The other day I wrote a visual essay about The Fantastic Four First Steps promotional art campaign, which is trying hard to create a nostalgic mood for something that never existed, with mixed results.
Well, now a little tidbit about the art has come from artist Chris Weston who points out that a promotional still fr the film is literally based on his cover for Fantastic Four: First Family.
Right down to Johnny putting up rabbit ears behind Reed.
Here’s the full cover, rendered in Weston’s signature high contrast detail. Gotta love it!
In a later post, Weston declared that far from this being just a bit of reference, that very issue and image are shown in a featurette about the making of The Fantastic Four – I’ve embedded the video at the appropriate spot.
While I criticized the studio campaign for not looking like it was made by humans, it may be a bit of relief to learn they were looking at art by humans. And Weston may be getting the much desired “Special thanks” credit at the end of the movie – we won’t know until we see it obviously. But Weston may get his wish – “special thanks” often include a $5000 bonus which pays for your trip to the premiere.
The use of comics as the basis of popular superhero movies is a topic that is sure to generate conversation. On the one hand, these moments are sometimes the most memorable ones. Sometimes they are fun little Easter Eggs for comics readers. (CBR has a rundown of some of the most notable scenes, natch.) Superman, which I’m seeing later today, is by all account heavily based on the Morrison/Quitely All-Star Superman, and James Gunn has never been shy about saying that. My social media feed for the last few days has been nothing but photos of comics folks (including Quitely) at Monday’s premiere. Jim Lee filled in for Just Jared on his IG:
Thor Ragnarok, one of my all time favorite comic book movies, takes a lot from the comics, from Jack Kirby’s design for Hela to using Walt Simonson’s Thor as a storyboard:
Damn that is good! Here as a whole page of Walt Simonson Thor!
Thor Love and Thunder, also from Taika Waititi, also took its main plot from the comics, with mixed results, and at least one image seen in the trailer was taken right from Esad Ribic’s work on the comic:
The Hawkeye TV show was pretty much taken directly from Matt Fraction and David Aja’s work, right down to the logo, and Aja made one somewhat pointed comment about it, but he also posted this, so he was hired for something – and what a beautiful poster.
Quitely, Weston, Ribic, Aja – if you’re going to borrow, borrow from the best!
Recently there have been tensions over how Marvel treats comics folks, including the Dustin Nguyen call out, the Rob Liefeld snub, and the long-ago but never forgotten Ed Brubaker slight. The teensy Weston matter will be another entry in the long ledger. Maybe $5000 is a fine amount for using a panel that someone was already paid for as inspo. My own wish is that more of the original comics creators could be hired as concept artists or poster artists, as Aja was. They are certainly talented enough, and it does happen occasionally. And going back to the bigger picture, Andy Park was once just a talented and friendly guy in Artist Alley and now he’s the Director of Visual Development at Marvel Studios.
But it’s maybe a little ironic that back in the Adventure Time Era of animation, indie cartoonists were snapped up directly from their tables at SPX to go work in animation, while superhero comics artists didn’t get hired in droves even as superhero movies took over the world.
Anyway, I’m a big Chris Weston fan! If you haven’t read it, check out The Filth by him and Morrison. It’s good.
