Artists Talent Test  Mixed painted media on panel 13.5” x 20.5” 

 The Marvel universe inspired paintings of Mark Todd drew a happening crowd to the show’s opening last Friday at La Luz de Jesus, including an intrigued Ashoton Kutcher, taking a rest break from battling the LA Weekly and owner Village Voice Media.

With this cluttered show-IN AMAZING 3-D- the Hollywood gallery has once again hit one out of the park, something that’s been going down consistently under the curatorial savvy of Matt Kennedy. Marking a fine art departure from the tightly rendered graphic work that put the space on the map, Todd’s work draws from the over-the-top delirous Stan Lee rewrite of Shakespeare and flashes painterly flourishes evoking old school comic artists Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby’s robots and demon-space men,

Gallery director Kennedy, who has penned a nifty history of sequential art well worth the eight bucks he’s asking for the book, is keenly in tune with those influences telling the Legman ” I used to eat tuna fish sandwiches in Jack Kirby’s kitchen. I’d go to his house and talk to him after school.”