This massive tome from a Kickstarter collects all of Michael Turner's work at Aspen Comics from 1998 until his death in 2008. It's all been reprinted and repackaged ad nauseam by Aspen since Turner's death (often in such a confusing manner that you have no idea of the reading order).

Michael Turner had a penchant for drawing scantily clad women. Turner came up in the Top Cow world of comic's almost "soft porn". He was a very talented artist, but his women are always posed in ways that don't fly in today's comics, with backs arched and breasts pushed out. So give it what you will. To each their own. The stories are kind of awful with stilted exposition and the art is always very posed with little sense of movement.

A selection from a larger work, but it gave a feel for the depth (no pun intended) of the stories covered in this volume. There are four artists that I associate with the 90s:Lee, Liefeld, McFarlane, and Turner. His style of hard lines, loooooooooooong legs, inability to realistically draw feet, and gorgeous faces fits in with and is classic to that era of comics. The characters were fun to revisit, and it was refreshing to go back and see so much art from that period.

The fact this book doesn't collect whole story arcs (and at least in the version I received, pages seemed to be missing from one of the stories) means that it's hard to get a full sense of what stories are being told in these series. However, since some of these comic series are ongoing and I'm not sure whether Turner switched to only writing some later issues, the point may be to highlight his drawing ability, not so much the story arcs he created. Regardless, it's an impressive collection and shows what a formidable talent Turner was.

3.5

There's a lot to say about Aspen Comics under Michael Turner, depictions of women in scantily clad outfits and drawing them in ways that say artists don't know how to draw them out of heels. At the same time, there's a scale of mesmerization that beckons the reader to experience a big brand new world. It's rather nice to see how the art and storytelling techniques change in how they present a plot over the years. The current series barely even need history lessons. This book just invites readers to see the world of Michael Turner for themselves.

Note that I have not been privy to the whole book here, rather a comprehensive edit of the volume, showing how the output of the late, great Michael Turner has been presented. And let's face it, that if nothing else is what these guys are experienced in doing, for there's been no end of iterations, reprints and deluxifications of his titles since his passing due to bone cancer in his mid-thirties. Bizarrely called "Volume One" in the credits, this would appear to be everything except "Shrugged", which remains a title I've not seen. I've seen a lot of this before, however, and so will have many of his fans, which means this premium-and-then-some edition will take some justification with the bank manager and/or wife or husband.

Either way, we get the entire "Fathom" from his hand, starting with all the previews, prequels, teasers, issue zeroes, issue a halfs, and more. Then "Aspen", the start of "Soulfire", and more or less the only bit that was new to me, namely the six-page teaser of the uncreated "Ekos". Oh, and every single possible cover – if not presented full-page, as sometimes they're in a 3x3 grid. A heartfelt tribute from Turner's mother, and individual introductory pages to guide us through the chronology of production and so on, is all that is new. Oh, that and the fact this was kickstarted to buggery and a thousand doodads got thrown at it. Either way, the price tag is proof that only those who know what to expect (and know they're getting what they already own) will be here, making pretty much all my comments redundant. I am sure there was a chance of more new material to make this more special, if only for the producers to get gripe at how the high asking price meant too many were priced out. But as an ultimate edition tribute, this is definitely four stars.