Ku-Blam!

Sundy Kubert Creativity.

Haveing finished my run of Jerry Robinson's Alfred stories for Barnab Comics, I have decided to try and find woe of Joe Kubert's work from the late forties and early fifties. I like this period of his work, when he had moved away from DC and his earliest influences and before he returned to DC to further develope his style. He used heavy blacks in those days and you can still see the influece of Will Eisner, but his figures became more realistic. There is quite a lot of it, some of which has been reprinted. But not everything.

Today I am starting with the first of two Alabam stories he did for Cowpuncher. It still has his early style, similar to the work he did on Hawkman for DC (which partly made his fame). He has not yet proberly found his style, using the black ink to hide any flaws. The use of black backgrounds seems to hark back to Mort Meksin, who was a big influence on Kubert.

With it I have also reprinted a story by un unfamiliar artis called Jack Ross. It seemed familiar, looking like a DC artist who was using some of the same tricks as Mort Meskin. Turns out that Jack Ross is one of the pseudonyms for John Small(e). It's primitive work, but I alwasy like it for it's raw energy and uniqueness.

New And Unknown

Sunday Meskin Measures.

One of the fun things about Mort Meskin is that he did so much work, every now and then something turns up I hadn't seen before. Here is a 1952 crime story from Avon's Behind Prison Bars. I never knew I had to go and look at Avon for work by him. Interesting thing here is that at that time he was already doing more schematic, heacy stuff for Prize. Could this be a left-over from some time before that? It seems completely of it's time.

Socko

Saturday Leftover Day.

Here's an oddity. From smalltime publisher Avon, this is Cowpuncher. The inking looks to me like taht of George Roussos, who was not a regular at this company.

Your Goverment Dollars At Work

Saturday Leftover Day.

In alter Ego #105 (the magazine about golden and silver age comics and it's creators) Richard Arnt wrote about the Comics Code, which policed the contents of American comic books from the mid-fifties. There were some samples of comics code ordered butchering, especially in the beginnening when everyone was still figuring out how this worked. I understand they are working on a follow-up article for which I have provided some samples. Here is another whopper - in Avon's Wild Bill Hickock #25 and #26 huge changed were apparently ordered. As was the case in several other changes I have seen from other companies, there was so little time that stuff had to be cut out of the art plates or in some cases replaced by new panels which didn't have the time to be colored. Here, from Wild Bill Hickock under a Raymond Kinstler cover) is a story that was changed so much, you can't even see what the original must have been like.

In the story, a ranger finds someone in trouble in a forrest fire. After saving the victim, he deduces it must have been made deliberately and finds the guy who did it. But everything about the victim has been changed, up to the splash page! So who was te original victim and was it even a girl? If she was too sexy, why not slap some ink over her (as I have seen done in other stories)? A weird an d probably unnecessary change.

Oddly, the panel where someone is shot i the belly and yells 'Oh, my hand!' seems to have been part of the original story.