So hat tip to my friend Mart Gray for sending me this image of Supergirl and Superboy. Looking around, this seems to have been an 11x15 pinup from 1978.
I love the whole look of this. The slightly tilted aspect, Supergirl leading the way flying with Superboy running, and the classic early 70s outfit on Kara is just wonderful. Maybe some more could have been put in the background. But the solid purple backdrop does make you focus more on the characters.
While the piece isn't signed, it looks to me most like Neal Adams. There is a sort of Dick Giordano flair to it so I wonder if Adams did pencils and Giordano did the inks.
I have seen it credited to Dave Cockrum but it doesn't look like Cockrum to me. Could Giordano have inked Cockrum and overwhelmed the style?
If anyone knows for sure who should be credited please let me know!
Just gorgeous!
The older I get, the more I love that version of the Supergirl costume.
That's a very cool pin-up. I love it!
ReplyDeleteI agree. It looks like Neal Adams' art, but it doesn't look like Cockrum. Although...
"Could Giordano have inked Cockrum and overwhelmed the style?"
After reading this line I realized we can not ask either of them. Saddening.
Given his terrible -and fateful- opinions on Kara, I wonder if Giordano resented having to ink so many drawings featuring a character he was unable to find some worth in.
I miss those versions of the characters. The more time it passes, the more I regret DC made the decision to jettison their universe (It's crazy to think Marvel almost made the same thing in the middle 80's to clean house and update their heroes' origins).
I also love that costume. I don't get why some people tell say she looks like a waitress or a roller skater.
Giordano is surely involved, and he may as well have pencilled it as well. I would rule out Buckler (search for Supergirl art made by him to see my point), as well as Adams, but they could easily have provided only a sketch and let Giordano do the main job.
ReplyDeleteI would have gone for Andru, honestly, after briefly considering Dillin (but the faces are definitely not his).
My guess is Andru or 100% Giordano.
I think this was part of a DCU print calendar for 1978...I could be wrong. Agree with Anj if this is Dave Cockrum's pencils then someone really really aggressively inked him....I miss "That Seventies Supergirl" too, she was whimsical and poorly served in her SMF feature, but every so often she'd shine very very brightly and remind everyone that she was Kal El's only real equal in all the DCU.
ReplyDeleteI'd be nice if she turned up in a Elseworlds (something that did not ship COIE #7) ready and willing "To Shine" once more.
JF
I istintively read "Buckler" instead of Cockrum. But what I wrote still stand, and I agree with Anon above.
ReplyDeleteThe Hot Pants outfit still remains my favorite SG outfit of all time. Melissa's TV outfit is #2 and at #3 is the more traditional blue top/red skirt.
ReplyDeleteAs for the 70's outfit...IF ONLY, IF ONLY, IF ONLY that could be transmitted to TV. And by the way the title for this show would be "That Seventies Supergirl."
It would be a wild ride jsut for laughs fun and mind checking at the door.
My favorite SG suits: Early 80's which would become the Matrix suit, Hot Pants, S:TAS, classic original costume and Smallville Comics.
ReplyDeleteOff-topic, but Superman Homepage's Action Comics 976 review is already up. I find interesting Michael Bailey, who considers Post-Crisis/Pre-Infinite Crisis Superman to be HIS Superman, thinks "Back-to-the-basics" reboots are useless:
"This isn’t just my personal opinion either. If you look at the various attempts to “fix” of “update” Superman over the past forty years it never takes. In 1971 Denny O’Neil wrote a storyline that took half of Superman’s powers and turned all of the Kryptonite on Earth to iron while at the same time he and other writers changed Clark from a newspaper to a television reporter. The lowered powers and Kryptonite thing did not last all that long and eventually Clark was back behind the typewriter while still doing the evening news. John Byrne revamps Superman and takes away a lot of the trappings of the Silver and Bronze Age but once he was off the books a lot of those trapping started to creep their way back into the stories. It’s almost like if you try to change Superman or at the very least try to mess with some of the aspects of Superman that all you’re really doing is pulling on a rubber band. At some point, it is either going to snap or go back into place."
Given that the CW has crossovers and one of their shows has time travelers, we totally *could* see this costume live.
ReplyDeleteThe mind boggles!
This appears to be from an actual poster. With border, approximately 11" x 15". Saw it on Etsy being described/sold as a poster by Neal Adams from a poster "book" (unclear what book that might be, as it's bigger than a tabloid/LCE/Treasury sized comic and the paper is clearly not newsprint). I can see Adams' work in Superboy, but the Supergirl figure looks a lot more like Giordano's work. Quite possibly a Continuity Studios gig. It's unlikely to be Cockrum due to the time period, although I've certainly seen many attribute his Batman #246 cover (inked by Giordano, one of Cockrum's rare covers during his time at DC) attributed to both Dick and Neal.
ReplyDelete