Black Widow: Deadly Origin #1 (Greg Land variant), on sale Nov. 4.
Say what you will about Greg Land-- and believe me, many people are saying a lot of things about Greg Land-- there's no denying that his rendering style is very effective. The point is that for many it's TOO effective, and if it looks too much like his source, is it really his own? I'll let that debate slide, because there's enough problems on this cover that these issues of swiping-slash-plagiarism are actually secondary.
First of all, I have to wonder when Black Widow became a paraplegic. Is the art supposed to fade away into the background or otherwise have Natasha burst from the page? Then this is not the kind of rendering you want. It's not the only anatomy issues, either. Check out that left arm-- little more than a steel rod protrudinga from her neck. And those bracelets on the left arm are completely going the wrong way according to their supposed twin set on her right wrist. There should be a twist in the torso, but it's too smooth to be twisted, unless the Widow is a T-1000 Terminator robot with different points of articulation.
And what's with the random photo collage in the background? Great use of iStockPhoto, to be sure, but there's nothing visually interesting about their integration together nor anything to highlight or differentiate with the foreground. It's a bit of a mess with no guidance for our eyes. Ultimately, it just ends up being quite dull overall, and that makes the attention and rendering of the Widow's face all that more weird by juxtaposition. If I had to make a guess, all of the artist's attention when to creating the face and hands, and everything else was afterthought. For shame.
Comments