Adventures of George Reeves Imaginary Magazine Covers
By Lou Koza
I began creating these imaginary covers back in April 2020. It had crossed my mind that it would have been amazing had such a magazine about all things George Reeves had been published starting in the early 60’s. It started out for me as just an exercise in covering some subjects of George Reeves and the inspiration were those old Screen Thrills magazines. I found after creating about a dozen imaginary covers, I still had more subjects I wanted to bring attention to. Soon I got on a roll creating a cover every two days as more ideas were coming to mind. Around cover number 40, I hit a creative wall and thought that would be it. But after a couple of weeks went by I suddenly got a burst of ideas and then my goal was to reach (if I could) 104 imaginary covers. Same number of episodes produced of the Adventures of Superman. I did, and then lo and behold I did another ten at a much more slower pace.
As you can see, the covers cover a wide range of George Reeves subjects. Superman of course is the flagship subject, but it’s not his only topic. If fans know George Reeves, then they know there’s far more to him than Superman. These covers are just that, covers. There is no inside the magazine articles, but many who have already been exposed to these on Facebook often complemented me with wishing articles came with the covers and if the magazine really existed, they’d be loyal customers. But that is a whole publishing effort far beyond this mortal man. I like to think that “The George Reeves Historical Archives” books and the fictional story “Mister Reeves” that I produced can pretty much fill in all the blanks.
George Reeves is a foremost, important subject in my life and I simply wanted to present him in a new, refreshing manner. All meant to keep his good spirit alive and in the hearts of his fans.
For those George Reeves fans, I’m hopeful these imaginary covers reach beyond the Facebook page, “George Reeves, Actor & Director.” I do have narratives that accompany the images and so if there is any curiosity with wanting to know about the making of the cover, you’d be welcome to visit my Facebook page.
— Thanks, Lou Koza
Imaginary Comic Book covers, Starring George Reeves
By Lou Koza
About a year ago, I started pushing my PhotoShop V2 skills towards creating imaginary comic book covers with of course George Reeves as it’s main component. I wanted to explore the idea what covers might look like if the publisher had the “Adventures of Superman” television in consideration. Much like the company did when they published 1966 Batman television show comic books in recent years using the respective actors.
Note that in some cases I strayed form the simple dynamics of the 50’s television series. For example, I imagined several crossovers, such as the current actors who portray Superman on screen, the Iron Giant, Super Car, Perry Mason, Lucy and Ethel and King Kong. Whatever came to mind that I thought would be interesting. Even Jerry Seinfeld, who happens to be a Superman fan. Yes indeed the 50’s budgets constraints certainly would have kept all these entities from gracing our little television screen with Superman. In truth, I initially wanted to keep it tight to the 50’s show. But this is an imaginary comic book. So a little extra excitement in the funny pages isn’t going to cause any harm.
You will notice in the last few imaginary covers, I did dabble in Artificial Intelligence. While one might think it’s a snap to plug in a command and presto a super-duper image appears. Just know that I still needed to apply a bit of PhotoShop in the form of preparation, assembly and touch-up. It is my opinion Ai doesn’t make anyone go away. It’s a tool. Still in all, it’s an exciting tool. One I hope the true artist in the business embrace to help them. Not change them. I love the efforts of a skilled artist and in telling a story it makes all the difference.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the imaginary covers.
— Thanks, Lou Koza
