Wednesday, April 5, 2023

The eyes of Gil Kane's Superman



Although Gil Kane has an immortal reputation as one of the great superhero artists - his Atom and Green Lantern comics are literally the definitive takes on the characters -  there's something about his Superman that always creeped me the fuck out..

He only did a short run on Action Comics in the 1980s, but it stuck in my head when I read it as a kid. I remember how much it didn't look like a Curt Swan comic and just wrong in some weird way. Superman wasn't bulky, he was lithe and sleek as he soared through the sky. He still retained the power of the super punch and there was true grace in his flying. But everyone also had piercing eyes and looked like they were made out of play-doh.

Kane came back in the 90s for a brief run, not long after the whole death of Superman thing, and it's not nearly as creepy as the earlier comics, with a long haired Superman who was very much on brand with the Dan Jurgens Kal-El, the standard of the time.

But that earlier stuff still looks weird and strange to me, in all the best possible way. Like all the comic art that freaked me out as a kid, I can't get enough of it as an adult, and Kane's short Superman run has become something I can dig out of the back issue bins, and freak out over, all over again.

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