Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery
Panels and Pages… Art and Artists… Creators and Conventions… Musings and Memories…
Action Comics # 855, October 2007
Geoff Johns, Richard Donner and Eric Powell creating a multi-part Bizarro story?
Sign me up.
Spoiler alert: It’s absolutely terrific — fun and affectionate — start to finish. Powell knocks the art out of the park. Many mainstream superhero readers tracked down Powell’s Goon series after they saw this.
You can bet the farm — Kent’s or otherwise — on that.
One final time — Happy Halloween, 2024!
Criminal Macabre / The Goon: When Freaks Collide #1, July 2011
If the 60s “comic chase movie poster” can be considered its own category, Jack Davis and Frank Frazetta owned it.
Eric Powell pays a loving tribute to these classic posters — and both artists — with his terrific painted wraparound cover for the one-shot crossover, Criminal Macabre / The Goon: When Freaks Collide. (2011). (Instead of actors, we get monsters and creatures. Seems like a win.)
Davis continued to illustrate film posters using his trademark caricature style until most movie marketing materials employed photography. Frazetta though was later hired instead for his painted fantasy flair. Today, of course, illustrated poster efforts have all but disappeared. Somewhere along the way, styles changed, and the ever-frugal Hollywood execs decided that $20 million for an actor made sense, but a few thousand bucks for marketing art is a bridge too far.
Sigh. We are all poorer because of it.
Happy Halloween —all month long!
The Goon #13, July 2005
Jaws is one of my favorite films.
Probably top 5 if I really think about it.
In fact, anyone who knows me well, knows that I have a tradition of watching the film every year around the July 4 Holiday. (The film takes place in “real” time from about June 28-July 7.)
And of course, as discussed previously, I’m a big fan of Eric Powell and The Goon.
So, a page featuring the Goon vs. “Jaws”? A no-brainer. (Ok, just a regular ‘ol aggressive shark, but still…)
My friends who are also super fans of both Jaws and Powell’s art — a bigger group than you might imagine — are also impressed.
Be careful at the beach, everyone. Last thing we need is a panic on the Fourth of July.
Secret Wars Too, #1, January 2016
Eric Powell brings his offbeat sensibility to the good doctor in this two-page gag story featured in a Secret Wars parody comic.
I acquired this page directly from Eric at SDCC a few years back, and apparently the other page had just sold to another lucky purchaser.
Missed it by that much.
(Full two-pager presented below.)
Incredible Hulk #22, January 2001
Welcome to Day 8 of “12 Days of Hulk.”
My favorite version of the Hulk the last 35 years or so?
Mr.Fixit, of course. The gang enforcer you, absolutely, positively don’t want to mess with.
That “character” pretty much disappeared when Peter David left the Hulk title, but he makes a comeback here courtesy of Paul Jenkins and the criminally (pun intended) underrated Kyle Hotz.
And Eric Powell on inks? Count me in, of course.
Strange tales #134, July 1965
The Human Torch and Thing buddy comedies of the early 60s come to an end in this cool penultimate page by Bob Powell and Wallace Wood.
Torch solo stories started in Strange Tales #101 (hey, it worked in the Golden Age) and within a few years, the Thing was added to the strip as well. An ever-changing group of creators, and frankly, some second-rate stories and villains, didn’t apparently do much for sales, and our Fantastic two get bumped by Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. in the very next issue.
Meanwhile, this amusing story features time travel, The Watcher, Merlin the Magician, and Kang the Conqueror, who is apparently about to play an important role in the MCU. (It’s only his third appearance as “Kang” at this point, following two run-ins with the Avengers.)
Because I love time travel stories I can forgive all of it — except maybe Powell and Wood’s execution of the Thing. They are not alone though in rocky renditions of Ben Grimm. Flipping through these old Strange Tales stories, very few artists other than Jack Kirby seemed to figure out how to successfully make anatomic sense of a character made from rocks.
It’s clobberin’ time, indeed.
Action Comics #857, December 2007
Our ode to Halloween and the creatures that often inhabit the comic book pages continues…
Bizarro Doomsday, at the bidding of Bizarro Lex Luthor, destroys the newly created members of the Bizarro Justice League.
Huh?
Trust me, it’s a wild ride. You just have to read it for yourself. Written by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner (Yes, that Richard Donner), the three-part story unravels (er, unfolds) in graphite, ink and wash-tone in perfect fashion by Eric Powell.
Donuts not included.
Goon, Vol. 2, #4 (Albatross), April 2003
Here’s a great Goon splash page from Eric Powell, cool sound effect included.
We’ve previously discussed a tremendous appreciation for Powell’s art, but I also have tremendous respect for him as entrepreneur.
He’s come pretty much full circle recently as he returned to independent publishing after spending many years under the Dark Horse umbrella.
When Eric launched Goon, he published a handful of issues with Avatar, but, dissatisfied with that arrangement, he ultimately independently published the series after a brief try out at Dark Horse that didn’t result in a Goon publishing offer.
After a few issues, however, Dark Horse realized they had made an error in editorial Judgment, and brought the Goon on board.
That relationship ended in 2018, and Eric once again, turned to the independent route under his own publishing banner, Albatross.
It takes willpower, discipline and much more to hit your creative deadlines while simultaneously working through the labyrinth of publishing details — production, printing, distribution, etc. But as far as I can tell, Mr. Powell is doing just fine, thank you.
If you ever have a chance to hear him give a marketing presentation for Albatross, don’t pass it up.
I’ve seen a few, and they range from “just” very funny — to downright hilarious.
Will Eisner’s The Spirit # 11, 2016
Concluding our celebration of the 80th anniversary of The Spirit, with additional creators’ takes on the beloved and influential character.
Looks like the Spirit forgot to beware the Ides of March.
Matt Wagner brought the Spirit back to life for Dynamite in 2015 with an ongoing series. Although Matt drew the cover for the first issue, the amazing Eric Powell created many of the rest of the main covers, including this terrific one.
I first discovered The Spirit via the over-sized, black & white reprints from Warren Publications in the mid 70s. I was bowled over by Eisner’s artistry and sophisticated use of sequential narrative but also by the enormous emotional punch these stories seemed to pack into a brief seven pages. Whether it was humor, romance, pathos or irony, I found a depth of character and resonance that seemed to be missing from the mainstream comics of the day. I can honestly say The Spirit changed my perceptions of a comics creator and made me consciously aware of the artistry involved in rendering these tales. I’m a comics artist and writer today because of Will Eisner and The Spirit.
— Matt Wagner, quoted in the Westfield Comics Blog
Marvel Monsters: Where Monsters Dwell #1, December, 2005
Continuing a two-week series celebrating Halloween with the best in monsters, mystery and mayhem.
Marvel Comics has only recently fully embraced its monstrous heritage; giant creature stories that dominated its publishing line just prior to the “Marvel Age of Comics.”
When it came to oversized behemoths (home grown or alien) terrorizing Earth’s inhabitants, no one could hold a candle to these giant-size oddballs from 1959 -1963.
And I do mean odd: Oog, Orrgo, Ulvar, Rombu, Rorrg, Goom —and his offspring Googam (I kid you not) — are only a few of the dozens of beasts, lizards, robots, and aliens that walked the earth. (And of course, our pal Groot from Guardians Galaxy was originally a planet-wrecking alien conqueror way back in 1960.)
Obviously inspired by the pop culture of the day (Godzilla, et al) Stan Lee, along with co- creators Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers Larry Lieber and others, took a monster-sized football and ran with it.
Eric Powell created all four covers for this series of modern one-shots in 2005, plus he provided interior art for the Devil Dinosaur issue. I’ve shared my thoughts about Eric previously. The creator of the Goon is a terrific talent, and his art style blends reverence and satire perfectly on these covers.
The Where Monsters Dwell issue specifically features three main characters: Bombu, Monstrollo and Manoo. The covers of their original appearances, along with Eric’s three other covers, are shown below.
