Thursday, March 17, 2022

Prince Street News: Night of 100 Stars

The new BACK ISSUE! (#133) is out, a tribute to comics' many STARMEN (and women), giving me an opportunity to take Prince Street News back to Julie's Bar for the Night of 100 Stars! This is another one packed with inside gags for the longbox crowd, so don't feel bad if you don't get it.  I will give a few footnotes: The big guy flying into panel one (and in the background on panel six) is Fletcher Hanks' Golden Age character, Stardust the Super Wizard. The woman with the eye patch is Bronze Age Supergirl enemy, Starfire (DC had at least three of them). The guy talking to Commander Steel in panel three is The Shield, comics' first star-spangled patriotic superhero (predating Captain America by a year). Wonder Woman's outfit on page two panel one is from an aborted 1990s animated series / toy line, The Star Riders (one mini comic made its way into Kellogg's cereal boxes in 1993). The Tony Stark joke being made by Marvel villain Blastaar to Shooting Star on page two panel four refers to Iron Man's bronze age drinking problem.  Oh, and that's Batman in the costume with the fin on his head (in case the punch lines didn't make it clear). 

NEXT UP! It's the 40th episode and one of my favorites of this strip I've done: The Lost Oddities of the Bronze Age! If you've ever thought that Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn should've appeared in DC Comics in the '70s, then this will be the PSN for you! 






Sunday, March 6, 2022

Another Round of Spidey!

More Spider-Man recreations, this time the cover to AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #76 (after John Romita), MARVEL TEAM-UP #1 (after Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia), and the splash page to AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #122 (by Gil Kane, John Romita, and Tony Mortellardo) sans word balloons and captions. 





STRANGE TALES 128 Redux

Another commission, this time a reworking of the cover of STRANGE TALES #128, repurposing a Steve Ditko pinup of Dr. Strange from the interior as the main image for the cover, with the Jack Kirby Thing / Human Torch / Quicksilver / Scarlet Witch piece as a secondary image. Man, those Ditko backgrounds are fun to draw.