Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery
Panels and Pages… Art and Artists… Creators and Conventions… Musings and Memories…
Chaos War: Dead Avengers #2, February 2011
Tom Grummett delivers a terrific modern homage to John Buscema’s original cover to Avengers # 52 from the “classic” Buscema era.
I’m not sure how you kill a “Dead” Avenger (I never did catch-up to this crossover) but the art is cool regardless.
We continue with our 60th anniversary celebration of the first appearance of the Avengers.
See you Tuesday.
Avengers #68, Cover Re-creation, 2002
Sal Buscema delivers a perfect recreation of his classic cover for Avengers #68 featuring the entire team concerned, shall we say — about the current health of The Vision.
Sal got a lot of mileage of these kinds of group shots. (See Below.)
Apparently, the cover of Marvelmania was actually his tryout piece for the series, and obviously he knocked it out of the park. (No surprise.) One lucky collector owns the original.
That illustration didn’t appear in color until it was used as a pin-up in a Marvel Treasury reprint (Jack Kirby Cover), years later.
Meanwhile, a third similar group shot appeared as a story end page, although we haven’t been able to track down its provenance — yet.
We continue with our 60th anniversary celebration of the first appearance of the Avengers.
See you Friday.
Avengers #44, September 1967
The legendary John Buscema took over the regular art chores on The Avengers a few issues prior to this one, and quickly makes the series his own.
In this second part of the story that introduces the Red Guardian to the Marvel Universe, we present a terrific action page that pretty much captures the melee madness of the cover.
(Spoiler alert: Turns out the Black widow wasn’t really a widow. But, as always, we digress.)
Welcome to the 60th anniversary (!) of the Avengers, who debuted as a team in 1963.
To be continued…
I’m the guest on last week’s Friday (2/3) episode of the terrific comic book industry podcast Dollar Bin Bandits, available on your favorite podcast platform — and on YouTube. (Links below.)
We covered quite a bit of ground: State of the industry, Topps and IDW days, comic book history, gaming and much more.; maybe something for everyone — or at least anyone who cares about these topics.
They picked a “classic” photo for marketing (as seen above — full version on my “About Me” tab), so don’t’ be too surprised if you watch on video, and well, I don’t look exactly the same. (Must have been the lighting.)
Thanks to Oren Phillips and crew for a very enjoyable hour, and an excellent series all around!
https://www.youtube.com/c/DollarBinBandits/videos?app=desktop
Jack Kirby Classic Hulk & Iron Man Mashup, 2012
Here’s a fun mashup of two early Jack Kirby Marvel Silver-Age images: Hulk, from the title splash of Avengers #2, and Iron Man from the cover of Tales of Suspense #39.
About 10-12 years ago, Angel was drawing some Kirby-recreations and original reinterpretations, and offering them online. He included this specific art with some other items I acquired from him, with this inscription. Very lovely, especially since I like to think he was really thanking Jack here, not me.
And I like it better that way.
It’s also the appropriate art to segue into a celebration of the Avengers 60th anniversary, coming in February.
Stay tuned.
Iron Man vs. Magnus: Robot Fighter, Commission, 2012
Mike Allred tackles the Magnus vs. Iron Man theme with great results, including a fully hand-lettered logo!
I acquired both the Paul Smith IM-Magnus commission and this one at the same time, from the same dealer, so I assume the original owner had moved on from this concept.
If there are any others out there that look as good as these two, I would probably try to obtain them as well.
You know where to find me.
Classic Iron Man vs. Magnus: Robot Fighter, Commission, 2001
Mankind advances more than 2000 years into the future, and the greatest superhero of the era apparently can’t distinguish between a robot and a man in a suit of armor?
No matter, it’s a superb piece of art by the terrific Paul Smith. And a perfect way to honor both characters’ 6oth anniversary.
Magnus, Robot Fighter #20, November 1967
Gold Key was never a publisher of choice for me as a kid. It had to be a really slow day at the comics rack, and I had to be flush with cash (meaning a few extra coins) to pick up the one Gold Key title I liked: Magnus Robot Fighter.
Russ Manning’s vision of the future was so clean and pristine that I didn’t much care about the stories, I just loved the art. Beautiful futuristic cities, and crazy badass robots. Oh, and his men and woman were gorgeous. Natural selection had apparently taken leaps and bounds by 4000 AD.
The future looked really bright — minus that whole totalitarian robot situation, of course.
Magnus Robot fighter turns 60 in 2023. 1963 was apparently a good year for armor.
Iron Fist #1(1975) Re-Imagination, 2005
Continuing our Iron Man 60th anniversary series, here’s another great Bob Layton piece.
This time, we have a 2005 re-imagination of Gil Kane’s Iron Fist #1 cover(1974). Bob completely changes the POV of the action, transforming the piece into his own — while still honoring the original.
Since the background equipment is still intact in Bob’s version, lets call it: “One Minute Earlier.”
Iron Man #258.1, July 2013
Iron Man celebrates his 60th anniversary in 2023. (Actually, Tales of Suspense #39 was on the newsstands in December of 1962 with a cover of date of March 1963. But why quibble?)
What better way to honor Shellhead’s anniversary than with a dramatic —and iconic — 2013 title splash from Bob Layton’s (breakdowns by Dave Ross) “variant” story of the Armor Wars sequel.
Bob, with John Romita Jr. and David Michelinie created the original and memorable Armor Wars I in 1987, and a few years later was scheduled to be the solo writer and on the sequel. But… Valiant comics presented Bob an offer he couldn’t refuse, and he jumped ship at Marvel. John Byrne stepped in and wrote the already announced sequel, and then 23 years later, Layton — with Michelinie and Ross — had his chance again to do his own take.
Follow all that?
Don’t worry, if I got anything wrong, Bob will definitely let me know.
Happy Anniversary, Tony Stark.
