Monday, June 30, 2014

Wish List

Monday Cartoon Day.

I may have shown some of these before, but here are some of Mort Walker very funny cartoons for Collier's and This Week. I wish someone would put out a ook of these in all their original splendor...

Sunday, June 29, 2014

A Date With Destiny

Sunday Mort Meskin Day.

This week, all four issues of the late forties Hillman title My Date were uploaded to the Comic Book Museum. My Date was the firt of th enew magaznes created for Hillman by the lgendary team of Simon and Kirby. It was filled with 'teen' gag strips, a sub-sub-sub gere om American culture tat was very popular around that time, with radio and movie series. Around that same tim, Archie emerged as well and become on to be the market leader in the genre. But around that time, every company had it's own.

Simon and Kirby's version destinguisehd itsefl by being even more romance centered than the others. In that repspect it was a clear precursor to their later breakthrough comic book series Young Romance (which revolutionized the industry and lead to a whole decade of romance comics).

Of course, not everything in the book was by Simon and Kirby. They never worked like that, alway spreading their talent over several projects. I don't think they already had a studio back then, but in any way this is also the first tme they worked with Mort Meskin. I know he was considered to have done a cover for a later number), but here he is with a full ten page story in what I consider to be his best style. Similar to but maybe a bit less finished than the work he was about to do with Jerry Robinson. Not only is it a very well drawn romance story (in may ways better that the one he would turn out later for Young Romance and Young Love, etc), it also has a couple of extras: several interesting transformation panels and a very impressive bad dream/halicination panel.

Scout's Horror

Saturday Leftover Day.

Among thee new scans I have been making, is one of the Stan Lee/Al Hartley version of Mrs/ Lyon's Cubs, by then sometimes also known as Cub Scouts. This strip wa set up by Stan Lee and Joe Maneely to sell to smal any city that has cub scouts. Stan Lee tried to allign himself with the American Scouting association and although that seemed to go well, it did not result in a huge amount of papers. Still, there wa enough to start running. Then, after a couple of months Joe Maneely died and the strip was taken over by Al Hartley. Although Hartley was a prett good artist in his own right, he (and Lee, I guess) dcided t dumb down the strip and concentrate more on the kids and less on the parent's home life. With that and the beautiful Joe Maneely art gone the strip died a quick and early dead.

I have found a lot of background correcspondence on this strip and would love to feature it in an article, but sadly I have never seen actual printed Sunday art from either the Maneely or teh Hartley version. There are a couple of Sunday originals going around (most of them ending up with Joe Maneely expert Michael Vassello) and they show that that is where the srip was at it's best. So to find a sigle Hartley Sunday was a big thing... no for the other forty or fifty to turn up.




Friday, June 27, 2014

To Wit

Friday Comic Book Day.

This month a huge new book on the work of Stan Lee and the early Marvel years was announced from Taschen books in the Previews catalogue and on Amazon, with an expected publication date of December first 2014. Preorder your copy soon, because this important and sure to be impressive follow up to Taschen's similar DC book is sure not to be missed. And it will finally put all those people to rest who have said that the alost one meter high DC book is impossible to shelve because there is no book like it... because now there is.

To celebate this, I have selected a short story by Stan Lee and Dan DeCarlo. I have always given much space to the pre Marvel work of Stan Le (and written about it for Roy Thomas' magazine Alter Ego. There is much more to be told about that period and Roy's book will only cover a small part of it (with it's expected focus on the more succesful and famous superhero years). Still, this is a nice sample of something else Stan Lee was good at - sily jokes. In fact, the long run of My Friend Irma was the basis for my article examining Stan Lee's writing style, which was always one of coming up with funny or silly reactions... even if he had to provide the set-up line himself.

As for the succes of the book, I suspect that the sexy ladies of Dan DeCarlo had almost as much to do with that.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Mikefest

Thursday Story Strip Day

Here's another batch that came from my recent scanning activities witj a credit question. Mike Roy is credited with the creation of the short running comic strip version of novel detective Nero Wolfe. Original writer Rex Stout also lend his name to it, but it is doubtful he did more than have a look. After a year or so, Roy left the art to others, including Fran Matera and someone called Christiansen, but even before that he didn't do it all by himself. Mike Peppe has been mentioned as an inker and here in these pages (certainly the last three) I clearly see the hand of Mike Sekowsky.