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Art Appreciation-- Marcos Martin's Amazing Spider-Man #620 cover

One of the pure delights during the past few years has been seeing Marcos Martin draw The Amazing Spider-Man on a sporadic basis. While I'm still planning on dropping the Amazing Spider-Man collections, I may end up picking up Martin's issues, such as the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man #620.

Personally, I think there are only two Spider-Man artists-- Steve Ditko and John Romita.  Everyone else is some combination of those two.  While I like the Romita school (Romita Jr., Bagley, McKone, Andru, etc...) I get excited by the Ditko school of artists.  They bend the characters into near impossible poses, use the positive and negative space of the costume to great effect and make Peter Parker a still scrawny kid rather than a super-hero. 

Martin here uses the coloring and shapes in Spidey's costume perfectly.  I also really like Mysterio's cape, more reminiscent of flowing lava than the folds of a cape.  It all adds to the fiery and smokey feel of the cover.  There's true danger here, no matter how understated it may be.

The early success of Amazing Spider-Man and Brand New Day was the strength of the varying talent it had. No two artists were alike but they were all strong and drew a different but near perfect version of the character.  At this point, I'd love to see Martin get a long arc of the title to draw.  I'd love to have just one solid collection of Spider-Man stories, filled with his artwork.

Amzspidman620