry about these rising AIs!!!

For the details, READ HERE.

The Killing Joke page 1 produced by DALL·E. It's just a joke!

The Killing Joke, page 1. Gorgeous art by human Maestro Brian Bolland

Rubik's Code writes: "There are two major thoughts I have here. The first one is – there will definitely be a niche of AI-generated comic books, both scripts and illustrations. My feeling is that their style will be similar, at least in the beginning. Transferring a specific style from one panel to another is going to be tricky, but that might be solved sooner than later. [...] For now, I can see this as a tool that might assist authors to visualize their scripts better, and for illustrators to shorten their work by generating some details for each panel.

The second one is [...] I can see a future where comic book author uses tools to generate script based on a few keywords (take any GPT-3, T5 or whatnot) and then use another tool to generate illustrations, like Dall-E for example. Looking even more into the future, the author itself might be made obsolete and an infinite amount of content might be created in this automatic loop."

The complete article is available HERE.

DAILY MOORE [21]

Art by Brian Bolland.

Colors by John Higgins.
From: The Killing Joke.
First edition: 1988, DC Comics.

Joker by Tanino Liberatore

Art by Tanino Liberatore.

Above, painted cover by Italian superstar TANINO LIBERATORE for French USA Magazine N.36 on the occasion of The Killing Joke publication in 1988. 

Liberatore's illustration was based on a sketch by Brian Bolland, finished and inked by Fershid Bharucha.

More info about USA Magazine here.

Mad Joker

"My warm-up doodle of the Joker turned into this exploration sheet. Was too much fun LOL! Special thanks to Alan Moore and Brian Bolland for creating the ultimate Joker story in 'The Killing Joke'. I remember as a kid, crying at the end." [Joe Madureira]

Posted the 12th of December 2013 on Facebook official Joe Madureira fan page.