Friday Comic Book Day.
I love the early work of Joe Kubert. What he is producing these days is pretty impressive as well, back in the late forties and early fifties when he was still using loads of inkin his lines, it had a mesmerizing quality for me. I have shown several samples of this work over the years, most recently from his late forties oddjobs for DC titles. After that he roamed for a bit doing work here and there. He ended up at St. John's doing his own imprint with Norman Maurer, including the 3D comic, Mad imitation Whack and Tor. When those failed, he flaundered for a bit, doing jobs for Stan Lee and in 1955 he worked for Norman Maurer's most important employer for many years, Gleason. He started doing stories for the later issues of Crime Does Not Pay and sonn added the lead story for Boy Comics (from #110 to #118). I have two of those stories here. It looks as if Bob Bean was involved, who worked with Kubert on serveral features at St. John's.
2 comments:
This certainly was Kubert's golden age. He'd cleaned up the drawing weaknesses of his youthful years without losing the rough-and-ready style that had made his work stand out. Fine stuff!
I offer page 5, panel 3 of the first story as proof that Kubert had an influence on Steve Ditko. That's a classic Ditko fight setup. Plus everyone has spider sense marks around their heads.
The Jabbo character has always aggravated me. Of course every private-school story has its villainous bully. However Jabbo's villainy was never consistent. Take the the first story. Unlike a real villain he has qualms about covering for the bad kid, Yet he gets steamed when CB saves his ass from expulsion. If he were simply a stupid lug his actions would play better, but he doesn't act particularly dumb (except when he fails exams). Not that it matters. Charles Biro probably isn't interested in seeing my notes.
I really think that they should have just used Iron Jaw, instead of Jabbo. Pretty much the same dialogue and what not, except that someone would be bitten to death in each story.
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