The Fabuleous Fifties

It Couldn't Have Been More Easy

Friday Comic Day.

George Tuska and Pete Morisi wer good friends. Their careers were more intertwined then we may know. Morisi's style obviously is heavily influenced by Tuska and George Tuska surprisingly mentiones that Morisi influenced him. They even shared a studio at one time, but neither man did ever say when exactly. Some art spotters have difficulty telling them apart, but Morisi's sene of design always gives him away. Tuska in his early years was more of a character artist. It's only later in the fifties that I run into difficulties. I have gathered here together a shipload of Pete Morisi's work for some of Charlton's western titles. This work is more similar to that of Tuska than any of Morisi's work I know. So much so that I am not even sure if one of two of them are not actually by Tuska, even though the Grand Comicbook Database has attributed them to Morisi. Still, there are some of his particular touches, such as the panel within a panel trick. But the figures and attitudes are more Tuskaen than ever. At that time George Tuska was doing two newspaper strips, Scorchy Smith and Buck Rogers (the latter with a Sunday as well) as well as the occasional short contrbution to any of the remaining comic book companies. There is no way he could have had the time to help Morisi out. So that leaves me with only two possibillities: either Morisi took his Tuska influence up a notch... or Morisi is the one helpping out Tuska with his newspaper work. It is certainly true, that Tuska during this time developed a sense of design that was not yet there in his earlier work and remained with him for the rest of his career. But they both never mentioned a collaboration like that and I think they would have. Still it is nice to see them side by side. The Scorchy Smith sequence I am showing here is from a slightly earlier period and some of the dailies are missing, but it makes for a nice comparison.