We can also stick posters to them.
The truth is that, somehow, despite my voracious comic-reading habits, as a child I only ever had two comics-related posters on my bedroom wall.
One was the one that came with Marvel UK's Planet of the Apes #1, and the other was the John Buscema poster that came with the first issue of The Titans. I'm proud to say I still have both those posters.
There were, however, another set of posters that always impressed me greatly.
And those were the six that frequently appeared on the back of Marvel UK's weekly comics in the early to mid-1970s. I can't remember ever seeing them advertised in the American comics and, therefore, what the story was behind them, I have no idea.
All I know is they were things of beauty, with a level of anatomical accuracy not always found in super-hero figures, suggesting that real-life models may have been used.
Who painted them?
I don't know.
The Hulk's face has a touch of the John Romita about it. The Thor figure's lean build, and pose, looks to be in the Neal Adams envelope - although I'm not convinced the painting style is. The mad thing is that, despite their obvious desirability to any true lover of the radiation-affected, I never nagged my dad into buying them for me, even though we could have had the lot for a mere 90 pence.
Then again, for all I know, taking inflation into account, 90 pence could probably have bought you a semi-detached house in the middle of London back then.
Still, if I missed out on such treasures, at least I have my Titans and Planet of the Apes posters to keep me warm at night.
Hi from Spain.
ReplyDeleteThose posters-stickers are very much known here, in my home country where they were printed, too.
They were painted by López Espí, an illustrator responsible for the re-made covers of the first Spanish editions of Marvel comic-books.
To be true, there was another artist who began re-doing the covers. This one is called Enrich (or Enric) but López Espí´s work lasted a decade and Enrich just painted the first ones. Painted, not just drawn.
Search in Google Images writing López Espí... He made some actual masterworks.
In those days there was an exchacing policy of material from Uk to Spain and viceversa, so that is the reason why they were printed in UK, I guess.
Greetings from Abraham García.
Wow, don't you just love the internet? I was going to post my own theories about the artist/artists, but clearly Mr Garcia has the story.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, my word verification was 'fluckgue' - is blogger trying to tell me something?
I like to think that I can claim a bit of credit for those posters, but perhaps I'm deluding myself. Here's how it happened: Avengers #1 (the UK edition, 1973) gave away transfers with its first issue, comprising four of those Spanish illustrations. Tiny 'though they were, one could still see that they were mini-masterpieces, so I wrote to Marvel UK and told them so - saying that they should issue them as posters. A year or so later they did. So you have me to thank. (And probably a few hundred others who no doubt wrote in to tell them the same thing.)
ReplyDeleteAbraham and Kid, thanks for the enlightenment.
ReplyDeleteBill, thanks for the word verification.
Sorry to revisit an old topic - but - my brother and I actually had/shared this collection of posters...the most suprising of which was the Cap one which actually spelt his name CapITain America!!
ReplyDeleteThese were truely a thing og beauty. I still have the the Cap, Spidey ( my favourite) and Thor posters but alas they have seen better days. Iron Man unfortunately met the wrath of my sister in a mood, and it was a battle Iron Man did alas did not survive....
ReplyDeleteSpirit of 64
It does make me wonder what else was going on in mainland Europe at the time, in terms of artists portraying Marvel heroes. Did every country have local artists reinterpreting them?
ReplyDeleteFranca did, Italy did not. Italy instead concentrated on producing Disney product! Topolino (Mickey Mouse) was must reading over there.
ReplyDeleteWe did in the UK before British Marvel. Didn't Barry W Smith do stuff for Pow and Wham?
Mexico produced Marvel material for their local market.
Spirit of 64
Barry did indeed produce Marvel-related material for the British comics.
ReplyDeleteFrance did, Italy did not. Italy instead concentrated on producing Disney product! Topolino (Mickey Mouse) was must reading over there.
ReplyDeleteWe did in the UK before British Marvel. Didn't Barry W Smith do stuff for Pow and Wham?
Mexico produced Marvel material for their local market.
Spirit of 64
Opps posted twice by mistake. Apologies all!
ReplyDeleteDon't forget Frank Hampson's Spidey, Steve.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, French Marvel reprints generally had new covers by their own artists. Or rather, it seems, artist. For instance, here's the cover for Spécial Strange #19 that I had back in the day for some reason, featuring the (then) all-new, all-different X-Men -
https://www.comics.org/issue/702567/cover/4/
Its by some fella called Jean Frisano, who I couldn't tell you anything about - I only found out his name looking up the comic just now - but if you look at the cover gallery for the mag, it seems he did nearly all of them -
https://www.comics.org/series/41551/covers/
Although as you can see, some of the images are fairly close to the US originals (#12 for instance is pretty much identical to Dave Cockrum's for X-Men #101, only with painted colour added). He also did the covers for the same publisher's more simply titled Strange -
https://www.comics.org/series/41546/covers/
I just included that too, because it started publication earlier - in 1970 - and the first 20 or so just used the US covers, slightly altered in a manner not unlike that of Marvel UK.
Iirc, Spécial Strange included an interior pin-up page I assume was by French artists, although I've no idea who. Quite possibly that Frisano geezer again. Definitely not a moonlighting Druillet, Moebius or anyone like that!
Although of course the latter went on to do a Silver Surfer 'graphic novel' with Stan Lee...
-sean
Thanks, Sean. I am quite taken with the title fonts.
ReplyDeleteThere are some interesting colour choices for the heroes' costumes, though. I was especially struck by Daredevil wearing green gloves and boots.
My comment seems to have disappeared, Steve.
ReplyDeleteNot that I'm complaining - it's hardly a big deal in the great scheme of things - but it's not the first time, and I'm curious how that happens. Or is it still visible to you?
I liked the French title logos too btw.
-sean
Sean, I shall search behind the scenes for your comment and see if I can find and restore it. What sometimes happens is Google, who own the blogger.com URL, mark comments out as spam and hide them from the world. I then have to search through the site's whole mountain of comments to find the ones in question and mark them as not being spam.
ReplyDeleteSean, I've just been behind the scenes and Google seems to have gone completely mad, with huge numbers of comments by a wide variety of people having been marked as spam and blocked. I've just restored all the wrongly-flagged comments from the last five years, including yours.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Steve. You have done the global online community a service - I don't know how it would have managed, not being able to read old comments of mine on Steve Does Comics.
ReplyDelete-sean