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What's on the Front of your OA?
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25 posts in this topic

I don't have anything cool to contribute to the "back" OA thread, unfortunately, but I have a couple of neat things on the front of some of my pages.

On one of my Power Pack pages, there're some blue pencil notes in the bottom left corner. One says "overlap balloon," referring to the word balloon in a panel that they wanted moved up to overlap the panel above. Below the to-be-moved panel, there's another note that says, "On stat (don't cut or paste on original), move this panel up & to the right as shown to overlap 3rd & 5th panels." And then there are markings on the 3rd and 5th panels to direct the overlaps. Another cool thing of note is that this page was done during that period in the 80's where Marvel did those gross corner & top cutting of the pages when pulling them off the rollers. However, this page was not cut at all. My theory is that because they apparently used a fully stat page to move that panel, it's the stat page that went on the roller, and thus the original pencil and ink page borders were preserved. Good on the artist or whoever left the instruction to not mess with the original art!

And I just got an F5 page in this week that's interesting. It came from the Preview comic, and each panel drawn on the page is treated as a separate showcase part, rather than a sequential story. There are 4 pieces of art on the OA page, but the top, facial picture went unused. It wasn't even inked, because the artist left a note in pencil that said "don't do" with an arrow pointing toward it for the inker. He put a note saying, "Kevin do" with arrows to the other 3 arts. Kevin Conrad is the inker. The gun has no border, and actually overlaps one of the panels a bit. In the final published page, that gun was moved into a kind of floating space with what I assume is a digitally done wallpaper-type background, and the panel that it originally overlapped was cut just a tiny bit and rebordered so it wouldn't have a weird indent or require minor redrawing. The published page has a different face pic, which I've seen the OA for on CAF. On that page, there are, I think, 4 faces that were all used on different published pages. There's also 1 additional panel which I assume is on another page of OA somewhere out there. Finally, there are various other notes on the page that of course weren't published. There are some funny captions for the 2 panels: "Sasha Ho Big Action" and "Sasha Ho Slim Action." The gun has an owner designation (original and final) and model: Sasha Ho's [formerly Molly's, because her name is scratched out] gun; MK-23 SOCOM. And there are even a couple of personal notes in the outside borders. One says, "Pay McCallum," and another says "Tom Cho XXX-XXX-XXXX," except the X's are an actual phone number. Who are McCallum and Tom Cho? Neither of those names are listed as having to do anything with the published book. Oh yeah, and at the top there's a weird number in the Issue designation: 60606. It also says Page 1 but the published page is actually 5.

I just think it's neat how sometimes OA has an interesting story of its own beyond the story it tells in a book. What are some interesting notes and things on the front of your OA?

 

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f5.jpg

Edited by BuraddoRun
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At the bottom of this Exiles 2 cover by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray, you can see that the title Deadpool and issue 53 are scratched out. Exiles 2 was published in Sept. 2001, and Deadpool 53 was published Jun 2001. Sure enough, that issue's cover was also by Williams III and Gray. Just think, in an alternate universe, doppel-me is the proud owner of the Deadpool 53 cover. hm

 

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dp53.jpg

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My X-Men 2 page has a correction note that says Cyclops. I wasn’t sure what needed to be corrected, but on investigating it appears that the figure in the panel was drawn by Kirby as Angel, but Stan had it changed to Cyclops (which was the right call as a panel on the prior page makes it clear that Angel is on the other side of the room with Professor X).

my guess is the inker Paul Reinman made the corrections (you can see an erased line where the wings used to be, and the shadow toward the bottom was modified from what I suspect was meant to be the bottom of Warren’s wings)

pretty cool at any rate.  I love seeing the behind the scenes action of how these stories came togetherimage.thumb.jpg.1f37b9c23765d377e70ab12b61dc72cb.jpgimage.thumb.jpg.e0d72c07f0a3179367ae404a62ea29a9.jpg

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On 10/16/2020 at 9:38 AM, rsonenthal said:

I'll play. This cover of Our Army at War #160 by Joe Kubert is memorable for being one of the first covers to show Jackie Johnson, an African-American member of Easy Co.  If you look closely at the upper left corner, you can see Joe's note to the colorist making it clear that Jackie is going to look differently than what they are used to seeing.

Our Army at War #160, Cover Comic Art

 

 

An excellent piece.  DC's racist soldier was a bit more of a cartoon than the one in the Sgt. Fury episode which tackled the same issue.  But this was still an important and memorable issue.  And the hit-you-over-the-head presentation makes for a more zeitgeisty cover

Edited by bluechip
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This isn't technically on the front of a page, but it arrived taped to the front of a page I got in today. It's just a small sketch and note about the background behind the page, which I find interesting. Marco Galli assisted with the inks, but wasn't credited in the published comic. I wonder how often that happens, when inkers or even artists have assists that aren't credited. It used to be common in animation that in-betweeners weren't credited, I know.

The Tenth Issue 5 Page 14.jpg

IMG_20201029_202319029.jpg

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On 10/20/2020 at 12:49 PM, Grant Turner said:

My X-Men 2 page has a correction note that says Cyclops. I wasn’t sure what needed to be corrected, but on investigating it appears that the figure in the panel was drawn by Kirby as Angel, but Stan had it changed to Cyclops (which was the right call as a panel on the prior page makes it clear that Angel is on the other side of the room with Professor X).

my guess is the inker Paul Reinman made the corrections (you can see an erased line where the wings used to be, and the shadow toward the bottom was modified from what I suspect was meant to be the bottom of Warren’s wings)

pretty cool at any rate.  I love seeing the behind the scenes action of how these stories came togetherimage.thumb.jpg.1f37b9c23765d377e70ab12b61dc72cb.jpgimage.thumb.jpg.e0d72c07f0a3179367ae404a62ea29a9.jpg

I'm always impressed when someone can read Stan's notes. What does the other one say?

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On 11/7/2020 at 12:04 AM, drdroom said:

I'm always impressed when someone can read Stan's notes. What does the other one say?

It says “lemme down”

I have a page from Avengers 9 where Stan seems to be making a playful dig at Don Heck, but for the life of me I can’t quite decipher it!

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Got this recently. You can't see it on the scan, but at the top above Uatu's head in blue pencil, it says "STAT HEAD FOR PG 3 - FLOP IT!" And I don't have the OA for page 3, but the published page does indeed have a mirror image of his head.

There are notes in various places around the border making it clear that there should be a colored border for the flashback. They ultimately chose purple.

Finally, in the bottom left panel, where it says, "Their plan was four-fold," there is a stat glued over "was four-" and a blue pencil note that says "WAS." I assume it originally said "Is" and needed the simple correction. Funny enough, the stat obscures the top of the line underneath a bit, but it was published that way, with a partially cut top of the word "Fold."

what if 25 pg 2.jpg

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xVEd03Xy_2602190057541gpadd.jpeg

It's a little hard to read, but there is text written from the artist, Dale Keown to the inker, Mark Farmer, all along the gutter of this splash page:

Dale: Delphi is naked, but be careful...

Mark: Thanks for the warning Dale, but I usually practice safe sex while drawing the Hulk.  Besides, I've seen issue 382 and i just know she wears a scarlet body stocking - yum!

Also, the text box and title are a stat, the actual art goes all the way to the top.

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....and this from my Andru MTU #3 page:

1981891135_MTU3Page12c.thumb.jpg.2e0a0e079a1f26e27174bf698df57160.jpg

I was never quite sure what the writing at the foot of the page was saying... 151947059_Magnifyingglass.gif.f2b9c08e7e10e87dbe1097db08d5cd2d.gif

1938678975_MTU3Page12c(2).thumb.jpg.4f3be014699582206619ac882500ed42.jpg

hm

626271146_RCO013_1469485576(2).thumb.jpg.3d557fd44edea04c4630a4166ee330f2.jpg

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