I tried an image association game this week, I started with the Marc Silvestri piece and let my mind take me somewhere, I’d go looking there and find another piece and then repeated the exercise several more times until I came up with these. Don’t ask how as I’m sure if I tried it again tomorrow there’d be all new images.
Also, its getting late in the year so please forgive if I’ve double posted something from earlier in the year 🙂
Marc Silvestri gives us a great splash page for Web of Spider-Man #18, September 1986. I’ll pick this one for the week’s winner, I could look at this page all day.
Bob Kane gives us this epic splash page for Detective Comics #73 featuring the Scarecrow. I wish I found one that was not colour enhanced as I think they went too hard on the dark. March 1943.
Rico Rival must have been a Bob Kane fan, his splash page for Dead of Night #11 gives us another Scarecrow splash to enjoy. This splash screams early 70s, love the flaming background. November 1975.
Bill Sienkiewicz is such a great artist, so much style and mood in his work. This splash page from Moon Knight #28 is a feast. February 1983.
Joe Kubert with a tighter style I like on the splash page for Showcase #25 from April 1960.
Joe Staton and Joe Orlando stack this splash page from Showcase #97 with so much goodness the page can hardly contain it. February 1978.
Walt! You have knocked it out of the park this week. Your first splash by Silvestri seems meh at first, but the more I look at it, the more I like it. The layout, the detail, all of it.
The Rico Rival Scarecrow is fantastic as is the Sienkiewicz. For me, the Sienkiewicz edges out the Rival slightly because of the positioning of Moon Knight and the details around him.
However I would be a liar if I said that the Power Girl splash wasn’t my favourite this week. Great stuff!
Owen echoes my feelings on these to a tee! At first I thought “They are pretty ok.” But the more I look at all of them the more I like them!
Cheap shot on Power Girl, but it made me laugh. Not very good perspective on her arms, and her legs are well done but look like a Gil Kane swipe. Don’t stress that costume or else, surprise for everyone!
Modesty Blaise used that technique in her both her prose novels and her comic strip (Peter O’Donnell wrote both…the books are putstanding, Inhave read every one, and the strips hold up too). Called “the nailer,” she”d strip off her top and walk into a situation with overwhelming odds, guns blazing. The men’s surprise at a half naked, gorgeous woman was just the edge she needed to skow down their reaction time. And since it was a British newspaper strip, they could get away with occasional nudity which of course would never pass muster in the U.S.
Rico Rival? Another Filipino (looks like that style) artist new to me. Very sharp work, those guys were dedicated! No phoning it in. But then the money they were getting from DC was SO much more than they could make in their own country. I think they were eager to do their best and get those big paychecks that went a long way back home. Plus pride in their work and all buddies, like the old EC crew in the fifties.
You are right-on on the Bob Kane, that black surely lost us some detail. Gotta be some Jerry Robinson or others at work there, too. Too good for Kane alone, only the Batman and Robin kook like his work. Always stiff, always the same poses.
Best this week for me is the Joe Kubert Rip Hunter. Makes me want to go read my copy. I may just do that! I have never gotten in Rip very much but not for lack of collecting and reading the Showcase issues and recently collecting the first couple years in his own title. I like that era of DC, the very early sixties, and I need to give Rip another chance. The first superhero comics I ever read were 1961 DCs (and FF #1, glory be) and those covers, thanks to those great ads in every book are burned into my brain, even if I never bought that particular issue…Rip Hunter included. dc had the magic, just before Marvel began to blossom, and even into 1962-63.
I’ve always liked time travel stories. The early Rip stories in his own title were sadly not by Kubert, but they are adequately drawn. The stories are just not up to the work Julius Schwartz/John Boom and crew were doing at the same time in Mystery in Space/Adam Strange, Green Lantern and The Flash.
Bud, if you want to see a female superhero use her feminine wiles (if you want to call it that) to mesmerise the male villains, do a Google image search for Kekko Kamen in her costume (if you wsnt to call it that).
Klaus, I remember someone mentioned Kekko to me once before, once I looked her up. Looks like its mostly videos, which I don’t have the patience to watch. I can’t even keep up with the latest superhero movies, often.
Leave it to the Japanese to do a topless superhero. From a purely practical standpoint, it does seem like asking for trouble to run around like that, in that I mean scuffs and bruises and vulnerable points exposed. Even Golden Age male heroes in short shorts always seem very impractical. Dollman, Hercules, and most of the Dell heroes like Phantasmo et al.
Superman’s got it right, full costume, and it’s also impervious to harm. And those retro Batman outfits from the remake films, kevlar like today’s military, that’s what I want to wear in a skirmish. These scanty outfits the superhero girls run around in, they look good but they’re gonna get banged up…and on those long nights, cold too.
Bilbo & Frodo’s mithral, Elfish impervious chain mail, that’s the ticket! Probably warm too,
Nice cheap shot right back at me Bud, I think Robinson is credited with inks on that Kane piece.
Bud, the topless one is another Japanese character done by the same guy who did Kekko. Kekko is completely nude, wearing just gloves, boots and mask. She appeared in manga from 1974 onward. The movies are just capitalizing on the totally nude factor and are mostly porn. The mangas were what I was referring to.
Invulnerable superheroines like Supergirl and Wonder Wonan wouldn’t feel the cold so, I guess, the skimpier outfits work for them.
That splash on Web of Spider-man #18 saved that comic!!!
The destruction of the classic spider-suit made that comic’s high price of admission (they’re up around the $30 mark these days) worth it. Paying good money to see a red hand push Parker wasn’t satisfying, I thought the description ‘Eddie Brock/Venom cameo’ was a bit of a long reach both literally and figuratively speaking.