Saturday, October 01, 2005
Comic Art
Continuing with looking at the "Honorable Mentions," let's look today at Jim Steranko. Few artists in the medium have had more influence while producing less art that Steranko, particularly when it comes to art for the mainstream characters and publishers. This image of Lee Falk's Phantom was one Steranko did for a French trading card series.The Phantom is on of the more interesting characters in comics - in part because he hasn't done well in magazines, but has done phenomenally well as a newspaper strip. My personal opinion is there is a large gap between his look and his legend. His legend just does not suit a costumed superhero. I know the costume is what has allowed the generational stuff, but I think he would be better suited to a mask to preserve the anonymity of the hero and otherwise normal jungle clothes. Just one man's thoughts.
This is one of those covers. One that has stuck with me since I was but a wee lad. The menace in the face of the Hulk is amazing.This also marks, if not the beginning of the story line, it is the signature cover of the story line where Rick Jones, who burst into comics as the Hulk's sidekick (it was Rick that Bruce Banner saved from the gamma bomb when he became the Hulk), put on the Bucky costume (Cap's WWII sidekick) and became Cap's sidekick for a while.
That period for Cap was awfully good, he had to deal with the fact that he lived, albeit in suspended animation through the events that killed Bucky Barnes, and all the guilt that implied. Given that his stories with Bucky really were written in WWII they very much had a father/son thing going on, so you can imagine how Cap felt. It made quite an impression on me, even as a kid.
But Steranko is most known for his work on the modern Nick Fury, operating as an agent of SHIELD. Fury is another revived WWII character.In the big war Fury was a sergeant followed by his Howling Commandos. In the modern age his unit was used as the nucleus for a super-secret government agency to protect the world from menaces that the public simply wasn't ready to fathom -- you know, the superhero world. Fury and SHIELD were a super hi-tech James Bond sort of deal. They, by the way, always had the best bad guys. AIM and Hydra, based loosely on the Specter of Bond fame were just too cool.
Steranko's art is probably most notable because it is some of the first was widely acknowledged as good that did some things that Jack Kirby didn't. Until Jim, most guys were trying to stay within the lines that Kirby had established. Steranko pushed the envelope.
