I’ve mentioned before how sometimes ideas for art kind of come at me from random directions, and certain ideas will stick in my head until I do something about them. This is one of those.
Most fans of comics and comics history will recognize the significance of All Star Comics. Especially issue #3: it was the first appearance of the Justice Society of America! The cover for #3 is well-known, as it’s been re-created and repurposed by a number of other artists over the years. I even did it myself once some years back for an FCA cover (Fawcett Collectors of America), replacing the DC heroes with Fawcett’s.
Less familiar are the issues prior to #3. I guess once DC had published Archive Editions containing every issue from All Star #3 forward, it was decided that they probably should complete the set and put out an Archive collecting the first two issues, before the title became about the Justice Society. Hence volume #0.
On a recent reread of that volume, I was struck by the cover of All Star #1. The published cover seemed an afterthought: using existing art photostatted from previous stories and pasted up, the characters looking tiny and constricted in the layout. Maybe the issue was running close to the deadline when they realized they still needed a cover. I started to think, “What might it have looked like if they’d had more time to put it together?”
And as mentioned up top, the idea stuck, and the only way to get it out of my head was to actually do it! So here’s my take on it.
Hope you enjoy it!
Well said, Mark. I turned to AS#1 and the cover was exactly as you describe: tiny images. What you have done is vastly improve the layout size, but keep the idea of snapshots in the cover layout. I like the look of the Gary Concord costume. Colors are great. I re-read the story and would like to see that smoothed out also. I certainly like the premise tho. The Spectre continues to be an all time favorite. Yours is a great take in the hinting of the supersized Spectre covers. Thanks much.
Glad you liked this, Joe.
There’s something very “Doc Savage” about how Gary Concord would get into fights, and his costume would get shredded (at least in some of the samples I’ve seen). So I thought it would be fun to go with that idea. And the Spectre was certainly one of the more unique Golden Age heroes (I can’t remember where, but I think years ago someone wrote an essay referring to the Spectre and Dr. Fate as “the Wild Ones.” Definitely appropriate). Unfortunately, as time passed, they kind of tamed the Spectre down, introducing the comic relief character “Percival Popp, the Super Cop.” Dr. Fate got a similar taming down.