It’s all about the cover.
When the Fortress Keeper happened upon this cover 20 some-odd years ago, Brian Bolland’s image of a monstrous Superman ready to wreak havoc created an adrenaline rush rarely equaled in your narrator’s long history of comic reading.
Surely, this would be an epic that would top all epics. A mutated Superman struggling against his bestial nature, a world endangered by its one-time protector.
Unfortunately, Superman #422 fell toward the end of editor Julius Schawartz’s long tenure on the book. Alan Moore’s poetic denouement to the pre-Crisis Superman’s saga was one issue away. John Byrne loomed.
This was no time for epics.
Later, the Keeper discovered that Schwartz commissioned the Bolland cover before a story had even been written - a challenge to the book’s scripters the famed editor enjoyed issuing from time to time.
Your friendly narrator doesn’t remember the writer, but does remember the palpable disappointment he felt reading the contents. The Curt Swan art was professional as always, but the story concerned a creature who stole Superman’s clothes and mildly rampaged across Metropolis.
Hardly the stuff of legend, although the idea of a creature stealing Superman’s clothes is kind of funny when you think about it…
Yet the power of Bolland’s cover remains undimmed over time. In a time of static pin-ups substituting for drama, it is a potent reminder of how powerful a comic illustration can be when rendered by a master.
Brian Bolland is blessed with that level of mastery. Happy birthday sir, and thank you for years of great comics.
I remember an issue of the wonderful cavalcade of stuff looming on the horizon periodical the Amazing Heroes Preview Special, which, if I recall correctly, reproduced this cover full-size on a page and mentioned the the write-up that when Bolland’s artwork came in, they just had to write a story around it.
There’s some sort of analysis in there somewhere about the different types of comics covers: the ones that had stories written around them, the ones that reproduced scenes that didn’t actually appear in the comic, the ones that gave away mysteries or surprises in the story, and curse ‘em all, the pin-up cover of today.
But for the moment…yes. Brilliant cover.
Hey! I used to love those Amazing Heroes Preview Specials!
I wish Wizard was one-tenth as good as that magazine used to be…
it’s a bit late, maybe you already know it, but the writer was Marv Wolfman.