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Jason G. Michalski
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 2:34am | IP Logged | 1
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Todd Klein updated his blog post to include a source:
ADDED: The source isRon Zalme, a Marvel production artist at the time, and the image is from hisfiles. He wrote about it on Facebook:The cover art for X-MEN #137 had been commissioned and donewithout any preliminary design work… which was frequently the case… but Marvelhad decided to run a contest that month… and that issue was supposed to be aspecial “double-sized” comic… and the X-Men logo was one of Marvel’s largesttitle logos to begin with. I did my best to cobble it all together… but JimShooter and the editors were appalled by the tiny bit of room left for the art!(Rightly so! … But I kind of intentionally pasted it up that way to… ummm… makethe point…). Needless to say, changes were made. LOL They got rid of a bunch ofcover copy to fit the art in a more traditional manner.
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David Miller
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 3:40am | IP Logged | 2
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If nothing else, I find this all so damn interesting.
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Mark Haslett
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | 3
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Ron Zalme claims to have done it and done it poorly to passively support
the anticipated objections that Shooter would have to all the cover copy.
He anticipated correctly and his design was rejected.
What does this not explain about the weird design choices?
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Jason G. Michalski
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | 4
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Ron Zalme explained the idea behind that version and why Jim Shooter and editorial made him change it to what was printed.
To me, it looks like he may have "moved" the signatures to the other side because the bottom left corner box would have covered it up or maybe just moved it over to balance out all the text on one side of the over.
Unless there is a reason to doubt Ron's story, it doesn't sound like a fake to me. It's just an idea that didn't work.
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Peter Martin
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | 5
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QUOTE:
| To me, it looks like he may have "moved" the signatures to the other side because the bottom left corner box would have covered it up or maybe just moved it over to balance out all the text on one side of the over. |
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The signatures are not just moved. The Austin signature is in all caps, when Terry Austin didn't (and doesn't) sign his name that way. This is odd.
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Athanasios Kollias
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | 6
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I am afraid I don't buy it. His story is the following:
I did my best to cobble it all together... but Jim Shooter and the editors were appalled by the tiny bit of room left for the art! (Rightly so! ... But I kind of intentionally pasted it up that way to... ummm... make the point...) "I did my best" and "intentionally pasted it up that way..." cancel each other out.
As I already mentioned, there is NO reason to mess the corner box heads, even if Ron Zalme's intention was to bury the idea. Why go to the extra trouble of cutting, redrawing and moving around one element if his goal was to make sure it failed? He could have the same outcome by simply glueing in the real corner box!
My personal take is that the Gaspar Saladino lettered boxes were intended to be used for some ad (like the one posted below, where the creators used to be mentioned). Maybe the editors did decide to make a fascimile like the one under discussion for the ad.
But, I wasn't there, so of course I may be wrong. This discovery just makes my spider-sense tingle, from the various details that ring wrong to the fact the cut-up glued-up elements are in such pristine condition, to the fact that not one person ever mentioned this in the past FORTY FOUR years! |
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Mark Haslett
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | 7
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You don’t buy it? You think he’s lying? Singular.
The answer to your questions about his motives, speculatively, might come
to you if you imagine yourself being faced with a job which you think should
not be done. Doing your best under those conditions, is not likely to result
in your best work.
How do the oddities of this piece become more likely in your mind as a work
of forgery? Every one of your objections, such as they are, would still stand.
What possessed the mind of the forger to do all of the weird things that you
point out? They only serve to make the piece more mysterious, less likely to
be accepted, and therefore less valuable as a forgery.
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Dave Kopperman
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | 8
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Signature placement: Obviously my working methods and tools are way different, but when I have a similar task of cramming a bunch of elements together in a layout, I sometimes just lay shit in and forget to deal with it or just decide "it's fine". Which is what I think when I look at that: it's fine. As far as any difference between signatures, either they had something from another cover he laid in, or they were just quickly lettered by someone else for attribution. I don't think this is the mystery of the ages, here. Just somebody doing a process that he did professionally 40/52, and thought in advance of the project that it was just too much shit.
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Andrew W. Farago
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | 9
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I trust Ron Zalme's recollection of this. It's most likely a piece that his friends and colleagues knew about, and he must have eventually gotten a reasonable offer from a collector to purchase it from him. The biggest argument against it being any kind of a fake is that he never tried to capitalize on its existence, didn't put out a big press release tying his own name to it, and just quietly put out a confirmation about the piece's history after he'd already sold it.
The stakes are so low on this that it wouldn't make any sense for it to be any kind of scheme.
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Athanasios Kollias
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | 10
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How do the oddities of this piece become more likely in your mind as a work
of forgery? Every one of your objections, such as they are, would still stand.
What possessed the mind of the forger to do all of the weird things that you
point out? They only serve to make the piece more mysterious, less likely to
be accepted, and therefore less valuable as a forgery.
+++
I mentioned it may have been an ad. So, no forgery, just not a cover design. I don't understand your comments. If it was a forgery, it would be discovered because of the inconsistencies, not despite of them!
Again, it is a gut feeling. Nothing seems like ANY other cover of the X-Men comic at the time, there is NO need to put a box around it and the credits were not a thing of the time. In ads, yes, they were used in abundance. In covers, not.
And of course, after 44 years, one may not be lying, they may well be misremembering. That happens, you know...
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Dave Kopperman
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| Posted: 09 May 2024 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | 11
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I'd disagree with the strong ("NO need") assertion that the bounding box wasn't needed. It's subjective. To me, there's so much visual noise with everything in place that reducing the art and creating a little negative space for the captions makes the whole thing read better. And you can actually see more of the art, though it's smaller. While the whole enterprise is doomed to failure, I think his solution is about the best that could be hoped for.
Edited by Dave Kopperman on 09 May 2024 at 8:56pm
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Andrew W. Farago
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| Posted: 10 May 2024 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | 12
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It's a neat "What If?" look at art direction and design. This isn't all that far removed from the era when Marvel had logos that took up the entire upper third of the cover, a border around the artwork, and extra captions and word balloons thrown in for good measure.
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