Friday Comic Book Day.
This week I got an issue of Giggle comics in the mail, that I believe has a Irving Spector cover. It's #99 and I am showing it here with the first Spencer Spook story, which I believe to be by him as well. Spenser Spook was a regular feature of Giggle comics, which took over the book somewhere around this time. The strip was usually drawn by other artists. In fact, the issues directly surrounding it are downloadable from Goldenagecomics.co.uk and the Spenser Spook stories in those are clearly by different artists, probably Dan Gordon and someone else. There are two reasons I think this six page story might be by Spector. First I seem to recall his son Paul telling me or somewhere online that his father worked on Spenser Spook. Still, he could have been talking about the covers only. Secondly, I think the style is really a lot like that of Googy. There were more artists working in the faux Kelly style at that point. But Spector had a loose inking style, that none of the others can match. There's something about that light feathering of the shadow parts that seems to stand out to me. Also, if Dan Gordon had drawn this, the eyes and teeth of the characters would have been different.
Either way, it's a lovely story to have a look at. For those of you who are interested in composition, have a look at those appearing and disappearing pots and chairs and paintings on the wall. The artist uses anything he can to frame the characters in his story, not minding how the same floor or wall on the same page was drawn. The result is silly and inconsistent, but it makes for some fast reading.
4 comments:
Hi Ger, thanks for posting this.
Certainly his cover and story, lots of tell-tale signs. Aside from your other observations: the baton twirler pose on the cover is very similar to his cover on Giggle #97; some poses in the story are similar to some Coogys; the alternative spelling of the word "help" (HAL-LUP!), even the handwriting choice of the way he inked "The End".
Ha ha, great post Ger. Never heard of this series before but now it's something else fun and spooky to add to my list of GA to look for.
This would have made a great Abbott & Costello movie.
Steve,
There are many more Spenser Spook stories, some of which you can get at goldenagecomics. Since none of those are by Spector and I am not very soon going to go into the whole West Coast animators thing, you free to scoop them up and use them. I think it is a pretty funny series, more Abbott and Costello than Casper.
Over at Joh K.'s blog, where he showed some of these pictures, many people noted the similarity between Spector's style and Walt Kelly's. In fact, Specor even worked on Ckuck Jones' Pogo cartoon of the late sixties. Anyway, to me the similarity is even greater if you compare Spector's comic book work to kelly's Pogo comics. How well know are these to my readers? Should I show some of them?
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