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Circus Posters
Client: Marvel Comics
Date: March 30, 2005
Posted by Rich & JG
GENERATION X artist Chris Bachalo always challenged us with fun title page opportunities, and was kind enough to leave plenty of room for the title so we could really make it part of the artwork.
Issue #17 cast Stan Lee as narrator/ringmaster, and Chris had laid the pages out with Big Tent stripes on the pages, so we started by looking at old circus posters in The Golden Age of the Circus which JG found on the bargain shelf at Borders.
Richard had also been dying to find a use for an 1800s Sunlight Soap label (right) he found in Packaging Source Book (a great reference of product packaging from the last 100 years), and the primary colors and sweeping, bold type just seemed to fit. Richard used this bit of reference once again when Marvel needed a logo for "Stan's Soapbox" column.
Back when Marvel still used cover lettering, we insisted on doing it for all the books we lettered, to give them a cohesive presentation. For the cover, Richard and Dave Lanphear checked out old horror movie posters in Christies auction catalogs (a great cheap source for all kinds of art reference), picked up at the Bud Plant booth at Comicon.
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