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| Images copyright MARVEL COMICS |
MARVEL had been publishing their weekly periodicals in Britain for a while, when, perhaps responding to some readers' requests, they asked the rest of us if we'd like to see more original covers. To my mind, 'original' covers meant the original covers which had first appeared on the U.S. mags, not newly-originated ones for the U.K. comics, which seemed to be what Marvel had in mind. I responded, saying "Yes, more original covers please!" - as, no doubt, did quite a few other Marvelites, because, before too long, the weeklies sported brand-new (and, a few exceptions apart, mostly inferior) cover art all across the board.
I eventually twigged to what had happened regarding the differing interpretations of what was meant by 'original', but, going by the poor reception of many of the 'new' covers featured on this blog, I had the right idea and Marvel had the wrong one. (I exclude JIM STARLIN's covers on early issues of MWOM because they were well-drawn and I actually like them.) Perhaps, had Marvel stuck with more 'classic' covers from the original U.S. issues, their titles may have enjoyed a greater success.
So what say you readers? Did you care much for the specially-produced, newly-drawn cover art on the Marvel weeklies of your youth, or, like me, did you prefer to see the classic covers that had first graced the initial printings of these early titanic tales? Make your valued views known in the comments section - the fate of the free world hangs in the balance! (Well, if I'm gonna lie, I like to make it a big one.)
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| This cover illo was also pressed into service as a splash page in the very next issue. Not quite in the same league as the SURFER cover above, eh? |
I prefer the term "UK-exclusive" for covers that appeared only on Marvel UK comics. Some of them were very good - for example POTA #5, my first ever Marvel comic, had a UK-exclusive cover which I'm very fond of but it's true that many other such covers were rather poor and The Super-Heroes in particular had lots of truly dreadful covers which looked like they'd been drawn by an 8-year old.
ReplyDeleteYeah, some of the Marvel UK covers were awful, CJ, surprisingly drawn by American Marvel artists, so you'd have thought they'd be better. Some of the POTA covers weren't shining examples of good art in my opinion, but they did the job, I suppose.
DeleteAs bad as most of the UK "original" covers were, they were works of art compared to most of the UK originated splash pages. I do recall some later MWOM featuring the Avengers UK originated covers that were very nice
ReplyDeleteSometimes the same new art was used as both covers and splash pages, McS. It usually looked worse as a splash page because it was in b&w. Eventually, Marvel UK used panels from the first part of a story in the previous week's issue as 'The Story So Far:' intros to the second half of the story, and they were a lot better.
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