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