Star Brand #14 Cover Art

A true crown jewel for my original art collection. John has kept this particular cover art for all these years since its publication in March of 1988 - it was the very last of his Star Brand covers that he still had. I am very pleased to be able to say that I am the first person to own it in a personal collection! I feel especially fortunate as I *never* expected to be able to own an original cover by John on my relatively meager collecting budget.

I have fond memories of this very issue - but oddly it was one that I did not pick up while it was newly published. I was still operating on a very slender teen budget at the time (I think I only earned about $20 a week at a part time job after school back then), and could not really afford the higher priced direct-edition New U comics during that final year of publication. One day not soon after the line had ended, I found this particular issue of Star Brand in a quarter-bin…

I had neither bought nor really seen an issue of Star Brand since #7, and the cover image for #14 plus the ”Sins Of The Father” title were *immediately* very compelling to me. I was wondering just what the hell had happened in the series since I last read it... I took it home and devoured it, and was left feeling even more mystified by the Star Child, as well as being horrified that Ken seemed to have gone completely insane. That page where he was holding the lady prisoner that he had “saved” haunts me to this very day.

I was also very happy to have received the extra pieces that came with the artwork, like the title overlay on acetate, and a separate hand-coloured sketch by John showing where he intended the art to overlap the title.

I also shone a light under the paste-on stat image of the Star Child to discover that in the original version underneath, the baby’s legs are posed with the nearest leg forward, which also has the unfortunate side-effect of showing the Star Child’s butt . I guess Howard Mackie (the Editor of the New U line at the time) must have decided it was better not to have a baby’s butt showing on the final image - probably for the best!! 🤣🤣 ⚡️🌎