Sometimes, in the course of post-modern comics events, you will see the use of a familiar pose or image from days past, either to evoke memories of the original or to memorialize a favorite artist or team. The iconic “dead hero cradled in crying heroes” arms cover has made many appearances, as has the “X-Men coming at Magneto’s evil force bubble with Cyclops going all pew-pew-pew out his face”, although the latter has expanded to four and five-page gatefolds due to the sheer number of mutants extant in the Marvel Universe. When it comes to the homage, comic books have the rare benefit of being readily available for comparison, unlike, say, the use of the “baby carriage on the steps” sequence from ‘Battleship Potemkin,’ which has led to a lot of this sort of thing over the last 8 and 1/2 decades, which begs a question…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) enjoys the repeated appearances of the Justice League “Stand There With Your Game Face On” group shots, asking: What’s your favorite repeated image in pop culture?
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The Justice League #1 cover with everyone looking up, It is non descript, shows everybody involved, and can be used at anytime without being overly dramatic or giving anything away.
Spiderman’s a touchstone character for me, so I’ll go with Amazing Fantasy 15. Admittedly the art isn’t that great and later artists would have a better grasp of how dynamic the panel composition could be for Spidey, but for me this is an iconic image.
The opening to the Watchmen movie was like an orgy of these types of images. The Nite Owl Andy Warhol is awesome, along side the Silhouette take on the sailor kissing the nurse.
More contemporary, I really do like the pastiches of the Obama Hope political poster. I know they seem overdone, but this one in particular gets me every time: http://i.imgur.com/DBye6lW.png
Variations on old fashioned pin-up girl images (such as Betty Page). I’ve seen quite a few across comics, TV and other sources where an artist paid homage to the old pin-up art with a slight twist.
I also love the Super Sentai staple of the team posing, shouting the team name and occasionally a symbol, image or explosion appears behind them.
Even though, or perhaps because, its completely ridiculous and has little bearing on the story itself, I like that classic Star Wars poster with Luke on the mountain, Leia hanging around his crotch, and a bunch of plot points hanging around in the stars above him.
Guess its Frank Frazetta style?
Whatever, I just usually find it funny.