Nice catch! I felt the Ditko influence, but Boggie's work seemed primitive in comparison. Maybe it was just the idea of homaging a 1960s interior panel arrangement on a 1990s cover, as you suggested.




Jeff: I've got to get in a review this week.
Also Jeff: But not while you're in the middle of a tense and complex text conversation with your ex wife about the kids!
Jeff: No sweat. I can do both...

I'm seriously embarrassed on this one.

And also, is it more a commentary on my obliviousness or on the total inconsistency in Bogdanove's art that I couldn't immediately tell?






I definitely would have enjoyed that more. It seems to me, though, that Jerry White was every bit as detested as the Post-Crisis Jason Todd (and maybe moreso) for pretty much the same reasons, and folks just wanted this giant Marv Wolfman mistake removed without the chance of return.

And now he might return.

For the most part, I'm not a big fan of Bogdanove's work though certainly, the man has his moments.  The big massive brawl to the death with a big dumb monster that's coming up?  By all means, let Bogdanove let loose.  A style which feels incompatible and perhaps even at odds with what's going on in the other titles?  Not necessarily a bad thing when in about half a dozen issues from now, the four titles are going to wildly diverge from one another with "Reign of the Supermen!".  But when you open Superman: Man of Steel and are blown away by the first page and it's by someone other than the regular artist...





That still throws me, hence my bringing it up.  Strangely, though Gammill's pencils are so much more impressive than Bogdanove's, suddenly the improvement makes me feel like the title's become redundant.  I suppose it's because Gammill's work here doesn't look radically different to my eyes from Tom Grummett's over in Adventures of Superman that I feel that way, but I will say that if you're Mike Carlin and you're looking to justify a fourth Superman title (which, yes, by this point has already been running for close to a year and a half) it might actually be easier to make your argument using Bogdanove's cruder artwork than someone else's more appealing stuff if that more appealing stuff feels like a repeat of last week's show.  


eh.  I don't want to come down too hard on Bogdanove - you want Superman repeatedly punching a laser back to its source then Bogdanove's your man.  And there's something so earnest about his style that I'm genuinely convinced that as he's drawing this stuff, he's screaming the Superman theme at the top of his lungs even as his neighbours are pounding on his door threatening to call the cops if he doesn't shut the hell up.  

But yeah, I just thought it was worth a mention.

Interesting point. I personally prefer the titles feeling similar to one another: different enough that you can feel the individual contributions of unique writers and artists if you are looking for them, but cohesive enough that this does feel like one shared universe featuring one set of characters with one set of distinct looks and personalities, regardless of the title at the front of the book.

That being said, it could be fun to see Bogdanove unleashed - just how absurdly exagerrated can he take things without feeling any need to conform to the visual look of his peers? Sometimes I like that absurdly exaggerated '90s style where muscles and pouches expanded to reflect the intensity of the moment, but not in a core Superman title.



I kind of love this read on his art. It might help me stomach/appreciate it a bit more going forward.


And I really think I need to make a bigger deal about Gammill's return. Sure, it was a rush job, but he drew (in my opinion) the most iconic covers of this era, and I'm thrilled by the possibility that he might be back to do more soon.

Maybe not quite totally unique...




From Action Comics #505 (March 1980), art by Curt Swan and Frank Chiaramonte. Swan uses the same camera angle looking down from above, but with a cliff instead of a building.

I'm not saying Guice swiped from this or even had it in mind. But as I said before, his layouts and angles got a lot less interesting after he stopped drawing Flash where writer Mike Baron was giving him layout suggestions, so I kind of wonder.

No, that was me.



Not the first one. The Superman office at that time was downright allergic to anything that could be considered pre-Crisis, e.g. the Weisinger and Schwartz eras, for the most part.

So either Guice swiped from Swan on his own, or as you said it's coincidence and Guice came up with that angle on his own. Or, I suppose, someone else entirely once used that angle and Guice swiped that. But either way, the angle is not "totally unique."


I have to tip the hat to Marv-El* a little though, if he hadn't mentioned Action Comics #505 in this post, I wouldn't have thought to check it and found that page.




Thanks.

* How do you tag someone again?

Yeah, I think they were just trying to distance themselves from aspects that had aged worse in the 90s. But the homages were fine. I mean, he's still Superman! You can change the myth up to a certain point.

eh.  Bogdanove does offer an "After Ditko" note below his signature though I wonder if that couldn't be read as blaming Ditko for the cover rather than tipping his hat to him.

I mean, what's to stop a lazy artist from saying to himself, "You know what?  I'll just erase half the cover, slap on a 'After Colletta' on there and this cover's good to go!"?