Captain America 616 Charest Cover
Marvel just sent out a press release about Captain America issue 616: it’s been well covered around the comic sites. What captured my attention was the beautiful Travis Charest cover: why is this man not doing any comic interiors! Although I think it’s his use of colour that gives his covers such tenacity. Give it a click to enjoy el grande.
Scott VanderPloeg works in I.T. but lives to eat and read. Currently Editor-In-Chief of Comic Book Daily. His ramblings can be found at eBabble.
Maybe Charest is one of those great artists that is an incredibly slow worker? His style and attention to detail could prevent him from churning out a book every month.
I think most fans would be very happy with 64 pages a year from Charest.
I would be happy with 32 pages a year!!! If you haven’t seen it, check out his earlier Wildcats stuff!
Yes the cover is spectacular, but you think that if someone was going to draw a specific something (Captain America, the flag), they would take the 20 seconds necessary to Google the image just to make sure that the image is correctly rendered. Case in point. When you hang an American Flag vertical (as in the cover) the blue field of stars is ALWAYS in the upper left corner. Something any Cub Scout would know
http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagetiq.html
Again, beautiful image, badly rendered due to gross incompetence on the part of the illustrator.
What possible reason could it matter which way the flag is shown?
What position should your knife and fork be on the plate when you finish a meal: if you don’t know you’ve been insulting everyone you’ve ever shared a meal with.
I’m with the Perfessor on this one. I remember a baseball game (I think) somewhere deep in the US where they had the Canadian flag hanging upside down during the national anthem. Of course it mattered that it was hanging upsidedown while our anthem was playing and I’m sure it mattered to you Scott, the red blooded Canadian boy that you are!
Now I don’t know much about art but I’d bet the flag positioning here was more poetic license and necessity and less incompetence. To get the Cap’s blue head with a white A into an area of contrast. His head would have been lost in the blue with white stars background.
But it’s an image of a flag. No one has issues that it has big holes in it or a corner missing: we accept that as part of the painting. Same goes for the position: let’s say bad people hung the flag and good ol’ Cap is there to defeat them and then rehang it the proper way. In fact he was probably so shaken by seeing the flag hanging incorrectly he decided to get to the flag first and stop the bad guys later.
This isn’t real life people, it’s a comic book cover.
Or perhaps the flag is hung the correct way and Cap is behind it?
Not only is the flag wrong (Marvel at least caught THAT and reversed the image for cover), but Cap’s cowl has NEVER covered his NOSE. Not with the WWII helmet or any other time.
Boo to Charest and double boo to Marvel. Pathetic incompetence. Hire some people who give a $#!t about the characters, Marvel!