Friday, March 15, 2013
The Grooviest Covers of All Time: The Marvelous Gene Colan, Early Groovy Age Style
How about some "Marvel"-ous early Groovy Age Gene Colan covers to end your week, Groove-ophiles? Yeah, I thought you'd dig that! Man, to think these masterpieces sold for only twelve measly cents--and had 35 more pages of comics to go with 'em!
Gene really was "the dean." His art was reason enough to read Daredevil.
ReplyDeleteFYI: The Daredevil #44 cover is inked by Jim Steranko. Also, the Doctor Strange #180 cover was cobbled together at the last moment by Sol Brodsky because Gene Colan's cover art went missing in the mails (it re-surfaced later and eventually saw light of day as the cover to Roy Thomas' "Alter-Ego" #6). The Eternity figure is really Ditko's drawing from an earlier issue of Strange Tales (#146?) and the Dr. Strange figure is Gene's from, I think, an earlier issue of Doc's mag. - Jeff Clem
ReplyDeleteI knew about the DD cover, but didn't know about the Dr. Strange one. I thought the Eternity figure looked out of place for Colan, but the Doc Strange figure was the selling point for me!
DeleteWhat, no Tomb of Dracula? For shame!
ReplyDeleteBut not as shameful as this: Gene Colan was one of those artist that, when I was a kid, I thought was bad. Messy, strange, stretched out.
Of course I was an idiot. Colan's ToD is incredible, and his feel for shading and distorted anatomy were dead on and brought ToD, (and everything else he touched), to life. One of the greats.
Well, since I was doing the late 60s Colan, I couldn't find an excuse to add any ToD covers since they ran from 72 to 79. No shame, just me being a rigid follower of my own (admittedly silly) rules. ;D
DeleteWhen i was a kid, guys like neal adams impressed me. Now I don't think much of their work. Gene Colan, to me, towers above the photorealistic
Deleteschool. As do Kirby, Ditko, Romita, Sekowsky and the like. but i like the much-maligned Frank Robbins and late-period Infantino too, so there you go.
Artists like Colan, Kane and Robbins were slightly problematic for me as a youngster, too, with their strange contorted figures, particularly compared to Adams and the Buscema brothers - a good example to be found in the figure-work in the Iron Man/Sub-Mariner cover above. I still think highly of Adams and the Buscemas, but it's the work of the others that I'm constantly rediscovering and appreciating more and more as the years go on (through posts like this one, needless to say).
DeleteMasterpieces all! I recently bought a lovely Near Mint copy of that DD #44, purely for the awesome Colan cover. With Steranko inks too! Beautiful work... and the interiors pretty groovy, too :-)
ReplyDeleteGene "The Dean" Colan's cover art is weirdly effective. You look at the elements and they sometimes seem awkward, but put together they add up a very memorable image, one geared to draw the eye. That's what covers are supposed to do.
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