This is another Hart Amos cover, but unlike his typically generic 'super' Century Comic covers this one is based on the lead story, “The Girl in the Bottle”. The artist for the original story is Ruben Moreira, but I have not identified the original source for this story.
I’m curious to know whether Amos based his cover on the original – that is, assuming there is an original cover, as this story may have been a back-up feature. The splash page may have provided a loose guide for it insofar as it features a bottle in the foreground and two people in a boat in the background, but it’s only a token similarity – the splash page has a man in the bottle, the image is reversed so the bottle is to the left of the shot, and the boat and figures bear no resemblance to the Amos picture.
I’m curious to know whether Amos based his cover on the original – that is, assuming there is an original cover, as this story may have been a back-up feature. The splash page may have provided a loose guide for it insofar as it features a bottle in the foreground and two people in a boat in the background, but it’s only a token similarity – the splash page has a man in the bottle, the image is reversed so the bottle is to the left of the shot, and the boat and figures bear no resemblance to the Amos picture.
Update!
The Junkyard's UK correspondent has identified "The Girl in the Bottle" as the cover story in Tales of the Unexpected #6, October 1956. The cover is also by Ruben Moreira, and it is clearly the model for Amos' rendition. As to why the Tales of the Unexpected cover was redrawn rather than reprinted...?
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2 comments:
>>As to why the Tales of the Unexpected cover was redrawn rather than reprinted...?<<
Hello, Spiros.
Might be as simple an explanation as this: Hart's cover art and colouring is actually much better than the "Tales of the Unexpected" version -- and would certainly have been much more attractive on the newsstand.
A really nice cover I hadn't seen before.
I think you make a good point, AR. For example, if we survey the first 20 issues of Century we see the covers are predominantly in primary colours - mostly blues and yellows for backgrounds with splashes of reds - so if KG Murray wanted to maintain a 'look' they may have needed to have a cover image redrawn in order to colur it to their specifications. And the new Amos cover certainly fills this criteria better than the sombre Tales of the Unexpected version, which is suited to a lite horror/mystery mag, but not so much for an adventure comic like Century which still carried superhero stories.
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