Art Adams posted some pencils for his Marvel covers on his FB account, and I spotted the colored version on Comic Vine.

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Adams isn’t particularly an artist I would associate with the current modeled color style (his art is very geometric) but both versions looks pretty fantastic. What do you think?

11 COMMENTS

  1. I think that Arthur Adams is one of very few artists who came to popularity in the 80s that is doing their best work right now. (Alan Davis also comes to mind. George Perez too.)

  2. I think Ghost Rider is dominating the image in the colored version in a way he wasn’t intended to.

    I know I shouldn’t be *too* hard on Marvel/DC colorists, since they’re usually cranking out the pages at a faster pace in order to make up for the wages they get, but it really is a bummer how modern comics coloring (on mainstream books) overpowers the art, and often doesn’t put much thought into where the focus should be. Giving both the extreme background and extreme foreground the same cold purple hue causes the foreground characters to sort of recede, when they should be the focus.

  3. > “I think Ghost Rider is dominating the image in the colored version”

    I thought the same until I noticed Satana’s “costume”…

  4. I gave a second look at the cover on Comic Vine, where it is reproduced in a bigger format, and I think that the coloring works quite well. In a larger format, the looming of the background characters on the foreground heroes works much better. Personally I think it looks pretty good. I usually don’t buy annuals, but I love Adams and I can’t miss this one.

    In general I strongly dislike “modeled” color style (which is not the case here): in my eyes it makes comics look like wanna-be video games. It’s bad enough on some superhero comics but i find it unwatchable on more cartoony stuff (I remember, for example, a Peanut comic with 3D-like color modeling).

    Still, modern coloring techniques make it possible to preserve detail in a highly detailed cover like this one. I also appreciate it that Marvel does not command a coloring house style and allows for variety.

  5. @kate Your point was already clear in words, but of course an image speaks louder. Indeed, the edit changes the focus completely.
    I don’t dislike the original’s choice (for the reason I mentioned above) but on a side by side comparison I prefer yours.

    Off-topic but: do you like Francavilla’s coloring style? E.g.:
    http://www.francescofrancavilla.com/sequentials/captain_america_and_black_widow_636.html
    I like it a lot and I can’t imagine anybody else coloring his art.

  6. Yeah, he’s got a nice old school look to his colors that compliments his style. I think in most cases that when an comic artist knows how to color, their own colors usually look better than anyone else’s colors on their work, because they know in their head how they wanted it to look.

    I think even very modeled coloring looks fantastic when it’s someone doing it on their own work. The problem with modeled coloring is that how good it looks depends not only on the drawing/painting skill of the colorist, but also on whether the colorists’ own style is compatible with the artists’. If that makes sense.

  7. Art Adams is freakin’ AWESOME!

    Since the background characters are what I’m buying this for, I’m cool with them having such a large focus on the cover.

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