MattBrady
04-06-2003, 11:04 AM
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/sangiacomo/Curt.jpg" width="200" height="259" align="right" border="0">by Mike Sangiacomo
I didn’t realize how much I missed Curt Swan until I read Curt Swan, A Life In Comics, by Eddy Zeno (Vanguard, $34.95). Curt was the Superman artist for 30 years, his clean-cut image of Superman is the one most people associate with the Man of Steel. He was a comic artist for 50 years until his death in 1996 of a heart attack.
Swan drew hundreds of DC comics beginning with a Boy Commandos story in 1945. He drew comics until his death, one even coming out posthumously.
His characters were skillfully drawn, anatomically correct. He didn’t need to draw Superman with monstrous muscles to show his strength, the power was shown in a dozen more subtle ways. His stint on Superman followed that of another great artist, Wayne Boring, who was cruelly put out to pasture in the mid-60s by an indifferent industry.
A Life In Comics includes interviews with the greats of the industry, all sharing their memories of the quiet Swan. The words of Alan Moore, Joe Kubert, Julius Schwartz, Al Williamson, Carmine Infantino and many others were used to help define the man behind the cape.
But the true joy of the book is the art, including 14 pages of some of the greatest moments of Superman’s career. Arlen Schumer put together wonderful double-page montages of Superman with his friends and foes. Zemo’s breezy style, punctuated by art on every page, makes the Curt Swan book a thing of wonder.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/sangiacomo/thunder2.jpg" width="235" height="366" align="left" border="0">THUNDER’S FUTURE-PAST
A week after the <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=00003 1" target="_blank"> article</a> about the long-awaited return of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents I happen to be in a used book store in Cleveland.
It’s great place, full of dusty, old volumes.
It has a big, sloppy box of comics that I rarely look twice at. It’s usually beat-up Marvel and Image comics from the past 10 years. But this time, a familiar cover caught my eye, the one and only issue of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. #1 from Solson Publications. It was a very cool T.H.U.N.D.E.R. comic, and possibly the rarest of them all. It’s not the most valuable, but try to find it.
The 1987 comic was set sometime around 2010, a time after a conservative government has suspended civil liberties and closed the expensive T.H.U.N.D.E.R. project. Thunder Mountain was closed down and an addled android called NoMan wanders the halls, wondering what happened to his old friends.
When a young girl is chased inside by bad guys, she runs into NoMan and identifies herself as Lyn Brown. NoMan thinks she said she was Len Brown, the real name of Dynamo, and leads her to the treasure room where the super-strength inducing Dynamo belt is kept along with a spare suit.
She puts it on, turns the dial and there is a familiar crackle as the belt energizes and...
That’s all. The issue ends there, promising to continue the story in the next. But there was no next issue. No more Solson in fact, as the tiny company run by Rich Buckler and Gary Brodsky faded away. The writer-artist team of Michael Sawyer, James Lyle and Ron Wilber never had a chance to finish their tale of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. future.
Here’s hoping that crackle comes back in June when DC gives T.H.U.N.D.E.R. a go.
Michael Sangiacomo is a statewide news reporter for the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. His syndicated "Journey Into Comics" weekly column on the state of the comic book business, can be found in newspapers and at the Newsarama website. His monthly comic book column appears the first Saturday of each month in the Plain Dealer Arts page and is syndicated through Newhouse Newspapers. He also writes a twice-monthly audiobooks review column covering crime thrillers and mysteries that can be seen at <a href="http://www.audiobookstoday.com" target="_blank">www.audiobookstoday.com</a>
I didn’t realize how much I missed Curt Swan until I read Curt Swan, A Life In Comics, by Eddy Zeno (Vanguard, $34.95). Curt was the Superman artist for 30 years, his clean-cut image of Superman is the one most people associate with the Man of Steel. He was a comic artist for 50 years until his death in 1996 of a heart attack.
Swan drew hundreds of DC comics beginning with a Boy Commandos story in 1945. He drew comics until his death, one even coming out posthumously.
His characters were skillfully drawn, anatomically correct. He didn’t need to draw Superman with monstrous muscles to show his strength, the power was shown in a dozen more subtle ways. His stint on Superman followed that of another great artist, Wayne Boring, who was cruelly put out to pasture in the mid-60s by an indifferent industry.
A Life In Comics includes interviews with the greats of the industry, all sharing their memories of the quiet Swan. The words of Alan Moore, Joe Kubert, Julius Schwartz, Al Williamson, Carmine Infantino and many others were used to help define the man behind the cape.
But the true joy of the book is the art, including 14 pages of some of the greatest moments of Superman’s career. Arlen Schumer put together wonderful double-page montages of Superman with his friends and foes. Zemo’s breezy style, punctuated by art on every page, makes the Curt Swan book a thing of wonder.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/sangiacomo/thunder2.jpg" width="235" height="366" align="left" border="0">THUNDER’S FUTURE-PAST
A week after the <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=00003 1" target="_blank"> article</a> about the long-awaited return of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents I happen to be in a used book store in Cleveland.
It’s great place, full of dusty, old volumes.
It has a big, sloppy box of comics that I rarely look twice at. It’s usually beat-up Marvel and Image comics from the past 10 years. But this time, a familiar cover caught my eye, the one and only issue of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. #1 from Solson Publications. It was a very cool T.H.U.N.D.E.R. comic, and possibly the rarest of them all. It’s not the most valuable, but try to find it.
The 1987 comic was set sometime around 2010, a time after a conservative government has suspended civil liberties and closed the expensive T.H.U.N.D.E.R. project. Thunder Mountain was closed down and an addled android called NoMan wanders the halls, wondering what happened to his old friends.
When a young girl is chased inside by bad guys, she runs into NoMan and identifies herself as Lyn Brown. NoMan thinks she said she was Len Brown, the real name of Dynamo, and leads her to the treasure room where the super-strength inducing Dynamo belt is kept along with a spare suit.
She puts it on, turns the dial and there is a familiar crackle as the belt energizes and...
That’s all. The issue ends there, promising to continue the story in the next. But there was no next issue. No more Solson in fact, as the tiny company run by Rich Buckler and Gary Brodsky faded away. The writer-artist team of Michael Sawyer, James Lyle and Ron Wilber never had a chance to finish their tale of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. future.
Here’s hoping that crackle comes back in June when DC gives T.H.U.N.D.E.R. a go.
Michael Sangiacomo is a statewide news reporter for the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. His syndicated "Journey Into Comics" weekly column on the state of the comic book business, can be found in newspapers and at the Newsarama website. His monthly comic book column appears the first Saturday of each month in the Plain Dealer Arts page and is syndicated through Newhouse Newspapers. He also writes a twice-monthly audiobooks review column covering crime thrillers and mysteries that can be seen at <a href="http://www.audiobookstoday.com" target="_blank">www.audiobookstoday.com</a>