Surfer white-out

Monday, while Denro and I were hanging out with Joe Sinnott, on the Kirby Dynamics blog Robert Steibel happened to post a nice piece about Joe’s inking on a classic Jack Kirby splash page, and today he posted a follow-up. This is a scan of the page from a copy of the original 1968 comic book that you can click to enlarge.

What isn’t obvious on the printed page, but can’t be missed on the original art, is the white-out and re-inking that was done on Alicia Masters’ hair.

My vote is this work was not done by Joe, but in the Marvel bullpen by somebody else, and I’m tempted to say Dick Ayers. Although it isn’t easy keeping a consistent line when inking on top of dried white-out, the brushwork doesn’t look like Joe’s “feathering” technique. It would be helpful to see a scan of the original art for page #2, because Alicia’s hair appears to have been partially reworked there, too, especially in the second panel, although the pen lines are definitely Joe’s.

Joe’s perfectionism might have led him to go over his work again, but when more than one panel is involved it’s more likely that Stan decided he wanted changes made. And if the finished art were already in Stan’s hands in the city, he wouldn’t have sent it all the way back up to Saugerties, he would have had somebody in the office do it.

Here is a short interview with Joe that confirms something I’ve always assumed — Joe met Jack Kirby for the first time in 1972, and not in 1975 as has been repeated many times.

The reason why I have always thought that Jack and Joe met in ’72 is because I know they were both at Phil Seuling’s 1972 Comic Art Convention in New York, as was I.

I wonder what the Statler-Hilton management thought when they saw the huge, broken mirror on a hallway wall? Did they write it off, or make the con pay for it? They should have charged the convention, because Seuling broke it. I saw it happen when he jumped up on a table that was placed against the mirror. He was with some other guys, and they all ran off like school kids who had broken a window while playing baseball. I was only 16 years old, and I wasn’t going to get blamed for it and try to convince hotel security it was broken by the guy who organized the convention, so I took off too!

Follow-up: The Kirby Museum has just posted photographic proof that Jack and Joe met in ’72, and here it is.