In its heyday, Wizard magazine was, for better or worse, the premiere comics publication. And somewhere in there, they began producing comics called ½ issues, exclusives you could only get through them, for a variety of properties, as well as 0 issues that were little more than promo pieces (We have one of those coming up) and things like this. Behind that cover by the late, lamented Tim Sale, Wizard has gotten a whole bunch of artists to draw classic Spider-Man moments. This came out in 1998, so it’s pretty much right on time. It’s a pretty wide array of artists, from many not typically associated with Marvel comics to beloved Spider-Man artists to 2 future beloved Spider-Man artists. I’m not gonna run all 16 of them, but here’s the best/most interesting ones according to me. I was kind of surprised to find Leonard Kirk in here, I don’t think I knew he was in comics this early:
Clean. Nice. Reasonable opinions!
This is interesting to me because it looks older than this magazine to me. I assume it’s not, but his style looks more like it did a few years prior.
Doug Manke is kind of known for his giant bulky dudes, and for obvious reasons, but look at that perfect Spider-Man!
In these days, Pacheco pushed his figures so hard. Every limb, every finger was made as dramatic as possible.
No surprises here. Funny how he became the artist most associated with Thanos in the 80s & 90s, and also did a bunch of Spider-Man. That book told his future.
This is near the beginning of Bachalo’s long journey to make his art surprisingly abstract for mainstream comics. That he’s stayed a favorite artist as he’s gotten weirder and weirder is pretty remarkable. And he’ll later have a pretty long association with Spider-Man, coming back to the character over and over in the next 20 years.
Not as long as Bags’, tho. I hope he likes drawing Spider-Man, because no matter what he does, he always ends up back on Spider-Man books.
I don’t actually like this one, or literally anything Ramos has ever done, but he will sadly become a fan favorite Spider-Man artist in the coming decades, so it’s worth a mention. Spider-Man acquires a lot of artists that people allegedly love and I do not in the 21st Century. It’s been a rough time for me as a fan… for a lot of reasons. Well, that’s it for this. Not too deep, but fun to look at.