The Fabuleous Fifties

Crossed Lines

Sunday's Measure of Meskin

Over at the Yahoo Mort Meskin group some of us regulars have been discussing the amount of Meskin assistance in some of the George Roussos stories. Roussos and Meskin worked together in the forties and lived in the same appartment building in the fifties and sixties. They also did a couple of stories together for Stan Lee, signing them MR. And some interviews one of both of them have said they sometimes helpen each other out. So it is not weird that some people have taken to writing 'Meskin and Roussos did a lot of work together in the fifties'. But I am not sure. Both were artists who could do the whole thing on their own and payment for comic book stories was such, that it would often not have been advantageous to share the money. There are also stories about Meskin having trouble facing the empty page and needing some sort of assistance to 'get going'. But in the stories by Jack Kirby, all he needed was a little doodle to deface the page and would be able to take it from there himself. In the early sixties he hit a major dry patch and was assisted in at least one story by Joe Kubert and possibly one by Carmine Infantino as well. But the Kubert story I have seen (and shown here) looks more like Kubert inked it, which is odd for someone like Meskin, who could ink stick figures and still create a great page without adjusting the pencils first.

and then there's the fact that Meskin signed some of his later DC stories and didn't sign others. Could it be that he only signed the ones he did on his own? Stylisticly, they all look the same. And the stories Roussos did on his own look different. Anyway, I'd say those who want to see some Meskin assistance in a Roussos story (or the other way around) should be cautious. As a test case, here is a Roussos story that has 'a hint of Meskin' in it according to the great Timely/Atlas site Atlas Tales. Frankly, all I see is two Meskin-like faces on the third panel of the first page and I can't think of any scenario other than Roussos imitating Meskin for them to be there.


Adventures into Terror #10: