Better put on eye protection, I’m about to geek out.
Author:
Alan Cowsill
What They Say
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.
With access to the rarest and most interesting cover art in Marvel’s 75-year history, DK brings together an unforgettable gallery spotlighting the most iconic covers along with never-before-seen concept art from all over the world. Featuring the likes of Spider-Man, Iron Man, and The Avengers, as well as the writers and artists who gave them life, including Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, this book brings together the beloved Marvel characters like no other has done before.
Spreads feature blown-up versions of the beautiful comic art capturing every detail while captioning facts and information about each cover’s artist, storyline, and history. Marvel Comics Cover Art is the only book of its kind to span the breadth of Marvel’s cover art and is an imperative addition to any collection.
The Review:
This may win the “duh” statement of the year award, but comic book covers are an art in-and-of themselves. As the first thing a prospective reader will see, they have to showcase the story, present the title character or characters, and provide some sense of story or conflict. In addition to that, they have to present some sort of bravura moment of spectacular action or suspense or sheer “what the?” to capture that reader’s interest. They could be fun, they could be scary, they could be titillating, but what they couldn’t be was boring.
In the Gold and Silver Ages, comic covers had little to do with what actually happened in the comic. Two famous examples of this come from Superman. In the one he uses his heat vision to burn a Father’s Day gift from Jimmy Olsen right in front of the boy, and in another he tries to stop Pat Boone from writing a love song for Lois Lane. As time progressed, comic covers still provided outrageous scenes (“I now pronounce you Dr. Octopus and Wife!”) but they had a bit more to do with the story. At the same time, artists were trying new and different styles and were really doing experimental things in their work. And while Marvel doesn’t own the lock on amazing covers, there’s no denying that the company has its share of some of the most iconic in the business.
This is where Marvel Comics: 75 Years of Cover Art comes in. It’s a hefty, oversized coffee table book housed in a gorgeous slipcase and it contains the most iconic covers in the company’s storied history. It doesn’t reproduce every cover—to do that would require volumes in numbers to rival the Encyclopedia Britannica—but it does present the best and most important: the covers that first introduced characters—such Captain America #1 where he punches Hitler—and the covers that in some ways have defined how we view a character—such as Jim Steranko’s cover for Incredible Hulk King-Sized Special #1.
Not only does the book present all of these covers, each one is annotated with a small blurb about the creators, the character, or something that occurred behind the scenes. For example, Hulk’s face in the aforementioned Special was redrawn by Marie Severin because the editor didn’t like Steranko’s original.
Cowsill does a fine job of picking and choosing these covers. While the collection isn’t quite exhaustive, it does provide a great sample of what the company produced, going as far back as when Marvel was Timely Comics. There are covers here for Millie the Model, Patsy Walker, and other non-superhero books such as Devil Dinosaur and Howard the Duck. There are even covers from Marvel’s slick horror magazines such as Tales of the Zombie. Cowsill also includes preliminary sketches of covers, allowing us to see the steps in the process.
And if all of that wasn’t enough, the book comes with two prints from famous comics: Amazing Fantasy #15 (the first appearance of Spider-Man) and Invincible Iron Man #1(the first issue of Warren Ellis and Adi Granov’s Extremis storyline—the arc that revitalized Iron Man for the modern age). As soon as I buy frames, these two prints are going up on my office wall.
In Summary:
Marvel Comics: 75 Years of Cover Art is a fun coffee table book that Marvelites such as myself will love. It covers a wide swath of the company’s history and provides fun and interesting captions about the art, the artists, and the company. Highly recommended.
Content Grade: A+
Published By: DK Publishing
Release Date: August 18th, 2014
MSRP: $50.00
