Art book review: Mariachi Samurai and 4:00 AM by Jose Lopez

I bought this book immediately after buying his second sketchbook named "4:00 AM" And I have to say that as much as I loved his second book; this one is even better. Both of the books main focuses are comic character concepts. Although as you go through the books there are as well some full page pictures for you to feast your eyes on.

I was attracted to Jose' second book by it's brilliant cover. The cover has a white back ground and then a comic style man holding a gun out across the page with 4:00 AM written in big red letters. And the first book "mariachi samurai" also has a superb cover with a deadly looking samurai with multiple swords filling the page.

Now to say that the quality of the art work is wasted on the front cover, would in fact be a lie. As instead the covers are a sign of what is to come inside the rest of the books. Inside as I said earlier you will mainly find comic character concepts. For me I found that these were, creative, original, new and fresh. Although in the 2nd book there are some batman character concepts and superman (because he has done work for dc comics) mainly what you will find in the book is his own characters and work.

The characters themselves along with the styles have a very nice variety. The characters themselves can range from a big scary looking monster to a cute looking beaver wearing a dinner suit and bow tie whilst reading the news paper. The styles of the pictures range from a pencil sketch, to a digital drawing, then all the way to a beautiful watercolor painting/drawing. There is a character in 4:00 AM called "Toshiro" And the drawing/painting is done as a full watercolor 2 page spread and is in fact one of my favorite pictures in 4:00 AM.

The final added bonus was that when I opened both books, I was pleasantly surprised to find the artist's signature on the corner of the first page. This wouldn't usually mean much to people as he is not a massively well known artist. But as someone who has just fallen in love with his work, to then have signatures on both of his books is an absolute privilege.

My only slight fault with the books is something that other people have said as well. When Jose Lopez was interviewed he explained how he didn't just want to call his books, the art of Jose Lopez, so he instead came up with 4:00 AM and Mariachi Samurai as a way of making them more interesting and different. This is all very well, however it would have been nice and still would if Mariachi Samurai and 4:00 AM were actually graphic novels too. In Mariachi Samurai we do get shown a few comic panels, however these were only created for the purpose of the artbook; and not for the purpose of including them in an actual graphic novel too.

So in conclusion If you are into comic art and character concepts and you are looking for a new artist with new, original, creative and fresh work; then I simply could not recommend this book to you enough: outstanding!