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Heavy Weight Battle..STERANKO VS BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH

Started by WEBHEAD,

42 posts in this topic

WEBHEAD

WEBHEAD

Posted
Posted

In a show down of Marvels greatest "cult following" artist. Who is the fan favorite?

hail.gifIn a one cover show down who would create the ULTIMATE COVER. hail.gif

 

Jim Steranko

 

HULK1A.jpg

 

or

 

Barry Windsor-Smith

 

 

avg100.jpg

 

 

VOTE NOW VOTE EARLY VOTE OFTEN

 

 

 

 

WEBHEAD

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october

october

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STERANKO, love the early Nick Fury covers....not to mention Cap 110 and 113. On second thought I also love Smith's conan covers, especially 11, 14, 15 and 16. This is tougher than I first imagined. 893scratchchin-thumb.gif

 

I will go with STERANKO...but with some hesitation.

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Norrin_Radd

Norrin_Radd

Posted
Posted
In a show down of Marvels greatest "cult following" artist. Who is the fan favorite?

hail.gifIn a one cover show down who would create the ULTIMATE COVER. hail.gif

 

Jim Steranko

 

HULK1A.jpg

 

 

Hulk KS Special is my favorite 1968 Marvel. So I'll give Steranko the... thumbsup2.gif

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Mephisto

Mephisto

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Posted
STERANKO, love the early Nick Fury covers....not to mention Cap 110 and 113. On second thought I also love Smith's conan covers, especially 11, 14, 15 and 16. This is tougher than I first imagined. 893scratchchin-thumb.gif

 

I will go with STERANKO...but with some hesitation.

 

Steranko I love his early Nick Fury like issue 3 covers also and Cap 111. I love the 60's feel a lot of the psychedelic covers have.

I always loved the cover to Captain America 113. But his original version may have been even better if Marvel would have accepted it.

cap-death.jpg

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Kevin Boyd

Kevin Boyd

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Well, I find it odd that you would choose a cover by Steranko from the height of his career and compare it to one by BWS when he was just a beginner.

 

BWS is the better artist, hands-down.

 

In fact, all of The Studio artists - Michael Wm. Kaluta, BWS, Bernie Wrightson, (and arguably) Jeff Jones are better comic book artists than Steranko, who, while good, was a real flash in the pan in comics.

 

Each of those guys turned out decades worth of original material (except for Jones who has had documented problems), while Steranko did comics for what? 2 or 3 years? Then he quit to do his cinema magazine.

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goldust40

goldust40

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Other artists may have been more prolific (and I like all of them, needless to say) but for a brief period in the late '60s Jim Steranko was pushing the envelope and advancing the medium in a way that attracted the attention of interests outside comics. Granted Marvel overhyped him during that era but he was prepared to take chances and he did have range.

 

Also unlike Jones, Kaluta and Wrightson, who all owed at least a little to Frazetta, Krigstein, Ingels, etc. Steranko was harder to pin down in terms of influences (Eisner, maybe?). BWS had started off as a Kirby clone and gradually drew more and more from pre-Raphaelite works (they were very fashionable at the time) and hasn't developed much since his Conan run.

 

That said I agree with Kevin Boyd in that Steranko was a bit erratic and more amateurish than his Studio colleagues.

 

So I'll go with Steranko, just.

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Kevin Boyd

Kevin Boyd

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How can it be the height of Sternanko's career you just said he was in it for like 2-3 years. He did a 2nd tour of duty in '72 and a few things in the 80's so that would mean the Hulk book was early for him too.

 

Steranko came and went faster than most superstar artists while BWS evolved and grew as an artist over time. Steranko was a sensation in 1967-68 and was gone by the early '70s.

 

BWS was an active illustrator throughout the 70s and 80s - granted not all of that work was in comics, but comics fans were at least aware of what BWS was doing with prints and posters, covers, etc.

 

What did Steranko do in the 80's that was of any note? A couple of prints? Some drawings in Playboy that showed his style hadn't changed in over a decade? I can't think of anything else.

 

The Hulk to Avengers comparison is like taking the cover to MacFarlane's Spider-Man #1 and comparing it to a Jim Lee Alpha Flight cover. One is by an artist at the height of his popularity, the other is by an artist at the start of their career.

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namisgr

namisgr

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Kind of like comparing apples to oranges. Steranko was an innovative designer, and wove his art and plots in a cinematic way. Smith was a fantastic artist with exquisite detail. While I really enjoy most of John Buscema's work, the Conan title pretty much fell off the face of the earth for me when Smith left. Nick Fury, meanwhile, may have been a Kirby and Lee creation, but he was never cooler than with Steranko at the helm.

 

Thanks, Chromium, for that tremendous Conan 20 cover. The artwork in that ish is extraordinary, especially the battle scene with that wolf-creature. I also loved Smith's backgrounds, the castles, saloons and sorcerer's creations, not to mention the bodacious barbarian babes.

 

606962-bws.jpg

606962-bws.jpg.50d2907f00cf4d91a13ece99af16c3ff.jpg

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rob_react

rob_react

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BWS had started off as a Kirby clone and gradually drew more and more from pre-Raphaelite works (they were very fashionable at the time) and hasn't developed much since his Conan run.

 

Hasn't developed much since his Conan run? I guess if you look at just the basics of his style, but his Conan run barely looks like the same artist that was responsible for even his work later in the 70s. Once he got out of comics and turned himself into someone who takes a long time to create one image, I think the difference was like night and day. Even his later comic work (back to drawing many pictures quickly) makes much of his Conan run look crude by comparison.

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