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Thursday, April 09, 2009

Super Powers Calendar Page

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This is an ingeniously designed page from a mid-1980s Super Powers calendar--I have forgotten where I got it from, since I don't have the calendar; all I do know is that its one of the oldest items to in "To Post" folder I have for the Shrine.

Anyway, I call it ingenious because it uses three pieces of Jose Luis Garcia Lopez stock art, and puts them together so it kind of looks like a complete sequence of Aquaman swimming away. Neat.


On an unrelated note, this piece reminds me of an assignment we had back in our third year at the Joe Kubert School. Our instructor for this one class was the legendary Irwin Hasen, and he told us to draw a house, in three separate seasons--any three of the four we chose.

It was an exercise to help us learn to consistency in what we were drawing, so all of us groaned at the thought of having to draw a boring ol' house three times, when all most of us wanted to do was draw Batman.

Anyway, the next week rolls around, and we all whip out our drawings. I sat next to my pal Dan Eaker, and was embarrassed at my effort compared to his--he drew three houses so meticulously, mathmatically perfect you could've used them as blueprints. My stuff just looked weak.

But we were both shocked at what another friend, Sean Tiffany, produced--he just drew one picture, of the same house, sliced into three panels, each showing that portion of the house during a different season. He cheated!

We were goofing on Sean and how he tried to cheat his way out of the assignment, and were sure Irwin would call him on it, especially compared to the masterful work Dan had produced.

We sat down and did a group review, and when Irwin got to Sean's, Dan and I got ready for the beat down. But Irwin took one look at it and said something to the effect of "Sean, I love what you did here, with the three panels! Brilliant!"

So not only did Sean cheat and do less work than he was instructed to do, but he complimented by the co-creator of Dondi for doing it! Sean shot us the biggest grin he could muster, and I died a little inside that day.


But please don't let my sad story take away from your enjoyment of the Aquaman piece!

3 comments:

R Duncan said...

I appreciated your very nice (and comic book related) story.

Wings1295 said...

Great piece of art and a great anecdote, thanks for sharing!

Sean Tiffany said...

Ha ha! I was just thinking of this story the other day!

I rule!