Friday, August 13, 2010

Marvel In The Raw!

I love getting a glimpse of different cover art approaches. It really shows the thought process of the creators and the editors and what they think will motivate a buyer to snap up a particular comic.



Barry Smith


Marie Severin

John Romita

Gil Kane

Don Heck



John Buscema


Jack Kirby


Marie Severin

Most of the changes seem to be about how to most dramatically capture the action and drama of the events in the book, that is all save the final Captain America cover. Clearly there was a decision to obscure the fact that Cap went to Vietnam in the story, and since a cover was produced announcing this, we can assume it was very late in the editorial process perhaps even at the publisher level that the idea was altered.

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3 comments:

  1. It's so amazing to me how similar some of these are. I mean, why did it matter which side of the cover Submariner was on?

    Sometimes I like the alternate better. Like I think the alternate Avengers cover might have been a hair better than the one they went with.

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  2. I definitely like the rejected Spidey cover better. It's more dynamic and seems to me to be a clearer image than what they eventually used.

    As for the Avengers cover, I prefer the Don Heck version too, but I suspect it was rejected because the heroes mostly have their backs to the reader. Just a guess on that.

    As for the Subby cover, the one detail that goes missing when it gets flipped is the tower with Big Ben in it, a specific London reference. When it gets flipped the monster seems more prominent.

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  3. Cap 105 seems to be a great cover. I don't understand the change from the original. The only thing that would make a difference dramatically would be closing the background with the villians (instead of having a more open space in the middle). But I think the original version is easily more dramatic.

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