Sunday, May 23, 2010

That Ol' Stein Magic Has Me In It's Spell

Sunday Stein Special.

Two more stories by Mort Stein from the later run of Black Magic. Editor Joe Simon used all his regular suspects for this book. There are plenty of stories by Bob Powell, Ted Galindo and Dick Ayers. I've seen George Tuska and Marvin Stein as well. Most of these people also worked for Simon's Sick. He even managed to get an ad for Sick in one of the books, which I think was from another publisher. The first story (from Black Magic #37 is typical Stein stuff. Solid, badly colored and a bit boring. The second story (from Black Magic #40 is remarkable, because here we see Stein trying out another inking style or being inked by George Roussos. The style is that of Meskin and Roussos at DC at that time. Personally, I think it is Stein himself, trying out something new. Interesting sidenote for everyone studying Jack Kirby's inkers in the early hero books at Marvel.












2 comments:

Smurfswacker said...

Very interesting. One gets the feeling Stein might have been pretty good if he'd only have slowed down. All these pages look like they were knocked out pretty fast.

The Kirby influence in the faces is also noteworthy, as well as the only comics appearance I've seen (so far) of the legendary George Adamski flying saucer!

By the way, isn't it Marv Stein rather than Mort?

None said...

Sick was published by the same company that did Black Magic. The name Prize was used only for the comics while for Sick they used Features or Headline.

I'm not sure what you find particularly Roussos like in the inking. If it is the shadows that Stein has placed on the face on the one panel, that is a varient of what I refer to as negative highlights that Marvin used from time to time.

Harry