Thursday, February 7, 2008

Homage To Spidey


As I have mentioned elsewhere, I wouldn't really count Roy Lichtenstein as my greatest inspiration, but rather John Romita Sr. who did most of the Spiderman artwork in the late 1960s and 1970s. There was just a nice way that he framed the action and I just like the way his stuff was drawn. When you compare more contemporary comic drawing to that of the Silver Age, it's like comparing the names of football teams of the NFL to the football team names of the XFL. Contemporary comics would be named the Los Angeles Xtreme, the Memphis Maniax or the Orlando Rage. To me, contemporary comics try too hard to be over the top X-Games inspired. One has to wonder how well they will stand up to the test of time.
But anyway, as you all know, my schtick it doing political satire in comic painting form and this was my homage to Spidey. It's pretty much taken right from the panel of one of the most famous issues of Spiderman of all time. It was issue #122 (I believe, though I'm not sure) where Gwen Stacy dies at the hands of the Green Goblin. For those of you who only know the movies, Gwen Stacy was Spiderman's original love interest while Mary Jane Watson was just "a friend." At the time, all of this was quite shocking. A main character? Killed? Unthinkable! Besides, she was just so damned hot. Who didn't have Gwen Stacy fantasies?!?