I've been an LSH fan since the earliest days of my comic collecting life. I got my first Adventure Comic featuring the LSH while sick with pneumonia in the 3rd grade and I've been hooked since. I own virtually every appearance from Adventure 247 ($25 back in the day) to today.
The
Shooter/Swan/Klein era is remains my favorite art era, but the
Dave Cockrum,
Mike Grell and
Michael (Mike Nasser) Netzer runs contributed mightily to my love the team.
Al Plastino drew the first story of my favorite characters - the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Brian Stroud, the Silver Age Sage recently posted a drawing by Al and mentioned that he was accepting commissions of cover recreations. I searched Mike's Amazing World of DC Comic's database of Al's work and came up with a list of covers by him that I thought I might get recreated, but I didn't follow-up.
This past Christmas, I received several new DC Archives including one with the LSH. That caused me to thumb through earlier ones. While doing so, I saw that first splash by Al and said to myself, "That's the one."
I contacted Brian, got Al's snail mail address and sent him a letter with a scan of the page in question. A day or two later, my cell rings a work (not a good thing generally) and the merry voice on the other end says, "Alex, This is Al. I want to start your drawing today."
He told me that the original had too many words and that he'd never liked the layout and wanted to change it to avoid those wordy pieces. I said, "Go for it." I was so surprised that I'm sure I sounded like an idiot fanboy.
Al told me he wanted to get started now because the weather was bad and he couldn't get on the golf course.
He's a lively guy and everyone should
contact him, visit his
website, and get a commission. You'll be glad that you did; I sure am glad that I did.
BTW, if you like the LSH, check out my
Swan LSH commission. You'll be glad that you did.
