Tuesday 5 September 2017

CRIVENS' CLASSIC COMIC COVERS - SPIDER-MAN COMICS WEEKLY #141 (EXPANDED)...

Images copyright MARVEL COMICS

Here's a great cover from the mid-'70s by KEITH POLLARD and DUFFY VOHLAND, which cleverly features all three stars of this MARVEL UK weekly periodical.  The Spidey-signal on the wall ensures that SPIDER-MAN is no less present than THOR and IRON MAN, despite him being 'off-frame' (and his head in the corner box helps with that too).  A nice idea, neatly executed.

Inside, it's good to see that Marvel had abandoned the overpowering grey tones (which often came out as near-black) and let the artwork speak for itself.  If I remember correctly, eventually they returned to much more muted tones, which didn't obscure the line-work and subtly enhanced some panels.  For myself, I didn't mind the plain black and white, and the pages below ably demonstrate that it was far cleaner and, by and large, no less effective. 




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had this one ! At the time I was getting SMCW, Dracula Lives and POTA. Some of those UK exclusive covers were really good but others were dire. I look at the awful ones on cover galleries and wonder how they were ever considered good enough to be published.

Kid said...

I'm the same, CJ. Some were rotten - same as some of the new splash pages for the second half of stories divided into two parts. What were they thinking sometimes?

TC said...

DC did something similar with Detective Comics #521 in 1982. Green Arrow began as the back-up strip in that issue, and the cover shows him fighting some bad guys. But the Bat-Signal appears on a wall in the background, reminding everyone of who is still the star of the lead feature.

Not 100% sure, but that may have been the first time since 1940 that Batman himself was not on the cover of Detective Comics.

Kid said...

I don't know myself, TC, but it would be interesting to find out. Anyone out there know?



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