The Fabuleous Fifties

Real Crime

Friday Comic Book Day.

I have mentioned Mort Meskin before. He was one of the most interesting artists of his generation, working in the forties, fifties and sixties until he went into advertising. These days, he is usually remembered as an influence on the work of Steve Ditko, but he really deserves some attention on his own. In the forties he worked with Jerry Robinson on a selected numer of terrific projects. before that he had caught everyones eyes at DC, doing the stories of such heroes as the modern western hero The Vigilante and DC's own Flash knock-off Johnny Quick. But he did much more than that, most of which will never be reprinted in this hero-obsessed age we live in. He did several stories for Dc's Real Fact, which I will be showing as soon as I have scanned them. I will start with a story from Real Fact #13, which seems to have been inked by Meskin. He certainly did the splash page, but the rest of the story (although not in his style) does show his telltale way of inking. Simon and Kirby expert Harry Mendrick learned me to look for the destinctive way Mesking inked larger strokes by going over them several times. You can ee this from the split ends in the clothing folds on most of these pages.