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| Images copyright MARVEL COMICS |
Rummaging about in cupboards has yielded rewarding results, enabling me to showcase even more entries in our series of 'pot luck' cover galleries. Overall, they're in an approximate order, though one or two may be out of strict sequence to facilitate a more pleasing pictorial presentation (and my laziness), so don't get too bent out of shape over it ('cos I won't).
So without any further ado, let's get to it!
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| Back cover, featuring JACK KIRBY art specially produced for the U.K. |
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That's a real nice Captain Britain on the Summer Special cover, his lion still looks like a cross between a frilled lizard and a monkey though. Kirby's done a half decent lion on his duo pinup.
ReplyDeleteActually, for Kirby, it's kind of boring (the pin-up, not the lion); at one time he'd have had two characters DOING something, not just have them standing around. Still nice to see 'though.
ReplyDeleteI definitely had the Spider-Man and Marvel Super-Heroes Summer Specials (both from 1979) - I remember thinking that Marvel didn't do summer specials and it seemed a bit odd at the time, for me a summer special meant the Beano or Dandy etc not Marvel. I might have had the Fantastic Four one too because I've definitely read that Dr. Doom story but that could have been in the original 'What If' although it was probably this one.
ReplyDeleteYeah I'm not particularly fond of it myself, do you know who did the other CB it's got a kind of Steranko feel about it? The thing about the lion is that they should've for the full on stylised heraldic look, like that on the yellow and red flags that used to come with flag sets you'd buy at the seaside to adorn your sandcastles. The bushy mane one never quite works but it seems to be a consistent feature, so it must be on a style sheet somewhere.
ReplyDeleteI think that 1979 was the first year that Marvel did Summer Specials, CJ - certainly no earlier than 1978 anyway. When you think about it, their Summer Specials should've been full colour affairs, to distinguish them from their usual monthly mags.
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That's by Pablo Marcos, DSE - from the cover of CB #36. Regarding the lion, it could be that some artists were just trying to put their own individual stamp on it, to avoid it looking like a direct lift from a book on heraldry or something.
Thanks for pointing me to Pablo Marcos. Yeah, that makes sense what you say about the lion, the heraldic one might be too generic to base an intellectual property around.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's why the lion was left out when they redesigned the costume.
ReplyDeleteYes, Kid - I'm sure 1979 was the first year for Marvel's summer specials. It was all part of the plan to make Marvel UK seem more "British" following on from the big (and extremely unwelcome as far as I'm concerned) change in the weeklies in January '79.
ReplyDeleteI had mixed feelings about it, CJ. On the one hand, the way the pages were resized reminded me of the Power Comics, and the Pocket Books and Summer Specials were good ideas, but the Marvel 'feel' of the weeklies was somewhat diluted.
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