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Post by tarkintino on Jun 7, 2020 18:31:15 GMT -5
More examples of this Great cover/ lousy interior than of great cover/ great interior and lousy cover/ great interior, that's for sure. But here's one I think of from when I was a kid:  Oh, man, did I want to see how Batman came to look like that! Here's what I got:   Yeah...what a sharp decline from cover to interior. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Jun 7, 2020 20:07:02 GMT -5
Any issue of Justice League of America between 1968 and 1974. Adams or Cardy covers, Dillin interiors. Cei-U! I summon the perpetual disappointment! So I'm the odd man out cuz I like Dillin artwork on the League. Never was one to run with the lemming's off the cliff. Oh, I have nothing against Dillin. Between JLA, World's Finest, and Blackhawk, I have scores of comics drawn by the man. Definitely one of the medium's underappreciated workhorses like Sal Buscema or Jose Delbo, both a competent draftsman and a competent storyteller. But sometimes you crave more than competence, and a cover by Cardy or Adams promises that.
Cei-U! I summon the difference between good and great!
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Post by berkley on Jun 7, 2020 20:27:21 GMT -5
Like I always say, as much as I love all those Steranko covers, I would much prefer one 20-page comic + cover rather than 21 covers for 21 comics with interior art by someone else.
And the same for all my other favourite cover artists. A Frank Brunner Dr. Stange cover is great, but it doesn't make me like the comic inside, drawn by someone else, any more than I would have done without the Brunner cover. (edit: if anything, the comic inside suffers by contrast with the vastly superior cover it's graced by).
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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 8, 2020 6:38:33 GMT -5
So I'm the odd man out cuz I like Dillin artwork on the League. Never was one to run with the lemming's off the cliff. Oh, I have nothing against Dillin. Between JLA, World's Finest, and Blackhawk, I have scores of comics drawn by the man. Definitely one of the medium's underappreciated workhorses like Sal Buscema or Jose Delbo, both a competent draftsman and a competent storyteller. But sometimes you crave more than competence, and a cover by Cardy or Adams promises that.
Cei-U! I summon the difference between good and great!
Competent is a good thing. I think that during that era, I avoided buying JLA because the art was really bland. I don't remember avoiding buying a Sal Buscema book. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 8, 2020 6:53:38 GMT -5
This was definitely jarring. Justice Machine cover by all powerful at the time, John Byrne and interiors by Mike Gustovich.   |
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Jun 8, 2020 7:56:04 GMT -5
Standard practice for just about any product. Provide a great cover or image to sell the product no matter if it is great or good or garbage. Many products utilize beautiful women & sexy/provocative images to promote/increase sales. Comics before becoming fan driven collecting was all about a child's impulse purchase. All that mattered was the sale. Why from the very start of comics it has been about having an eye catching attention getter with many e mediocre or poor interior. Just another act of putting on your best face for a night on the town to attract folks that might otherwise ignore you... This definitely is a marketing tactic that works on almost anything. And I agree comics do it too, especially with sexy women covers being that it appeals to the targeted demographic. However on the side of just your standard superhero cover, I think the difference is that the cover or interior art is going to appeal differently to people. First two instances that popped into mind on seeing this thread was every issue of the "New" Defenders covers vs interior art. And to me in this case not only were all the covers amazing and done by amazing artist, but the interior wasn't just not to my taste it seemed badly done or rushed. Now with Aliens Earth War you have amazing John Bolton covers, but Sam Keith interior. In this case I am just not a fan of Keith's art. It wasn't so much that I hated Keith's art, it was more that it just wasn't John Bolton's. Sometimes it seems the cover is indeed selling an inferior product. Then there is times it's just that the cover artist appeals to someone so much anyone's interior art is going to seem inferior even if well done. |
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Post by rberman on Jun 8, 2020 8:53:18 GMT -5
Sometimes it seems the cover is indeed selling an inferior product. Then there is times it's just that the cover artist appeals to someone so much anyone's interior art is going to seem inferior even if well done. It's the same story in 1968...   As in 2020...   Moreso these days what with all the variant covers. How does that work financially? Do the comic book companies pay for all those variant covers? Or are they provided by the artist free to make that piece of art a "published work" which is then sold as such on the original art market? |
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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 8, 2020 9:28:04 GMT -5
@mrp commented that the variant covers really boost the ordering by comic shops.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 8, 2020 10:34:15 GMT -5
I know what you mean about the timelessness of this practice, rberman, but there are better examples from 1968 than Magnus. The Russ Manning art in Magnus wasn't a step down from the cover paintings. (Although nobody could make Magnus look imposing in those white go-go boots and mini-tunic.) |
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Post by rberman on Jun 8, 2020 10:42:48 GMT -5
@mrp commented that the variant covers really boost the ordering by comic shops. Oh, I'm sure, due to the "gotta catch 'em all" collector mentality. I was more curious about how the cover artists are remunerated when a given issue has two or fifty alternate covers. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Jun 8, 2020 13:06:29 GMT -5
Your interior page is from Justice Machine #2, which sported a cover by Mike Gustovich and Terry Austin. Was Rusty Clunker a self-deprecating pseudonym? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2020 13:24:03 GMT -5
I am with codystarbuck in a great cover is splendid but what's inside matters more. He nailed it with "subtle" as ALL artists he mentioned put story and flow above all else. I would add Heck, Tuska, Aparo to the aforementioned making me a comic fan. Same for me. I appreciate the storyteller artists from the 60s to the 80s that weren't flashy. They did what was needed. |
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Post by MDG on Jun 8, 2020 13:45:11 GMT -5
There were plenty of undergrounds that had a great cover but mainly "filler" in the book. That led to this gag:  |
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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 8, 2020 14:15:33 GMT -5
Your interior page is from Justice Machine #2, which sported a cover by Mike Gustovich and Terry Austin. Was Rusty Clunker a self-deprecating pseudonym? I wasn't sure that it was, but I didn't want to pull out my copy. It's still more of the same type of poor artwork. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jun 8, 2020 14:15:54 GMT -5
Your interior page is from Justice Machine #2, which sported a cover by Mike Gustovich and Terry Austin. Was Rusty Clunker a self-deprecating pseudonym? Yeah. For the record, this is the opening page of Justice Machine's first issue:
Here's the cover to the second issue, by Gustovich and Austin:
And here's that opening page in color:
Personally, I didn't think the art was that bad in the original run of Justice Machine, until the fourth issue, when I got pretty wonky, with a slapdash quality to it. And as far as I can tell, the Rusty Clunker credit was similar to the 'Crusty Bunkers' credit used by the Adams & Giordano studio, i.e., it meant several different guys did the inks.
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