Quick Look: Hulk Special #1 Cover by Jim Steranko

While i'm on this Adams and Steranko kick, I wanted to share one of the most iconic images from that era, one that has gotten lost over the years as time has marched by. Steranko's Hulk cover was an astonishing design, with the integration of the logo into the artwork, and the fact that Hulk's head is really too large for his body. But it works, and it works beautifully since it allows the expression to be read better at this size, a triumph of getting the artwork to fit the message rather than be a slave to any one master (such as pre-designed proportions).

It isn't a wonder that Stan gave Jim all this freedom when it came to his work at Marvel, after all, he was looking at the stuff and knew that Steranko was on that enviable upward curve where the artwork experiences rapid leaps almost every month. What I don't get is how he didn't realize how Jim getting the writer credit and freedom to experiment would hurt Kirby. That lack of emapthy was a huge miscalculation at best, or a huge blind spot at worst. I suspect the latter.

Sneak Peek: The Carnival - One Last Note, Before I Go

Yes, bad blogger, no question. I'll try to get better. But in the meantime, I've hard at work at the next Carnival story, trying to get it done in time for this year's APE in San Francisco. Just wanted to put up a small peek at the front cover, sans color. You'll see the small thumbnail, worked out with marker, as well as the finished art. comments appreciated of course.

I'll try to post more art this week!

In Review Of: Jim Starlin - A Life In Words and Pictures

This is an interesting book to be reviewing, given that its finally a retrospective by one of the two major influences in my artistic life. Starlin and Gulacy were to the two men who really changed my life by providing art and stories that I was dying to try and compete with. The irony, of course, is that you'll never top those formative stories. They tend to take on far greater significance in your head than just being issue #30, or #40.

Now, having worked with Gulacy on and off since 1996, I have less issue with making comments on his work. I guess having pages that i inked included in his art book gives me the chance to be making those comment for a place of knowledge.

Starlin, on the other hand, is a whole different kettle of cosmic fish. We've met a few times, but he wouldn't remember me from any other artist/fan, so I've no other connection with him other than continuing to read over his work on the periods that i've enjoyed. I was looking forward to a "Behind the Music" approach to some of my favorite comics. What i got with this book, both fed that desire, but also left me terribly hungry for more. I'll be curious to see if other Starlin-ophiles like my buddy Alex Sheikman feel the same.

Gems to be found here: Jim admitting that we started the whole Thanos story with a bunch of characters in mind and nothing resembling a plot. That Roy Thomas wanted Captain Marvel to have the glittering trail behind him. He added the guest stars on the book (Iron Man and the Avengers) on a whim. He demanded to have a say over the inkers on Captain Marvel and the resulting demand got him off the book.

And now the quibbling on my part: We are treated to a number of panels of artwork and even full pages being reproduced here, but very little original artwork. Now, i know that after all this time the art has been long since sold, but lets look at who this book is for. Not the casual fan. No, this book is entire for the long devoted, cosmic cube loving Starlin fan. So why print a number of panels that we already know and love and give us more original art to look at? The only original of the entire Captain Marvel run reproduced here is the cover for #30, which Jim sold only recently. And its the size of a postage stamp. Why not put the call out to the artistic community? I alone could have provided a print read version of three different pages from issue #30, including two splash pages. I've seen the unaltered cover for issue #29, Jim's original version without the Romita head. Why isn't that in there, as large as could be? (The original artwork for Captain Marvel is concentrated primarily in the hands of about about 6 individuals, and we're all fairly well known, it wouldn't have been that hard.)

And why is there a ton of art from the late 1970's printed before the chapter on Captain Marvel 1973-1974? It comes at exactly the wrong point in the book. Its out of chronology and even messes up the narrative flow of the text.

Warlock fairs better, with a couple of great scans of original art, and a more precise storyline of exactly how working with Marvel went on that series. What is missing is a dissection of just how the Universal Church of Truth came from his being in a strict Catholic school growing up, and how the inventive time travel story ending came about. Its a deep storyline, one with more emotional gravitas and thought than most superhero stories. I guess that i'd love to hear Jim go deeper into the work.

Metamorphosis Odyssey comes off better here than it did at the time in the Epic books, I think partly because the art isn't a complete and utter muddle in the printing, and it comes off less as "The Grand Artistic Statement" and more as someone stretching out and trying something new.

Another gem: Jim dislocated his finger playing volleyball and had to tape a felt tip pen to his hand to ink the book. Which is why it looks different. And why the originals have all turned blue and purple over time. And that the book was part of the game changers on royalties to artists. As was Dreadstar.

Jim goes on to delineate any number of other projects over the next 20 years, many I'd seen, and some that i hadn't, but i won't spoil your chance to dig into the book for yourself. Certainly it does an excellent job of spelling out the much more of the editorial insanity that continually pushed Jim away from comics, or completely scuttled series that would have been worth reading. Why? No idea other than it was something that i saw in the comics industry every damn day taht i worked there. Now, this is just Jim's side, and he is nothing is not at opinionated figure, which was presented to me when i showed him a portfolio of work back in '89 or '90 and he told me in fairly straight forward terms to keep my day job. Always.

Jim makes the point of saying on page 294 that he doesn't want to come off "like a bitter old man, ranting about all the things that went wrong with his final job in commercial comics", but after a while it hard to make excuses for why so many creative people constantly have to do interviews to explain how editorial messed up their most recent project. I have no problem believing Jim when he writes, "There was no longer any fun in the job (working for Marvel or DC)." And that's so sad.

Jim came in when comics were chaos, and an ex-viet nam vet who would still get drunk or loaded could go home and create a bunch of crazy fun shit that has clearly stood the test of time. And that time is long since past. Rock and Roll has moved on.

I appreciate the reprint of more obscure short stores in the back, at least one that i hadn't seen. And I like the few pages of proposals that didn't go through as well. I suppose that none of the sketches from back in the day could have been used to round out the pages from earlier in Jim's career. Are there no long lost sketches from Captain Marvel or Warlock for us to check out? No old script pages? Nothing else to let us peak behind the curtain? After all, we're the die hards; we'd appreciate stuff like that.

And, unlike many other popular comics figures, Jim's best work deserves that level of dissection. At his best, Jim posed philosophical questions of his villians, and existential queries about not just his heroes but all his protagonists. He used off-handed Kirby creations like the cosmic cube in throughly creative ways, and did so in a time when the use of corporate comics as a means of personal expression was becoming the norm for the young mavericks of the 1970's. The proof of Jim's genius is rooted in the fact that there have been very few legitimate additions to the cosmic pantheon of Marvel that haven't been branched off of Jim's ideas. With two failing heroes, Jim created a storm of ideas around them. Ideas that are still being traded off even today.

Soul Gem? Check. Titan, a hollow moon of Jupiter? Check. Cosmic awareness? Check. Thanos. Gamora. Pip. Infinity Gems. Inbetweener. Chaos. Order.

Thanos. Villian who didn't want to knock over banks. No, he worshipped Death. Try saying that over in your head a few times. He was Darkseid done better.

I'd have loved for Jim to address some of his own, reportedly, dissatisfaction with his art, and his switch to writing in the 1980's. What prompted his change in style? Other than Kirby and Ditko, who else influenced his early art? The change of only doing pencils instead of inks in the mid-1980's? Who got him to have the vast majority of his characters constantly ready to pounce? Where did this delicate inking style on his book plate illustrations come from? Inquiring minds want to know on a $50 book.

i've been meaning to do an appreciation post on Starlin, as i had Gulacy for the blog. As a nice history piece. Perhaps this will be a good push to do that. In the meantime, this is one fun book. And while shorter on substance that i would have liked, I still enjoyed it quite a bit, even if it wasn't quite the behind the scenes look that I would have loved.

Changing up Studio Yoakum

Spent a little time to change up the wall in Studio Yoakum. here is a quick pic of the wall o' artwork after changing out the art in the frames. Now up are:

- A George Perez/Pablo Marcos page from Avengers #167

- A two page spread from Sandman Mystery Theatre by Guy Davis

- the final page of Wardancer #3 by Weiss and myself

- A Rusty and the Big Guy sketch from Darrow

- an Invisibles page by Fegredo

- an old Iron Man page by Tuska and Johnny Craig

Inking page 19 of The Human Hourglass as we speak. Almost done!

For Olivia: Do Something!

My youngest daughter threw the blank 8.5x11 paper at me with the title (in her mind) Do Something! so I whipped up a strip over breakfast about our usual breakfast time during school.

I'm not the average house husband, but i usually do the morning ritual, this the pretty damn true to life. Olivia cracked up when i gave the artwork back to her.

Enjoy.

What Do You Do: the Holy Grail Artwork

I just had the interesting experience of being offered a piece of artwork via email.

No, not just a piece of artwork. One of those "grail" pieces. You know the kind, the ones that you've stared at the printed page at for so many years that you've memorized the very contours of the ink lines, noted the areas where the color went off register (damn cheap 4-color printing), actually dreamed about the day when you might discover the page sitting, with no one aware of its true value, at an estate sale somewhere, next to the old china. Except those things don't happen anymore.

Except that, in this economy, you never know who may or may not have over-extended himself buying things. And collectibles are certainly assets. And a certain number of these assets, the more valuable ones, many times never hit ebay or heritage. Many times they're traded or sold silently through a network of traders and collectors that all know each other.

So I'm offered this page... and it is quite out of my price range. In the same number of thousands of dollars more than i can spend as when i saw the Starlin cover and splash that are on the short grail list. And I had to turn him down, but not without doing a quick inventory of artwork and assessing with both my gut and my wallet, in that way that we collectors do, what i might be willing to sell to make that happen. And it was touch and go as to whether I let go of a Starlin splash to get this one, or an early Dringenberg, or... we'll I decided against it. But it was an offer, and I was happy, if literally for this one chance in my life, to get the opportunity to own it.

After 20 years of lusting for it, I can at least put it in the column of ones that you had to let get away.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Who?

In the middle of working on a new commission piece.

I literally think that this is the first time that I've drawn Spider-Man since i was about 10 years old.

And I actually remember the costume without reference. Scary.

New Artwork for August

Not a whole lot to say, some new artwork to look at. Inspired by the paperback book covers of the 1950s. Click for a larger version!

Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and the Spider-Man Originals Redux

Having read both the comments on my original post, along with the others were listed below heidi macdonald's link to my post, i stand convinced that Stan would not have been to donor of the amazing Fantasy #15 artwork. Having unfairly implicated him, I publicly retract some of my original comments/accusations.

This leads me to something that I've thought about posting for a long time, but simply haven't made the time to do: talk about the infamous warehouse that Marvel stored their artwork in. Its more than urban myth, but some of the story is worth bringing out. Watch for the fallout on this one.

And, for the record, just like with the Lee/Ditko piece, i'd rather get something wrong but get the discussion going so that the truth can either come out (or at least dispel rumors) along the way.

Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and the Spider-Man Originals

I am sure that most of us had the chance to see this little tidbit of information from the Library of Congree blog:

“Spider-senses” all around the Library were set tingling when we learned that the Library had just acquired 24 pages of original 1962 drawings from “Amazing Fantasy #15,” which marked the first time the world’s most famous web-slinger, Spider-Man, would appear in print anywhere. The Spider-Man origin story in “Amazing Fantasy” was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko; the pages are Ditko originals, complete with pencil erasures and white-out opaquing fluid.

and this bit on the actual donation and number of pages:

In a deed of superheroic proportions, an anonymous donor has given the Library of Congress the original artwork by Steve Ditko for Marvel Comics' "Amazing Fantasy #15" -- the comic book that introduced Spider-Man in August 1962.

This unique set of drawings for 24 pages features the story of the origin of Spider-Man along with three other short stories -- also written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko -- for the same issue: "The Bell-Ringer," "Man in the Mummy Case" and "There Are Martians Among Us."

While I'm missing the attribution, it has been said that the donor asked Steve Ditko's blessing before making the donation, so the question is, who is the donor? Or should we say, who isn't the donor? And I certainly, with no other information other than real, true fanboy supposition, have to say: is there anyone in the world other than Stan Lee that could be the donor?

Lets use a little logic here. Artwork from that era is rare, and having an entire story together speaks volumes over who might have had their hands on the originals. Fantastic Four pages from a similar time frame have hardly shown up even after Jack's death, and when they do, they are split up and scattered across the world.

Who do we know that was around the office back then? Stan, Jack, Steve Ditko, Flo Steinberg in the office, Sol Brodsky in production, letterers like Artie Simek who would have worked in the bullpen. From the interviews, its hard to see Martin Goodman or any of the other Goodman family like his son Chip being there to get their hands on it. Most of these folks are dead, so we have to cross them off the list.

Who would have the motive to donate artwork like that, artwork that is worth a huge amount, potentially millions of dollars? We would have to posit that it was someone who was financially well off, someone who didn't need the money. In all that we know, Stan is well set up in a way that Jack and Steve never were and never would be. He was the company man for years and years, and has his name on all these properties, and I doubt that that has come cheap in his contracts. Plus, we know that he had a contract to get a piece of the films. Yes, the films.

What would be the motive about the donation? What would Stan have to gain by this? In his case, reputation. While Jack and Steve were marginalized over the years by Stan the Man while Stan was still at the helm, even ceremonially, of Marvel, time has done some interesting things to this particular legacy. Jack Kirby has literally been taken from obscurity at the end of his career and HERBIE the robot to being revered as a pop culture icon by multiple books and magazines. Stan, essentially, has been marginalized by those who have taken up Jack's torch and been carrying it since his debacle with the Marvel artwork return. Spider-Man is the one main bit of the Marvel pantheon that isn't Stan and Jack. Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Silver Surfer and all the rest - we could see them as proof of Jack's creative legacy.

Don't talk to me about Doctor Strange. This is Spider-Man. And this is Stan and Steve. This is Stan confirming his legacy outside of Jack Kirby. And with the Library of Congress donation there is both a certain level of legitimacy and immorality granted.

There really isn't any one else that could have had the chance to get their hands on the complete book. So why doesn't Stan come forward and simply admit that he wanted to donate the original issue for national posterity? Perhaps for the same reason that he wouldn't want to admit that he has some of the other artwork from the beginnings of the Marvel universe. When the pencillers and inkers signed the backs of their checks, they forfeited their rights to the work. But I doubt that Stan ever had to sign such a check. How much of a legal grey area is that artwork in? How much claim to that artwork could the former and current corporate owners have?

Until I hear differently, or other information comes to light, I'll be happy to assume that Stan is the one that made the donation. And while I'm not really sure that it changes my idea about him or his legacy, all I can say is this: as an artist, and a comic book fan, I've very glad that the artwork still exists and in good form. While I doubt that I'll ever get the chance to see it personally, I love knowing that those pages are out there, or at least in there.

Edit 5/21/08: If you direct linked here, then click here for the follow up post.