Have a look at another interesting side-by-side shot of a Fantastic Four cover and its counterpart in the reprint comic, Marvel's Greatest Comics--this time featuring FF #100!
On the left, the original as drawn by Jack Kirby; on the right, the revised cover by Alan Kupperberg. Both versions were inked by Joe Sinnott.
Back in the day, of course, Fantastic Four practically sold itself--but I thought Kirby's cover would have been better served by the vibrancy that Kupperberg, Sinnott and the colorist bring to the newer version. Facial expressions are more detailed (the Sub-Mariner, the Super-Apes, and Dragon Man are good examples), as is the rocky definition of the Thing--and the MGC cover features a variety of brighter colors in both the background and the FF logo, as opposed to the stark black-and-white of the original. The darker tone of the FF uniforms seems to work better, too, giving the team a less "faded" look.
If it weren't for his paste gun, though, we wouldn't be able to make out the Trapster behind that darned UPC symbol. And there appears to be a new villain added to the mix, standing behind Dragon Man to his right--who is that guy? Kupperberg has also moved the Torch to accommodate the logo--but it looks like Johnny is about to cook his girlfriend! The Wizard seems to be saying "Thanks, Torch! I was sneaking up behind her, but I appreciate the help, fool!"
That FF story was printed in the UK in The Titans #43. The Titans was a short-lived experiment whereby the comic was printed "sideways" in landscape mode. The FF was the lead story in The Titans from #27-#52 so the original U.S. covers had to be re-drawn to fit the landscape design - unfortunately they weren't re-drawn very well :(
ReplyDeleteMany of those Bronze reprint covers are very nice improvements off the originals, the Steranko MGC covers, some nice Buscema redrawings, etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm eyeing the MTA 11 with the red background improving over the original Avengers 17, or even MTA 16 with wholly new cover.
I'm still pleasantly pleased with discovering never-before-seen reprint covers (HOPEFULLY without that darn corner UPC symbol....).
Actually, my bad, I meant to name-drop Starlin on those MGC reprint covers.
ReplyDeleteAgain, uber-cool covers at typically awesomely-cheap prices for VF+ condition issues on eBay.