COVER GALLERY: 1995

For this year, Alex Ross' art wasn't just on the covers of Astro City it was also on other comic covers as well.

BIG BANG COMICS #0: The idea behind Caliber Press' Big Bang Comics is to pay tribute to the Golden and Silver Age of comics in more ways than you may think possible. Not only do they emulate the heroes, having parodies of Batman (Knight Watchman) and Superman (Ultiman) but they're also able to capture the silliness and campiness of the comics read by our grandparents. So for this cover, Alex Ross renders The super-heroine Thunder Girl, who represents Mary Marvel from the Shazam mythos. Since Alex loves the whole Shazam "family", he was glad to paint this cover and it shows, the heroic pose and the flowing cape and dress of Thunder Girl as well as the killer lighting, makes this cover a winner, unlike the Prime cover from the previous year.


MIDNIGHT SONS UNLIMITED #9: With a cover date of May, 1995, this issue tells the story of "Golden Age (1940s)" Marvel heroes such as the British vigilante Union Jack and the German paladin The Mighty Destroyer teaming up with the American "hotheaded" mystery man The Blazing Skull to stop the growing nazi threat. This is a very nice story if you're interested in learning a bit about these old characters from the time when marvel was called Timely Comics, and see how they were the precursors or the original ideas of some of today's heroes, for example, The Blazing Skull looks exactly like Ghost Rider, The Mighty Destroyer wears a skull on his chest just like The Punisher and Union Jack is still around today. The cover is an excellent composition of the characters in the story and by this time Alex had perfected his rendering of real-looking flames (first used in Marvels) so the Skull looks amazing.


ELEMENTALS: GHOST OF A CHANCE #1 was published at the end of this year with a cover date of December 1995. It was written by Bill Willingham with art by Tony Akins. Now I don't know much about the story of these Elementals, but the cover is a nice composition of what I think are the main characters in a ripped page kind of fashion, it looks really good. The story behind this cover is it that the original art for it, has been "missing" for quite some time. You see Alex Ross gets all the art he paints, back to him after the publisher scans it and adds titles and all that, but this one didn't return from publisher Comico. So, if whoever has this art is reading this, give it back, it's not like you can sell it without people noticing. Come on, it's an Alex Ross original, you'll probably have more luck trying to sell a stolen Mona Lisa. ;-)



INDIANA JONES AND THE SARGASSO PIRATES #1 of 4: This mini-series' first issue was published on December 1995 and continued in 1996, so we'll talk about issue 2 on our 1996 post, 'cause both had covers by Alex Ross. This 4-issue series was written by Karl Kesel with art by Paul Guinan, Kesel and Eduardo Barreto. For this cover Alex was hired for the uncanny resemblance his painted characters have with the real life actor or model, in this case Harrison Ford, and I'm not going to comment on how awesome and realistic his Indy looks, just check it out for yourselves.



IN MY COLLECTION: Only the Midnight Sons issue.