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S. Jersey artist Laura Guzzo's style is unique, eclectic

Woodbury native Laura Guzzo has become a staple at Wizard Philly and other cons over the past few years, but the South Jersey artist says she has a great reason for attending the Wizard show in her backyard.

Woodbury native Laura Guzzo has become a staple at Wizard Philly and other cons over the past few years, but the South Jersey artist says she has a great reason for attending the Wizard show in her backyard.

"The thing that I look forward to about the convention is that it's my best show every year by a huge margin," said Guzzo, an increasingly accomplished comic-book cover illustrator. "I don't know what it is about Philly's Wizard World, but it's three times as profitable as any other show I do - and I do shows in Chicago and Boston."

"I think it's a combination of the size of the show and the fact that people in Philly have worked with me, so a lot of people are already familiar with my work."

Guzzo's art has has been featured in galleries all along the East Coast, including Arch Enemy Art, in Old City, and the McKee Lounge, in Center City.

Guzzo says that her unique style has eclectic inspirations, including art nouveau, tarot cards, stained glass, 1950s pinup girls and anime.

"When I was growing up, my brother had taken apart a calendar with art from the art nouveau movement and I put them up as posters all over the house," Guzzo said, laughing. "I was raised Roman Catholic, so I've been exposed to a lot of stained glass and I like that iconography.

"I enjoy 1950s pinups because it has that same iconography, where even if it's sexual it's still a single image that manages to be fascinating. As far as the tarot cards, being interested in religious iconography I developed an angel obsession and there's no way to research angels without also researching demons, because it has the same structure. It's very hierarchical.

"That led me to look at the imagery around the occult and around modern paganism. Also, anime was absolutely critical to me becoming an artist. While it's now cool to be into comics, it's a bit embarrassing to be into anime."

Guzzo's comic projects have been as out-of-the-ordinary as her art influences.

First, there's "Roadkill du Jour."

"It takes place in the Bayou and involves biker gangs and magic and mobsters," she said. "It's just fun. It's ridiculous."

Then there's "Killer Queen."

"It's all based around the rock band Queen," Guzzo said. "Some of the stories are elaborating on the lyrics of the songs. Some stories imagine Freddie Mercury as a spy or superhero, and there's a story about a fat-bottomed girl saving the world."

And we can't forget "Shakespeare Shaken."

"It's an anthology with a lot of different writers in which they take their favorite Shakespeare work and [create] new work inspired by it. I did 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' but as a trash romance novel cover. I did the last scene of 'Hamlet' as a 1920s and 1930s film noir - that sort of thing."

Though she loves the interesting projects she's currently doing,Guzzo says she would be more than happy to accept work from the Big Two or on characters like Red Sonja, if offered.

Guzzo says that there is one thing she enjoys the most about what she does: "There have been projects I've worked on where I started it and it turned into something that looked completely different from how I had imagined them in my mind. It looks better than what I had planned in my mind.

"I like that every once in a while, something gets created by your hand that feels like it didn't really come from you, that feels like it's a total surprise - and I like that. That's neat to me."