Big Barda Poster art - Adam Hughes

 

 

(click for larger image) In keeping with my last post, I thought I'd share another Adam Hughes piece that I added to my collection not long ago.  As I mentioned in that post, Adam is adept in many mediums - pencil, ink, color, and digital color.  So the Wonder Woman cover that I recently posted scratched my itch for a nice inked piece by him.  Adam is also known for his illustrations rendered in Copic marker.  These are done in warm grey tones and then scanned into Photoshop and tweaked to add color.  It's a great technique and a clever use of both mediums.  But to pull it off, you have to be really good with the Copics - and he is.  I like this piece because it's Adam at his most "painterly" - he's so expert at layering the tones to get volume on his figures.  And speaking of his figures - Big Barda is one of my favorites!  I had never seen the original for this piece nor the poster that it was created for.  But I walked into a convention and saw it on display and fell in love with it.  Luckily, the seller included one of the original posters with the purchase.  Its  a limited edition print and I have an Artist's Proof - they're actually quite hard to find now.  But nothing trumps the original!

Wonder Woman 170 - Adam Hughes

(click for larger image). I think Adam Hughes has cemented his place as one of the greatest illustrators to have worked in comics.  Though he started out as just another "good girl" artist, he never stopped improving his drawing and illustration skills, and many now feel he deserves a place among greats like Drew Struzan or even Norman Rockwell (both influences).  Like Struzan and Rockwell, Hughes was never shy about using photo reference to get his images to look nearly flawless.  Hughes is a self taught artist and is very capable of working in pencil, ink, and color.  At some point in his career he took the leap into digital coloring and he's now probably better than any colorist working in comics.  While he has done interior comic book work over the years, he is primarily known as a cover artist.  Two of his longest running stints were on Wonder Woman (48 covers), and Catwoman (40 covers).

In the early 2000's when Hughes was wrapping up his run on Wonder Woman, I started seeing originals pop up in various collections.  I thought it would be nice to have one myself.  So I looked through all the covers online and picked three covers that were my favorites.  Those were 145, 158, and 170 (the three of them all have something in common - a sharp eye can figure it out!).  I've known for a long time where the 145 cover was but I think the owner is planning on taking it to his grave.  The 158 was around and then disappeared.  It recently turned up and I almost bought it, but the owner decided to hang onto it.  The 170 cover had two owners over the years.  I contacted the original owner once, briefly, but I didn't push very hard to get it.  Many years, and one new owner later, I decided to give it another go.  After discussing it on and off for a few months, we were finally able to work out a deal and I got to bring this beauty home!

It just so happens that this is Hughes' personal favorite Wonder Woman cover.  He writes in his book Cover Run:  "Hands down, this is my favorite Wonder Woman cover that I did during my run...this is the one time I felt I really nailed the Wonder Woman I see in my head.  I wish I'd been able to draw her like this every time.  The build, the rendering, the face - all spot on."  Looks good to me too!

World's Finest 263

(click for larger image)  Once upon a time in comics, writers and editors created alluring covers to entice readers into buying each comic book.  The covers typically depicted a scene within the book - a scene that was usually outrageous, shocking, or unbelievable.  Sometimes it appeared the heroes faced an impossible doom. Sometimes it even implied that a hero would die!  The potential reader couldn't help but think "I need to see how this turns out!"  In fact, it was common knowledge that some of these outlandish covers were created first, and the writer was simply told to write a story around it.  This system resulted in a lot of interesting and unbelievable ideas.  But it was also a lot of fun.  Unless of course the scene depicted on the cover never actually happened in the book, which was sometimes the case.  Or, it was tweaked slightly within the story giving the heroes an out.  In those cases, the reader faced bitter disappointment.

This system lasted for decades, but began to decline in the early 1990's.  The new trend was to have covers that were more vague, and more iconic.  The covers rarely had anything to do with the actual story and one felt that the covers became interchangeable - any Superman cover could be swapped with any other Superman cover and it wouldn't affect the story a bit.  This new method is what we have today; long gone are the days of those eye catching covers with their impossible dilemma's.  Instead we have depictions of our heroes looking strong, brave, iconic.

When I first started reading comics, the old system was in place.  It was always fun to see how these stories would resolve themselves.  Well, not always fun - some stories were pretty terrible.  But I read them anyway to satisfy my curiosity.  Another disappointing aspect, which is still with us today, is the fact that the cover artists were not always the artists hired to draw the interiors.  So even if you had a beautifully drawn cover, you might not have a beautifully drawn comic book.  That actually happened a lot.  So these covers were really special to me because they showcased the better artists working at the time.  For DC, that meant people like Neal Adams, Rich Buckler, Ross Andru, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, and George Perez.  More often than not, these artists works were greatly improved by the inking of one of DC's all time greats, Dick Giordano.

Even though the stories were not always the greatest, I still have quite a bit of nostalgia for many of the covers from those days.  I was lucky to find a couple of my favorites.  One is the cover to Word's Finest 260 by Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano (seen here).  The second is this one, World's Finest 263 by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano.  Did you know Batman and Superman had sons?  Neither did I until I picked up this comic!  Too bad their existence meant the world would be doomed! (see, now you'll have to buy the comic to find out what happens!). Or if you want to cheat, click HERE (pencils by Ross Andru, inks by Dick Giordano)