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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

DC Stock Art Week, Part 2: More of the DCU!

sgIf you thought yesterday's Garcia-Lopez shot of the most famous members of the DCU was exciting, try this!

I have no idea what product this might have been for, except maybe for DC's late 80s/mid-90s subscription ads. I mean, what manufacturer outside the world of comics would say "Yeah, we need that guy in the weird gold helmet. Oh, and that green guy, too--that's the Hulk, right?"

I find Red Tornado a suprising inclusion, though he did once get his own Hostess ad, so maybe he had more merchandising potential than I would think. Surely The Atom belongs on here; maybe he was deemed to small to see when the piece would be reduced to fit on a product. And we've got Wonder Girl...why not Kid Flash? Aqualad? And come to think of it, where's Black Canary?

All right, all right, I'll stop.


Obviously this is a composite of various solo poses (some of them, at least), since the staging is a tad awkward on some of them, and awkward staging is not a phrase you'd use to describe Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez's work. It looks like Batman is throwing his batarang at Superman (must be a Frank Miller-era Batman), Wonder Woman looks like she's jitterbugging in relation to everyone else, and Firestorm is blasting Green Arrow's head off (Ronny Raymond's a Republican! who knew?).


All those quibbles aside, it's still a beautiful piece--bright, exciting, and dynamic!

15 comments:

Doug Slack said...

And Robin is completely out of formation. Must be Jason Todd, because Dick Grayson always brought his "A" game.

rob! said...

"look, look, LOOK AT MY CROTCH!"

--that Todd kid always was a punk.

Anonymous said...

I'm curious as to how these were delivered to the license holders. Are they slicks that would have to be placed in paste ups or stripped in? I mean they were not using digital files then were they?

Wow, paste ups and stripped in... showing my age.

rob! said...

charles-

i worked for an art studio from 1994-1996 where we made t-shirts for marvel, dark horse, etc.

the stock art then was given to us in giant 3-ring binders and we xeroxed and later scanned everything--we never got anything on disc.

so since a lot of this stuff is from eve earlier, i bet it was all paste-ups! FUN FUN FUN!

Anonymous said...

This one does indeed look more thrown together than some of the other Lopez group shots I've seen. I really like the JLA one that includes every official member of the Pre-Detroit era League. It even has Flash and Zatanna holding hands, as they were briefly an item in the JLA comic! That one appears to be created as a group piece, with some of the figures "pulled out" later for use on merchandise.

Chris

Anonymous said...

I actually have a t-shirt with this picture on it! I'll try to scan it and send it to you next week. It's awesome, especially since Aquaman is front and center!

rob! said...

>>It even has Flash and Zatanna holding hands, as they were briefly an item in the JLA comic!<<

wow, really? i've never seen that one?

>> I actually have a t-shirt with this picture on it!<<

now that'd be a cool shirt!

Anonymous said...

I remember the ole' style guide in binder days with the scanning and coloring of everything in the studio. Then when they started sending disks they had these wonderfully designed guides to accompany them. I have a few in my collection... Then came the days of FTP or Web Delivery (not as much fun).

I'm looking forward to seeing more stock art this week! That t-shirt sounds cool too!

Anonymous said...

Here's the Flash and Zatanna sitting in a tree art, on a camo-wife beater currently available!

http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/stylinonline_1937_4882171

Some Aqua-goodness there too!
http://stylinonline.stores.yahoo.net/aquaman.html

Chris

rob! said...

a lot of what's coming this week you can see on that Aquaman page...but there are 1-2 surprises in the bunch.

ive seen that JLA art before, i like how its got Elongated Man and Black Canary on there!

Anonymous said...

I saw one of those Aquaman T- shirts at Target of all places last week, talk about a surprise.

They had Green Lantern, Flash, a one color shirt of Sups, and a Batman logo as well all in his era of artwork, my work week wardrobe is set!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful Garcia-Lopez art but could that Wonder Woman be a Dick Giordano piece?

Not that that's a bad thing - Giordano draws a real nice Wonder Woman. Heck, Giordano draws a real nice everyone.

Anonymous said...

I think Giordano inked some or all of these style guide shots. His work blends so well with Garcia-Lopez (just like it did with Adams) it's kind of hard to tell.

Chris

Doug Slack said...

I'm thinking this thing is circa 1985. Both Fate and Tornado had their own titles that year. Plus, Supergirl's hair could only exist in that timeframe.

J.P. said...

Looks like we have Dr. Fate, Martian Manhunter, Firestorm, and the Red Tornado because of their inclusion in the Super Powers line and series.

That's what I'm guessing anyway!

Thanks for posting these!