Friday, March 15, 2024

Who did this jigsaw?



I invested way too much time recently into doing this giant 1500-piece jigsaw last week. It was actually quite easy, as far as 1500-piece jigsaws go, because those costumes in those glorious primary colours are seared into my fuckin' soul. I just wish I knew who did the art.

There's no credit anywhere on the box, and I can't find anything about it online, (but that might just be because Google is just really fucking useless these days), and that credit has been bugging the shit out of me, even as I spent hours solving the puzzle, piece by piece.

It's obviously a tonne of José Luis García-López in there, he's the definitive DC superhero artist of that era, literally setting the style for the entire company. But then I swear there is some deadset Dave Gibbons, and other parts that are unmistakably George Pérez (especially in the hair). But there are also a couple of faces with a definite Kevin Maguire vibe.  

Is it just one artist, aping all the greats? Is it a vast confluence of them all, the ultimate ideal of DC superhero art of the late bronze age?. 

It's going to bug me a lot longer than it took to do the puzzle. Some parts of it, like the Parademon, or Starfire's hair - which is 100 percent Pérez - were easy to figure out. An artist's line can be the real puzzle. 

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