Recently in Silver Surfer Category

This classic Silver Surfer image is by Jack (King) Kirby, inked by superstar Al Gordon.  Gordon took on this inking challenge for a class he was teaching in the bay area.  The colored version on the right was done by John Heebink.

Al Gordon has worked on so many comics; Justice League, Legion of Super-Heroes, Wildstar are but a few.  You can see a list of his accomplishments on Comic Book DB.

Want another take on this theme?  Check out the Craig Hamilton Silver Surfer pinup.  Nuff Said!

Here’s a 1989 Marvel Age cover by Moebius featuring the Silver Surfer.

This issue promoted the two issue “Silver Surfer Parable” story that Stan Lee and Moebius did together.  It wasn’t very successful story-wise, but seeing Moebius doing his version of Norrin Radd and Galactus was cool.  Nuff Said!

Marshall Rogers created this 1987 cover for Marvel Age 52, promoting the re-launch of the new series he did along with Steve Englehart.  I am sure the Jack Kirby purists will object…but I still like it!  Nuff said!

Yesterday, I received a very special poster from Asgard Press, featuring this classic cover from 1968 by Big John Buscema.

Silver Surfer #1, the very first solo issue featuring “The Sky-Rider of the Spaceways” (as the masthead would later say) .  For a long time, this was one of my holy grails of comic book collecting.  I remember a friend of mine who saw it at a flea market (at a cheap price), only to have his father pull him away from the scene.  When I did finally buy it in the 1970s, long before trades or collections were available, I reveled in the origin of Norrin Radd and his transformation by Galactus.

If you’ve ever wanted a poster of Silver Surfer #1, you can now obtain it for less the $20 at Asgard Press Vintage Marvel store.  Asgard’s Marvel posters are 20"x28" and printed on 100% recycled paper with soy-based inks.  This is high quality paper—thick and sturdy, it won’t crinkle up at the first touch of your hands.  In addition, the poster is reproduced in a way that mimics the visual of the 1968 comic.  And by that I mean it’s not overly glossy.  Asgard really preserves the vintage (which is what describes all of their products) look of the original cover.  I’m gonna frame this one and get it up on the wall real soon.

You can also get an 11"x14" reproduction of Silver Surfer #4, another John Buscema classic showing the Surfer hurtling down toward the Mighty Thor.  This print—with the same high quality as the aforementioned poster—is just one of 16 prints inside the 2010 Vintage Marvel Comics Calendar.  Asgard Press has designed this calendar in a very clever way that will appeal to all Marvel collectors.  You can display this calendar on the wall for 16 months, hang it on nail or tack.  When the year is over, you can separate the cover image from the calendar through perforations on the top or bottom, and it’s in perfect condition.  It’s still a Giant-Sized Marvel cover, ready for framing.

If you always believed (as Denzel Washington did in the movie Crimson Tide) that Jack Kirby is the one true Surfer artist, the Vintage calendar also has a month with Fantastic Four #50.  Check out Asgard Press site or look for the calendar in your comic book store.  Nuff said!

One of the opening chapters to the Avengers-Defenders war started with Avengers 116, with this fantastic cover.

Silver Surfer vs the Vision, as Wanda looks on somewhat helplessly in the background--never mind that she could wipe them all out with a hex spell!  This cover is really well executed by Johnny Romita, with the silver guy nearly flying into the viewer.  Nuff said.

Esad Ribic was the artist on Silver Surfer Requiem a few years ago, and he has also worked on a number of other Marvel mini-series (Loki, etc).  I’ve always admired his art—but I think I like these paintings even more than the Requiem series.  The Silver Surfer flying upside down—out of Earth’s atmosphere into the stars—is an awesome concept.

Now I have to admit—I was a bit fooled by the second picture.  I thought it was a separate painting, but now I realize it’s just the first painting flipped vertically.  Perhaps the colors are tweaked and the bottom is cropped.  Nuff said.

One of my favorite inkers of all time is Tom Palmer.  Palmer has a superlative inking style, but he is also a wizard of coloring--especially in the old days using the four color process.  No one could make colors more vibrant (without using computers) than Palmer.  His credits are too numerous to mention, though you can look them up on Comic Book DB.  I'll always remember his inks on Neal Adams (Avengers, X-Men), Gene Colan (Doctor Strange, Tomb of Dracula), and John Buscema (Avengers).

Back in the 1980s, fans always wondered how well Palmer would work with the superstar of that period: John Byrne.  We finally got to find out in a special double sized event issue: Silver Surfer #1, V2, circa 1982.

I think the cover to this special is one of the most glorious Silver Surfer covers of all time.  All for the big price of $1, the story (plotted by Byrne and dialogued by Stan Lee) resolved a number of dangling plot threads strewn throughout various Fantastic Four stories.  Shalla Bal, who had been kidnapped by Doctor Doom and forced to live with amnesia, was finally discovered by Norrin Radd.

I made a recent discovery myself--John Byrne's original pencils to the splash page of this special.  The Surfer dissolves into one of his usual bouts of self-pity, among the wreckage of a long lost Himalayan civilization.  Streams of light arc diagonally towards the Surfer, drawing your attention down to his figure.  I am really impressed by how tight Byrne's pencils are on this page.  He was really quick during this period.  Did he knock this one out in a day?

Here's the finished page with inks/colors by Palmer.  You can see he kept all of Byrne's original lines intact, but Palmer also added his own remarkable style.  The color design is fabulous--the muted tones of the ruins really make the Surfer's white body stand out in the scene.

I was under the impression that this was the only Byrne/Palmer collaboration, but I see they also worked on X-Men The Hidden Years.

Tom Palmer continues to work in comics today, most recently on Kick Ass with John Romita.  Nuff said.

Here is a John Buscema illustration from the first Marvel Swimsuit issue in 1991.

No idea if this was created for the magazine or lifted from an earlier comic book.  I still think it looks pretty nifty, and the Surfer is indeed "still hanging ten" by surfing the spaceways.  Nuff said.