Dr. Strange observing his greatest enemy, Dormammu! Nuff Said.
Showing posts with label Paul Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Smith. Show all posts
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Doctor Strange and Dormammu by Paul Smith
Another nifty piece from the blog of Paul Smith...
Dr. Strange observing his greatest enemy, Dormammu! Nuff Said.
Dr. Strange observing his greatest enemy, Dormammu! Nuff Said.
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Silver Surfer by Paul Smith
I recently discovered the blog of Paul Smith, one of my favorite artists of the 80s/90s...he's still doing great commissions and sketches!
Great inked piece here of Norrin Radd, very much inspired by John Buscema. Nuff Said!
Great inked piece here of Norrin Radd, very much inspired by John Buscema. Nuff Said!
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Strange Sunday: Doctor Doom vs Dr Strange by Paul Smith
Here is a doozy from the archives...
Vintage Paul Smith commission, circa 1983, featuring Doctor Strange fighting Doctor Doom, Ditko-style. Who wouldn't want to own this piece? Nuff Said!
Vintage Paul Smith commission, circa 1983, featuring Doctor Strange fighting Doctor Doom, Ditko-style. Who wouldn't want to own this piece? Nuff Said!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Marvel Fanfare 45 pinups by John Byrne, Michael Golden, Brent Anderson, and Paul Smith
Marvel Fanfare #45 from 1988 was a special issue devoted to pinups. Editor Al Milgrom picked some notable artists to contribute this stellar issue. Michael Golden’s Captain America pinup here is a prime example. How many times have you seen Cap take down Hydra agents? Many times, but never like you see it here in Golden’s pinup.
Brent Anderson contributed this pinup featuring Ka-Zar, Shanna the She Devil, and Zabu in their native Savage Land. Zabu is stealing the spotlight here. I hereby declare Anderson to be the definitive artist for Zabu!
Paul Smith drew this excellent illustration of the Green Goblin flying above Manhattan on his glider. Love the angle of this picture.
Here is the cover to Marvel Fanfare #45, featuring Al Milgrom lining up all the Marvel Universe stars (featured in this issue) for their portraits to be taken. I’ll share some more pinups from the issue tomorrow. Nuff Said!
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Strange Saturday: Dr Strange and Clea by Paul Smith
August was a great blogging month--I did a post nearly every day. September, not so great, but finally here's a new pic from Paul Smith!
Doctor Strange and Clea, posing in front of a Ditko inspired spacey background. This piece is from the collection of Malcolm Bourne who owns a lot of great Smith drawings. Nuff Said!
Link: Malcolm Bourne's Gallery at ComicArtFans.
Update: Comment from my old MT blog...
Doctor Strange and Clea, posing in front of a Ditko inspired spacey background. This piece is from the collection of Malcolm Bourne who owns a lot of great Smith drawings. Nuff Said!
Link: Malcolm Bourne's Gallery at ComicArtFans.
Update: Comment from my old MT blog...
1 Comments
Great piece, wonderful composition. Fantastic example of what made Smiths run on the good Doctor's title such a classic!
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Strange Saturday: Paul Smith and Doctor Strange
Doctor Strange hasn't been lucky in terms of sales, but when it comes to artistic talent, he magically attracts the best: Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, Barry Smith, Frank Brunner, Michael Golden, etc. In the 1980s, after he had set the comics world on fire with the X-Men, Paul Smith drew a handful of issues starring the mystic master.
Doctor Strange #56 was Paul Smith's second issue. The cover really stands out in my memory, because it's beautiful, elegant, and efficiently designed. The "shot" is taken from an angle below so that you can see the stars and planets in the background. Doc doesn't need to fight anyone, to sling any spells or fight Dormammu to be cool. He's just ultra-cool enough with his look, costume, Eye of Agamotto, etc. The cover was drawn in 1982.
Tom Horvitz has the original cover over on ComicArtFans. Would love to have a good scan of the original.
Here is the original splash page to that issue, inked by Terry Austin, who had worked on the series since Marshall Rogers took over a couple of years before. Austin was the perfect inker for Smith.
This 1980s period was a particularly good one for Doctor Strange--I heard Brian Bendis talking about the Smith run on Word Balloon a while ago. Check out Essential Doctor Strange Volume 4 TPB (v. 4)
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Jean Grey as Phoenix, Courtesy of Paul Smith
Last week, I shared some Mike Mayhew pieces of Jean Grey as Marvel Girl and the Black Queen. Let's fill in Ms. Grey's third persona...
Here's a cover that Paul Smith did back in the day, with Jean Grey as Phoenix. I've completely forgotten what comic this cover belonged to, please let me know if you remember. Nuff Said!
Friday, February 12, 2010
Paul Smith's Amazing Heroes X-Men Cover
This 1982 Amazing Heroes cover by Paul Smith appeared during his spectacular run on X-Men. Marvel fandom cheered when Smith took over the series—and cried when he left nearly a year later. In the middle of a double-sized issue of X-Men, no less! Nuff Said!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Storm's Journey, From Goddess to Punk to Princess
I had to struggle to think for awhile about who was my favorite African-American Superheroine. Misty Knight? Photon/Captain Marvel? There aren't that many major players in this category. Then the answer hit me, so obvious: Storm (Ororo) from the X-Men!
I really like this cover to Classic X-Men #3 by Arthur Adams. This was a month in which all Marvel Comics featured a character portrait on the cover. Adams, who was always great at drawing Storm (more later), captures her nobility and innocence at the same time.
In the early adventures of the new X-Men, Storm was a supporting character. Sure, we knew she could fly, zap bad guys with lighting bolts and exclaim "Goddess!" when the shit hit the fan. What I liked was Storm's inhibitions. She would come home to the X-Mansion and immediately shed her clothes. Hey, I was going through puberty, and scenes like this one in X-Men #109 with Peter at the lake helped out a lot. You can tell what Peter is looking at and thinking about in this scene. No wonder he has no words to describe his homeland, he's thinking about doing the nasty with Storm!
After reading this issue, I kept expecting Storm to have a romance with Colossus. That never happened. The X-Men thrived on romance triangles, and I was surprised that Claremont never put Storm in this situation.
Storm had a few weaknesses to overcome: mainly her naiveté with city-life and claustrophobia. She could have been written off as simply eye-candy.
But Chris Claremont loves strong female characters, and had a bigger character arc in mind.
Storm started to come into her own character after the death of Phoenix. Scott Summers left the team and Ororo took over as leader. I remember all the guys in my local comic shop hated this idea with all the intensity of Rush Limbaugh's dislike for Bill Clinton! Yet this led to Storm's defining moment in X-Men #170 (1983) when the team was trapped in the lair of the underground Morlocks.
Callisto, the leader of the Morlocks, was holding Kitty Pryde hostage. There ain't nothing more you can do to piss off Storm than to threaten Kitty. Callisto challenges Storm to a knife fight, with Kitty as the prize. This fight was well choreographed by artist Paul Smith. Callisto, who looks like she learned knife fighting in Brazil, gets in a few slices on Ororo. Then Storm displays a cold-blooded streak of intelligence when she stabs Callisto and calmly walks away, proclaiming herself the leader of the Morlocks!
After this event, we would no longer view Storm as a naive young woman. We knew she would go to any lengths to protect the mutants on her team.
This was all happening during a great era for the X-Men. Claremont and Smith were firing on all cylinders. We were shocked when this led to Storm's transformation in X-Men #173 when she became a punk! Again, most of the guys in my LCS hated this punk look, with the mohawk haircut, leather outfit, and studded collar. I secretly thought it was totally kinky and hot. I just love the 1980s and this was one of the highpoints of that decade.
Paul Smith mentioned this remake in an interview done for Marvel Spotlight Uncanny X-Men 500 issues celebration: Oh my god, that was just a bad joke gone too far! I knew they were gonna cut the hair, so I did a number of head sketches with varying short hair sytles and as a joke--as a joke--I put a Mr. T Mohawk on her. Louise Simonson (the editor) looked at it and said, "You know we're gonna get hung no matter what we do, so let's commit the crime!" So we went with the Mohawk. I went ahead and switched to the Wendy O. Williams (of the Plasmatics) style instead, more free flowing. But once you get into that, you had to get into the whole leather and stud thing. So it was just a bad joke that got way out of hand.
Mohawk Storm was used to great affect in the Uncanny X-Men Annual #9 in 1985. This was the second half of the great Asgardian two-part epic (that began in New Mutants Special #1) drawn by Arthur Adams. The cover features Storm swinging an Asgardian hammer in a very Kirby-inspired Thor-like pose. Notice how Storm's mohawk works so nicely in the middle of that winged helmet.
Storm is the object of Loki's master plan in this storyline, seducing her with power and brainwashing her to fight her fellow mutants. Loki creates an Asgardian hammer for Storm, which she wields in this sequence, where Adams competes with another Asgardian artist--Walt Simonson.
There are many other adventures of Storm, but for me, these early ones really stand out in my memory. There was a backup in Marvel Team-Up #100 (1980) featuring Storm meeting the Black Panther in her youth. This was later used as the spark to get these two married. Ororo's profile in the X-Men universe has diminished somewhat as a result, but it's interesting to see her working with the team again in Astonishing X-Men. Nuff said.
Update: Comments from my old MT blog...
I really like this cover to Classic X-Men #3 by Arthur Adams. This was a month in which all Marvel Comics featured a character portrait on the cover. Adams, who was always great at drawing Storm (more later), captures her nobility and innocence at the same time.
In the early adventures of the new X-Men, Storm was a supporting character. Sure, we knew she could fly, zap bad guys with lighting bolts and exclaim "Goddess!" when the shit hit the fan. What I liked was Storm's inhibitions. She would come home to the X-Mansion and immediately shed her clothes. Hey, I was going through puberty, and scenes like this one in X-Men #109 with Peter at the lake helped out a lot. You can tell what Peter is looking at and thinking about in this scene. No wonder he has no words to describe his homeland, he's thinking about doing the nasty with Storm!
After reading this issue, I kept expecting Storm to have a romance with Colossus. That never happened. The X-Men thrived on romance triangles, and I was surprised that Claremont never put Storm in this situation.
Storm had a few weaknesses to overcome: mainly her naiveté with city-life and claustrophobia. She could have been written off as simply eye-candy.
But Chris Claremont loves strong female characters, and had a bigger character arc in mind.
Storm started to come into her own character after the death of Phoenix. Scott Summers left the team and Ororo took over as leader. I remember all the guys in my local comic shop hated this idea with all the intensity of Rush Limbaugh's dislike for Bill Clinton! Yet this led to Storm's defining moment in X-Men #170 (1983) when the team was trapped in the lair of the underground Morlocks.
Callisto, the leader of the Morlocks, was holding Kitty Pryde hostage. There ain't nothing more you can do to piss off Storm than to threaten Kitty. Callisto challenges Storm to a knife fight, with Kitty as the prize. This fight was well choreographed by artist Paul Smith. Callisto, who looks like she learned knife fighting in Brazil, gets in a few slices on Ororo. Then Storm displays a cold-blooded streak of intelligence when she stabs Callisto and calmly walks away, proclaiming herself the leader of the Morlocks!
After this event, we would no longer view Storm as a naive young woman. We knew she would go to any lengths to protect the mutants on her team.
This was all happening during a great era for the X-Men. Claremont and Smith were firing on all cylinders. We were shocked when this led to Storm's transformation in X-Men #173 when she became a punk! Again, most of the guys in my LCS hated this punk look, with the mohawk haircut, leather outfit, and studded collar. I secretly thought it was totally kinky and hot. I just love the 1980s and this was one of the highpoints of that decade.
Paul Smith mentioned this remake in an interview done for Marvel Spotlight Uncanny X-Men 500 issues celebration: Oh my god, that was just a bad joke gone too far! I knew they were gonna cut the hair, so I did a number of head sketches with varying short hair sytles and as a joke--as a joke--I put a Mr. T Mohawk on her. Louise Simonson (the editor) looked at it and said, "You know we're gonna get hung no matter what we do, so let's commit the crime!" So we went with the Mohawk. I went ahead and switched to the Wendy O. Williams (of the Plasmatics) style instead, more free flowing. But once you get into that, you had to get into the whole leather and stud thing. So it was just a bad joke that got way out of hand.
Mohawk Storm was used to great affect in the Uncanny X-Men Annual #9 in 1985. This was the second half of the great Asgardian two-part epic (that began in New Mutants Special #1) drawn by Arthur Adams. The cover features Storm swinging an Asgardian hammer in a very Kirby-inspired Thor-like pose. Notice how Storm's mohawk works so nicely in the middle of that winged helmet.
Storm is the object of Loki's master plan in this storyline, seducing her with power and brainwashing her to fight her fellow mutants. Loki creates an Asgardian hammer for Storm, which she wields in this sequence, where Adams competes with another Asgardian artist--Walt Simonson.
There are many other adventures of Storm, but for me, these early ones really stand out in my memory. There was a backup in Marvel Team-Up #100 (1980) featuring Storm meeting the Black Panther in her youth. This was later used as the spark to get these two married. Ororo's profile in the X-Men universe has diminished somewhat as a result, but it's interesting to see her working with the team again in Astonishing X-Men. Nuff said.
Update: Comments from my old MT blog...
2 Comments
Awesome post!
you know your African-American superheroines - and Storm is definitely the first that comes to mind. She's one of my favorite characters.
Storm vs Cyclops fighting for leadership of the team in The Uncanny X-Men #201 wsa a great moment of the character, too!
http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/4/23698-3092-26413-1-uncanny-x-men-the_super.jpg
http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/4/23698-3092-26413-1-uncanny-x-men-the_super.jpg
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