In my new book Behaving Madly (about the Mad magazines imitators of the late fifties, click on the Amazon button on the right to preorder your copy) I was not able to use any material from Sick due to copyright reasons. Which I idn't mindm because it gave me lots of room to show other stuff. The only bad thing about it, is robed me of a chance to highlite the later career of Bob Powell, who work for Sick for the last seven years of his life. After his death, Powell was accused of having no sense of humor by isonce pupil.studio mate Howard Nostrand and the huge body of work proves him wrong. Powell had an acute, if very sharp sense of humor. In fact, I was able to show some of it in my book, because he developed his satirical style on magaziens such as Panic, before going to Sick. But does that mean that Powell was a harsh or mean man. I think it proves he was a realist rather than a clown or fantasist. His mean contribution to any of his work from the forties onward is that he aded a level of realism and believabillity to the situation. Never more so than in his last and most important post Sick production, the shortlive newspaper strip Teena-a-go-go. Created together with Teen Life editor Betsy Little, he created a special girls strip for her magazine, which they later soold als a Sunday and daily strip as well. GHaving shown some of the Sundays, I never knew there was a daily version as well, until I ran across these micro-fiche sampels. Is there anyone out there who saved all three months of this strip?
4 comments:
Perhaps we are spoiled by the draughtsmanship of a Leonard Starr or a Milt Caniff, but frankly these strips are not very well drawn particularly in their 2-dimensionality and lack of proper perspective!
I don't really agree. For me Bob Powell's work has an expressiveness that only compares to Will Eisner. Caniff at that point was still good, but ot as impressive as he was in the forties. And although I like and am amazed at Leonard Starr's work at that time, against Powell he comes off a bit to slick for my taste. It's like comparing Gene Colan to Joe Sinnott.
I respect your opinion of Bob Powell, and especially respect Bob Powell's brilliant work in comic books. However, being more interested in comic strips rather than comic books, I wonder whether there would be an example of Powell's work in comic strips which better reveals his talent (understanding it might be exceedingly rare to find). Someone named "Dominick" made a fascinating comment in 2013 on Craig Yoe's "Terror" collection of Powell on the Goodreads website: "Powell is an interesting artist, fond of oddly-proportioned and distorted physiques and gestures, and of interesting shifts in layout and colouring choices" - this captures my sense looking at Powell's comic book work, although you may not agree. And I am wondering, since comic strips "ab initio" have certain unremitting constraints, it might make it exceedingly difficult for this impression of Powell to really manifest. I agree with what you say about Will Eisner, whose unconventional "camera angles" and incredible depth-of-field introduced to me by the Harvey "Spirit" reprints of the 60's blew me away.
Well, I certainly like Powell's work on Bat Masterson, which he took over from Howard Nostrand and continued for longer than Nostrand had. Unfortunately, I only have a couple of pretty bad dailies, but I would love to see what he did with the Sundays. I am particulary fond of his work in Panic, Frantic and Sick, where he shines as an illustrator. The Panic and FRantic part of this is covered in y book Behaving Madly. I wrote an article about his work for Sick, which I hope to someday publish in Alter Ego.
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