If you can put aside the flagrant racism sprawled all over this Alex Schomburg CAPTAIN AMERICA cover, it’s another excellent example of the sort of piece that he routinely generated during the golden age of comics. The sheer number of actions and details is staggering, in that none of them repeat. Cap both machine guns … Continue reading Great Covers – CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #38
A much emulated Jack Kirby cover, this THOR image is the earliest example I can find of one hero holding the dead body of somebody else (though the pose comes out of classical sculpture and painting.) The deep purple background sets a somber mood, but the white glow around the figures silhouettes them perfectly and … Continue reading Great Covers – THOR #127
For whatever reason, comic book publishers in the 1970s seem to have favored cluttered covers, packed to the gills with blurbs and copy, often to the detriment of the artwork, which was forced into a tiny space. This AMAZING ADVENTURES cover by P. Craig Russell suffers from this, yet the drawing is so delicate and … Continue reading Great Covers – AMAZING ADVENTURES #39
Another Kirby. No story in the world is going to live up to the potentials imagined by this cover image. It’s also an early example of Stan Lee’s hyperbolic cover copy, albeit in a restrained way. It’s a bit dicey to refer to your own work as a ready-made classic, after all–though Stan could usually … Continue reading Great Covers – TALES TO ASTONISH #34
Let’s talk about Jack Kirby for a moment. Kirby is pretty much the greatest creative force in comics. But as a cover artist, his efforts could be a bit uneven. Now, he did some marvelous covers, but also his share that were cluttered, oddly-composed or just ineffective. Given the number of covers he produced over … Continue reading Great Covers – THOR #155
A classic SILVER SURFER cover by John Buscema. Everything works on this one. The diagonal composition draws your eye down tot he waiting Thor on the lower left while emphasizing the Surfer’s speed and trajectory. The deep background color makes the characters pop while providing an appropriate space-y environment.
Over time, we’re almost certainly going to be seeing a lot of Alex Schomburg on this site. Schomburg was the pre-eminent cover artist for Timely/Marvel in the 1940s, and also provided covers to several other outfits. His pieces, like this one, were routinely jam-packed with visual information, intricate dances of controlled chaos and energy. Almost … Continue reading Great Covers – CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #37
This is maybe the most 1980s cover ever produced, one that tapped into the zeitgeist of the times (and also killed a proposed DAREDEVIL animated series then being shopped.) It’s a killer image, and it demands your attention. In those days, it was rare to see a super hero using a gun, and the extreme … Continue reading Great Covers – DAREDEVIL #184
This X-MEN cover by Jack Kirby is a nice piece of art, but it’s really the coloring that kicks it into the stratosphere as a great cover. That strong monochromatic red will stand out like a beacon among other covers on the racks and gives the impression of danger, of heat. There are just enough … Continue reading Great Covers – X-MEN #17
Quite often, it’s the coloring that will take an ordinary cover image and make it into something extraordinary. This Jack Kirby SGT FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS cover was in all likelihood colored by the late Stan Goldberg. The fact that every element on this cover is rendered in the same color scheme (including the … Continue reading Great Covers – SGT FURY #16
The Tom Brevoort Experience 