Limited Collectors’ Edition C-41 Super Friends Cover by Alex Toth

Premiering the fall of 1973, the Hanna-Barbera-produced Super Friends was a success both for DC Comics and ABC TV. It ran in various formats until finishing as the toy tie-in Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show in 1985.

Initial character designs were done by renowned comic book artist Alex Toth who worked developing many animated shows. DC tapped him to do the cover and a new short story for this tabloid reprinting Justice League of America stories.

Colour and trade dress by me.

The Published Cover

Front cover as published.

Back cover as published.

Colour guides by Sol Harrison.

What’s With Superman’s Head?

Original art scan from somewhere on the web. Toth’s original Superman head was removed and discarded. A stat of a Curt Swan Superman head was pasted in.

Superman No. 183 cover, pencilled by Curt Swan, was the source for the Superman head used. Thanks to Mark Evanier for identifying the source.

DC had a history of being slow to adapt to new artists drawing established characters. When Neal Adams drew his first Superman covers, at least one of his heads was replaced by one drawn by Al Plastino. Even Jack Kirby saw his Superman heads replaced by ones drawn by Murphy Anderson on the Fourth World books. And so, as late as 1976 when this book was published, DC editorial still thought nothing of doing heavy-handed edits like this one.

With lots of Toth material available, I wanted to make the cover all-Toth as it should have been.

On the left, Toth’s first take at designing an animated Superman was rejected by DC because it wasn’t close enough to the Curt Swan standard of the comics. Knowing this, it explains why the head swap was done on the comic as well.

The circled head on the left looked good to me, but I didn’t like the tight, solid black of the hair. So I combined it with the hair from the head on the right. I added some additional details to take the drawing from Toth’s minimal animation design to one that fit better with the illustration style used on the cover.

Final art made production ready.

Re-creating the Super Friends Logo

Stat of the logo pasted on cover art.

Glyphs drawn. Kerning adjusted. Guidelines set up for telescoping.

Telescoping surfaces drawn. I loathe rebuilding telescoping logos because it’s all about the technical accuracy of the perspective and the line joins, and my Virgo anal-retentive nature won’t let me just wing it.

Comparison of the two versions.

New Colour

New colour version.

Updated trade dress added.

Your Bottom-of-the-Page Bonus: Alex Ross

Super Friends! – Your Favorite Television Super-Team is Back! from 2001. Poster and trade paperback cover as published. Toth homage by Alex Ross.

Updated trade dress added to turn Ross’ art into a tabloid edition.