Now Playing: Silent Type
Much as it may seem that way, the Web is not the be all and end all of source material. It can be wayward and quite unreliable, with old favoured links suddenly pointing nowhere; the site having moved or been removed. Look back over Drink It Black and, regrettably, some of the great hyperlinks will now take you on a wild goose chase.
If you want to know more about Bob Wiacek, you may have to go back over your collection, or pick up one of the many books devoted to all things comic book.
Books also have the advantage of not directing you to a sales pitch or an order form, when you look up a subject.
The problems and advantages are different. Where a useful link could disappear, a book can rapidly become outdated, especially when profiling a creative talent whose still working, or a character still in syndication.
So, say you want some information on Wiacek and you don't trust the 21 thousand odd search returns on the Web to yield this quickly and accurately. You could look up 'Wiacek, Bob' in the index and/or 'Marvel inkers of the eighties' in the contents but in which book? The World Encyclopedia of Comics by Maurice Horn is a vast and authorative text but it may not go into the detail you require.
Wiacek is both penciler and inker and his work appears in a number of mainstream releases, but he doesn't have the superstar status of artists like the Romitas and the Buscemas and he's no auteur like Jim Steranko or Jim Starlin so is unlikely to have his own biography.
This is where a little knowledge helps. You could find references to his colleagues or books he has worked on, but there's no guarantee that there will be comprehensive writings on them either. Or that it will come in book form.
