Wednesday, November 19, 2008

When The Future Was Only a Few Years Away

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Continuing my posting last week of a Mort Meskin/George Roussos and solo Roussos story, here is another solo effort by Roussos from the same period. Apparently, he spent a lot more time on this one, which comes as no surprize since it was a commercial assignment. From the late forties all through the fifties General Electric factories had a rack of pecially made literature for thei worker to browse through and take home. Some of these were leaflets with recepies or household tips and some were more informational. The most popular ones were comic strip booklets, drawn by a variety of artists. Will Eisner is said to have worked on them (and have bult his company American Visuals on the assignment before losing it to someone else. I have never seen a sample of his booklets, but I do have more then a few done by George Roussos. From the late forties until at least late in the fifties he did a lot of these 16 page informational somic books, usually about electricty or some other sort of 'hard science' subject. They are not hard to com eby. A lot of them were taken home and since they are only 16 pages and have no cover they never sell for a lot on e-bay. There is no list of the complete series, so you never know what you are collecting. My sample here is from 1953 and it is excellent. The usual Roussos touches are there (the crosshatched inking of certain shadows, the menaving trees and bushes, the weak-chinned characters) but he took the time to execute them all at his best. Take a special look at page four, where he manages to create tension in a page where very little seems to happen, though the use of silhouettes, composition and lettering.


















I had three more Moxy pages, which I added to the post beneath.

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