Worst. Cover. Ever. (Part 15)

After all that "peace and good will towards man" business from the Christmas season, I think it's time to balance things out a bit with a little snarky negativity in the form of another Worst Cover Ever!

Our fifteenth inductee into the Comic Cover Hall of Shame is from the original Marvel Comics THOR series.  As a collector of Thor comics, I often come across this eyesore while searching through back issue bins...so I thought I'd finally purge all the negativity I've built up toward Thor #482 (1995), which I still can't quite bring myself to buy for my own collection.

Maybe the best way to tackle this mess by artist Lou Harrison is to break it down by character.  Starting on the lower left hand side of the cover is supposedly Loki, Thor's evil half-brother.  Instead of the sly, malevolent Loki, the overly manic expression on Harrison's Loki looks exactly like a photo reference model who's caught somewhere in between "angry look" and trying not to crack up.  To me, this shows a little too much reliance on the obvious photo reference the artist used for the Loki face.  "Loki's" horned headpiece isn't very convincingly rendered, either.

The magenta guy in the middle is supposed to be the mysterious High Evolutionary.  Despite some rather nice metallic painting effects on the character's face mask, the contrast level is too low...so the areas of the face kind of blend together and don't really have much visual impact. It's simply "there".

Probably the best-painted character on the cover, Count Tagar (a creation of the High Evolutionary) is also a none-too-subtle photo reference shot. What is it with these photo models?  They're either Zen-placid (High Evolutionary and Thor) or completely insane with rage (Loki, Count Tagar), with none of the more subtle emotional middle ground painted imagery is ideally suited to capture. Further cluttering the already shoe-horned layout, Tagar's warm color scheme visually blends together with Thor's warm skin tones, which doesn't allow the foreground figure of Thor to properly "pop" off the page....which brings us to....

Thor.  Ugh.  As I touched on in the Count Tagar critique, Thor's facial expression here is dead-eyed and emotionally inert....almost as if he's in a deep trance.  Add to that the silly skull-cap "helmet" and the hair that looks like the frizzy straw of a cartoon broom, and you've got a truly giggle-worthy thunder god on your hands.

One of my pet peeves with superhero comic artists is when costumes are rendered as if they're spray painted onto skin rather than made of fabric. No, I don't think every fold or crease needs to be shown, but come on....some of this stuff just gets lazy and non-sensical...such as Thor's skimpy mid-torso "costume" here, looking more like a tattoo than an actual piece of fabric or armor.

Are those thighs or a cluster of purple grapes?  Here's a good example of how no amount of painting razzle dazzle can cover up poor drawing.  The anatomy here (and elsewhere) on Thor is, frankly, very poorly drawn...which only becomes magnified during the painting process.  Poorly drawn muscle groups become bloated water drops.

Similarly, are those Thor's feet or a pair of tennis balls stuck into some hanging panty hose?

These isolated areas of poor drawing look all the worse when combined into the full body shot of Thor.  That cartoonishly tiny head stuck atop an inverted pyramid of lumpy muscle, that tree-trunk of a left arm haphazardly stuck onto it, along with the bloated "sack of potato" thighs stuck to those limp, dangling yellow boots...all make Thor look more like a giant balloon character from the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade instead of the majestic thunder god he's supposed to be.

If you blink, you might miss that this issue marked the 400th appearance of Thor in the title that began as Journey Into Mystery (Thor first appeared in issue #83, then later took over the numbering as The Mighty Thor).  Nothing like a shrimpy, hard-to-read blurb partially obscured by artwork to mark your 400th appearance, is there?

As fatally flawed as this cover is, this blurb does a good job of summing up its enduring incompetence.

Comments

[cinephile]

OMG...I always enjoy this feature, but that might be the single worst cover you've run for it yet. Did anyone at Marvel notice that Thor was dressed like He-Man? And as you say, it's a sad way to ring in an "anniversary" issue. Maybe they should've changed the title to The Mighty Snore.

[Mark Engblom]

Or, in my case, "The Mighty Ignore" when it comes to adding it to my Thor collection.

[suedenim]

I keep forgetting just how plain *ugly* Marvel Comics in the mid-'90s could get. Not just the artwork per se, but cover copy, logos, etc.

Curious, I looked up Lou Harrison on comics.org to see what else he'd done. Seems like Marvel used him very briefly as a (very) poor man's Alex Ross.

This "Fury" cover:
http://comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=262526&zoom=4

It's not quite as bad as the Thor cover, but it ain't good. The bleary-eyed Nick Fury looks more like David Hasselhoff fumbling around with a room-service cheeseburger than ever before or since....

[Mark Engblom]

"I keep forgetting just how plain *ugly* Marvel Comics in the mid-'90s could get. Not just the artwork per se, but cover copy, logos, etc."

You're right...that was definitely a big low point for Marvel. I recall them flooding the market with an insane number of titles (everyone and their uncle had their own series), imitating the wretched artwork of the Image boys, flirting with bankruptcy, etc.

However, as bad as that artwork was, I can't say I like the visuals of Thor in his current title, either.

[Rich]

I haven't read a lot of Thor, but that's the absolute worse I've ever seen him look. Did his costume inside the book look like that too? I've never seen him in clothes like that.

[RW]

LMFAO Dude this website kicks so much ass. Don't stop doing this whatever you do.

[Mark Engblom]

Glad you're enjoying Comic Coverage, RW! Reactions like yours make it all worth it.

[SueReeno]

The Thor and small head are renderings of the artist Lou Harrison

[Eric78]

Holy crap...thats the funniest s#*t I have ever read. Sack of Potato legs just topped it off! I can't stop laughing! But I must say that in reference to what the other person said about "wretched image boys", don't knock on Lee and Silvestri. Their art is phenominal. Now, Liefeld, McFarlane? Yeah....wretched.