For this episode, I redrew (painstakingly, if I may be allowed to add) two of my favorite covers from that format: Neal Adams' iconic wraparound for SUPERMAN #252 and Nick Cardy's somewhat less-iconic (but still keen) cover for BATMAN #254. Now, you may ask, what is the point of doing faithful (or at least as faithful as my talent will allow) recreations when I could just paste the actual cover into the strip? Because I wanted to, that's why! It's my damn comic strip, if I wanna use it as an excuse to do my own take on some of my favorite comic book covers, you can't stop me (and besides, the actual covers are reproduced elsewhere in the issue)!
There is an awful lot of Photoshop placement of actual covers in this strip, however. My rule of thumb for PSN is that if the panel depicts me holding a comic, I'll use the actual book rather than redraw it. In the past, I have actually redrawn covers for this purpose, but it turned out to be WAAAAY more effort than it was worth in the context of the strip. I also used the actual covers for the first two panels (the comics on the spinner rack are all cover dated July 1971, meaning that as a young'un, I perused all of these great old comics at the same time on the same rack! Swoon!).
Editor Michael Eury really outdid himself on this one. Full of historical background on not just the Super-Specs, but other (sadly short-lived) reprint series of the 1970s, BI! 81 had me digging through the longboxes and adding titles to my want list.
The next installment of PSN pops up in BACK ISSUE! #84, which focuses on Supergirl in the '70s. I'm especially excited about this issue because I also (with the fantastic help of a half a dozen great cartoonists) did the COVER for this one... stay tuned!
Actually, you can probably look at other stuff on the web between now and then, it's not out until October. It would be silly for you to keep your browser open to just this page for four months.
