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Comics with cool painted covers thread
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342 posts in this topic

Come one, come all, and please post your favorite painted comic book covers here!

 

There's a lot of angst on the Boards lately about potential damage to comics from pressing and the encapsulation process, so it would be nice to have another thread devoted to the beauty and variety of the art form.

 

The painted cover has come and gone and come back again over the decades, and remains a special genre with different qualities than the more typical line and ink.

 

James Bama is a realist painter best known for his terrific paperback book covers and movie posters, and a member of the Illustrator's Hall of Fame. Here's his painting used for the cover of ish #1 of the one-shot Gold Key Doc Savage comic. The detail and lighting on Savage's face is especially great.

 

DocSavage1.jpg

 

And a slightly more tame-looking version of the painting, without the left-to-right tilt:

 

Doc-Savage-artwork-snake-small.jpg

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Here's another awesome painting from Gold Key comics. The Doctor Solar #2 cover was painted by Richard Powers and published in 1962, at the height of the atomic age and cold war. Like Bama, Powers was a prolific paperback book illustrator, especially of science fiction. He is considered one of the most influential sci-fi artists of all time, and is a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

 

His paintings were used on only the first two issues of Doctor Solar, published in 1962. The cover to #2 is especially spectacular. I love the way it's painted to look like the center of the cover has been torn away to reveal the extraordinary interior of the comic and its spectacular surreal atomic explosion, with a clearly crazy dude reveling smack in the middle of it all.

 

DrSolar2.jpg

 

 

For those interested in learning more about Powers, his art is the subject of this book:

 

rpowers.jpg

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Great thread. Sometimes we lose sight of the reason for all the plastic and conservation/restoration.

Current modern cover artists I love are Sam Kieth, Sean Phillips and Tim Sale. A cover painting pops up by any of these guys and there is no mistaking the unique styles.

 

Here are three by Phillips.

 

 

image_zpsd8ulksca.jpeg

 

A little bit pen and ink, a little bit painted, combined to really nice effect. The vertical paint lines give the impression of rain. And, I'm left wondering who she's dancing with. hm

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For me, it's hard to talk painted cover without Alex Ross immediately coming to mind. Though I probably enjoyed Kingdom Come the most, my first introduction to his art was in the Marvels series:

 

1994_marvels_covers_0_4_by_alex_ross_by_trivto-d5dk3n7.jpg

 

 

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immediately went to buy a copy of this as soon as I saw the cover :) I think the guy did a few painted covers in his tme :)

 

 

Just one or two pulps. :grin:

 

Whose work is it?

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For me, it's hard to talk painted cover without Alex Ross immediately coming to mind. Though I probably enjoyed Kingdom Come the most, my first introduction to his art was in the Marvels series:

 

 

s-l500.jpg

 

This one shows the influence of the pulps and old paperbacks. Ross has so many spectacular examples. :applause:

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For me, it's hard to talk painted cover without Alex Ross immediately coming to mind. Though I probably enjoyed Kingdom Come the most, my first introduction to his art was in the Marvels series:

 

 

s-l500.jpg

 

This one shows the influence of the pulps and old paperbacks. Ross has so many spectacular examples. :applause:

 

Awesome cover!

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