Out Of Whack

Saturday Leftover Day.

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for Alter Ego (it actually got so big it was spread over two issues) about all the Mad comic book imitations. I wanted to turn it into a book, but John Benson and Fantagraphics beat me to it. Instead I wrote a book about the Mad Magazine imitations Behaving Madly, which went on to win an Eisner Award nomination. If I had done the Mad comic book imitators book, I would have tried to include one of the stories from the 3D book Whack #1. But not as a 3D story. Last week I tried to see if I could turn the 3D story into a clear line 2D version and it went pretty well. For print, it would probably have needen even more restauration ans possibly some coloring. But here you are. I don't think there are many people who have actually read it (even if they have the 3D book with glasses). A Dick Tracy parody by none other than Joe Kubert.

Matt Art

Monday Illustration Day.

Like many of his contemporaries, African-American comic book artist Matt Baker made a move to other types of jobs. The comic industry was growing smaller every month and jobs were harder to come by and paid less and less. Always a great illustrator, he tried his hand at magazine illustration. He was lucky in the fact that the publisher for whom he did the most of his comic book work, also had a sideline in magazines. And although I do not know if Baker's first magazine illustrations appeared in St. John magazines, he did do a lot of them, both for Nugget (a Playboy wannabe) and Manhunt (an Ellery Queen Alfred Hitchcock digest magazine wannabe).specially Manhunt is a rare treat. For the first few issues he did an opening illustration for every story. A couple of years ago I shared everything I had from #2. Here are the 12 illustrations he did for #3.

Scott For Free

Friday Comic Book Day

Over the yers I have shown of the work of Walt Scott. A regular of the NEA bullpen and features, he did special information strips, handled the Captain Easy for a couple of years, did political cartoons in the fifties, introduced his 'Litte People' through the NEAChristmas strip and ended up doing years and years on the Little People Sunday strip. Some people don't like his wrk, especilly on the Sunday Captain Easy and it is true that his style can shift from plesantly stylized to lifeless. But his pretty women were always pretty, his colors were always sparkling and when he drew cute, there were few people who could match him. One of those artists who deserve a better look. As I am quite familiar with his style, I noticed that he contributed two stories to St. John's 100 page Kiddie Carnival one-shot. I was not aware of any similar kiddy books from this publisher in this period and in fact it looks as if the stries here were originally created for Ziff-Davis kiddie book Fairy Tales. So I had a look and indeed, the contents of this book (an possibly the similar 100 page christmas book from St. John I am downloading right now) seems to come from Faily Tales #11 at least. Well, let me look into this further while you enjoy the work of Walt Scott...

Tough Love

Friday Comic Book Day.

Looking for some more early Kubert stuff in Nightmare, I came across this story by George Tuska, doing his best tough guy art. This from 1954, probaby just before he took over Scorchy Smith.

Romancing The Genre

Saturday Leftover Day.

Here are a couple of more Ric Estrada pages, including the dingle story he did for DC before doing off to Germany and disappearig from comics for about ten years. In the comment section yesterday, Bob asked if Estrada worked in advertising. As far as I see he didn't. He was just a young kid coming frm the New York School of Visual arts. I don;t know if he was part of the same bunch of artist studying there under Jerry Robinson (which incudes Marie Severin, Bob Forgione, Ross Andru and Steve Ditko), some of which were consequently very much influenced by Alex Toth when they started working for Standard. But they all ended up at Standard and here Estada seems to be on his own and slightly later.

I have more of Estrada's earlier work and might ad that later. But for now, I am starting with the later stuff. Not all of it as impressive as the pages I shared yesterday, but if have one that is and will ad it as soon as possible