Rank and File: A Comic Art Hall of Fame...
Redartz: Greetings once again! We're back at it again with a fun poser for you to consider, regarding your favorite comic covers. But first, a quick update for you.
Several of you have inquired about the circumstances of my power outage and consequent general absence from this space last week. Well, the circuit breaker box on the side of our house literally melted; it's truly miraculous we had no fire. Obviously the power had to be cut, and between awaiting repairs, local safety inspectors and utility officials, we were stuck in the 'dark ages' for about 8 days. Not an experience I'd recommend for anyone, but we made it through. Fortunately the temperatures were mild for the most part. No longer will I take air conditioning and lights for granted!
Anyway, on to our topic. The premise: you have been selected to choose the artwork for a big exhibition. More specifically, this show will showcase comic cover artists throughout the medium's history. And with such a wide possibility of artists to choose from, space allows only 1 cover per artist. So, your task is to pick the artists, and choose a great representative cover for each artist,one that highlights their talent and impact. As I'm a framer by trade, I'll see that your picks are safely framed, of course!
Our gallery has several wings, so we can have a section for Golden age, Silver age, Bronze and Modern if you so choose. And while you begin your careful consideration, I'll submit a few nominations to get the show started. Feel free to improve upon my picks as you see fit. As the week goes on, I'll try to post some more nominees based upon your comments; the better to fill our gallery. See you at the opening!
My preliminary nominations:
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| Jack Kirby |
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| Neal Adams |
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| Dave Cockrum |
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| John Byrne |
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| John Romita, Sr |
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| Barry Smith |
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| Walter Simonson |
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| George Perez |
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| Carmine Infantino |
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| Joe Kubert |
More to Come...
A bit late, but here are some of the nominated covers, presented for the appreciation and illumination of one and all. Thanks everyone for each response! And as suggested by our friend HB, you can look forward to seeing 'Hall of Fame Cover' pop up periodically on a single artist basis. Salutations!
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| Dave Cockrum |
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| Jim Aparo |
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| Steve Ditko |
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| Rich Buckler |
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| Nick Cardy |
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| Mike Ploog |
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| Herb Trimpe |
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| John Byrne |
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| John Buscema |
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| Frank Frazetta |
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| Mike Kaluta |
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| Alan Davis |
21 comments:
First of all, holy cats, I can’t imagine being without power for 8 freaking days. We’re currently at 105, expected to get up to 108 or 109 later today, and bracing for possible brown-outs and black-outs. But EIGHT WHOLE DAYS — Lordy!
Great topic, but fiendishly hard! I’m not even gonna attempt to pick a Best Kirby Cover or Best Gil Kane yet — way too many candidates to consider. Really need to think about those.
I started making a few lists, and realized all my choices so far were from the Silver and Bronze Ages. But what about the Golden Age? All those great covers by Reed Crandall, Charles Biro, Jack Cole, Mac Raboy, C.C. Beck, Alex Kotzky, Lou Fine, Al Bryant etc etc? Those INSANE Alex Schomburg covers?? Clearly, this is a challenge of epic proportions!
Well, here are just a few of my choices to start with:
I like your Barry Smith pick a lot. Funnily enough, my pick is the issue right before yours, CONAN 19. Great action scene with WILD, almost psychedelic color. While picking this one, it occurred to me that color plays a huge part in a cover’s overall impact, so I’m keeping that in mind as well. My gallery show is obviously going to have to feature large hi-res scans of the actual color covers as well as the b/w originals.
My Romita pick is a ridiculously obvious one, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 50, the classic ‘Spider-Man No More’ cover. I was initially thinking of picking one of his action Bronze Age covers , and was checking out thumbnails at the GCD, when I came across this one and it was just too good to pass up. Simple, beautiful, emotionally powerful, and again, that superb color scheme just takes it all the way home.
X-MEN 50 is my Steranko pick, Lorna Gray in shades of green, a bit less obvious than one of his famous SHIELD covers (4, 6 or 7) or the iconic CAP 111, or even the oft-homaged HULK ANNUAL 1.
Your Cockrum pick is great — I really love 99 as well. But my pick is kind of a weird one, INCREDIBLE HULK 206. Besides his trend-setting art on X-Men, he was also Marvel’s main cover guy for a few years in the mid-to-late 70s, and HULK 206 is a great example of why that was so. Such a strong, iconic image, it was slapped on everything from cheap rack toys to Slurpee cups.
I’ll be back with more later...
- b.t.
I’ve been on a horror kick for the last few weeks, so....
Bernie Wrightson: HOUSE OF SECRETS 106 — gang of vampires in the spooky woods
Mike Kaluta : THE SHADOW 12 — I defaulted to his best-known run, but boy, he had a TON of stellar covers on DC’s various horror titles
Jim Aparo : ADVENTURE 432 — Spectre in the swamp — with fabulously moody color (by Tatiana Wood, I’m guessing?)
Sanjulian : CREEPY 77 — Xmas Special — Baby Jesus menaced by demons!
Enrich : VAMPIRELLA 52 — lavender logo really pops against the gold / ochre color scheme — gorgeous!
Ken Kelly : EERIE 60 — space girl attacked by worm monster
Will Eisner : THE SPIRIT 6 —may not actually be his all-time ‘best’ but it’s my favorite (also my first)
Steve Ditko : HAUNTED 3 — I couldn’t find a single Marvel cover of his that really ‘spoke’ to me — but i adore his Charlton stuff, and this is probably the best of his ‘green ghost’ covers (there were like 10 of em)
Don Newton : HAUNTED 25 — dynamic painted portrait of new host Baron Weirwulf and friends
Tom Sutton : WEREWOLF BY NIGHT 10 — he did SO many cool Charlton covers but WBN 10 is his absolute masterpiece
Johnny Craig : VAULT OF HORROR 26 — living dead hands busting out of pavement
Jack Davis : TALES FROM THE CRYPT 46 — tough choice — excellent color on this one seals the deal
Graham Ingels : HAUNT OF FEAR 24 — gooey cheesecake
George Evans : CRIME SUSPENSTORIES 23 — murder cheesecake
Wally Wood : WEIRD SCIENCE-FANTASY 27 — bug-eyed-monster, blasters and a buxom beauty
Harvey Kurtzman : TWO-FISTED TALES 25 — blunt, raw, emotionally harrowing
-b.t.
Picking covers that seemed to appear in my head ;
Ditko- Spider-Man #33, what he did with that water...
Colan- Daredevil #23,Gladiator coming at ya'
Trimpe- Hulk #144, Doom!
Cockrum- X-Men #101, first Phoenix.
Byrne- So many iconic covers but Marvel Team-Up #68 (Man-Thing) really strikes a Bronze Age chord with me.
Buckler- Daredevil #130, striking!
B.t.- very impressive, very authoritative! Yes, picking 'just one'is Mighty Tough. All part of the challenge here. Love your attention to the horror covers. Some truly magnificent art to be found therein. You mentioned Kaluta, for instance. He had some gems. But great call on that Shadow cover! Aaaand thanks for giving us some EC love...
Killraven- great picks. I'd join you on Ditko; that cover is justifiably iconic. And that Byrne MTU cover was stellar. Another artist extremely difficult to limit to one.
Oh golly--- I just have to throw in the towel, I'm afraid. Not only am I stumped trying to nail down specific favorite covers, period--- trying to break it down even further to say that this is this ARTIST'S best cover is beyond ol' HB's abilities w/out turning it into an hours-long research/archival project--! Man----!
Although I daresay that you and I seem to have different visual tastes, Red. [Mind you-- since you are a legitimate Art Guy, I immediately defer to yours as being almost certainly more legit-- heh!] Of the examples you've posted, Enemy Ace is easily my favorite. The others are good, memorable covers, but-- would I label them as literally the best ones ever produced by each artist? I don't know. I tend to go for simpler covers with a single dominant dramatic element or image. But would that make it any artist's "Best"-? I mean, John Romita did a zillion great Spidey covers, many iconic, even--- but I think Tower of Shadows #1 might be my personal favorite. Ohhhhhh it's all beyond me. . .
HB
Humanbelly :
I know what you mean! To make my choices, I had to just throw up my hands and say ‘Eff it!’ more than once. I daresay SPIDEY 50 probably isn’t Romita’s ‘best ever’ cover, nor is it my favorite Romita cover, or even my favorite Romita Spidey cover (i have a real soft spot for the cover of SPIDEY 130, even though Hammerhead is NOBODY’S favorite Spidey villain). I chose #50 because it’s just a dang nice cover, as well as an iconic one, and it definitely would look great in a gallery exhibition. And someone like Jazzy Johnny, hell, he drew so MANY amazing covers over the years, in every genre — from Superheroes to Westerns to Romance to Horror, you name it. Who has time to research every single one of them, even with incredible resources like the GCD and Mike’s Amazing World of Comics at our fingertips? (Though, admittedly, it’s not the WORST way to kill a few hours...)
So, yeah, picking a ‘good’ example of each artist’s work , or just one that you happen to like for whatever reason, is certainly a respectable way to go here. That TOWER OF SHADOWS cover you mention — yep, it’s pretty great.
But having said all that, I’m STILL not ready to pick a Kirby or Gil Kane cover. There’s JUST. SO. MANY.
So. Anyway.
Thanks to our pal Redartz’ diabolical challenge, I’ve been falling down the Great Cover Artist rabbit-hole — thinking of artists who absolutely belong in the exhibit, but whom I haven’t given enough thought to choosing a really good example yet:
Dan DeCarlo. George Wilson (all those beautiful painted Gold Key covers). Brian Bolland. Mike Golden. ADAM FRICKIN’ HUGHES, for fart’s sake!
But I do have a few more I’d like to share:
Nick Cardy: SUPER DC GIANT # S-17 , ‘LOVE 1970’ — a big-ass collection of mostly tepid DC Romance stories wrapped in a spectacularly torrid Cardy cover. Talk about your tough choices! I sometimes think of Cardy as ‘DC’s Romita’ — neither of them were particularly flashy or innovative, but each produced an enormous volume of excellent, exciting, well-above-average covers and interiors, month after month after month.
Mike Ploog : GIANT-SIZE MAN-THING #1 — two massive muck-monsters punching the (literal?) crap out of each other — it’s disgustingly delirious, gloriously gooey
Herb Trimpe: INCREDIBLE HULK 171 — ‘The RHINO coming at Hulk from one side — The ABOMINATION from the other!’— there are probably ten other Trimpe covers I like just as much, but this one is a nostalgic fave
Paul Gulacy : MASTER OF KUNG FU 51 - his first MOKF cover, immediately following his LAST issue as penciller
Starlin — again, a tough, TOUGH choice — I defaulted to CAPTAIN MARVEL 30, my very first Starlin comic (and still a fave)
Frank Brunner : MARVEL PREMIERE 13 (Dr. Strange) — ‘Not All My POWER...Can SAVE Me!’
P. Craig Russell : AMAZING ADVENTURES 28 — his first Killraven cover, on his second issue as penciller — I love his early stuff even more than his later, more polished work
And lastly, two Golden Age covers from Fiction House, for lovers of Leg Art:
Maurice Whitman : PLANET COMICS 72
Bob Lubbers : WINGS 91
Speaking of Leg Art reminds me: I’m thinking of changing my Steranko pick. Those two SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL covers are pretty darn sweet...
- b.t.
I wonder I wonder I wonder---
If maybe this post could be adapted into a Regular Category, and then the specific Topic each time is an individual cover artist? Keeping it more in the vein of easy water-cooler chat? (Which is easier to manage during a busy day/week).
b.t., your mention of Herb Trimpe/Hulk 171, up above, is what brought that to mind-- as I totally agree that Herb alone has a BUNCH of great covers that I would probably go on about at length. I bet just about any artist could support the topic for a full post in a slow week, y'know?
(Also, among Herb's best I would include Hulk #109-- right near the beginning of his tenure on the title---)
HB
Hi guys,
HB- you make a good point. Perhaps I wasn't very clear, "best" cover is pretty much impossible for many artists. My intent was just to pick a good representative cover that displays said artist's particular talents. And an interesting thought you share about making this a feature. It is, upon reflection, quite a mammoth subject for a single post. Hmmmmm....
B.t.- more excellent mentions! Will have more to say later in response. Well done...
I'm terrible at this game because I don't know the number of the comic I'm thinking of but here are some I do know:
John Byrne: UNCANNY X-MEN #130 - the debut of the Dazzler and a spectacular cover.
Barry Smith: I've got to go with CONAN THE BARBARIAN #1 because the cover is an absolute classic (Marvel has just released an Epic Collection featuring Conan #1-13 and, yep, the cover is a reproduction of CTB #1).
Another of my all-time favourite covers is CONAN THE BARBARIAN #62 (which I bought back in 1976) but I'm not sure if the cover artist is John Romita or Gil Kane INKED by John Romita - it's fab either way.
But there are also UK-exclusive Marvel covers which I love but I don't know who drew them - such as PLANET OF THE APES #5 which was my first ever Marvel comic - for me it's an iconic cover but I don't have a clue who the artist was.
Red, being without electricity for 8 days would be a major nuisance but at least I wouldn't need to worry about losing my air conditioning because I don't have any in the first place. In this country it rarely gets hot enough to need a/c - we recently had a heatwave which was uncomfortable but the temperatures never reached the levels you get in the US.
Colin:
The only reason I know the specific issue numbers of the covers I’ve been citing is because I look them up on the Grand Comics Database. I’m not ‘That Guy’, I have VERY few issue numbers memorized. And my memory gets worse with each passing year.
The GCD says the UK POTA 5 cover is by Ed Hannigan and Mike Esposito (I would have guessed Ron Wilson) and the CONAN 62 one is indeed by by Kane and Romita.
Speaking of people who DO have incredible powers of recall: a couple of years ago, I had a fun chat with legendary letterer Tom Orzechowski at a convention, and as we were talking it occurred to me that he had lettered a bunch of comics that I’d bought in my first burst of obsessive comics consumption, and he casually said, ‘Oh really, which ones?’
b.t. : Hmmm, let’s see... the last issue of the Avengers / Defenders war...
T.O. : AVENGERS 118 — what else?
b.t. : The first Master of Kung Fu ...
T.O. : SPECIAL MARVEL EDITION 15 — what else?
b.t. : Um.... first Morbius solo strip...
T.O. : Which one, color or black and white? I did ‘em both.
b.t. : Color... Paul Gulacy’s first pro job...
T.O. : Ah, FEAR 20. What else?
b.t. : One of the McGregor / Buckler Black Panthers... had a great Steranko-swipe double-splash, the action took place inside the letter-forms...
T.O. : Right, ‘Malice By Crimson Moonlight’, JUNGLE ACTION 8 — what else ?
b.t. : (starting to get a little nervous now) ....Um... Jim Starlin CAPTAIN MARVEL... fighting The Controller on the cover...
T.O. : Ah, # 30, that’s a great one ... had 3 splash pages, each with its own title logo — helluva lot of work for 10 bucks a page, but I loved it ...
I got the feeling he’d been waiting for years to play that little parlor game with someone. But then again, comics nerds can be a pretty pedantic lot, so I might not have been the first obsessive geek to have been able to rattle off a list of his early credits. In any case, it was AMAZING.
- b.t.
...my comment disappeared...
GREAT anecdote, b.t.-!
You have to figure the letterers must have been their own little sorta-odd subset of comics creators. Maybe similar to the Guys in Accounting. . . or the quirky folks in I.T.
And maybe having to spell Tom Orzechowski for one's whole life has a magnifying effect on one's memory for specifics. . . !
HB
b.t. - I'm very grateful for that information about POTA #5 and CONAN #62.
I intend to investigate the Grand Comics Database!!
I'm starting to think there's something nefarious at work; now my laptop is freezing up. Will try to put up some images based upon your comments.
Edo- sorry your comment vanished, I'll see if I can retrieve it.
B.t.- terrific tale about Tom Orz. One of the all time best letters, amg and apparently a comics savant as well!
Okay everyone, here is Edo Bosnar's comment, fished back from the ether...
Edo Bosnar:
All right, not saying these are the best covers by these artists (although that argument can be made for some of them), but they'd all look great framed in an exhibition hall:
Frank Frazetta: Famous Funnies #214
Steve Ditko: Out of This World #11
Will Eisner: Will Eisner's Quarterly #5
Barry Smith: Marvel Treasury Edition #4
Gil Kane: Jungle Action #15
John Buscema: Tarzan Annual #2
Michael Kaluta: Doorway to Nightmare #2
P. Craig Russell: Parsifal
Marshall Rogers: Mister Miracle #24
Michael Golden: Micronauts #11
John Byrne: Avengers #187
Frank Miller: X-men Annual #3
George Perez: New Teen Titans #13
Walt Simonson: Thor #337
Mike Zeck: Captain America #286
Alan Davis: Detective Comics #570
Sorry I couldnt save your links, Edo; but at least there's the list!
Boy, I came across a site yesterday (that I totally didn't mentally note) which showed Neal Adams' run of covers for HOUSE OF MYSTERY that featured these three kids. . . something I'd never heard of. For all of Neal's brilliance, I would DEFINITELY submit something from that run for him. They are extraordinary. Each one utterly captures a contextually non-existent moment, and are little one-panel stories all their own. . .
HB
Thanks, Red.
Argh. The thanks is from me, Red.
Humanbelly: I saw that nifty gallery of Neal Adams ‘Little Snoopers’ HOUSE OF MYSTERY covers too. It’s at a site called DARK WORLDS QUARTERLY. My interest in the stuff posted there varies but he updates it daily, so I have it bookmarked and check it out often. And when he does post something that appeals to me, he does it up right, with a heavy emphasis on visuals. He’s had a series of posts on Weird Tales and Robert E. Howard that were profusely illustrated with vintage art, and he’s recently had a couple about Sword and Sorcery comics that were cool too.
Edo: I like a lot of your choices but that Barry Smith TREASURY cover — oh MAN (chef’s kiss) — that’s the stuff right there. How did I forget that one?
And I hadn’t even thought of picking a John Buscema cover. Much as I love that man’s work — and I DO, I really REALLY do, he’s in my Pantheon of great comics artists, Top 10, maybe Top 5 — I guess I agree with Roy Thomas that covers weren’t really his strong suit, to a degree. I just now remembered a cover I like a lot, CONAN 78. You got your berserk barbarian, your mace-wielding maniacal sorcerer, everyone’s favorite chainmail-bikini-rockin’ redhead facing down a squad of red-robed cultists and the best of all, one of Big John’s most beautiful full-figured scantily clad ladies writhing fetchingly on a sacrificial altar. Velvety inks by the man himself puts it over the top.
I’m thinking about finding a Golden Age cover for my Kirby pick. Those CAPTAIN AMERICA covers are pretty spectacular. And I still have to pick a Schomburg....
b.t.
Okay, FINALLY...
Jack Kirby, CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS 7
Alex Schomburg, ALL WINNERS COMICS 11 (#12 would actually be my preference but the caricatured Japanese soldiers on that one are just way too racist)
b.t.
And Gil Kane, MARVEL TEAM-UP 6. I could spend weeks checking out his vast ouevre at the GCD, trying to pick just the right one but screw it. MTU 6 is one of my early faves, the cover is dynamic, it’s got one of his signature characters on it in a nice dynamic pose, color is good — DONE.
-b.t.
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