Shadow and Flame with Magik

Cover Dated January 1995

Cover by Joe Phillips

http://www.newsarama.com/24887-earl-norem-passes-away-at-91.html

On June 19, 2015, we lost Earl Norem, he was 91 years old.  Unfortunately, this is the only comic that I own, that features his work.  Norem was born on April 17, 1924 and this is the type of work he did.

This five issue series was the comic form of the 1994 Fleer Ultra X-Men Collection.  Which I can only imagine the artist really like this idea.  Instead of their art being barely seen on a trading card, it is on a nice glossy 8×11 sheet of paper.

Earl Norem contributed with a pretty awesome Omega Red image.

There are two other pages that are worth noting.

Bo Hampton’s spectacular Cypher –

The other one is Brian Stelfreeze’s Shadowcat –

Finally, Joe Phillips’ cover is actually a pull out cover for Excalibur, with the front cover being of Rachel Grey and the back cover being Nightcrawler –

and Shadowcat being the pull out –

I also really like how the comic itself, on the reverse of the Shadowcat image, that has the artist breakdown and the character they drew – that made this post so much easier to do.

It makes sense that these would make up the cover as they form one complete image –

Which is pretty awesome!

Thanks to Comic Collector for having the images of the trading cards so readily available!

http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/CoverTitle_Grid.aspx?id=02f096ec-9c61-4789-9751-90b6da0e13c5

Earl Norem, you will be missed.

I own this issue and the fifth issue is on my Wishlist.  I’m pretty sure I owned this cards (or some of them) back in the day as I was crazy for Marvel superhero trading cards in the 90s.