Customer Reviews

Superheroes: The Heroic Visions of Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell- Featuring X-Men, Spiderman, Spiderwoman, Silver Surfer, The Hulk

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Superheroes (Titled "Titans" in it's hardcover printing) mainly covers the art Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell produced for the Marvel Masterworks trasing card series in the mid-80's, with a few covers and misc. art thrown in for good measure. While it's nice to see the art at a larger size, the limited variety of poses gets old after a while. Boris and Julie use each other as models, so most of the faces look alike; The ones that don't look like them are based on bodybuilders, so the female characters have a very hard look to them, facially speaking. The colors are gorgeous, though. The real problem with the book is the text, by Nigel Suckling, who manages to live up to the first syllable of his last name. The book is riddled with spelling errors (Ogum, instead of Ogun), characters have the wrong names attatched to their paintings (Mariko and Yukio's names are transposed, as well as Yukio being called by the wrong name). The text passages show that Suckling didn't bother to get more than a passing familiarity with the comic characters; He describes Spider-Man as being bumbling...? His passages about Boris & Julie's views on time-travel & Geography are hilariously bad.
Superheroes is a nice book for fans of Boris & Julie; I would have liked more information on their techniques, and their opinions of the pieces, though. Anything to save me from Suckling's turgid prose....

The artwork, featured on a very popular series of Marvel trading cards, is powerful and brings a certain amount of realism to our favourite comic book heroes. The problem is, some heroes benefit from a more realistic look, while stylised characters such as the Hulk, tend to look a bit silly in such glorified detail. I tended to prefer Julie's style, more in proportion and more recognisable. The text describes Boris and Julie's relationship and their approach to their art, no doubt of interest to the budding artist but a bit dull for the average reader. However, all in all a powerful and exciting set of super hero artworks.

With paintings of such high quality it's really a shame to see so many small and half-page images. This could easily have been a 5 star art book.
Anyway, for any comic book fan it's pretty much indispensable.


SPECIFICS:
Page Count: 160
Number of images: 172
Small images: 39
Half page images: 38
Full page images: 88
2-page spreads: 7
BW images: 0

TEXT:
1 page - General introduction
7 pages - Chapter introductions
Comments on the paintings and some characters

ART:
42 images: 5 stars
81 images: 4 stars
45 images: 3 stars
4 images: 2 stars
0 images: 1 star

Overall: 4 stars

90% of Julie's work is stunning. 60% of Boris's work is stunning. By far, Julie is the better artist. Turn to any page and if there is a beautiful picture on it, chances are Julie did it. If the picture looks odd like the person's face or body being deformed, chances are Boris did it. They both have their share of throw away paintings. Some of them are down right terrible. But when they get it right it really is a feast for the eyes. One downfall for this book is the information on the comic characters. Why does it say Storm has gray skin? Like time I checked she was African American and they don't have gray skin. There are a ton of mistakes on the characters but it doesn't really matter since the paintings are why you're buying the book.