Friday, December 19, 2014

Making a Splash: George Perez's Fantastic Four

While the Fantastic Four doesn't seem to get much respect these days, during the Groovy Age Marvel's flagship title was still tons-o-fun! Did'ja know that during the mid-to-late 70s, Pace-Setter George Perez penciled over a dozen issues of The World's Greatest Comic Magazine? While he wasn't the regular artist (he rotated with Rich Buckler,  the Brothers Buscema, and Ron Wilson for most of his run), his hip energy infused Marvel's First Family with an energy that hadn't been seen for quite a while. Check 'em out. from FF issues 164-167, 170, (George drew most of 171, but Rich Buckler provided the first three pages), 172, 176-178, 184-188, 191-192 (August 1975-December 1978), plus the splashes from the 1979 FF Annual #14!
























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5 comments:

  1. Edo BosnarDecember 19, 2014 at 6:16 AM

    The only one I had is FF Annual #14, which I absolutely loved - probably mainly because of the art. Anyway, that is a nice set of splash pages which, I suppose, goes without saying given the artist...

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  2. MikeDecember 19, 2014 at 9:02 AM

    i was never partial to joe sinnott as an inker. It semed to me that he always overpowered and 'Kirbified' the pencil artists. These examples are no exception - there's little of anything that is recognizable as George Perez. The same thing happened with John Byrne's early work on FF before he took it over.

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    1. keythd23December 21, 2014 at 12:10 PM

      It isn't so much that he overpowered the pencils as that as an inker he's highly overrated. Compared to Palmer, Janson, Rubinstein and Austin, who greatly embellished whomever they were teamed with, Sinnott was just a slick tracer. Except for the first couple of years he inked Kirby I never did feel that he deserved the reputation he has had as one of the greatest inkers of all time.

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  3. AnonymousDecember 19, 2014 at 10:34 PM

    FF #186 (Enter: Salem's Seven!) was the first comic I bought with my own money. I was 10 years old and even though I wasn't entirely sure what the heck was going on in that issue I knew it was beautiful to look at and I wanted more. I sought out those other Perez issues and loved them all. Thanks for the flashback!

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  4. Chris TolworthyDecember 20, 2014 at 4:08 AM

    The Perez FF issues are my all time favourite comics. It was Perez in FF 171 that made me decide I had to have every single issue, and finally led to my web site. ( http://zak-site.com/Great-American-Novel/ ) I can't praise Perez on the FF enough. My only regret is that he didn't do more.

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