Saturday Leftover Day.
The comments to yesterday's post made me have another look into the later work of Carl Hubbell. One of the last things he drew (before retunring to ink some stuff in the sixties) was Rusty, a kids comic much like Bob Brant and the three Boys stuff hehad done for Gleason. It was published by Good Comics, which also published John Law, Sky Ranger by Edmond Good. Edmond Good worked in a similar style as Hubbell, but he was a seperate artist. He also did the newspaper strip Scorchy Smith from 1944 to 1945. The Lambiek website mentions that he also was a tv scriptwriter, but that seems to have another Edmond Good with a different date of death (Bas, take note!).
Some sources clump in Good Comics together with several later Gleason companies and indeed they did use a lot of the same artists and worked in the same kiddie genres. But not Edmond Good, so who knows.
I also looked around in some of the later Gleason titles and found many more signed and unsigned Hubbel work. Carl Hubbel was one of those artist who didn't mind sgning his work, so sometimes it can be easy to spot it. I found some of it in an oddball title called Shorty Shiner. This title, which in unnoted in the Grand Comics Database is a really well drawn kids western. If it wasn't done in 1955 (the year he was very busy) I would say it was by Warren Tufts. I immediately spotted the style, but fortunately later on an activity pages was signed.
After that, we have a couple of stories and activity pages Hubbel did for Geason's unsurpassed Ucle Charlie's Fables. A delightful fairy tale book with a distinct adult feel and art by Hy Mankin, Norman Maurer, Dick Rockwell, Fuji and Fred Kida. Here we also see, that there were several artists associated with Gleason, who worked in a style similar to that of Hubbell, or maybe developed it at the same time. Hy Mankin is the best of these and I like Norman Maurer as well. Maurer took this style with him to St. John where Joe Kubert and Bob Bean did their own version.
And as for why I call this style remeniscent of Bill Elder's, have a look at the activity pages Hubbell did for Uncle Charlie. They, more than anything make me associate his work with that of Elder.
And I am starting with a three page story Hubbell did in Sky Ranger, by the way.
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