COVER GALLERY: 1994

We have finished with the mini-series in which Alex Ross collaborated as a cover artist, costume - character designer and/or co-plotter and we're now going to showcase his work as a cover artist only. We'll do this by year so let's start with his earliest cover works.

THE SPECTRE #22 was published in late 1994, it's the conclusion to the story arc called "Spear of Destiny" written by John Ostrander and pencilled by Tom Mandrake. On this cover Alex tries to emulate or give the feeling of one of those classic Frank Frazetta covers with a lone hero (Superman) fighting this supernatural creature. I think it does the job pretty well and for being one of his earliest works the art looks amazing. Also this one of the very few times in which you'll see Mr. Ross paint Superman with long hair, which he hates, but during the 90's after the death and return of the man of steel, the character was wearing it that way so Alex had to stick to the design, which he hated even more.
FUN FACT: The Spectre was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the same guys who created Superman!

PRIME TIME Hardcover Collected Edition: This is a collection of the Prime series, originally published by Malibu Comics, which was later bought by Marvel Comics. This publisher is the one responsible for the Men in Black comic book, which later became a couple of hit movies. Now this superhero called Prime bears a resemblance to DC's Shazam so it was only fitting that for this cover Alex Ross imitated another cover from one of the original Shazam books called Whiz Comics in which Billy Batson poses next to Shazam (which is impossible by the way) so this cover is also of the hero and it's alter ego posing side by side. I really don't like this cover, the hero looks fake even though he's painted "anatomically correct" to look like a weightlifter, he just looks like a cardboard cut-out, awful!

IN MY COLLECTION: No