A Sense of Doubt blog post #2640 - More George Pérez reprints and art work - RIP - for 2205.11
I had a George Pérez category on my t-shirts blog, so why did I not have one here on Sense of Doubt?
I had five links in my T-shirts blog in my George Pérez category .
Here are links and the content followed by art work by George Pérez.
The world will not be the same without George Pérez.
Rest in power, friend to us all.
Blog Vacation Two 2022 - Vacation II Post #76
I took a "Blog Vacation" in 2021 from August 31st to October 14th. I did not stop posting daily; I just put the blog in a low power rotation and mostly kept it off social media. Like that vacation, for this second blog vacation now in 2022, I am alternating between reprints, shares with little to no commentary, and THAT ONE THING, which is an image from the folder with a few thoughts scribbled along with it. I am alternating these three modes as long as the vacation lasts (not sure how long), pre-publishing the posts, and not always pushing them to social media.
Here's the collected Blog Vacation I from 2021:
Saturday, October 16, 2021
T-SHIRTS CONTENT
Monday, March 3, 2014
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| JLA and Avengers - art by the Maestro - George Pérez. CLOSE UPS OF MY AVENGERS PRINT I have shared pictures of the 41st Avengers print by George Pérez and Tom Smith before. But here's some close up shots. A wee bit of glare from the glass, which adds a nice ghostly effect. .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) |
Friday, December 6, 2013
Saturday, November 23, 2013
T-shirt #247 - Wonder Woman
The George Pérez eraThough I am not the world's greatest Wonder Woman fan, I am a huge fan of George Pérez, and when he took over and re-launched Wonder Woman in 1987, I was completely devoted. I loved it. I bought every issue. I bought the poster. I hung on the edge of my seat, drooling over every image. every gorgeous page. I already devoted much love to George in T-shirt #144, when I also shared some of the beautiful George Pérez Wonder Woman art.
George Pérez's wonderful Wonder Woman comic is not only my favorite comic from this time period, but one of my favorite super hero comics series of all time. For someone who did not and does not count himself as a huge Wonder Woman fan, I feel that this is quite an achievement.
George Pérez is just brilliant. As I noted, I wrote about George before, and I am honored to count him among my Facebook friends.
George Pérez is one of my favorite comic creators of all time, and I think it's time I give him his own category.
George Pérez's Wonder Woman comic came at a time when DC was re-vitalizing its heroes after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which George Pérez also drew with Marv Wolfman at the writing helm. With comic books like The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One as well as John Byrne's relaunch of Superman (which is one of the good things he has done in my opinion), it was time for Wonder Woman to also see a new vision as one of the top three (supposedly) Franchise heroes for the company.
Much of the following will be paraphrased from Les Daniels' book Wonder Woman the Complete Story as seen in the picture above. I will cite the quotes though the not the paraphrases.
Smartly, George sought the input of women, from his wife Carol, to his new editor Karen Berger (almost solely responsible for DC's success with the Vertigo line), Jenette Khan, and even Ms. Magazine publisher and noted feminist Gloria Steinem. George said he "wanted to make her [Wonder Woman] a nice person. I probably went a bit overboard where the action was sacrificed because of that, but I was trying to make a her a peace character. It's a contradiction in terms---having a crime fighter who's a peacekeeper" (Daniels, pg.169).
One thing that George Pérez did that I admired greatly was to return Wonder Woman to her roots as a character born of GREEK MYTHOLOGY and to eliminate the references to Roman mythology creeping in since the 1940s. "William Moulton Marston had no doubt mixed the two cultures deliberately, using the more familiar Roman names for figures he wanted readers to recognize immediately (Mars) and less familiar Greek names for figures he wanted to disguise (Aphrodite)" (Daniel, pg. 169-170), Pérez rejected the idea that a love goddess would have been the leading patron of the warrior Amazons. He also jettisoned the Marston idea that "women would tame men through erotic enslavement" (Daniels, pg, 170) as a core concept in the book.
Pérez also did away with Wonder Woman's "Kryptonite," her weakness that when she is shackled she loses her powers. Pérez dealt with this issue head on in episode #19. Though he showed Diana bound on the cover, he did so because the point of the story is that she breaks out of the chains.
George Pérez stated about his work on the book: "I was trying do a humanist, rather than a strictly feminist, view of the character. I didn't want her to come out as confrontational" (Daniels, pg. 170).
He succeeded brilliantly. It's great to see all the comic covers for the George Pérez run in the Comic Vine pages. There's a fair amount of content both on George Pérez's wiki page and the Wonder Woman Wiki page on Pérez's run on the book and the stories he created, especially the events leading up to the DC crossover The War of the Gods and later the final story with Donna Troy's character. And somewhere, I own the poster shown below, though I do not think my copy is in very good condition as it was taped to the wall of my bedroom for maybe as many as 20 years.
So, is this enough content?
Saturday, October 19, 2013
T-shirt #212: Orange UnderArmor
Monday, August 12, 2013
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T-shirt #144: The Teen Titans and a roundup of bloggy stuff and other nonesuchHappy Monday!
I say "Happy Monday" on purpose because "happy" is the operative word today. Stay tuned.
As I wrote yesterday, KUDL's summer season is over, and so I am taking a break from KUDL and Ultimate shirts in general for some time.
I felt it was time for some roundup and reflection. For some readers the blog can be overwhelming. I do have a category devoted to what I think is my best work, entitled "Lists-My Ten Best Blog Entries," which contains 11 blog entries. I could not stick to ten.
One of my good friends and a dear reader spoke to me this past weekend wishing me well. I was deeply touched by this expression of good will by a dear friend and a reader. Thanks. You know who you are.
Part of my intention to do a roundup today is to recap as I close in on 150, which feels like a milestone. Also, I am approaching another milestone. If you don't know what milestone I am talking about, read T-shirt #77: Narcissism. My personal milestone takes place (begins and ends) on August 16th, which also happens to be my parents' 55th wedding anniversary, and the day before my wife's birthday (her number of years I am not at liberty to disclose). Starting August 16th, I have scheduled four days of pajama T-shirts. I may not use all four days in a row to show pajamas but that's the current plan in case I need that much time.
THE ROUNDUP
I promised roundup today. And, so I present, first, some bloggy roundup. I expected to do a whole bevy of roundup today but that's not going to be possible. Bloggy roundup, happiness, and one happy thing (George Pérez) is all I will have time to accomplish.
I had a reader praise my blog but admit disinterest in much of it: "too much about comic books," he said.
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Though I explore a lot of subject matter with this blog, it would make sense for comic books to be the number one subject. So far, I have devoted 44 of the 144 posts to comic books: DC Comics (20), Marvel Comics (11), and Other(13). I do not have an "other" category, so I derived that number from subtraction. You can see these categories listed on the right side of the blog page. The Sports category takes second place with 36 entries, mainly because I include all of my Ultimate shirts in sports. I have featured 19 Ultimate shirts and 16 KUDL shirts, and though this may seem like a lot, the category for Just Logos and Symbols carries the third place rank with 29 entries, and I did not include sports logos in this category. The Logos category consists of comic book, SF, and other related logos, such as Star Trek, Mad Magazine, and The Comics Code Authority. Shirts I have been given as gifts takes fourth place with 27 entries, so NO, I am not buying them all myself!! Thus, TV and Movies takes fifth place with 25 entries, as many of these overlap with comic books. Some may feel I am cheating here as the shirts for several entries in this category have nothing to do with TV or movies, such as T-shirt #99: Moby, but since I wrote a little review of Iron Man 3 in that entry, I added it to the TV and Movies category, and so it serves double duty.TOP TEN CATEGORIES FOR THE 365 T-SHIRTS BLOG AS OF TODAY
For those who like lists, here's the top ten for the blog so far.
- Comics Books = 44 entries
- Sports = 36 entries
- Just Logos and Symbols = 30 entries
- GIFTS = 27 entries
- TV and Movies = 25 entries
- Music = 22 entries
- DC Comics = 20 entries
- Science Fiction = 20 entries
- Ultimate = 19 entries
- KUDL = 16 entries
ABOUT HAPPINESS
I have been thinking a lot lately about what makes me happy. This is surely a theme of this blog. Why would I wear a shirt displaying something that makes me unhappy? Obviously, if I am going to wear a shirt, which sits close to my heart, the thing depicted will also be close to my heart. This entire blog is one long journal about the things that make me happy outside of the obvious things, such as family and friends. I could probably complete a blog about 365 people or memories and not run out of material, much like the T-shirts.
But because of the aforementioned milestone, I have been thinking about things that make me happy, why they make me happy, and managing what my therapist and I call "self-care," which means making sure I get enough of those things that make me happy. I did discuss this subject some in T-shirt #103: Aloha, dedicated to the concept of Aloha from my wife's native land of Hawaii, which someday I hope to visit. In that blog entry, I began a subject that I plan to expand and explore often in the second 100 entries, of which I am halfway complete: THE RULES OF CHRIS. Though I did not name the "Rules of Chris" in the post, I added T-shirt #64 to the category because of the subjects I explore therein. Subjects of T-shirt #64 will connect very directly to several future blog entries.I cannot make a list of happy things because the list is this blog. In the end, I hope to have over 365 happy things, and maybe room for more. In fact, some of the happy things, such as the very first entry: T-shirt #1: Son of Satan, deserve further exploration. I did not know what I was getting myself into when I started back on March 22nd. I could surely explore the very interesting Damion Hellstrom in more depth, but I will save that investigation and reflection for another time.
For now, today's happy thing: George Pérez and the Teen Titans.
ONE HAPPY THING: George Pérez
If I had to select one favorite comic book artist, I do not even have to think about it. I would select George Pérez.
I have struggled with this issue of listing my favorite comic book artists. I started my thinking on this subject in T-shirt #27: Iron Fist, when faced with writing about Gil Kane. At that time, I made a very preliminary list, which, of course, contained George Pérez. I made the list just off the top of my head, which five artists sprung to mind first. By the time I reached T-shirt #43: Deadman, I realized that I had left Neal Adams off the list, and so I had to correct my oversight, and so I decided to organize the artists by era, which saves George Pérez for the 1970s and 1980s, even though he is still working today. In fact, the height of his career is arguably the 1980s, and he is probably best listed then. I decided to divide by era only because I have too many favorite comic book artists to keep to a simple top five or even a top ten. I have not even written about all of my favorites yet. More are still to come. But if I were to choose one artist as my all time favorite, I would unhesitatingly choose George Pérez.
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I have the pleasure of being Facebook friends with George Pérez. In the 1990s, when my friend Neil Southwell and I were trying to sell a Teen Titans comic book idea to DC comics, we had the privilege of going to George's house (then in Queens) so he could critique Neil's art, which was an amazing learning experience. I am proud to say that we were able to meet with the editor of the Teen Titans books of the time, but DC declined to hire us to create a new Titans book. I am amused by the current All New X-Men book at Marvel Comics because this was essentially our idea with the Teen Titans. We wanted to bring back the original Titans (Robin, Speedy, Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Wonder Girl), though I planned to leave in doubt HOW they came back to the, then, mid-1990s DC landscape. Were they clones? Was it time travel? Were they brainwashed? Maybe they were aliens? What if they were brainwashed, alien, clones from the past? I had many plans for fun revelations and mysteries. Too bad we did not get our shot. If I had scans of the art, I would share it. The first page splash showed the original Wonder Girl's fist slamming into the then Robin's (Tim Drake) face in extreme close up, blood and teeth spewing forth. It was a great idea for an image and Neil drew it beautifully, though as George showed us her pointed wrist bracelet would not have allowed her to bend her wrist without goring herself.
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Back to George and the Titans.
This shirt commemorates a more recent edition of the Teen Titans and a spanking new logo. But any time, I think of the Teen Titans, I think of George Pérez (check out the Wiki).
In fact, I think about George Pérez every day because his lithograph for the Avengers 41st anniversary hangs directly above my computer desk in the place of ultimate honor (see photos).
I spotted George Pérez from his very first published art work in the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu magazine in 1973. Soon he was illustrating many of my favorite comics, to which I subscribed to ensure I would have all of George's great work, such as Avengers and Fantastic Four.
In 1980, George hopped to DC with Marv Wolfman to do the New Teen Titans book. Though I bought the first issue, I was off to college and my comic buying was spotty for a few years as I distracted by girls, girls, music, more girls, okay and maybe a little with academics (especially my classes with beautiful women). I loved the New Teen Titans book, but I missed a lot of issues. It was early 1984 before I started making regular treks to the local comic shop (a used bookstore that is now out of business; it would be another year before I would find Fanfare) and started buying the Teen Titans issues on a regular basis (and any back issues I could get my hands on). My love of comics renewed, I followed George's work avidly as he created the world-shattering and pivotal comic maxis-series Crisis on Infinite Earths with Marv Wolfman and then later a complete re-definition and a wonderful re-envisioning of Wonder Woman.
I have been an avid follower of George Pérez's work for most of my life (and his). I think his art is the most gorgeous in the history of comic books. I also love that he is an oft-imitated artist, such as by Phil Jimenez, who is a great artist in his own right but surely lists George as his number one influence. George's career is well chronicled in the Wiki devoted to him. He is still at work today, involved in DC's New 52 launch.
In 2010, DC finally agreed to publish the graphic novel we Titans fans had been waiting for since the 1980s. I actually owned a photocopy of the art that was distributed to our APA TitanTalk way back in the late 1980s. I wrote about my involvement with the APA in T-shirt #62: Nightwing. The graphic novel Games is a beautiful masterwork and a testament to the excitement of those 1980s Titans stories. Back in the late 1980s, George had asked my friend Neil to do some drawings that would appear on cards in the finished product. The cards are included on the pages of the finished art work, but I am not sure if these are Neil's drawings. He is not credited, in any case. Nevertheless, George has always been a huge supporter and a regular communicator with the fan community, much more so than many of his standoffish colleagues. It's one of the things I appreciate about the man. Not only is he a great artist, but he is a wonderful and gentle human being. I feel honored to say I know him, even a little.
Games is a wonderful graphic novel, and I highly recommend it. Maybe in a future post, I will review it and offer up more of a love letter to those 1980s Teen Titans issues and why I am such a huge fan. (And, no, it's not just because I have a huge crush on George's Donna Troy, Wonder Girl, and consider her my favorite woman character in all of comics... but that's surely part of it.)Meanwhile, I will close with some more George Pérez art, including an image from the other, long-awaited master work: the JLA-Avengers book, which finally saw print in 2003.
Also, no entry about George Pérez can exist without mentioning his ingenious Hulk: Future Imperfect (written by Peter David) and George's run on AVENGERS with Kurt Busiek.
Enjoy this image gallery tribute to the great George Pérez. Surely, it is incomplete, and I will be forced to cycle back to this great artist again before my 365 days are at an end.
A FEW FUN LINKS
MOST ANTICIPATED COMICS OF 2010: GAMES
GEORGE PEREZ ON TEEN TITANS
TOP TEN MOST INFLUENTIAL COMIC ARTISTS: GEORGE PEREZ
CACHED COPY OF A REVIEW OF GAMES
GEORGE PEREZ IMAGE GALLERY
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| page from the "Who is Donna Troy?" comic (Titans #38). |
All art (I hope) is posted here with permission of George Pérez, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics.
With all love and respect to and for George Pérez.
- chris tower - 1308.12 - 16:48
ART GALLERY
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2205.11 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2504 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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