About 12 years ago, when I first entered into the OA hobby I discovered the cover art to ASM 375 on CAF. Being my favorite issue of Spider-Man and maybe favorite comic, I had to try and find a way to get it. My first offer was a bit underwhelming for the owner but was every cent I had to spare at the time. Another offer a couple years later made me realize that the market had moved faster than I could afford. At that point my hopes were basically crushed for ever owning the one piece I'd likely trade my whole collection for. Such was my love for that cover that out of my heartache sprouted an idea, to commission the original artists for the next best thing, a recreation.
I first found a vintage Marvel art board identical to the original. Then I spent the next few years trying to get on Mark Bagleys commission list, not easy. Once I did, I was informed that he did not want to do a line for line recreation…FML. That was gut punch for sure but I was determined so we eventually came to terms on a faithful reinterpretation of the original. Mark Bagley did the pencils and when finished had even added some hand lettering on his own. From the inception I planned on doing trade dress/photo stats to mimic the original so that was just a bonus although I knew it would be covered up. Randy Emberlin and I live in the same state so it was fairly easy to get him to do the inking which came out great.
The last stage of the process was to create the trade dress/stats to honor the original as closely as possible. A bit of a perfectionist, I took a lot of measurements & reference pictures to ensure the final look was as authentic as possible. No photoshop was used but everything else from photo editing apps, multiple paste-ups, a transparent overlay and AI. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the quality of the printout logos so I took my fine tip pens and touched up the majority of the webbing and lettering as well. As a bonus to myself, I took an additional picture of the cover with the original newsstand barcode from my childhood copy as the cherry on top. *See additional images.
Think what you will about commissions, recreations, etc but when a piece means something special to a collector we all can appreciate that feeling and relate. It’s not perfect and it’s not the original but it is a collaboration between the original artists and myself which makes it meaningful in its own way. All in all, this whole process has been an adventure, one that ran the gamut of emotions but culminated in a sense of accomplishment that I can feel proud of, even in the absence of the real deal. And who knows, maybe one day that cover and I may have our…Final Confrontation. Until then, I’ll enjoy the hell out of this. Thanks for reading!
