Art Jam: Will Eisner, George Perez and Sergio Aragones!

From a George Perez FB group: an unlikely jam piece by George Perez (Starfire), Sergio Aragones (Groo & little people), and Will Eisner (The Spirit) in 1985!

Firestorm, Green Arrow, Black Canary and Elongated Man by George Perez

Here's the second set of Justice League commissions by George Perez featuring the classic Bronze Age versions of the characters.

Firestorm.  The original version of this character still works the best for me.  A teenager kid with nuclear powers...restrained only by Professor Stein living in his head.  Brilliant.  The best deterrent to Superman in the DC Universe.

Green Arrow.  Nice light and shadow work here.

Black Canary.

Elongated Man.  Love how Perez tangles up this goofy character.  Nuff Said!

Justice League 2012 Commissions by George Perez

Remember the great Gerry Conway / George Perez era of the Justice League?  I love that one and enjoy perusing those back issues when I run across them.  Recently George Perez did some commissions that evoke that era...

Wonder Woman.

Batman.

The Flash.

J'onn J'onnz.

The Atom.  Nuff Said!

Legion of Super-Heroes commissions by George Perez, Part 2

Last time, I featured the women, now it’s time for the super-dudes from the Legion of Super-Heroes, by George Perez.



Mon-El.



Ultra-Boy.





Superboy, wearing the Legion flight ring!

Legion of Super-Heroes commissions by George Perez, Part 1

George Perez has been busy working on a number of commissions for fans, featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes.  Here are a few of them, featuring the women from the future.

Saturn Girl.

Phantom Girl.

Dawnstar.

George Perez Commissions: Superman, Wonder Woman, and 1970s Avengers

Here are two wonderful recent commissions from George Perez!  First up is this nifty illustration of Superman and Wonder Woman flying together.  They are the royal couple of the DC Universe.

Next is this great pen and ink drawing of the 1970s era Avengers team.  The Vision, Scarlet Witch, Wonder Man, Beast, and Wasp are all represented.  Along with a few characters who made very brief appearances, like the Falcon.  Can’t recall Mockingbird being around at the time, but it’s nice to see her alongside Hawkeye.  Check out the George Perez Facebook Fan Page for more good stuff.  Nuff Said!

George Perez: Teen Titans Poster, Amazing Heroes, Newsletter covers

There have been many great Teen Titans illustrations by George Perez, but not all of them appeared on the monthly comic.  For the second issue of Amazing Heroes in 1981, Perez provided this cover featuring the Titans.  This was published somewhere around issues #9-12 of the New Teen Titans.  The new characters (Cyborg, Raven, Starfire) take the foreground while the original team members discuss things in the background.  Talking about the time Starfire walked around Central Park without her shirt on?

Note the headline on the upper right: New Comics Company Signs Kirby, Grell!  That would be the announcement of Pacific Comics, which published Captain Victory, Starslayer, the Rocketeer, and many more great series.

A few years later, Perez contributed another Titans cover for the 50th issue of Amazing Heroes.  This issue would have been published around the time that The Judas Contract arc was wrapping up, with Jericho being featured front and center. 

The other interesting thing here is that George’s style has matured in his work on Teen Titans.  His character faces are more detailed and expressive than in his early work.  His storytelling grew as well in the interior pages of the Titans.

Of course, if you were a real Titans fanatic like me, you owned this poster that DC Comics made in the early 1980s.  I had it on the wall of my room, to the bewilderment of my parents, who probably would have rather seen the Farah Fawcett poster instead.  But you can see here all the bits of Titan mythology from the first 35 issues or so: Trigon, Brother Blood, Deathstroke, Blackfire, the alien races that would form the backdrop of the Omega Men, and Terra, sitting on top of Titans Tower.

I threw away this poster in a fit of poster cleanup (along with the Legion poster by Keith Giffen, the Revenge of the Sith poster, etc).  Sigh.  Does anyone still have it intact after all these years?

If you were a Titans fan during this era, you were probably enamored with Koriand'r, the bronzed babe known as Starfire, who learned English in her first appearance by kissing Dick Grayson.  From that moment they were fated to fall in love, which lasted for many years in the Titans series.  Of course, it didn’t last, and in the current era of DC Comics, this relationship is all but forgotten.  But for true Titans fans this romance lingers, as you can see from this cover to the George Perez newsletter in 2001. 

Wow, in looking back over these covers, I get all misty eyed over the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans.  Geoff Johns and Mike McKone came close to this magic in their relaunch, but no one has yet surpassed the New Teen Titans saga from the 1980s.  Nuff Said!

George Perez: Post-Crisis Wonder Woman cover from Amazing Heroes

Concluding our look at the Post Crisis on Infinite Earths covers from Amazing Heroes, the last hero featured was Wonder Woman.  The big excitement for most fans was that Wonder Woman was getting one of the hottest artists in comics, George Perez!



Perez relaunched Wonder Woman for a brand new DC Earth. This cover for Amazing Heroes 106 that Perez drew displays all the classic elements of the character, the tiara, bracelets, and lasso.  But Perez also contributed a lot to the Amazon mythology of Wonder Woman.  Her battle armor was a great addition and used by other people (Alex Ross) in later years.



The cover to Wonder Woman V2 #1 was the best out of all the DC Comics reboots.  Perez populated this cover with all the epic moments from Diana's origin: the Amazons, Hercules, Ares, and her own birth out of clay.  This is probably my favorite run on the character.  Nuff Said!

Amazing Heroes: Crisis on Infinite Earths covers by George Perez

DC Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths struck terror in the hearts of comics fans everywhere in the 1985.  Amazing Heroes magazine was there to provide behind the scenes articles, with some terrific covers by George Perez.



Amazing Heroes #66 from March 1985 provided a look at Harbinger and her mentor, The Monitor.  Framed by five parallel worlds, it was an intriguing look at the two characters who knew the most of the forthcoming Crisis.  The Monitor had been floating around making tiny appearances in various titles even before the Crisis mini-series started.




Would you believe that the article in AH #66 was written by Mark Waid?  Waid was the perfect person to interview the creative team, given his encyclopedic knowledge of the DCU.  A decade later, Waid would help create his own apocryphal tale (along with Alex Ross), Kingdom Come.




On the flip side, March 1986, there was a special wrap-up issue featuring this gem of a cover by Perez.  Mark Waid (a Special Guest Editor for this issue) provided a lot of articles here: a DC Comics obitiuary of all the heroes who died, Who’s Who in the New DC Universe, etc.  Roy Thomas also got interviewed by Andy Mangels—the Crisis essentially gutted everything related to Earth 2, All Star Squadron, and Infinity, Inc.  The shocking news that All Star Squadron would end with issue #60 was heart-breaking.


Amazing Heroes #91 was chock full of Crisis goodies.  You can tell that Andy Mangels and Mark Waid must have worked very hard compiling all this information.  Mangels also wrote an article titled Monitoring the Monitor, a checklist of all the hidden easter eggs scattered across various comics.  His first appearance was nearly three years before the mini-series, in New Teen Titans #21 from 1982.  Nuff Said!

Wonder Woman 600 Splash Page by George Perez (inked and colored versions)

One of the greatest Wonder Woman artists of all time (and the father of the current continuity), George Perez, drew the lead story in Wonder Woman 600.  Diana Prince teamed up with all the super-chicks in the DC Universe, as you can see in the above splash page.  The details in the black and white inked piece are amazing.  You can see several other pages of Wonder Woman 600 original art here.

Here's the final page with colors by Hi-Fi.  The colorist adds a tremendous amount of effects, but there's no doubt that Perez gave him a lot to work with.  Not too crazy about the new outfit, but this lead story was pretty cool.  Nuff Said!

Legion of Three Worlds 5: A Legion Fan's wet dream ends, Bouncing Boy gets many wives

If you're a Legion of Super-Heroes or George Perez fan, you've probably devoured Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #5 by now.

All in all, this mini-series was a super duper roller-coaster ride, a true gift for Legion fans who waited decades to see the classic versions of these characters return.  It had more resurrections than Resurrection Man, a good one (Kid Flash) and a clumsy one (Superboy).

You can understand why the last issue of this series was delayed.  It's packed with to wall to wall action and tons of characters.  The double page spread, shown above, of Legionnaires from alternate universes banding together to fight Time Trapper (an older version of Superboy Prime) was spectacular.  I can only name about 70% of the characters.  My favorite is Saturn Girl on the lower right, in her swinging 1970s swimsuit.
There were more endings in this final issue than in Peter Jackson's Return of the King.  Here are some of those and other great moments that I liked.