COMICS RIFFS I LOVE: The Keith Pollard BLACK GOLIATH "skintight alien supersuit" riff!

I recently unearthed the tattered remnants of my comic collection from early childhood, and stumbled across a 1976(!) issue of Marvel's Black Goliath that might well have been an indirect influence on Emp's supersuit from Empowered. (I say "indirect" because  I haven't laid eyes on this issue in forty-odd years.)

A few words of introduction:

"After being attacked by Stilt-Man with his Z-Ray, Black Goliath, Celia and her nephew find themselves spirited away to the distant planet of Kirgar."

Given that I don't remember buying any other issues of Black Goliath, I must've picked up this up solely because I found the art by distinctive stylist Keith Pollard to be striking as heck.

Note, by the way, that this issue's story is only 17 pages long—scattered through a breathtaking 15 pages of ads and lettercol!—but writer Chris Claremont unsurprisingly crams a heap o' dialogue into that measly pagecount.

Ah, but check out this page:

Why, it's a "molecule-thick skinsuit" derived from alien technology! Pollard's stipple-based rendering scheme is very different from the pencil-based system I would use decades later for Emp's supersuit, but some degree of similarity definitely exists.

Ah, but behold this far eerier coincidence, which came as a shock to me when I glanced through the issue—why, it's an alien tiger attacking!

Not to be confused with this Empowered vol.12 page featuring an anachronistic smilodon (seemingly) attacking:

I swear that really is a coincidence, as I had no memory of the alien tiger attack until I started scanning the Black Goliath issue a few days ago. No, seriously!

Ah, but I'm pretty sure that Pollard's distinctive alien skinsuit did make an impression on impressionable Age 9 or 10 Me, as most of the comics I read as a wee lad in the 70s were not big on the sexiness.

Other Marvel artists I was perusing at the time—Don Heck or George Tuska, say—were definitely not drawing very many "butt shots" like these, gotta say:

A direct line to Emp's skintight supersuit? No, not really, but the idea of such a visual riff as a generic superheroine costume might well have lingered in my mind afterward. I abandoned cape comics only a few years later, and wouldn't read any again until the mid-80s renaissance of Swamp Thing, The Dark Knight Returns, Daredevil: Born Again and the like; I didn't even think about writing or drawing a superhero comic until I was approached about Gen13 and Titans circa 1996.

Whew! Just blew a g-d hour and a half outta my all-important morning work shift on this post, folks; hope you enjoyed it!

Next week on this here Patreon: We kick off the week with another double dose of life drawings, as usual.