Crom and Issus! Michael Wm. Kaluta turned seventy-five the other day and I was asleep at the keyboard. Michael Wm. Kaluta (henceforth generally referred to as ‘Mike’ or ‘Kaluta’) was right there at the beginning, sword-brothers. Right there at the beginning for me, anyway. At the dimmest dawn of my comic book art fandom—which I should write a post about sometime—there was Jim Starlin, Jim Aparo, Joe Kubert and Mike Kaluta. Kaluta remains a favorite to this day for many, many reasons.

I first encountered Mike Kaluta's art as a back-up in the pages of DC's Korak, Son of Tarzan #48. He and Len Wein adapted Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pirates of Venus. It blew me away. Grace, detail, and savagery. Much like the Barry Windsor-Smith art I encountered a year or two later. Kaluta, BWS, Bernie Wrightson and Jeffrey Jones all communed together in the mid-'70s to produce The Studio, one of the great art books of the modern era.

The Studio gang broke up, but Kaluta kept cranking out great work, both for independent ventures and the major comic companies.

Time is short. I plan on a post dedicated to MWK's 'Carson of Venus' work in the near future. In addition, a few other appropriate Kaluta projects are planned for the remainder of 2022.

Kaluta is a titanic talent--and just a great guy, from all I've heard. For his fans, I hope you find something new in the gallery below. For newcomers, I hope you can see what all the hullaballoo is about.

Happy (belated) birthday, Mike. Thanks for everything.

A very early work from Kaluta. His inks over Roy G. Krenkel’s pencils. I’ll have more of this in a future post.