First things first: yes, this is another FCA cover illustration, which will appear in the January 2014 issue of Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego, on stands in December. And no: this is not Captain Marvel!
The characters here are Goodguy and his nemesis, Dr. Sin. Prior to being asked to do this cover, I must confess I was unfamiliar with them. They were created by fan artist Alan Jim Hanley. As a young comics fan, I had no clue that there were that many other people out there who also loved old comics, let alone that there were fans who did their own comics! So I never came across the existence of this strip back then.
My title for this post comes from Goodguy’s periodic catchphrase, his equivalent of Captain Marvel’s and Billy Batson’s “Holy Moley!” Though we didn’t wind up incorporating it into the cover directly, my post here seemed a good place to use it.
In doing the cover, I had the opportunity to read a couple of Goodguy stories. Fun stuff! Along with his sense of humor, Hanley clearly had a lot of love for old comics, and old comics characters. I wouldn’t mind seeing some more.
Oh; I should mention too that the FCA issue I did this cover for also reprints a complete Goodguy story, appearing in color for the very first time. Yours truly did the coloring.
Mark, you did a tremendous job of capturing the essence of Hanley’s Goodguy in this drawing. I knew A. J. through correspondence, and I think he would have been greatly pleased by what you did here. I can hardly wait to see the story in color.
Thanks much, John! It’s especially gratifying to hear from someone who knew Hanley, as I would hope he would’ve enjoyed my version of his character.
Mark, here is something else which occurred to me. In one of his fanzines, published not long after the debut of the SHAZAM live-action TV show, A. J. commented that “Jackson Bostwick looks more like Goodguy than he does Captain Marvel,” but pronounced that as “okay.” It might be intriguing to see Jackson photoshopped into Goodguy’s costume.
Mark, it also occurs to me that you may be only the third person ever to draw Goodguy, at least for publication, and maybe for any reason. Hanley himself, of course, was the first. And Marty Greim’s COMIC CRUSADER STORYBOOK featured a full-page of Goodguy by Schaffenberger. If there were ever any other artists who drew the character, I either don’t recall or don’t know of them. I suspect that no one else did. So that’s another plus for this excellent piece of artwork!
Huh! I didn’t know that. If so, it’s a nice distinction!
The idea of the existence of a Schaffenberger version got me curious, so I did some googling, but no luck turning up anything. That would be very interesting to see!