What makes the best comic book covers? It’s a great topic for debate. For us as individuals there is no wrong answer, of course. It’s purely subjective. But with a little thought it is frequently possible to explain what it is about a particular image that grabs you. The best ones are the ones that make you stop and check out something you weren’t previously going to purchase – and in some cases, you even end up picking up a title you’ve never even heard of before.
On one hand, this is a silly cover. Maybe one of the silliest you could ever find. Now, while all art is subjective, what makes this silly isn’t the actions of the humans. It is the grin on the face of the T-Rex. He is smiling with the same joy of anticipation that the Joker does right before he goes off on some wacko tangent. Crazed grin or not, that T-Rex definitely has plans for dinner!
As silly as the look on that giant reptile’s face may be to some, the cover definitely has one thing that many covers lack, absolute, undeniable charm. There is something wonderfully human and warm about the entire scene. Who hasn’t worked with a goofball who loves to stand on his head for a joke? As hard as we try, even the toughest of us let our guard down for a second.
Of course, the minute you let your guard down is exactly when the dinosaur shows up.
Turok #100 (November 1975) was painted by George Wilson. Even if you don’t recognize the name, you have seen his work. Over the course of his career he was responsible for hundreds upon hundreds of pulp, comic, magazine, hardcover, and paperback covers.
Wilson was a workhorse for Western Publishing, the company that published Dell and Gold Key Comics. His painted cover art was seen on books such as Doctor Solar Man of the Atom, The Phantom, Time Tunnel, Tarzan, King Kong, The Space Family Robinson, Dark Shadows, and Star Trek.
It didn’t matter if Wilson was adapting a TV show, a movie, or an established comic book character. Working from a few sentences supplied to him by the writer of the issue, Wilson repeatedly turned out painted covers that drew readers in. Which is all that Western Publishing wanted.
His career had begun in commercial illustration and over the years he created romance book covers, game covers, pages for Hardy Boys books and just about anything that Western or an ad agency asked him to create. One minute he was called upon to draw an exciting jungle adventure featuring The Phantom and the next day he was working on a western title. The man could shift between genres without missing a beat.
His work was considerably more reality-based than an average comic book cover is generally known for. There are no curved elbows or disjointed arms flailing wildly in opposite directions as someone runs. Wilson’s sense of anatomy is as near perfect as Gil Kane’s was. On Turok #100 you can feel the blood rushing to the head of the man who is making the other two laugh and smile.
It wasn’t just his skill with a pencil or his ability to work in watercolor and acrylic so skillfully that made Wilson so great. Many of his covers have an added sense of depth and dimension separates them from a regular comic book cover.
On the left side of the cover he placed a large, brown tree trunk rising out from behind a gray rock. It looks innocuous and certainly doesn’t play a part in the action. It may have even been a last minute decision to include it. But without that long tree trunk, the balance and focus of the cover shifts dramatically. The way that Wilson placed it along the top, left side actually ties the cover up as a whole. Without it, the cover becomes partitioned, leaving the title and the light yellow of the sky to dominate the image.
Its presence also grounds the dinosaur inside the action. For without the trunk, he would simply be snarling over a bunch of bushes. The trunk also adds depth to the picture. By having it falling behind the rock it pushes the rock forward in the reader’s eye. Which only pushes the bushes and especially the figures in front of the rock, even more forward in the reader’s eye. It all adds to a sense of incredible depth in the picture.
In fact, so much is going on behind the clown standing on his head that we have to make a conscious decision to adjust our eyes in order to focus on him. Once we do, we find a wonderfully expressive face concentrating on his stunt. It makes you wonder how many readers turned the cover upside down in order to see exactly what he looked like.
It isn’t too hard to imagine that Wilson may have been having a bit of fun with this one. Turok was an action packed title that swam in the deep well of the Lost World-Valley-Island tradition of comic, pulp, and adventure storytelling. In fact, down the line the character, in a more modified and modern form, went on to become a successful video game and even had a modern animated film.
However, on this George Wilson painted cover, Turok, his brother, and The Laughing Caveman are just three guys messing around. That is, of course, until a dinosaur decides to attack.
As a point of introduction to this great artist, we dropped in a few extra covers that were painted by Wilson. His name seldom sets the hearts of collectors on fire, but he was one great painter with a terrific sense of action.
And, that smirk, smile, or grin found on the dinosaur who graces Turok #100 aside, Wilson could really draw one mean dinosaur!
-Mark Squirek