I MADE WALLPAPER

Not computer wallpaper.

Thirty-two actual-sized colour scans from pages of 60s, 70s and 80s DC and Marvel comics.

Comics piled alongside comics in this fashion are an overpowering sight.

Do you recognise any of them?

CHRISTMAS COMICS: Mike Ploog's Santa Claus

Mike Ploog has drawn a lot of comics over the years. Ones I’ve liked include Abadazad, Frankenstein, Ghost Rider, Planet of the Apes and Weirdworld. He’s even drawn some of Eric Powell’s The Goon.

This Santa Claus comic is an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s story. As indicated in the title, it follows his life from baby to adulthood. Here are some pages, click for larger versions...

Before the end, Death turns up for Santa...

In order to make some money, Ploog left comics and worked in movies. With decent income sorted out, he wrote and drew Santa Claus outwith the deadline driven processes of Marvel and DC. It was then published in 1992 by Tundra. Ploog turned out a really beautiful book here.

MARVEL STAR WARS #108 (or MUG ME, MARVEL)

Marvel was licenced to make Star Wars comics in the 70s and 80s, creating the original run which featured many creators including Howard Chaykin, Mary Jo Duffy, Michael Golden, Archie Goodwin, Carmine Infantino, Cynthia Martin, David Mazzucchelli, Tom Palmer, Walt Simonson and Al Williamson.

Being a big Star Wars fan, I read all of them. The series ran from 1977 to 1986. The next Marvel Star Wars comic was scheduled to be a series called Dark Empire by Tom Veitch and Cam Kennedy, but the rights lapsed and Dark Horse picked it up instead. They’ve published Star Wars comics since 1991. Unlike Marvel, who put out one ongoing series with limited related titles, Dark Horse have continually brought out an ever changing roster of series. It was too much to keep up with for me. I still keep an eye out for good Star Wars comics, but haven’t felt the desire to buy them all since after Dark Empire 2 back in 1994.

Now that Disney has bought Lucasfilm, speculation is rife about Marvel getting the licence back. Disney owns Marvel, so it might make sense. However there have been other Disney properties which feature in comics not made by Disney, so it’s not a certainty. And anyway I thought to myself, who cares? Doesn’t make any difference to me who’s publishing Star Wars. But then it occurred to me: Marvel could get the rights back and publish Star Wars #108.

The completist in me would find it very hard not to buy that!

R.I.P. TONY DEZUNIGA

I've just read the very sad news that Tony Dezuniga has died. A great artist from the Philippines who did a lot of work for the big US companies in the 70s and 80s. Here is some artwork from the stories I really enjoy that he drew. Dezuniga and John Albano created the western character Jonah Hex in the early 70s.

He had a crack at Star Wars. Around the same time, Marvel were publishing a magazine called The Rampaging Hulk. This had some quite racy back up stories. So a youngster who wanted to read about The Hulk off the telly also got to read the adventures of Shanna the She-devil.

In the early 90s Marvel UK were publishing Strip. The comic reprinted Dezuniga's Punisher stories from years before. Dezuniga was the first of a wave of Filipino artists who were given work by DC Comics because they could be paid much less than US artists. In fact Dezuniga acted as an agent of sorts for a "Filipino invasion". This led to another favourite comic of mine - the adaptation of War of the Worlds by Yong Montano. There was also Ernie Chan, a very good artist, especially his inking. Dezuniga was criminally underused in comics once the 90s began, which is a shame, but he had already left behind a great body of art.

NEW DITKO HULK BOOK



There's a nice Marvel comic out now called "Incredible Hulk & The Human Torch: From the Marvel Vault". It's a first printing for a story pencilled by Steve Ditko in the 1980s to serve as a filler for when the regular arist on Marvel Team-Up missed a deadline. However it was never needed before that series came to an end in 1985.

So now it's out and has been re-scripted by Karl Kesel who also inked it - recently. He writes a suitably gushing and proud introduction wherein he tells of his excitement at drawing over Ditko. He also says he's very fond of the character Johnny Storm and misses him now that he's gone, so he must be dead currently in Marvel Comics. It's great to see Ditko's Hulk back in sequences like the first one shown here (click for larger version).

I found the computer colouring really strange over Ditko's work. The story looks like his 80s work apart from that. The new writing from Kesel too throws in modern references - such as the one shown here to Youtube.



A lovely wee comic for Ditko fans.

P.S. Bonus bemused chuckle: The numbering on Marvel comics has become rather convoluted. There's an ad in this mag for a comic called Iron Man 2.0 #7.1

TODD McFARLANE

In the early 1990s, Todd McFarlane was the hottest artist working at Marvel Comics. He worked on the long-running Amazing Spider-Man title, catapulting it to massive success. After a while, a new Spider-Man title was created and sold on McFarlane’s name (and new status as writer/artist). That first issue sold somewhere around 2-3 million copies. Which seems ridiculous, especially by today’s standards, where the most successful Marvel Comics sell about 100k. But apparently that is the amount the title sold.

After that, he left Marvel altogether, taking 5 or 6 other “hot” artists with him to create a new company – Image Comics. Would readers go with the superstar writer/artists on new characters, or stick with the characters Spider-Man, The Hulk and X-Men at Marvel?

Well, for a time, Image was a sales phenomenon. McFarlane’s own Spawn was another million-seller, the other books were big hits too, and the DC / Marvel domination of the US industry was substantially cracked.

Personally, I never liked McFarlane’s style. Before he did Spider-Man, he drew The Hulk, and I didn’t like him on there. His rise to comics superstardom was a mystery to me.

So, why am I devoting time to the guy?

This is all a mere preamble to an interview I’d recommend you give a listen. In 1992, at the height of McFarlane’s success, Gary Groth spoke with him. They are living in different worlds, and it’s a fabulous meeting of minds.

Check it out here.

ORIGINAL KIRBY HULK ART

A while back I paid tribute to Jack Kirby, and in particular his stupendous work on The Incredible Hulk. After much thought, I chose one particular page to illustrate how good he was. In the time since I posted that, I mused on how it would be great to get a hold of the original art for that page. Kirby originals sell for a lot of money. If you know anything about Marvel Comics, you'll know they practically used the original art of their books as coasters, so I wondered if that page still existed.

Well, I had a look through the latest printing of the Hulk Marvel Masterworks book at the library, and guess what was included as an extra in the back. Two original page reproductions, one of them the artwork in question! I can't resist posting that...


















While I'm at it, here's the other one. It's great too...


















The great man's signature at the bottom...

COMICS WITHIN BORDERS

Something is going on in Borders.













They actually have US Marvel comics on sale, which is nice to see.

As far as I can remember, that's the the first time Marvels been available to people outside comics shops in the UK for about fifteen years. Up til 1994, Comag was distributing them - complete with fairly huge stickers plastered on the covers.

Along with their carrying Crikey!, this shows a new interest in comics is happening at Borders (they already had a pretty good aisle or two of graphic novels). Borders is charging a fortune for single issues though - I'm pretty sure some of those single issues cost £4.25, which is a lot to ask for an impulse comics buy.

In the UK, these US originals have to compete with British comics that reprint up to 3 US comics from a couple of years ago. These collections are all colour, cost about the same price or cheaper, and are a lot thicker.

And the US originals still have a big sticker stuck on front too.

But it is part of a pleasing trend on the part of the chain. Long may it continue.

STRANGE TALES

Today I picked up Marvel Comics’ Strange Tales anthology. This comic is the same vein as DC’s Bizarro books, and Dark Horse’s Star Wars Tales. Contributions come from Peter Bagge, Nick Bertozzi, Jason, James Kochalka, Junko Mizuno, Perry Bible Fellowship, Paul Pope and more. A stellar line up for sure, taking time out to do a super-hero story.

Here is An X-Men one-pager by the Perry Bible Fellowship:

I haven't read X-Men in over 20 years, but that's gotta be the best mutant story they've published in a long time!

Get down to a comics shop and buy this one quickly. A co-worker of mine has read Bizarro and asked me to get him a copy of this new title. But my comics retailer had no copies left. I’d got mine because I asked for it in advance, but other than that, he had under-ordered it. He said quite a few people had asked for it and were disappointed...