May 24th Russ Heath was awarded the Milton Caniff Award by the National Cartoonists Society. Russ Heath is a legendary artist, who is known for many things. His work goed from the hyperrealistic stories he did for many companies to the more silly stuff he did for some of the Mad imitations as well as assisting Harvey Kurtzman and Bill Elder. When I visited him a couple of years ago in Los Angeles he proved to be (and have been from the start) a great admirer of Kurtzman, who sadly never used him in his war books art DC. Instead of that he did tons of war stories for DC. But for it it was his more gritty war (and horror) work for Stan Lee at Timey Atlas that shows him at his best in that period. In the fifties, DC was a sanaticed company, where not only the stories but also the art had to be up to a certain standard. At Timely he could let go, depecting much more grim and sexy stuff - including many great covers. I hope the new book by Roy Thomas (and Doc Vasallo and his friends, see the comments section a week ago) provides us with many samples of that period. I have one large one as signed, handcolored poster, which Mr. Heath produced for a period when he still was visiting comic conventions (and he still might, I just don't see them that much).
Here is a great cover and a nice dark war story by Hank Chapman. Chapman also wrote for DC, but at Timely the stories were allowed to play at night. At DC war was only fought with the light on.
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