Classic X-Men 83 Original Art
Once upon a time I worked in the production department at Marvel Comics. All through the 1990s and halfway through the 2000s I was one of the behind the scenes people who helped do some work to make sure that the comics were printed properly. There is not much glory or money to be found in such a job. It’s the kind of job where you’re dealing with other people’s creative output all day but not leaving a trace of your own. You can find my name in a hand full of credits over that period but in general it’s hard to find the name of anyone who does that job. It’s a job that doesn’t leave much of a mark behind. So imagine my surprise when, as I was scrolling through my Tumblr feed, I came upon a mark I left behind long ago.
Among the things in my Tumblr feed I’ve subscribed to a lot of different comic book blogs. Since Tumblr is all about visuals people post pictures of comic book stuff including original artwork. One recent morning the art to the cover of X-Men Classic #83 by Joe Madureira and Dan Panoisan came up in my feed just like any other piece. The cover has a May 1993 cover date on it which means it probably was first on sale in about February 1993. That’s twenty two years ago. On the bottom of the cover you’ll see a note that says “1 at 90% Jared”. That Jared is me and I wrote that note way back in early 1993 (or even late 1992).
My Note on the Classic X-Men 83 Original Art
First off that note isn’t written on the actual paper the art is drawn on. Since we didn’t want to mar the original art with our production notes we would put a piece of removable white tape on the border of the art, write a note, and then remove the tape after the job was done. That’s another reason why few traces of my production work exist. So why is this piece of tape still on there? I have no idea. I guess I didn’t pull it off before I gave the art back to the editor. Or the editor took the page back before I could pull it off. Who knows?
I can tell you why I wrote the note though. The cover was for X-Men Classic #83 and the editor (I don’t remember who and can’t find his or her credit) thought the art obscured too much of the logo. This was before the days when we did things on computers so it was my job as the production guy to make all the pieces of the cover, art, logo, trade dress, and copy fit together correctly to make a finished piece to be sent to the printer. So I wrote that note on the bottom and brought the cover over to Robbie in the stat room for him to make a photostat of it at 90% of the size of the original size.
A photostat is like a cross between a photocopy and a photograph. It’s only in black and white like a photocopy but it’s made with a giant camera on light sensitive paper. Robbie ran the big photostat machine at Marvel so I gave him the original and he gave me back the original and the smaller copy. Photostat paper is pretty tough stuff so working with it is easy. It’s not going to wrinkle, rip, or bleed like a photocopy on normal paper would.
I’m not positive but I’m pretty sure this next part happened. Marvel had an art corrections department called “Romita’s Raiders”. They were basically artists in training, maybe two or three of them at a time, that John Romita Sr. oversaw. Any art corrections that needed to be made went to these guys and they penciled, inked, and generally corrected any page that needed it. Being an artist myself if it was an extremely simple touch up I would do it on my own but anything beyond that I would pass over to one of the Raiders. This touch up looks simple but not extremely simple so I’m guessing I passed it along.
In looking at the reduced size printed piece compared to the original I can see that Caliban’s (the guy in the tux) sleeve had to be completed and Storm’s (the woman in the Mohawk) blasts that are coming out of her hand had to be extended. That’s a simple fix but not an extremely simple one. Though I used an ink brush and pen all the time at home I didn’t use them at my work desk. And one of those tools was going to be needed so I must have given the piece to the Raiders to fix.
Classic X-Men 83 Printed Version
After I got the fixed stat of the art back it was my job to get a stat of the logo and corner box and paste them down on the fixed art for printing. That meant I had to take an X-Acto knife and cut away all the parts of the logo that the characters heads, hands, and blasts are in front of. I had to cut away a good ten to twenty percent of the logo. You could still read it and so that was acceptable. If you could imagine how much of the logo I would have to cut away with the original larger art you can see why the decision was made to reduce the size of the figures. I’m guessing it would obliterate fifty percent of the logo. That is not acceptable.
One last thing I wonder about this cover is where the stat art that got sent to the printer is? That the original art showed up on Tumblr means that it was returned to either Joe Madureira or Dan Panoisan like normal. One of them or a person they sold it to scanned it and posted it and so it ended up on the internet but what about the production stat that the cover was actually printed from? I wonder where that went? The printer sent all the original art back to Marvel and from there it went to whoever was working in Marvel’s art returns department at the time and he returned it to the artists who made the art. But since this “Original art” was a stat, a copy, who got it? Was it given to the Raider who made the corrections? I have no idea. All I know is that it wasn’t given to me nor would I have really expected it to be. But now it makes me wonder.
So there you go. A piece of my production art past came floating back to me on the pixels of the digital age. I have no records or even any idea of what individual comics I worked on in my production days. There were a lot of them. But here is one I can say for sure I had a hand in.
Discussion ¬