Real-life Steranko (5/5)

The complete Shield series in this paperback. ISBN 9780785185369.

The folks at IDW Publishing certainly came up with a bright idea: to publish comic artwork life-size (which means the books in the series are huge). This Artist's Edition, just over twenty-two inches deep, originally came out in 2014 and now copies are hard to come by.

I always thought that Steranko took comics to another level. His layouts and the use of graphics not normally seen in comics is tremendous. With this book, his drawing style can really be appreciated. I don't suppose many comic readers have seen the artwork of their heroes' life-size, the book reveals what it really looks like, the margins of the boards have bits of color, register marks, and scribbles by the artist and production staff. To achieve this the book is actually printed in four-color black.

There are twelve complete Nick Fury stories and seven covers in the back pages plus three pages about Steranko, he designed the book as well. Worth saying that IDW have re-issued this huge book in 2021 as a paperback but plenty of reviewers have commented on the very poor binding. ISBN  978-1684058631.