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Marvel UK Price Variants
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2,571 posts in this topic

On 5/9/2019 at 5:30 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Found it:

9dcd6ac2ba48ce718ffceeb120be352b--amazing-spider-cartoon-art.jpg.ddd8661ecab526d938d5f8d5f5416a74.jpg scw2.thumb.jpg.9ad8dcb82d3418d3dabedebd8878641e.jpg

So, someone added a bit more cop then. Not a bad effort at all :)

Not a bad effort at all Steve.

I do remember once reading somewhere that the reprinted covers on Alan Class comics showed more of the original art and that it was the US companies who cropped said art.

It seems that anything and everything went on back in the day. I'm sure, for instance, that I have seen 3 different versions of the Hulk 181 cover.

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Problem for the UK here was that given their large masthead, the art area left over was very square.  They couldn’t fit the vertical US cover artwork in the square box. Normally they just take what they were given and reduce the size to crop something out to fill the wider shorter area.  But on this cover, they have to cut off the dead body, OR, Spidey!  Looks like they ponied up the dough to have somebody add some artwork on the right. 

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22 minutes ago, Aman619 said:

Problem for the UK here was that given their large masthead, the art area left over was very square.  They couldn’t fit the vertical US cover artwork in the square box. Normally they just take what they were given and reduce the size to crop something out to fill the wider shorter area.  But on this cover, they have to cut off the dead body, OR, Spidey!  Looks like they ponied up the dough to have somebody add some artwork on the right. 

Hi. I've been looking at a lot of UK 70s reprints such as Spider-Man and Hulk ( Rampage) titles on the GCD site, and in every instance the artwork was a lot wider than that of the original US titles (as well as the 1000s of Alan Class reprints). There is NO WAY that these publishers would have commissioned artists to "add" artwork. I'm sorry but the original artwork was cropped in the US and used fully in the UK reprints.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HH1.jpg

HH2.jpg

Edited by Redshade
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2 minutes ago, Redshade said:

Hi. I've been looking at a lot of UK 70s reprints such as Spider-Man and Hulk ( Rampage) titles on the GCD site, and in every instance the artwork was a lot wider than that of the original US titles (as well as the 1000s of Alan Class reprints). There is NO WAY that these publishers would have commissioned artists to "add" artwork. I'm sorry but the original artwork was cropped in the US and used fully in the UK reprints.

 

 

 

 

HH1.jpg

HH2.jpg

I'm sorry that these images have appeared here. They were not meant to be. I fear that as I do not know what I am doing technologically that my PC has taken over.

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1 minute ago, Redshade said:

I'm sorry that these images have appeared here. They were not meant to be. I fear that as I do not know what I am doing technologically that my PC has taken over.

Sometimes if you start a post in a thread and don't post it or rarer when you do, I've noticed the boards will save that reply for when next you DO post... 

If you can follow that train of thought lol

But your not going mad!

tumblr_o36w2zIkku1sul7u4o4_400.gif

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18 minutes ago, Redshade said:

I'm sorry that these images have appeared here. They were not meant to be. I fear that as I do not know what I am doing technologically that my PC has taken over.

This post was not meant to be about Hulk 181 specifically. I tried to put these images in another post. I apologise for my technological deficiencies.

Edited by Redshade
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2 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

Sometimes if you start a post in a thread and don't post it or rarer when you do, I've noticed the boards will save that reply for when next you DO post... 

If you can follow that train of thought lol

But your not going mad!

tumblr_o36w2zIkku1sul7u4o4_400.gif

Mr Adam, you do not know how reassuring that your reply has been to this silly old duffer who is about as technologically competent as a squashed frog.

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Hi. I've been looking at a lot of UK 70s reprints such as Spider-Man and Hulk ( Rampage) titles on the GCD site, and in every instance the artwork was a lot wider than that of the original US titles (as well as the 1000s of Alan Class reprints). There is NO WAY that these publishers would have commissioned artists to "add" artwork. I'm sorry but the original artwork was cropped in the US and used fully in the UK reprints.

 

Log into the GCD and see for yourselves.:bigsmile:

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American covers were drawn on boards with proper trim area lines already blue lined for the pencillers. Often with black lines around the art area.  There was little reason for American inkers and pencillers to draw extra stuff outside the margins for free.  I don’t know much about overseas cover designs, and how often they changed them up as we do here. That is to say, I’m commenting on THIS cover art where the current overseas cover design only allowed for a wider art area than what was created for Marvels original cover. Similar to the 70s era Marvels... 

Generally over the years, American comics were 7x10 proportions, so all cover art was vertical and depending on the logo at top used art imagery that would be too tall to fit into the window box design of this current overseas design.  So extra artwork would be needed in cases like this, but not when overseas covers were same proportions as ours.

anyway, the extra art is pretty easy because it’s just binges and like here the missing parts of clothes etc. before photoshop cloning, everybody had to create more art all the time, so it wasn’t a big deal.

if you manage to post examples Or links I can see if my guess here hold up or not.

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Looking at the American Spidey 96 cover, I now see that the artwork is actually one big stat, a print of the art. What could have happened is that Gil Kane drew it the usual width, but Marvel added that strip down the left side. So they had to move Gil’s image to the right.

therefore Gil May have drawn the policeman on the right intending for it to appear on the cover. And it wouldn’t have needed to be drawn later.

If Marvel sent them a stat of the artwork alone, not the US final  cover layout, then yes, no extra drawing would have been necessary. But as you see on the original art shown above, the template cover boards pencillers and inkers worked on have printed lines. Nobody was drawing outside them with extra wider art for other markets overseas.

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10 hours ago, Aman619 said:

Looking at the American Spidey 96 cover, I now see that the artwork is actually one big stat, a print of the art. What could have happened is that Gil Kane drew it the usual width, but Marvel added that strip down the left side. So they had to move Gil’s image to the right.

therefore Gil May have drawn the policeman on the right intending for it to appear on the cover. And it wouldn’t have needed to be drawn later.

If Marvel sent them a stat of the artwork alone, not the US final  cover layout, then yes, no extra drawing would have been necessary. But as you see on the original art shown above, the template cover boards pencillers and inkers worked on have printed lines. Nobody was drawing outside them with extra wider art for other markets overseas.

Hi. I've been looking at a lot of UK 70s reprints such as Spider-Man and Hulk ( Rampage) titles on the GCD site, and in every instance the artwork was a lot wider than that of the original US titles (as well as the 1000s of Alan Class reprints). There is NO WAY that these publishers would have commissioned artists to "add" artwork. I'm sorry but the original artwork was cropped in the US and used fully in the UK reprints.

 

Log into the GCD and see for yourselves.

 

yy1.jpg

yy2.jpg

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And here the art on the US cover has been cropped on the left. These images are from the GCD who size all their photos to the same dimensions. In reality the Astounding Stories as with other Class titles were wider than the US comics, which is why more of the artwork could be shown.

 

yyy1.jpg

yyy2.jpg

Edited by Redshade
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in this Strange Suspense Stories, it seems that the the Astounding Stories had access to the actual artwork because the type elements are in different places.  And being from the 50s, before Marvel/DC etc normalized production with pre-printed cover templates, I agree it looks like the artists drew wider artwork, perhaps as they were told given Charltons having already secured foreign reprint rights for shorter cover dimensions.

There are a lot of ways to assemble these covers from photostats. It all depends on what you are starting with and what you need it to fit into.  We can get to a greater consensus if we had lots more examples, as Marwood accomplished with the British "reprints!"

 

 

 

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Aman619 said:

in this Strange Suspense Stories, it seems that the the Astounding Stories had access to the actual artwork because the type elements are in different places.  And being from the 50s, before Marvel/DC etc normalized production with pre-printed cover templates, I agree it looks like the artists drew wider artwork, perhaps as they were told given Charltons having already secured foreign reprint rights for shorter cover dimensions.

There are a lot of ways to assemble these covers from photostats. It all depends on what you are starting with and what you need it to fit into.  We can get to a greater consensus if we had lots more examples, as Marwood accomplished with the British "reprints!"

 

 

 

 

 

As I said Aman there are thousands of examples in the GCD.

What sayest thou Marwood (this being slightly off-topic, but you did start it :))?

 

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13 hours ago, Aman619 said:

I don’t understand how to use the site to find same cover artwork. Is there a simple method?

It's not really that daunting:). When one does a search of a specific US title the reprints are all listed onscreen, one does not have to go searching for them. The reverse of course is to look up the UK reprint and the information is there as to the US comic the issue was reprinted from. I am not really conversant in the esoteric arts of screen grabs but I am sure that if Marwood were here he would be able to explain it more effectively.

PS. I chose the Astounding Stories 1 at random but not only was Strange Suspense Stories 56 reprinted  in AS1( an anthology title) but Charlton also printed a Pence Variant. As you can see because this was produced in the US that the same cropped artwork was used. (There you go Steve, back on topic:bigsmile:).

 

sss1.jpg

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Im learning the GCD.  But I don't really know which title I'm comparing covers for.  I didn't find any with extra artwork because I didn't look very deeply, but I did match up thee 3 Tower comics covers reprint in Astounding Tales (Seems Alan Class had deals with many US publishers to reprint that he placed in this one title.  These 3 Tower covers were all simply cropped from the US art he was given.  

The answer may come down to how each US publisher supplied materials to other pubs. Either the final vertical US cover pasteups. or just a stat of the original art only, plus the US cover pasteup (with words, titles blurbs etc.).  Tower sent US covers that had to be cropped.  Charlton may have sent wider art stats that could fill the wider covers with art that was cropped in the US.

 

 

Tower1.png

Tower3.png

Tower2.png

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54 minutes ago, Aman619 said:

Im learning the GCD.  But I don't really know which title I'm comparing covers for.  I didn't find any with extra artwork because I didn't look very deeply, but I did match up thee 3 Tower comics covers reprint in Astounding Tales (Seems Alan Class had deals with many US publishers to reprint that he placed in this one title.  These 3 Tower covers were all simply cropped from the US art he was given.  

The answer may come down to how each US publisher supplied materials to other pubs. Either the final vertical US cover pasteups. or just a stat of the original art only, plus the US cover pasteup (with words, titles blurbs etc.).  Tower sent US covers that had to be cropped.  Charlton may have sent wider art stats that could fill the wider covers with art that was cropped in the US.

 

 

Tower1.png

Tower3.png

Tower2.png

Hi Aman. I'm not sure what you are saying here? If you look closely at the UK reprints that you show it can be ascertained that there is slightly more artwork on them than the original US comics although I admit not as much as on the images that I supplied.

Alan Class being a pretty much one-man-band used many different printers and the comics were never a uniform size, some were taller/shorter or wider/thinner. I remember some issues that had gone to a different printer and the covers were glossier than normal and the page stock was better than usual, these comics being stapled and not the usual AC glued squarebound issues.

Below is a copy of a Marvel UK comic where as before the artwork was supplied by Marvel US. Once again the original artwork was cropped on the US original.

yyy5.jpg

yyy4.jpg

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