Wednesday, March 20, 2013

A Quick Look: Iron Man #1 cover by Gene Colan

Gene Colan was a great artist with an utterly unique style that many times defied convention. Having seen Gene's pencils many times, I can honestly say that i'm glad that i was never asked to ink him. I couldn't have done what Tom Palmer did and sort through those myriad pencil lines to figure out which ones to highlight. Despite being a "brush guy". I look at Gene's work and think, "What the hell do you do for this?"

The cover of Iron Many #1 is a great example of using the heavy blacks to really orient the weight of the figure without having to worry about pointing out how wonky the left leg and right shoulder of the figure is! As well, if you compare this with the printed version, you can see how the editors statted the vignette scenes around Iron Man and moved this into different positions. Lets face it, it IS too crowded at the top. I would certainly believe that they told Gene to leave space at the bottom for a blurb, which he did, and they later decided that the "Premiere Issue" blurb didn't quite fit.  Personally, while both covers for me, Gene's original is better.

1 comment:

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