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| Images copyright MARVEL COMICS |
Continuing with our gallery of SILVER SURFER covers, we take up where we left off last time, which was SS #7. That means we start this little session with #8 through #12, with #13 to #18 still to come in the next post. Hope you'll join us then, but in the meantime enjoy these five covers by JOHN BUSCEMA.
Although Big John only drew the first seventeen issues in the series, they're clearly superior to the eighteenth and last ish illustrated by JACK KIRBY, which was intended as the first in a new direction for the title. Clearly, then, even with an artist of Buscema's calibre, sales weren't as good as they could've been, hence the change in approach. I can only speculate that the Kirby last issue did even worse in sales, hence the reason why the planned 'Savage Silver Surfer' plotline never materialised. After all, why flog a dead horse and throw good money after bad?
More on this in an upcoming post. Don't miss it!
4 comments:
Sales were failing before Kirby came on board. They chose to cancel it before sales for #18 came in.
I DID mention that sales weren't great under Buscema and that was the reason for the planned new direction with Kirby. Whether or not it was cancelled before the sales for #18 came in, if they had been spectacular, the title would've been revived PDQ. The fact that it wasn't shows that not even Kirby could make it work.
(Apparently, Kirby's issue would only have been a one-off fill-in, with Herb Trimpe being the regular artist. However, whether Trimpe's planned involvement came about because Kirby left Marvel around this time or was planned from the start, I'm not quite sure.)
I see now. I mistakenly thought you were a Kirby knocker for a moment there. I don't think Buscema's issues were "far superior" to the Kirby one. Both artists were great but Kirby was always the better superhero artist.
I'm a huge Kirby fan. When he was at the top of his game he was untouchable. However, at the end of his run on Marvel, either because he was disenchanted or perhaps because of volume of work (or both), he was no longer at the top of his game.
Unlike his first representations of the Surfer, Kirby's later renditions were awkward and stilted. Great as Jack still was, Buscema had surpassed him by this point I'm afraid. The irony is that he had done so by utilising Kirby dynamics and principles, but without the abstract 'idiosyncrasies' inherent in JK's work.
When a good inker could dilute these factors, Kirby was still great; but the more an inker made Kirby's pages look the way he had pencilled them, then the results were not quite so impressive - in my humble opinion of course.
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