Posted By Dan Greenfield on Apr 29, 2024 | 3 comments

Magnus has nothing on her…

This week’s Morrison Mondays takes us away from the land of DC and Marvel and into the world of Gold Key and Hanna-Barbera.

Dig Bill’s riff on Russ Manning and George Wilson’s classic Magnus, Robot Fighter 4000 A.D. #1, which came out only two months after The Jetsons premiered in September 1962:

“I painted this piece for a group art show at Van Eaton Galleries in Los Angeles,” sez Bill. “The theme of the show was simply ‘Hanna-Barbera’ and upon being invited to participate I instantly decided to do something based on my favorite HB show, The Jetsons! I’m also a fan of Russ Manning, particularly his work on Magnus, Robot Fighter, so I started thinking about a Jetsons/Magnus mash-up. The image I finally chose to parody is the cover of Magnus, Robot Fighter #1 by Russ Manning and illustrator George Wilson.

“There was no plan to make a print of the art, but Ruth Clampett was in attendance on the show’s opening night and changed that. Ruth is the daughter of legendary animation director Bob Clampett and founder of Clampett Studio Collections, the fine art publisher for Warner Bros. Ruth loved the piece and asked me if she could make a limited edition print of the art for an upcoming WB employee art sale. (Of course, I said yes!) I believe the edition size was only 50 prints and a few artist proofs, and they were made available exclusively to Warner Bros. employees and not sold in galleries.”

Bill also did work for 1990’s Jetsons: The Movie.

“Here’s an ad I did for the Jetsons movie. I painted the characters and car, and the background was painted by studio-mate Calvin Patton. I also worked on the Jetsons movie poster (pencils and art direction only).”

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