One thing that stands out to me about this beautiful cover is the effective use of a frame within a frame. Thor is dramatically framed within the 'arms' of the storm, which draws your eye right too him. After registering Thor you pull back a bit to take in the storm creature, and only then pull back to the outer frame and start noticing all the great touches (like the rainbow). Congrats on this gem.

The way this is colored is surprisingly effective. It's almost impressionistic - look really closely, and you see all the marks and strokes, but pull back a bit and it just sings.

Terrific piece! Great layout, poses, and execution, as one would expect from Rude on Space Ghost.

This is one of the best pages from the book! Steve and Jaynelle recently had it (accidently) posted as for sale on Steve's website, and I liked it so much I tried to buy it! Jaynelle had lost track of some of the pages that had been sold, so I end up picking up a couple of different (and also excellent) pages. You have a great collection!

Thanks for the great comment. Yeah, the old Black WIdow costume was both a product of the sexism of earlier times (the goofy demi-cape, the cateye glasses-mask) and a rip-off of the Black Canary. John Romita did a great job redesigning the costume (and how I wish I had a page from later in this issue!).

Great comment, thanks Ruben! I think Colan's anatomy sometimes looks wacky because he was fantastic at expressing bodies in motion. Look at photos of athletes in extreme movement and you see bones bending, joints hyperextending, and all sorts of improbabilities. The key was he needed the right inker to be able to decipher his pencilling, and not just trace his pencil strokes. Shores and Palmer were two of those inkers.

Wow, fantastic story, Steve, thank you for sharing. It really speaks to Merwan's thoughfulness as a creator. This piece will be in the next batch that goes to the framer.

This is terrific - I love the way the robot stands so impassively, in contrast to Leeja's obvious struggles. Masterful posing. 

This page makes me go, "Awwwww." Lovely. 

Aside from the absurtities in the flag that you mention, take a look at Nancy and Sluggo's 'salutes'. They seem to lack elbows but have extra-flexible wrists.

I could never figure out if Nancy was intentionally awful, like a bad attempt at irony, or if the joke was to laugh at the creator for thinking the strip was worth publishing. Of course, that applied to many strips at the time. To a curious kid, they seemed wildly archaic, like zombies that wouldn't die: Dick Tracy, Mary Worth, Mark Trail, Gil Thorp, many others. Hell, I'd put even Steve Canyon in that category. It made me confused when I later heard Milton Caniff was a big influence on so many comic book artists. 

I'm amazed that you read Blondie as a boy and DIDN'T notice that she was stacked! Add in her tight skirts, 20-inch waist, great legs . . . how could a pubescent boy not notice?!? It confused me that the nap-loving goof Dagwood had this hot wife, but I didn't read Blondie for the storylines. ;)

Check out where she came from - in the 1930s strips she was a full-on sexy flapper. Here's a nice backgrounder: https://www.tcj.com/chics-blondie/
That article talks about a Chic Young/Alex Raymond connection, something I had no idea about. Anyway, sorry for the rambling, this is a really nice Blondie example.

I was reading Apartment 3-G regularly and admiring Kotzky's art before I was regularly reading Marvel comics. I'm still looking for the right strip. This is a really nice example.

Thanks, Jeff!

It's a measure of Moebius's genius that six people can intelligently debate which of his works is his magnum opus, and all have six different choices. I think L'Incal is his long-form science fiction masterpiece, though parts of it drift, and he is less visually inventive when he's not writing his own material. The Airtight Garage is probably my choice, along with Arcach, but some of his shorter works (Detour, Is Man Good, The Long Tomorrow) are epic, if more concentrated, accomplishments. The World of Edena is amazing, though perhaps too derivative of some of his earlier work. And all of that is leaving aside his work as Jean Giraud and Gir.

Those last two panels are terrific! I sometimes think Toth's best work was on the Romance books.

Always love seeing Steve's prelims. So dynamic and yet so clear.

I agree with your analysis of Toth's critique. Steve was still fairly early in his career, while Toth at that point was in full misanthrope mode, effectively estranged from comics and animation and much of his own family because he was so harsh and intolerant of everyone and everything. And few people note that the critique was based on fuzzy 1980's fax machine images of Steve's pencils. Anyway, this is a wonderful page from a nifty little story.

It must be an awesome feeling to have a great piece of art from a book that you wrote! Steve did some incredible work on Birdman.

I'm not sure how I missed seeing this before now. It's amazing, and looking like a fully finished piece more than a prelim.

Thank you! I've been trying to do both decent documentation and also find interesting stories about each new piece I'm adding. I realized the descriptions for a lot of my older pieces were lacking, so I'm steadily going those pieces and refreshing the descriptions. Turns out to be a lot of fun!

That fourth panel could have been used in one of Reagan's political campaigns - 'Ronnie busts the bureaucrats!' or something like that.

I was unfamiliar with Gustavson till now - man, the guy could draw!

One of Steve's best covers, and maybe the best not to feature Nexus or another superhero as the center of attention. It's easy to just focus on Sundra, and miss all the beautiful work at the base of the image.

Wall power Nexus! This is an awesome page, and at that size (13.5"x20" image) it must look incredible in person. Plus Rude's inks and lettering. Nice!

Sweet! The Dude does have a proclivity for those contour-loving strips on his ladies!

I wonder if the attractive women were the editor's suggestion, the better to sell copies of the magazine? Good on you for rescuing this and getting it to a restorer. Look forward to seeing the conserved version.

Nice page! It's from Nexus: Nightmare in Blue #4 (aka, issue #98 in the overall continuity), and reprinted as page 346 of volume 8 of the Nexus Omnibus. Inks by Gary Martin, letters by Willie Schubert.

Want even more of a coincidence? Way back when I was buying Moebius art directly from Jean Marc and Randy Lofficier, and telling them how much I wanted an Airtight Garage page, they took mercy on me and sold me their copy of this exact LE print (an AP print, so not one of the 20 numbered pieces, but signed by the great man himself). And yes, I absolutely agree, Moebius is one of the very greatest of all time.

It's a shame Hor and Shoultz didn't continue in the field. This is pretty exceptional work for two people brand new to comics. It's a great story the way you tracked them down and became their biggest collector!

 

This may be a prelim for a painting, but as a drawing it is beautifully finished and functions perfectly well a piece of art in it's own right. It's wonderfully evocative, thanks for sharing it.

This is one of those commissions that would make a great cover!

I love early Barry Smith. His Daredevil work is wildly uneven, I think because he was just starting to pull away a bit from being a Kirby clone, and because he was also trying to be a bit consistent with Colan's style, but without really understanding it. He was also really dipping into influences from Steranko, sometimes with spectacular effects, sometimes just confusing. 

In this page it all works. This is probably my favorite early Barry Smith Daredevil page out of all three issues, even though the '3-D' effect he wanted in panel one didn't happen (but it did get you a killer DD image, inked by Smith, plus a bonus image to frame separately!). 

Great action page, great early page, just a great page!

I believe Gene Colan was 70 when he did this page, four decades into his amazing Daredevil work. He certainly never mailed it. Wonderful, dynamic page.

What an utterly sublime page! This is exactly the kind of Gene Colan Daredevil I love so much. Four big beautiful panels of joyfull superhero nonsense, which can be equally well enjoyed by someone who appreciates great drawing without having a clue about the Marvel Universe or the story. A raygun-armed Catman and a surley Gorillaman argue about who gets to whomp the hero while DollasDollasDollas float everywhere (look at the posing on the hand holding the gun!); a jaunty gut punch delivered with a Devilish wisecrack and a smidgen of thoughtful exposition; a Kat-KO punch as only Colan drew 'em; an acrobatic dodge of a Birdboy blast, 30 years before Neo did it in the Matrix. I love every bit of it!

This is a terrific issue with tons of great action - Gene Colan at his best! Tartaglione isn't the tightest Colan embellisher but this is solid work. I think after all these years this fine page deserves a better scan, if you ever find the time. And if you ever think of unloading this page, give me a shout.

Thanks for sharing this, and I love (and agree with) your comments about collecting OA. I got my first piece in 1980 and you're right, work by people like Barry Smith was expensive even then, especially relative to the meager means of most of us then. But the motivation was about enjoying the craftsmanship up close, about holding this precious art in our hands, and studying it up close and personal.  

I can never get enough of Kurtzman's Frontline Combat work - one of the true high points of the entire medium.

Fantastic writeup for a fantastic piece! Thank you from another big Steve Rude fan.

Yes, so many amazing pages in that issue!

What a coincidence - this morning I reread the Wage of Sin, and paused on this page to enjoy the details Steve packed in (like the waiter casually stooping over to allow the knife thrower his sport). Fantastic page!

One of Steve's most beautiful covers. His skills here are razor sharp. Thank you for sharing this.

Classic Colan DD jump spin in panel 3 - love it!

Steve did a great job on Mister Miracle, and I admire your little Rude/Mr. Miracle gallery!

What an amazing piece of comics history! And say what you want about Smith just doing his best to copy Kirby at the very beginning, he still brought his own energy and intensity to the job. I've always found young Barry's earliest work surprisingly enjoyable, plus it's fascinating to track his rapid evolution from issue to issue.

I just looked up the published version, and I think the fingers-in-the-eyes move by DD in the first panel was too much for the Comics Code, so it was turned into a fist to the face. Don't want kids imitating super heros and poking each other's eyes out! Anyway, fun page from Colan's last issue for a while.

Perhaps the ultimate Gene Colan Black Widow image! Love it.

Hey Jeff, I love your Colan page!. I'm curious what you mean by "digitally restored" here? 

This is about my favorite kind of Colan/Daredevil page - DD doing ariel ballet high above the streets while playfully musing to himself. I've missed this side of Matt Murdock in virtually all subsequent versions of the character by different artists. This is really a fantastic page.

Paul Gulacy, Shang Chi, Leiko Wu . . . the names evoke magic. Wonderful page!