Ultra X-Men 1995 Card #100 Archangel 1995

Boris Vallejo made this Archangel painting in 1995 for a trading card, and the hyperrealism is off the charts! You can almost feel the smooth, airbrushed finish on Archangel's metallic wings and, wow, those muscles. The texture here is fascinating because there isn't much! Vallejo seems to be chasing a sort of impossible perfection of surface, obscuring the process as much as possible to give the impression of something manufactured. Look at the pink piping on his outfit. It's so clean and precise, like it was laid down by a machine. It's interesting to think about Vallejo in relation to someone like Alex Ross, another painter of superheroes. Where Ross embraces a rougher, more painterly style, Vallejo is all about slickness and polish. He's like the Jeff Koons of comic book art! Both artists ask us to consider what it means to represent the human form in an age of technological reproduction.