Even if the comic inside is utter crap, you always get something worthwhile with a Gil Kan cover-up.
In one of his “Mark’s Remarks” columns in Marvel Age, Mark Gruenwald had a list of not quite serious professional comics jargon. The two I remember were “weeding the grass”, cancelling old series to make way for new projects and “cover-up”, when you have a good artist do the cover for an issue to cover for the much weaker artist doing the insides. Boy was Gil Kane used a lot in that role at Marvel in the 1970s. Not always even for bad artists. He also did a lot of covers for various reprint titles of pre-Marvel, Atlas monster stories that usually had Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko art. DC must’ve used them in this role as well when he worked there in the 1980s, considering this issue of The New Adventures of Superboy.
The art inside is by Alex Saviuk who isn’t a bad artist by any means but I can understand why if you can have a Kane cover, you take it. Saviuk himself was only a guest penciler for the three issues this Sunburst story ran (#45-47); Kane’s cover run went from #41 to #49. This is the only issue of the series I have and I only have it because of the Kane cover, proving that a cover-up works. I also like the idea of Sunburst, who I’d first seen getting killed in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but the cover was the main reason I picked this up.
If you’re familiar with Gil Kane’s art, you recognise it’s his work immediately even without his signature. The way Sunburst stands, with his right hand out stretched in front of him, his left slung out to the side, legs slightly bend, one slightly lower than the other, is a clear giveaway. The same goes for Superboy, repelled by Sunburst’s energy blast in mid flight. The outstretched, elongated right leg with the left leg raised up, lower leg tucked in under the knee is typical Kane. Hell, even the guns are: modern fire arms but they look like sci-fi blasters in a way only Kane (and maybe Carmine Infantino) drew them.
With any cover-up you run the risk of disappointment with the art inside but if you bought it DC had gotten its sixty cents, right. In this case, Alex Saviuk’s art here is disappointing, nowhere near the level he displayed on his later run on Web of Spider-Man, which is where I first encountered it. Look at Saviuk’s cover work there and these are great, much better than what he drew inside here.
Covers are there to sell comics, especially when most comics were still sold on the newsstands. Kane, with his dynamism and eye for composition is the ideal artist to do so. It would be great if somebody published an artbook of his Marvel and DC covers.
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