Amazing Heroes Issue # 158 Cover

Amazing Heroes Issue # 158 Cover

Periodical
Comics Strips

The title of the periodical is “An Amazing Heroes Special”, with the subtitle “AH in 3-D” written below it, with both titles capitalized, italicized, and printed in black. A label nearby reveals that this is issue “No. 158,” released on “Feb. 1, 1989,” and priced at $3.95 in the United States and $4.95 in Canada. The cover illustration features three young men wearing semiformal dress and 3-D glasses in the foreground, surrounded by an array of cartoon characters in a variety of styles and sources. Two of the three men are cheerily inspecting and criticizing the work of the man they are standing over, who is intensely drawing an image at his desk. The critic on the left is saying, “Y’got it wrong, Joe…Right, Lenny?” The critic on the right, ‘Lenny,’ agrees with a shake of his fist, “Right, Norm!” Meanwhile, the artist, ‘Joe,’ responds, irritated, “Lemme draw, willya?” The three men are the only entities on the cover not rendered in the 3-D treatment, and they speak with simplistic word balloons common in comics. The characters in the background, rendered in an anaglyphic 3-D style, with all of them split into red and blue and rendered mainly in purple, a melding of the two.

The two critics are cartoon representations of Norman and Lenny Maurer, a pair of brothers and publishers that pioneered the process of 3-D conversion with Joe Kubert in 1953. Joe Kubert himself is the third man, the artist being picked apart by the men overseeing him. His signature is in the lower-left of the cover, just above the barcode, and it reads “With regard to Ray “3-D” Zone, Joe Kubert © ‘88” The results were a sales success and continued a trend of 3-D comics that persisted for the next few decades.

Encircling them, clockwise from the top left, are Tor, a rough, long-haired barbarian from his namesake’s comic, along with his primate companion and a deadly reptile, the three stooges below him, a cartoon bear, a hard-boiled detective, a grizzled cowboy, an angry man with a top hat, an old man with a beard, a reptile, and another man with a pipe rendered in a more realistic style, and two other characters with hair and a hat that we can only see from behind. A whole crowd of characters in alternating red and blue stretches to the horizon, gradually losing detail and specific character traits until they become simplistic, identical cartoons.

While this cover is modeled after traditional anaglyphic 3-D printing, viewing it with a pair of specialized glasses would not reveal a true 3-D image, since the art is simply an imitation that allows for its subjects to be more legible.

Cover Artist: Joe Kubert
Executive Editor: Kim "Lou" Thompson
Managing Editor: Chris "John" McCubbin
Art Director: Lynette "Mo" Alcorn-McCubbin
Associate Editor: Charles "Sterling" Lieurance
News Correspondent: Dave "Nico" Hogswid
Production Assistant: Mark Thompson
Typesetting: Linda Gorell & Arlene Easter
Circulation: Rachel Enger & Carol Kovinick-Hernandez

MSU Special Collection Comic Art, PN6725.A47

Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

1989-02

Colin Corcoran

Rights Restrictions Apply

6-5/8 x 10-1/4 in.
Color

English

Periodical

1981-1992

Comic Book

6-5/8 x 10-1/4 in.