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Okay, Criv-ites - gather 'round and cast your corneas over the latest instalment of The SUPER HEROES cover gallery, chock-full of interesting images that'll make you wish you'd kept all your issues instead of donating them to the church jumble sale. Never mind though, I kept mine, and I'm perfectly willing to share them via the pages of this, the greatest blog in the history of any blog I've ever done, which, come to think of it, is only this one - so maybe that's not as impressive a claim as I'd have liked. Never mind, you can't win 'em all!
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22 comments:
Wait now! Is that … ? Yes, I do believe it is Debbie Harry standing next to Batman. Wonder Woman looks like someone too, but I can't quite put my finger on who it is.
It's like Spot The Celebrity; surely that's Sean Connery under Green Lantern's mask. I was tempted to nominate Alan Rickman as The Creeper and Demi Moore as Black Orchid, but it's probably before their time.
Looks like Leonard Nimoy as The Creeper, GB. A couple of the female faces (other than the ones you mentioned) look familiar, but I can't put my finger on them. WW has a vague hint of Lynda Carter about the face perhaps.
Kid, is that Kate Bush in the centre of the second group ? I know absolutely nothing about the Flash but apparently he can run straight across oceans according to the panel shown here !
The Debbie Harry ,Sean Connery and Leonard Nimoy jump right out of the page at you.
Whenever I noticed an artist using a celebrity face it would put me off.
That was the reason I was going to make a comment.
I did not comment on your previous posting of The Super Heroes because I really don't want to be negative when others are enjoying seeing them but...
The covers are atrociously bad compared to the wonderful goodies inside.
Look at that Batman 'kobra' splash page.
I have never seen it before but it is brilliant.
A wee bit Neal Adams but hey, nothing wrong with that.
The interior art makes me want to read these stories but not the covers.
Even the Solomon Grundy art is passable.
Not all negative though since your post made me go and look up Mike Nasser on Comicvine and lo and behold I have comics he worked on,
including 'Kobra' which I would never have known
Then Joe Rubinstein,also worked on some favourites and he is a big Neal Adams fan.
Not sure to be honest, Col. The artist could be using relatives as well as actors for models for all I know. As for the Flash, he can run around the world 8 times in one second, so obviously he's going too fast to sink due to his momentum.
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Baab, the covers are a bit hit and miss, but there's a few gems amongst them. It was good to see painted covers for a change, which gave the comic more of a 'magazine' feel, rather than just ordinary line art.
Great little mag so it was.
Fascinating stuff yet again Kid. As has already been said, that Mike Nasser (if memory servers, he was also known as Mike Netzer, but I might be getting confused)splashpage is completely outstanding, & I too had never previously seen that.
With regard to possible artists model for Alan Craddock, I believe that Raven(?)in the blue hood stood behind the Creeper is also Lynda Carter.
As you say, sometimes these covers are a bit hit & miss, but at the time of publication it was virtually unknown to have painted artwork on a comic book, & (in those pre-Alex Ross days)we almost never saw superheroes represented like this. I know there had been painted art on comic mags like Conan & Heavy Metal etc, but I think this would be very close to being a first for paintings of superheroes on a UK comic, so well done to whoever at LEM thought it would be a good idea.
I know what you mean about that magazine feel,I was mostly impressed by the monthlies that Marvel did with the painted covers,and i never quite got over The Planet of the Apes first issue in the uk.
There is a hint of a resemblance, Staz, but I can also see Deborah Kerr. Of course, it could be his auntie or his sister. I think it would've been the late Vanessa Morgan (editor) who decided to go with painted covers.
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Yeah, Baab - that first POTA cover was a belter, sure enough.
I completely forgot about POTA. I used to get the UK weekly starting with the issue which marked the beginning of the adaption of Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, & that cover (by Bob Larkin?) with the gorillas & the Satue of Liberty is an absolute classic. Alfred Alcala's interior art was no slouch either!
I think that art may also have been used for the poster in #1, if I recall correctly. There was a picture of it in my blog list - might still be there. Alfredo Alcala was indeed a class act, Staz.
Kid, I was looking at the poster from POTA No.1 online just a couple of days ago - I'd never seen it before but it was the painting used for the cover of the U.S. POTA #1. That cover for the UK #1 is fantastic but it's strange that on the U.S. POTA it was the cover for #2 - Marvel UK wisely decided not to use the rather dull U.S.#1 cover but apparently they saved it for the poster instead. I'd always assumed the poster was the same as the image on the cover. The "Beneath" cover from #35 is one of my favourites too - I remember really looking forward to the start of the adaptation of "Beneath" which had been trailed for several weeks beforehand in POTA.
Talking of POTA, Col, I've got all 5 original movies on DVD - I'll have to watch them sometime. The first one is a classic. Remind me - how many issues of POTA were there before it merged with MWOM?
Kid, there were 123 issues. #1-87 was just POTA and #88-123 was POTA & Dracula Lives. The very last issue of POTA & DL came out on February 16th 1977 which was the day before my 11th birthday. And my 11th birthday was the day I first saw the first POTA film - it is indeed a classic but these days it's a bit hard to believe that Taylor never twigs he's on Earth. The Pierre Boulle novel gets around a lot of those problems by setting it on an alien planet.
Thanks for that, Col. I didn't know that the original novel was set on another planet, which, to me, robs the story of a great twist ending. In that respect, I think the movie was an improvement.
Actually Kid, the novel has TWO twist endings ! But the novel's ending(s) must have been thought of as too difficult for audiences so they simplified it by setting it on Earth with an easier to understand twist. The 2001 POTA film has a similar kind of ending to the novel and Tim Burton got slammed for being too clever and baffling audiences.
I'll maybe get around to reading an English translation of the original novel one day. Tim Burton's version was okay, but it failed to grab me.
I like the gaudy painted covers although they do remind me of Heavy Metal albums. I've never seen the reverse of the "DC Universe" assemblage. I wonder if it inspired the cover to the 1997 all-ages Adventures in the DC Universe #1?
Haven't seen that series, Dougie, so couldn't say. I take it that was a British comic? I wonder how Marvel U.K. would've fared if they'd gone for a painted covers approach on their weeklies - whaddya think?
As has already been said, the UK POTA (a marvel UK comic)did use quite a few painted covers, which were obviously reprinted from the US POTA black & white mag (though I didn't realise that at the time). But admittedly, that's not superheroes, so probably isn't a fair comparison.
I was thinking NEW, specially-commissioned painted covers rather than reprints, Staz. For the superheroes, as you noted.
Kid, besides the English book of the first POTA ( aka Monkey Planet), on Hunter's Archive you can download pdf's of the Hungarian Monkey Planet comic plus 2 English translations in the comics section. Also there, if you click on magazine covers Hunter has posted beautiful restored paintings for the US Curtis covers, including those you mentioned, featuring outstanding work by the likes of Larkin, Ploog and Earl Norem. As for Tim Burton's film, I still don't get the ending!
Regarding the Burton film, JP, I think the astronaut had returned to an alternate Earth where apes were the dominant species, but everything else (technology, culture, fashion, etc) were the same as on our Earth. Either that, or something that had happened in the future had changed the past on this Earth - anybody's guess, I suppose. Thanks for the info.
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