That was was direction to him. I want that cover punch from CA #1 done as though Cap meant it. I got one more scene coming... another obvious Golden Age pairing that many people have tried AND showed that it is actually hard to pull off. 

I obviously think he's got that special something. I'd love to see someone give him a big battle superhero story to do. A remix of the Avengers/Defenders War from the early 1970s would get my vote. I have not asked for it yet, but I'd love to see him do Dormammu. 

That is such a great idea to look at. I inverted it and posted it as an additional image.

Indeed! We need that follow-up to the end of the "Hard Knocks" story, where the two stop fighting and sit down to talk about working on a book deal together... and start arguing about percentages. Get them in court with Jen Walters representing the Hulk and Matt Murdock representing the Thing, debating IP licensing rights. There's a funny story in there somewhere. 

thanks, Justin!

I quite agree. :)

thanks, Malcolm, as always

Thanks for the note. Should I mention that this was an overlooked page at Jim Warden's site, proabably ca. 2002, that I paid $200 for. Hmmm... probably not. 

I keep thinking it would have been intriguing if the MCU version of The Thing had used this first panel as its model sheet. In all of the early Lee/Kirby books, Ben was someone who scared people when they saw him, and he stayed covered up in public for a reason. This more light-hearted, primary colors version of the team looks fun (and pleeease be good), but a more grim Grimm might have been an interesting contrast. I always respected Chadwick's choice to never get Concrete too comfortable in his skin.

This page is composed so well. In lesser hands you might get the top and bottom panels only, but the complementary POVs are so enhanced by the  in betweens. 

Thanks. High praise from you, kiddo! :)

There was something so inspired about the way he depicted these two characters. Roughhouse tumble. 

Having the characters in the picture frames breaking the wall is just a frosting of deliciousness to his pieces.

love those clean lines and the style

Haha. 

So, it turns out the name "Brian" did not appear in the US until the 1910-20s, probably thanks to immigrants from Ireland and England (where it was a popular name, generally ranking in the top 4). It was in the top 10 in the US during the 1970s (ca, 10K people a year per million), but has dropped off considerably (to ca. 350/million in 2020). The "y" variant is older in the US, probably because it was also a surname. A spot of Bryans show up in the 1880s, drops off, and picks up in the 1980s are Brian declines, reaching a max of about 2200/million. In 2020, it's a "i" versus "y" toss-up, as both now have the same frequency. One great thing about being an "i" though, when your name is misspelled and/or mispronounced, it's because the "a" and the "i" have been inverted. Not so bad. 

Hi Peter - No clue at all. That's how it was when I bought it (a long, long time ago, off eBay, if you can believe that - it was the Wild West back then). The measurement markings are showing, so it sure looks like it was deliberate. I always assumed this was matted and framed at some point, and this was done to accommodate a fancy mat cut. 

I sure agree. There is no way anyone was appreciating this work when it was printed with watery ink on newsprint, either. In my CAF collection of pages (in the Among Us Mortals gallery) I always include 2-3 close-ups to check out.

His pages are filled with a ton of "of their time" observations, too. Very 1950s.

Ha. I just noticed my error. It's BTOOOM!

The solid sense of story-telling clarity never fails.

The solid sense of story-telling clarity never fails.

For sure. I was 11 in 1968 and had been reading Marvel comics for about 3 years. Everything was an event.

And credit where credit is due: despite the drama, Ben was dubious that a car crash could ever take out Johnny (sometimes I go super-nova) Storm. The off-beat plot stands up when you recall that Byrne was serving up some commentary about Neal Adams's support for a 19th C hypothesis that the planet Earth was expanding in volume, and the named antagonist in the story (Alden Maas) is an anagram of Neal Adams.

Thanks. Easy to agree :) "Name 5 memorable scenes from the entire run of Cerebus, and you are going to get BOOM on many lists."

Old school kind of style and attention to actual composition. There is no confusion in how to read this!

Haha. Exactly right. 

He's so extremely good at that! And you can tell he's got the knack hard-wired - look how he captures that feeling again when he made the small, on-the-fly remarque drawing for the dedication. Old school magic.

That's absolutely right. When you look at the style sheet from "only" 20 issues earlier, the evolution in style AND skill is huge (see Additional Images). I always thought that these "Mind Game" cover expressions were the first time Sim ever got to pure, top-flight, Disney-Mickey-type animation, ca. Fantasia era. 

he's sooo good at capturing the spirit of the originals - and this Torch is a masterpiece

yep

yep

the action is palpable and captures the spirit of the original - and every tribute to the original design for telling a complete story

I so totally agree! The overall sense of actual space is better than a lot of modern comics (even though when you scrutinize the details of the windows/frames and Ben's placement relative to them, it ends up as contradictory as a visual illusion - and perhaps that is a point: you can only take in the entire scene as a gestalt). 

Kasra! Or the Dean of Modok, if you prefer! Thanks. I was blown away by what Abbey turned in on this - her absolute first time at anything this complex, and at the same time, assembled from my stuff not hers. Your comment is apt (although she did put a musca depicta in the other one). On the other hand, a "legacy painting" commissioned by someone turning 60 might be as momento mori as you get. That truly awesome OAX Modok piece of yours has strong overtones of the work that Max Grundy does.

Thanks, Rob. Haha. The description with detail about the objects in both of the paintings is too long for the CAF space. 

If you are curious, check them out here -

https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/bcoppola/category/musings/

It's been raising the great question for some: what would I put in MY paintings?

You think seeing that kind of stuff is a rush? Back in the day (way, way back in the pre-internet days), a lovely and kind person named Mark Cohen (strip/MAD writer by night and real estate agent by day) was a trusted friend of a few key strip artists (starting with Sparky Schulz, because they both lived in Santa Rosa) and he ended up getting the idea to rep a few hundred strip artists who wanted nothing to do with the bother of selling/dealing with the public, esp. when it was the long and bothersome US mail and sending checks and so on. I got to know Mark and visited his office a few times ... leafing through PILES of Peanuts strips and Nemo pages, Golden Age stuff, that was lying about. I got some things... but the refrain is well known: "If I had had more money...". He did take me to meet Schulz once at the Snoopy ice rink, where I was treated to lunch and proceeded to make garbled fanboy conversation, asking every fracking question he must have answered a thousand times or more. 

Hi Jason - Without a doubt, I agree on all those points wholeheartedly. It's nothing short of a stunning 2-pager. Yep - Fanfare ended up with a lot (all?) of the art from this series and all of the pages I got were from them (K'zoo is a couple of hours away from me, and it was SO tempting to bug out there). They had nice scans... so I just posted them. You actually previously commented on that awesome vertical slices layout used in issue 4, page 3, which is still one of my all-time favorite designs for a page. 

Thanks, John! As I said, that 4 pp sequence (and I think you did those 4) is great.

Hi. Thanks. Totally agree. In fact, it's even more impressive in person because the black/white range is even broader than the scanner image portrays. I just happened to be looking at it a few hours ago and was noting the black blacks and the white whites. Coincidental to get your comment on it just now!

Hi. Thanks. It was nothing but a fluke upon a fluke that I ended up with these, and I am also SUCH a fan that I still geek out when I see them hanging on the wall. I first saw him, too, in a small venue in Madison WI just as he was taking off. I've been to a couple of the Madison Square Garden shows he does. Still a thrill.

Such a good point, Andrew. And not one that is easy to appreciate these days when everything is so previewed and analyzed months if not years before the actual issues are released (well, everything else for that matter). It's fun to be old enough to remember trying to glean any information at all about a new month's releases when the new "Checklist" hit the Bullpen Bulletins page, or there was a page with four covers from issues coming out that month. This must be one of the last months with Stan listed as Editor in Chief, too. Roy took over in 1972.

And you are absolutely right about the Avengers. The energy in that series has been growing since Buscema started (the Hank Pym/Ultron/Yellowjacket storyline, bringing in the Black Panther and Clint Barton's stint as Goliath) but there was nothing like the Kree-Skrull saga for getting you to run around to every comic book spin rack you knew of, for fear of missing an issue. I absolutely recall buying many of those particular issues and simply having to read them on the spot.

Thanks, Toni!!!!

Me too! I always think about you and I having those companion pages from FF76 - ha.

More has been made in later years that the plot came from Claremont. I do not recall seeing commentary on just how much or why he was drawn to it.

Thanks, Jordan! Agreed: classic... 51 years ago! yikes

Thanks, Steven! I agree. He only did a handful of Avengers issues. When I think about Buckler, I think about this 2-page spread (so I was super-happy to get it, so long ago), which was his third work for Marvel. Something about this splash, including the real tension built up through the four top panels (even though they are right there in plain view of the sun shot and that streaming title. 

And I think about his pair of Iron Man issues (and the cool cover to issue 196, is next to last work, and one of the few things inked by him).  

And I think (unfortunately) about the many Kirby swipes he did when he was on the FF.

Oh, interesting comparison. The image is really captivating.

This is exactly why Carson ended up doing it the way he did. I wish I post a sensory version --- the different textures in the large figure are raised and so you get a very cool tactile difference

this look for Banner is really outstanding, I agree! thanks marcus

Hulk is happy to share!

I loved every little piece of the composition and artistic decisions. The 'logo' lettering for the Hulk, those damned blank lenses in Banner's glasses, the 'secondary' characters arrayed in the background, including the bomb. 

Thanks. I was super lucky. Mark Hay was showing some things he was taking to SDCC on the Paolo Rivera episode of CAF Live and he flashed this piece. I jumped on email like a madman.