Chris Stevens Hulk Transformation Painting: This one is Incredible!

I recently blogged about a great Hulk variant cover by Chris Stevens. I am a huge fan of Chris and his artwork. He is a great guy and and unbelievably talented artist that excels at every medium he tackles. I have commissioned Chris 4 times over the last 5-6 years and am blown away every time he completes a piece for me. His latest piece is a painting that depicts an amazing transformation scene of the Hulk. I am at a loss for words to describe how great this piece looks in person. Chris put a ton of work into the painting and I am very humbly grateful to be able to add this to my collection. Please take a look at the 4 commissions I have picked up from Chris in the thumbnails below (click for larger image) over the years. If you like his art, please click here to view his web site with lots more of his artwork. I promise it is worth a click and you will enjoy viewing his gallery of artwork.

      

An Incredible Library!

Northlake library in Northlake Illinois has embarked on a lofty goal of raising $30,000 to purchase a 9 foot tall Hulk statue (Studio Oxmox), new graphic novels, and technology equipment for the library patrons. The statue is the signature item for this fund raising campaign for the library who calls the Hulk one of the largest literary figures of all time. The library plans to use the Hulk statue to bring people into the library to promote their growing collection of graphic novels.

I really hope the campaign is successful and not just for the Hulk statue. The library also plans to use the funds raised to purchase software and hardware to help people learn how to create art digitally, including a 3D printer which will allow you to design and print 3D statues, action figures, etc. I know I would take advantage of something this cool if my local library had such offerings. Click here for the full article and donation options. I hope to be able to provide an update in a few months that include pictures of the library with their new statue.

Even Ron Marz says that every library should have a Hulk. I agree!

Name that Hulk! Artists revealed

Life has become rather chaotic lately so this update is a little later than I had hoped but at least it is finally here. This is a follow up to the previous post that had the correct answers masked. The correct answers to the Hulk faces are listed in the article.  I had no clue on Ditko (4) and drew a blank on Gil Kane (7) as well. I will have to find the Ditko image reference as I am not familiar with it from my recollection. The Kane piece is one I should have known as I have seen it before somewhere. #3 doesn’t look very Kirby-ish to me but I was familiar with the image so I was able to guess correctly.

Individual reference images (click for larger view):

 
Reference Information
1) Incredible Hulk #1 cover
2) Incredible Hulk #102 cover
3) Marvel Super-Heroes #36 cover
4) Tales to Astonish #67 page 3
5) Defenders #14 cover
6) Incredible Hulk #181 page 3
7) Tales to astonish #88 page 1
8) Incredible Hulk #200 cover
9) Incredible Hulk #222 cover
10) Incredible Hulk Annual #7 cover
11) Incredible Hulk #245 cover
12) Incredible Hulk #307 cover
13) Incredible Hulk #341 cover
14) Incredible Hulk #350 cover
15) Incredible Hulk #369 cover

Frank Cho’s Hulk arrives in Savage Wolverine!

I previously posted that Frank Cho’s Savage Wolverine comic would have a guest appearance from the Hulk in issue 5. As such, I recently picked up the issues leading up to next month’s issue 5 to read the story before the Hulk enters. Well, the story is still in issue 5, but Hulk makes a full page appearance in the last page of issue 4. Here is preview of what is to come next month. I am looking forward to reading these issues once the 5th issue shows up and hoping for an epic battle between Wolvie and Jade Jaws!

Name that Hulk! How many can you identify? Test your gamma knowledge!

Can you name the artists that drew these Hulk faces? Honor system on this one gammabros … no cheating. I have blanked out the artist list so that you can test your Hulk artist knowledge. The grey Hulks are the easiest and about half of the green versions are obvious but there are a few sure to test your knowledge unless you are already familiar with this classic page. I will leave this up for a week and then I will post the unaltered page to see how many you get right. Post your guesses here and don’t go searching for the page as a cheat because you will likely find it. Good luck!

Honeycomb Cereal, Herb Trimpe, and the Incredible Hulk: How Can You Go Wrong?

Check out this great video of the 1976 Honeycomb cereal commercial featuring the Hulk and the Honeycomb hideout crew. I loved Honeycomb cereal as a kid and my parents didn’t object too much when I asked for it (unlike some other cereals) so I had it quite often growing up. The Honeycomb commercials were always fun, with the Hulk version being the best. I love the classic voice-over and always wanted a cool hideout like the gang in the commercials.

Herb Trimpe is one of my all time favorite Hulk artists. While I was picking up new comics off the spinner rack that were drawn by Sal Buscema, I was making monthly trips to the comic shop to pull older issues illustrated by Herb out of the back issue boxes. Herb’s art in this commercial is really well drawn and evokes a sense of what Herb was drawing in the Hulk comics at the time. I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a great collection of production art from the commercial a few years ago. It was really interesting to see how the art was done for the commercial and how everything was done manually (digital production was still many years away at this time). Click the Thumbnails below to see large images of the original artwork used to make the commercial. Honeycomb, Herb, and Hulk … what a great combination!

  
      

Concept art for planned Kotobukiya Avengers statue series: Avengers ARTFX+ series will include the Hulk

According to the recent Kotobukiya catalog (click right thumbnail for full catalog) from February, there will be a new “Avengers ARTFX+” line of statues released next year (2014). The series will include Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Black Widow, and Hawkeye from the current comic series.

The image below is a conceptual depiction of what the statues will look like when displayed together. The series will be sculpted in 1/10 scale and will likely be produced with the lighter vinyl material. The series will be developed under the art direction of Adi Granov which is very promising. The concept art looks great to me!

This series follows the initial ARTFX+ Justice League of America series (pictured below) released by Koto already. That series came out really nice and followed the concept art very closely so I am very optimistic about the Avengers line. There isn’t any other news yet so I am not sure of the price point, who will do the sculpting, or any other details. I will post more as it becomes available.