How many Fantastic Four covers did Jim Steranko produce in the 1970s? Only three to my knowledge.
Fantastic Four #130 was produced during Steranko's flurry of 1972 covers for Marvel. This issue featured the return of the Frightful Four, with an interesting twist. Medusa, once a member of the Frightful Four in 1960s, had switched sides and become a member of the FF. Taking Medusa's place? Thundra, the Femizon who wanted to make babies with Benjamin J. Grimm. The Thing looks great on this cover.
Fantastic Four #131 featured the answer to a mystery that began in Avengers #104--whatever happened to Quicksilver? The last we had seen of the silver speedster, he had heroically sacrificed himself to defeat a Sentinel. Seriously injured, Pietro saw something horrible approaching him. Then he vanished, leaving the Avengers and his sister Wanda to wonder where he had disappeared.
This issue gave us the answer! Quicksilver had been approached by Lockjaw, the teleporting giant bulldog from the Inhumans. Lockjaw brought Pietro to Attilan, where he was nursed back to health by Crystal. Crystal melted Quicksilver's icy exterior and he fell in love. Naturally, when Johnny Storm discovered them together, a massive fight ensued.
It was a pretty darn good soap opera moment in the Marvel Universe. Unfortunately, it had the side effect of removing Quicksilver from the Marvel playground for a number of years.
While the 1972 FF covers are good, they don't seem like iconic Steranko. But the cover to the Fantastic Four Marvel Comics Index in 1977 is really groovy and psychedelic, man. Nuff said.
Back in the 1970s, we had no internet or Marvel Wikia to give us the data on all of Marvel’s published comics. What we did have was the Marvel Comics Index series, published by George Olshevsky. He painstakingly listed each issue of a title, providing a snapshot of the cover and listed the title/credits for each one.
He had some great cover artists for this index series, but my favorite cover was this one featuring Captain America by Jim Steranko.
What a cover! It could be a movie poster. Steranko highlights everything great about Cap’s World War 2 history with Bucky, the Invaders, Professor Erskine, the Red Skull, Hitler, Zemo, and Baron Strucker. Thrown in some American fighter planes dropping off paratroopers and the Sands of Iwo Jima flag raising for even more patriotic fervor. Nuff said.
Here are a couple of Steranko covers that I didn’t even know about until I did some research!
Tex Dawson, the Marvel cowboy who faded off the face of Earth 616. Apparently his big gimmick was that he had a white German Sheppard (Lightning) and a black stallion (Whirlwind). Steranko’s cover is really nifty, full-on Wild West glory.
Here’s another cover, to Western Gunfighters #14. Apart from Matt Slade—who might have been in Steve Englehart’s Avengers time-travel story—I don’t recognize these dudes either. Nuff said.
You may know that Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan began in the pulp magazines. Ka-Zar actually first appeared in the pulps as well. And if a man can run around in the jungle half naked, why can't a woman? The pulp stories had women as supporting characters in Tarzan and Conan, but it took a comic book series to make a headline character. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle was the first female character in comics to have her own title--appearing in 1942 three months before Wonder Woman. Since that time, there's probably been more jungle queens running around than men.
Marvel decided to create their own jungle girl in 1972 when Shanna the She-Devil was published.
And A Jungle Queen Is Born! One of the greatest covers Steranko has ever executed. The cover, and the character, harkens back to the 1940s covers featuring Sheena. Shanna's design is just classic, with the leopard skinned bikini that she runs around in, the claw bracelets on her legs/arms, and that wild red hair. She's leaping out of the trees, towards the hunters, but also leaping at the reader.
Ka-Zar has his sabretooth tiger Zabu as his best bud. Shanna has her pet leopards, Ina and Buri, who will do anything to protect her. I thought this was a great idea, it made Shanna an animal lover and protector. Unfortunately, Ina and Buri were killed by a villain in Savage Tales #9.
Our current era has a lot of artists who draw sexy women. Adam Hughes, Terry Dodson, and Frank Cho immediately come to mind, although Amanda Conner is in that mix as well. I like all those artists and their women are fantastic.
But I think our collective senses are all too dominated by Maxim magazine. The cover to Shanna the She-Devil #2 shows another way to draw a sexy woman. Make her toned, athletic, and sensual with a classic face and flowing hair. Shanna's breasts are normal sized and her ass isn't jutting out of a thong, but she's wildly appealing. When I hit puberty, this cover was better than most Playboy magazines.
The women back in the 1970s that I liked were more normal. Linda Carter, Victoria Principal, Catherine Bach, Heather Thomas, Markie Post, Bo Derek, Valerie Bertinelli. I also liked Adrienne Barbeau, Raquel Welch, Ursula Andress, Loni Anderson. Did the latter group have breast implants? It's possible since those were developed in the 1960s. Even if they did, those gals didn't appear too unreal.
Don't get me wrong, not everyone in comics draws unreal women. There are lots of exceptions. I just think Steranko has shown how a strong, lithe woman is sexier than heck. Nuff said.
Jim Steranko wrote extensively about two characters in the pulp magazines--characters that were the early prototypes for Superman and Batman. Doc Savage and the Shadow.
I had already bought several Doc Savage paperbacks (with beautiful James Bama covers) before Marvel announced they would publish a comic book based on the character in 1972. It was a pretty good series with nice art by Ross Andru.
Steranko drew the cover of issue #2, set against a Mayan backdrop. The first two issues were a retelling of Doc's origin, which I had read in the first paperback. Doc's father is killed and he traces the murderer back to Central America--the source of the Savage's great wealth.
Steranko's Doc uses the Bama design (as did the Andru art inside), with the skull-cropped hair, vest, and boots. That was the version I always had in my head reading the paperbacks. In the History of Comics, you can see that Doc was portrayed on those covers with blond hair and normal clothes--kind of like a muscled Robert Redford.
I love how different properties get "Marvelized". In the logo, SAVAGE reins above everything else. Which is funny, because Doc isn't Savage, he's like Brainaic 5 with superior fighting skills.
Doc Savage #3 started a new storyline with the cult of the Silver Death's Head. Doc's creator, Lester Dent, always created great names for the bad guys in his stories. This cover features the villain standing on a map of the world he intends to conquer, while Doc faces off against his army of silver goons. Pretty wacky.
This series only lasted eight issues, but it wasn't the Bronze Man's last appearance at Marvel. He guest starred in Giant-Size Spider-Man #3, and later had his own black and white magazine--which also lasted eight issues!
Steranko would go onto to express his love for the pulps by painting a series of paperback covers for The Shadow. I'll always admire Steranko for turning me onto the great history of pop culture and characters like Doc Savage. Nuff said.
Jim Steranko's two volume History of Comics was my favorite history book ever. I read it as a kid and learned about the origins of comic books, which actually started before comics were even published--in the Pulp Magazines. Magazines like Weird Tales, where Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian appeared, had great cover paintings.
Steranko's barbarian covers recall the glory of the pulp covers, but add his own inimitable style.
Creatures on the Loose #1 featured Gulliver Jones standing over a princess he's just rescued, right after he slaughtered an entire army. Pulp covers often portrayed men in their grittiest moments, while the woman on the cover was left in pristine form. I love the color scheme on this cover. The dead warriors in the foreground are red, the planet in the background is blue. Was Steranko drawing Gulliver Jones or John Carter?
Thongor made his first appearance in the next issue, Creatures on the Loose #22--another way for Marvel to cash-in on the barbarian craze that Conan had ignited. The pulpish influence can be seen in the form of the woman on the steps--lying unconscious, with her backside facing the reader. I swear I've seen that same pose in either a pulp magazine or a Frazetta cover. Again, the hero is standing above the heroine, ready to hack and slash anything that comes to attack her.
Great covers! Steranko advertised his own creation, Talon, in his magazine ComicsScene. I was really excited about that, but if I recall correctly, it was never published. Please tell me if I am wrong. Nuff said.
By the time I started reading Marvel Comics, around 1970, I had missed Steranko's great runs on Captain America and SHIELD. I first encountered Nick Fury in the pages of the Avengers and Captain America. I thought he was ultra-cool, to say the least, the first time I saw the Helicarrier in Cap's book. During the Kree-Skrull war, Cap and the Avengers met with Fury in a space-orbital carrier. Fury had all the toys a boy could want, a radical girlfriend in Val (with her crazy Bride of Frankenstein hair), and his best friend was called Dum Dum Dugan.
I was primed for a SHIELD solo title. Nick Fury and his Agents of SHIELD in 1972 was my first.
Steranko's cover was amazing to me. Fury and the other agents were in underwater gear, attacking a base full of crazed AIM agents in glass-enclosed secret base. I had seen Diamonds Are Forever the year before and just gotten in James Bond. This cover brought that Bondian style into comics, shaken and stirred with a Marvel twist.
The stories inside were Jack Kirby and Don Heck reprints. Sure, it was a bit disappointing that the cover artist didn't draw the stories inside. But I was thrilled to learn the early history of Nick Fury. Whenever I read a Marvel reprint book, I felt like an archeologist opening up an undiscovered Egyptian tomb.
The cover to Nick Fury and his Agents of SHIELD #2 was a bit more in the classic Steranko mode. In addition to Fury, I was able to learn about SHIELD's supporting cast: Gabe Jones, Clay Quartermain, and my favorite, the bookish Jasper Sitwell. Sitwell's rallying cry, Don't Yield, Back SHIELD! still rings in my memory. I can't figure out why Sitwell has dropped of the face of Earth 616.
This reprint title only lasted five issues, not long enough to cover Steranko's Strange Tales run. Years later I would discover Steranko's 1960s work and be blown away once again. Nuff said.
Beginning...a week of covers by the legendary Jim Steranko!
However, these aren't necessarily his most famous covers from the 1960s. No, most of these covers were published in 1972, the year I first encountered the work of this impressive artist.
There were times when I could impress my elementary school teachers with my knowledge of Greek mythology (derived from Hercules in the Avengers), Norse mythology (Thor, of course), and classics like the Invisible Man, from Supernatural Thrillers #2 in 1972. Steranko sells this cover beautifully. It transports you back to a 19th century English pub with all the background details. I was intrigued by the Invisible Man unraveling his bandages, removing his glasses, etc. The adaption inside was well executed, recapturing the essence of the story in one issue.
Steranko also drew the cover to the first issue of Supernatural Thrillers, featuring an adaption of Theodore Sturgeon's short story, IT! A few years later in Astonishing Tales, another character called IT! (a 30 foot tall stone giant) would take over that book. Marvel recycled the IT! logo that you see here. When I started to read science fiction stories a few years later, I sought out the writers I knew about from Marvel: Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison in particular.
There's one more Marvel horror cover that Steranko did in the 1970s, and it's infamous--because Stan Lee rejected it! Tower of Shadows #1 featured a short story by Steranko, and he drew this cover along with it. This was obviously a bone-headed decision on Stan Lee's part. Steranko's cover is awesome and if he had let it go, surely Tower of Shadows #1 would have been a collector's item. You can read on Wikipedia about Steranko's disagreement with Lee over this cover. Nuff said.
