I've been a huge fan of Joe Jusko ever since I first laid eyes on his amazing paintings for the 1992 Marvel Masterpieces card set and I've been waiting a long time for him to get his own Marvel Masterpieces card set again. Now the wait is finally over (after a few years of agonizing delays getting the set finished...) Simply put this book captures all the artwork from the card set (and more!) in a large format and is incredible from beginning to end. Each and every painting gets a 2 page spread, the right side is the full page image of the finished painting (with no writing or borders or anything to cover up the image which is how it should be done, other art books could learn from this) the left side shows various sketches, ideas, progressions, alterations, requested changes etc that lead to the finished piece, and has a blurb from Joe himself about his thought process designing the piece, his inspiration, his thoughts on the character, costumes, things like that, which I found to be extremely interesting!

In these blurbs Joe mentions things like which cards he likes best (leaping Hulk in the desert, Rogue, Captain America with Dum Dum, Daredevil on gargoyle are some) his least favorites (Legion, Multiple Man, female Thor, anything Venom related, modern Iron Man...or anything Iron Man which he makes abundantly clear) Characters he knew nothing about (Female Captain Universe, Morlun, Gorr the God Butcher, Ultimate Spider-man) new age costumes he likes and doesn’t like (he likes X-visor Cyclops and modern Mystique, dislikes Hawkeyes, Luke Cage, Falcon, Iron Fist and Nova’s new costumes, dislikes Black Panther with a cape) versions of characters he enjoyed to do or would have rather done (he’s always wanted to paint the original green/white or red/black Captain Marvel and thus he didn't want to do Carol Danvers Captain Marvel, he enjoyed doing "blue man" Dr.Strange over the classic Dr.Strange who he is not a big fan of, he really disliked the version of Star-Lord he ended up having to paint etc) concepts that he wanted to do that were rejected by Marvel (Frankenstein's Monster with a film strip border - shown in the art book this way for the first time, Gwen Stacey done as a photograph to Peter, with a note from Gwen written on there to Peter - a note he had his wife write to emphasize the female hand writing) even some paintings that he felt he could have done better or would have changed if he had a second chance (Iceman, Blade, Black Widow, Spider-man VS Morlun, Thor VS Hercules)

There are also several new paintings he did just for this book and other paintings he did for the card set which Marvel did not end up using and are printed in this book for the first time, including most importantly the Fantastic Four, which Joe (correctly) states no Marvel Masterpieces set is complete without Marvels first family! The list of the new paintings included in the art book but not printed in the card set are: Mr.Fantastic, The Thing, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, Firelord, Galactus, Valkyrie, Gladiator (buzz saw hands not Shi'ar) Madame Hydra, Ulik, Killraven, and Apocalypse VS Magneto.

All in all this book is a must have for any Joe Jusko fan, Marvel fan, art book fan, or combination of any of these things! This is the perfect example of how to properly do an art book, the art is the star, its presented extremely well, no distractions, insights into the piece from the artist, and knowing the "behind the scenes" thoughts adds so many layers and interesting tidbits while looking at the art, very highly recommended!!!

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Rating	4.7 (94 ratings)
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Category	Art of Comics and Manga

Joe Jusko's Marvel Masterpieces