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!
San Diego Comic-Con, July 24-28, 2024
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.
San Diego, July 19-23, 2003
So good to see San Diego Comic Con as close to a “regular” event as possible…It’s been much too long!
Part two tomorrow!
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.
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.
