Worst Cover Ever: Through the (Fun House) Looking Glass

When you view a stubby, distorted human body in a fun house mirror, it's entertaining. 

Seeing stubby, distorted bodies on a comic book cover? 

Not so entertaining. 

To be sure, distorted human proportions are a cornerstone of superhero comics, but it's usually done on the side of stretching those proportions larger than their average size...not compacting them! The culprit behind this "unheroic distortion" is, of course, poor drawing...which you'd think would be kept far away from a comic book's cover, right? After all, the cover is the most important part of a comic book since it attracts the eye, and sets the stage for the story inside....so you'd want to have your top people drawing them, right? 

Well, as my continuing Worst Cover Ever feature has proven, the top people weren't always available...so the important cover chores would fall to mediocre artists farther down the creative totem pole. Long-time Marvel staffer Al Milgrom was one of these low-wattage wonders who was inexplicably assigned a ton of early 80's Marvel covers...many of which approached "fun house mirror" levels of distorted drawing. 

One of Milgrom's anti-masterpieces was the cover of Marvel Team-Up #105 (1981), featuring three stubby characters that vaguely resembled Power Man, Iron Fist, and the Hulk.

 

Some questions come to mind:

The face of rage....

or a lower lip stuffed with chewing tobacco?

Is the Hulk's arm bursting out of Luke Cage's sleeve, or is Hulk's arm somehow phasing through the solid matter of Luke's arm since they both appear to be occupying the same space? Has the squeeze of the Hulk's hand compacted Luke's torso to only half its normally heroic size?

Iron Fist or the stubby leader of Munchkinland's Lollipop Guild? 

A forearm...or a turkey drumstick? Is the girl being held within Hulk's hand or in the crook of his arm?

Who are the only normally proportioned people on the cover?  Why, the hillbillies in the background, of course!

Was this blurb really necessary? Without it, the three main figures could have been drawn much larger and in proportion...and not awkwardly crammed into the space below such a non-essential (and nonsensical) message.

Need more proof that Al probably wasn't cut out for cover work? Then click here for more Milgrom Magic.

Comments

[Phillyradiogeek]

That girl Hulk is holding looks like Kamandi the Last Boy!

[Mark Engblom]

...or a blond version of Medusa of the Inhumans!

[Wes C]

Well to start with a positive: Iron Fist doesn't look that bad to me.

That said, I've never understood how Milgrom continued to get so much work.

I feel sympathy for him. Stubby and awkward posing is a problem I suffer from sometimes when drawing people too. But, at the same time, I've never been commissioned to do any comic book work. You'd think Al would have improved over time. Looking at the West Coast Avengers covers you linked to would indicate otherwise.

I totally agree with Suedenim's comments about Al from the linked post.
He must have been one hell of a pinch hitter to get the amount of work he did.

BTW: That's one thing I like about your cartooning, your figure posing has a naturalistic feel to them. I forwarded the recent Shazam one you did to a friend who's a big Capt. Marvel fan - the panel with Shazam impatiently clicking his pen was great!

Sorry for the digression

[Brian]

Poor Al Milgrom, although in his defense, he's nowhere near the first artist to draw a lousy Hulk. Even Steve Ditko's Hulk on some of those early appearances is pretty atrocious (not everyone can be Marie Severin, I guess).

Still, as you and suedenim noted on the linked posts, whatever his defects as a penciler, Milgrom is a strong inker.

[Joseph]

The 'fun house mirror' is a perfect description. The cover of Uncanny X-men #171 always bothered me in the same way - Colossus looks like he's twice as wide and half as tall as he should be.

Excellent site - keep up the great work!

[tony vincent]

thank you, THANK YOU! It's hard to speak negative about a certain artist, but then that also makes it difficult to just tell the truth. Ugg I hated his covers, his stories, I finally just stopped buying Marvel because it looked like the company was becoming hackwork and didn't care. My GOD, just look at the covers from a few years earlier--- what was Shooter smoking in the '80s!

[The Amazing Braino]

Hi, I found this site Google-imaging a picture of Power Man. As a life-long Hulk fan, I always cringed at the latest Al Milgrom cover! Your take on those individual images above - hilarious! You might enjoy my riff on the old Spider-man cartoons: http://www.atomicmonsters.com/spider-man67.htm