Max Riffner

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He Must Soar Alone!

Yeah, I did another poster tonight – this time of The Silver Surfer, one of my favorite super-heroes of all time. I’ve actually owed the recipient the artwork for about 16 years…

My uncle, being the cool uncle that he was, decided to get me the Marvel Masterworks Silver Surfer Vol. 1 when I was a kid. He grew up in the 60s, and he obsessed over the Fantastic Four. So when he was Christmas shopping for me back then, he saw the book and got it.

I liked it. I didn’t love it. See this was the early 90s, the time of the Image artists. If it wasn’t Jim Lee or Todd McFarlane, I wasn’t that interested in it. However, I read it, and the further in I got, the more I liked it. By the time I finished reading the book, I was in love with not only the Silver Surfer, but I had also dropped my bias towards older comics (which began a long love affair with the quarter bin and the Marvel Horror books which I’ve written about here).

I told my uncle a few weeks later in January how much I loved the book (and as a young adolescent, it was indeed the cornerstone of my collection as it was hardbound and had a dust jacket). He told me that he would love for me to draw him a Silver Surfer for him sometime…

And I have. Several times over the years. But it never felt right. Tonight, it felt really right. His son is the one I did Batman for, so this seems somewhat fitting.

Click for larger image.

The image is an homage to the John Buscema cover for The Silver Surfer #1, and then run through the recently linked color halftone tutorial from Les McClaine.

I may have to start doing the super-hero pinups every month. I’ve been getting requests (my favorite being from Christian, who demands another Silver Surfer with Galactus and a Composite Superman).

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