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Gil Kane Cover Thread
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Started by Ghost Town,

632 posts in this topic

Ghost Town

Ghost Town

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KC #201 is an elusive one - I've always wanted to see what the new story was inside. I'm assuming it was inventory left over from Giant Size Kid Colt, which was running short new stories around that time.

It's Gary Friedrich and Ayers. It looks like it's a full length story. If I had bought the book off the stands, I'd be pretty disappointed to see the story inside after seeing that cover.

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Timmay

Timmay

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KC #201 is an elusive one - I've always wanted to see what the new story was inside. I'm assuming it was inventory left over from Giant Size Kid Colt, which was running short new stories around that time.

It's Gary Friedrich and Ayers. It looks like it's a full length story. If I had bought the book off the stands, I'd be pretty disappointed to see the story inside after seeing that cover.

 

lol

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El Toro Rojo

El Toro Rojo

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KC #201 is an elusive one - I've always wanted to see what the new story was inside. I'm assuming it was inventory left over from Giant Size Kid Colt, which was running short new stories around that time.

It's Gary Friedrich and Ayers. It looks like it's a full length story. If I had bought the book off the stands, I'd be pretty disappointed to see the story inside after seeing that cover.

 

Totally, what a letdown. But yeah, that's who was doing the new 17 pagers in GS Kid Colt, so that was probably a leftover.

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AndyBoBo

AndyBoBo

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I can't believe I haven't shown this off yet! (I think you have seen this, Ghost) By far one of my favorite covers of his!!! Stoked to have had the chance to pick this one up...

 

Creatures_on_the_Loose_30_Cover_Pencils.jpg

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Ghost Town

Ghost Town

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I can't believe I haven't shown this off yet! (I think you have seen this, Ghost) By far one of my favorite covers of his!!! Stoked to have had the chance to pick this one up...

 

Creatures_on_the_Loose_30_Cover_Pencils.jpg

It's such a great cover and awesome piece to own, Andy. It's cool to see all the detail in Kane's pencils.

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bronze johnny

bronze johnny

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I look at how amazing those details are and wonder how the "computer generated/enhanced artwork" in today's comic book world could do better than Kane's incredible talent.

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MasterChief

MasterChief

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Certainly those covers that he inked himself sit in a special category by themselves. I could see starting a collection of the self-inked books, perhaps bookended by the Palmer and Janson books.

 

I have always considered it a shame when Kane had his work (especially faces) corrected by John Romita. I would imagine that Romita himself was not too fond of the job.

 

You are spot-on in your assessment of the Romita instituted changes to Gil Kane covers. That is exactly what happened. But John was just following orders as they say. And it was all in an effort to satisfy one Stan Lee.

 

No matter how it went down, or who directed who, or who trumped who in artistic-doctorial decisions, the fact of the matter is simply a matter of historical record now.

 

And not unlike Jack Kirby of the 1960 Marvel Age, Gil Kane – through the vision of his composition and the magic molded by his dramatic drawing pencil – has secured his place in pop cultural history as the artistic icon adeptly named Chief Marvel Cover Artist of the 1970s.

 

Here's an excerpt from a very enlightening interview with Roy Thomas conducted by Daniel Herman about Gil Kane. It's from the book Gil Kane Art and Interviews by Daniel Herman and published by Hermes Press, 2002.

 

Enjoy. :)

 

(Great thread, Barton! And many thanks to you and everyone else for display all the great Kane Covers! :golfclap: )

 

 

**************

 

 

HERMAN: In 1972, Stan Lee was promoted and you become the editor-in-chief at Marvel and at that point, Gil Kane's covers increased geometrically.

 

THOMAS: Gil liked to do them because it was good money for him. One big drawing instead of several smaller ones. He didn't necessarily receive any extra payment for doing covers in the early days, but it was still easier. And of course he liked to ink some of theme, though I didn't have him do that much.

 

HERMAN: He said that he made more money and it was quicker work.

 

THOMAS: He would come in to my office, and I would get out this whole stack of Xeroxes of work, and we'd go through it for cover ideas. Some of them were mine, and some of them were his.

 

HERMAN: As a matter of fact, in many cases he would do the rough, get it approved, then he would light box it. Were you assigning him all of these covers to establish a house look for covers?

 

THOMAS: At that stage Stan had almost nothing to do with covers anymore except to approve them at the end. Stan, although he liked Gil's work, was never a big fan of Gil's as I was. I was a fan of Gil's for two reasons. One is that I liked his artwork, and the other is that he was available to do covers any time I needed him. Ideally I would have liked to have a wider variety of art on the covers, because on Gil's covers, as great as they are, a few of the figures or layouts looked too much alike, which of course happens anytime you have one artist doing a lot of covers, whether Kirby or Romita or anyone else. But overall, the covers worked out great, and I loved working with Gil on theme.

 

HERMAN: When I looked at all of these covers when I did the first book, you could see where different inkers were really changing the covers, they were changing the drawing a lot. You could see they were adding in a lot of complex effects that clearly were not in Gil Kane's vocabulary. Was that because you were assigning inkers because you wanted to changes the look of the covers or was it just something that happened?

 

THOMAS: I think it was a combination of me, and Stan, and probably John Romita, who was the Art Director. We both knew that was necessary, and that Gil's work, as fine as it was, might get a bit monotonous on so many covers, if we didn't do more with them. We liked Gil's covers for the design, but there were certain things Gil did that did cause problems. For instance, he was a little too likely to have figures running straight at you, or at such an angle that you would not see their figures or costumes clearly. And seeing the costume was often important. You could get away with that inside, but not on the cover.

 

HERMAN: He forced perspective, at any angle, and he would tip the image up or down, and usually looking downward, as Jack Kirby forced perspective, but Gil forced perspective right out constantly in a lot of his covers, where people are either flying backwards or they are flying forwards. In some cases it is hard to make out some details because Gil was more interested in emotion and composition.

 

THOMAS: He was a very good cover artist, but every artists or writer is going to do some things better than others. Jack Kirby was a great cover artist, but yet some of his covers were lackluster.

 

HERMAN: When an artist does 800 covers, they are all not going to be masterpieces.

 

THOMAS: Some of Gil's best covers were the westerns, some of which I had a part in, and some of which came after me.

 

HERMAN: Gil's favorite covers were the westerns. I have looked at a lot of them, and some of them are his strongest covers. With the superhero covers and some of the monster covers there are a lot of changes on them, where they have been statted over, rearranged, and pasted over.

 

THOMAS: Gil didn't always get the costumes right or the look of the character quite right. He wasn't a details man, which is fine, but then we had to take care of the details. That usually meant John Romita.

 

HERMAN: Well, on the western covers, at least the original artwork that I have seen, maybe 15 to 20 originals, there are no changes at all.

 

THOMAS: No, there were very few. For one thing, nobody cared about the westerns that much. They were mediocre sellers at best, by that point. Secondly, the western heroes were not supposed to be musclemen anyway, so we sort of let Gil go his own way with them. Also, how are you going to improve a Gil Kane horse, for example.

 

HERMAN: I asked John Romita, "John, when you inked all those Spider-Man stories that Gil Kane did, it looked a lot like your stuff", and I said "Where you inking to make it look like John Romita?" and he said kind of jokingly "Well, Stan wanted me to make it look like John Romita."

 

THOMAS: Stan liked Gil's work, but he was never a big fan of Gil's like I was. Gil and Stan were not really on the same wave-length. Jack Kirby, despite whatever he personally thought of Stan, did at least 90% of what Stan wanted, and John, of course, spent a whole career very industriously figuring out what Stan wanted and giving it to him. He was always very good at it.

 

HERMAN: John Romita was an extremely polished craftsman.

 

THOMAS: He was already good back in the early 1950s when he was doing Captain America. He only got better. In many ways, I liked his stuff the very best in the 1950s, because on that Captain America he had his own style. When he came back to Marvel after years of doing romance comics, I think that DC had washed a lot if it out of him, and he sort of built up his style again, amalgamating Kirby and different things. John was the guys who changed Gil's work for Stan. Gil had his own way of doing things, he didn't always do a lot of backgrounds, or add all the little background things that Stan wanted. Gil was interested in the design and the storytelling – and even the storytelling he would do it a little differently from the way Stan would want it done...

 

 

kaneartandinterviews.jpg

 

 

 

 

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