Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Black and White Wednesday: Groovy Age Unused Cover Gallery
Covers! Comicbooks can live or die by those pages designed to protect the insides of the mag! A great cover artist can move thousands of copies--if the editor okays those covers first! Here are a bunch'a suh-weet "covers that might have been"--but weren't! What was wrong with these particular comicbook covers? Hard to tell by looking at some of these--well, except for those covers that belonged to mags that either got cancelled or had their name changed. Kirby! Adams! Cockrum! Perez! Layton! Graham! Could any editor or publisher give these talented titans the thumbs down? Yep, they could...and they did!
As much as I would have liked to have seen Graham's cover make the cut, I can understand why it might have been nixed, as it might have mimicked too closely Graham's full-pager in the story. It's interesting how Gil Kane was tapped to do most of those covers, as Graham was clearly up to the task.
ReplyDeleteSome of these I would definitely have liked to see edge out the covers that actually appeared. For instance, Avengers #178, which I think is better styled than Buscema's approach; and I have absolutely no problem with Layton's first alternate cover for IM #133, as it gives the Hulk more exposure yet still leaves the spotlight on Iron Man.
What an interesting topic!
Love these behind the scenes looks you give us of our beloved hobby. I prefer the Jimmy Olsen, Thor and Ms. Marvel versions here to those that were published.
ReplyDeleteDoes that first cover really count as a rejection? It looks to me to be the same drawing of Orion that appeared on New Gods #1, with the spacey background jazzed up a bit.
ReplyDeleteI expect that Kirby Superman on the Jimmy Olsen cover gave DC editorial a bit of a heart attack though (:
-sean