Monday, September 11, 2006

Luke Cage! POWER MAN!!

Last week I saw the Essential Power Man at the comic shop. Flipping through it I learned that Frank Robbins drew a few issues of Luke Cage in the mid 70's. I'm a big fan of Robbins inks especially his Johnny Hazard strips. Instead of buying the Essential which is full of other artists' work (some not so hot) I dug through the back issue bins and found the one issue that had the coolest splash page (see below, after my drawing).
I'd never really looked at Luke Cage comics before because I never liked the art. Now seeing him drawn by Frank Robbins I am in love. How could I have missed this costume? I was actually planning on doing a drawing of Iron Fist, who teamed up with Power Man for a well known run. That drawing will have to wait but in the meantime here is my two-fisted take on Luke Cage, Power Man!
This is the splash page that caught my eye. I love how much information Frank was able to compress into the drawing. And, of course, I love the open shirt! This and the image below are from issue #34 of LUKE CAGE, POWER MAN by Marvel comics.
Check out Luke's butt in this panel. Isn't that a lovely butt!? Oh, the things Frank Robbins could do with a simple brush and ink.

I encourage you to check out more of Frank's artwork. I don't have a checklist but I know he did some great stuff on the Shadow, Batman and Johnny Hazard!

best,
j.

8 comments:

Ramón k Pérez said...

you're right, luke cage has a nice ass.

:)

love how you dropped your image into a photo background! did you snap the background yourself or just find one online? either way it's magic.

j. said...

Senor Calavera - The background is simply a city street found through Google Image. The real magic was the cut and paste job I did to get rid of a car side-veiw mirror which intruded into the frame! Luke would be standing on that mirror were it not for Photoshops clone tool.

Gracias.

j.

PORK-PIE said...

Luke Cage! Woof! Yeah, I always liked him.. even with his slightly goofy tiara. The open shirt made up for it! Glad he's in the Avengers now (or what's left of it, with Civil War going on).

Great illo J!

C.Edwards said...

70's superhero costumes are so fucking hot.

j. said...

Luc - Thanks. Yeah, that tiara and the chains on his waist were two things I thought were silly as I drew them.

Klahd - Y'know...last night I caught an info-mercial for a Disco compilation on CD. Greg Brady was the host and they showcased a lot of funky music acts from the 70's. And the costumes worn by the singers were downright frightening. I can't imagine anyone wearing some of that fashion today. On a positive side the men showed a lot of skin (and didn't wax)...but on the negative side? The patterns hurt my eyes.

j.

jockalot said...

I love it. Wonderful work such as yours makes me want to take drawing lessons (and go out and buy Photoshop).

Here's a link to an HTML keyboard for special characters:
http://www.foxinternet.co.uk/bloggerkeyboard.html

Choose the special character code, then type the code in the comment box in place of the character you want.

That way, you can say properly, "Señor." Or, I ♥ Luke.

Doug

Alden V said...

oh, cool. Luke Cage looks great. Love the lineat and inkwork as always!!! good stuff.

Thomas Mitchell said...

Love your drawing as well as the retrospective panels by Frank Robbins. I was also a fan of Frank Robbins work, even though he wasn't terribly popular with fans. To add to your list of his work, he also did many issues of Marvel's Invader's comic with Cap, Submariner and the Human Torch. And to add to the Luke Cage artwork to remember, I have very fond rememberances of the George Tuska origin sequence in the first issue where Luke is breaking his way out of the experimental chamber that gave him his powers. He was naked with some artfully placed wisp of steam or something to hide what the comics code wouldn't allow.