Words and Pictures

Piero Mancini, Comics Artist

2012-01-17T22:54:00.000-08:00

Mino, Lia, and Piero
Piero Mancini was an Italian illustrator/comic artist with an appealing minimalist style.

[For the following details I'm indebted to a biographical entry at the Fondazione Franco Fossati, a fabulous resource on Italian comics history.]

Piero Mancini was born in Adria in 1927. His family moved to Milan while he was still a child. It was there he studied art, at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.

In the early 1950s Mancini moved to Padua to work in advertising and illustration. He began a collaboration with the Catholic kids' weekly Sant'Antonio e i fanciulli (St. Anthony and the Children), which was later retitled Il messaggero dei ragazzi (The Kids' Messenger). Though he mostly produced illustrations, Mancini also wrote and drew a police-themed story/quiz in comics form.

One of a series of Bob Star (Red Barry) covers for Club Anni Trenta

Up until the mid-1960s Mancini created numerous illustrations for a series of literary adaptations. Among the most noteworthy were a dozen plates illustrating The Divine Comedy. In 1966 Mancini started drawing comics for the Messaggero, beginning with a story about Giotto. During the next decade he provided artwork for many comics features. His best-known work was on the series Mino e Lia, written by Claudio Nizzi. Mino and Lia were ordinary modern kids who stumbled into various adventures. The series ran from 1972 to 1975.

Collection of Mino & Lia from Mera-Fumetti

In 1977 Piero Mancini illustrated an adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank which appeared in Sgt Kirk. It was his last major project, for the artist passed away in 1979 at the age of 51.

Mancini's impressionistic style bears a certain resemblance to the work of Dino Battaglia. He went even further than Battaglia in experimenting with unusual textures. His toolkit included pen, brush, sponges, razor blades, and toothbrush splatter. The result was a very personal and attractive style which admittedly sometimes sacrificed detail for effect.

Following is one of Mancini's Mino and Lia adventures. Though only 9 pages long it was split across two issues of Il Messaggero. In fact I think it was originally intended to run in three parts. In the Italian original the last panel on page 3 seemed to set up a cliffhanger and the first row of panels on page 4 look like they were extended upward to cover a gap left for the series logo.

It's a very simple, very low-key story. A hallmark of the series was the way Mino and Lia spoke directly to the reader. Personally I find the schtick annoying, though it does help hurry the story along. To my eyes the coloring is also reminiscent of Battaglia. I have no idea whether Mancini did it himself.

All in all this is a nice job by a lesser-known star in the Italian comic universe.

English version by Ron Harris

Character Design--Spanish Women

2012-01-11T22:25:00.000-08:00

The Mystery of the Spanish Woman

In this post I don't tell you, I ask you to tell me.

I am fascinated by the iconic Beautiful Female Face drawn by Spanish comic artists. I hope someone out there can tell me where it came from.

I first encountered the Face in the work of cartoonists employed by the Selecciones Ilustradas studio of the late 60s. These young men revolutionized comics with their work both for Spanish publications and for clients in England, France, Germany, and the USA. Among them were Esteban Maroto, Carlos Gimenez, Victor de la Fuente, Jose Ortiz, Jose Gonzales, Luis Bermejo, Rafael Auraleon, Enric Sio, etc. etc. etc. American fans first met many of them in the pages Jim Warren's horror comics, Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella.

Though their individual styles varied greatly, all these guys drew variations of the same Beautiful Female Face.

Rafael Auraleon, Jose Gonzales, Adolfo Usero, Jose Ortiz

At first I thought the Face was the product of the studio environment. This often happens when many artists work in the same room, especially if they're young and enthusiastic: they pick up bits of each other's style. Perhaps one of the SI men drew the Face and everybody else liked it and copied it. Or maybe an editor (or studio manager, art director, client) liked the Face and insisted everyone draw it.

Jesus Redondo, Homero

Later, though, I ran across the Face drawn by Spanish artists not connected with SI. It seemed that almost every Spanish comic artist with a "modern" (i.e. post-fifties) style used the Face.

I associate the Face with the mid-to-late 1960s. I wish I knew more about Spanish comics from this period. Browsing Joan Navarro's excellent gallery of classic Spanish comic art I discovered artwork from late 1950s-early 1960s romance comics in which the women almost had the Face...with differences in hair style and makeup, of course.

Purita Campos

Did the Face originate in Spanish romance comics? Was there a particular artist who created it and inspired an generation of younger cartoonists? Why is the Face particularly Spanish? A few Italian, British, and Mexican cartoonists used it, but they seemed to do so in imitation of the Spaniards.
Frank Langford (UK)

Does anyone know the origin of this classic Spanish beauty?

Stuff I've Done--9

2012-01-03T16:23:00.000-08:00

My Favorite Star Trek Page
I remember the years when I was drawing Dallas and Star Trek as a blur of lots of work, lots of frustration, lots of drama, and not much money.

I was originally hired to draw Dallas, but when Thomas Warkentin left Star Trek, that was the strip I really wanted to draw. Not only did I like the property better, but also Paramount pretty much left the strip alone. There was none of the nasty, iron-fisted editorial intervention that Lorimar practiced on Dallas. That was partly why I offered to take the strip on. Another piece was that I'd be earning more money. But the major reason was to provide an entry into the syndicate for a "good friend." This laid the groundwork for much of the aforementioned drama. Suffice it to say that one should keep personal and professional relationships separated. Widely separated.

My final Trek storyline concerned the Enterprise entering a regatta and running afoul of space pirates. It was my favorite story of the bunch. It followed a long, incredibly-complicated nightmare on which the writer collaborated with noted s-f author Larry Niven. That episode is a story in itself. I suppose I'll tell my side of it one day. I mostly remember the story as Advanced Lettering 101. There was lots of this:In comparison the regatta story was just the right length, focused, and well-plotted. The dialogue was good and there were nice character bits. It was a joy to work on, though I didn't stay through to the end. Thomas ghosted the last two weeks after I resigned both strips in a state of exhaustion.

I was always playing catch-up on Trek. The syndicate cared more about Dallas, which made a lot more money even after losing half its original list of papers. But one weekend I stayed up extra-late to do this Sunday. It remains my favorite bit of Trek art. It was one of the few originals I kept. The others I sold cheap in a fit of depression to some art dealers pretending to be fans.

The writer and I snickered over the suggestion in panel 3 (Kirk putting on his shoes) that Kirk had slept with Vera DiMarco. It was as close to sex as anyone got at the L.A. Times Syndicate. I luxuriated in doing the Wood inking thing and devoted loving attention to Vera's clingy gown. Here's a scan of the b&w proof sheet: The color version above is from the Houston Chronicle, one of the few papers that carried the strip.

Noel Sickles and Milton Caniff--2

2011-12-26T17:17:00.000-08:00

The Great Postum Face-Off

In my last post I presented a Noel Sickles Postum ad. I mentioned having once seen an alternate version. I am grateful to Fortunato Latella for turning up a copy of that version. (In case you don't know, Fortunato curates an excellent comics blog which is always worth reading.)

Fortunato's ad is in third-page format, while mine is a half page. I had misremembered that the art in each version was completely different. In fact some panels were the same. The two make an interesting comparison.
Panel 1 of the third page is a completely different drawing from panel 1 of the half. Note that in the third page the girl sits on the passenger's side of her car. In the half page the car points the other way and she sits (more logically) behind the wheel. The dialogue in the third page panel is shorter, which is a good thing because the panel is only half as wide.The second panel of the third page telescopes into a single frame what takes the half page three panels to tell. The half boasts a lot more great artwork, but the third-page version takes the prize for economical storytelling.The next panels are the same in both formats. However the third page's panels have more art. We see more of Mr Coffee Nerves' vest and the hero's coat in the first panel. There also seems to be more "air" at the top. The next panel shows more of the house in the third than in the half, and we see all of Mr. CN's left arm, which is cropped in the half page.

The dialogue has been tweaked between versions. Some changes are so small I wonder why they bothered: "What does he advise" in the third is "What did he advise" in the half, while "If you give up flying" becomes "If you give up trying." The hero's dialogue is considerably simpler in the third page. Mr. CN's lines are the same in both versions.
The last two story panels are the same in both formats. Again they show more art in the third than in the half. In the award scene we see an extra aviator on the left side and an extra spectator on the right. The officer's dialogue differs slightly between versions. The girl's dialogue is the same, but her balloon is lettered anew in each version to fit the different panel sizes. The hero's final balloon has also been relettered between versions. In the half page the hero's picture is larger relative to the copy, pushing the final paragraph into a narrower column.

When I first saw this ad I assumed that the half-page version was the original. But comparing the versions I believe the third-page came first. I'm pretty sure panels from the third were cropped to fit the half-page layout. It makes more sense than extending the edges of smaller panels for the third.

Why would the agency draw three new panels and add extra dialogue to convert a third page to a half? Why not? It occurred to me that my assumption that the half-page was the "real" one was based on the syndicate procedure of using expendable panels to convert half page Sundays into thirds. But when this ad was produced in 1940, that process wasn't yet standard procedure. Probably after the agency finished the third page the client asked for a half-page version. The agency reformatted existing panels and added extra art and text to fill the space.

Noel Sickles and Milton Caniff

2011-12-14T16:44:00.000-08:00

A Postum Posting
This is the only tearsheet I own from the "Paul Arthur" Mr. Coffee Nerves adventures. A fine one it is! Caniff has said that "Bud" Sickles handled all the art on the CN strips except Mr. Nerves himself. That is borne out by this half-page, which features a sort of Scorchy Smith gone to the Dark Side. What love and enthusiasm Sickles put into drawing those planes and cars!Reading these old ads one wonders if 1930s women were really as materialistic as all that. Don't bother calling me until you get those wings, loser! (Nitpicker's afterthought: doesn't it look as if the balloon in panel 8 was re-lettered? A Comics Code change?)

Interestingly, in a library magazine archive I discovered a versiion of this strip (printed in black and white) with the same script but entirely different art. Still by Sickles, but a complete re-draw. Unfortunately I didn't have a portable scanner in those days. If anyone has the alternate version I'd love to see it again. Were there other similar variants?

George Wunder, Artist

2011-12-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

In Glorious WunderColor!

All my comics-reading life I've had a love-hate relationship with George Wunder. His was a nearly impossible assignment: to take over an iconic American comic strip from its superstar creator almost at the apex of its popularity, and make it his own. There were many reasons why Wunder's Terry never reached the heights of Caniff's. Some of them, like the fading interest in heroic adventure strips ,weren't Wunder's fault. Others, like his clunky stories and increasingly-idiosyncratic way of drawing people, were. Taken together, I still feel GW has gotten a raw deal from comics historians. He put a lot of skill and effort into Terry. Especially during its first decade, Wunder's Terry was a visual feast of elaborate chiaroscuro inking and ambitiously-detailed backgrounds. And there was something else, the subject of this post: beautiful Sunday page coloring.

When George Wunder took over Terry, the palette available to Sunday page colorists was still broad. Wunder made the most of it. He had a knack for making unusual color choices--greens, purples, pale yellows--which when laid over his film-noir artwork created stunning pages unlike anyone else's. The three samples I show here date from mid-1949.
Interestingly, Wunder's color schemes would have looked garish printed on quality paper. The softening and yellowing effect of newsprint contributed mightily to the beauty of the pages.

Years ago I read somewhere that Wunder's wife had colored his Sundays. This is quite possible, of course. I just haven't seen any other reference to her contribution. I did see a couple of illustrations Wunder did after retiring from Terry. I think they were for a book about military uniforms. He drew them comics-style in ink, then colored them with watercolosr. The color schemes were identical to those of the Terry Sundays. And being painted on bright white board they looked really garish. Which reminds me of something that happened to me because of my love of WunderColor--a story I'll tell some other time.

Albert Dorne, Illustrator

2011-12-09T12:25:00.000-08:00

When Art Was His Oyster

Here is the earliest signed artwork I've found by legendary illustrator Albert Dorne. It appeared in Good Housekeeping magazine in December, 1926.

Dorne, you'll remember, was born in the New York City slums and began working to support his family when still a kid. His Wikipedia entry gives a sketch of his career arc from office boy to prestigious illustrator to founder of the Famous Artists School.

We all gotta start somewhere...Dorne would have been twenty years old when he drew this ad pushing the health benefits of oysters. It's competent, certainly, but looking at it one wouldn't have suspected the heights the artist would attain. The hands--later one of Dorne's specialties--are a bit clunky. Missing overall is the spirited mixture of realistic drawing and cartoon exaggeration that filled Dorne's illustrations with action and character.

One funny thing: he already had his signature down!I always felt that Dorne, who drew many continuity-style ads, would had been a heck of a comics artist. He just would have earned a few million dollars less during his career.

P.S.: I'd be interested to hear if anyone is planning to stuff their holiday turkey with oysters this year.

Stuff I've Done--8

2011-12-04T20:02:00.000-08:00

The Need for Speed

In 1986 I was hired by an L.A. ad agency to draw four comic strips advertising an indy action film called Jake Speed. The movie was a one-man show. Wayne Crawford, not-well-known for a handful of small films like Valley Girl, Barracuda, and Night of the Comet, produced, wrote, directed and starred.

The movie was sort of Romancing the Stone in reverse. A woman seeking her kidnapped sister is aided by a man who seems to be the real-life incarnation of Jake Speed, hero of a series of paperback books. There follow lots of one-liners, high-speed chases, and explosions.

The agency came up with a month-long teaser campaign. They wrote a mini-adventure, supposedly a prequel to the movie, in the form of four daily-size comic strips. One strip would appear each week during the month preceding the film's release. On the fifth week the strip's position on the page would be filled by the regular movie ad.

I don't know what went wrong--the strips were delivered to the agency on schedule--but the first one didn't appear in the Times until two weeks before Jake Speed opened. The remaining three were run in a block the following week. Then the movie opened and, 100 minutes later, disappeared. Here are the four strips. [In the movie "Reno Melon" was the author of the Jake Speed paperbacks.] I've never seen the movie. Reviews of the time savaged it. I remember one writer noted that Wayne Crawford had "all the charisma of a can of tuna." Many remarked that the body-count was unusually high even for such a genre film. On the other hand, IMDB offers nearly two dozen reviews praising Jake Speed as an unjustly-ignored minor classic. One thing I do know: the "production values" on the strips were much higher than those of the low-budget feature...a sad truth as old as the first comic adaptation of a motion picture.

Comics Code Changes

2011-12-02T19:48:00.000-08:00

A Code Wind Bloweth
The new issue of Roy Thomas' ever-fascinating magazine Alter Ego has a lengthy article about the effects of the Comics Code on American comics. Way back when Jim Vadeboncoeur and I used to hang out and scour old comics, we frequently encountered early Code-approved stories which had obviously been extensively retouched, often with bizarre results.

The advent of the Code threw the comics industry into a tizzy. Over a period of about a year and a half, comics appeared carrying stories written and drawn before Code censorship went into effect. Publishers were forced to overhaul them to meet Code demands. Weapons disappeared from hands, balloons were clumsily relettered or even blanked out, and endings were changed in sometimes ridiculous ways.

I urge you to check AE for the full story. It goes beyond the changeover period to document the Code's evolution and eventual demise. However for my money the best period was the Great Changeover. And my all-time favorite Code change craziness (not covered in the Alter Ego article) was "Face to Face" in Charlton's This Is Suspense #24.

Charlton took over This Is Suspense from Fawcett, reprinting stories from the pre-Code Fawcett run. The first and last stories in #24 are Fawcett stories with a redrawn and re-lettered panels. "Face to Face," though, may have been a Charlton original. It was drawn by Dick Giordano, who I believe didn't work for Fawcett. At any rate, the story encapsulates the craziness of the Code Changeover in one classic page.

The set-up: crook Quentin Ajax set up his twin brother Paul to take the fall for a swindle they both worked on. Now Paul has escaped from--oops! sorry, been let out of--prison, seeking revenge. The twins argue and Paul socks Quentin:There follows the old head-hits-the-edge-of-the-table gimmick. The helpful Paul decides...hell, panels two and three speak for themselves.
I don't want to leave you hanging off that fire escape, so here's the rest of the story. Paul is elated to discover his twin was hiding a fistful of money. Unfortunately he also learns that a notorious hit man intends to shoot Quentin on sight. The gangster will surely mistake Paul for his target.Suddenly a mysterious someone comes to the door...then lets himself in. Gasp...it's none other than--
I'll never know whether editor Al Fago intended the story to end this way (a less-peculiar "send an ending" feature had appeared in a different Fago Charlton comic), or whether the Code bounced the original ending and Fago threw up his hands rather than fix it. I suspect the latter is the case because the prize offer is not lettered in the same professional hand as the story. It looks more like the same guy who invented the fire escape.

Ferenc Pinter, Illustrator

2011-11-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

Pinter, Painter

It's clear from looking at my blog that I tend to like "classical" style illustrators: lots of realistic rendering and detail. So it's a surprise even to me that I like the late Ferenc Pinter's super-minimalist, super-designy illustrations so much.

What moves me is the audacity of Pinter's postery compositions as well as his inventive color schemes. If he needed to model something realistically--a face, perhaps--he'd do it. The rest of the time he let shapes and pattern carry the story. The results were magical.Born in Liguria and trained in Hungary, Pinter (1931-2008) fled the Hungarian Revolution and settled in Milan. After a while doing advertising and poster art, he connected with Mondadori, the giant publishing house, for whom he worked more than three decades. Among his most renowned works were covers for a series of crime paperbacks and, especially, for Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret novels.I offer a smattering of his many covers. You'll find plenty more at his official website. Art dealer Claudia Salmin's Segni & Disegni seems to have had a connection with Pinter in his later years. They produced several prints by him, as well as offering some of his originals for sale. When you get to the site search "Pinter" and enjoy.

Things I Never Did--2

2011-10-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

Raiders of the Lost Art
Back when I was drawing the Dallas and Star Trek newspaper strips, my syndicate (the Los Angeles Times Syndicate) also distributed the Star Wars strip. One day word passed down that Lucasfilm had suggested the Times Syndicate produce a strip based on their "other" movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Indiana Jones' 1930s-serial adventures were my favorite kind of story. Not bothering to consider the fact that I was already drawing two daily and Sunday strips, I put together this promotional piece and routed it to Lucasfilm. I drew it on a 15x20 inch piece of heavyweight Crescent board and colored it with markers and Dr. Martin's dyes (note that the flesh colors have faded with time).That was the end of the story. The syndicate passed on the strip. Later I was told they thought selling their existing continuity strips was trouble enough. Raiders was nowhere near as big a deal as Star Wars and they figured an Indiana Jones strip wouldn't stand a chance. Nevertheless a short while later they launched a strip based on the already-passe (and quite dead) Bruce Lee. Go figure.

A year or so later Lucasfilm returned the art without comment. Some time after that I heard that John Prentice had been angling to draw the Indy strip. Guess who would have got that assignment.

Several years later I drew another Indiana Jones piece just for the hell of it. Thus ended my relationship with Mr. Jones.

Everett Raymond Kinstler, artist

2011-10-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

Master Strokes

In my scrap file, under "Pen and Ink," I found these two tear sheets of illustrations by master penman Everett Raymond Kinstler. The first is the inside front cover from an issue of Avon's Prison Break comic book.
The other is from some digest-size fantasy pulp...probably also published by Avon.Everyone knows that Kinstler left comics to become a renowned portrait painter. I'm sure the money was much better. Still it's a shame that when he started painting he stopped producing these incredible pen-and-ink drawings. The inside front covers of Avon comics were the ideal place for Kinstler to strut his stuff. Slick paper meant precise reproduction of his linework, while the montage format let him go wild with elaborately-rendered heads...
...and swirling action scenes.Looking closely at these drawings one is amazed by the apparent haste with which they were inked. The hook-shaped ends of Kinstler's strokes make them look like sketch strokes banged down at furious speed. Yet so precise is Kinstler's control that the drawings never look slapdash.Kinstler learned many of his licks from his friend and mentor, James Montgomery Flagg. To Flagg's classic turn-of-the-century penwork he added more elaborate rendering and a wild sense of drama. I offer this gallery of Kinstler IFC's from Avon comics for your enjoyment--and amazement.

ERK tackles child endangerment:
Kinstler ventures into horror-host country:
A bravura display of Kinstler's ability to build mood:A nice clinch with a dollop of history:And to wrap things up, the best drawing of Broderick Crawford ever (not a bad Barbara Hale, either).
Sidebar: Did you notice that several of these pages were lettered by Wallace Wood?

Things I Never Did--1

2011-10-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

Not Becoming a Marvel Inker

Recently my excavation of the Eternal Garage turned up more nostalgic oddities.

I moved Los Angeles in late 1976 or early 1977. Mark Evanier, leader of a cadre of fanboys who hung out together at the San Diego Comic Con, had advised me that if I wanted to draw comics professionally, I had two choices: either move to New York where the majors were located, or to Los Angeles where Disney and the animation industry were based.

I wanted to move to New York, but the prospect of moving across the continent to America's biggest city scared me shitless. I chose LA. However I did make one foray into the Big Apple. I stayed for several days with an aunt living in New Jersey. I took a train into the city to show my portfolio at Marvel and DC. It was to be my only visit to New York.

The difference between the companies was amazing. DC's lobby was an awe-inspiring piece of corporate design, with vast glass doors, expensive carpets, a cold receptionist and a huge logo on the wall. This I remember, but I don't remember much else about the meeting, not even with whom I met. I got a cordial but quick brush-off: some nice stuff here, keep drawing, move to New York.

I don't remember the Marvel lobby at all. What I recall is a nondescript hallway lined with doors. I was ushered into the office/studio of John Romita, Marvel's art director. Romita received me warmly and gave thorough yet gentle critiques of my drawings. He pulled open a drawer crammed with xeroxes of Marvel artwork. He offered me some sample pages to ink . He chose some by Marvel's tightest pencillers: covers by Jack Kirby and Gil Kane, interior pages by George Perez and George Tuska. He suggested I ink a couple on overlays and he'd evaluate them.

I'd planned my trip poorly. I visited Marvel on the next to last day of my vacation. I had no drawing equipment with me. I'd have to mail the inked pages from LA. Therein lay the biggest problem. Not many years later, working by mail became common. However at the time the majors dealt only with local artists. If I wanted to crack Marvel, Romita said, I'd have to move to New York.I sent in four covers and two interior pages. A week later I called Marvel but didn't reach Romita. A week later I failed to get through again. So I gave up. Thus ended my career as a Marvel inker.

These are the only copies I have of those sample jobs. I don't have any of the original pencils. Photocopies were expensive and the copy shop a long ways off, so I often didn't xerox stuff. Stupid. Anyway, I post these not because they're particularly good--they aren't-- but because they represent a crossroads in my life.

What if I'd been brave enough to take on NYC? Not long afterward Marvel underwent a big expansion and hired lots of new kids, some not much better than I was. I might have broken in. Surrounded by kindred souls, I might have learned the craft I never learned. I might have studied at one of New York's great art schools. I might have connected with one of the era's great teachers: Giordano, Adams, Buscema. I might have had some sort of career with the Big Guys.

On the other hand, I was a small town kid already over my head in Los Angeles. My life was in constant turmoil thanks to my undiagnosed manic-depression. I was afraid to ask favors or blow my own horn. I was shy, lonely, disorganized, and broke. Who's to say I wouldn't have been one of the thousands that New York ate alive?

By choosing LA I found a disastrous romance. Its implosion drove me to take a workshop where I met the marvelous lady to whom I've been married for nearly 30 years. Our marriage brought two fantastic kids who make me swell with pride.

It's this paradox that makes time travel stories popular. You're tantalized by good things that might have happened had you decided differently. At the same time you realize the good things in your life are the culmination of the decisions you did make, good and bad. You can only live one life at a time. So you live that one and write comics about the rest.

Lou Fine, Artist

2011-09-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

A Different Spirit
Recently the Digital Comic Museum posted a series of Spirit sections from 1945. It's a rare treat to see any Spirit sections in their original form. These are especially interesting because they represent the period when Will Eisner was in the service and The Spirit had been given over to other hands: notably, those of Lou Fine.

There's no question that the 1945 Spirit was not the "original" Spirit. Stories suffered the most as Eisner's carefully-structured scripts gave way to mundane, rather disjointed stories like this one. The art changed even more. Gone were Eisner's cartooniness and cinematic layouts (though some of the best of these lay in the future after Eisner returned from the Army). The new style was more like mainstream comic books. But though the style may have been different, it certainly wasn't bad art.

I believe this story is mostly Lou Fine's work. It offers a fascinating glimpse of the Golden Age great changing from his over-the-top superhero style to the handsomely-drawn conservative style he'd use for the rest of his career. The drawings of Soapy on page 4 could have come straight out of the ad comics he and Don Komisarow did for J. Walter Thompson in the 1950s. (Fans of Fine's ad art must check out this entry in Today's Inspiration about his collaborations with Komisarow.)

This might not be the famous "real" Spirit, but it's sure a bunch of nice drawings!

Swiping Then and Now--3

2011-08-26T18:31:00.000-07:00

Two Bites of the Same Apple

In earlier posts (this one and this one) I discussed the honored tradition of artists swiping one another's work. While digging through my scrap file for a job I stumbled across this pair of images.

The first is from a personal-hygiene ad of the late 1940s (being a clipping I've no record of the magazine or its precise date). It probably advertised either Listerine or Lifebuoy, depending upon the offending body part. The signature appears to read "Ric Kelly." I presume it was painted in greys, but there may have been a color version.The second image came from a comb-bound lithographer's sample book from the mid 1950s. I wish I'd kept the book intact rather than razor blading it! But that was decades ago...anyway, this was presented simply as an example of good color printing. There was no headline or copy, just the picture. It's signed "Jack Klay." I haven't been able to make out the date. It looks like "47" but that would place it right about the same time as the original. I suppose it could be "57."Two things immediately strike me. First, it's a remarkably close copy. The location and shapes of the folds in the jacket and blouse strongly suggest that it was traced (projected, pantographed, whatever). The second thing is that Klay's painting of the faces, which differ somewhat from the originals, suggests he was skilled enough not to need to copy someone else's work. What was the story?

Stuff I've Done--7

2011-08-23T16:19:00.000-07:00

Going Gaga

The following link will take you to a Lady Gaga video: You and I

If you've followed this blog at all you're probably wondering, "Why the hell is he linking to a Lady Gaga video?" The answer is one of the more unusual freelance gigs I've had: I drew storyboards for the video, working with director Laurieann Gibson.

A few weeks ago I got a phone call from a guy for whom I'd done some website drawings. My son had interned for an entertainment company in which this fellow had been a partner. He told me an old friend of his was desperate for an experienced storyboard artist who could start NOW. I said I was available. To my amazement, within a couple of hours I was signed up to spend the next day drawing boards for the new Gaga video. Networking takes you the strangest places!

I put in a delightful day's work at the director's new home in Encino. Laurieann was in the middle of moving to LA from Canada, and the furnishings were mainly moving boxes. I set up on the dining room table and began cranking. Laruieann Gibson is an energetic woman with an amazing resume (check out her Wikipedia entry) and was great fun to work with. In fact I haven't had so thoroughly enjoyable a day's work in many years. Icing on the cake was getting to meet not only Laurieann's team members but also her mom, sisters, niece, and dogs.

Unfortunately I did not meet Lady G. herself. We were putting the boards together at the last minute, and Gaga was already in Nebraska preparing for the shoot. I hope sometime to have that pleasure.

Strange Moments in Comics

2011-07-29T20:12:00.001-07:00

When Good Objects Turn Human

Last week I found this cartoon plea from a yogurt carton on a box at the grocery store where I work.

It set me thinking about the human's love for anthropomorphizing animals and objects. It also started me reflecting upon some of the weird things that have been anthropomorphized. Obviously, any creature with arms and/or legs can eventually be turned into a human-like character. Inanimate objects present a greater challenge. Over the years advertisers--ever the standard bearers of anthropomorphic objects--have met that challenge with mixed results.
Perhaps the strangest humanized object I've encountered in comics is an anthropomorphized milking machine.
Here are the cover and three pages from "Johnny Surge," a booklet from 1947. I wonder just who the advertiser thought would read this? The subject and the "we know we're kidding you" tone of the cover blurb suggest an adult audience, specifically the dairyman they hoped would buy the milker. But somehow I can't picture a self-respecting dairyman being caught dead reading a storybook about a cutesy milking machine.

Maybe they thought the the farmer's kids would read it and propagandize the Old Man. "Shame on you, Daddy, you're hurting our cows with evil milking machines!" This was not only a strange character, but a strange book.

All the same, milking machines weren't the oddest anthropomorphized object. Unquestionably the least likely--yet somehow endearing--humanized object was...who else?

Technique talk--6

2011-07-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Packing It All In

Each of us who's ever done a commercial art job has met the client who wants absolutely everything in the commissioned piece.

He usually starts small--"I want this guy standing at the edge of a cliff with the moon behind him." Suddenly he thinks of some must-have addition. "And wait, in the background there's this house, right? With a light on in a window on the top floor." After that it snowballs. "Then over here, a car is driving up, fast, and a thug is jumping out. He's waving his gun. And what if we have a woman running out of the house shouting at the thug..." And so on.

This cover from Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay has all the earmarks of that kind of job. Its layers of complexity are amazing. A scantily dressed woman in a nightgown shows some leg as she holds an oil lantern and looks from an upper-floor window at a guy with an Elvis hairdo digging an immense hole in the yard (if that's a grave, it's for a square giant). Reflected in a mirror next to her we see an old guy in a robe (Her husband? Her sugar daddy?) opening the door behind her. He's either surprised or angry. The woman is doing some emoting of her own. Note both her upset expression and the patented Charles Biro Shake Lines around her body. Lots of narrative detail, but I find the story it tells confusing rather than intriguing. I'd bet most of the 5,000,000 readers looked at it and said, "Huh?"

The artist sure earned his twenty-five bucks drawing this cover.* He didn't shrink from his task. He strove manfully to fit everything in and still get a decent composition. He came close, but there remains an annoying hole at the lower right that even Charles Biro's enormous signature doesn't fill. The viewer can't help noticing all the loving interior detail: specific rather than generic furniture, doilies on the chair arms, decorative frills on the vase and the mirror frame, titles indicated on all the books, and even a ceramic doggie on the top shelf. I can't figure the cover out but I rather admire it.
--------------
*Charles Biro signed this cover, of course, but I've read in several places that he seldom if ever drew any of the CDNP covers bearing his signature.

Stuff I've Done--6

2011-07-22T23:08:00.000-07:00

Past Jammin'

In the deep recesses of the Darkest Garage I came across this bit of nostalgia.

During my early years in Los Angeles I lived in a rundown apartment building called The Golden Palm. Those were among the best years of my life. The building was packed with Art Center students, novice illustrators, up-and-coming photographers, and comic artists. My neighbors and/or roommates included Jim (James) Gurney, Tom (Thomas) Kinkade, Paul (Paul) Chadwick, Bryn Barnard, Laurie Newell, Alan Munro, a bunch of sometimes-entertaining drunks, a fat landlady with a collection of clown paintings, a paranoid woman who believed men in helicopters stole food from her fridge when she was away, and oh, so many more.

For several years after going our separate ways the GP Gang stayed in touch by mail. We traded cassette tapes, photos, drawings, and such. Eventually time, families, growing careers, and chance broke up the club.

I still run across artifacts of those days. This image is one of them: a mail-order art jam. I apologize for the poor quality of the image. This is a scan of a color photocopy given to each of the participants after the original returned to its maker.
I believe Bryn Barnard started the jam with a Space Parrot floating against a blank blue background. I don't remember the order in which the next images were added. The distorted face was painted by Jim Gurney, the spacedog was contributed by his wife Jeanette, and the fellow in the robe was done by Paul Chadwick. Tom Kinkade did the landscape at the bottom. I was the last on the list. I couldn't figure out what to add so I finally framed the entire image with a monitor and installed a 1930's space babe in the foreground.

I know Jim and Tom painted their bits in oil; I believe Bryn used acrylic. Paul's figure is painted in the gouache style he was using at the time, but I don't know for sure which medium he or Jeanette used. I painted mine in casein. The original was about 8 inches square on a piece of heavy illustration board.

God, I loved those old GP Jams!

Dino Battaglia

2011-07-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

Death and the Gambler

"Death and the Gambler" is one of my favorite short stories illustrated by Dino Battaglia, a giant of Italian comic art. It appeared in Corriere dei Piccoli in the late 1960s, and was the first of a series of short-story adaptations Battaglia illustrated. Battagtlia's unique style, with scratchboard textures cloaking his lovingly-detailed world in mist, perfectly complements Prosper Merimee's enjoyable fable set in a world in which the old pagan gods coexist with Catholic Christianity. I love the story as much as I do the art.

By the way, this series also offered Battaglia the opportunity to show his very personal and very effective color technique. I scanned these pages from tearsheets of the original CdP printing. After experimentation I decided not to attempt to "whiten the pages" because all my efforts spoiled Battaglia's color. So here it is yellowed pages and all.

Just in case you wonder as I did the first time I read the story, the bearded guy on the second page is Saint Peter.

What I like about the story is that Federigo, not a bad man at heart, manages to live both the good life and the good afterlife. He's one of those merry tricksters you read about in analyses of myths...not many people can con the Big Man himself!

I don't know if Merimee was first to use the Death-up-a-tree gimmick, but the idea's reappeared several times since. For example in the 1939 movie On Borrowed Time, Lionel Barrymore traps Death in the backyard apple tree using the same subterfuge Federigo uses.

Secret Origina!

2011-06-30T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Truly Secret Origin of The Watcher!

Old school Marvel fans are well acquainted with THE WATCHER, that well-intentioned alien observer who can't seem to keep from meddling in the affairs of earthlings. Uatu, as he was later christened, first appeared in Fantastic Four #13 (April 1963), when the superhero team was on the moon, battling a ghostly Commie and his team of intelligent apes. [Even in those days it was a hard premise to swallow.]

How many of you know that Uatu wasn't the first big bald guy in a hospital gown to go by the name of Watcher and set humanity straight? In fact, three years earlier (May, 1960), the original Watcher, Codin by name, made his first and only appearance. As you'll see, this Watcher wasn't sworn to non-interference. On the contrary, the Watcher band was formed specifically to meddle in the affairs of everyone in the universe. Their mission was to prevent the discovery of the "Forbidden Formula," a liquid which, if mixed, would cause "the entire galaxy [to] EXPLODE!"

The stuff must have been easy to make, because Watchers headed off the deadly manufacture "eighty times a day" all over the galaxy. That's what I call job security.

Anyway, from issue 18 of Charlton's Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds here's the only adventure of the original Watcher, told in just five awkwardly written and indifferently drawn pages. I believe the penciller is Lou Morales. Obviously the inker is Vince Colletta.

By the way, I sincerely doubt Stan Lee was cribbing ideas from Charlton comics in 1960. This was surely another of those strange coincidences that happen from time to time in a high-volume industry like comics.

Swiping Then and Now--2

2011-06-17T22:38:00.000-07:00

Swiping Revitalized--uh, I mean, Revisited.

On the heels of my last post I offer this advice. It is obviously not meant to be taken seriously (It pains me to have to say this, but nature knows no thinner skins than righteous Internetters.) Aimed at American comic artists, clearly. Not bad advice, though.

Handy Handbook for More Effective Comic Book Swiping
by S. R. Chasm

Swipe from old stuff. The older the better. Most swipists crib the stuff they liked last week or last year. However fans' knowledge of artists seldom goes back more than a decade. Swipe Frank Miller, you're found out. Swipe Al Avison and only the scholars will catch you. Note: 2008 isn't "old."
Swipe from alternate genres. Dan Adkins had a good idea: in his comics work he swiped from science-fiction magazine artists; in his s-f work he swiped from comics. At the time there was little crossover between readerships. Be careful, though...
Don't swipe where everyone else looks. This changes with the culture. Today it's unwise to nab stuff from celebrity shots, porn (this used to be a safe source), movie stills less than 20-30 years old, and mainstream magazines or websites. Lift a photo from a gay porn mag and you'll be nailed in a heartbeat. You're less likely to be called if you swipe a photo from a farm implement trade newspaper.
Utilize foreign sources. This is still a good idea, though given the reach of the Internet it's not as safe than it used to be. American fans remain ignorant of most foreign comics. Look how long it took Giffen's love of Jose Munoz to be acknowledged! There are plenty of foreign comics artists, especially from the 50s and 60s, who were great and are still unknown. Not many eyes will catch a swipe from Hans Kresse! Careful, though: Italian Bonelli comics used to be a great source of swipes, but today lots of those guys work for the US market. Gotcha!
Learn to Draw Better. Just kidding.

Swiping Then and Now

2011-06-17T19:53:00.001-07:00

Swiping: What Does It all Mean?
(and who cares?)

The Internet is the spot for pots calling kettles black, so who am I not to join in?

At right, a cover by Bill Black. Can't identify the original artist from the small pic. Maneely?

When I was a fanboy, denouncing swiping was all the rage. I eagerly joined the attack upon Dan Adkins (who it must be admitted raised the concept to a new high). Then a couple of years later when trying to land an art job--any art job--I included a swiped piece in my pathetic portfolio. One AD obviously smelled a rat. Was it because the swipe was the best piece in the book? At any rate he asked what I reference I used. Caught by surprise I babbled vague nonsense that would have been useful only to a politician. My red face gave me away anyhow. I suspect the AD let me go without further ado because he figured I'd learned my lesson.

This recent cover by David Mack was pulled after a Previews appearance when the swipe was outed

A couple more years passed. I found myself the pasteup artist (remember pasteup artists?) at Learning magazine. The art director was Mike Shenon, a talented designer. I loved Mike and learned volumes from him, but I'm telling no stories out of school to say he could show, er, fits of temper. I saw the Shenon temper explode one day when a young art school grad presented an illustration portfolio that I thought was terrific.Jim Starlin (r) does Esteban Maroto. I swiped this from somebody's site (appropriately enough). Don't remember who...if he kicks I'll remove it.

Mike greeted the guy politely and flipped the first page. But on the second page his face darkened. On the third he pointed at the piece and cried, "This is a steal from Joe Bowler!" [The actual artist I no longer recall, but Bowler is from the right period.] Mike flipped a few more pages, getting angrier with each piece. "And this is Coby Whitmore! And Austin Briggs! What the fuck!?" In the 1960s, despite the hippies, "fuck" was an uncommon word in the office. But the quaking artist had unknowingly delivered the ultimate insult.

"THESE ARE ALL AL PARKER!!!" You see Mike was a passionate fan of Parker--and a good friend of Parker--and the guy who later helped mount retrospectives of Parker's life's work.

Mike slammed the portfolio shut and threw it back at the artist. "Get the hell out of here!" he stormed. "How dare you come in here..." and dissolved into an awful tirade. The artist didn't say a word. He retreated up the stairs as quickly as he could without actually running. Mike needed the rest of the day to calm down.

The real Al Parker. 1946 gouache illustration found at Sam Fox School

But this event wasn't the last word on the subject. In comic books, swiping was common and professionals generally didn't think much about it. As most of you know, Wallace Wood made a joke of it with his famous motto "Don't draw it if you can swipe it, don't swipe it if you can trace it..." etc.

Then there's the matter of drawing from "reference." Artists almost always draw more accurately from photographic (or live, if you can afford it) models. Even more so if he projects a photograph and traces it. Swiping, in a sense, is working from reference. Especially if you're not the best of draughtsmen. Your superhero drawing is better because you "referred" to a drawing by somebody who did it better.

Why do artists swipe? Common reasons seem to be (a) inability to draw the swiped subject; (b) fear that one couldn't draw the subject without swiping it; (c) real or perceived lack of time to do preparatory work for a particular drawing. Most of my swiping arose from (a) and (b). But I did plenty of (c), too. Drawing has always been difficult, especially superhero drawing. Faced with a deadline, an often-erased fight scene, and a stack of Gil Kane comics, the better and quicker result came with the swipe.

The third reason probably informed Wood's swiping. He obviously could draw anything he wanted to, but his studio was constantly cranking out a lot of stuff. "Fast" always trumps "original." But swiping can also become a habit. Before you even sketch out a job, you haul out your scrap. I remember one issue of Daredevil Wood drew in which DD, tied to a vertical post, escaped by shinnying up the post. He did this in a panel swiped from a 1934 Terry and the Pirates panel. Now really...did it actually take less time to fish out an obscure tearsheet to copy than it would have taken Wood simply to draw the scene? Me, maybe. But Wood?

Which brings me in a circle back to the thought that prompted this entry. I have run across some newspaper strip work by one Paul Pinson. In the early 1940s he was among the procession of artists who drew Dan Dunn. I don't think Pinson's work was very good (though it wasn't swiped!).
Googling for information on Pinson, I ran across a site with this interesting piece: an 1947 ad from the New York Art Director's Club Annual for Paul Pinson's humorous illustration.Problem is, here's an illustration by Keith Ward's work for Knopf's edition of Reynard the Fox, published just two years earlier.One of two words describes taking an ad in the Holy Book of American Illustration which exhibits a swipe of a recent--and critically acclaimed--drawing: "chutzpah" or "stupidity."

Here's an ad Pinson put in the Annual in 1952. Is it all his work?That's the ultimate downside of swiping, I guess. Once you are identified as a swipist, you could do the best original drawing of your life and everyone will wonder where you swiped it from.

Steve Ditko, comic artist

2011-06-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

A Brush with the Ditko Brush

Here's a nice early Ditko strip from Charlton's Crime and Justice 18 (April-May 1954). I stumbled across it while researching the title at the Digital Comic Museum, an Internet blessing for comics fans. It's an episode from a series about two radio-car cops. This is the only entry in the series drawn by Ditko.

Most of Ditko's stylistic traits are in place. He's inking with a heavier brush than he used later, and I find the results delightful. Many people have mentioned Jerry Robinson's influence on Ditko. It's visible here, especially in the faces (both men shared a liking for big noses). I haven't seen it discussed much, but I believe early-middle-period Joe Kubert (about the time he was doing "Chuck Chandler" for Gleason) also influenced Ditko, especially in posing.

Ditko does a nifty turn with his brush in this strip. Check out the suggestions of architectural shadows in this detail:
Even in1954 Ditko's visual world was stuck in the early 1930s.

Back from the Dead Again

2011-06-16T18:09:00.000-07:00

Where the hell have I been?

For the last ten weeks I've been taking a digital Environment Design class at Gnomon School of Visual Effects. I've been spending all my free time doing homework for the class. I've let both my blog and my DeviantArt accounts lapse. It's worth it if it means another step toward freedom from life as a bl**dy grocery clerk.

Today however I have a day off--thanks to the flu! So there will be a post today...

Stuff I've Done--5

2011-03-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

A Generalist Saves the Specialists

A while back I praised Joe Horne's The Specialists, a forgotten gem from the early days of MTV's Liquid Television. Thanks to a tip from Mr. Bloody Mojo, I found that the entire series has been posted to YouTube. The first episode is here. Seeing the show again after all these years was a treat. It's funny how Joe Horne's designs, a radical departure in their day, look mainstream now--though still better than a lot of the stuff out there!

I'd almost forgotten that the ninth episode of The Specialists featured my one and only appearance as a cartoon voice actor! It happened this way. Joe was assembling episode 9 when he discovered missing dialogue. The actor playing Granfaloon, the millionaire with the missing poodle, never recorded his line welcoming Fifi home. It's easy to see how the line was missed, because after his introduction in episode 1 Granfaloon didn't reappear until the end of the story.

Anyway, Joe burst into the studio in a frenzy. The original Granfaloon was unavailable and Joe needed someone NOW to pick up the line. I happened to be sitting there and Joe said, "Ron! You'll do it!" He whisked me over to the recording studio and stood me in front of a microphone.

I'm not a voice actor, nor for that matter an actor of any sort. For the next half hour I stood there and sweated, repeating the line over and over while Joe pulled his hair out. Finally he got something he could use. Of course my voice didn't sound anything like the original actor. But that didn't worry Joe. He figured no one would remember what Granfaloon sounded like anyway. So in episode 9 when you hear, "Fifi! You're back!" etc., that's me. Once the artwork came back from the animators, Joe presented me with a thank-you gift: a cel of Granfaloon holding Fifi. It was a nice way to mark the end of my acting career.

Space Conquerors!

2011-03-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

A Fine Day in Space

When I was a kid I was a Boy Scout. I had a subscription to Boy's Life, a large-format monthly filled with short stories, fact articles, lots of ads for guns and...a comics section!

Naturally this was my favorite part of the magazine. The section ran full- and half-page color comics, their subject matter divided amongst fact, humor and adventure. I later learned these strips were produced by Johnstone and Cushing, the legendary comic art studio. At the time I was reading Boy's Life the section's roster included "The Tracy Twins," "True Stories of Scouts in Action," "Tono of the Longhouse People," biblical and historical one-shots, and my favorite, an s-f series called "Space Conquerors."
From my garage/midden I've recovered the handful of tearsheets I clipped from the magazine in the early 1960s. For years they'd been my only mementos of the series. Three cheers for the Internet! While googling in preparation for this post I discovered a complete index of the series with links to every episode in Google Books' run of Boy's Life!
I learned that the feature began in 1952 and went through several reboots as well as periods during which it simply presented astronomical facts. The story I'm posting turns out to have been the first episode of one of those reboots. It introduces three nameless astronauts exploring space in the first faster-than-light spaceship. Early episodes were rather tame, but later the series became a wild and woolly space opera. Not that the stories were very good: half a page per month made for sketchy plots and no characterization. It didn't help that the writer (presumably Al Stenzel) occasionally changed plans in mid-story.
This 1962-1963 episode was drawn by Lou Fine in his most generic style. Art on the strip was generally good. Fine had replaced George Evans, who had replaced the second of two guys I don't recognize. Fine drew several stories, then Alden McWilliams took over for a long run. After a surprise appearance by Gray Morrow, Fine returned. This time his art was more elaborate, though in some strips he seems to have been inked by another hand. Fine died in 1971, so the art variations may have been related to illness.According to Planettom, the series ended in 1972. However I swear that years later...maybe the mid-1980s?...I came across a copy of Boy's Life, now thinner and in a smaller format, and found an episode of "Space Conquerors" drawn by Ernesto Colon. Did I dream this? Does anyone know about post-1970s Boy's Life comics? Several later "Space Conquerors" originals are out there. Here's a nice 1964 page from Stephen Donnelly's collection. From near the end of the strip's run comes this one from 1971 which belongs to Alan Crouse. Both are by Fine.

George Evans—Artist

2011-03-10T23:24:00.000-08:00

Lost “Interview” with George Evans

While sifting through the endless piles of crap in my garage/midden I rediscovered something I never thought I'd see again: one of the two letters sent to me in 1974 by one of my favorite comics artists, George Evans.

Evans was one of those artists who spent a lifetime producing beautiful work, yet was always under-appreciated—mostly because his quiet style seemed dull in the light of flashier contemporaries like Wallace Wood and Al Williamson. Evans started drawing in the 1940s; drew comics for famous publishers like Fiction House, EC, Fawcett, and Dell; and ghosted George Wunder's daily Terry and the Pirates for decades before inheriting Secret Agent Corrigan from Al Williamson.

In the 1970s I was out of college and trying (unsuccessfully) to assemble an article about movie and television tie-in comics, particularly those published by Dell in the 1950s and 1960s. I wrote three men who'd worked on them: Alex Toth, George Evans, and Frank Thorne. All three responded kindly—and at length—to my questions. Evans was the most pleasant surprise of all. His letters were long, friendly, and chatty, providing loads of background information. The Toth and Thorne letters are long gone. Fortunately the surviving Evans letter contains much information about his varied career.

Following are excerpts from his letter of April 8, 1974. I've inserted italicized comments explaining my original questions. I hope genuine comics historians will find something to help them in their research.

First I asked Evans about how he became involved with Dell and how he went about adapting movies to comics.

Initially I did some stuff for Western which was an affiliate of Dell, or at least they worked together, though with separate editorial offices and people. At Classics [Illustrated] near the end their editor was Leonard Cole, who went on to Dell and asked me to go with him.

Panels from Oliver Twist, a Classics Illustrated issue Evans

drew with Reed Crandall

The first movie-related stuff I did was When Worlds Collide for Fawcett. Then the TV-related Captain Video. On WWC they just gave me a slew of stills, some of which I still have. I'd read the book and saw the movie, so with the stills, stayed close to what had been done. At Dell, they got stills, too; sometimes sheet after sheet of photo-size stop-action stuff, which is what they gave me for Tales of Terror. But they let me just interpret it loosely along the movie line, so I hammed up some of the stuff—and it was well received, so I guess if you have fun doing something, it helps communicate.

A page from one of the short stories in Dell's

Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Terror (1962)

I asked whether he had begun to work with George Wunder at the time he was doing Twilight Zone, having noticed what I thought was Wunder influence in his work. He turned out to have started even earlier.

At Tales of Terror I had just begun to work with Wunder, through a quasi-agent named John Lehti; also, he was a cartoonist, and he abetted the inking of the last story there. And he was the one supposed to do Ivanhoe, but bogged down, so it was a botched and butchered patch-up job. I can't even recall which parts I did. I think he'd done bits everywhere that he had swipes for, or that fitted his abilities, and I hacked to a boring finish.

I asked him about his collaborations with Reed Crandall, which enlivened many a Classics Illustrated as well as Twilight Zone stories.

Reed and I held over from Classics. Reed had gone back to Kansas to help look after his mother. I special-air-mailed rough layouts to him; he put them in inking shape and zipped them back. We were pretty fast as a team, so somehow made our deadlines. Mail was faster then...and far more reliable, and much cheaper, too.

This page from an unidentified Twilight Zone story

was penciled by Crandall and inked by Evans;
both men were at the top of their form.

One time though he threw me a curve. I had penciled for him to ink, but he turned it over to a Frank Borth. And Borth simply inked what he felt like of the pictures, and erased what he'd left un-inked. I spent a lot of time putting it all back together myself. It was the semi-humor story to a Twilight Zone, and Reed had wanted a vacation—and Borth was a humor-cartoonist he thought he could trust.

I believe this story from Twilight Zone #4 (1962) was the one Borth worked on. Many of the character faces appear to have been touched by someone else. An interesting sidelight: half the final page was dropped to accommodate an advertisement. It wasn't until a reprint several years later that the page appeared in its original form.

I asked Evans if he could drop any names of editors or writers. Alex Toth had suggested Kim Aadmot wrote for The Frogmen, so I asked about him as well.

I worked through Len Cole, as noted. If others edited or whatever I never met them. In fact, Len lived at the edge of N. Y. City and would bring the stuff out so I could avoid the hassle of going in and wasting the extra time. Two names only come back to me as writers: Leo Cheney (think that's spelled right) who did the Twilight Zones and much s-f stuff. And Don Siegel (Sei-gel?) did The Frogmen. Don't know if he's the Don Seigel who is now a reputable name in movie making. Don't know Kim Aadmot. If he wrote Frogmen, it was after my time.

I was a great fan of the early Frogmen comic. I was puzzled about why the book's concept changed completely between issues: in the beginning the two heroes had families and kids and ran a skin-diving shop in the Northeast. At the time Evans left the book the families suddenly vanished without a trace and the heroes became globe-trotting adventurers.

Why did they change that? I have no idea. Maybe Mike Sekowsky just told them he wasn't drawing whole tribes of people. He seems to have a lot of clout in the business, and many friends, so it's a possibility [Actually Sekowsky took over after single issues drawn by Don Heck and Alex Toth]. Me—I get involved with the people I draw, and really thought of those two families as neighbors. Crandall helped me on the first couple—or the first, for sure.

This page from The Frogmen's first issue (O.S. 1258, 1962)
clearly shows Reed Crandall's pencils. The kids belong to the
two heroes' families, as discussed above.

I had been trying to identify the inker on the first Brain Boy and wondered if it had been Evans (I cringe to admit this).

No, I never inked anything of Gil Kane's, though he once phoned to ask me to do same. That's not my idea of things. Half-an-artist or less! I'd rather be a bad one on my own! Didn't do any writing on Frogmen, but sometimes Len and I talked about them, and sometimes in a story a faux-pas would turn up that I'd pick up and he and Siegel would smooth them out. Yes, Frank Frazetta helped me on a few pages of Frogmen, and quite a lot on the last Twilight Zone. He had just parted company with Al Capp, for whom he'd penciled the Sunday Li'l Abner for years. One of Capp's people had had a stroke, and out of a clear sky he ordered Frank to drop everything, move up to Boston and go full-time as a Capp ghost. Fortunately, Frank had the guts to say no—though he knew it was an instant cut-off, and he had a new house, a young family...He scraped by with his comics work while painting up the samples that launched his painting career. I'd turn green with envy watching the facile way he swept in color...

From The Frogmen #2 (1962) comes this knockout
example of Frank Frazetta lending his special touch
to the inking.

From Toth and Thorne I'd heard interesting stories about restrictions on likenesses and other contractual nonsense. I asked Evans about his experiences.

I don't know about all the technical and contract details, but of course they had to negotiate regarding copyrights. Use of stars' likenesses was probably covered in the stars' contracts with the studios. Probably they got nothing extra, in the same way Laurel and Hardy got not a cent extra as they became the most popular comics on TV.

It was possible to have at least some of the films run at private showings. Not bang-bang; but when a group of somehow-involved people (cartoonists, advertisers, critics, etc.) could be assembled. I saw the Hercules stuff that way. Became a big man in my older daughter's eyes when I magnanimously took her with me—and she gloated about it around the neighborhood kids! Other stories they sometimes got the entire storyboard from the film company's art department. I saw the storyboards for 20,000 Leagues etc. or some undersea story. On charcoal paper with litho pencil. Loose but very handsome. I was surprised they weren't in color. Wonder if there was another in color—as for color movies you'd think there'd have to be planned color composition.

Stills were given but so far as I know, didn't have to be followed, though doing so made easier work. Likenesses were never questioned, at least to me. And since I saw many books that simply used the assigned artist's “standard” faces, with only a slight bow to actual actors, I guess no one cared. Maybe they preferred that. How could the stars make trouble if they weren't used?

From O.S. #1328, The Underwater City (1961). Not the best page
from the book, but chosen because George Evans invited himself
along on the government's inspection tour of the undersea installation.
That's him in the green suit in panels 3 and 5.

I asked about his adaptation of a minor film, The Underwater City. This comic was another personal favorite.

I did Underwater City on my own, completely. Did enjoy it, though afterwards felt I missed the likeness to the hero, Wm—who? [Lundigan]. So far as I ever knew, it had no connection with my doing Frogmen, but then it might well have in the editorial rooms. I don't do any diving, but I am spectator-interested, and among the neighbors some of the athletic types dive, and we quacked a lot about it; and of course equipment was available for reference. The shore is only nine miles off here, and there's a lot of surfing and diving. Was, anyway, when I needed reference. It's getting polluted, too—so maybe it'll be kaput, too. But lotsa boats of all kinds, all the scenery. And many completely fruitless fishing expeditions with friends on various boats all went into Frogmen.

A beautiful page from The Frogmen #3 (1962).

Did he like doing movie comics any better than other books?

Depended on the story. I always yearned to do things like the James Bond stuff—or the “Flynn” ones [I think he was referring to Our Man Flint]. But one editor told me the girls I drew were not slutty enough for that sort of thing. Don't know whether that was praise or criticism.

Have had discussions on comics related to movies or TV characters. Including with Wunder. It's a really tough question. Takeoffs on one-shots possibly have a place—but then I think the story should sort of take-off from the movie story, just as movie versions often veer away from successful novels on which they're based. To just re-tell the same story—especially using the same stills as basic pictures—would seem dull. That's why I tried to ham it up, or make it a little more expansive. Adaptations of successful series characters to series comics would seem to me too much maturation—and bad for both. Any failure on the part of either turns the money-oriented producers sour. And yet I do think some comics should have continued around series characters even though the TV thing failed. Or was slaughtered. Star Trek as a perfect example.

It's not a movie book, but to wrap things up I couldn't resist
adding this page from Evans' Classics Illustrated retelling of an urban legend
about a ghostly hitchhiker.

I think the best idea for comics is to originate stories that go beyond where movie or TV stories go. I don't mean that in the curent sex and/or slaughter stuff, for I don't see how you can go any farther with either! But as an example, the funny story that was always included in the Twilight Zone. Nothing was too ridiculous, as long as it could be drawn, where making props for the TV version would've been too expensive, and too phony.

Dell was good to me, though as said back yonder I dealt only with Len Cole. I was much closer to the affiliated Gold Key, and really liked the group of people up there. I hope that was mutual. In fact, I must say that among the comics publishers I have worked for I've found very good people. I understand that was not so in all companies. I was lucky—and I was a little bit choosy, too; and, of course, friends in the business—artists, writers—steered me to the good people. People like that are good friends.

*****

Just reading his letters you knew George Evans was a nice guy. Everyone I've seen quoted who knew him confirms that fact.

In closing let me point out that he seems to have got the Dell/Gold Key thing slightly muddled. The Hercules book he mentions and the Twilight Zone one-shots were published by Dell Comics when it was still connected with Western Printing. However Frogmen and the Tales of Terror adaptation was done after Dell and Western had parted company. As I understand it, it was during this period that Leonard (L. B.) Cole was editor. The non-Western Dell continued the numbered One Shot series for a while but soon switched to releasing tie-ins as unnumbered issues.

There seem to have been two distinct periods of non-Western Dell. The first (the Cole period?) is known for off-beat series like Brain Boy, Space Man, and Kona. Most still featured painted covers. Frank Springer, Paul Parker, Gerald McCann, Jack Sparling, and Sam Glanzman were among the artists.

At a certain point the line changed again: painted covers were replaced by line drawings, ongoing series were canceled, sometimes after a couple of reprinted issues; and writing and art teams changed. Some earlier artists like Springer and Sparling continued with the new Dell, but the new crew featured many names familiar to Charlton readers: Sal Trapani, Tony Tallarico (with Bill Fraccio), Dick Giordano, the Vince Colletta studio, Steve Ditko, and writer Joe Gill. During this period Dell experimented with new series like Nukla, Super Heroes, and Flying Saucers. Most died after three or four issues. I speculate that the change was due to a change in editorship from L. B. Cole to D(onald). J. Arneson. At least it was Arneson who signed a reply to my letter of comment regarding Nukla. But that's a subject for another time.

Lives of the Artists

2011-02-18T19:18:00.000-08:00

Mad Painter's Scandalous Escapades Revealed in Court Docs!

Those interested in misbehaving geniuses mustn't miss this article on the BBC website.

I've always liked Caravaggio's work, and was intrigued by his rotten reputation. It's amazing to think that police records like these have survived hundreds of years! Lindsay Lohan's will vanish in a few years when our digital media erodes.

I was disappointed to hear Caravaggio died in a hospital. I preferred the tale (knowing it was too good to be true) that he'd died of a heart attack while running down the beach, screaming at a boat that was taking his possessions away. A fitting way for such a hothead to cash in.

Frank Follmer's Naughty Disney

2011-02-17T21:40:00.001-08:00

The Mystery of the Disney Orgy

This post is really a comment about a post on Joakim Gunnarson's blog, Sekvenkonst. My comment was so lengthy that I thought I'd waste my own storage space rather than fill his. Unless you read Joakim's post and its comments, this won't make much sense. So please put down your pencils and read them now. I'll be here when you return.

Welcome back. As you see, the question is whether former Disney artist Frank Follmer was the original source of Wallace Wood's infamous "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" which appeared in the underground publication The Realist in 1967. An online dealer has put a large stock of Follmer's dirty drawings up for sale, accompanied by a glowing biography suggesting the artist was a seminal contributor to Snow White and deserved a place in the pantheon shared by Disney's "Nine Old Men."

Who Was Frank?
Some Googling turned up a handful of credits for Follmer, mostly as an effects animator in cartoons and shorts. So Follmer existed and did indeed work for Disney in the 1940s. So far, so good. Several collectors on the "Comic Art Fans" display vintage Follmer pencil drawings like this "storyboard drawing from Snow White:" I have no reason to doubt their authenticity, but three things puzzle me. First, these drawings aren't in the Disney archives. The company is famous for holding on to their production drawings. Second, each collector's comments about Follmer are nearly identical. This suggests that the drawings were all bought from the same source (the hagiograpy-writing art dealer?), which prevents cross-checking. Finally, as Joakim points out, the artist doesn't draw very well.

Now, not everyone needed to be a top-notch draughtsman to work at Disney. But check out the Disney historical books. The company's board artists were very good indeed. After all, the studio was at the top of its game. It attracted the best talent. So I'm struck by the poor perspective and lifeless drawing in the storyboard panel. Consider also this sheet, offered by a different online vendor:
These are copies from vintage model sheets we've seen before. They're better than I could do, but they wouldn't have rated very highly at 1940 Disney.

What does this suggest? That Follmer was a minor Disney artist who liked to draw the studio's characters, but wasn't nearly as important as the dealer advertises.

Dating the Dirties
On to the main question: Did Follmer originate the Disneyland Memorial Orgy? You've already seen several of Follmer's versions of the scene on Joakim's site. For analytical purposes we'll use the black-and-white one, the only one with a date.
The legend reads: "The boys in the animation department--1955." Obviously Follmer liked the theme of this piece, because he created endless variations. I presume this is not his earliest version. In a 2009 post on the Realist site a contributor calling himself "John Collector" wrote:

"Few people know that Frank Follmer was the original artist[of the orgy]. Wally Wood recreated the original for the Realist #74 [in 1967] one month after Walt Disney passed away. Paul Krassner owns the copyrights and often claims he inspired the work, but I have several original versions of this piece purchased directly from Follmer in the 1950s on Disney studio paper dated 1940."

There's no reason to doubt the gist of the story, but the dates are tricky. John Collector says the original versions dated from 1940 and he purchased them "in the 1950s." If we accept Follmer's date on the black-and-white piece, 1955, then John Collector bought the drawings between 1955-1959. This and several other drawings feature Sleeping Beauty's Castle, landmark feature of Disneyland theme park, which opened in 1955. Presumably all Follmer drawings with that castle were made after 1955. Moving back in time, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan were made in 1951 and 1953 respectively. No versions including those characters could pre-date 1951. By the same token, Bambi appeared in 1942 and Dumbo in 1941; any versions with those characters were created post-1942.

Sorting everything out, it appears that Follmer produced the Disney orgies now on sale in the late 1950s. This doesn't preclude the possibility that he did do a version in 1940. It just means that such a version isn't among the current lot.

Ours Is But to Wonder Why
Why did Follmer do so many of these things? If the original had been simply a prank to amuse his fellow artists, Follmer probably would have drawn a copy or two for friends, but that's all. Maybe he planned to sell them. If so, he didn't do very well considering how many he had left to sell to John Collector. Was he simply obsessed with Disney characters fucking? After all, some fan artists are. If so, why didn't Follmer invent new poses for the participants instead of using the same ones over and over, flopping one occasionally? We may never know.

Finally, why would Follmer misrepresent the dates of his work? Many minor old-timers have told fans stories to make themselves seem more important than they were. Follmer might have been one. Or he may not have misrepresented the dates at all. He could have been vague about dates and John Collector, like many dealers, filled in the details from his imagination.

Did Woody Do It?
I began this ramble intending to find that Follmer had copied his orgies from Wood's Realist drawing. I've changed my mind. Wood drew his poster in 1967, so all Follmer's work would have to come after that date, and all John Collector's information would have been lies. A gut feeling tells me JC was gullible, but not an outright liar. He wouldn't stand to lose much by admitting that Follmer drew his orgies in 1956. That was still a decade before the Realist drawing. He had no need to fabricate an elaborate backstory dating to the 1940s.

On the other hand it's easy to imagine counter-culture publisher Paul Krassner stumbling across a copy of this underground masterpiece and viewing it as an anonymous cultural artifact like the "What Me Worry" kid. He hires Wood to clean it up (in the artistic sense only). Krassner could easily believe he "inspired" the work because he was the one who found it and introduced it to the Age of Aquarius.

That's All, FFolkes...
How close is my analysis to the truth? I'm just another fanboy...we won't know until old-timers who knew Follmer weigh in to either confirm or refute the dealer's version of the story.

Stuff I've Done--4

2011-02-16T20:22:00.000-08:00

Evaporated Liquid

A long, long, time ago in a world far, far away, it was 1992. I was working with a small TV animation studio. Word came that MTV, then the outermost molecule of the cutting edge, was seeking short animated series for its hip new anthology, Liquid Television. Everyone in the studio, even me, was invited to bring their ideas to a pitch meeting.

Even back then "hip" was not what I was. If I'd been any less hip I'd have needed replacement surgery. So I decided just to be myself. I prepared two boards to present my personal mixture of art deco, obscure reference, and word play. My series was to be called Flab of Fury, Sword of Doom. It was set in a city called Decotropolis, which name I think has since been used by someone else.It's easy to tell the age of the proposal by its references: those were the days of Lone Wolf and Cub and a dog called "Spuds" who starred in Miller Light Beer ads. Mexican wrestling was still a niche genre, almost unknown outside Los Angeles.I liked my idea, naturally, but it definitely wasn't what MTV was looking for. However our company did place a series on Liquid Television: Joe Horne's The Specialists. Joe is one of the many unsung talents of TV animation. He's still in the business--he has directed dozens of series from Disney's Teamo Supremo to Boondocks--but few people remember The Specialists and its equally brilliant MTV forerunner Stevie and Zoya. We had no idea what our competition would be, but we were all confident that The Specialists would be a smash. It was clever, it was hip, it was loaded with cultural references, and at the time its visual style was absolutely unique.

Which goes to show how wrong you can be. The Specialists got barely a nod. The MTV audience doted instead upon an animated comic-book fantasy called Aeon Flux. You may have heard of it. But there was one short that even the hippest of us thought was the ugliest, stupidest, and most worthless of all the Liquid Television contenders. This was a one-shot called "Frog Football," and it introduced two characters named Beavis and Butt-Head.

Chinese Revolutionary Painters

2011-02-15T16:19:00.000-08:00

The Paint is Red

Years ago a friend gave me a monograph about one of the State painters of Mao Tse Tung's China. Over time the poorly-produced booklet fell apart. All I have left are the color pages from the center. It's just as well, because (regrettably) I don't read Chinese. It goes without saying that I have no idea of this guy's identity or biography.

His work is typical of the "social realist" painting which flourished under China's Communist government. Intended as propaganda vehicles, these works celebrated good-looking men and women involved in labor and national service. The paintings appeared in books or as inspirational posters in factories and schools.

There seem to have been three broad styles of Chinese revolutionary art: a flat-colored approach which seems to owe much to classical Chinese art and block printing; dynamic black-and-white pictures which resemble mid-20th century Western magazine illustrations; and full-dress oil paintings stylistically rooted in conservative European art of the late 19th century.

It's interesting to see a work-in-progress demo of one of the artist's oils. The approach is solidly academic: a fairly complete charcoal drawing, a wash-in using sepia tones, then opaque color worked over the underpainting.(The finished painting is the image at the top of this post)

Also interesting is the way that the subject's face changes from drawing to finish. In the drawing he's a typical good-looking Chinese man. During his transformation into a hero the model's face loses most of its ethnic traits. I've been puzzled by this before. Many Chinese revolutionary painters seemed to employ an idealized "revolutionary hero" face which didn't look very Chinese.

In the following landscapes the artist treats a factory scene, a traditional landscape, and a river view with a pleasant Impressionistic style.

Here are a lively head study and a sketch of a plaster cast (nice reflected light):These two heads may be details from larger works:Finally come three propaganda works. The picture of the miners caught my eye. In the handful of books I've seen reproducing Chinese revolutionary art appear dozens of paintings glorifying noble (and unusually clean) coal miners. It's kind of creepy in light of the many Chinese mine disasters over the years.Thus does another anonymous illustrator enter the blogosphere. If someone out there knows his name, or can translate the captions, I'd love to hear from you!

Advertising Comics, 1940

2011-01-26T17:50:00.000-08:00

Comics Go Legit, Sorta

In an earlier post I presented some comic-strip-style ads that found their way into the New York Art Director's Club 1939 Annual of Advertising Art. In this installment I offer the three strips that appeared in the 1940 edition.

In those bygone days three kinds of comic-like strips appeared in American magazines and newspapers. The Art Director's Club lumped all three into one category, "continuities." In my blogs I limit "continuities" to the most common sequential ad form: a series of photos or drawings illustrating a story told in typeset captions beneath the pictures. These continuities tended to be illustrated by "classy" illustrators like Albert Dorne, Jon Whitcomb, and James Williamson. The second category, the least common, told the story comic style with balloons and captions, but used photos instead of drawings. The third group was the standard comic we know and love, drawn either by noted cartoonists or by anonymous specialists.

In the hallowed halls of the Art Director's Club, all three types received short shrift. In the Annuals a magazine illustration was often reproduced on a full page. Comics were crammed three to a page at the back of the section. Nonetheless, given the books' high-quality printing, it's possible to extract viewable copies. Of the three 1940 entries the halftoned Wizard of Oz strip suffers the most.

Note the blank spots in the Pep and Oz strips. This suggests they were reproduced either from originals or from early proofs taken before type and stock cuts were added.

This full-page ad introducting Wizard of Oz was drawn by Joe King. In my earlier post you'll find speculation about King, who may have been an eccentric painter--or just someone with the same name. I'd love to see this strip in print. This tiny (3-1/4 by 3-3/4 inches) repro looks really good. I get the impression that in the finished product there may have been typeset captions beneath the panels.Next is an outing with The Captain and the Kids (or was it the Katzenjammer Kids?) credited to Rudolph Dirks. Advertising agency Kenyon & Eckhardt, Inc. produced it for Kellogg's All- Bran cereal. If you read the copy you'll find All-Bran is promoted as a laxative.Finally an energetic geezer named J. Fuller Pep teaches a bunch of kids the glories of Kellogg's Pep cereal. I don't know if J. Fuller was a continuing character. I've never seen another strip featuring him.Another Kenyon & Eckhardt project, the Pep half-page originated at the Johnstone & Cushing comic art studio. These Annuals are useful because sometimes they reveal the names of unsigned commercial artists. Not this time. Only the studio receives an art credit. Has anyone ever seen it in print?

Family of Love Promo Comic

2011-01-25T20:34:00.000-08:00

Spiritual Love Goes Physical

In the early 1980s I found this exceedingly odd comic-style pamphlet on the ground at a street fair. I will read anything in comics format (even Jack Chick comics!), so I studied this strange mingling of soft-core porn and Christian proselytizing with increasing disbelief. The comic came from the Family of Love, a cult which began in the 1960s as the famous (one might say notorious) Children of God.

The history of the Family, which continues today as The Family International, may be found in this Wikipedia article. Suffice it to say that the cult was started by one David Berg (who was not working for Mad magazine). Its members lived communally, studied Scripture, and apparently enjoyed considerable sexual liberty.

In 1974, Berg (aka "Father David") conceived a proselytizing tool for the new age, "flirty fishing." Female Family members were encouraged to find love-starved males through escort services and share God's love with them physically. By chance many of these liaisons involved money passing from saved to savior; this point led to later accusations that the Family ran a prostitution ring. Read the details in the Wiki article.

It's interesting to note that the Family shared a trait with many other sexualized cults through the years. Some old guy, touched by God, suddenly found himself surrounded by available young (allegedly sometimes very young) women. Given my advancing years, I've concluded this might be a good time for me to consider starting my own cult.

"Is Love Against the Law" justifies and promotes flirty fishing without naming it. Perhaps the Family figured men would read the comic, then join the cult in hopes of finding busty girls taking notes while wearing transparent shirts. The 8-page strip was offset-printed on both sides of a 6-1/2 by 11-1/2 inch sheet of paper. The paper was folded into four segments in an arcane manner that made it easy to read the story out of sequence. Art was credited to "Zebulon Geppetto." The only reference I found to ZG on Google was in the Family's archived correspondence. Someone had chastized him for illustrating a "false" story criticizing Berg and the cult. ZG credited the cover layout to a co-worker, "Eman Artist."

All things considered the artwork is pretty good for an amateur comic. It surely beats the clunky stuff in Jack Chick mini-comics. But Jack Chick would consider the Family allies of the Devil, and the Devil always seems to get the best artists.

Another NEA Obscurity

2011-01-08T18:56:00.000-08:00

Nature's Wonder Book

When looking after my mother in Washington, I had a few spare moments to browse an antique mart. There I found this interesting little book, "Nature's Wonder Book," which consists of panels reprinted from a nature feature syndicated by NEA. The copyright date is 1928-29 and the artist is William Ferguson.

From Lambiek I learned that Ferguson made a career of nature-oddity strips like "The Great Outdoor World" and "This Curious World." His last work was in the 1960s. I speculate that the feature reprinted here was "Mother Nature's Curio Shop," which Lambiek says ran with NEA from 1928 to 1931.

Ferguson's art is quite good and his humorous vignettes are drawn in a pleasant style.

The oddest thing about the book are the redundant captions above each page. Some make lame jokes about the content of the panel while others merely repeat the information. My theory is that when assembling the book NEA used a standard paper size and felt a need to fill the empty space at the top of each page.

Jack Leynnwood--Illustrator

2010-12-28T17:54:00.000-08:00

My Favorite Jack Leynnwood Stories

Those of you who know who Jack Leynnwood was...or more fortunate yet, those who had Jack as a teacher--know that he was not only a major force in 20th-century illustration, but also a great teacher and a genuine "character." For the uninitiated, let me just say Jack was responsible for hundreds of illustrations, mostly "hardware" based, for everything from plastic model kits to movie posters. If you ever drooled over those fantastic Revell plane and ship boxtop paintings--that was Jack.
Though Jack left a permanent imprint on my life, I didn't know him well. I only had one unforgettable class with him. I leave it to another, his student and long time friend, Michael Boss, to give Jack and his career the full treatment they deserve. Don't miss it.
I was fortunate to take Jack Leynwood's marker-comp class at Art Center College of Design. Jack had been teaching at Art Center for a long time. The school began as a commercial art college in downtown Los Angeles. By the time I blew into town--the late 1970s--it had moved into spacious new quarters in the Pasadena hills. The new school had plenty of seats to fill. From a small, fiercely competitive illustration school, Art Center expanded to include photography, industrial design, and fine art. During the years I roomed with full-time Art Center students I heard many tales of practical old-timers butting heads with the new "artsy" teachers.
Jack was one of the old-timers. He wore the badge with pride. Short, feisty, and bursting with energy, Jack reacted to critics of his "old-time" methods by giving them more of the same and then some. He knew he was too good and too tough to be "eased out" like other oldsters had been. So he made a point of tweaking artistic noses at every opportunity.

Jack protested loudly that he was only in the field for the money. Some facts bear this out. He never saved originals ("Aaaah, I didn't need 'em."). He filled his spare time with his "true" loves (horses, flying, music, collecting Jaguar cars). But Jack's zeal to do the best possible work and his dedication to teaching his students to do the same... these suggest that his tough-guy routine was at least partly an act. And Jack had acting in him. One of the delights of having a class with Jack is that he always gave great theater.
Jack was short and wiry. He looked like an ex-bantamweight boxer, which someone told me he had been. Whether lecturing or conversing, he spoke with a rat-a-tat cadence that reminded one of classic James Cagney. He liked to tell stories. Friends who know me have heard these stories a thousand times, but I offer them to the rest of you give you a tiny hint of Jack's style.

Hardly a class went by without Jack reminding us he wasn't teaching Art. "This is illustration," he'd say, "this isn't Art." One memorable evening a student's comment set him off. He rattled off his reply in a single breath, talking so fast it sounded like a single word.

"We're not talking Art here! I do Illustration, I don't do Art! You wanna do Art, you wanna go to Otis [a rival art school] and sit in the lotus position and throw bananas at the canvas and call it Art, go on! Go right ahead! I'll be laughin' all the way ta the bank! Laughin' all the way ta the bank!"

Jack had been in World War II. After the war he had used the GI Bill to pay for art school. That was the beginning of his illustration career. Once he reminisced about one of his first jobs. "It was for a nudist magazine, you know? I was an airbrush artist. A photo retoucher. Now back in those days there were things you couldn't show in a magazine, you know. If you sent 'em through the mail you could get thrown in jail. That's what they hired me for. They'd give me a stack of photos of naked people and I'd airbrush 'em out. That's how I spent every day, day in and day out--airbrushin' 'em out, airbrushin' em out.

"Then one day the boss comes in and he says, 'Hey, Jack! The postal regulations have changed! We can show that stuff now!'

"'Oh, God,' I says, 'That means I'm out of a job.'

"'No, you're not!" the boss says. 'Make 'em bigger, Jack! Make 'em bigger!'"
Jack's attitudes of decorum were old-fashioned as well. If a class were all men, he was one of the boys, boisterous and raunchy (though always in an old-school way. Jack was neither a heavy-duty cusser nor a dirty talker). Let a woman join the class and Jack became a perfect gentleman, soft-spoken and deferential. He wouldn't dream of speaking to a girl as openly as he would to a guy.

One of my classmates was a quiet, attractive Korean girl. Stereotypically demure, she didn't talk much and giggled self-consciously when she did. One night Jack had brought in a nude male model so we could practice idealizing the figure. Jack wandered around the room critiquing us. He stopped by the Korean girl and nodded.

"That's pretty good, that's pretty good," he said, "but you've got the legs too short. The illustration figure is usually divided in half at the--" he made a vague gesture in the direction of the model--"at the, uh, the package."

The girl looked blankly up at Jack.

"The...package?"

"Yeah, uh, you know, the upper body and the lower body are about the same length in an llustration figure, and the dividing line is, uh, the package." None of us had ever seen Jack sweat. We were loving this.

"But what do you mean, the package?" the girl asked, still confused.

This time Jack made some very vague motions about his own midsection. "The, the package, you know...the middle of the--"

"Oh!" The girl's eyes lit up and she exclaimed at the top of her lungs,. "I get it! You mean his COCK!"

Jack turned ten shades of red and for once was speechless. "Uh, yeah, yeah," he mumbled, "yeah, that's it."
Jack was famous not only for the quality of his paintings, but the speed with which he painted them. Once I did a storyboard for a movie-poster agency. A gorgeous little gouache on the wall caught my eye. It depicted an aircraft carrier at sea. I immediately recognized it as Jack's work. The art director told me Jack had done the painting for a presentation (I think it was for The Philadelphia Experiment, but I no longer remember). The art director liked it so much he asked Jack if he could keep it and Jack of course said yes. The a.d. told me a great story.

Jack had painted the finished poster art for Airport '77. In the movie a jetliner crashes and sinks to the bottom of the sea. The poster showed the airplane balanced at the lip of an underwater crevasse. The client loved the painting, but suggested that Jack add more rocks and rubble around the nose to emphasize the force with which the plane had hit the ground. Jack agreed and took the painting home to retouch.

First thing next morning Jack was back with the corrected painting. The client went off delighted. But the art director was puzzled, for he'd noticed several other small details had changed too. He took Jack aside. "Jack," he said, "that isn't the same painting you brought in yesterday, is it?"

"Naah," Jack shrugged. "Puttin' that stuff in was too much trouble. I just painted the thing over."

That's Jack Leynnwood in a nutshell.

GE Giveaway Comics

2010-11-24T16:20:00.000-08:00

Adventures in Antiquity

Those of you who don't know goldenagecomics.co.uk ought to check it out. This site archives hundreds of rare old comics from a galaxy of publishers. One collection includes several of the giveaway comics released by General Electric during the 1950s.

These 16-page, cover-free comics feature Johnny, a red-sweatered high-school boy, and Ed, a business-suited know-it-all who never stops smiling. In each comic Ed takes Johnny to some place where they'll find lots of General Electric products and explains the related technology. One issue deals with the history of jet power, another the story of television, and so on. We learn during the course of the series that GE is a kindly, selfless benefactor responsible for inventing and/or developing almost all the life-simplifying technologies of the modern world.

I used to own most of these comics, but they went in the Great Collection Sale some 20 years ago. Finding them at goldenagecomics.co.uk allowed me to revisit the series and see if the art was as good as I remembered. Some of the GE books stuck in my mind as quite well drawn. In later years I doubted those memories, because the art was credited to George Roussos, who (as George Bell) had unimpressed the hell out of me inking early Marvels.

Thanks to Ger Apeldoorn and other bloggers, I've learned that early Roussos work was actually pretty good. Ger has questioned the common assumption that Roussos did most of his old comics work teamed with Mort Meskin. The GE comic I reprint here supports Ger's theory. The art certainly looks like Roussos, despite the faces on the main characters (which have a weird Lou Cameron vibe, but that's probably coincidence). The middle-aged men, a Roussos specialty, have his look. So does the drapery inking. I see no Meskin here, however.

Be that as it may, if this is George, it's one of the finest and most painstaking jobs he ever did. Good figure drawing is surpassed by even better background work, and the sheer effort he put into some of these pages (check out page 9) is impressive. Despite the fact that most of the story is walk-and-talk, this is an exciting old-school art job.

This comic, "Adventures in Electricity," is identified as "number seven" and bears a 1950 copyright date.

Who Drew the Green Hornet?

2010-08-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

He Hunts the Biggest of All Game...Artist ID's!

Recently I found an online reprint of Dell's Green Hornet one-shot (Four-Color #496) from 1953. Behind a really nice cover is a really nice art job by someone I don't recognize.

[Is the Hornet kneeing that guy in the nuts in panel 4?]

I found only one guess online after a lot of Googling: Frank Thorne. This seems very possible. I'm unsure because the only other Thorne art I have from the period are the two Perry Mason Sundays I posted some time ago. These were drawn the previous year. The Mason strips are sketchier and stylistically more Raymondian. Of course Thorne may have used a more finished style on the Hornet. He also may have chosen not to emulate Raymond outside of Perry. Perry Mason was a King Features strip, after all, and Thorne's editors might have instructed him to follow Raymond.Whoever the artist was did a fine job on this book. For one thing he put research and effort into his locations:
He also avoided generic posing and character design. For example his version of reporter Mike Axford is a real individual:
One source noted that the two stories in the comic bore the same titles as episodes of the Green Hornet radio show. The commentator hadn't seen the comic but speculated the stories were adaptations of the radio scripts. After reading the stories I'm convinced he was correct. The pacing and dialogue are just like the radio play's. In addition the comic book writer (I believe it's Paul S. Newman and I don't think I'm mistaken) maintained the radio drama technique of having characters constantly call each other by name so the listener can keep track of who's talking. This "tagged" dialogue sounds kind of strange in a comic book.

Anyone know which artist is behind the Green Hornet's mask?

San Diego ComicCon 2010--2

2010-08-10T18:41:00.000-07:00

Girls! Guns! G-Strings!
As I mentioned in my last post, one's skull would have to be numb indeed to miss the central theme informing a majority of ComicCon's displays: sexualized violence.

Years ago, in the days when panting fanboys were creating the concept of "good girl art," their quest was for scantier clothing and poky nipples. As the Market's inexorable drive for profit eroded the media's creaky self-regulatory machinery, we got what we wanted and then some: acres of flesh, scandalous action poses, and button-popping bosoms big enough to float the Titanic. Even then the groundwork was being laid for the next evolutionary phase. The mainstreaming of bondage fetishism and the rise of slasher movies helped cement the new role of newly-naked comic book women as sexy torture victims.

Of course the image of the beautiful, terrorized victim is as old as our patriarchal society. What's different today is its intensity and pervasiveness. At first one might imagine that the more recent wave of images of sexy women as perpetrators of violence emerged to balance out the powerlessness of the earlier sexy victims. Really it's just a variation on the same theme. They may pack guns the size of Volkswagens, but these busty amazons wear the same wire micro-bikinis, strike the same sweaty wide-legged poses, and twist their mouths in the same screams of pain. They still get raped, beaten, shot and flayed in page after lovingly-rendered page. The main difference is that after the abuse they carve their abuser's entrails out.

I can't buy the idea that this is all okay. The official line, supported both by leftist free speech advocates and rightist believers in unregulated markets, is that this fetishized misogyny is harmless. The mayhem is imaginary. People can tell fantasy from reality. Those who indulge in these fantasies achieve catharsis as well as orgasms. They would never carry their fantasies over into the real world.

My problem is this. Teachers have known for years that repetition and immersion change attitudes as well as increase knowledge. Propogandists have known for generations that endlessly repeating the same lie alters a target group's beliefs. With repetition and immersion cults brainwash members into doing everything from panhandling to killing themselves. Most significantly, advertisers have over a century of proof that repetition and immersion can make consumers lay out vast amounts of money on the stupidest products for the most irrational reasons.

Yet somehow this rule doesn't apply when it comes to the linking of sex with violence against women. Men don't become more physically and emotionally aggressive toward women. They don't become more tolerant of violence in general, or more inclined to abuse in their personal relationships. It's all harmless fantasy!

If someone can explain to me how that works I'd be much obliged.

San Diego ComicCon 2010--1

2010-07-31T16:57:00.000-07:00

Then and Now
So I survived a one-day trip to the San Diego ComicCon. I rather expected to be bummed out, as happened previously. Instead I had a great time. The reason? I reconnected with two old friends and coworkers I hadn't seen in nearly 15 years. One was Stefan Martiniere, genius illustrator and computer-game art director; the other Ricardo Delgado, ace of screen, print and fossil records. It was such a pleasure talking with them that I felt elated the rest of the day.

I had half-hoped I'd run into fellow bloggers like Joakim Gunnarson. Having made no advance plans and given that the convention center didn't do paging, I didn't stumble into any of them. At least I finally got to meet Don Rosa. "I've admired your work for years." "Thanks. And you're...who?"

I first attended the Con back when it was at the El Cortez Hotel. Its attendees were 99% fanboys. Today, as everyone knows, the Con's a cross between a trade show and an advertising spectacular. All the big media companies roll out their latest and biggest products in hopes of sparking positive word-of-mouth. All the little companies try hard to look like big companies. And everybody wants to sell you something. It's mind-boggling: books, clothes, weapons, statuettes, posters, prints, DVD's, and on and on. At ComicCon you'll see more ways to present violent images of nearly-naked, huge-breasted women than you imagined existed.

It's both ironic and sad that the Dealers--once the mainstays of comics-related enterprise--have been relegated to a tiny ghetto at one extremity of the hall. One still finds long cardboard boxes full of bagged comics (much more expensive than they used to be, of course!), but now selling used comics is a quaint sideline. ComicCon today is about comic book characters, to be sure, but not about comic books themselves. Other livelier media have overtaken them.

Other livelier marketers have overtaken the dealers, too. The really desirable old comics are hermetically sealed in plastic crypts which treble their value but make them difficult to read. Prices on primo original art have risen so high that I can't even feel sorry about being unable to afford them (e.g. paperback cover art for $30,000). Above everything towers Heritage Auctions, whose huge display included priceless Golden Age comics and an enormous (real) safe.

I was surprised there weren't more full-out geeks. There were plenty of shoppers, but the number of hardcore decked-out costumed sword-toting fanatics was small. This may have been due to the convention's recent policy of selling all tickets in advance. No more spur-of-the-moment "Hey, let's put on our Star Wars shirts and stand in line for three hours to get into the Con!" Advance buyers tend to be older, more organized, more goal-oriented, and more affluent than your typical middle-school geek. Still there were enough underclad lovelies wandering around to make it worth cleaning my glasses (not too underclad, though; the convention has rules about that sort of thing).

Amidst the din of the media promoting games, movies, comics, and web series, anyone with half a brain could hardly miss the theme informing most of them: sexualized violence. If you'd taken away the images of bloodthirsty seminude women holding huge weapons and those of terrified seminude women being tortured or butchered, the entire Con would have fit into the local Denny's. But more of this in another post.

When I'd had enough Con, I wandered around downtown. San Diego is a visually delicious city. Many of its oldest buildings were saved from development (mostly thanks to the town's reputation as a shabby Navy port) until people appreciated them again. A neighborhood of nineteenth-century structures has been sanitized under the name "The Gaslight District." Like most Old Towns the district is filled with restaurants, bars, and upscale boutiques. A wine bar seems to occupy every other corner. Conspicuously absent were the drunken sailors. In fact, during an entire afternoon's stroll I didn't spot a single uniformed Navy man, drunk or sober. I don't know where the sailors party these days, but it sure isn't in the Gaslight District. Most of the patrons of the sidewalk bars were young, hip-looking men and women with expensive watches and television wardrobes. They probably live in the many condos filling the area's old office buildings.

But old San Diego wasn't far away. You could still turn a corner and catch a faceful of the aroma of sewage, beer and urine. A block beyond the Gaslight District's border, homeless men idled in front of hollow-eyed office buildings that had thus far resisted gentrification. Here were the dollar stores, the (sleazy, non-hip) tattoo parlors, and the mini-marts. The all-night cheapie theaters, though, are all gone. Like the waves on the nearby ocean, affluence in San Diego ebbs and flows.

Next: Girls, Gore, and G-Strings!

Going South

2010-07-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

It's Ho, Boys, Ho, to San Dieg-e-o
Barring a last-minute change of circumstances (or heart) I'll be going to the San Diego Comic Con this weekend. The plan is to be there Saturday.

What the hell will I be doing there? I dunno. I have nothing to offer...at least I can hope to meet one or two European bloggers who may attend. See you there. Maybe.

A Sight Unseeen--6

2010-06-25T18:19:00.000-07:00

The Comic Section That Never Was--Over and Over Again

I've been digging through my garage looking for this item for months. Finally my labors have borne fruit.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd done comic-style artwork for an episode of the TV series Remington Steele. One of the props in that show was a fake newspaper comic section. Remington and Laura are fans of "The Blaster", an adventure strip supposedly produced by curmudgeonly cartoonist Raymond Kelly, but actually ghosted by his murderous assistant, Arte Wayne. Among the art I produced was a Sunday episode (in black and white) which presented the show's opening action in comic form.

The Sunday episode art was inserted into a mockup comic section that the post-production house had lying around. The post house was the Howard Anderson Company, a legendary post-production and effects company that has been around since 1927. It goes without saying this mockup had been around a l-o-o-o-ng time...no one remembered just how long. Whenever a client needed a phony comics section, Anderson stuck new art into an empty space on the mockup and ran off a new four-page "edition."

I'm not sure exactly how they did this. These were the days before large-format copiers and computer printers. They either had an old-fashioned letterpress unit or an offset printer which they fired up for these special occasions. The copy I have doesn't have the "indentations" characteristic of letterpress printing, so I'm voting for offset. It had to have been a big machine: the fake paper is the same size as a full-sized American newspaper spread.

I was fortunate to get a spare copy of the Remington Steele edition. I present it here for two reasons: first, to give everyone a look at this comic oddity; and second, to invite you Golden Era art-hawks to tell me who drew the other features. I'm sure there are some interesting stories buried here.

Here's page one:

The first strip, "Our Street," has a 1950s UPA look to it. The strip isn't very slick and like several other features has no story. To me this implies it was made specially for the section and not taken from some cartoonist's back stock of unsold strips. Bill Carter is surely an alias.

The second strip, "Casey the Cop" by Wally Bullock (another alias?), seems amateurish to me. Or is it just "stylized"?

The third strip, "Donny and Dolly Dewlap" could conceivably have been someone's unsold strip. It delivers a gag rather than being open-ended like the last two. 'Ted Baker' is too generic to take seriously.

The fourth feature, which has no title, is drawn in a capable early-1930s adventure style reminiscent of "Tailspin Tommy". The signature is interesting: 'Jan Grippe' is unusual enough to be a real name. Google turned up two references to a 1950 movie producer with this name, but I couldn't find the pages. Then there was a Jan Grippo (b. 1906) who co-produced the Monogram "Bowery Boys" movies. The sig could be "Grippo." Maybe he started out as an artist and tried to sell a daily adventure.

The last strip, "Captain Smith", is drawn in a competent 1940s semi-realistic style...except for the main character, who is Dick Tracy under another name. Though the episode has a beginning and an end, it doesn't seem like an unsold daily. "K. Lentz" means nothing to me. IMDB didn't have any Lentzes that made sense, and the name was too vague to make a meaningful Google search. The lettering on this strip is the most professional of the bunch; it has almost a Ben Oda look to it.

And now page two:

"Uncle George" by 'Max Morgan' (surely a fake name) could be from almost any time. My guess is 1950s. The art isn't exactly bad, but it ain't great either.

"A Day at the Fair" by 'Todd' is completely unlike any other strip in this potpourri. Whoever this guy is (the signature 'Michael Kent' sounds unlikely), he must have trained as a 1930s animator. Both character design and drawing style point that way. It's a damned nice job, too.

Look who's here! "Toby" is by none other than animator extraordinaire T. Hee (real name Alex Campbell). He signed his own name and got a byline. Among his many employers was UPA (early 1950s). Given the style of "Our Street", could there be a UPA connection to this paper? Or am I grasping at straws?

"Marty" by 'Herb Klynn' appears to have been drawn by a cartoony artist drawing straighter than usual. Something about it says late-1940s to me (could it be Marty's resemblance to the Bardahl man?).

"Snips and Runty" seems to be the top row of a real (unsold) Sunday page, although the signature is probably phony. Unlike most of the strips here, the lettering appears to be professional.

"The Rovers" intrigues me. Based on both the cartooning style and the heroine's dress and hair, I'd swear this was an unsold strip from the late 20s or very early 1930s. Its pacing suggests it's part of a longer story, and its subject brings to mind all those "Joe Palooka"-style strips. Google drew a blank on 'Leo Courey'.

Page three has a couple of features I know something about:

"Gerry" is likely the work of Gerry Woolery of Playhouse Pictures, the animation studio which contracted with the Steele team to supply art for the show. It was probably done on the spot to fill the hole to the left of "Sylvia Trace."

"Sylvia Trace" is, of course, two retouched "Dallas" dailies over which I lettered new dialogue. This was from my latter days on the project, when the late Thomas Warkentin was brought on as inker. You don't need a very keen eye to recognize J. R., Pam, Bobby, and Miss Ellie under those mustaches and glasses. Gerry agreed to my leaving Thomas' and my names on the strip, since Playhouse Pictures got screen credit for the Steele art, not me.

"The Blaster" is the fake Sunday I drew. Of course I signed it 'Raymond Kelly', but using my own signature style. Some friends who saw the episode thought I'd actually signed my own name to the art.

"Dinky" seems to be signed 'Ade'. It appears to be newer than most of these strips. It has that light, casual style that started in the 60s and continues to this day.

The fourth page of the mockup merely repeats the strips on page two. Now listen up, art spotters and strip historians. Who drew these strips? When? Why? Has anyone out there seen this comic section in other TV shows or movies? Get to work! And thanks.

Sostig the Pirate

2010-06-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

It's Time-Wrecking Time!

Recently I've been re-reading my replica collection of early Albi d'Oro issues. Albi d'Oro was a post-WWII Italian comic book from Mondadori, reprinting features which had first appeared before the war in Mondadori's weekly children's papers. I especially enjoyed issue #199, “Sostig Il Pirata” (“Sostig the Pirate”), which originated in the late 1930s.

I don't know if Ray Bradbury's “The Sound of Thunder” was the first time-travel story to warn of the perils of changing history, but it certainly left its mark upon the genre. Ever since its publication, one hasn't been able to write about time traveling without considering unintended future consequences of things chrononauts do while in the past. Not so “Sostig the Pirate.” Its heroes violate time travel laws with the gleeful abandon of city folk out to teach the rubes a thing or two. The story's audacious disregard for anything but fun makes it an enjoyable romp, a relief from the earnestness of much time-travel literature.

“Sostig the Pirate” was part of an ongoing series called I Conquistatori del Tempo (The Conquerors of Time), scripted by Federico Pedrocchi and drawn by Giovanni Scolari, who had earlier collaborated with Pedrocchi on the legendary space opera Saturno Contro la Terra (Saturn vs. the Earth). “Sostig” is a self-contained sub-story within a larger arc called “Il Fiume del Fuoco” (“The River of Fire”), the second story arc in the Conquistatori saga.

In the first story arc, Professor Everton had invented a means of traveling through time. He enlisted hunky adventurer Trevor to lead an expedition into the past. The professor, his daughter Daly (Trevor's love interest), and a couple of fellow scientists survived a harrowing series of adventures in various eras before returning to the present. Now the professor finds himself a bit short of cash. Ever-resourceful Trevor offers a neat solution:

Of course Trevor forbids Daly to go with him, and of course Daly stows away and goes with him anyway. But more of this in a moment. Since he'll be facing bloodthirsty pirates, Trevor wants to be sure he has the stronger hand. So on his trip into the past he'll be taking along a fully-armed torpedo boat!

Not long after jumping back to pirate days, Trevor discovers that Daly has invited herself along on the voyage. Surprise!

But although Trevor briefly turns into Flash Gordon when he welcomes Daly, this girl is about as far as you can get from the classic Dale Arden clinging vine. She's one tough cookie, a real scrapper, always ready--no, eager--to man the guns alongside the boys. She's also something of a hothead, as we'll see in a moment. But first, the chrononauts rescue a dying ship's captain who was set adrift in a dory after Sostig, a vicious pirate, slaughtered his crew. Before his exile the captain had heard Sostig planning his next attack, plundering a merchant vessel called the Mary-Joan..

The chrononauts have a mission. Their torpedo boat steams full speed ahead, reaching the Mary-Joan just as she's battling three of Sostig's ships. Our heroes flex their muscles and give the pirates a taste of 20th-century steel.

Sostig himself escapes. The time travelers raise their phony sails and head for Maracaibo, “the pearl of the Spanish empire.” Trevor and Daly go ashore to snoop around. They discover a proclamation from the local viceroy offering a 200,000 ducat bounty on Sostig. The loss of the reward irks Trevor. The pair decide to visit a local pub to dig for information. Trevor cautions Daly to avoid trouble, but she laughs him off: “I'm not worried! I was the Olympic women's fencing champion!”

Good thing, too. No sooner have the two seated themselves at “La Posada del Buen Retiro” than a brunette swordswoman greets them and makes eyes at Trevor. In time-honored Dale Arden tradition, the Green-Eyed Dragon immediately bites Daly. But like I said, Daly's something of a hothead:

A brawl erupts and the police arrive to break it up. A one-armed stranger helps Daly and Trevor escape the melee, but eventually they're caught and hauled before the law.

Another donnybrook ensues. The chrononauts and their new ally grab the post commander for a shield and fight their way to the upper floor. They find temporary respite behind a barred door. After gagging and tying the commander, they seek a rear exit. But when Trevor enters one room, he discovers a lovely woman--and gets another surprise.

A rather long flashback fills us in. Pedro, the one-armed man, had been a respected young officer in Maracaibo. Isobel was his beloved. Unknown to Pedro, the post commander also desired Isobel. He appointed Pedro to guard a shipload of pearls bound for Spain. Pedro protested that the course ordered by the commander ran straight through pirate territory. The commander demanded that Pedro obey orders, though he agreed to Pedro's insistence that the orders be put in writing. It turned out that the commander and the viceroy had plotted with Sostig to attack the ship, steal the pearls, and kill Pedro. Sostig would split the proceeds from the pearls with the treacherous pair, and the commander would have Isobel all to himself.

However it didn't quite work out that way. Sostig double-crossed them and kept all the loot. Though the pirate thought he'd killed Pedro, the young officer narrowly escaped death. Pedro lost an arm, but while on Sostig's ship he'd memorized a map showing the location of the pirate's treasure island.

The chrononauts quickly find Sostig's hoard, including the stolen pearls and Pedro's written orders. How about the rest of the treasure? “Of course the pearls are yours, Pedro, so you can complete your mission. As for the rest, we'll return whatever we can return. What's left over we'll divide between us.” Want to bet how much of the fortune was returnable?

Though Trevor's financial woes are at an end, Sostig is still at large. It's time to make him pay. The torpedo boat soon catches up with the renegade. Its deck guns blow Sostig's masts away. Then Daly and Trevor's machine guns feed the pirate crew hot lead until they agree to turn over their captain.

Sostig is gone, but there remains the matter of the traitorous viceroy and post commander back in Maracaibo. Anchoring beyond the range of the forts' guns, Trevor marches into the royal headquarters and demands the 200,000 ducat reward for Sostig--as well as a few other things.

You don't mess with Italians!

The commander sends his strongest warship out to punish the upstarts, but...well...

All's right with the world, Pedro is reinstated and marries his lovely Isobel, the treacherous officers have left town, and except maybe for several hundred dead soldiers and pirates, everyone's happy. On to new adventures!

Yep, they don't make 'em like that any more!

Stuff I've Done--3

2010-06-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

Research Meets Reality
I have a presence in the amateur/semipro art community, DeviantArt. It's my "rest of me" site, where I post art, photos, and ramblings just because I feel like it, not because of their thematic significance. If you're so inclined you can visit it at ronharris.deviantart.com.

Recently I unearthed and posted some old background drawings from my TV animation days. I have always liked this one, depicting a Parisian cafe:
In my notes I identified this as a BG from the old Dinosaucers series. However subsequent conversation with a rabid Dinosaucers fan (they really exist!) suggests it came from another show. Maybe Karate Kid. I didn't label the photocopy and I simply don't remember.

Anyway, those of you who've been to Paris were no doubt struck by the vintage American-style telephone booth in the left foreground. What is a vintage American-style telephone booth doing in Paris? It's there because the script said so. And because the art director said the script said so, and we aren't changing the script just because Paris doesn't have vintage American-style telephone booths.

This was one of the countless times that my artist's desire to get things right has collided with the practical aspects of TV production. Schedules are short (especially on Dinosaucers!), a hundred different tasks are being performed simultaneously, and cartloads of money are being spent. You can't halt the process just to correct a factual detail.

I don't pretend to any sort of moral high ground about research. Personally I love research. But I lack the obsessive drive necessary to be a research expert. I also have limited patience; eventually I want just to get on with it. I regret it deeply when I learn after the fact that I made some huge factual blunder. But I feel worse when a truly major error is detected in advance but circumstances dictate it must go through anyway. In the case of the phone booth, I could imagine every kid in Paris yelling at the screen, "What is that stupid thing? We don't have those here!"

On one show my art director was a young
Frenchman. He was fabulously talented and knew his craft to the nth degree. He was also a hothead equipped with an endless supply of contempt which he was quick to unload upon those whom he considered morons. We were designing another show set in Paris. Paris is a favorite destination for cartoon characters. The a.d. was already pissed because the writers had got the elevator system in the Eiffel Tower all wrong.

Then came the Parisian pet shop. "Pet shop!" he roared. "Ignorant assholes! We don't even have American style pet shops in France!" [I have never been there, so I don't know, but I wonder if anyone can confirm or deny that there are no pet shops in France.] It wasn't the existence of the pet shop that sent the a.d. over the edge, though. It was the sign the writers wanted on the storefront: Maison du Pet. Now they obviously wanted to say "House of Pets" and couldn't (or chose not to) find a translation for "pet." In those pre-Internet days finding translations could involve a bit of legwork. The unfortunate thing is that in French pet means "fart."

The art director's eyes burned and his lip curled in a truly magnificent sneer as he fulminated. "Maison du pet!! Do you know what zat means?!!" (He had an almost stereotypical French accent which really took over when he was angry.) "'Ouse of Farteeng! It means 'Ouse of Farteeng! Muzzerfuckairs! Oh, zey're so smart! Zey know so much about Paris! I should let it go through. Oh, I should let it go through! On televisions all over the world: Maison du Pet!" But while the man was a hothead, he was also a dedicated professional. Maison du Pet did not go through. Instead the sign was written in English: "Pet Shop."

My one brush with "big time" television was producing bogus newspaper strip art for an episode of the lighthearted mystery-adventure Remington Steele. The story concerned a young artist working as a ghost for a rich, famous, domineering cartoonist. When the big man is murdered, our heroes deduce that the assistant killed him. They stage an elaborate hoax to trap the killer into incriminating himself.

I never met the episode's writers, but the producer was impressed by their thorough research. They wrote lots of little-known factoids into the script to lend it authenticity. For example an important clue hinged on discovering that one artist pencilled with a regular black pencil while the other drew in non-photo blue. Clever--maybe the only time non-photo blue pencils found their way onto prime time television. Unfortunately a 500-pound gorilla was sitting in the corner: the oldest, "wrongest" misconception about newspaper comics, something anyone who'd researched the field shouldn't have missed.

As part of the setup Remington Steele creates several new episodes of the dead man's strip. The trouble is, Steele draws the strip today, and it appears in the newspaper...tomorrow! Having just finished two years of struggling to maintain six-week leads on two daily strips at once, I couldn't believe my nearsighted eyes. As diplomatically as possible I mentioned the error to the producer. "No kidding?" he said. "They draw 'em months ahead?" Yes, I said. "Well," the producer replied, "we sure as hell can't do anything about it now!"

Of course he was right. The episode was in its final weeks of production. Fixing the mistake would mean throwing everything out and starting over at the script stage. No one in his right mind would suggest that. The episode aired with blunder intact. That's just how it goes...facts are nice, but only if you fit them in early enough.

Placeholder--Still Alive

2010-05-26T18:27:00.000-07:00

I've been absent from the blog thanks to a long and extremely demanding outside project. Promise I'll be back next week...sorry for the long silence.

Technique Talk--5

2010-04-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

How They Did It!
I have a big collection of early 20th-century how-to books on commercial art. One of my favorites is Fashion Drawing--How They Do It! by Hazel Doten and Constance Boulard. It was published in 1939 by Harper Brothers. This book has a special appeal because the publishers bound samples of drawing papers right into the book. Among them are Whatman paper, bristol board, coquille paper, and two dead technologies: Contak shading sheets and Craftint Doubletone drawing board.

From the invention of photo-engraving well into the 1960s, commercial art was obsessed with finding ways to obtain shades of grey in drawings without using halftone screens. The cost difference between a line cut and a halftone cut was substantial. Furthermore cheaper publications like newspapers and farm journals used low-grade paper on which it was difficult, if not impossible, to print good halftones.

One reason pen and ink drawings were popular was that they almost always reproduced well. Flat grey tones could be added to ink drawings using Ben Day, a process by which dot or line patterns were overlaid photographically during negative-making. The illustrator showed the engraver where to put the pattern by attaching a tracing paper overlay or by painting on the drawing with non-reproducing blue watercolor.

Of course since the Ben Day process added an extra production step, it increased costs. Materials like Contak sheets and Doubletone board allowed an illustrator to add Ben Day-like tones directly to his original. The drawing was then shot as a line cut.

I believe Contak sheets were the first self-adhesive tone sheets. These were thin transparent plastic sheets upon which was printed a line or dot pattern. The backs were coated with adhesive. To apply a tone the artist placed a sheet over his drawing and trimmed it to the proper shape with a knife. He peeled away the excess film, then rubbed the remaining piece with his fingernail or a burnisher to set the adhesive. In the 1950s Zip-A-Tone became leading brand in the shading-film field; for years illustrators used its trademark as a generic name for this type of product.

The piece of Contak film in Fashion Drawing is somewhat thicker than later Zip-A-Tone sheets, with a glossy surface. The adhesive back is covered by what appears to be extra-thin tracing paper. The artist peeled away this backing to expose the stickum, which according to the book was wax. The text explains that the top-printed pattern was easily scraped off with a blade or a matchstick, allowing the artist to remove tone from small areas. After the drawing was finished it was brushed with a fixatif to prevent further scratching. The fixed part of the sample in the book appears glossier and thicker than the rest of the sheet. The scan below includes a Contak-shaded drawing.Craftint paper was a unique item. It came in two flavors: Singletone and Doubletone. A Craftint sheet was a heavy piece of bristol board upon which a pattern was printed in almost-invisible blue ink. When the sheet was brushed with developer, a clear liquid smelling of ammonia, the pattern turned black (dark brown, really) anywhere the developer touched. Doubletone sheets used two developers. If the pattern were crossing parallel lines, Light Developer exposed only "uphill" lines while Dark Developer exposed both sets to produce a darker tone. [Note: I scanned the sample sheet and the color didn't show up, but for history's sake I'll post it anyway.]Craftint paper was expensive, but its convenience and tonal range appealed to newspaper comic artists. Noel Sickles, Roy Crane, and Mel Graff used Craftint extensively. Craftint paper was essential to Crane's style; he used it through the 60s until the shrinking size both of printed comics and of original drawings rendered the process impractical. Crane once complained that in later years his originals were so small that Craftint tones looked like chicken wire. Here are some Craftint-shaded drawings.
A sheet of Ross board was not bound into the book, probably because Ross board was thick and didn't bend well. Ross sheets were covered with a raised pattern made of a chalk-like material which could be scraped off if desired. The artist drew lines in brush and ink, then added grey tones by rubbing a lithograph crayon or a grease pencil over the surface. The surface pattern broke crayon strokes into dots which would reproduce as a line cut.

Apparently there were many varieties of Ross board. White-surfaced boards came in numerous patterns. Others were coated with black ink which could be scraped away scratchboard-fashion. The only sheet of Ross board I've ever seen was a Gray Morrow original from the black-and-white Space: 1999 comic. Its pattern was so coarse it brought memories of Roy Crane's chicken wire. I don't know how Morrow applied his usual delicate penwork without his pen constantly "falling into the holes." A drawing on Ross board is to the right of the Contak drawing above.

Ross board's younger cousin was coquille paper, which is still available. This thin drawing paper is stamped with a random granular pattern. It accepts ink, pencil, and chalk. Black Prismacolor pencil on coquille paper looks weak to the eye, but reproduces beautifully in a line cut. Almost all of the black-and-white drawings in Andrew Loomis' art instruction books were drawn this way. Combining Prismacolor (or litho crayon) with brush and ink permits a startling range of tones. The large smiling girl on the first scan was drawn on coquille paper.

Fashion Drawing provides rare insight into art materials of 70 years ago. I'm sure many other essential items vanished into time even before computers came along and finished off the whole lot.

By the way, if anyone has some Ross board lying about I'd love to give it a try.

Alberto Giolitti, Artist

2010-03-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

A Glimpse at Studio Giolitti
Italian artist Alberto Giolitti (1923-1993) was one of my earliest comic art influences. I didn't know his name, because he never signed anything, but I loved Giolitti's dramatic, realistic art on titles like Sgt. Preston, Turok, Indian Chief, and TV and movie adaptations. I followed his path from Dell to Gold Key (where I finally learned his name), studying and swiping his figures. (At right, photo of Alberto Giolitti)

Giolitti had a long, remarkable career which took him from Italy to Argentina to the United States, then back to Italy where he set up a comic art studio. The operation grew to employ more than fifty artists, producing comics for Germany, England, France, the USA, and Italy.

Rather than repeat Giolitti's biography, I strongly recommend the official Alberto Giolitti website, maintained by his friend and co-worker Angelo Todaro as a tribute to this influential artist. The site not only has complete biographical information but also a gallery of comic stories and original art that Giolitti produced during his career. (At left, Sgt. Preston from 1954)

I'm interested in the Giolitti art studio because I'd seen many of its products over the years without knowing where they had come from. Studio work appeared in the second German Perry Rhodan series, countless English digest-size war comics and comic papers, the Whitman Starstream s-f series, and even the notorious Italian erotic comics like Oltretomba and Jacula.

Studio Giolitti opened when the artist returned from America in 1962. It seems to have petered out around 1989--Todaro is vague on this point. About the time the studio opened, Il Vittorioso, the long-running youth paper backed by the Catholic church, went belly up. A large group of veteran creative people were suddenly out of a job; many found employment with Giolitti.

Recently I obtained one of ANAF's limited edition reprint books, La Pattuglia Bianca ("The White Patrol"), collecting a Mountie series Franco Caprioli drew for France through the Giolitti studio. Caprioli was one of the legends of Il Vittorioso, and deserves a hundred articles all to himself. Gianni Brunoro interviewed the artist's daughter Fulvia for the book's introduction. Her father had always freelanced from home, so as a girl Fulvia had shared the ups and downs of the artist's career. In her interview Fulvia Caprioli gives a snapshot of Studio Giolitti in its early days. I've translated the relevant parts for you Anglophones out there. I think you'll find it interesting. (At right, a page from Turok, Son of Stone)

Ms. Caprioli begins with the failure of Il Vittorioso.

"The 1960s were really 'critical' years for our family (and perhaps for similar families of 'old guard' Italian artists). Conflict was in the air, a crisis of certain values upon which, whether they believed them or not, older generations--among them the one to which Papa belonged--had based their lives. The wind of 'revolution' penetrated even art and comics. The world was changing rapidly, technology was advancing, everyone was getting richer. And we were always getting poorer."

(At left, a prewar Il Vittorioso with Kurt Caesar art)

"In 1964, Il Vittorioso was in bad shape; it was going to shut down, so many of the paper's artists, among them Ruggero Giovannini, Renato Polese and others, presented themselves to the 'Graphic Studio of Alberto Giolitti' (as well as the editors of various newspapers, like Il Giornalino) looking for work. Papa went there, too, probably tipped off by one of his colleagues. The main reason my father accepted this work is that he was 'unemployed,' like all the other Il Vittorioso artists."

Ms. Caprioli mentions Giolitti's wife of many years, Joan, whom the artist had met while working in America. Mrs. Giolitti seems to have been the studio's business manager. It seems that Studio Giolitti shared one characteristic with many other art shops: lack of money.

"Alberto Giolitti had an art studio on the Via della Magliana, in Rome, where several other Il Vittorioso artists were working, mostly for the foreign market: France, England and Germany. Alberto Giolitti had married an American, who functioned as 'manager' and maintained the business relationship with the foreign publishers, particularly in England. I would go to the studio with Papa when he had to turn in his work. It was a somewhat squalid place, on the outskirts of town; there were still farms around it.

"I remember Alberto Giolitti well: the classic 'Romano,' dark, not too tall, with a lively face, a bit superficial. His father had the famous 'Gelateria Giolitti' in Rome. I also recall that many times Giolitti sent Papa home without having paid him. In fact once--and perhaps I shouldn't say this, but it's the absolute truth--we returned home on foot (hours and hours of walking!) because Giolitti hadn't paid Papa, and we didn't even have the money to take the bus. Stories of times gone by, almost 'unbelievable,' but true all the same."

Giolitti asked Caprioli to work at the Rome studio, but the artist preferred to stay at home. Working for a studio rather than a publisher was a difficult transition for Caprioli, who always took a very personal interest in his art.

"When he was doing stories for France, he continued to work as he always had, from home. Certainly, he missed the direct contact with the publisher because, even though he talked with Miss Ratier [the French editor] on the telephone, everything else was done through Giolitti. He never even had the satisfaction of seeing his work in print. You can imagine what it did to the soul of an artist like my father, to see his work, executed with such love and care, mysteriously disappear into the 'exterior,' without ever knowing anything about it: whether the readers liked it, and so on. The pages paid very little."

Unlike American shops of the forties, which broke jobs into assembly-line pieces, Studio Giolitti seems to have followed the European tradition of assigning artists jobs which they produced alone. Of course this doesn't mean the artist didn't sometimes use assistants. However the shop-style system of several artists working on a single page seems to have been rare.

Brunoro asked Fulvio Caprioli how Giolitti came to select her father to draw The White Patrol.

"Papa was already well known and appreciated in France and other foreign countries. His stories were even reprinted in Siam! ... The second reason was that Papa was fluent in French, which Giolitti wasn't. Perhaps he chose my father thinking that Papa would get on well with the scripts, which were sent in the original language."

Alberto Giolitti died in 1993. He was working till the very end, leaving behind an unfinished Tex story for Bonelli. A long list of artists, both old-timers and newcomers, had passed through Studio Giolitti's doors. The once-anonymous artist had impacted comic art in half a dozen countries. (At right, Tex by Giolitti)

Stuff I've Done--2

2010-03-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

Health Consequences of Comics
It was 1959. I was ten years old, happy, and healthy. Especially happy, because I was clutching the latest issue of Cosmo, the Merry Martian. This offbeat comedy title had captured my young heart. I was sure it was the funniest comic I'd ever read. As soon as I got home from the drugstore, I fled to my favorite reading room (the bathroom) and while doing the ol' Number 2 I spread the comic on the floor in front of me so I could savor every panel.

Then it happened. I wish I remembered what the joke was that set me off. All I remember is letting out a huge explosion of laughter. And I barfed.

Like I said, I was healthy. There was no logical reason I should barf. But barf I did, and my mirth became heartbreak. There on the floor before me was my Cosmo comic under a big pile of vomit. I would never know how the story turned out. I left the comic lying there while I cleaned up, then I carefully rolled it up. Holding the book at arm's length I carried it outside and dropped it sadly into the trash can.

Of course Mom asked me what happened. "I threw up on my Cosmo, the Merry Martian comic," I replied truthfully.

Mom valiantly tried to find something wrong with me, but I was completely symptom-free. It was a one-time event. I never again laughed so hard that I barfed. It must have been something about that comic.

[Sidebar: Cosmo is one of those pleasures that was really great when I was ten years old. It didn't age well. At my advanced age I still chortle over Carl Barks' Scrooge McDuck adventures, but when I read a reprinted Cosmo story, I was disappointed at how lame it was. Oh, well, at least my health's safe.]

Image stolen from Don Markstein's Toonpedia.

Corriere dei Piccoli

2010-03-02T16:26:00.000-08:00

A window onto a past window onto the past
This weekend I was excited to receive a gift of 38 tearsheets from Corriere dei Piccoli, the legendary children's supplement to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. A friend had owned them forever, forgetting just where they came from; having no idea what to do with them, he gave them to me! From hints in the articles I gather they were originally published in late 1933 and perhaps early 1934.

The pages were from two series of educational color pages illustrated by an artist whose signature I can't make out. The first series, "Come vestivano" ("How They Dressed"), pictured costumes from different regions and historical periods. Most of the subjects were Italian, though topics included things like "Costumes of the French Revolution" and "Costumes of Characters in The Three Musketeers." The example below presents Italian dress in the late 1300s. The text characterizes the "trecento" as having planted the seeds of modern united Italy. The drawings are rather nice and are given plenty of space.
The other series, closely related to the first, was "L'oriente favoloso" ("The Fabulous East"). Like the first series the pictures concentrated on costuming. The text presented general information about various Asian countries and their culture. This example discusses India, with an emphasis on how the caste system creates strife between classes and ethnic groups.The reverse sides of these pages provide an interesting glimpse into Italy of the 1930s. The pages are divided between a long article on some kid-related subject (this one is about "The World of Toys") and display ads. The ads are a mixed bag: many are directed at the kids themselves, but most seem to be aimed at their parents. In the sample below we find ads for a meat extract, a salt solution for soaking tired feet, a dentifrice (available as liquid, paste or powder), and a supplier of uniforms for the several Fascist youth organizations (flags and badges, too!).I have a particular fondness for Corriere dei Piccoli (roughly, The Children's Courier), because through it I was introduced to the world of European comics. In the late 1960s an Italian deli near my university stocked a handful of Italian magazines, among them CdP. Though I didn't know it, by that time CdP was in its final decline after running over half a century (the supplement began in 1908). It had long ago transformed from a newspaper supplement into a glossy weekly magazine of some 60 pages. Most of its comics were translations of Belgian Tintin features: Bruno Brazil, Bernard Prince, Michel Vaillant, etc. Being ignorant, I assumed at first these were Italian series. Only later did I discover the Belgian connection. 48-page adventures were serialized several pages per week. Occasionally a special issue would run a long story in its entirety; for example an adaptation of The Great Locomotive Chase by Argentinian cartoonist Arturo del Castillo.

Though a minority, original Italian material appeared, too. It was in CdP that I first encountered Aldo di Gennaro, Giorgio Trevisan, irrepressible Benito Jacovitti, and above all the incredible Dino Battaglia. Even Hugo Pratt popped up from time to time, though I didn't appreciate him until later when I discovered Corto Maltese.

During the time I was reading Corriere dei Piccoli signs of change appeared. The biggest change came in 1972 following a reader referendum. The venerable magazine's title was changed to Corriere dei Ragazzi. In 1908, piccoli, like its English equivalent children, was commonly applied to all pre-teens. But by the 1970s youths found the term demeaning. Ragazzi carried a connotation similar to kids in English. (Interestingly, children/kids went through a similar process in America about the same time.) Interior pages began appearing in black plus one color rather than full color. Going through a succession of editors, cost-cutting, and format changes, CdR finally limped to a conclusion in 1985. By that time I'd lost track of it.

Here's to dear old Corriere dei Piccoli, to which I owe a great debt...if only for introducing me to Battaglia and Jacovitti. As for also introducing me to I Puffi... well, we can't win 'em all.

Storytelling--1

2010-02-24T15:54:00.000-08:00

Plus That Script!
In an interview given many years ago, Alex Toth advocated that comic artists should "plus" a script when converting it into drawings. The term comes from animation, and refers to enriching a story by inserting visual bits--background details, poses, actions--that don't appear in the script.

It's similar to what happens in movies. If a scene features two actors talking, the actors seldom just stand there and yak at each other. They'll perform some sort of business that tells something about their character while adding movement to a static scene. For some reason, though comic artists frequently enliven scenes with interesting camera angles, they often don't go much further.

Recently I re-read two stories that showed what a master Toth was at plussing a scene. One was from the 1970s, when he was drawing romance stories for Charlton; the other is a Dell movie adaptation from the late 50s. Before looking at the Toth panel, let's look at a typical dialogue exchange from another story in the same issue. The penciller is Charles Nicholas.
This setup tells the basic story well enough, but the eye-level camera and static poses lend the scene a generic look. The impression isn't helped by the casual background. This room has no personality; it could be any room anywhere. Now let's look at how Toth illustrated a dialogue exchange that could easily have been presented in the same way:Not much happens in this panel. The narrator (a movie star) drives away while her friend and the guy they both love discuss her departure. But the panel is exciting because everything Toth draws gives the scene a unique personality. Instead of a generic house Toth has created a "Bel Air mansion" appropriate to a temperamental movie star. He stages the scene in deep perspective. Matt strikes a dynamic pose we understand without needing to see his face. The star is driving off not in some generic car but an expensive Porsche. Its cockpit is crammed with luggage. All the smaller background details--the shadow of palm trees, the cobblestone street, the tile roof--shout "Southern California Richville." This scene has individuality, and the story is better for it.

Creating well-thought-out backgrounds is a great way to plus a script. Consider this panel from the Dell adaptation of Clint and Mac, a youth-targeted mystery-adventure set in London. It's easy to picture the script for what might have been a throwaway panel. Smith, the guy in the trench coat, returns to his apartment expecting to meet his accomplice Toby. Smith calls out but Toby isn't there. Here's how Toth interpreted the scene:
This panel is an entire book about Smith. As written the character is a typical bad guy without much depth. But when composing this scene Toth asked himself, "Who is Smith? How would he live?" So we see a cheap, impossibly cramped room with wet laundry hung over an old-fashioned stove to dry. A couple of magazines are thrown onto the rumpled bed. He's not a total slob, though: while his clothes are tossed over a chair, his dishes are done. Smith (like Toth) is apparently a car fancier: other than the calendar his only decoration is a print of an old automobile. The blind is pulled halfway down; Smith dislikes either the sunlight or prying neighbors. Smith has become a real person. This is what plussing a script is all about.

Still one might ask, "Is there a point to this?" It's a fair question. After all the Clint and Mac panel really was incidental to the story. Its basic idea could have been got across in a simpler way. Is Toth just showing off? Comics as a medium are admittedly less involving than movies. People tend to read them quickly without scrutinizing each panel. However I believe that, just as happens in movies, thoughtful plussing subliminally adds to a reader's experience of the story, allowing him or her to take away from it more than was originally there.

Technique Talk--4

2010-02-19T22:39:00.000-08:00

The Need for Speed (continued)
In the last post we looked at speedy Frank Godwin fighting the Deadline Doom in some old Connie strips. We agreed that speed is king in the commercial art world.

In my day the undisputed kings of speed were the Filipino comic artists. Almost to a man they could produce quality finished work at dazzling speed. Alfredo Alcala, Nestor Redondo, Fred Carillo, Tony de Zuniga, E.R. Cruz...the list goes on and on.

When these guys stopped working for comic books they moved to the better-paying animation industry as designers and storyboard artists. That’s where I got to know--and admire--many of them. One artist I especially enjoyed talking to was Abel Laxamana. Out of all the Filipino artists I knew Abel was the only one inclined to intellectualize about comic art. In one of our discussions I asked him how Filipino cartoonists came to be so damn fast.

Above, Abel Laxamana

He explained that during the heyday of Filipino comics (the 50s and 60s) there were plenty of comics published, but the pay rate was abysmal. To make even a modest living an artist had to produce lots of pages. You either learned to be fast or you sank.

Interestingly, this situation shaped the entire culture of Filipino comics. Though the pay was low publishers demanded a high standard of artwork. Face it: when you have to live up to guys like Francisco Coching and Alfredo Alcala, you’d better be good.

Above: The Man, Francisco Coching

This was the origin of the Filipino studio system. An established artist, eager to make more money, contracted with publishers to deliver more work than he could possibly do himself. To keep his commitment he hired assistants, often newer artists who hadn’t yet cracked the big time. The veteran artist paid his assistants from the income and took a percentage for himself. The assistants got plenty of experience and dreamed of the day they’d be good enough to approach publishers personally, overcommit on their own contracts, hire their own assistants, and take their own percentage.

Above: Nestor Redondo

The publishers didn’t care whether artists used assistants, but they did insist that the art delivered to them look like the veteran artist’s work. Thus it was critical that assistants learned to imitate closely the master’s style. Out of this system arose the Filipino National Style.
Americans often criticized Filipino artists for “all looking alike.” Like all generalizations this was simplistic; Filipino artists had individual styles just like all cartoonists. But like all generalizations, this one had a grain of truth. The similarity between Filipino artists’ styles was greater than that of artists in any country except perhaps Japan.

At the root of this phenomenon was, of course, the studio system. If you’re assisting Nestor Redondo, you learn to draw like Nestor Redondo. Later when you become a lead artist yourself and establish your personal style, you’ll still show a strong Redondo influence. Inevitably you’ll pass some of that influence to your assistant, and so on.

Above: Fred Carillo

Once I asked Fred Carillo for his Secret of Speedy Drawing. To him the key was visualizing exactly what you would put on the page, then drawing it directly with a minimum of wasted movement. While visualizing would mean a second or two spent not drawing, the time taken to make the drawing time would be cut dramatically. Fred pointed out how I (and so many other artists) wasted time figuring out what to do on the paper, sketching, scribbling and redrawing. His approach was like alla prima painting: visualize the stroke, put it down, and leave it.

As I said last post, speed drawing reveals just how good you really are. The downside is that no matter how good you are, to stay ahead of the game you make compromises.

Above: E. R. Cruz

Instead of researchiing a car you draw a generic car, or re-use stock characters. Perhaps all your characters start looking alike. This was the Achilles’ heel of E.R. Cruz, a speed demon among speed demons. He had one young-man face and one young-woman face; if there were two young men in a story it was difficult to tell them apart. And finally, as Abel once suggested, when you wanted to slow down and really take time on a piece you might find you don’t remember how.

All the same, if you want to see top-grade comic art done at speeds that would make an American’s head spin, check out the oeuvre of Coching, Alcala, Redondo and their brethren. It’s amazing.

The art in this post was found at the website museum.alanguilan.com. This guy's collection is incredible; you mustn't miss his site if you appreciate great comic art.

Technique Talk--3

2010-02-19T22:06:00.000-08:00

The Need for Speed
While working on a Connie collection recently, I encountered an example of a capable artist pushed to the wall by deadlines. Frank Godwin was known as both a prolific and a reliable craftsman. He always seemed to be doing several things at once: magazine illustration, his own comic strips, ghost work on others’ strips, book illustrations, agency work. But in 1938 work seems to have gotten the best of him.

Godwin always drew Connie quickly. Even when at the top of his game he worked in a fast, calligraphic manner quite different from the lush style he used years later on Rusty Riley. But during the course of four short stories we see him working faster and faster until, it seems, he is overwhelmed.

At the beginning of the period, Godwin looks like this: fast, but taking time to work up his figures and putting thought into staging and atmosphere.Gradually his drawing speeds up. Figures are sketchier, often looking as if Godwin has drawn them directly with the pen. Backgrounds (admittedly seldom of much interest to Godwin during this period) become little masterpieces of indication. Check out the last panel.By the time he starts the third story line, the strain is beginning to show. Finished panels still appear occasionally, but backgrounds are often reduced to a couple of lines or vanish altogether. Godwin begins cheating with head shots and talking airplanes.By the fourth story Godwin is desperate. Almost every panel is a head-and-shoulders shot, and backgrounds--well, just take a look at this sequence, which opens at a Central American airport, then moves to the hero’s hotel or wherever he’s staying.Alas, the effort is in vain. The last week of the continuity is ghosted by another artist, and the following story is entirely ghost work.So what happened? Illness? Taking on too much work? Too much partying? Of course we’ll never know. But the story told by those ever more rapid drawings started me pondering the role of speed in comics.

Anyone who’s been in the business knows that speed is king in the art world. Speed trumps quality: a mediocre artist who makes every deadline is more valuable than a supremely talented artist who’s unreliable. Interconnected demands of clients, publishing schedules, busy printers, and overloaded distributors don’t leave much wiggle room. You want to survive as an artist, you have to be fast.

An interesting thing about working fast is that it strips you down to your basic abilities. No time for reworking or redrawing; you wham it down and leave it. Your good points stand out and your weaknesses jump up and down screaming. Looking at this Connie speed session one sees just how good a draughtsman Godwin was. Even at breakneck speed he still draws beautifully--he just draws less.

In my next post I’ll talk a bit more about speed, represented by the record holders of speedy comic book production: the cartoonists of the Philippines’ “golden age” of comics.

Marking time

2010-02-13T16:42:00.000-08:00

Where You At?

It's been too long since I posted here. Life has been a bit too interesting...spent a couple days in the hospital after going to Emergency with what seemed to be the big Heart Attack. After countless tests and investigations it became clear my heart was fine--thank heaven! I seem to have experienced the notorious Acid Reflux (which American TV viewers know intimately thanks to endless commercials). Its symptoms can resemble the Big One but it's considerably less serious. So I'm taking my medicine like a good boy and paying closer attention to my diet. I can take a hint!

More soon.

George Tuska, Comics Artist

2010-01-17T20:50:00.000-08:00

Why Weren't the Tuska's Looser?

Lately Ger Apeldoorn has been posting a retrospective of work by George Tuska, one of the underrated comic artists of the 50s and 60s. Ger has a fine collection of both newspaper and comic book pages. I strongly recommend taking a look.

Seeing this work reminded me about an aspect of Tuska's work that puzzled me ever since my unsuccessful trip to New York in the 1980s seeking work from Marvel. Art director John Romita gave me photocopies of pencilled pages to ink as samples. He chose work by the tightest pencillers, so I went home with covers by Gil Kane and Jack Kirby, and interior pages by the Georges Perez and Tuska.

(At left is a page from Iron Man #8, in which Tuska got a better-than- average ink job from Johnny Craig.)

Tuska was the regular Iron Man penciller. He was almost always inked by Mike Esposito. Like most fans back then I found the book capable but dull--a judgement often applied to Tuska's work in general. Personally I'd always had a soft spot for Tuska, having grown up with his Buck Rogers newspaper strip. In college a collector friend introduced me to Tuska's crime strips for Lev Gleason. I gained a new appreciation for the artist. The crime comics showed a skill range that wasn't always obvious in Buck Rogers. Still, based on his Marvel art and his occasional appearances at Harvey and Gold Key, I'd concluded that Tuska was a competent artist with a somewhat simple, cartoon-oriented style that didn't belong in superhero comics.

(This page from Crime Does Not Pay is typical of George's Lev Gleason work, though some other strips were heavier on backgrounds. Two Gleason trademarks: some guy hit some other guy once a page, and the #@$%! dialogue was so heavy there was little room for the art.)

I wasn't ready for what I saw in his Iron Man pencils. They were beautiful! The first surprise was how fully they were rendered, sometimes almost to the point of being tonal drawings. Many pages, especially the "street clothes" pages, featured elaborately worked out light and shade. The action pages burst with both enthusiasm and careful drawing. The stuff knocked me out. I diligently (though unsuccessfully) tried to do them justice. One page I especially liked. Tony Stark was out of costume and floating in the East River. A tugboat rescued him, after which he returned home to maunder awhile. The lighting on this page was worthy of the finest Caniffist. Several months later the comic came out. That wonderful page had become a bland nonentity indistinguishable from the other equally lifeless pages in the issue. It wasn't like Esposito pulled a Colletta and ignored Tuska's pencils. The backgrounds were complete and the shadows were still there, but somehow all the life had been sucked out of them. Looking back I wonder if it was even possible to do them justice in ink.

(This pencilled panel, lifted from Kurt Busiek's website, is from later in Tuska's career. It's nice, but looser than the ones I remember.)

I came away with a new appreciation for Tuska's craft, but I was also puzzled by the disparity between these pencils and the way Tuska drew when he inked his own work. The assembly-line specialization of American comics encourages the presumption that "nobody can ink his own pencils." But whether an artist's inks are weak or strong, stylistically they usually resemble his pencilling. In Tuska's case it was almost as if two entirely different ways of thinking informed pencils and inks. Inked Tuska drawings were two-dimensional: postery, outline-driven, cartoon-like if you will. The Tuska pencilled drawings were three-dimensional, driven by light and form--illustration-like you could say.(This Scorchy Smith daily from 1959 is inked in the Buck Rogers style Tuska also used for his solo comic book work.)

A couple of years ago I found Tuska's official website, run by a relative or a friend or somebody with access to the artist. It was my chance to hear the artist's own thoughts about his differing styles. The webmaster passed my question to him and I received a cordial reply. Unfortunately my enquiry must not have been as clear as I thought, for Tuska answered an entirely different question. I felt it would be rude to press the issue, so I didn't write back. Now I'll never know.

I wish I had copies of those pages. Back when I did them, in the days before scanners, it was a big deal for a starving fanboy to find a copy shop and pay for oversize copies. I returned the copies with my inking samples and that was that.

(Postscript: I must confess that seeing those Iron Man pages prejudiced me, probably unfairly, against Mike Esposito's inking. This surely isn't fair to a major figure in the history of American comics, but when one starts out as a fan it's hard to shake the fannish propensity to judge artists by unrealistic standards.)

Comical Politics

2009-12-27T21:10:00.000-08:00

The Laughing Right and the Action-Packed Left: Part 1 of 2

This is the first part of a two-part ramble inspired by Allan Holtz's comments regarding a small-circulation conservative-commentary strip. In this post I wonder, “Why is it so hard to create a successful conservative satire strip?” Next time I ask, “Why is it so hard to create a successful liberal action hero strip?”

[Prefatory note: In these posts I use the generic terms “liberal” and “conservative” as they are understood--or misunderstood--in modern popular American discourse. I don't pretend to follow classic definitions of these terms. Americans threw those out the window long ago. Furthermore, since I've never lived anywhere but in the USA I can't speak about anyone else's varieties of liberalism and conservativism.]

It's easy to name topical comic strips from the last 50 years with a liberal slant. Pogo, Doonesbury, and Bloom County spring immediately to mind. Yet despite the overwhelmingly conservative bent of American media, only one conservative strip has gained much of a foothold: Bruce Tinsley's Mallard Fillmore.

Mallard has been successful in readership terms, but it's hard to call it funny. Funny isn't what Mallard Fillmore is about. A typical daily is a frontal attack upon something Tinsley doesn't like. Though presented in strip format, Mallard Fillmore is less a conservative take on liberal strips than it is an extension of the old-fashioned partisan political cartoon. Liberal strips can be equally partisan--during its heyday Doonesbury was frequently run on the opinion page--but they usually follow story strip traditions, peopling a world with a cast of characters and presenting commentary within the context of a storyline.

Setting aside this matter of form, if American values are as reliably conservative as the media claim, why haven't the last few decades produced as many right-wing satire strips as left-wing? The knee-jerk answer is to blame the “liberal media,” but that's as useful as saying “the devil did it,” especially considering that the conservative giants who own modern media would probably love to have a few more strips on their side.

The Leftersons, produced for small weeklies, regularly ridiculed liberals for being liberals. (Source: Holtz)

I think a key point is that much American humor concerns the Little Guy putting one over on the Big Man. Americans have always pictured themselves as Little Guys. Both liberal and conservative “Little Guys” delight in seeing someone in power cut down to size, be it a boss, a politician, or a millionaire. This kind of humor is rooted in dissatisfaction with the way things are and a desire to find a vaguely-defined “better life.”

A similar dissatisfaction underlies liberal criticism. Liberal satire suggests that while things may suck right now, we can improve them by changing the power structure. On the other hand, American conservatives think the power structure is fine as it is; problems arise when malcontents insist on messing it up. This puts conservative satirists at something of a disadvantage. You can't collect laughs at the expense of the Big Man if you share the Big Man's views.

Holtz says George, another minor weekly, alternated politics with generic gags.

Another factor is that modern American conservatism holds certain core assumptions as inarguable. This is a visceral, not an intellectual, position. A bumper sticker I once saw sums it up: “God said it. I believe it. That's that.” American political conservatism interlocks so well with religious fundamentalism because both take certain questions (e.g. the Bible is God's word, American wars are just wars) off the table. The possibility that following these core beliefs may have caused serious errors can never enter the discussion.

Contrast this to American liberals, who in their quest for societal justice tend to analyze and question almost everything. This isn't to say that liberals don't have their inarguables. Liberals don't like to consider whether racial and gender equality really are desirable, or whether some people are born superior to others and will inevitably rise to wealth and power. But for the most part liberals thrive on intellectual debates rich in analysis and nuance. Faced with a war liberals want to dissect its origins, morality, and consequences. To conservatives the mere fact the war exists trumps everything. They want to talk patriotic duty and to rally the home front in support of the troops.

On reflection one realizes that an analytical, nuanced world view provides more satirical ammunition than an absolutist view. A liberal satirist has more things to talk about. Liberals can attack a war from a dozen different angles. Pro-war conservatives are limited either to defending the conflict (seldom a great source of jokes) or attacking the liberals for objecting.

An amusing aspect of Mallard Fillmore's direct commentary approach is that this parody, from America (The Book), could easily have been the real thing.

Unable to attack a status quo they support, conservative cartoonists wind up attacking attackers of the status quo for daring to attack it. It's rather a second-hand sort of humor. It definitely lacks the satisfying immediacy of a good right to the Boss's chops.

Another galling restriction on conservative cartoonists is that many earlier traditions in America-first humor were based overtly on racial or ethnic prejudice. Times have changed, and today even many conservatives find that kind of humor distasteful. Racially motivated criticism has reinvented itself as (safer) economic criticism: yesterday's shiftless “Negro” has become a resource-sapping Welfare Queen; the old “Brown Tide” threatening racial purity is now an army of economy-wrecking immigrant laborers. Old standby religious prejudices are equally tricky. Ridiculing Jews clashes with the religious conservative's obsession with protecting Israel. Blasting Catholics irks Hispanics who, though part of the Brown Tide, provide support for conservative positions against abortion and homosexuality. No wonder that conservative humor's safest bet is to attack liberals for being liberals.

Just why it's bad to be a liberal is left vague. Questions of “why” would introduce nuance into the discussion, and liberals might seem to have valid points. The conservative media's most awesome achievement during the past forty-some years has been to recast the very word “liberal” into a badge of shame which even liberals take pains to avoid. The perception of “centrist” has been driven so far to the right that today's wishy-washy liberal is given treatment once reserved for ultra-left Godless Commies.

As American business and government have merged into a corporate super-state, actions necessary to maintain profits--outsourcing manufacturing, curtailing social programs, narrowing individual rights--increasingly hurt small-town voters who form the traditional conservative base. Embracing the notion that someone is ridiculous simply because he bears the “liberal” badge makes it possible for conservative Little Guys to rally to defend the very people who are foreclosing their homes and sending their jobs overseas.

The upshot of all this is that the conservative cartoonist attacks not the liberal's issues but the liberal's credentials. A viewpoint is ridiculous simply because a liberal holds it. That's how we get cartoons like this “Mallard Fillmore” daily:

To a conservative cartoonist this panel may make some kind of sense. “Hate crime” is just a fancy label for somebody hurting someone a liberal likes. But people are always hurting other people, so trying to categorize and prioritize the hurts is typical liberal silliness.

But just beneath the surface this joke equates the commission of hate crimes--crimes motivated solely by racial or ethnic prejudice--with the natural forces that drive carnivores to eat weaker creatures. In other words, it's natural for heterosexuals to murder homosexuals. I suspect if the point were presented in this way even some rock-ribbed conservative Little Guys would holler. By carefully remaining on the surface the conservative cartoonist avoids too much analysis. That means endless variations on one joke--”aren't these liberals silly!” And that just ain't funny.

Next post: why it's damned near impossible to do a liberal action hero comic.

Technique Talk--2

2009-11-20T19:20:00.000-08:00

Mouthing Off
When posting a story from the Golden Age Speed Comics, I was fascinated by the anonymous artist's shorthand "surprised mouth," which he used several times in the story. It looked like this:
The mouth is a black oval with a similar, smaller shape cut out of the bottom. Depending on how you look at it, the smaller shape represents either the tongue (I believe this was the original intent) or the lower teeth (in which case the guy is missing a few). This led me to ruminate about the stylization of mouths in "realistic" (i.e. non-cartoony) comic art.

Like cartoony art, realistic comic art is mostly shorthand and caricature. The main difference is that realistic art seeks efficient ways to suggest how things really look (more or less).

Realistic comic artists have developed more abstractions for the mouth than for any other facial feature. It's no wonder. The mouth is a very complicated structure. The expression muscles push and pull it all over the place. Talking changes its shape radically. What's more, the construction of the lips and the corners of the mouth are far more complex than they seem. Comic artists, pushed by personal style, deadlines, and skill limitations, develop their favorite way to say "mouth" with a minimum of hassle.

For some reason, on a male character a "full mouth"--that is, a mouth with both upper and lower lips completely drawn--appears effeminate:Drawing the lips too round or too full can detract from the "man's man" look realistic artists usually strive for. Impressionists Noel Sickles and Milton Caniff circumvented this potential pitfall by drawing a thin upper lip in shadow, reduced almost to a line, while indicating the lower lip only by the shadow it casts on the chin:
This soon developed into a formula that served realistic cartoonists for decades: two parallel lines, a long thin one on top and a short thick one below.Frank Robbins took this to an extreme. Toward the end of his newspaper career, his characters wore two lines of equal length and thickness, often spreading across the entire face.Profile mouths followed a similar evolution. Again a fully-drawn mouth is complicated and liable not to look sufficiently masculine:
Once more cartoonists eliminated the outline of the lower lip and reduced the upper lip to a line with a hint of thickness.
Once this approach was streamlined, this became another formula used by countless strip and comic book artists.
Note how the overhang of the upper lip was beginning to disappear. Frank Robbins took the abstraction one step further by getting rid of the lip profile altogether. The mouth became two short dashes floating in space:
An alternate approach was to draw the profile of the jaw as an unbroken contour with the mouth lines superimposed:
Yet another variation (frequenty used by George Wunder and the later Caniff) was to combine the lip overhang and the lower lip into a single unit. Unlike in the previous example the lower lip was differentiated from the chin:As time went by and the "manly school" moved from newspapers to superhero comics, the more realistic approach taken by contemporary magazine illustrators influenced some cartoonists. However few challenged the thin-upper-lip-no-lower-lip formula. Carmine Infantino's illustration-inspired mouth dared to show the outline of the upper lip. However the lower lip remained an indication:
Infantino was pretty much alone in this respect until the revolution headed by Neal Adams brought photographic realism to comic books. Wallace Wood was the only other notable upper-lip man. He developed an odd "half-upper-lip" which featured the septum but not the rest of the lip. This indication became a cliche with Wood, and was dutifully duplicated by his many imitators.
Wood also increased the size of the lower lip shadow, often modeling its edges to further sculpt the lip. It was an "illustrator-y" version of the Caniff mouth. It's also worth noting the unique mouth Jack Kirby developed in the 1960s: he drew the top shape of the upper lip, resulting in this:
Having mentioned Kirby, I must nominate him as the perfector of the open superhero mouth. Two thousand artists have drawn variations of this mouth ten thousand times. It fairly bursts with drama and action, yet bears no relationship whatever to a real mouth. The perfect shorthand!There don't seem to be as many open mouth stylizations as there are for closed mouths. I suppose it's because in superhero comics most open mouths are shouting, and the Kirby mouth fills the bill. John Romita did develop an unusual schtick, however, which I don't think anyone else used. This was his gritted-teeth mouth:I conclude this ramble with the oddest open-mouth abstraction I know. It brings us back to the Golden Age, when superheroes still smiled a lot. I first saw the mouth on Jerry Robinson's Robin, but it enjoyed a certain popularity in the forties before going extinct.Note that the black semicircle representing the open mouth doesn't connect with the the upper lip. The upper teeth are created entirely out of negative space. It's a fascinating trick, but it had a flaw: colorists often didn't get the idea, and colored the teeth pink like the rest of the face. The result was a face with two mouths, one open and one closed.

English Comic Strips

2009-09-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

Oh, não! It's the Bionic Englishwoman!
A friend with a lifetime's collection of odd stuff enjoys feeding me things he can't imagine anyone wanting. Last week it was MULHER BIÔNICA, which is to say, The Bionic Woman in Portugese. This roughly 8"x10" 36 page full-color booklet was published in Brazil by Ebal (Editoria Brasil-America) and bears a 1979 copyright.

This interesting comic reprints two stories from Look-In, an English comic paper from the 1970s which specialized in TV show tie-in strips. A little Googling revealed that Look-In began running Bionic Woman in 1976. The Ebal booklet's artwork is by two well-known British illustrators with credits on both sides of the Atlantic. The first, "The Bionic Woman vs. the Black Dragons," was drawn by John Bolton:

Bolton's work, showing influences from Frank Bellamy, is very nice, with many interesting color effects. While there's a lot of movement in his panels, Bolton often pulls the camera back during action scenes, robbing them of immediacy.

The second story, "The Martians," is drawn by the prolific John M. Burns. His comic-book approach is more dynamic than Bolton's. Action scenes jump from the page. Burns does insert giant character heads into too many pages, though this being a TV tie-in I suppose that's forgivable.

My biggest gripe with Burns (other than his customary sloughing off of backgrounds) is that his bizarre color choices render some panels nearly unreadable. I've seen other work by Burns with equally chaotic color schemes, so I presume that color just isn't his bag.

In my opinion most English comic-paper stories suffer from shallow, diagrammatic scripts. The comic paper format is largely to blame. Most papers ran major full-color features on the front and back pages of each weekly issue. This limited story development within a given episode. Frequently a false climax was built into the bottom row of the first page to carry readers to the continuation on the back cover. Another climax concluded that page, to encourage the kids to buy the next issue.

These factors, combined with space taken up by big heads and "poster" scenes, encouraged rudimentary stories. The greater page-counts given features in comics magazines like 2000 AD were a big step forward.

Another thing that strikes me about comic-paper features is their slapdash panel arrangements. We haven't seen layouts like this in the USA since the Golden Age: overlaps, tilted panels, odd shapes with starburst and lighting-bolt borders. No doubt this was intended to make the paper as exciting as possible on the newsstand. Printed one after the other in a book like this, the loud layouts quickly tire the brain.

A Sight Unseen--6

2009-09-23T17:04:00.000-07:00

If It's Drawn Like a Duck...
Time is rushing past at a furious rate...I've passed a major birthday since my last post. I'm trying to work out keeping up with several of these outside projects at once, but my damned job keeps interfering.

On October 2 the first Long Beach Comic Con will be held at the Long Beach (California, USA) Convention Center. It looks like they're trying to make it a big deal. Typically for comics conventions these days, there will be a handful of comics people and lots of movie, TV and gaming exhibitors. If you're in the area drop by the Pacific Comics Club / Tony Raiola Books booth (#123) and you might run into me.

I'm not sure how "unseen" today's offering is. These and similar photocopied model sheets were circulating around the studios twenty-umph years ago when I was working in TV animation. By now I'm sure they've all seen print somewhere. Nevertheless, there's always someone who hasn't seen what everyone else has, so here are some lovely lessons on How to Draw a Duck.

First up are two Carl Barks sheets describing how to draw Donald for the comics. I still smile at his dig at artists over-using silhouettes in their strips.

Next is an undated general full-figure model sheet crammed with pointers on proper proportion.
This sheet of heads dates from 1944. Nice expressions and some unusual angles.The last two sheets are cleanup notes covering the little details that make the difference between a near-miss and a dead-on duck.

Perhaps some of you Disney experts can identify the artists on these sheets. There's nothing quite like a well-drawn duck!

Perils and Pitfalls of the Golden Age

2009-08-30T16:40:00.000-07:00

It's Like Comics on Speed!
If you haven't been following John Adcock's fine blog Yesterday's Papers, here's a good reason to begin. John is running excerpts from a series of rabid anti-comic book feature stories first published circa 1945 in The Southtown Economist. This Chicago newspaper began documenting comics' contribution to perversion and juvenile crime long before Dr. Wertham published his first article. It's a fascinating look not only at the persecution of comics, but also attitudes about propriety in the waning days of World War II.

John's first story is here. The second installment dissects a "Captain Freedom" story from an issue of Speed Comics (No. 35, November, 1944). Which is what prompted this post. While John turned up an image of the book's cover, by lucky chance I have scans of the whole issue. Without attempting in any way to steal John's thunder, I would like to present the entire story, "Revenge of the Insect Giants," to provide context while you read the Economist article.

In the story a villainous beekeeper creates giant killer bees to take revenge on a tormentor. Captain Freedom must intervene to set things right. The newspaper article doesn't mention that the beekeeper is a stereotype "hayseed" locked in an ongoing feud with a neighbor. When not feuding, Jabez Mather, the beekeeper, is growing, for no apparent reason, some giant bees. A bee escapes and stings the neighbor's bull to death. It's good news and bad news: the bull was about to maul Captain Freedom's pals, who are vacationing with the Captain's alter ego nearby.

But then the neighbor finds his bull killed by "this bee stinger." Not even pausing to wonder that the stinger is two feet long, the distraught neighbor grabs a shotgun and shoots up Mather's beehives. To Mather this is the last straw. He runs to his "bee laboratory" vowing revenge.

Mather dispatches a giant bee to kill his neighbor. Captain Freedom hears the man's dying scream and confronts the giant bee. However the creature expires before the Captain can attack. The bee had left its stinger in the neighbor, and drops dead.

The kids try to spy on Mather but they're discovered and trussed up. As the article's horrified writer says, the mad beekeeper paints the youths with nectar so his bees will kill them. Just why they deserve death isn't clear.

Neither is Mather's sudden elocution upgrade. While his neighbor was shooting at him, Jabez had said things like, "Ye be shootin' up my beehives! I'll git ye fer this!" As he slathers on the nectar, the new improved Jabez intones, "First I anoint my victims to make a decent dish...soon giant bees will hatch and have a royal feast on these nectar-smeared kidlets!"

When the Economist claimed that Captain Freedom bashes through the barn door with his head I thought they'd simply misinterpreted bad drawing...but by golly the journalist is right! Hearing the kids' screams the good Captain head-butts his way into Mather's lab.

He's met by several giant bees. The Captain is outnumbered but Mather is taking no chances. He throws a convenient jug of nitric acid (a must-have on many New England farms) at the battling hero.

Sadly, Mather's aim is poor. Instead of frizzling Freedom, the acid splashes the giant bees. "My beauties!" Mather emotes. "I have destroyed my beauties!" An attempt to run is cut short as Captain Freedom tackles the bee-keeper, delivering a righteous speech: "Save your song, you dirty killer! Save it for the jury!"

But the heinous hayseed will never need to comb his hair for a trial. A blow from Captain Freedom knocks Mather into the beehives. The bees swarm from the smashed hives and promptly sting the farmer to death. Just in case we don't know that's what's going on, Mather cries, "YEEOWW! I-I'm being s-stung to d-death!"

Captain Freedom chases the bees away with a smudge pot. It's too late, though. A caption tells us: "But--DEATH...comes for the bee-keeper. Ironic death!" In case we slept through the two previous panels, Mather helpfully recaps them, briefly lapsing into Cowboyspeak to do so: "I'm c-cashing my chips! My own bees stung m-me to d-death!" Exhausted by approaching death, Mather is unable to maintain his lofty villain dialogue. When he launches into a last-minute self-justification, it's in his own voice: "I'm not really a killer like you said, Mister...just was aimin' to settle accounts with that no-account Hiram!"

This statement evinces enough sympathy for the Captain to murmur, "Take it easy!" as the bee-keeper expires. Though this ought to be the story's ending, there's a half-page, balloon-crammed anticlimax. This is the exchange The Economist describes. Captain Freedom, having read the last caption and liked it, paraphrases it for his funerary speech: "He died the same way he killed his neighbor--IRONIC JUSTICE!"

This, too, should have been the end of the story, but the kids still need to stage a leave-'em-laughing finish with Captain Freedom's alter ego (the kids don't know publisher Don Wright is Captain Freedom). And that, finally, is the end.

The end of another grisly, mind-rotting comic story. Another attack on our children's minds and morals. Not even a rousing memo from General "Hap" Arnold could counteract this story's evil effects. In fact, immediately after reading it I ran out, smeared two neighbors with Sioux Bee honey, and blasted their beehives with a shotgun I found in my garage next to my jug of Nitric Acid.