Marking the 10th anniversary of the Death and Return of Superman, Dan Jurgens and Bill Sienkiewicz tackled a four-issue retrospective mini-series titled, appropriately, Day of Doom.
Bill’s unmistakable inks make the situation even more horrific this second time around. (This is one of the best pages in the series, as it features all four Superman characters who “returned.”)
Happy Halloween indeed — and welcome to the 30th anniversary of the Death of Superman.
Dan Jurgens drawing seven different Supermen on one splash page? Absolutely terrific.
I’ve lost the thread on the DC multiverse. Is it infinite these days or finite? Do all versions exist simultaneously, or at different points in the timeline?
It doesn’t really matter. As a long-ago former CEO of mine would say, this kind of pondering can make you reach for the Excedrin.
(And, trust me on this, he had the largest bottle of Excedrin I’ve have seen to this day. It must have been a special order. But, as always, we digress.)
Fun fact: In Dan’s and inker Norm Rapmund’s original art, the Superman just to the left of “our” Superman, looks a bit like Jimmy Olsen to me. The coloring clearly modified the face in the published version.
A long time ago, in continuity far, far away, Chewbacca apparently does not make it to the conclusion of the Star Wars Saga.
And the classic team of Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway beautifully illustrate this mournful moment in a rare departure from their more common DC team-ups.
I realize we can be broken records about this, but the coloring obviously doesn’t do the art true justice. It might look good on a computer screen, but as for the final printed version… not so much.
This was a DF exclusive to this Dark Horse comic published in 2000.
Of course any storyline that Chewbacca died flies out the window with all the other post Return of The Jedi continuity, once Disney purchases Lucasfilm and declares all the previous “cannon,” non-canonical.
Which is good for Chewie, of course, but not necessarily the rest of the Star Wars Saga.
(As a side note, Marvel has indeed done some terrific comics since reacquiring the license. But tossing out 30 years of stories, in comics and novels, some of them quite excellent… well… I have no words.)
Domination Factor: Fantastic Four #1and #2, December 1999
Dan Jurgens has some fun with time travel in this clever interlocking mini-series featuring the FF and The Avengers.
The part of the story that takes place in the contemporary era (1999) sees Dan storytelling in his traditional artistic style. But when time travel is involved, Dan and inker Bob McLeod purposely ape Jack Kirby. (And Joe Sinnot.) As you can see from the pages below, Dan and Bob re-do the top panel from FF 94, 30 years prior. And then the story takes a turn — literally — as The Thing realizes that Dr. Strange’s time spell has worked.
Bonus points: The pages are hand-lettered by the talented John Costanza. Although John came on board at Marvel too late to work on the original Lee and Kirby Fantastic Four run, he did in fact letter the Lee and Kirby “reunion” Silver Surfer graphic novel. Close enough in my book to at least earn a no-prize.
Dan Jurgens delivers a dynamic and powerful splash of Captain America fighting the hordes of Hydra. Whenever I look at this page, I’m reminded of Jim Steranko’s great double page spreads of Cap in action against similar — or — greater odds.
Dan’s splash is not a swipe — and possibly not even a purposeful homage — but its energy captures the spirit of that great Steranko run.
This is the part where I should swipe Stan Lee and say “Nuff said, “ except I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the other main figure on the page who appears at first glance to be The Red Guardian.
He is not. He is, in fact, “Protocide,” an early super soldier experiment retconned into Cap’s continuity — and pretty much retconned out, after the Jurgens run ended.
Now I can say it:
“Nuff Said.”
Steranko’s great splashes always had Cap in mid-air, performing improbable acrobatics against impossible odds!
Continuing our celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Justice Society of America, with each new post featuring a different classic JSA character.
Today’s riddle: What do comic art collectors miss the most that comic book editors and publishers miss the least?:
A: Word balloons on the art board themselves.
Digital lettering is an amazing boon for comic book production, and a disappointment for many art collectors, myself included.
If you work in the editorial department, of course, no one misses the endless FedEx packages trafficking from penciller to letterer to inker, and back. Ugh.
But… the art boards themselves feel less complete without them. These are, after all, comic book pages. Comic books are pictures AND words.
Modern comic book original pages are analogous to silent films. If the visuals communicate well enough, you can interpret the storytelling without words. (And there shouldn’t be too much of that anyway. But I digress.)
Which finally gets us to this page by the great Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund. Superman is about to break the neck of fellow hero Wildcat, while Maxwell Lord looks on gleefully.
Pretty easy to figure out that Superman is either under some sort of mind control — or he’s not Superman at all. (Spoiler alert, it’s the former, and Wildcat survives.)
This is a great splash from a great art team on a great series. As mentioned in a previous post, I’m definitely a fan of this run of Booster Gold, which ended perhaps a bit prematurely because of “The New 52” reboot in 2010.
First appearance of Wildcat in Sensation Comics #1(January 1942), plus earliest appearances in the Silver Age in Brave and Bold and The Spectre.
Part five of a multi-part series celebrating Batman’s 80th birthday.
Booster Gold goes back in time to save Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) from being crippled as depicted in Alan Moore’s classic Killing Joke. Of course it doesn’t work, and of course, this being a Booster Gold comic, things go from bad to worse. Batman (at this point in the timeline, Dick Grayson) is none too happy.
Jurgens wrote much of this Booster Gold series, and he plays to his own specific artistic skills and interests. I enjoy the storytelling here, as well as the expression on Booster’s face, a combination of dismay and disappointment as he explains his failure to Batman. And extending Batman’s “ears” into the upper panel is a clever and splashy touch.
The New 52 reboot ended this series a few years later, which was unfortunate. It combined action and wit (and mind-bending time paradoxes) avoiding outright camp or satire while providing a joyful and thoughtful ride through the DC time stream.
It’s the Avengers vs. the Destroyer in this great action page from the first issue of the underrated reboot of the Thor mythos. Dan Jurgens wrote the series and John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson provided the visual storytelling for the launch.
Cool bonus feature: Both artists signed the page the year the issue was published.
Marvel definitely floundered after the Image exodus in 1991, but by the late 90s stated putting the comic book pieces back together as evidenced here and in the launch of the Marvel Knights imprint, produced by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti. The Ultimate universe came along a few years later, and the rest, as they say is history.
Continuing our celebration of the Fastest Man Alive with a few classic “re-runs” — pun absolutely intended— from the early days of the blog. Today’s post is part two, of the genre within a genre, “The Flash of Two Worlds.”
Two legends team up, and tell the tale of two legends teaming up.
This fabulous story page comes to us courtesy of DC Universe Legacies, a 10-part 2010 series written by the late Len Wein that provides an overview of DC history (in contemporary continuity) through the eyes and life story of a one man. The series features an all-start line-up of DC art talent including Joe Kubert, Jerry Ordway, Dan Jurgens and many others.
The page here, showing the Flashes meeting for the first time, contains retroactive continuity (retcon), as both characters exist in the same universe — which is the established “post-Crisis” narrative. Also, in the original Flash #123, the Flashes have already met and teamed up when they get to the construction worker.
Garcia Lopez and Gibbons are a terrific pairing, and I was fortunate enough to find this great page before someone else did.
