@PauloCosta Yikes! Yes, that must be the one Englehart mentioned; I didn't expect it to be so over the top... And thanks for posting those others! The second is definitely from a fave storyline from back then, and I love that "versus" cover at the top!
Mar. 1953: This month it’s another eye-popping cover by Norm Saunders, Worlds of Fear #10. Unlike most publishers of the time, Fawcett did not publish much in the way of horror. Worlds of Fear was only one of four horror series in the history of their line. Painted horror covers were a rarity. Saunders only worked in the horror genre a handful of times, and each instance was a painted cover for Fawcett. But it’s really the composition that makes this cover special. The wall of giant eyeballs and the single figure in the foreground makes for a nice break from the skeletons/zombies/monsters looming over their victim. Even the title logo, with its semitransparancy is top-notch.
June 1953: This cover has popped up in this thread before, but it is far and away the most striking cover of this month. Plus, at this point Fiction House was only a year away from ceasing operations of their comic book division, and I want to get at least one Fiction House cover by Maurice Whitman in. The reason they went out of business was in large part due to being targeted by Fredric Wertham in Seduction of the Innocent because of their prolific use of sexy, scantily clad women in their comics, and in particular what he claimed were hidden pornographic pictures in a “Tabu” story drawn by Whitman—a claim which (according to Bill Pearson) made Whitman laugh out loud every time he thought about it.
Whitman was born in 1922 as Maurice E. Wisotzky. When his parents divorced (he was 13 at the time), his mother was given custody of Maurice and his three siblings, and she changed their last names to Whitman (not her maiden name, which was Braunstein). Whitman showed a talent for art at an early age, but upon graduation from high school in 1941, he went to work managing a retail clothing store. The following year Whitman enlisted in the Army, where he was assigned to the Fort Dix graphics department, painting signs and posters. He was discharged just a few months later because of flat feet. And so, without any formal art training, he joined the Chesler Studio in the fall of 1943, and quickly had his first story published—a “Phantom Eagle” story for Wow Comics.
He soon left Chesler’s studio (as did everyone who had the opportunity) to work for Lloyd Jacquet, and finally joined the Iger Studio in 1945. Eventually he became a fixture in the pages of Fiction House’s titles, becoming a regular on such features as “Ghost Patrol” and “Kaänga”. His first cover for Fiction House was Wambi, Jungle Boy #7 in 1950, and from that point on, he became primarily a cover artist, drawing dozens of covers for Fiction House over the next four years.
When Fiction House ceased publication in 1954, Whitman hardly missed a beat, switching immediately to Charlton Comics as, again, primarily a cover artist. Most likely he had to take a page rate cut at Charlton, and his artwork suffered somewhat from their lower publication standards, but on the plus side he also got illustration work for one of Charlton’s magazines, Real West Magazine. Whitman was at Charlton during the famous flood of 1955, and was one of the many employees who had to be rescued by helicopter from the roof of the printing facility.
In 1963, Whitman started getting work from Dell, though not enough that he was able to completely leave Charlton. He also worked as part of Wally Wood’s studio, where he contributed to some jobs for Warren. In the ’70s, he did some work for DC, but mostly worked in advertising. In 1976, he opened an art gallery, where he sold his portraits and oil paintings. His last big comics job was a 1979 Doc Savage graphic novel (digest-sized) published by Bantam. He died from heart failure in 1983.
July 1953: This month it's Mad #7 with a cover by the creator of the series, Harvey Kurtzman. Mad came about because of one thing: money. Bill Gaines was a notorious cheapskate, and though he treated his staff well in terms of gifts and trips, etc., many of them felt underpaid once EC’s sales began taking off (they got $25 a page). Among those was Kurtzman. Kurtzman put in hours and hours of research for his war stories, even going so far as to make field trips to the local army base to get reference material. But he wasn't getting paid for doing research, only for turning in pages, and resented that others at EC could make more money by doing less intensive work which could be turned out much more quickly. So Kurtzman fell back on his first love: humor. It took some doing, but Kurtzman convinced Gaines to publish a humor comic, and thus Mad was born.
Mad wasn’t quite an overnight success. The first few issues sold rather poorly in fact. But within a year the comic series caught fire, and sales had risen to 750,000 copies. Kurtzman wasn't quite satisfied though, as he really wanted to produce a slick magazine, but Gaines refused. When Kurtzman was offered a position with Pageant magazine, however, Gaines gave in to keep Kurtzman on staff. With issue #24 (cover-dated July 1955), Mad changed formats from a four-color comic to a full-fledged black-&-white magazine, and the result was so successful that the issue had to be reprinted—something practically unheard of in the magazine industry.
But because of the damage being done to EC from the Kefuaver hearings, the rest of the EC line was in a nosedive. The horror and crime titles had been dropped, and the New Direction titles just weren't bringing the readers in. Gaines was heavily in debt to his printers, and was on the verge of having to throw in the towel. But Kurtzman helped Gaines convince Gaines’ mother (who owned half the company, and controlled the money) to throw everything behind Mad. And so the comics were all cancelled, much of the staff was laid off, and Mad went on to be one of the most influential magazines of all time. But all that wasn’t enough for Kurtzman—he wanted complete control of the content of the magazine, and Gaines would never give him that. So only five issues into the magazine-format run, Kurtzman left. Gaines was devastated, and hired Al Feldstein (one of those who had been laid off) to take the reins Kurtzman had thrown down. And though many (including myself) think Feldstein’s tenure was blander and less appealing, the magazine flourished for decades, at one point selling two million copies per issue.
Aug. 1953: Speaking of Charlton (a couple of entries back), this month is Racket Squad #9. Charlton began in 1931 when John Santangelo saw there was money to be made in publishing the lyrics to popular songs. Unfortunately, he did so with no regard to copyright laws and subsequently went to prison in 1934 to serve a sentence of one year and one day. While in prison he met lawyer Ed Levy, with whom he went into business once he got out legally publishing song lyrics. Within a year they opened their own printing press, and went about expanding their publishing operations. After seeing how successful comics were doing, in 1944 they began publishing their own as a way of keeping the presses running overnight—though they didn't officially become Charlton Comics until 1946. As many publishers of the time, they bought material that was packaged by a studio, in Charlton’s case, the studio of Al Fago. The comics were successful enough that in 1951 Charlton brought on Fago as an in-house editor and hired a staff of artists and writers.
Frank Frollo joined the staff in 1952. He was an experienced artist, having begun his career in 1937 working for a variety of publishers, including Dell, Quality, and Centaur. I've found very little information on Frollo, but he appears to be a journeyman artist. Judging by the gap in his credits, he likely served in the military from approximately 1945-48. He worked for Charlton from 1952-56, likely going into advertising work during the tumultuous time following the Kefauver hearings. He wasn’t a great artist by any means, but this cover is easily one of the best drawings I've seen from him.
I just finished reading the "Epic" collection of the "Panther's Rage" storyline. I had only read maybe two of these when I was a kid, but after hearing Chris talk about it on the show, I decided to finally fill in this gap in my Bronze Age reading. I can certainly see why it was considered unique at the time, even if it's a bit...wordy...even by Bronze Age standards, reading it now. I'm glad I checked it out, though!
Here's one of the covers included in the collection (and also used as cover art on the Epic collection):
RIP Dan Spiegle December 12, 1920-January 28, 2017
Hollywood Superstars #4 Epic Comics March 1, 1991
Dan Spiegle was a comic artist known for a wide variety of comics including Hopalong Cassidy, Scooby-Doo, Nemesis, Blackhawk and Crossfire. He passed away on Saturday at the age of 96. While he was in the Navy during WW2, he worked on the military base newspaper and was designing insignias for airplanes. Upon his discharge in 1946 he went to Chouinard Art Institute in L.A. and soon got his first work drawing the Hopalong Cassidy comic strip from 1949 until it was cancelled in 1955.
The above Hollywood Superstars series was created by Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle for Epic Comics (Marvel's imprint for creator owned properties). It ran from November 1990 to April 1991. The series featured the adventures of Jerry Naylor, a stunt coordinator disillusioned with the film industry, Melody, an aspiring actress trying break into the business, and Leo Haney, a good natured stand-up comedian. They ran a private detective agency in Hollywood, where they dealt with various crises related to the movie business. Also included were essays about the entertainment industry by Evanier along with color illustrations by famed cartoonist, Sergio Aragones.
Some of you may recall that I now do a custom calendar each year, with beloved covers from my own Bronze Age collection (either the originals, or re-bought for this purpose). Figured I'd share them for 2017 as the year progresses.
So, for January 2017, here was my cover. The prior issue and this one were almost a proto-Defenders try-out, apparently, and in this issue, the "Titans Three" take on some of the Avengers. I seem to recall that when they got around to trying out the Defenders, Stan wouldn't let them have Silver Surfer (at least initially) so Dr. Strange got dropped into the mix.
Sub-Mariner #35 (March 1971) Pencils: Sal Buscema; Herb Trimpe (alterations) -- per GCD Inks: Sal Buscema; Herb Trimpe (alterations)
This one is the shark just to the left of Aquaman’s hand. He flipped it in Photoshop and redrew the tail, and added the lighting effects to make it jibe with the other sharks.
This is the shark in the center just below Aquaman’s hand. He didn’t have to do much of anything with this one except adjust the color.
So there’s definitely Photoshopping of images going on, and one of those images is from a guy who photographs sharks and sells prints, so maybe there's some copyright issues at play here too. And that’s the real issue here as far as I'm concerned. At what point does reference become copyright infringement?
If I'm going to be the regular artist of Aquaman, I'd probably spend some time getting familiar with shark anatomy so I don't have to rely too heavily on reference, but if I'm only doing a cover, do I really have the time for that? Probably not. I'm probably going to take shortcuts. But you have to make the reference your own. Did Middleton do that here? I don’t know. Some things he drew himself, some he either traced or fiddled with in Photoshop.
But comic artists do this all the time with cars, buildings... mundane, everyday background material. I rarely hear anyone complain about that. And it’s been going on for decades. The only difference now is that you can use Photoshop instead of having to break out your Art-O-Graph or lightbox.
I really don't care. If the cover artists of Atoll #1 isn't corrected for swiping a movie poster, then referencing a few sharks on a variant cover doesn't affect me in any way whatsoever. Maybe I like the composition too much.
I really don't care. If the cover artists of Atoll #1 isn't corrected for swiping a movie poster, then referencing a few sharks on a variant cover doesn't affect me in any way whatsoever. Maybe I like the composition too much.
That's the cover I was trying to think of, but couldn't. So I left this out of my original post.
I was going to say, there's only so many ways to do sharks. 95% of shark photos are basically the same 10 pictures. As long as it's not Atoll I really don't have a problem.
I really don't care. If the cover artists of Atoll #1 isn't corrected for swiping a movie poster, then referencing a few sharks on a variant cover doesn't affect me in any way whatsoever. Maybe I like the composition too much.
That's the cover I was trying to think of, but couldn't. So I left this out of my original post.
I was going to say, there's only so many ways to do sharks. 95% of shark photos are basically the same 10 pictures. As long as it's not Atoll I really don't have a problem.
Well, the guy selling prints of his shark photo might have a problem with it. But that aside, just from a purely aesthetic angle, I don't really like the collage effect. You've got sharks that are ultra-photorealistic, with the ocean surface and Aquaman figure drawn in a much more simplistic style, so that it looks like you took a photo of a bunch of sharks and drew the ocean surface and Aquaman on top of it. At first glance it looks cool, but the more I look at it, the more it bugs me. It feels kind of like watching an old cartoon where you can tell which parts of the image are going to move because the overlay cel is a slightly different color than the background cel. It makes me conscious of the production process, and sucks some of the magic out of the image. Maybe that's just me.
Maybe we should start a comic cover swipe thread and examine modern, golden and silver age swipes of any previously existing photos or artwork? Might be interesting.
Maybe we should start a comic cover swipe thread and examine modern, golden and silver age swipes of any previously existing photos or artwork? Might be interesting.
It'd be difficult to track down the Golden Age swipes, because they often came from magazines that no longer exist. And a lot of times swipe files would be passed down from one artist to another, so someone in the ’70s might be swiping from a photo taken in the ’40s. I think Al Williamson got the swipe files from one of the big comic strip artists—can't remember who at the moment. Wally Wood had a huge swipe file—a couple of filing cabinets’ worth, dating back decades.
The easiest swipes to trace are Shelly Moldoff’s “Hawkman” swipes of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon strips, because the Flash Gordon stuff is readily available.
Continuing with my Steve Gerber reading....when I finished Volume 2 of the Gerber Man-Thing TPB collection, I was disappointed that it cut off 4 issues before the end of Man-Thing's initial run. Luckily, I still own 3 of the 4 missing issues, and picked up the other (#19) via ebay and finished out the series.
My childhood experience with this character consisted of the Power Records "haunted clown" storyline (previously posted about here) and the last 3 issues of the series, which were pretty freaky for my little-kid brain. Below is the cover and splash from the final issue --- and, yes, that's Steve Gerber narrating a letter to editor Len Wein. And it just gets weirder and crazier from there. Needless to say, I loved it as a kid, and still enjoyed it a heckuva lot as an adult...
Per GCD: Man-Thing #22 (October 1975) Pencils: Ed Hannigan ? Inks: Klaus Janson
Deep diving into the 1990s; arguably the best of Beavis and Butthead by Rick Parker. Ren and Stimpy had some great covers, but I didn't have a lot of good choices with these.
Deep diving into the 1990s; arguably the best of Beavis and Butthead by Rick Parker. Ren and Stimpy had some great covers, but I didn't have a lot of good choices with these.
Comic book shortcuts: Door way too big, so as not to obstruct view of characters: Check. No doorframe baseboard, or depth to the doorway/wall: Check. Much wider sidewalk than normal, to accomodate the too-large door: Check. Hidden feet of characters to imply stairs, but characters too close for there to be room for those stairs: Check. House across the street way to small and out of perspective to leave room for moon to show it is nighttime: Check.
I do like the random rip in the old guy’s shirt though.
Deep diving into the 1990s; arguably the best of Beavis and Butthead by Rick Parker. Ren and Stimpy had some great covers, but I didn't have a lot of good choices with these.
Comic book shortcuts: Door way too big, so as not to obstruct view of characters: Check. No doorframe baseboard, or depth to the doorway/wall: Check. Much wider sidewalk than normal, to accomodate the too-large door: Check. Hidden feet of characters to imply stairs, but characters too close for there to be room for those stairs: Check. House across the street way to small and out of perspective to leave room for moon to show it is nighttime: Check.
I do like the random rip in the old guy’s shirt though.
Like I said I didn't have a lot of choices. The rip in Mr. Anderson's shirt and the upside jack-o'-lantern made it stick out of the bunch.
Like I said I didn't have a lot of choices. The rip in Mr. Anderson's shirt and the upside jack-o'-lantern made it stick out of the bunch.
Well, this cover is all about the gag (such as it is). Humor gets away with a lot of artistic license that more “realistic” genres generally can’t. That house in the background is there to show that they are trick-or-treating in a neighborhood, but if it were drawn where it should be drawn based on perspective, it would be hidden behind the jack-o’-lantern head. So he fudges the perspective and places it higher in the image, leaving enough room for a full moon to show that it is nighttime. It's storytelling over realism.
This cover is very similar to a Gene Colan cover posted here a while back (see below). It has all kinds of perspective problems as well—and it's another trick-or-treating cover. As with the B&B cover, there is no depth for the doorframe/wall, the door is inaccurately drawn, and the doorstep isn’t properly accounted for. In both cases, it’s all about the figures and their interaction.
Comments
Magnificent!
Whitman was born in 1922 as Maurice E. Wisotzky. When his parents divorced (he was 13 at the time), his mother was given custody of Maurice and his three siblings, and she changed their last names to Whitman (not her maiden name, which was Braunstein). Whitman showed a talent for art at an early age, but upon graduation from high school in 1941, he went to work managing a retail clothing store. The following year Whitman enlisted in the Army, where he was assigned to the Fort Dix graphics department, painting signs and posters. He was discharged just a few months later because of flat feet. And so, without any formal art training, he joined the Chesler Studio in the fall of 1943, and quickly had his first story published—a “Phantom Eagle” story for Wow Comics.
He soon left Chesler’s studio (as did everyone who had the opportunity) to work for Lloyd Jacquet, and finally joined the Iger Studio in 1945. Eventually he became a fixture in the pages of Fiction House’s titles, becoming a regular on such features as “Ghost Patrol” and “Kaänga”. His first cover for Fiction House was Wambi, Jungle Boy #7 in 1950, and from that point on, he became primarily a cover artist, drawing dozens of covers for Fiction House over the next four years.
When Fiction House ceased publication in 1954, Whitman hardly missed a beat, switching immediately to Charlton Comics as, again, primarily a cover artist. Most likely he had to take a page rate cut at Charlton, and his artwork suffered somewhat from their lower publication standards, but on the plus side he also got illustration work for one of Charlton’s magazines, Real West Magazine. Whitman was at Charlton during the famous flood of 1955, and was one of the many employees who had to be rescued by helicopter from the roof of the printing facility.
In 1963, Whitman started getting work from Dell, though not enough that he was able to completely leave Charlton. He also worked as part of Wally Wood’s studio, where he contributed to some jobs for Warren. In the ’70s, he did some work for DC, but mostly worked in advertising. In 1976, he opened an art gallery, where he sold his portraits and oil paintings. His last big comics job was a 1979 Doc Savage graphic novel (digest-sized) published by Bantam. He died from heart failure in 1983.
Mad wasn’t quite an overnight success. The first few issues sold rather poorly in fact. But within a year the comic series caught fire, and sales had risen to 750,000 copies. Kurtzman wasn't quite satisfied though, as he really wanted to produce a slick magazine, but Gaines refused. When Kurtzman was offered a position with Pageant magazine, however, Gaines gave in to keep Kurtzman on staff. With issue #24 (cover-dated July 1955), Mad changed formats from a four-color comic to a full-fledged black-&-white magazine, and the result was so successful that the issue had to be reprinted—something practically unheard of in the magazine industry.
But because of the damage being done to EC from the Kefuaver hearings, the rest of the EC line was in a nosedive. The horror and crime titles had been dropped, and the New Direction titles just weren't bringing the readers in. Gaines was heavily in debt to his printers, and was on the verge of having to throw in the towel. But Kurtzman helped Gaines convince Gaines’ mother (who owned half the company, and controlled the money) to throw everything behind Mad. And so the comics were all cancelled, much of the staff was laid off, and Mad went on to be one of the most influential magazines of all time. But all that wasn’t enough for Kurtzman—he wanted complete control of the content of the magazine, and Gaines would never give him that. So only five issues into the magazine-format run, Kurtzman left. Gaines was devastated, and hired Al Feldstein (one of those who had been laid off) to take the reins Kurtzman had thrown down. And though many (including myself) think Feldstein’s tenure was blander and less appealing, the magazine flourished for decades, at one point selling two million copies per issue.
Frank Frollo joined the staff in 1952. He was an experienced artist, having begun his career in 1937 working for a variety of publishers, including Dell, Quality, and Centaur. I've found very little information on Frollo, but he appears to be a journeyman artist. Judging by the gap in his credits, he likely served in the military from approximately 1945-48. He worked for Charlton from 1952-56, likely going into advertising work during the tumultuous time following the Kefauver hearings. He wasn’t a great artist by any means, but this cover is easily one of the best drawings I've seen from him.
Here's one of the covers included in the collection (and also used as cover art on the Epic collection):
January 1975
Pencils: Gil Kane
Inks: Klaus Janson
December 12, 1920-January 28, 2017
Hollywood Superstars #4
Epic Comics
March 1, 1991
Dan Spiegle was a comic artist known for a wide variety of comics including Hopalong Cassidy, Scooby-Doo, Nemesis, Blackhawk and Crossfire. He passed away on Saturday at the age of 96. While he was in the Navy during WW2, he worked on the military base newspaper and was designing insignias for airplanes. Upon his discharge in 1946 he went to Chouinard Art Institute in L.A. and soon got his first work drawing the Hopalong Cassidy comic strip from 1949 until it was cancelled in 1955.
The above Hollywood Superstars series was created by Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle for Epic Comics (Marvel's imprint for creator owned properties). It ran from November 1990 to April 1991. The series featured the adventures of Jerry Naylor, a stunt coordinator disillusioned with the film industry, Melody, an aspiring actress trying break into the business, and Leo Haney, a good natured stand-up comedian. They ran a private detective agency in Hollywood, where they dealt with various crises related to the movie business. Also included were essays about the entertainment industry by Evanier along with color illustrations by famed cartoonist, Sergio Aragones.
So, for January 2017, here was my cover. The prior issue and this one were almost a proto-Defenders try-out, apparently, and in this issue, the "Titans Three" take on some of the Avengers. I seem to recall that when they got around to trying out the Defenders, Stan wouldn't let them have Silver Surfer (at least initially) so Dr. Strange got dropped into the mix.
Sub-Mariner #35 (March 1971)
Pencils: Sal Buscema; Herb Trimpe (alterations) -- per GCD
Inks: Sal Buscema; Herb Trimpe (alterations)
Aquaman #18
March 2017
Variant cover by Joshua Middleton
March 2017
Variant Cover B by Bill Sienkiewicz
This is the shark in the center just below Aquaman’s hand. He didn’t have to do much of anything with this one except adjust the color.
So there’s definitely Photoshopping of images going on, and one of those images is from a guy who photographs sharks and sells prints, so maybe there's some copyright issues at play here too. And that’s the real issue here as far as I'm concerned. At what point does reference become copyright infringement?
If I'm going to be the regular artist of Aquaman, I'd probably spend some time getting familiar with shark anatomy so I don't have to rely too heavily on reference, but if I'm only doing a cover, do I really have the time for that? Probably not. I'm probably going to take shortcuts. But you have to make the reference your own. Did Middleton do that here? I don’t know. Some things he drew himself, some he either traced or fiddled with in Photoshop.
But comic artists do this all the time with cars, buildings... mundane, everyday background material. I rarely hear anyone complain about that. And it’s been going on for decades. The only difference now is that you can use Photoshop instead of having to break out your Art-O-Graph or lightbox.
I was going to say, there's only so many ways to do sharks. 95% of shark photos are basically the same 10 pictures. As long as it's not Atoll I really don't have a problem.
The easiest swipes to trace are Shelly Moldoff’s “Hawkman” swipes of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon strips, because the Flash Gordon stuff is readily available.
Continuing with my Steve Gerber reading....when I finished Volume 2 of the Gerber Man-Thing TPB collection, I was disappointed that it cut off 4 issues before the end of Man-Thing's initial run. Luckily, I still own 3 of the 4 missing issues, and picked up the other (#19) via ebay and finished out the series.
My childhood experience with this character consisted of the Power Records "haunted clown" storyline (previously posted about here) and the last 3 issues of the series, which were pretty freaky for my little-kid brain. Below is the cover and splash from the final issue --- and, yes, that's Steve Gerber narrating a letter to editor Len Wein. And it just gets weirder and crazier from there. Needless to say, I loved it as a kid, and still enjoyed it a heckuva lot as an adult...
Per GCD:
Man-Thing #22 (October 1975)
Pencils: Ed Hannigan ?
Inks: Klaus Janson
Door way too big, so as not to obstruct view of characters: Check.
No doorframe baseboard, or depth to the doorway/wall: Check.
Much wider sidewalk than normal, to accomodate the too-large door: Check.
Hidden feet of characters to imply stairs, but characters too close for there to be room for those stairs: Check.
House across the street way to small and out of perspective to leave room for moon to show it is nighttime: Check.
I do like the random rip in the old guy’s shirt though.
This cover is very similar to a Gene Colan cover posted here a while back (see below). It has all kinds of perspective problems as well—and it's another trick-or-treating cover. As with the B&B cover, there is no depth for the doorframe/wall, the door is inaccurately drawn, and the doorstep isn’t properly accounted for. In both cases, it’s all about the figures and their interaction.