Sometimes, you read a comic and you think to yourself, “Man, I’d like to hang out with the guy who made that book.”

Madman is such a book, and Mike Allred is such a guy. You get the feeling that a night spent over beers with Allred would involve lots of sixties pop, a fair amount of quoting from the greatest adventure flicks of all time, and a fierce debate over which Kirby book is the greatest of all.

A trippy concoction of pop art, Kirby and horror flicks with a love story at its heart, the saga of Madman has been a cult favorite since its debut. Available now in trades, Frank Einstein’s journey continues in Madman Atomic Comics from Image. Allred’s also done some memorable “mainstream” superhero work, contributing to the critical darling X-Statix as artist with words by Peter Milligan, and releasing the underrated miniseries Red Rocket 7 and even an adaptation of the book of Mormon, entitled The Golden Plates.

Visually, Allred is perhaps best known for his clean line and elegant compositions. An Allred page “flows” unlike that of pratcially any other penciler. On colors is his wife Laura, who always lends a note of optimistic brightness to the look of any book they work on together.

Those curious to check out Allred’s unique, inviting style can track down his issue of Solo, the DC Comics compilation title in which an artist is given free rein to take on any and all portions of DC continuity in an “off-the-record” collection of adventures.