{"id":25,"date":"2005-02-07T23:02:32","date_gmt":"2005-02-08T03:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harrymccracken.com\/hgr\/?p=25"},"modified":"2005-02-07T23:02:32","modified_gmt":"2005-02-08T03:02:32","slug":"bill-gates-meets-king-kirby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/2005\/02\/07\/bill-gates-meets-king-kirby\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates Meets King Kirby"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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I’m surprised to find myself with a bit of superhero news, but I was walking through PC World’s art department today, and saw this nifty booklet of blown-up images from (mostly 1960s) Marvel comics. Turns out that Corbis–the image archive owned by Bill Gates–has acquired the rights to Marvel graphics for licensing as fancy clip art. This booklet was something they’d sent to us to promote their wares. It’s well done, eye-catching, and probably a minor collector’s item–and this copy is mine, since (sad to say) PC World is unlikely to illustrate anything with vintage Marvel images.<\/p>\n

The best thing about the booklet: It’s maybe the only Marvel product I’ve ever seen that doesn’t mention Stan Lee but does <\/em>give prominent credit to Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Buscema, and others for the images it touts. (It doesn’t give them, or their estates, money<\/em>, I suspect–but credit’s a lot better than nothing.)<\/p>\n

As I was shrinking this art down for this site (violating Marvel’s copyright, no doubt), it struck me that one of the many strengths of this art is that it looks great in oversized form (as in the booklet) but also reads extremely well at a small size (the Surfer and Captain America images you see here are only 125 pixels across apiece). Those guys really knew how to draw for legible, impactul reproduction,<\/p>\n

You can browse the available Marvel art at Corbis’s fancy-schmancy Marvel section<\/a>. Note: The site, unlike the booklet, is rife with recent, unremarkable Marvel art–in most cases, you need to scroll to the right to see the vintage stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m surprised to find myself with a bit of superhero news, but I was walking through PC World’s art department today, and saw this nifty booklet of blown-up images from (mostly 1960s) Marvel comics. Turns out that Corbis–the image archive owned by Bill Gates–has acquired the rights to Marvel graphics for licensing as fancy clip … Continue reading “Bill Gates Meets King Kirby”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}