I have a various times reported that E-Man by Joe Staton and the late great Nick Cuti is my favorite superhero. I latched onto the Charlton project in the middle of its brief Bronze Age run but it filled me with glee to read the issues over and over and to fill in the few I was missing. Then E-Man was revived at First Comics, then again at Comico, then again at Apple, then again and again and yet again here and there over the decades. The last E-Man story was published a few years back and with the passing of Cuti there will be no more I guess. I'm both sad about that, but happy I got to enjoy them while they lasted.
No small part of that enjoyment was Nova Kane, the college student slash exotic dancer who welcomes the alien Alec Tronn to our Earth and then falls in love with the dopey shapeshifter. She herself undergoes changes, becoming his powered-up partner. But at first she was a mere Earth woman as if that were a mere thing at all. I recently came across this bit of vintage Staton artwork.
It's not the first time I've seen Nova rendered by her co-creator sans clothing, but it might well be the first time he drew her that way. She's produced in that delightful "bubbly" style (that's what I call it anyway) Staton had when he first started at Charlton. His figures were rounder and less angular. And "roundness" is the perfect way to draw a lovely like the alluring Nova.
I miss having new E-Man stories but I will always have the old ones. Here are the original Charlton covers that featured Nova.
Expect more ravishing "Girl Fridays" features in the weeks ahead.
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E-Man is one of my all time favourite comic book characters, just a great fun read. I still remember picking up issue 2 ( the first time I was aware of E-Man) and it felt like such a fresh exciting book. The entire Charlton run is wonderful. I followed E-Man for most of his entire run right up until his last appearances in the Charlton Arrow. Sad to see the character end then again if DC etc got hold of him he would no doubt be redesigned as some power mad, emotionally wrecked dark hearted anti hero.
ReplyDeleteWe feel the same about that. As sad as I am for E-Man to go away, I'd be even sadder to see someone butcher the character that Joe Staton and Nick Cuti nurtured for so many years. When Marty Pasko wrote the character for First Comics it deviated just a bit from its simple premise, and it was not the same. It's unfair to say, but no one grokked the character quite the way that Cuti and Staton did.
DeleteFirst issue I ever bough was #1, can't say for sure whether I ever saw any more after that (possibly #2), but I got the 7 ish reprint series a ton of years ago. The Nova art always impressed me.
ReplyDeleteThose First reprints are outstanding and have the virtue of having the Michael Mauser stuff too from Vengeance Squad. Great stuff from a bygone era.
DeleteOops, don't know where the 't' in 'bought' disappeared to - couldn't have hit the key firmly enough. The one thing I felt was lacking in the First reprints was that the original covers weren't in colour, but that apart, it was a great series.
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