Friday Comic Book Day.
In earlier posts I have shown some of the work of fifties comic book artist Al Gordon. For a small period he produced a couple of stories for Stan Lee's Atlas outfit that seem to have been inked by Joe Kubert. Why Kubert would team up or be teamed up with this one artist is unclear. His contributions to Gordon's work vary - on some stories he does a very heavy inkjob, on others his personal touches are light. But on all the overall look is veryunsimilar to the solo work Gordon would produce later on for Charlton. So it is interesting to find a story done for Charlton around the same time, that also shows some Kubert touches in the inking. Not very much, only a few. But still enough not to make this look like Gordon's own work later on.
So who was Gordon and what was his connection to Kubert? Was he a young talent helped along by Kubert, who was allowed to do more and more himself as time went by? Or did he learn his trade from Kubert and is what I see a Kubert touches (the use of white-out, for instance) just Gordon imitating Kubert? But why do these traces disappear from his later work? Anyway, here is the story.
Since the material in these books is probably copyrighted by Joe Simon, I can and will not show the whole story, but I believe the first page shows my point.
I see at the Grand Comic Book Date Base that the next issue of Bullseye also has Sheriff Shorty story by an unrecognized artist. Is that Gordon, too? Anyone have scans for me?
1 comment:
Well, at about the time that this story was set, the average height of a man in the Old West would have been something about 5ft 7in or so. At 5ft 6in, Shorty wouldn't have been regarded as remarkably short.
(And I sigh to think that, just 70 years ago, I would have been regarded as tall.)
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