This curious early cover for Gold Key's Turok Son of Stone #31 is the work of George Wilson most likely. What is depicted is a menacing three-headed "honker", but one which seems oddly transparent in some ways. The cover relates to a notorious story titled "Valley of Dangerous Dreams" in which Turok and Andar encounter the fruit of a plant which conveys some powerful hallucinations, the tri-headed honker being one of them.
This artwork was later revised and reused for the cover of Turok Son of Stone #97. But this time the honker has only two heads, and the cover relates to a story titled "When a Star Falls" in which freakish mutated honkers are produced when a radioactive meteor falls into the Hidden Valley.
Above is the original artwork, and apparently what was done was that the original three-headed honker was revised directly on the original artwork, forever obscuring the image. Note how the transparent legs remain. It's a shame indeed, for today of course all of this could've been done digitally and the original artwork would've been spared. But then, like as not the great paintings by Wilson would not have been commissioned to begin with.
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The real and true Turok. Man, I could not stand the Valiant version.
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall, valiant advertised the book, as having a hybred foil/crome cover. Yeah, a little foil on the masthead. Like so many other suckers out there, i ordered about 20 copies, as did a pal. What an over printed piece of crap it was. Proof that one can't judge a book by the cover.
DeleteOh, I didn't mind him so much, but you are right, the classic is the best version.
ReplyDeletePoor Andar suffered the most at the hands of Valiant.
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This is the same thing Aurora did for the box covers of the glow-in-the-dark editions of its monster models--someone painted glowing faces and hands right over the James Bama originals.
ReplyDeleteOuch! That stings. Probably bothers us more than it does Bama though I bet.
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