Marvel Comics of the 1980s: Todd McFarlane

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Marvel Comics 75 Years of Cover Art

MARVEL COMICS 75 YEARS OF COVER ART
by Dorling Kindersley Publishing
$50US/$52CDN

“Marvel Comics will celebrate 75 of years of comics excellence in 2014. DK commemorates this special anniversary with Marvel Comics Cover Art, a beautiful, large-scale book featuring some of the most impactful, inspiring, and unusual comic cover art to come out of the Marvel vault.”

This hardcover volume highlights Marvel Comics cover art from its 75 year history, walking us through the golden, silver, bronze, and modern ages. As you might expect, I was curious about which covers they chose for the 1980s. That beloved decade’s cover art was spread over the Bronze Age (1970-1986) and the Modern Age (1986-Present), spotlighting Frank Miller, George Perez, Walt Simonson, John Byrne, John Romita Jr., Todd McFarlane, and Art Adams.

A bit more attention could have been paid to other classic 80s cover artists, like Ed Hannigan, Michael Golden, and Bill Sienkiewicz, but I understand the desire to cover the 75 years in one volume. And to be fair, each of the eras covered is worthy of its own book. Hopefully the success of this book will spawn more volumes that can more thoroughly detail the masters of each age.

Writer Alan Cowsill did an admirable job authoring the text that accompanies each cover, as it must have been a challenge to summarize the significance of the cover and artist in one poignant paragraph. And knowing the breath of talent in the 1980s, I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to select the covers to display.

The reconstruction of the cover art needs to be praised as well, especially with the oversized page format that presents the art in a lavish, larger-than-life format. While a lot of the cover images were digitally enhanced and repaired, it would have been nice to see them in their raw form, blemishes and all. As you might know, I love digging up old original art and I would have liked to have seen more of the original art.

This book gets a strong buy recommendation from me. And for full disclosure, I did received a complimentary copy for review purposes, but don’t take my word for it. Check out the hardcover at your local bookstore, you’ll find it hard to leave without it.

This 320-page hardcover fits nicely into its slipcase and sits nicely between my Omnibus and Absolute editions on my bookshelf.

Here’s the official trailer for the book to give you a good preview: