A Year's Worth of Comic Book Banners

Last May I started making banners for a comic book message board that I'm a member of the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages Message Board. I'm a co-moderator there. :)

Anyway, as you will see, at first I didn't know what I was doing and could barely use Photoshop. But I am slowly learning.

The message board displays two banners each week, but because a number of other folks make banners too, I usually only get one banner up every other week. And, I tend to make a lot of banners so there is sometime a long gap in-between me making a banner and having it be seen.

Oh, the other thing that needs to be understood is that I post under the nickname of Paste Pot Pete. Why? I don't know. I've posted on comic book message board with that name for more than 12 years. If you know Marvel comics, Paste Pot Pete is a Fantastic Four villain from the early days so he invokes some of that Silver Age magic. And it's a silly name because well it sounds silly, but also because poor Pete, who changed his name to The Trapster, just got to be a lamer and a lamer villain until he hit rock bottom and became the only super-villain in history to be defeated by the Baxter Buildings security systems when the FF was out of town.



This is one of the first banners I made. Of course I would start with my own namesake. And this is sort of an important banner because I was so proud of the fact that the text from the cover had the second meaning of serving as a signature. And I haven’t been able to stop signing ever since!





I’ve always wondered if this joke was too mean. I’m sure Gernot has no problems with the ladies. :) Gernot is my co-moderator and the guy who decides which banners go up each week.
 

Shane, a fellow banner maker, did a better take on the same image. My joke kind of falls flat. And I hate that font I was using on these early banners. I should pull a George Lucas and do special editions of the banners with a better font.



I really like this one, but again every time I look at it I want to change the font.
 

I think this is the first of my dialogue change banners so it’s a little primitive. I always love it when I can leave in some original dialogue. I think that makes it better somehow.



This one I did when the Avengers movie came out but unfortunately it didn't make it onto the message board until the movie was old news.



I think the first thing I had them saying was Avengers Assemble! And then I was like “but they aren’t all Avengers?” so I changed it to Avengers and Defenders Assemble. But then I was like “But I don’t think they really ever call themselves the Defenders” And Avengers and No-Team Members Assemble was definitely not going to work so I just went with the name of the message board. Gernot yells at me if I send him a banner without GSBAMB on it and makes me redo it.



This is a Special Edition of this banner. Originally it didn't have the cool green background, but I couldn't resist doing a little tweaking on some of the older banners as my skills improve. This banner has a mate that still hasn't been put on the message board.



I still think this one is hilarious, but I might be the only one who does.



Splish Splash was written as a challenge. Murray the K said there was no way Bobby Darin could write a hit song that started “Splish Splash I was taking a bath,” so I couldn’t resist the challenge of getting the song on these panels. In the last panel I originally had Flash saying they were drunk but I toned it down to dizzy.



I don’t know if they come across but I put a couple of in jokes in this one. Ben talks about turning 50 that’s partially about the FF’s 50th birthday but also a dig against “Marvel Time” which keeps the heroes from aging. Then Spiderman claims he was under a rock for weeks. This is a reference to something I heard one time about if Spiderman’s powers were scientifically accurate one of his only powers would be to be able to go for weeks without eating.



This one is definitely my favorite. (And it ended up being voted the GSBAMB 2012 Banner of the Year) I think this one’s got it all! And I even incorporated some of the original dialogue.



This banner is part of a set. Maybe Gernot will use it’s mate one of these weeks. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more!




The first of my commentary banners, it’s fun to riff on the current goings on in comic books



I learned how to use the clone tool, but other than hurting my neck when I crane it to look at this thing vertically, it also drives me nuts that I didn’t completely blend the yellows together better on this one.

There are about another 20 banners I've made since then but a lot of them haven't hit the message board yet. So it might be a while before I have enough to make another post about them.

But never fear, I've also been making banners for The Classic Science Fiction Message Board, its Facebook page, and my own Facebook page. Sounds like a lot, but I always use the same banners in all three places. So I'll be putting those up on the blog too.