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Still got a taste for the covers of the 52 page magazines that DC unleashed upon the comics-buying public back in the swirling '70s? Then you've come to the right place, Melvin! Most of them are by Jack Kirby, but Neal Adams, Murphy Anderson, and Mike Royer (and others?) also played a hand in some of them to a greater or lesser degree. Got a favourite (or three)? Then tell your 52 page fellow fanatics what they are (and what they mean to you) in our comments section. We're all dying to know.
13 comments:
Anther great set of covers, Kid. I think that a large part of the success of these covers was the use of colour that really makes the images pop. New Gods #5-7, Mister Miracle #4, Jimmy Olsen #143 are all outstanding use of colour. I feel that when the DC comics reverted to 20-cent issues that the covers started to suffer - many of the comics then had the title on a solid colour taking up a third of the cover, with a much smaller scene below. And then the 100-pagers that followed had awful covers full of small images. Any ideas if the cover art director changed at DC during those years?
I'm not sure about a change of art directors, B, but I think it probably depended on who was overall editor of certain groups of titles as to what the covers looked like. The Superman titles may've had a different art director to the Batman ones for example, though I don't know for sure. Vince Colletta was an art director at DC for a while, but I don't know whether it was around this time or not.
Let's hope someone reading this knows for sure and will let us know.
Forever People and New God's just left me cold Im afraid although some of the covers look really good. Mr Miracle was OK and I learned to really like the character but Jimmy Olsen was for me the best of the titles and covers here.
As I've said many a time before, McS, I consider Jimmy Olsen to be the best thing Jack did at DC. After all, how could he go wrong with Superman? (Apart from his kiss-curl and S emblem that is.) The only Forever Person I liked was Beautiful Dreamer, and I still feel a tingle in my loins when I look at her on covers 4 & 8. None of the New Gods were major players in my opinion, though Darkseid was a good baddie (if that's not a contradiction-in-terms, but you know what I mean).
Let’s face it, Kirby needed Lee to edit his words into English as she is spoke by humans.
I read some of these, still have Forever People 4. It was hard to read and understand. The ideas were there right on the cover but not translated into stories. As for Don Rickles- who can say? I read it and I still didn’t understand where Kirby was going. Anyone want to guess ?
Sometimes he got it right, language-wise, PS, but he could never sustain it. And I never quite understood what the Anti-Life Equation was when I was a teenager; if Kirby explained it clearly, I either missed it or I was a particularly thick teenager. I think Don Rickles was included on the suggestion of Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman, but 'Goody' Rickels (slight difference in spelling) was never seen again. And the Rickles camp wasn't particularly impressed by what Jack had done.
I'd never even heard of Forever People, Mr. Miracle and New Gods until I read about them on blogs like yours, Kid (in fact, it probably was YOUR blog). As a Marvel fan I was only aware of Kirby's work for Marvel.
I cannot explain why it's so, but the cover for Forever People #4 has always been a big fave of mine. Despite the fact I didn't quite fully grok the Forever People until some years later, that cover did stick with me.
Rip Off
So would you describe yourself as a Kirby fan as well as a Marvel fan, CJ? If so, there's a heck of a lot of Kirby stuff out there you've yet to read.
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Maybe it's the colour dropped into the two Goons, RJ? It makes them stand out more than if their outline and details had just been rendered with black ink. Or perhaps it's Beautiful Dreamer almost hanging out of her dress?
Yes, I loved Kirby's art back in the day, Kid, and I suppose I still do but I view it rather more critically nowadays, mainly because of the glaring flaws you've highlighted over the years (such as the man with the books on his head you recently showed).
I think you'd like his Jimmy Olsen stories, CJ - might be worth tracking down the collected softcover Omnibus edition, either in print or digitally.
Kid, I'm done with buying stuff - comics, books, e-books, DVDs, whatever. From now I'm only buying things I need which will certainly help with this cost of living crisis getting worse by the month.
Ach, but where's the fun in that, CJ? Try the library, see if they've got any collected Kirby DC editions.
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