Today I came across the cover to New Titans #108 (1994), while researching Matrix Supergirl issues to pick up. The orange-skinned woman’s pose looked eerily familiar. Took me a few seconds, then I placed it: the splash page of Supergirl #11 (1997), guest pencilled by none other than…Greg Land. Yup, Marvel’s infamous tracing guy strikes again! [links NSFW] First page into a Supergirl comic, and he rips off the cover of a comic guest-starring Supergirl from 3 years earlier. Unreal. I never much liked the guest artist on Supergirl #11 and #12 (he was way off on the character designs) but I had no idea who he was until today. Although I’ve seen enough examples of Land’s lightboxing (putting a drawing over a pane of glass with a light source behind it and tracing it onto a blank sheet of paper) that I can usually recognize his work when I see it, I never realized I owned issues by the guy.* That’s because his style has changed radically since 1997. He’s become famous for a “photo-realistic” style in Ultimate Fantastic Four and Phoenix: Endsong, a style which relies heavily on tracing stills from movies and magazines in his case. Oh, and Land doesn’t just trace any old stills, he traces women from porn or pseudo-porn mags a lot (earning him a reputation for “Pornface” [NSFW] – another reason his work is easy to spot).
Damn. Now I really can’t enjoy those issues, knowing that hack worked on them and he couldn’t restrain himself from cheating on the first page. Now I’m wondering how many other panels in those two issues were ripped off from other comics. (The issues are online here and here if anyone wants to look for any other “lifted” poses.)
*Land also illustrated the second story in Supergirl Annual #1997.