Friday, April 24, 2009

Reach For The Stars

Friday Comic Book Day.

One of the visitors mentioned the Tom Corbett comic strip. There were two in the fifties, in fact. One, rather dull, published by Dell and a very good one by Prize later in the fifties. The Prize version was drawn by Mort Meskin, who did some of his career's best work for this three issue totle. I hav already shown the three stories from nuer 1 and as I haven't got number 2, I will immediately skip to the third and last issue. Accomanied by a great cover, showing Meskin's elegant mastery of his art (as did all his Prize covers at that time). He went on to work for DC, where his style was not appreciated, probably because he didn't confirm to the house style enough and couldn't be inked that way. But still, what an artist.









7 comments:

tom said...

There were also 3 comic book series published by Eternity Comics around 1990. It seems that one reprinted the newspaper strip and the other two were original. http://www.mycomicshop.com/search?q=tom+corbett&pubid=&PubRng=&GrdRng=

Smurfswacker said...

The stories in the Dell comics were dull, but the two Alden McWilliams issues were nicely drawn. If anyone has scans of these, I'd love a copy. I had to sell my copies some years back.

tom said...

There are some Dells here - not sure if they are the ones you are looking for...
http://comicsworld.wordpress.com/category/tomcorbett/

Vince M said...

This one's a beauty! Very lively and loose Meskin art. Similar to Kirby's approach to storytelling with simple and clear art in a Toth fashion.
I don't remember Mort Meskin ever drawing for '60s Marvel, but judging from this story he would have been a powerful contributor.

Ger Apeldoorn said...

Alden MacWilliams was a prolific artist, who always did slid work. I jts got a couple of papers with some great Dan Flagg Sundays he ghosted for Don Sherwood. But he same paper has full Tal Tales episodes and much more that goes to the top of the pile first.

Ger Apeldoorn said...

Meskn would probably not have done well at Marvel,as he was a master at suggesting action rather tha showing it. Bt then again, he does have simlarities to John Romita ansd I for one could see him following Steve Ditko on Spiderman...

Ger Apeldoorn said...

On rereading this a week later I see that the new lighter typing pad on my new portable computer isn't helping my typing dyslexia. Anyone know how I can turn on the spelling corrector in Blogspot? I used to have it, but now it doesn't do anything.