Agonizing

Friday Comic Book Day.

I got a whole bunch of digital DC hooror comics from the sevnties and eighties and went through them for the gag pages by Sergio Aragones. Before Groo, but after becoming a fixture at Mad, he joined DC as one of a group of replacement for the filler pages that were usually done by Henry Boltinoff. Although I like Boltinoff's style, his work has become a bit out of touch with the times at the end of his career and he was unable to or never asked to make his gags specific to the title they were in. Aragones was, and he provided a series of gags with witches, vampires and gargoyles for the various revamped horror titles. Regular features were his 'page 13' illystrations in the early books and his Cain and Abel pages in the later ones. Since I am not a particular fan of the superrealistic work of the Philippino artists invading the industy (on DC's invitation, I may add) and Aragones' pages were often the only thing I lied in these books. But never enough to collect them, so this selection is a good start.

Making A Mark

Sunday Meskin Measures.

Another early Mark Merlin story - with cover. Mort Meskin developed his style from a heavy black and white style in the fifties to a more sober line style in the sixties. We can see him midstream in this story.

Secret's Out

Sunday Meskin Measures.

These regular Mort Meskin Posts have become some of the most traffic generating things on my blog. I can understand the attraction. You know what you get, the storytelling is always superb and it is nice and easy. Unfortunately, I seem to have come to the end of my selection of Meskin's Mark Merllin stories from House of Secrets, but I do have some more later DC material from otehr books. After that I really should go back and start scanning some of his work for Prize to fill the gap.