Seeing there aren’t too many artists out there working for Disney that also did superhero stuff, I thought I would talk some about Bernado, who's work is featured regulary in the Dutch Donald Duck Weekly magazine. This week they had one of his 'Mad madam Mim' shorts. This guy is amazing, it’s so reminiscent of the 1950's! Anyway, Seeing Bernado (That is José Ramon Bernadó) also did a lot of stuff back in the 1990's for Marvel and DC, I was even more impressed. Because there are a lot of great artists out there working for Marvel, but there aren’t really many that can pull of committing themselves to Disneyesque stuff too. Beside Madam Mim, Bernado also draws a lot of 'Scamp' shorts for the Dutch DD, in the same classic style (see below).
'Mad madam Mim' first appeared in Disney’s eighteenth animated classic, 'The Sword in the Stone', which was based on 1938 the novel by English author T.H. White (1906 - 1964). White’s novel was eventually published as part of a tetralogy (a book divided into four parts) called 'The Once and Future King', although a fifth installment ('The Book of Merlin') was published separately after White’s death in 1971.
Disney’s animation followed the same storyline as White’s books, and focused on the education of a young, adolescent King Arthur by the magician Merlin. The animated feature film was released on Christmas day 1963, it would be the last animation they released while Walt Disney himself was still alive. Madam Mim was of course animated by two of Disney’s 'Nine Old Men' (the nine most import animators ever at his studio): Milt Kahl (1909 - 1987) and Frank Thomas (1912 - 2004). Kahl designed the characters from storyboards by Bill Peet (1915 - 2002) who was the only storyman ever at Disney who did all the storyboards for an entire animated feature film by himself, while also writing the script and doing all the character designs! Below: Original Poster for the theatrical release of 'The Sword in the Stone' in 1963.
In his youth, Bernado honed his art skills looking at the work of American Comic stars John Buscema (The Avenger, Silver Surfer) and Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby). In the 1980’s Bernado started working in the animation field as a storyboard artist and worked on series as 'Mofli, El Ultimo Koala'.
He worked for several animation studio’s, such as Acció, Oniria Pictures and Munich Animation, (creators of the popular animated feature 'Help! I’m a Fish' (2000) with main animator Jesper Møller (from “All dogs go to heaven” and “Ferngully, the last Rainforest”).
Bernado started working on Disney characters in the early ‘90’s through the Comicup studio in Barcelona. Working on Mickey and Goofy stories for Mondadori in Italy and Egmont in Denmark.
For Disney France Bernado would draw the Ducktales stories with L’íl Bad Wolf and Ellsworth (the black bird from Bill Walsh’s Mickey Mouse newspaper strip from 1949). For the Dutch weekly he did stories featuring Dumbo and Basil the Mouse Detective. In 1995 Bernado was offered to come work for American publisher Marvel Comics. Bernado worked with inker Rodney Gates on their 'Mantra' series (issue 23), written by Mike W. Barr (who also wrote for the 1993 Marvel series 'Break-Thru' with penciler George Perez). Bernado would crossover to DC Comics and draw for their series 'Justice League Task Force' (issues 25, 27/30 and issues 33/37). JLTF was a spinoff of Justice League Europe, one of the three Justice League series at that time. 'Europe' ran from 1989 to 1993, while the 'Taskforce' series was published monthly, between June 1993 and August 1996.
A total of 37 issues of the 'Taskforce' series were published. Also working on the series was writer Mark Waid (born March 21, 1962), former editor of fan magazine 'Amazing Heroes'. Waid also served as editor for DC in the late eighties. Waid possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of comics history and trivia and also serves as DC Comics' unofficial historian.
Above: Mantra 23 (July 1995) Bernado with writer Mike Barr and inker Rodney Gates, DC Showcase 7 (August 1995). For JLTF 28 (October 1995) Bernado worked with writer Scott Cien. Bernado also did the cover art for this issue.
Bernado also worked on DC’s 'Superboy' from issue 32 to 37 and 39 to 40 (on the ”Meltdown” storyline with writer Ron Marz) and he cooperated on the DC Showcase V1 # 7 with writer Scott Cien in “A Shadow over Eden”. In 1996 he took on Marvel's popular character Wolverine. For Wolverine # 98 he worked with Marvel editor/writer and 'Bucky O’Hare' creator Larry Hama on the 'Fade to Black' chapter. Below: 'Superboy' by Bernado, he also did the covers for these issues in 1996.
In 1997 Bernado did the artwork for Marvel's X-Man Annual with writer Christopher Golden. (from
'The Punisher: Purgatory' and 'Wolverine/ Punisher: Revelation') for this, Bernado also created the cover artwork and did the inks himself. The next year, Bernado expanded upon Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s creation from 1966, 'The Silver Surfer', in the 'Silver Surfer/Thor Annual'.
For Marvel, Bernado also cooperated with former editor-in-chief Terry Kavanagh for the 1998 two part miniseries 'Fury/Agent 13', written by Kavanagh, in which Sharon Carter aka Agent 13 brings Nick Fury from SHIELD back from the dead, after having been killed off by the Punisher. (Well, he wasn’t actually dead, he was in trapped in another dimension battling his own experiences from WWII).
Above: X-Man annual 1997 with writer Christopher Golden, for Silver Surfer Annual (1998) Bernado worked with writer Tom deFalco. The Nick Fury miniseries from 1998 with Terry Kavanagh. After 1998, Bernado returned to the European comics scene and started working again on stories for Disney France. For the Dutch Donald Duck weekly he specializes in stories featuring classic Disney characters like 'Mad Madam Mim', 'Little Hiawatha' and 'Dumbo'.
By the way, Boom! Studio’s announced they're putting out a new 'Chip ‘n’Dale Rescue Rangers' series before 2011, done by Leonel Castellani, so okay, there’s another one who can switch styles on demand. Castellani, of course is particularly known for his job on David & Goliath, which he did back in 2004 for Image.
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