Thursday, January 5, 2012

Stories to Stagger the Imagination

Here is an interesting duo of images to compare, but I'm at a loss to describe how or why they came to be this way. The top image is an inked and nearly finished comic cover by Gil Kane. It functions well as a cover ready for production—coloring, adding the issue #, price and DC logo. But it never went 'beyond' that stage (a pun that is stillborn) . . . but the bottom image is the same cover, rendered completely by Neal Adams, and made its way to the comic spinners where I bought it 42 years ago.

Okay, so why wasn't Kane's cover used, though you can see the title changed, and actually Neal Adam's cover is better because the angle of the comet earth is more acute, aiming right for our intrepid moon men, and the angle of the scene puts them in more imminent danger. Was Kane's rejected? But why not have him redraw it? A whole bunch of other meaningless questions come to mind, but all I know is—any answers might stagger the imagination and would come from . . . BEYOND the UNKNOWN!

Gil Kane — From Beyond

Neal Adams — From Beyond the Unknown #3 — 1970

8 comments:

Kid said...

I think I prefer the 'balance' of Kane's original, although the planet, as you say, looks like less of a threat. If he'd just changed the angle of the 'tail' while keeping the planet where it was, that might've worked. Both are good though.

Thomas Haller Buchanan said...

Hey, welcome Kid! Glad to see ya following!

Joe Jusko said...

I just wanna thank you again for turning off that slideshow function so we can see these pieces at a nice scale. I wish more people would dop that.

Great Kane cover that's totally new to me! THANKS!!!

Thomas Haller Buchanan said...

Joe, that slideshow function drives me nuts when I come across it. I think I'll do another post reminding people how to drop that.

I love how the Kane cover could be put into context with Adams. Maybe somebody from the old DC days could put a story to it.

Kid said...

I posted a piece about the 'lightbox' (as it's called) function a while back, but I've since found out there's another way around it. If you left-click on the image, a little box appears, giving you different options. If you click on the one that says 'Open in another window' (or something very similar), it bypasses the lightbox/slideshow facility and allows you to enlarge the image for clearer viewing.

Kid said...

Sorry, that should read 'right-click'. (On the line 'Open Link in New Window'.)

Kid said...

Dear me, my brain is asleep. I mean RIGHT-click on the image - then LEFT-click on the line 'Open Link in New Window'. Sorry for the confusion. Perhaps you should say that clearly in your own words Thom, then delete my last 3 comments.

Thomas Haller Buchanan said...

That's alright Kid, let's leave the comments here to show how confusing the whole thing is and that the best way to deal with the issue is to have bloggers turn off that function. Three posts above this one explains where to look to know how to do that.

Thanks Kid, you made a valiant effort!