This was a poster I saw in a comics shop in Memphis in the early 80's: a Jim Aparo Flash. The dealer didn't know anything about it, but he had it up on the wall and sold it to me. I still haven't tracked down its complete explanation, but I know it was one of a series of four promotional posters of DC characters. One of those might have been an Aparo Aquaman.As far as I can determine, the art was original for this production, rather than cribbed from a previously-published source. I've got to admit, Aparo wasn't at his best doing The Flash: the motion lines are a bit silly-looking, and the pose isn't nearly dynamic enough. But you know, posters like this played by different rules than, say, cover art. The important thing was giving a good look at the character and his costume, and conveying the premise of his powers. And the costume alone is so eye-catching that this makes for a pretty snappy-looking piece of art, especially at large size.
[In the comments, Scott detects that this is in fact recycled art, from Brave & Bold #151. How did I miss that all these years?]
MWG
ReplyDeleteI saw this and had a Brave and Bold #151 flashback immediately. That nutty disco story.
By George, Scott, you're right! This *is* adapted from that B&B cover! It seems to be altered a bit and extended--perhaps it was inked via lightbox to produce this isolated Flash image? Thanks for catching that!
ReplyDeleteI can give you a bit of background on this poster as it's one of the reasons I became a Jim Aparo fan. This poster was part of a poster book I got as a kid in a store. Don't remember the name of the store but it was like a Big Lots type of place. It was a VERY oversized book with posters of DC characters.
ReplyDeleteI got it as a child in the late 70's or early 80's. I believe it had about 8 posters including a Jose Luis Garcia Lopez of Batman, Robin and Batgirl and a Neal Adams Superman. Thinking back on it, it was the same store I got a lot of the Whitman reprint isues.
It was significant for me in that I loved the Flash poster so much that I later was reading Brave & Bold and thought the artist looked similar. I looked at the signature on the poster and the artist in the book and realized it was the same guy.
Jim Aparo was the first artist I could recognize by sight and remained my favorite artist for the ensuing 30 odd years!