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| Images copyright DC COMICS |
For all those craving their CRIVENS! fix, here's a cracking cornucopia of cataclysmic covers and captivating comicbook pages from the British monthly mag known as The SUPER HEROES, published in the early '80s. These five issues were the last in the series, alas, so get yourself comfy and savour the images laid before you.
I've seen some of these mags for sale in America on eBay, but whether or not they were originally distributed in the U.S. in the '80s or were sent by U.K. relatives, I couldn't say for sure. If any State-side readers can shed light on the matter, then feel free.
Remember, if you want to see any of the images larger, click on them, and then click again for optimum size. Happy viewing to discerning Criv-ites everywhere. Only the best is good enough for you!
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Sad seeing Vanessa Morgan's editorial, saying, "Remember ...it's never the end."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, very sad. (Had to cut and paste your comment to move it here as this new post never came up as a new post for some strange reason, JP.)
ReplyDeleteHave to echo John Pitt's comment. Thanks for putting up Vanessa's unsung legacy for all to see. I had the privilege of knowing her well for the last 20 years, after first encountering her through those friendly editorials. She was as nice - nicer - than they reveal. For anyone interested, she had a great send-off, and a lot of old - now famous - comics chums were in attendance. Thanks again, she would have appreciated it.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame she's no longer around, Steve, but at least she lives on in these mags - as well as the others she was involved with. Even 'though I never met her, she sounds just like the sort of person I would've liked. I'll certainly think of her whenever I look through my back issues of The Super Heroes.
ReplyDeleteKid, I bought a number of The Super Heroes, here in the states, at my local comics shop back in the '80s. They were nestled in with The Comics Journal and other such mags. I was especially after black and white Joe Kubert work, just to see his great inking.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the memories!
Thanks for dropping by and letting me know that, Thom, because it's good to know that they were definitely on sale in the States. Kubert's art looks great in black and white, maybe even better (sometimes) than in colour.
ReplyDeleteThat pin-up by Gil Kane is a beauty, and it's nice to compare it with the image above it by the same artist from many years before. Some of his work left me cold, but when he was on form and inking himself - as here or on a character like Blackmark - he was outstanding.
ReplyDeleteAnd nice to see a bit of Kubert's Hawkman, too. I've always thought that Hawkgirls's helmet/mask was one of the best looking of all.
It was generous of her to give a plug for the first issue of Warrior, something you'd never see anywhere else.
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ReplyDeleteGreat to see some of this work in sparkling black and white. I particularly enjoyed seeing the Gil Kane Star Hawks illo. Very nice!
I have to agree on the Joe Kubert art.
ReplyDeleteYou can see the skill of a master on those pages.
GB, I preferred Gil Kane's work when he had someone like Murphy Anderson inking him to soften his style. His 'up the nose' shots and some of his action positions all looked as if he'd used a rubber stamp and then filled in the costume details. Liked his early Green Lantern work 'though.
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Indeed, B - 'though I believe she knew and worked for Dez so it was a nice little gesture.
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Nick, it's like seeing it with new eyes sometimes when it's in b&w. It would've been better if he'd signed that page to British fans rather than English ones 'though, as England is only part of the United Kingdom, not all of it. Perhaps the publisher's name being London Editions confused him, eh? As I said to GB above, although Kane was a great visual storyteller, I found his style a bit overwhelming unless it was diluted somewhat by an inker with his own style.
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Baab, he was a master of the pen and brush, that's for sure. His work doesn't seem to lose anything when the colour is removed for b&w printing.
There are a couple of excellent interviews out there by Gil Kane in which he's brutally honest about some of the inkers he's worked with, including Murphy Anderson, and they're definitely worth a read. Dan Adkins was probably my own favourite inker on his work, although to be fair I liked him inking over anyone's pencils. I'm sympathetic toward your criticisms of GK's work, though, and always thought that his style was more suited to some characters over others.
ReplyDeleteI know he hated Vince Colletta's inking, GB. Apparently he was once asked who his second favourite inker was and he replied "Vince Colletta". When asked who his first favourite inker was, his response was "Anybody else".
ReplyDeleteWould I be safe in assuming that he wasn't the only penciller who held that opinion? In the most recent interview that I read by him, he asserted that Colletta and others "had a licence to kill as inkers" — he certainly didn't mince his words.
ReplyDeleteThere were a few, but artists often have their own idea of what inking style suits their work which doesn't always bear scrutiny. For example, John Buscema didn't like Alfredo Alcala's inks on his Conan pencils, a point of view I find simply astonishing. As for VC, I think his inks gave Kirby's Thor pencils more than they ever took away.
ReplyDeleteKid, perhaps Buscema didn't like Alfredo Alcala's inking because it sort of "smothered" his art and made it look un-Buscemalike ? I saw a Conan story where John Buscema was inked by Pablo Marcos and it looked almost unrecognisable as Buscema. I think artist and inker should be thought of instead as dual artists because that's what they really are. Will you be showing any more covers from Marvel Super-heroes or was that a one-off ?
ReplyDeleteCol, I think that artists should put ego aside, and if the finished product looks better than it otherwise would have, they should accept it as being better than the sum of its parts. Great as Buscema was, his pencils looked better with Alfredo's inks. Don't panic, more Marvel Super-Heroes to come.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't aware that John Buscema didn't like Alfredo Alcala's inks, that is a strange one they were such a stunning team (imho) and always thought big John was aware how good Alcala made his already wonderful art look. Yeah I was a bit annoyed when I bought that issue of Super Heroes and Gil Kane (one of my favs) had written to his "English" fans (no offence to English fans), but most Americans seem to think England and UK are the same thing (bless them) although its getting better you do you see this "error" in films, books and comics all the time (in a recent Marvel Foom blog I noticed the same thing sigh, must be the anniversary of Bannockburn thats getting to me lol)) - That character in the poster I think was "Star Hawk", a stunning newspaper strip Kane did which had some of his best art (imho) - Great to see these underrated mags again
ReplyDeleteKid, talking of Alfredo Alcala I've been looking at his art on Beneath and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and I can't recall seeing his artwork anywhere else - his inking yes but not his art. POTA also featured artists Rico Rival and Tom Sutton whom I also couldn't recall anywhere else but the Peerless Power blog does have art by Tom Sutton on today's post. My terrible memory led me to believe that Alcala had been the inker on "Beneath" and "Conquest" but not the artist.
ReplyDeleteMcScotty, having dug out these comics to scan and seeing how good they look, I'm almost overwhelmed by a compulsion to re-read them - which I'll hopefully get around to before I fall off the twig. Glad you enjoyed seeing them again.
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Col, funnily enough, I'm sure I've seen some of Alcala's art somewhere, but for the life of me I can't quite recall where. We must have bought our terrible memories from the same shop.
Alcala pencilled a few strips at Marvel including a couple of issues of Conans colour comic (ie issue 225 ) Man-Thing , Captain Marvel (number 35) he also pencilled a few Savage Swords of Conan's and various B&W strips in titles like Marvel Previews, Vampire tales etc. He pencilled a few strips at DC mostly the mystery type books like House of Secrets and Plop! - Warren mags also published his Voltar strip in Creepy or Eerie . Tom Sutton did a lot of books at Marvel and DC (tons at Charlton of course) including Seekers 3000 and "Werewolf by night" at Marvel and "I Vampire" at DC
ReplyDeleteEr, well, yes, of course, I meant to say all that, but it had temporarily slipped my mind (he lied, shamelessly). Ta, McScotty.
ReplyDeleteYes, thanks Paul - that only leaves Rico Rival then. By the way, talking of England/Britain - it's funny how Americans always refer to a "British" accent as if we all talked the same from John O' Groats to Land's End.
ReplyDeleteAh, but Col, there's two ways of looking at things. One could argue that as Americans tend to think England and Britain are the same thing, when they say British accent, they mean English accent. Or one could argue that because they say 'a' British accent and not 'the' British accent, they're aware that there are different ones. nice to have a choice, eh?
ReplyDeleteObviously though Kid, Americans know the word British and often use it so there was no excuse for Gil Kane saying English - I'm not his greatest fan actually, all those contorted poses his characters had. By the mid '70s he seemed to be doing nothing but Marvel covers, he must have drawn most of the covers from about '74-'77.
ReplyDeleteYes, they certainly know the word 'British', but they think it means the same as 'English', so Gil Kane wouldn't have realised anything was amiss in his use of the word. I'm certainly not offended by it - he meant to include the whole country in his greeting and thought English covered everyone. I agree with you about some of his art 'though - I think it eventually became a case of style over substance.
ReplyDeleteKid,
ReplyDeleteJohn Buscema didn't like most of his inkers; I think he accepted brother Sal, who remained close to his pencils, but he was unhappy with many I thought were wonderful, including Joe Sinnott, George Klein and Tom Palmer. As far as Kane goes, I think some of the stuff he inked with markers didn't look as good as some of his better inkers, although there are exceptions. Kane had lots of great inkers, including Dan Adkins (his favorite), Bill Everett, Tom Palmer and Tom Sutton to name a few.
Kane churned out a ton of covers for Marvel in the 1970's, a little too many sometimes that were rushed out or sloppily inked. I thought Colletta inked some of his Batgirl stories decently, though.
Ha! I didn't even realise it said 'ENGLISH' at first; it looked like 'BUGUSH' to me, whatever that is; I was reading the 'EN' as 'BU'and the 'LI' as another 'U'. What a plonker!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, it isn't only Americans who often equate 'English' with 'British'. Down in Australia I had friends of many nationalities where I worked, and almost to a man and woman they would do the same thing. After a while it became too much like hard work trying to explain the difference. In reference to something like the war, it bothers me most when scholars and experts on the subject still manage to use 'English' and 'British' interchangeably.
Sal Buscema is, of course, tremendously talented, and John used to say that he preferred his brother inking him as (like you say, Nick) he stayed true to his pencils. However, personally, I prefer what Tom Palmer did to John's pages - the combination was amazing. I think Kane was using markers to ink his own pencils when he started drawing Superman (in Action Comics?) back in the early '80s, but I wasn't too keen on the result.
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It's an understandable mistake when you realise that many English people do the same thing, GB. Loads of them use 'England' and 'Britain' interchangably, so Australians and Americans (and no doubt others) have probably picked up the habit from hearing them.
Kid, one final thought on this subject - it also must be confusing for foreigners when they see an England team in the World Cup, a Great Britain team in the Olympics and a United Kingdom entry in the Eurovision Song Contest ! At the London Olympics there was a Great Britain football team for the first time but back to an England one for the World Cup - I agree though that foreigners don't mean any offence and the fact remains that most people couldn't even point out England/Britain on a map. My father once told me he'd read about an American woman who said she'd like to visit Britain but the train journey was too long !!! By the way, I meant to say I agree with your opinion of Alfredo Alcala's inking of John Buscema - one of my favourite Conan stories is Iron Shadows In The Moon done by them which I first read in the Conan Treasury Edition from 1978. I'd missed it when it was in #1 of Savage Sword a year earlier but the Treasury Edition version was in colour so I'm glad I missed it first time around.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it ever happened, Col ('though I doubt it), but I'd have loved to have seen Big John inked by Nestor Redondo, who was a brilliant artist in his own right.
ReplyDeleteNestor Redondo inking John Buscema would indeed have been amazing Redondo is a really underrated artist
ReplyDeleteAs to Rico Rival I have a few of his books (not a big fan just seem to pick them up) he pencilled Marvel Comics' adaptation of Day of the Triffids (I was recently reading this on "Diversions of the Groovy kind" blog - ) ,a few Tales of the Zombie strips and I also seem to recall him drawing Marvels "Scarecrow" colour comic and a few Kung Fu black and white back ups - At DC he did a few strips in Unexpected and House of Mystery
http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/science-fiction-theater-day-of-triffids_25.html
I'm not sure who underrates him, McScotty, because he's pretty well regarded by those of us of a certain age, but I guess I know what you mean. I loved his Swamp Thing art after Berni (now spelt Bernie) Wrightson left the mag - beautiful work.
ReplyDeleteI just meant that Nestor Redondo doesn't seem to get the fan recognition that folk like Adams etc get considering how good he is etc . I think he is well respected with fans and other artists know how good he is - Probably because he hasn't worked on many super hero type comics apart from his great Swamp Thing most have not been high profile books (Rima, DC mystery comics etc)
ReplyDeleteYeah, he wasn't really on any high profile mags that would've brought him to a wider audience, but those that did see his art were unanimous in their approval. Even Swamp Thing was beginning to decline when he took over, which is why it was cancelled with #24.
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