Anthony Castrillo on Dynamo 5#25!

It was a pleasant surprise to find that one of the back-up stories of Dynamo 5#25 was drawn by Anthony Castrillo, one of my all-time favorite artists. Witness the wonder!

Boy, even though I first saw Castrillo's art in the days of his Fantastic Four run, it was when he became the writer/artist of Superman that I took notice of him; by the age of ten, he was the one artist I knew by name and could usually identify by sight. In the years since then I followed him to Sensational She-Hulk, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Next Men and Superman/Batman: Generations. Even when his run on Spider-Man was being savaged by fandom, I still thrilled to Castrillo's work on Marvel: The Lost Generation. More recently, I loved the black and white treatment his work received in Angel: Blood and Trenches. Now, I will admit that his inking seems rushed, bu--

Hm?

Oh, no, you're quite mistaken. I certainly do know who Anthony Castrillo is. Just look at this gorilla from Dynamo 5#25!

If he's not a twin to Castrillo's Grunt from Doom Patrol, then my eyes need to be examined.

Wait.

You say Anthony Castrillo is simply homaging John Byrne's art?

Wellll...maybe it's a pseudonym! Yeah! Byrne's an anti-Stratfordian, he understands that sometimes creative people have to hide their name...

You say Anthony Castrillo has his own website? But it could be an elaborate hoax! The comics version of Chris Gaines! It just can't...oh, bother...

Well, I suppose congratulations are in order for Mr. Castrillo, who has certainly performed an admirable job of aping Mr. Byrne. It's no small wonder to find an imitator in comics these days, what with Ian Churchill and Dan Panosian having both given up on drawing like Liefeld.

Still, it was once a tradition in the comics that every great artist have an imitator or twelve caught in his wake. Barry Smith started out as a Kirby clone:

But within a few years of Conan he'd sprouted a new name, Barry Windsor-Smith and developed a style worthy of this more pretentious nom de guerre:

Similarly, Bill Sienkiewicz started out looking quite a bit like Neal Adams:

He, uh, hasn't been mistaken for Adams in a very long time:

Today's artists who need a shortcut to honing their style seldom seem to adopt the styles of another artist. In these times, the cool kids seem to prefer Photoshop.