Name: Jim Kingman
Jim Kingman has been a faithful reader and collector of comic books for over thirty years. He currently publishes Comic Effect, a quarterly fanzine dedicated to emphasizing the fun in reading comics from all ages Golden, Silver, and Modern! For more on CE, check out its website at ComicEffect.Com.
Long Week, Short Column, Great Cover
By Jim Kingman
I will give DC’s 1997 mega-crossover event, Genesis, some credit; if I hadn’t been searching for tie-in issues over the weekend I wouldn’t have stumbled across this great illustration by John Totleben that graces the cover of The Spectre #56. It just stopped me in my tracks. It’s breathtaking (just as a landscape), gruesome (that is one ugly face), captivating (it has a familiar quality; Ray Harryhausen would’ve had a field day with the monster design), and terrifying (how would one stop a creature like this?).
The painting has nothing to do with the story inside, which stands on its own merits (writer John Ostrander and artist Tom Mandrake created a fantastic Spectre series; I highly recommend it). You don’t really need a story for a cover like this, the image tells it all. It disturbs and unsettles, and you just can’t take your eye off it (pun intended; I need some levity here). The people on the ship are so doomed.
Discuss this column at the Special Effects forum.
© 2004-, Jim Kingman