Many people have enjoyed the Marvel Masterworks comic books as they are the classic characters as they first came into this world. The artwork and stories have been cemented into they mythos of these characters and have been the well that future storytellers have been using to craft new yarns for years to come. Did you know though, that many the comics are recreations?
Enter Mike Kelleher, an artist commissioned by Marvel to recreate many of the ?films? that are used in printing comic books as they were, ? either lost, damaged, or altered, so a new version needed to be created.? He even went so far as to create them in the way the original artists did.
The Gallery
A gallery of his work will be open to the public starting on November 16th and will run through November 31st. The artist, Mike Kelleher will make an appearance on November 17th for a benefit for The Hero Initiative, a great organization that helps comic book creators with financial aid for insurance, health benefits, and other basic needs that they often cannot afford as in days past, many creators did not earn the kind of money that could afford them a decent lifestyle or retirement.The Art
According to a press release about the event, ?Each drawing is an exact recreation of the original works created by legendary artists Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, John Buscema and many others. Each piece, measuring 14 x 17 inches, was painstakingly reproduced to mimic line-weights and styles of the original artists and inkers.""These pieces are not simple recreations made for fans and collectors. Every drawing was commissioned and approved by Marvel Comics for publication in the Masterworks Collections.
Marvel Comics has gone to great lengths over the past few years to give fans EXACT reproductions of the silver age stories that made Marvel famous. Often times the film that was used in the original printing process were either lost, damaged, or altered, so a new version needed to be created."
The Process of Creating A New Masterwork
"When Mike Kelleher first began reconstructing artwork for the Masterworks books, he did them all digitally and the results were amazing, but he felt that they were too "smooth" and "mechanical" looking when compared to the pages shot from original film. The simple remedy was to recreate the images in ink on paper, at twice the printed size, just as the original artists did almost 50 years ago. The result is a much truer representation of the original printings.""I can't think of a more fitting tribute to the artists that I idolize than to use the recreations of their artwork to benefit comic creators," Kelleher said.?