This is my take on updating the CLASSIC Marvel Comics Calendars from the the mid 1970's that I grew up loving as a kid, particularly the 75', 76' (Bicentenial Year inspired artwork in that one was crazy fun) and 77' releases. Unfortunately the format was abandoned in the early 80's which has given way to 25 years worth of pretty uninspired calendar releases if you ask me. Well, this is what i'd want to see up on my wall and I hope you might enjoy it a bit as well. Do a search online too see what the "original" calendars looked like to see what I was going for. The corny lines were DEFINITELY part of the original as were the creators Birthdays, which was when the veil behind the scenes of comic books was first parted for me, offering a glimpse of the creators who produced the comics I loved so much.
I hadn't done one of these in 3 years and just had the urge to do another one. I hadn't used the color green yet as an accent color so that made using the Hulk as the main illustration a pretty straight forward proposition. When I found this excellent throwback style Hulk piece by Bruce Timm, I knew I had the focal point I needed to build the rest of the month around. A dream would be to have Marvel commission me to actuall produce a whole year of these for an OFFICIAL Calendar release, I know all the Fans Of Old Marvel would love it!!!
I'm using some of my favorite illustrations by many of my favorite artists in the comic book business, often little seen commissions and rarer published material that may have been relegated to a back cover or used in the commercial advertising end of the industry. This piece includes a magnificent splash piece of The Hulk by artist Bruce Timm and various pin-ups, clip art and comic art by Chris Samnee , Paul Smith, Don Perlin, Sal Buscema, Michael Golden, John Paul Leon, Steve Rude, Jack Kirby & John Byrne. Download it and tack it up on your wall, it's the next best thing we'll unfortunately probably never see officially.
The Anya Corazon Spider-Girl (the only Mexican/American Marvel superhero of note I could find surprisingly) was drawn by sirdefnesaur here on deviantart and @ sirdef on Tumbler.
You can find my 2013 entries for January, February & March here- dusty-abell.deviantart.com/art… dusty-abell.deviantart.com/art… dusty-abell.deviantart.com/art…
Don't forget to download the image for the best resolution possible if you print this off to put up on your wall!
And here's the link to Dusty's Deviant Art page where all this magnificence was originally posted.
Wow! What a great amount of nostalgic fun built in here. May fourth, the battle between Klaw and Blackbolt, and Hulk with a Absorbing Man panels are very nice. Great work. Wish they would publish fun calendars like this again.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really well-composed piece of work, there. I hope you get your wish for the opportunity to do a whole calendar like this - I'd love to see it.
ReplyDeleteIt's a dern shame ya can't buy one of these in a store.
ReplyDeleteM.P.
I miss the old Marvel calenders. They were good, like everything the House of Ideas produced during the Groovy Age.
ReplyDelete