SUPERMAN Specialty Piece - Circa 1970's

Newest Update: Sunday, March 24th 2024 - Just an hour ago, longtime inker Joe Rubinstein posted a screen cap of this piece on his Facebook profile, with a comment that adds his thoughts towards who may have done the art for this piece. I've added my own screen cap of his Facebook post up above as another additional image for you all to see and read.

Same Day Edit: I've suspected since the moment I first laid eyes on this piece that Neal Adams may have worked on this piece, whether it be pencils or inks, but will need to see enough circumstantial evidence before I credit Adams with any part of this. But interestingly enough, fellow collector Shaun Clancy pointed me to a Facebook post written by Joe Rubinstein claiming that he had inked the piece. I doubted that, even though Rubinstein had been at continuity during the 70's, so I had Shaun point me to Rubinstein's post so I could see it for myself. That's when a small mystery turned into a bigger one. Rubinstein had posted the image he had inked over Mike Nasser and yes, I immediately recognized HIS image having HIS inks. I've posted that scan as an additional image for you all to see. The mystery lies with the fact that the piece he inked is NOT the same piece of art I own and have posted here. Neal is well known for redrawing and reusing the same poses, so it's not surprising that there's more than one piece with the same Superman pose. So the question still remains: Did Neal Adams work on this specific piece I own? Hopefully more information will come to light at some point....

While the Incredible Hulk was the Marvel character I first gravitated to and loved, at DC it was Superman who first ensnared me in his steely grip. I was first exposed to him via the Super Friends animated show on Saturday mornings during the mid 1970's, but it was the 1978 feature film that really made me love the character. Unfortunately for me, as much as I wanted to make the Superman and Action Comics titles a part of my monthly reading when I started collecting comics in 1982, I just didn't see any of the drama in the comics that I saw and felt in the film. It was painfully obvious to me that DC had never developed any viable villains who could go toe to toe with Superman and pose a challenge to him. It wasn't until 5 years later when John Byrne made the move to DC to revamp the character that I finally had a reason to start reading the Superman books. However, in as much as the stories didn't attract me in the pre-Byrne era, I did enjoy looking at the covers which adorned the two monthly titles, as they were often drawn by Garcia-Lopez, Buckler, Adams, etc. When I perused 1970's back issues, I loved looking at the Adams covers, which were brilliantly done. Having also discovered Mike Nasser's work from that time period, I also loved seeing his stuff as well because he had an incredible understanding of Adams' illustrative approach and emulated it almost perfectly.

So although I haven't often collected specialty pieces during my 26 years in this great hobby, I just felt compelled to grab this when it popped up, because it is clearly 1970's vintage Nasser and even more importantly, it was priced at around HALF of what it was fairly worth at the time, so it was a no-brainer. I've often preached about spending as much free time as possible to follow market prices in order to have as good and up to date understanding of what art is worth, and in situations like this one where the dealer didn't know the true value, I was able to take advantage of that lack of pricing knowledge and got an absolute steal. I paid the same for this beautiful, vintage Nasser Superman piece as many artists would charge to draw a single character in pen an ink today. These types of bargains don't come along often, but when they do, knowing your shit comes in handy and you can get yourself great art at even greater prices. So as I often say, when it comes to prices/values, do your homework, people!

I also want to mention that artists didn't typically draw the type of decorative, outer border you see on this piece when drawing a piece for fans, nor did they typically draw fan art with the same tools they used for their published assignments. Both of those elements are present here and that makes me think this was likely done as a contribution for a fanzine or prozine of the era, or perhaps even more likely, licensed merchandise such as t-shirts, bed sheets, posters, slurpee cups, etc. But unless/until I find a published usage, I'll keep it listed as unpublished. Either way, this piece offers great 1970's "Neal Adams" Superman art but at "Mike Nasser price", which is cheap for what it is, even if I'd had to have paid full FMV for it. Most importantly, it being of the vintage that it is, brings me back to that time when I really fell in love with Superman as Christopher Reeve brought him to life for me. So cool!