Clemmier and Clemmier

Curious Clem

Saturday Leftover Day.

Thanks to the scanners at the Digital Comics Museum, I came across some fun war stories that I find really remarkable. I like this kind of loose style, whic seems a once inappripriate for the subject and in line with it. Mastr art spotter Jim Vandeboncoeur Jr. attributes this art to a Clem Weisbecker, a journeyman artist who is mostly know for his work for MLJ, the Archie company in the mid forties.

But it struck me that this must also be the unnamed artist of the funny Hector the Spector and Luke the Spooks tories in Sterling's The Informer books. I have shown these stories before, because I thought I had found the artist, when a piece of work in a similar style turned up in The Armed Forced Features, signed Jess Benton. Benton was another joruneyman artist, who must have worked as someone's ghost or something, since the only signed solo work he did was when he did a spot on Li'l Abner imitation called Jasper Jooks - in a completely different style. In my previous post I conclude that Benton must have been the unnamed artist of Luke the Spook (noting the preference for alliterating names). Now I don't know. Jim usually knows his stuff. Still, all the Clem Weisbecker material I can turn up is in a compeltely different style, not as humorous and most of it ten years earlier. At least Benton was still working in the mid fifties.

So here we have the evidence. Are these one and the same artist? And is it Benton or is it Weisbecker?

For more samples of Jasper Jooks, go to Alan Holtz' Strippers Guide or wait until I have scanned in my run of dailies.