Most male artists have a beautiful woman as their inspiration, but my muse was Marvel Comics and especially the Silver Surfer. In my teenage years when I wasn’t planning to be the next Lennon & McCartney, I decided to become a great artist. I hadn’t a clue how to paint, but I went to my local artists shop and got myself an easel, some oil paints and brushes.

I wanted to take comic book images and turn them into oil paintings. I knew that Roy Lichtenstein was doing the same thing, and making a lot of money, so the market was there. However, whereas the successful Liechtenstein was emphasising the origins of his images by even painting  the comic printers colour dots. I wanted to make the 2 dimensional drawings as ‘real’ as possible – (the characters WERE real to me)!

Galactus by Jack Kirby (Oil on Canvas)

Luckily copying from comics became respectable in the 1960′s with the Pop Art movement taking images from mass culture and changing their context. Andy Warhol’s ‘Campbells Soup Can’ and Marilyn Monroe multiple images are famous examples. Marvel Comics were keen to be associated with such a high profile art movement, and even changed their name to ‘Marvel Pop Art Productions’ for a short time in the sixties. 

Silver Surfer and Galactus (Oil on Canvas)

Looking at the paintings now there is one aspect preserved from the comics. None of the characters have any eyes! Comic printing at the time was not sophisticated enough to show small details such as eyes, and without any artistic training I didn’t dare fill in the gaps!

John McNally