Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Category: Original Art and The Artists

Aaron Lopresti — Lost Beauty

Original Art and The Artists

Unused Cover, Sword of Red Sonja: Doom of the Gods #1, October 2007

In an age of variant covers, exclusive covers, incentive covers, et al, sometimes a cover simply gets lost in shuffle.

It happens. (Take it from a former publisher. It definitely happens.)

Case in point: This stunning Red Sonja cover art was scheduled for Sword of Red Sonja: Doom of the Gods #1, got shuffled around and by the time the mini-series was complete, had not been published. I’m sure it didn’t help that another artist turned in a similar composition for a later issue.

I had a chance to catch up with Aaron last month and he thinks it may have appeared in a later trade collection or elsewhere at some point, but he couldn’t swear to it. And neither one of us could find it.

So, unpublished until we hear further. (Bonus points for the Marvel cover paper — all covers look better on that board, even if they weren’t actually produced by Marvel.)

All four published Lopresti covers from the original mini-series.

Frank Thorne — Angels From Hell!

Original Art and The Artists

Red Sonja #10, July 1978

Frank Thorne on Red Sonja? Sign me up. 

It took me a while to acquire a piece of art from his run on the famed female barbarian, but I ended up with a cool one.

To this day, the wildest convention events I have ever personally witnessed were the live performances featuring Red Sonja (Wendy Pini, Linda Behrle, and others) and Frank Thorne playing a wizard: “Sonja and the Wizard.”

They called themselves the “The Hyborian Players.”

It was indeed the 70s. Trippy, dude. Trippy.

Famed talk show host Mike Douglas with Phil Seuling, Wendy Pini as Red Sonja and actor Jamie Farr, July 1977

Reed Crandall — Debt Of Honor

Original Art and The Artists

Valor #3, August 1955

Reed Crandall pencils and inks a terrific page from a Crusades story about honor and betrayal. It appears in one of EC’s final comic books before the company completely exited the 10-cent color periodical business.

The Comics Code may have taken some of the teeth out of the storytelling of EC’s New Direction titles, 

But the art? 

The art remained just… great.

Gil Kane — Bloody Vengeance

Original Art and The Artists

Ring of the Nibelung #2, (The Valkyrie), February 1990

Gil Kane tackles Richard Wagner’s The Ring of The Nibelung opera series (adapted here by Roy Thomas) with dramatic results.

It’s a prestige format series, so Gil employs a large art format, and, unlike the majority of his DC work from this period, it’s primarily pen and ink, as opposed to marker. Therefore, the pages — pretty much all terrific — are collectible and displayable without worrying about the art fading to nothingness.

(Ask anyone — myself included — who has owned a page from either Sword of the Atom mini-series and they can explain further.)

What would Gil himself say about this dynamic page? I’m not exactly sure, but it would begin this way:

“Greg, my boy…”

Mike Machlan — Avengers #2, Redux

Original Art and The Artists

Marvel Fanfare #41, December 1988

Mike Machlan adds his own flavor to the classic match-up of The Avengers vs. the Space Phantom (Avengers #2) in this published pin-up from Marvel fanfare #41. Mike did a few of these classic interpretations as a portfolio in this issue, each with a different inker. (John Beatty provides finishes here.)

I’ve always enjoyed Machlan’s art. I understand that health reasons cut his career short, which, goes without saying, is a terrible shame.

Separately, I’ve gone on record saying that the first four issues of the Avengers are the craziest (in a positive way) and most colorful start to any series in the Silver Age — if not ever:

Issue #1 —The Avengers (Ant-man, Wasp, Thor Iron Man, Hulk) form to fight Loki, and despite Hulk’s reticence they agree to become a team. Wasp provides the name “Avengers.”

Issue #2 — Ant-Man is now Giant-Man, and this time the Space Phantom (instead of Loki) manipulates the Hulk (and the rest of the group) — and after a big fight, ol’ greenskin gets angry and runs-off.

Issue #3 – The remaining Avengers chase after the Hulk and run into the Namor the Sub-Mariner along the way. Iron Man wears new armor, everyone gets into a big fight, and the Hulk runs off. Again. Namor escapes to the sea. Cameos by Spider-man, The X-Men and The Fantastic Four.

Issue #4 — Namor, now really, really angry, starts hurling some icebergs around, and it turns out Captain America is frozen in one of them, although Subby swims off before he can discover that. The Avengers revive Cap (good thing they have a submarine), and after they tussle, and he comprehends he’s been in suspended animation for 20 years, he joins them.

Whew.

John Romita Jr. & Klaus Janson— Heroes Return!

Original Art and The Artists

Thor #1, July 1998

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.

Bob Layton — The New Line-Up!

Original Art and The Artists

Commission, All-Star Squadron #1 Mash-up with Avengers #150 and #151, 2007

Bob Layton has some fun reimagining the cover of DC’s All-Star Squadron #1 (Rich Buckler, artist) as an Avengers “changing of the guard” issue.

Also fun — Bob uses the trade dress for issue #150 (1976) of the Avengers own comic book, a fill in issue that primarily features a reprint of the first major line-up change in issue #16. The actual line-up changes in #151.  

It was clearly all meant to be a single story in #150, but… the dreaded deadline of doom strikes again.

Sal Buscema & Tom Palmer— Day Of The Man-Ape

Original Art and The Artists

Avengers #78, July 1970

Sal Buscema brings us a fantastic panel page featuring an over the top Man-Ape (M’Baku) defeating Black Panther and threatening the entire Avengers team. (Spoiler alert — he’s about to introduce us to the entire original Lethal Legion for the first time on the very next page.)

This issue is from mid 1970 — a classic period, as the Silver Age ends and the Bonze Age begins — and if I couldn’t find the monthly issue of Avengers at my local candy store, I would hunt it down somewhere. 

That, by the way, happened frequently. (Did your comics newsstand care which issues actually came in or sold out? I don’t think mine did.)

My obsession was a great way to get some exercise.

Bonus Page: The first appearance of Grim Reaper’s Lethal Legion.

Tom Grummett — Killing It Like Buscema

Original Art and The Artists

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.

Sal Buscema — Avengers Assembled!

Original Art and The Artists

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.