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!
The legendary Joe Kubert “borrows” from himself to create an iconic cover image; one of the very few to feature both Sgt. Rock and Enemy Ace together.
It’s a beautifully rendered cover, and one my personal favorites.
Kubert’s covers graced so many DC war comics from the 60s through the 90s that occasionally seeing one from another artist is just… incongruous.
And as artist, editor and Publications Director, Kubert’s storytelling insight and eye for talent ensured that many of the interiors were terrific as well.
Ahead of Memorial Day later this month, we’re featuring a number of great pieces of art from DC’s war genre by some truly talented creators.
Stay tuned.
Revisiting an iconic image to craft a new one, more than 20 years later.Check the eyes on both the original cover and the homage.
Sgt. Rock and Enemy Ace make their first appearances years apart in The Silver Age, and DC and IDW create two beautiful original art collections 50 years later.
2019 is somehow the 20th anniversary of Alan Moore’s ABC line of comics at Wildstorm / DC, which included Tom Strong and company.
Seems like only a few years ago that Wildstorm published the first issue of the cool retro-modern Strong, Moore’s obvious love letter to Doc Savage and other pulp heroes. Sprouse’s art was of course perfect for the character designs and storytelling. As noted previously, I’m a big fan of the Sprouse and Story team. (Al Gordon also did a nice job on inks of the earlier issues, but Karl gets my vote anytime Chris is penciling.)
Moore left the regular series shortly before this issue appeared, and in fact, it is “guest-written” by Mark Schultz, and “guest-drawn” by Pascual Ferry. The only Sprouse / Story art in this issue is this terrific cover. (To see it at full-size, check out the amazing and somewhat overlooked America’s Best Comics Artist’s Edition from IDW.)
Moore would team-up one more time with the art duo to wrap up the storyline in the final regular issue (#36), but fortunately for us, Sprouse and Story came back for both mini-series that followed, written by Peter Hogan. (Strong also ultimately appeared in a separate anthology series, Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales, featuring different creative combos.)
Now, of course, the ABC line is dormant and I’m pretty sure the Wildstorm imprint is as well. But Strong and his crew live on for now in the greater DCU, as part of the Terrifics, a quirky multi-verse title. Still, it is definitely worth revisiting the original 36 issues and the spin-off appearances.
Here’s an original to help us celebrate the 80th anniversary of Batman (I know, we said we were finished with that series… but this time we mean it!) and the 35th anniversary of the Teenage Mutant Turtles, launched in 1984.
Kevin Eastman was inspired to create this Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns homage during the first DC / IDW crossover between Batman and the Teenage Mutant Turtles. No surprise, as Kevin cites Miller and Jack Kirby as inspirations for his and Peter Laird’s original TMNT. The piece wonderfully captures the grittiness and weariness of Miller’s Batman; and Michelangelo as Robin? Mad genius. Everyone at both companies loved it.
But the art was formally submitted for approval a bit late in the game — after all the retailer variants and exclusive covers for that series had been determined and solicited, so it missed series one.
Flash forward to series two and three (2017 and 2019) — and now the DC retailer variant program has been virtually eliminated, and there is no logical place for the piece to appear as a cover. Sigh.
That third series is wrapping up now, and I’m assuming there will be collection of all three in a deluxe format at some point. Maybe this piece will appear as a bonus; I think fans would love to see it, and selfishly, I would love to see a color version.
As for how TMNT came to crossover with Batman in the first place? That’s a great tale, but one for another day.
The iconic Miller image from Dark Knight Returns and… An original art gift from Frank Miller To DC EditorJulie Schwartz in honor of his 75th birthday, 1990. I love it, but not as much as Kevin’s take on his own Dynamic Duo.
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents 50th Anniversary Special (IDW), July 2015
No one today pulls off a tribute to the great Wally Wood quite like the very talented Andrew Pepoy.
To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents, IDW Publishing asked Andrew to illustrate a cover variant – an homage to the iconic Wood EC cover, Incredible Science Fiction #29. For our version, we substituted Wood’s astronaut with the sexy and villainous Iron Maiden, one of the main adversaries in Wood’s original T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents.
The detail is terrific (especially noticeable in its original B&W form), and while no one can actually replicate Wally Wood, this might be as close as it gets. Home run!
Walter Simonson’s The Mighty Thor: Artist’s Edition HC, Original Art Cover
Editor/Original Art expert Scott Dunbier brought his Artist’s Edition idea to IDW Publishing, and the rest as they say, is history. In 2011, Walter Simonson’s groundbreaking Thor run became the very first of the many Marvel Artist’s Editions in this extraordinary series. (And the second IDW Artist’s Edition overall, following Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer the year prior.)
Scott also had the wild idea to do actual original art covers of these original art reprint books on a super-limited basis, and Walter went along with it. These are not “sketch” covers, but rather very nicely detailed individual pencil and ink full-figure drawings of Thor done on blank cover variants. Walter only did about 10 of these — 15 at the most.
The only drawback — I can’t think of any way to frame it. (It’s also the heaviest piece of original art I own. Artist’s Editions are not light, but that is definitely the textbook definition of a first world problem…)
