1983 - The Official Marvel Comics Try-Out Book

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:

1983 - Uncanny X-Men #167 Page #1

X-Men Days of Future Past homage by Felipe Massafera

Byrne's take on X-Men and Alpha Flight

"Ah, yes, X-MEN/ALPHA FLIGHT. What a pleasant experience THAT was!

"Shooter had been bugging me for a couple of years about doing that project. But I had no interest in working with Chris again. And I said so, time and time again. But Shooter kept at it, and finally I said "Okay, how about this? Get somebody else to plot the thing, then I'll draw it and Chris can script it, and I'll never have to look at it again." Shooter agreed. "And," I said, "please keep Kitty out of it. I don't like what Chris has done with he. Have her driving off in a taxi on the splash, or something." Again, Shooter agreed. No problem, he said. My requests were perfectly reasonable, he said.

"A few weeks later, a big fat plot arrived. That it was about twice as many pages in length as the first issue was going to be made my spider-sense tingle immediately. I read a few pages, and it was pure Claremont. Not only that, but Kitty was all over it.

"I called the editor to complain. This was not what had been agreed to. She called me "unprofessional" and hung up on me.

"So, remember that! If you lay out what you want from a project up front, have those needs agreed upon, then find out you have been lied to and complain about it -- well, that makes YOU unprofessional."

www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=32814&PN=0&TPN=13

The Mighty Thor Corner Boxes

by Walt Simonson

Nightcrawler by J.H. Williams

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1126546&GSub=33855