SANDMAN is getting a new trade dress. Christian Bale is the new Batman. Fantagraphics is publishing the complete PEANUTS. Retailers ordered in excess of 200,000 copies of JLA/AVENGERS #1. That's all the news that's fit to print. It's enough to make an opinion columnist weep and send him scurrying to his cave for the winter. Damn this accursed industry! Does it have nothing interesting to offer me?

All right, let's get through it. I like the new SANDMAN trade dress and the repackaging doesn't outrage me in the least. Christian Bale should make a very fine Batman for director Christopher Nolan. I'm not a fan of Schulz, but I always applaud any attempt to get the classics back into print, and not a one of those 200,000 copies of JLA/AVENGERS will be finding their way to my home. I have done my sworn duty, and it's taken just over a hundred words. Damn.

But no matter. For while I can scan the news pages all I want for the latest folderol and tarradiddle from across the waves, none of it is really comics. If Hurricane Isabel had seen fit to gather up the whole swarthy lot of them in her copious skirts and dump them into the swirling seas, the art of comics would remain unbroken.

Now, I don't wish to be misunderstood. Firstly, I'm not wishing death or devastation on anyone, and secondly I freely concede that the workings of the industry are enormously diverting. The gossiping and deceit that peppers the industry makes it a veritable BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL of the bald and unbankable, and this very site is as much about the industry of comics as it is about the art. If the publishers will insist on publishing, then the pundits will persist in their punditry.

My point is only that the sequential arts have no need for a Batman, nor even a Bendis. They will do just fine without a million readers. They will do fine without a thousand, or even a hundred. The business will die on its arse, of course, but business is not art, and if the market were not there - Direct or otherwise - there is nothing on God's dirty earth that could stop a truly passionate visual storyteller from telling their tales.

I'm being blissfully optimistic here, of course, which will probably cause as much muttered indignation among my readers as when I'm pessimistic, as there's no opinion so right that a force of will can render it fact. "Can he really mean to suggest," you will say, in the tones of the educated and well-mannered pillar of society that you and all my readers most surely are, "Can he really mean to suggest," you will repeat, having drifted too far from saying it the first time, "that without the dangling carrot of reward and broad recognition that this industry offers, people would be so driven by their passions as to continue making comics solely for their friends or, worse, their private enjoyment?"

Well, it's a hypothesis. And in the spirit of most hypotheses, it's almost certainly worthless. Since we don't live in my hypothetical world - where, incidentally, there is a cure for insomnia, tourists know to stand on the left side of the escalator on London Underground, and everyone can make a decent cup of tea - we must instead look to this one.

In this world, we have both persons of passion creating comics, and we have an industry that can obliging place these precious pamphlets on my lap. It also hands me a great deal of crap, of course, but great comics exist in spite of the best efforts of the business. Thus there is cause to be optimistic even in the face of accursed Mammon. These noble few, these true artisans, these are the people who give me cause to be cheerful - because however exhausted and embittered the industry might make me, I can always remember the plucky few whom I believe would be doing this stuff whether the industry was there or not.

Now, as a former film journalist I can say with some assurance that when a film magazine is running low on content in a given month, it will publish an article with a title like 'Hot New Hollywood Stars', consisting principally of pictures of young bucks and belles clad only in their scanties. The accompanying prose, such as it matters, will contain such hollow prattling nonsense as "Tara Reid - from bunny girl to sex kitten, this New Jersey girl's done it all". I know, because I wrote that very line for one of those very articles. May God have mercy on my soul.

The greater shame is that I've secretly always wanted to write a similar article for comics. Not, as you might think, because I hanker to get comic creators to strip down to their scanties (not in most cases, anyway), but because the very concept of 'hot new anything' is shockingly alien to an industry that ignores its young, buries its old, and hugs its middle aged to its meaty breast. In film, the youngsters are usually little more than wiggle and spunk. In comics, you have to be damn talented to get noticed, you have to get noticed to get connected, and dear reader have no delusions, you have to get connected to get published.

So who, in this carbuncle of a business, would I include in such a piece? Who are the young talents with the power in their pencil to actually excite me? Who do I turn to when I need a reminder that 200,000 copies of JLA/AVENGERS #1 doesn't have the least relevance to art?

First, there's Jason Alexander, creator of EMPTY ZONE and artist on the recent and all-too-short QUEEN & COUNTRY arc 'Operation: Blackwall'. I met Jason at this year's San Diego convention and got the chance to go through the pages sitting for sale on his table. And later I came back and took another look. And later still I came back and went through them all again. And yes, this time I actually bought a page, not being a total heel. It was a tough choice, as every page on his table was a complete work, and wonderful to behold. Each page could be clearly read and understood from the art alone, and each page was a perfectly structured whole. Panel-by-panel or page-by-page, Jason Alexander has an understanding of the comic page that few artists can match.

I'll note now that it would be blissfully easy to stack this entire list with QUEEN & COUNTRY artists, since the Oni Press players have a disconcerting knack for discovering fresh talents. As worthy as those artists all are (yes, every man jack of them, and the women jill too), I won't take the easy road by counting them off on my fingers, but I'll allow myself to name one more; Brian Hurtt. Having also worked on SKINWALKER, THREE STRIKES and DECLASSIFIED, Hurtt's establishing himself as an artist with an enviable knack for realism, detail and drama that's quickly established him as one of my new favourites. He has such a clean, clear line that it's almost a shame to hear that he's going mainstream and moving away from black and whites.

Then there's Rob G, artist on TEENAGERS FROM MARS with Rick Spears, and THE COURIERS with Brian Wood. Rob G has taken his Japanese manga influences and infused them with a boldness and frankness that is unmistakeably American in sentiment. He creates amazing energy on the page, but he's equally adept at conjuring emotion and at framing and presenting his panels with a literate eye. Already a storyteller of great talent, it will be fascinating to see how much further he can develop.

One of the most pleasant surprises of 2003, as anyone who cracked open the pages of HAWAIIAN DICK will tell you, has been the artwork of Steve Griffin. It's not just that his pencils are staggeringly accomplished, nor simply that he has a real flair for realism and a great knack for the cinematography of the page. It's that he's also his own best inker, and one of the most extraordinary colourists to emerge in recent years. So gorgeous and absorbing are his digitally painted pages that one could quite happily sit back and just enjoy the view of the islands.

Rounding out my personal list would be Scott Morse. Of course, he's fairly well established by this stage, having worked at all the major publishers and many of the minors. Yet when it comes to the rising talents whose work is always guaranteed to get my attention, Morse is top of the pile. Throughout his career, with works like SOULWIND, VISITATIONS and ANCIENT JOE, he's been working on weaving that perfect parable with the dedication and self-determination of a truly impassioned and inspired artist. As a writer, he's done his strongest work with the breathtakingly resonant BAREFOOT SERPENT. As an artist, Morse has shown time and time again that he has a quite frightening capacity for imagining the extraordinary and committing it to the page.

That's a short list. I could write a longer one, but it still couldn't possibly be as long as I'd like. And you'll have lists of your own, with any luck, of those young comic artists who best represent to you the promise and potential of the medium. And your lists probably feature people who have entirely passed by my radar, and whom my reading hours are much the poorer for lacking. Feel free to share your lists with me. I could do with the jolt.

In the meantime, forget about your reprints, your crossovers and your SANDMAN covers. Indulge your own passions for the medium by spending a little time with the real comic artists. Because this is comics.

Andrew Wheeler is a London-based entertainment journalist.

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