I was just a few years too young to get comics regularly when Manhunter was the back-up feature in Detective Comics Nos. 437–443. Written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Walt Simonson, it combined pulp high-adventure themes with espionage and thriller elements. With Goodwin’s tight, evocative prose and Simonson’s groundbreaking storytelling techniques, Manhunter always punched way above its weight as an eight-page back-up in the Batman comic that consistently sold the least copies.
So much so that when I began collecting seriously at the end of the 70s, Manhunter was still on people’s tongues. DC reprinted the story in a baxter volume during this period, and again in a deluxe edition a few years later with a story Goodwin had plotted but never dialogued before his passing. Suitably, Simonson illustrated it and the story carried no dialogue or captions.
I came across this post’s illustration on Twitter, posted by Simonson. Said Simonson:
“Manhunter’s Last Stand. With Batman and Dan Kingdom. Pen and ink. 14×17. 2009.
“This was my idea of what I might have done for a cover in the old days for the last issue of Detective Comics in which Manhunter appeared.”
Sounded like a great idea to me. Colour and packaging by myself.
The published cover by Jim Aparo.
Walt Simonson’s art from 2009.
Art extended at the top to fit the cover format.
Colour.
100-page version with re-created trade dress added.
Regular-sized comic version with re-created trade dress added.
YOUR BOTTOM OF THE PAGE BONUS
Wonder Comic Monthly No. 125 published by Planet Comics in Australia.
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Saw your recent Ghostly Tales work on the Aparo facebook group and that led me to this page. Wow! At the risk of repeating myself: another brilliant job (here’s hoping the folks at DC and Marvel have taken note, for when they need such work peformed)!
A couple of questions:
1) Now that you’ve featured the original cover of Detective 443 on this page, any chance you’ll clean it up and restore it, as well? I’d love to see it in a more enlarged version (the way that the Brave & Bold 100-page covers done by Aparo were enlarged when you cleaned them up — 112 and 116). I’ve always wished DC would enlarge the brilliant Aparo-illustrated Detective comics (oversized) covers from the 1970s (440, 441, 442, 443 and 444); not to mention the Brave and the Bold over-sized covers (with undersized Aparo cover art), like 113, 114, 115, and 117 (you’ve_ already seen to 112 and 116)!
Also, 2) I don’t know much about how illustrations for covers are handled (and rearranged), but it looks like – from the cover of the Australian republication – that the guns were all drawn by Jim Aparo, and even the left foot and shoe of the bad guy on the far right – but do you think someone else, in Australia, recolored the cover? That yellow shoe looks like the job of someone in a hurry. 🙂
P.S. In the case of #443, I should add that I did, finally, come across an enlarged version of the cover in the deluxe edition of MANHUNTER that was published last year. Still not as beautiful and clean as your restorations, but…
Thanks for the comments, Dorman.
For me to colour covers I need a fairly high-res scan of the lineart. While I do have a scan of the cover of Detective Comics No. 443 by Jim Aparo, it is very low-res and compressed.
For foreign reprints, if the colour differs from the original printing, yes that means someone in Australia in this case did new layout and colour. North American comics usually invested in slick paper for the covers, but Australia used the same newsprint for covers as the inside pages. That meant a rougher appearance.