The Captain America movie, Thor movie, the Green Lantern movie, and Avengers movie!

Time for a really quick blog. By now, most of you diehard comic book superhero fans and live action movie buffs know there are some more upcoming DC Comics and Marvel movies.

I am so looking forward to the Chris Evans Capt America, Chris Hemsworth Thor, the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie, and somewhere down the line, the Avengers movie. They should rock, and the night they debut in theatres, I’m there. If they’re even 1/2 as great as the Robert Downey Jr Iron Man movie and the Christian Bale Batman the Dark Knight movies, they’ll be incredible. Looking forward to Spider-man 4 also, but I mostly want to see a Wonder Woman movie! And don’t let the movie studios or anyone connected to them design Diana Prince’s amazon costume. Stick to the classic and best one. Don’t redesign the wheel, comic editorial teams and movie designers. Don’t change what the fans love. It could make the difference between a mega-hit and being relegated to “straight to video” hell.

Since the Mighty Avengers have been around since 1963, I’m going to commemorate the Avengers by showing our loyal Supervator Super-Blog readers some very cool VINTAGE Captain America, Mighty Thor, and Avengers posters! Just click on the images below to see a larger view of the posters, and to check current availability. Some have artwork by Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Ron Frenz, Alex Ross, Mike Zeck, Golden Age artist Alex Schomburg, and Silver Age legend John Romita Sr.

Thanks a MILLION for reading our Supervator Blog!

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Your favorite Jim Lee work? X-Men? Batman? Superman? Wonder Woman?

Hi people! It’s been a while since I’ve had time to do a blog, but here I am. Hope all the readers of the Supervator.com blog are doing well. This blog’s subject is phenominally popular artist JIM LEE. What’s your favorite character that Jim Lee has drawn? Is it Batman, Nightwing, Superman, Wonder Woman, the X-Men? Somebody else? For me, it’s his X-Men work, such as the work he did on X-Men issue 1 back in the 1990′s. By the way, the poster shown is the huge X-Men door poster published by Marvel Press Posters back in 1992. This giant size poster is about 59 by 30 inches, and shows Marvel Universe mutants like Wolverine, Gambit, Rogue, Storm, Colossus, the Beast, Professor X, Psylocke, and more. Just click on the photo to see if we still have it available for sale.

Meantime, I really love Jim Lee’s artwork, and I’ve notice more than a few toys and other superhero merchandise bearing his artwork nowdays, for example, in a lot of Batman products. The man is an icon, and our cowls are off to him!

Well, that’s all time allows for this blog. Thanks for reading, and feel free to check out all the posters and artwork currently available on SUPERVATOR.COM. Tell your friends!

Have no fear: I will explain Daredevil Color Guide Art

Hello, blog and comic art fans! Tonight’s blog is gonna be about fear, but don’t worry. It’s a good kind of fear! It’s about Daredevil, the Man Without Fear! As DD’s fans know, Daredevil TMWOF started his crime fighting superhero career back in 1964, in his silver age Marvel Comics Group issue 1 debut. DD is of course the blind New York City (and once San Francisco California) attorney, named Matt Murdock. Not only did Matthew Murdock have his hands full dealing with NYC criminals by day as a lawyer, but he also dealt with crime during his nightly rounds as the Man Without Fear.

I remember as a kid reading “Giant-Size Daredevil” issue 1 (which was a reprint of an old DD annual issue), and trying like hell to make my own Daredevil billy club, as shown on one of the pages of that Giant Size comic book. Drove me and my family nuts. Hell, I was always doing something comic related, like using a car’s emergency brake cable pretending I was that Ironman villain “Whiplash”, and whipping my plastic Marx Toy Company Marvel statue set (yes, I admit it). And when I was five, I foolishly cut my Mom’s floor wax can (yes, made of METAL), and tried to squeeze into it so I could be Iron Man. It cut the living s*it out of me. And then there was the time I tried to use those Tic Tacs plastic candy dispensers to make homemade Spider-man web-shooters that I filled with Elmer’s Glue. Oh by the way, this is just scratching the surface. There was also the time I thought I was Iron Fist and tried for fight a kid named David outside on my lawn. The only thing was, David *was* actually into Martial Arts unlike myself, so I got my Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu (and my ass) handed to me damn quick. I remember crying when the Mad Hatter (David Wayne) dropped liquid cement on Batman (Adam West) at the end of a 2 part cliffhanger episode of the 1966 tv show. I was 3 at the time, and I thought they really killed my hero! I was literally  tormented for 7 days until the next episode. I wouldn’t even eat bacon when I was little, til my Mother tricked me by calling it “Batman Bacon”. I swear to GOD!  So to say super-heroes made a huge impact on my life would be a massive understatement. If not for reading comics at around age 4, I’d probably be illiterate today. School taught me nothing. All I ever needed to know I learned from Marvel Comics! YEAH! Stan Lee is still the Man!

Back to Daredevil. My favorite issues of Daredevil were his 1st appearance back in the 1960′s by Wally Wood (yes, of EC Comics fame), by John Romita Sr in the 60′s, by Sal Buscema in the 1970′s, by Frank Miller in the 1980′s, but most especially by Gene Colan. There was just something about the way “Gene the Dean” drew Daredevil that I liked better than all the other talented artists that worked on the character.

Speaking of Gene Colan and Sal Buscema, here’s a couple cool screen shots of some original Marvel Comics color guide pages we currently have available  in our eBay Store. Just click on the photos to see more information about them, as well as check to see if they’re still for sale. As you might know, color guide artwork is also known as colorist’s art. It’s the real deal (they were hand painted by Marvel colorists) , they’re one of a kind, and they don’t make color guides anymore because comics are now colored on computers. Color guides are basically copies of the black & white original artwork, that are shrunk down and given to actual Marvel employees to hand color and draw those funny “color codes” on, so the printer knew exactly which shade of blue (for example) to make Spider-man’s costume. You get the idea. And what’s best about color guides is, there is almost always just one of each page ever made. Yep, when you own one of them, you own the ONLY one of them. Cool, huh?

Are these pages not gorgeous? Believe me, they look even more vivid in person, as color guide art pages usually do. They’re normally very bright in person, compared to the actual published comic book. See, back then, Marvel Comics (or DC Comics, for that matter), could not have published the actual comic books without color guides to show the people at the printing plant exactly which shades of colors Marvel wanted for each superheroe’s costume, for the backgrounds, etc. As of this writing, we still have a limited supply of older Marvel Colorist’s pages, like the Invincible Iron Man, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, and of course the Amazing Spiderman, among others.

Come take a look at some of these collectible rare pieces of comic book history. Collecting color guide art can be just as fascinating but MUCH less expensive as collecting comic book original art.

Thanks for reading this week’s blog!

SUPERVATOR.COM

Rare Vintage Comic Art and Posters

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The Big Daddy of them all: The 1966 Steve Ditko Amazing Spider-man 6 foot MMMS Door Poster!

Drum roll, please…… This is THE rarest and most sought after Marvel Comics poster of all time: the 1966 Spider-man six foot door poster produced by the Merry Marvel Marching Society (MMMS) fan club, featuring artwork by original Spiderman artist and co-creator STEVE DITKO. As of this writing, this poster is available on eBay.com. Just click on the poster’s photo for the link.

From what I’d heard behind the scenes years ago, this 1960′s Spidey door poster was going to be the first in a series of Marvel Comics Group superhero door posters, and can you believe the cost was just $1.99? That is not a misprint. Kind of blows my mind. My supposition here is that perhaps Marvel did not sell enough units of this poster to make it financially worthwhile to produce other Marvel Comics Group MMMS door posters. Doesn’t seem possible, does it? Maybe $1.99 was too much to ask back then? Either way, it’s a shame.

Now, can you just imagine what the other 60′s Marvel door posters would have looked like? I can. Let’s speculate a moment. Because the year was 1966, you can bet Jack “King” Kirby would have had a hand in some of the images chosen, and maybe John Romita Sr and Gene Colan.  If anyone can put the entire Fantastic Four or Uncanny X-Men on one 6 foot tall by 32 inches wide poster, it’s Jack Kirby. A Don Heck Mighty Avengers poster might have been tough to pull off because of the number of heroes on the team, but I can easily envision a Gene Colan Iron Man or Namor the Sub-mariner door poster produced from an old silver age Tales of Suspense or Tales to Astonish comic book. Kirby would of course been tapped on the shoulder to do a Captain America or Mighty Thor poster. And Jazzy Johnny Romita would have been the man for a giant-size Daredevil door poster, and of COURSE Spider-man too if Ditko hadn’t already done it. I can’t claim to like the poses or scenes chosen for many of the comic superhero commercial posters (think of the 1966 Batman Personality Poster that says “Nonsense, there’s no such thing as” (ghosts) by Carmine Infantino), but they picked the ultimate Spider-man pose for the Ditko door poster. This was one of the few that was done right. It was used on tons of Spider-man toys and memorabilia later, and was even the corner “price box” icon for Amazing Spider-man comic books during the 1980′s.

All this speculation on “what if” Marvel door posters reminds me of something really important that I’m sure 1 in ten million Marvel 1960′s fans even know about. Remember the medium sized 42 by 29 inch Spidey and Incredible Hulk posters by “Personality Posters”? And do you also remember the 8 mini posters set (about 17 by 11 inches each) that were sold all together in a plastic bag with a “Marvel Superheroes” header card? Well, if you recall, artist Marie Severin drew (I believe) all 8 of the heroes, which were Spider-man (based on the earlier Ditko pose), the Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Submariner, Dr Strange, and the Human Torch. BUT, did you know that Stan Lee and Marvel had considered or had planned to ALSO release mini posters of Daredevil, Dr Doom, and the Thing from the Fantastic Four? It’s true. I saw the original art to all 3 of the unpublished posters on eBay back around 1999. They were listed in someone’s auction, then for unknown reasons the auctions were stopped before there was an official winning bidder. Broke my heart, because I was planning on taking a shot at acquiring all three.

Well, I’m out of time, and it’s time to get back to the business of selling rare old comic book posters and color guide artwork. But the above makes me bummed out to think that there could have been an entire series of 1960′s Marvel king-size door posters that collectors could still be fawning over and seeking out today.

Thanks a million for reading Marvelmania fanatics, and see ya next blog!

Staff

SUPERVATOR.COM rare vintage comic art and posters

Rock & Roll Music, Marvelmania Style!

Welcome to Supervator.com’s latest blog, this time about some of the great superhero record albums and vinyl single 45′s that have been produced by companies like Buddah Records, Peter Pan Records, Lifesong Records, Power Records, etc. There was even an album called “Spider-man” by Freddie McCoy, which featured a spectacular Spider-man cover by Steve Ditko. There was also a “Marvel World of Icarus” album featuring all the major 1960′s Marvel super-heroes emblazoned on the cover, like Thor, Daredevil, the Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, and Spidey. Marvel was on it’s way into musical mass consciousness!

I was a kid back in 1972 when the Amazing Spider-man 33 1/3 lp “Rockomic” album came out in record stores called “Beyond the Grave”. It featured awesome front cover, back cover, and inner gatefold art by Silver Age Marvel Comics Group artist John Romita Sr. Shown on (and heard in) the album were Spiderman, the Green Goblin, the Vulture, the Kingpin, the Lizard, and Dr Strange. In fact, I think the idea to have Doctor Strange team-up with Spidey stemmed from the Master of the Mystic Arts recently (back then in the 1970′s) guest starring in the Amazing Spider-man issue 109 comic book. It had to be. Team-ups were pretty rare and special back then, not commonplace like now. Years ago, Supervator.com acquired a limited number of these scarce never-folded Jazzy Johnny Romita Spider-man posters, and they’re now available for sale through our webstore. We are probably the only place on earth that possesses any of these old Spider-man posters that have miraculously escaped the folding process.

Back to the subject of the marriage of comics and rock and roll. I’m sure I’m leaving a few records out featuring Marvel Universe superheroes, but there were many decent musical efforts. Some were cheaply made, and it showed, but they were sure fun. In fact, I got so inspired by the old Power Records “book and record set” releases that I made my own “audio comics” with my cassette tape recorder when I was about 10 years old. Oh my God, do I remember! One of my swift ideas was to act out all the parts to the Amazing Spider-man issue 123 comic book, the issue when Spidey fights Luke Cage, “Hero for Hire”. I needed sound effects and couldn’t think of anything good to use, so guess what? To imitate the sound of breaking glass, I stomped on a BOXFUL of old 1960′s Aurora monsters model kits that I had assembled and fully painted years ago. Great idea, eh? No wonder they’re scarce now. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Phantom of the Opera, Godzilla, King Kong, and ALL the other kits haunt me to this day. I had all 12 Aurora monster models in that fateful cardboard box. And you know what? I don’t even HAVE the stupid homemade cassette tape anymore that I made of me acting out the scenes from Spider-man 123. I won’t even get into the torture I subjected my old Hasbro GI Joe action figures and Captain Action dolls to.

Anyways, not that I didn’t like the 1960′s Batman albums or the 70′s Power Albums of Superman, Wonder Woman, and other DC Comics heroes (especially the covers showing artwork by Neal Adams), but I have a special place somehow for Marvelmania and MMMS Merry Marvel Marching Society type of stuff. Stuff such as the “Scream Along with Marvel” recording from the 60′s featuring Stan Lee and the Marvel Bullpen artists like Jack Kirby.

ARRRRGH! I was just getting into this blog, but business calls with another order for the Supervator web-store. Gotta go!! I’d love to talk more at length about comic book’s forays into recorded music sometime, and I never got to talk about the old 70′s Fantastic Four radio serials like I wanted to. ARRGH! Thanks a million for reading!

Supervator.com Rare Vintage Comic Art and Posters

Unanswered questions about Marvel Third Eye and FOOM “Friends of Ol’ Marvel” Posters

Hello, my fellow super-heroes! In this blog, I’m going to talk about the 70′s FOOM Club posters, and the Marvel Third Eye posters from the early 1970′s that were sold in some stores, record shops, and headshops (yes, the places that sell drug paraphernalia).

I’m sure many of you long-time comic fans remember the 1973 or 1974 F.O.O.M fanclub, Marvel’s followup to the 1966 MMMS (Merry Marvel Marching Society) and (approximately) 1969 Marvelmania International Club.

Foom was just awesome, and I loved that color poster that Jim Steranko did of the Marvel Universe heroes. The 12 different double or triple color mini posters, I’m sorry to say, didn’t do it for me. At all. Even if they were in the background of a Bruce Willis movie. There were so many better Marvel cover images they could have used for these mini posters, and I wish they used more colors. I’m sure it was a cost saving measure, and I’d probably do the same if I was in Marvel’s shoes (or should I say “in Marvel’s costumes?”)

Just imagine what those meagerly colored Marvel Foom posters would be worth right now, if only they were larger sized, showed more colors, and had better cover image choices? Don’t get me wrong, I love almost everything Marvel was doing in the 1960′s and early 1970′s. But the good news is, we do have that great full color Steranko Foom member kit promo poster to “Marvel” at.

I had the same reservations about the 1971 Marvel blacklight posters that were produced by a NYC company called The Third Eye, Inc. No doubt the 3rd Eye neon/day-glo posters were utterly gorgeous, but the images they chose, and some of the CHARACTERS they chose, leave me wondering who made those decisions. I doubt it was Stan Lee, although I’ve been wrong once or twice before in my life.

(UH-OH WARNING TIME: I’m about to get on my Supervator Soap-Box and talk indefinitely about the dayglo Third Eye Marvel posters from ’71. You’ve been warned!)

Why was there a Black Bolt or Medusa black light poster? Why so many featuring Dr Strange or Namor the Submariner? Who the hell wants a black light poster of Odin and Hela, but Thor’s not shown in it?? I love John Buscema’s art on it, but WTF! And the other Thor poster showing him up-close kissing Sif? What about that? Yuck! Not the Sif part, I mean, for a goddess, Lady Sif was pretty hot. Why did the world need a Captain America poster showing Cap turning backwards on his motorcycle to wave goodbye to the Falcon? Why were the Spider-man blacklight posters so boring in their image selection? Why, Lord, Why? Why not a poster showing some of that KILLER art Steve Ditko did in Amazing Spider-man Annual 1, for example? Where’s the Green Goblin? Where’s Mysterio (talk about a psychedelic character who’d be perfect for mind-altering posters!). What about that incredible beyond words splash page that Ditko did in Spiderman Annual 1 showing Spidey blasting Electro across the face? That would have made the world’s greatest super-heroes poster of all time!

Also, why do the 2 Incredible Hulk posters made by the 3rd Eye show the Hulk (a guy purportedly 10 feet tall) AS PRACTICALLY A MIDGET! Go check eBay or something about this. I mean it. One of the biggest superhero characters in the Marvel Universe, and he’s a m-i-d-g-e-t in both posters! I don’t get it. Although I was a little kid at the time, they should have let ME pick the images shown, and which characters are shown.

The only Third Eye posters I thought were great were one of the Jack “King” Kirby Fantastic Four, Kirby’s “Astral Thor”, the Jack Kirby Captain America (where Cap is hitting bad guys to his right and his left), and the absolute best two were the Silver Surfer “At last I’m free” by Kirby, and the Invincible Iron Man poster showing art by Gene Colan, as Ironman is breaking apart one of those trap walls that close in on it’s victims, which was taken directly from a splash page in Tales of Suspense/TOS.

But of course, topping even the Iron Man poster in the series of 24 Third Eye posters was the promotional poster drawn by my Silver Age inspiration, the Jazzy Mr John Romita Sr. Johnny Romita’s promo poster for the Third Eye posters series showed all the big guns like Capt America, Hulk, Thor, Spider-man, Daredevil, Iron Man, and even Black Bolt from the Inhumans with a BLUE mouth from the colorist.

All right, once again I need to be stopped before I blog all over myself about these posters. It’s just that, I love them, I’ve personally owned a few, I’ve sold several hundred of them by now, and I wish Marvel would release another series of large blacklight posters, possibly with another company, of course, because the Third Eye Inc has been gone for decades. (I loved the Third Eye Poster company’s other work too, like their head shop posters, their Marvel heroes jigsaw puzzles, and their Marvel greeting card series). As you can obviously tell, I have a passion for old Marvel posters. But next time you produce some posters, ol’ House of Ideas, let ME pick the images!

Thanks a Million for reading,

Supervator.com
Vintage Comic Art and Posters

First Blog from Supervator.com

This is the Official blog of the Supervator.com vintage comic book posters and art online shopping web-store. Here we discuss the aspects of poster and comic artwork collecting. This is our first blog, and shown here is a gorgeous and rare 1971 Marvel Universe Third Eye Blacklight poster that was drawn by Silver Age Marvelmania, MMMS (Merry Marvel Marching Society), and FOOM era artist, the great John Romita Sr. Shown in this scarce 1970′s neon dayglo black light poster are the Incredible Hulk, the Amazing Spider-man, Dr Strange, Daredevil the Man Without Fear, the Silver Surfer, Black Bolt of the Inhumans, members of the Avengers (Thor, Captain America, Iron Man), Captain Marvel, The Human Torch and the Thing from the Fantastic Four, and Prince Namor the Submariner.

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