Panel Discussion: Frankly Fond of the Fantastic Four...

 

Redartz:  Yes, it's true. I'm quite fond of Marvel's 'first family', the Fantastic Four. And this affinity goes  back a long way, to nearly the start of my comics interest. You've all heard how I cut my comics teeth on Superman and Spider-man; well after the wall crawler, the FF pulled a strong second place. This probably stems from exposure to (and devotion to) the 1967 Saturday morning exploits of the FF as presented by Hanna Barbera. 

 

That and Spidey were the definite highlights of those cartoon mornings for me, and it led to me picking out some FF issues off the spinners (which was, no doubt, the hope and expectation of Marvel executives). Oddly, though I recall almost all my old Spidey issues easily, those FF issues are more difficult to pin down. One that I do remember distinctly having was Fantastic Four Annual 6, with Annhilus. I was drawn irresistibly to that swirling red Kirby/Sinnott masterpiece cover. It's still a favorite. Incidentally, that summer had two 'swirly' covers, both of which I picked up- the other being, of course, Spider-Man Annual 5. What a combination those two books made...

 

Years later, when I returned to Marvel after years of Archie exclusivity, the second book I picked up was, again, Fantastic Four. This time it was issue 147, in the heart of the Thomas/Buckler era. And I loved it; making the FF another 'must buy' each month. Oh, and Rich Buckler's Kirbyish art really grabbed me. Yes, it was obvious, but the book looked great., and the stories were classics. Doom and the Surfer, Counter Earth, the Inhumans- just so much good reading.  Thomas, Wein, and Wolfman put together a very solid multi-year run on the title. Yes, there were a few reprints and a few clinkers, but overall the FF held a level of quality few comics could match.

 And returning to art, the FF seemed blessed with solid art for most of it's history. From Kirby to Buscema to Buckler to Perez to Byrne; it was like a Comics Art Hall of Fame! Much as I hated to see Buckler leave the book later on, his replacement by George Perez really eased the pain. Still later, Keith  Pollard did wonderful work on the book, and Seinkewicz was different but interesting.  

 

Then there was John Byrne. He took the Four to heights unseen since the days of Lee and Kirby. Under his auspices the Fantastic Four became my number one favorite; even beating out Spider-man and the X-Men. Which was an accomplishment, believe me. His run on the book, over several years, still stands up as a high point in 80's comics. I look through those books even today and am stunned by how good they were, and are. 

But what about the Fantastic Four themselves? What made them appealing to 7 year old, 14 year old, and 23 year old Redartz? The characters, obviously. "Marvel's First Family", indeed. The series had a feel unlike any other, with that family dynamic guiding the storylines and character development. And the characters- four fascinating ones. Reed, the rather obsessive intellectual. Sue, who grew from a seemingly supportive role to become perhaps the team's strongest and most interesting member. Johnny, the Kid, but with heart (and his terrific 'frenemy' relationship with Spidey). And Ben, wonderful Ben. Ben Grimm may be the greatest, deepest character to arise from the minds of Lee and Kirby. So, so many excellent stories have been focused on him, his frustrations, his conflicts, and his personality. No wonder he trails only Spidey on my list of favorites. 

So there's the reasoning behind my fondness for the Fantastic Four. We'll wind up with a few more eye-catching covers that capture the greatness of the series. So after you feast your collective eyes upon them, let's share our thoughts about all things Fantastic! 

 

 

 

Rank and File: A Comic Art Hall of Fame...

Redartz:  Greetings once again! We're back at it again with a fun poser for you to consider, regarding your favorite comic covers. But first, a quick update for you. 

Several of you have inquired about the circumstances of my power outage and consequent general absence from this space last week. Well, the circuit breaker box on the side of our house literally melted; it's truly miraculous we had no fire. Obviously the power had to be cut, and between awaiting repairs, local safety inspectors and utility officials, we were stuck in the 'dark ages' for about 8 days. Not an experience I'd recommend for anyone, but we made it through. Fortunately the temperatures were mild for the most part. No longer will I take air conditioning and lights for granted!

Anyway, on to our topic. The premise: you have been selected to choose the artwork for a big exhibition. More specifically, this show will showcase comic cover artists throughout the medium's history. And with such a wide possibility of artists to choose from, space allows only 1 cover per artist. So, your task is to pick the artists, and choose a great representative cover for each artist,one that highlights their talent and impact.  As I'm a framer by trade, I'll see that your picks are safely framed, of course! 

Our gallery has several wings, so we can have a section for Golden age, Silver age, Bronze and Modern if you so choose. And while you begin your careful consideration, I'll submit a few nominations to  get the show started. Feel free to improve upon my picks as you see fit. As the week goes on, I'll try to post some more nominees based upon your comments; the better to fill our gallery.  See you at the opening!

My preliminary nominations:

Jack Kirby

Neal Adams

Dave Cockrum

John  Byrne

John Romita, Sr

Barry Smith

Walter Simonson

George Perez

Carmine Infantino

Joe Kubert

More to Come...

A bit late, but here are some of the nominated covers, presented for the appreciation and illumination of one and all. Thanks everyone for each response! And as suggested by our friend HB, you can look forward to seeing 'Hall of Fame Cover' pop up periodically on a single artist basis. Salutations!

Dave Cockrum

Jim Aparo

Steve Ditko

Rich Buckler

Nick Cardy

Mike Ploog

Herb Trimpe

John Byrne

John Buscema

Frank Frazetta

Mike Kaluta

Alan Davis

 

This & That: Our ...Somewhat Less Than Favorite Covers...

Redartz:  Hi folks! Not long ago we did a post about our favorite comic covers. In the interests of balance and full coverage, it seems natural to consider the other side of the coin: covers that, shall we say, didn't light our fires. And this is not to disrespect any particular title or artist; it's just that these covers failed the 'cover would make me buy it' test by a long shot.

First off:  This cover for Avengers Annual 10. For the most part, I like Al Milgrom's work, but this cover is just way too cluttered. All those panels, unevenly spaced. An overabundance of text certainly doesn't help. And this doesn't even address the "Columbia" banner across the top. As great as the interior was, the cover wasn't.

 Next up are two covers from Ross Andru, featuring the banner characters of each of the Big Two. As with Milgrom, I usually like Andru's work. At least, his interiors. Somehow, though, I always felt he lacked something when it came to his covers. On Superman, it just looks blocky- there were numerous such covers about that time. Kind of an uncomfortable viewing angle; good thing Supes wasn't turned a bit or we'd have gotten a Super booty shot. As for Spiderman 157, again we have some rather clunky figures; along with a flat background. Coming during the heyday of John Romita covers, seeing this from Ross was dismaying...

Turning to a couple of my favorite artists, here are examples that just go to show that nobody's perfect. Avengers 162 by George Perez? Not a bad cover, certainly. But as good as he usually is, this seems a bit unremarkable. And the action is difficult to follow; the composition seems rather scattershot. And Ultron looks a bit cartoonish, strangely.

 My other bronze age favorite: John Byrne, of course! But not because of this cover, I'm afraid. Byrne could do wonders depicting Ben Grimm, so what happened here? Fantastic Four 274 is the book, and our rocky friend Ben is the subject. But he almost gets lost amongst the rubble and bricks. Even the Thing's look seems off. Strange, as Byrne provided some fabulous cover art during this same era. Again, nobody's perfect.















Speaking of perfection, many folks would consider Jack Kirby the perfect comics artist. He's always the King in my book, but even he has some clunkers. This cover for Fantastic Four 78 always struck me as off; especially Ben Grimm's human face. That's quite a nose he's got there.  As for his later work, some of it was incredibly cool. However this cover for 2001 issue 2 looks like an ad for Max Factor mascara. Kirby could get pretty loose with some of his later drawing, but this cover was a bit too loose for my tastes. 
 

And how about this cover for Daredevil 69 by Sal Buscema? For one thing, that's a lot of prominent word balloons. Especially distracting against that black background. As for the art itself, Daredevil looks like he bulked up quite a bit. He almost resembles one of Carmine Infantino's famous DC apes. And it's a minor thing, but it bothers me: DD's mask has that sharp black shading, but the rest of the figure just looks flat...

 

And here are some more general cover comments. Photo covers can be quite effective: the classic cover to Submariner 7 for example: Namor looks amazing as John Buscema depicts him rising above the streets. On the other hand, this Spider-Man cover (from ASM 262) just looks a bit cheesy to me. Perhaps it's the combination of hand-rendered art and photography that works for me; the photo alone just lacks punch.

 

 Finally, this cover for Justice League of America 23 (2006 series) exemplifies one of my pet artistic peeves. Specifically, it has no sense of design. It's an over-rendered mess. Fine linework is great, but not when it gets totally lost in Too Much Detail. Everything in this cover mushes together visually, with the exception of the logo and Wonder Woman. And really, I don't mean to be critical, but it is a problem way too common with comic cover art in the modern era. This cover could have been more effective if, say, they took out half the characters and blacked out the background. Then you could actually make out individual figures and actions. It reminds me of my first year drawing class in college: what you leave out is as important as what you put in. 

Okay, I've pontificated enough. I'll turn the mike over to Marti; let's see what he's got for us...
 

Martinex1: Thanks for getting us started Red!  There are a number of comics that rub me the wrong way.  And it is not necessarily because the art is bad, some of my selections will actually be from some of my favorite artists who are definitely superstars.

Martinex1: My first choice in this rather dubious post is for Avengers #228.  Al Milgrom pencilled this piece.  I think the cover would have been one-thousand times better if he actually had Hank Pym in costume.  It is the "Trial of Yellowjacket " after all, and the cover can be symbolic if he doesn't wear his fighting togs in the story itself.  That choice really diminished the cover.  On top of it, I have never liked that Hank is very indistinguishable from Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, and Donald Blake when out of costume (which is probably why those characters are fully suited up in the background).  I believe this should have been corrected by editorial.  This cover just was not good enough.

Martinex1: I really admire John Byrne's art.  He is definitely one of my favorite artists of all time.   I know some people don't like his style, but I have always found him to be an enjoyable and clear storyteller.  I also think that many of his covers are iconic - just take a look at Uncanny X-Men #141 or almost his entire run of Fantastic Four covers.  It is a bucket list type dream to own original cover art from Byrne.  But I would not want to own one of these.  This particular FF cover does nothing for me.  I have commented before that I am really turned off by "civilian" covers when I am looking for super-heroes. It is of course rendered quite well, but thematically it does nothing for me.   This Alpha Flight cover is a miss for me also.  I think the extreme close-up works against the layout - it wants to be "in your face" but it comes across as strange and unshapely.  If he had pulled back just a bit, it may have been more effective.  Having said that though, it may not be the pencil art at all but rather the color that is off-putting.  The pink header does not work well at all against Sasquatch's orange fur and it actually seems to cut off the top of his head.  I am not sure if the whole thing would have looked better if the entire panel was orange.

Martinex1: George Perez is another favorite of mine.  But I have never liked covers that put the characters in a distant shot.  Covers should be bold in my mind; the characters should be larger than life. Something about the size of the characters diminishes the cover for me.  It would have been a perfectly fine internal panel, but for the "marketing" of a story, I thought this was a miss.  This cover is actually famous in a sense as it is well-known that the graffiti on the train car includes the names of many comic creators and co-workers from Marvel.  It is a novelty in a way, but I felt that the touching tribute to his peers actually minimized the action because he needed to pull back to use the space on the train car.   I am torn on this one, but it does not work for me and back in the day I delayed buying this issue from the spinner rack for a long time.

Martinex1: Bob Layton is just fantastic and he had an iconic run on Iron Man along with writer David Michelinie.  I like his work even more now as I have recently been looking back at his key run on the book. Layton also shares some of his work on Twitter, and I always check it our because it is fantastic.  This cover however always seemed rushed because of the strangely proportioned characters.  I know it is supposed to be a forced perspective to indicate the characters "coming at you," but it is just too much.   Wolverine's lower leg is much too large and Spider-Man looks fat.  It always strikes me as weird, like a fun house mirror version of the characters.  I don't like it.

Martinex1: Metal embossed covers never did anything for me.  I found it very hard to see the art.   The Avengers had an intermittent series of this type of cover during the Gatherers story arc.  I preferred the second print  or newsstand versions so that I could actually see the art.  Steve Epting and Tom Palmer were a great team, but I could not even distinguish the characters in the embossed version; the art was just lost.

Martinex1: Archie Comics and Harvey Comics are spectacular and we don't discuss them enough here. And I know you are going to say, "What?  How can you criticize this classic art?"  And I would respond that it is not at all the art that bothers me about these covers.  My beef with these publishers though is that I can never recall what is inside a particular issue because the cover does not tie to the stories.  There are old Archie tales that I remember so fondly.  A beloved cousin gave me a ton of Archie issues when I was little, and after losing them decades ago to childhood wear and tear I wanted to recreate the collection.  It is impossible  For the life of me, I cannot recall a single issue cover to try to source the comics.  I have absolutely no point of reference.  That was never true for super-hero tales back in the Bronze Age.

Martinex1: On the other hand, more modern comics have embraced the poses and poster shots for covers and I hate it.  Take a look at the comics below.  They may indicate what heroes are in the issue (maybe) but there is absolutely nothing about these covers that indicates anything about the story inside.  I really dislike that immensely.  In the future, any collectors will have the same concern with Marvel that I have with Archies and Harveys.  The embracing of these stock shots is misguided I think.

Redartz:  Marti, I so agree with your thoughts about those 'poster shot' covers. Once in awhile is fine, but almost every issue? No, give us some reference to the interior contents to entice us to buy. But hey, it's time for you all to chime in. What do you think about these covers we've chosen, and what covers can you think of that left you cold?