THE STORY BEHIND THE COVER TO GHOST RIDER 13

It was 1991 and I was working a full time, 9-5 job in advertising where my main clients were Maybelline, Pepsi, and Bill Gold, one of the most famous movie poster designers in the world. A side note, Bill's been designing movie posters for over 70 years, some of his most famous were The Big Sleep, Casablanca, Dirty harry, The Exorcist and The Sting. I worked with him many times on a series of posters and one day I will do an entire post on Bill because he deserves more than being a side note on this story.

Back to comics… I had been wanting to get more comic book work on the side and have been helping Mark Texeria, my High School buddy, work on Ghost Rider and the Punisher after hours in the Marvel Comics bullpen. The bullpen at that time was a giant room where all the artists sat and pieced the books together. It was filled with a ton of wonderful talented people and was overlooked by Jazzy John Romita and his wife Virginia. Years later when I co-created Marvel Knights, I would be spending a lot of time in this space, but that’s a story for another time.

I would finish up my advertising job and would arrive about 5;30 every night in the Marvel Offices whenever mark needed me and we would work together through the night on as many pages as possible so he could nail his deadlines. We were fueled only by our love of comics and a box of chocolate doughnuts and a 64 oz coke, our regular nightly diet. Yeah, eventually my blood pressure would reflect my poor diet choices.

One late night, after working on a stack of pages, Mark told me he forgot all about a cover that was due the next day for Ghost Rider. We talked about what he should do and then he said we should paint it together. Music to my ears. He sent me off that night with a rough sketch of what he was looking for and told me to see what I can get done and bring it in the next night and we could go from there. When I was at my advertising job the next day, during my breaks I started sketching out the rough pencils tighter and then started cutting out some of the shapes using acetate so I could go in and airbrush the larger color fields on the piece. I used mainly gouache paints because they were water based and could be airbrushed easily and got most of it done during lunch and an hour after work and quickly rushed it over to Mark, who was eagerly waiting over at the Marvel Offices. He looked at it, smiled and pulled out his paints and painted the skull in front of me in about 20 minutes. It was like magic watching this master work. Honestly, even when I was in high school he was one of the best painters in the building but seeing him work in front of me was a lesson in itself. Once he finished the skull, he outlined the guy in the background, touched a couple of things I did up and it was finished. We dropped it in the editor’s office, Bobbie chase, at the time, and then he handed me some pages to work on the next day and we both went home, both satisfied we saved the day.

The next day I finished my work at 5 and went over to Marvel to work on Mark’s pages in the bullpen. Doing this got me a free pass to go up there after hours and in the end, gave me the opportunity to show my work and pick up some work of my own. That day I sat at one of the desks of someone that went home for the day and got to work. It was about a half hour later after I settled in, the editor in chief at the time, Tom DeFalco came into the bullpen and he was holding the painted cover Mark and I did in his hands and waving it around to everyone. Tom had a pretty booming voice as he addressed the room asking “Who told Texeria he could paint the *@#$%! cover? We don’t do *@#%! painted covers!” and then he paused and looked at the painting closer and yelled “and who the hell is Palmiotti?” Well, I was sitting right in front of him and I just looked up, shrugged my shoulders and kept on working. I figured this was not the best time to finally introduce myself. Looking back, I think it was the best decision.

Marvel was in a spot and the book had to go to press so they wound up using the cover and although it was ghosted on the bottom of the cover, my name made it to the cover of a Marvel comic! I was just so damn proud. A little-known fact is that I never wanted to be an inker. I wanted to pencil, but all the work I ever got mostly was inking and I fell into it. I have since learned to enjoy it, got pretty good at it and then one day, looked at what I was doing and decided to not do it anymore. Again, a story for another post.

Now, cut to about 26 years later, Amanda and I finish up a day at New York Comic Con and we head over to a gallery party at Metropolis Collectables on 36th street. It’s a fine business run by a friend of mine I have known for years, Vincent Zurzolo- a collector of all things and seller of comics, comic book art and more. The place is some private offices and holds a pretty nice sized gallery space with a ton of amazing comic art. This night we were there with a bunch of people in the industry and Vincent takes Amanda and I to show off some art of his personal collection in one of the side offices and there it is. The Ghost Rider cover I worked on so many years ago, proudly displayed over his desk. I ask him how he got the cover and he tells me he bought it from Tex many years before. I smile and tell him to look closer at the signatures on the bottom. He looks, smiles and tells me he never knew I worked on it. We both laugh and I give him some background on it and how I avoided the wrath of Tom DeFalco. It was nice seeing it had a home with someone that appreciate it.

I hope this now gives you guys a better appreciation of the actual cover when you see it.

That is the wonderful thing about art, every piece has a story. For me, it holds a special place in my heart. Mark and I painted one other Ghost Rider piece together a year after. It was the trade book cover collection below. Most people don’t know I did that either, mainly because the terrible design on the cover managed to cover our signatures on the left, but that’s another story.

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