THE OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE

This guidebook contains, as the name implies, the prices of comic books from A-Z as well as some articles. It is published yearly by Gemstone Publishing. The covers always resemble a piece of art from the Golden or Silver Age of comics but with slight changes, in this case, Alex's realistic renditions of them.

ISSUE 27 from 1997 has 2 different covers, both by Alex Ross (so, you're going to have to buy the same book twice). The second cover from the left is a reproduction of the very first Green Lantern issue from 1940 originally drawn by Howard Purcell, and the one on the far right recreates issue 1 from Flash Comics pencilles by Sheldon Moldoff, from that same year . As you can compare between the original art and Alex's, there aren't many differences, they are now just three-dimensionally awesome!


ISSUE 29 from 1999 again features 2 different covers by Alex Ross (what? buy two issues of the same book, again? well, you're a collector, aren't you? Suck it up!) This time the covers belong to the Silver Age and we also have a Marvel cover (left) featuring a representation of issue 4 of the Avengers from 1964 by legendary creator Jack Kirby and on the right we have a reproduction of a more obscure cover (it took me awhile to find out which it was) of Adventures Comics #247 featuring Superboy and the Legion of Super-heroes originally pencilled by another legendary artist, Curt Swan. One more time, Alex's tributes are fantastic.


ISSUE 32 from 2002 No tribute to any famous cover (that I know of, anyway) for this edition, just a very in-your-face, depiction of Spider-Man ready to battle with the Green Goblin. Its weird perspective makes it look so cool, since we're talking about Spidey, here!
Now, most of the issues we've showcased on this post can be found at the Gemstone Publishing site so, go get 'em, although they're a bit pricey!

Sadly, I still don't have any of them IN MY COLLECTION.

SUPERMAN: DOOMSDAY & BEYOND

This retelling of the Death and Return of Superman is nearly 200 pages long, it was published for the young-adult crowd and it was written by Louise Simonson (one of the architects of said storyline). Now the year is 1993 and Alex was hard at work on his breakthrough masterpiece, Marvels. He had just come out of doing the Terminator work and was looking to get into "The Big Two" (DC & Marvel Comics) and this was his first crack at a DC character. He did a great job! as you can see, at this point Alex still didn't have his trademark Superman rendition all figured out, so he came up with this one which resembles the original Superman from the Siegel & Shuster days. It looks pretty awesome, plus, this is the only time Alex has painted Doomsday (although it's only a fist, but anyway).

COLLECTOR'S ALERT: This is a very hard to find item, I've added it to MY COLLECTION recently after looking for years, and I found it in MINT condition, shrink-wrapped and all!

OTHER MAGAZINES

There are other magazines from now-defunct publishers, some of which contain new cover art by Alex Ross. Some of these I've discovered along the way and there might be a few that I don't even know about...

FANBOY #2: This short-lived fanzine published in Alex's city, Chicago. features a very rare interview with him, when he was an unknown, or up-and-coming artist and you can see how he hasn't changed. This interview focuses mostly on Marvels and how it came to be, since the initial pitch he did with his friend and author of the Uncle Sam miniseries, Steve Darnall, of some pages of art and a short story about the original Human Torch (which was later printed in Marvel Age #130 - and from which the cover on the left came from) to finally being picked by the editors and having Kurt Busiek repackage the whole story into what became Marvels. Very nice and insightful interview. (I will post this interview shortly).


COMIC BOOK MARKETPLACE #110: This magazine's cover is just a composite of a few pieces of previously published art by Alex Ross, plus a picture of him working at his desk, so no surprise there. The surprise comes with a very long interview with Alex mostly about the Mythology book and everything that went into putting together said book. Of special note is an interview with Mike Hill, intermixed into the regular cover story. For those of you who don't know who Mike Hill is, he's an extraordinary sculptor, responsible for the large scale Alex Ross/Marvel line of busts AND for creating life-size wax statues of Superman and Batman done based on Alex's designs.

IN MY COLLECTION: Both magazines.

NEXT UP: BOOKS! We are going to be dealing with the books which have the privilege of sporting a cover by Alex. These do not include graphic novels; ONLY regular novels and guidebooks!

TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING

TwoMorrows Publishing has been churning out comic book-related magazines and books since 1994 and has expanded to include some more geek-related publications such as Brick Journal (about Lego collecting). The first and foremost publication they have is The Jack Kirby Collector which we talked about a few posts ago, now we're going to deal with their other publications.


ALTER EGO # 3, 16, 30, 55 & 75: This magazine deals with the Golden and Silver Age of Comics, with interviews with past creators and new ones about how influential these periods were to them. The covers to issues 3, 16, 55 and 75 (pictured above) have Shazam related images because this magazine has a section called Fawcett Collectors of America (FCA) and if you remember, Fawcett Camics were the original publishers of Shazam and Alex is a huge fan of this character. The cover of issue 30 (third from left) is a reprint of a panel from the treasury-sized JLA: Liberty & Justice. So it's not necessary to get this particular issue for its cover but it does have an interview with Alex. Some of these issues contain interviews with Alex Ross. All of these issues are IN MY COLLECTION.





















BACK ISSUE # 5 & 30: This magazine is the counterpart to Alter Ego, this one deals with comics from the 70's to present day. I can't point out enough those gorgeous covers from 2004 and 2008 featuring Linda Carter (TV's Wonder Woman) and Jackson Bostwick (TV's Captain Marvel) rendered by Alex, they are awesome! they are well worth the price of the issue. Both issues are IN MY COLLECTION and I can tell you the resemblance with the actors who portrayed Wonder Woman and Shazam is uncanny.


COMIC BOOK ARTIST #1: This issue on the left is IN MY COLLECTION. The cover (left) is a classic image of Superman drawn by Neal Adams and painted by Alex Ross. It's such an iconic image and it's made by these 2 creators whose styles are all about realism. Inside there's a joint interview with both creators. This interview with Alex continued in issue 2, which has a Frank Cho cover (not Alex), and it also has cool new sketches and images inside, like this image of the "Ambiguously Gay Duo" painted by Ross (right), only found here. Don't know who they are? click here and have a good laugh!

AGE OF TV HEROES: Although this book should belong in our "books" section, I decided to keep it here because it was published by Twomorrows. This hardcover tome, written by Jason Hofius and George Khoury deals with the TV adventures of everybody's favorite superheroes since the beginning of television. The cover features the characters Alex grew up with, namely the 70's heroes, Superman (George Reeves), Batman (Adam West), Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) and Shazam (Jackson Bostwick). The likenesess are dead-on, especially West and Bostwick. Carter's resemblance was better achieved by Alex on the cover of Back Issue (seen above). Due to the odd angle, Reeves' likeness fails to look 100% accurate but still, this is one gorgeous piece of art, that's not IN MY COLLECTION yet.

THE COMICS JOURNAL

This magazine is published by Fantagraphics Books.
THE COMICS JOURNAL #216 (left):This issue came out in 1999, it features that wonderful, yet simple cover of a hand with some gems or jewels featuring superhero symbols like Superman's and Batman's. I like the simplicity of the cover to convey the idea of "A Fistful of Interviews" but also notice the level of detail on the hand.

THE COMICS JOURNAL #223 (right): Apparently Alex decided to give this publication his most surreal covers. This time we see a man being fed intravenously with superheroes. This cover was censored in some parts of the United States due to the image of a junkie doing his junkie business, I think they were overreacting a little. This is a really fine cover and it's more psychedelic than what we're used to from Alex. This issue contains part 1 of a very long interview with Alex Ross. For those completists, part 2 appeared in issue #224 which doesn't have a cover by Ross, only the interview.

IN MY COLLECTION: Only issue 223

TV GUIDE

I know that TV Guide isn't the usual place where you would find a painted cover by Alex Ross but this amazing set of interlocking covers for the December, 2001 issue, has an in-depth review of that little known TV show called Smallvile, which was a big phenomenon back then so they decided to bring the guy who bridges the gap between comic books and real life to paint the main characters. Let me tell you that Alex is (or was) a fan of this show up to the point where he painted Tom Welling, who portrays Clark Kent on the show, a few more times after this one, once with Christopher Reeve and another with the Super-suit (I'll post those images soon). These covers are spectacular, although the likenesses are not what might be called "dead-on" but the backgrounds and the flying Superman in the last cover kinda make the image, as a whole, an incredible one.

To celebrate the return of Spider-Man to the big screen in 2002, this fine publication released another series of pseudo-interlocking covers but this time by different artists, I said "pseudo" because the background was similar in all issues but the Spidey pose was different. Alex got to do the last of 4 issues, the other 3 were made by guys like Mark Bagley, John Romita Sr. and Jr. Alex's pose for the webhead features too little of the character, just his face and shoulders; they look ok but I wish there was more of it like the Wizard 100 cover where you can see all of Spidey in one of his trademark poses. All of the issues mentioned in this post are part of MY COLLECTION, well, the ones with Alex's art, of course.

FRANK FRAZETTA FANTASY ILLUSTRATED #8

Frank Frazetta is a world-famous fantasy painter whose images have become symbol of Conan because he has painted many covers for this character's book covers. He has also illustrated comic books and strips and he is a legend in the field, being followed by artists such as Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Cary Nord (in the recent Conan series) and our very own Alex Ross, remember that his cover for The Spectre #22 was made to pay tribute to those classic Frazetta images up to the point where Alex wrote a "After Frank Frazetta" dedication in it which DC Comics later removed to avoid a lawsuit. This illustration is called Spider Man (below right) and it's one of Frazetta's most recognized images along with his "Death Dealer".


COLLECTOR'S ALERT. This magazine had a special edition cover, which was only available at the Wizard World Chicago convention in 1999 and was limited to only 1000 issues, it also included the same Alex Ross cover in a medium-sized poster without the logos. Now, this image rocks! Alex took the beautiful Frazetta image and, following a similar color composition, spun it completely on its tail and gave us a more in your face, action-packed image, with those really creepy and menacing spiders.

IN MY COLLECTION: Yes!!! and I found it that very same year for less than 10 bucks on eBay!

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #14

The spiritual sister of this blog, and where I got that nifty name, this issue published in 1998 by TwoMorrows Publishing doesn't have an actual cover by Alex Ross, of course, it's a Jack "King" Kirby cover of Fantastic Four's The Thing (left) but, this issue is a "flipbook" so, flip it over and you'll get that amazing cover of Captain America by Alex, painting over Mr. Kirby's dynamic pencils (right). The result? that gorgeous in-your-face cover of Cap battling those evil "Ratzis" from the early days of the comic book in the purest Kirby fashion but now with the added bonus of Alex's hyper-realism. Needless to say that Alex is a HUGE fan of Jack Kirby's art and was flabbergasted when he actually got to meet him at a convention while he was promoting Marvels, shortly before his passing in 1994 (this was mentioned in the HC and TPB editions of Marvels). Below you can see the original Jack Kirby penciled art next to the finished painted art by Alex Ross.