For the last couple of years, I've been covering the career of forties and fifties artist Mort Meskin on Sundays. I like meskin's work, I think it shows both a consistant talent and a willingness to grow. An artist who dares to take shortcuts, but usually manages to turn them into artistic triumph. And one who can fall prey to extreme stylisation, but always finds a way to renew himself. One or two times I considered to stop, because I was scare one of the big copyright owners would come after me for using up so much of this material, but they didn't. At other times, I was hesitant to continue, thinking enough is enough. But the posts I devote to him always manage to remain among my best visited. So I ended up with an impressive body of work represented here, even with one or two unknown finds among them. And I haven't done half of it yet. The only thing holding me back these days it having the scans. I am particulary spotty on the DC years, since DC books are expensive and scans hard to get. I have most of his work for Prize, but I skipped those because scanning all of them myself takes time (and I usually want to scan the whole book while I am at it, which takes even longer). I also have to admit that I am not particulary fond of the muddy look most of these stories have (wether they were done with George Roussos or not).
This week the Digital Comics Museum has started uploading lots of Prize books as part of their Prize Comics Spotlight. Most of these books are from Jim Vandebocoeur Jr.'s collection and have one of his famous index cards as well. I urge you to have a look at this important and still growing site. This gives me the chance to pull some of the Meskin stories I haven't shared yet. Today, we have two from Headline #45: one solo story by Meskin and one supposedly inked by George Roussos. The solo story had the same look as some of the early stories Meskin did for DC, where (as Alex Toth told us) he would cover the page in pencil and start drawing by making white spaces for his figures with an erazer, giving them a stark film noir look.
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