Let’s go for a ride in Speed Racer’s Mach 5, hiding in the trunk with Spritle and Chim-Chim.
The series as it was originally presented in Japan.
Category: Cartooning
Super Kissing Cousins
With Krypton and its laws gone, Superman seemed to be suggesting the taboo idea to Supergirl more than he was rejecting it.
The Devil’s Details
It’s been 60 years — sixty! — since I hooked onto my first favorite Marvel Comics character, Daredevil, in issue #19. I continue to shake my head in amazement at the mass popularity of what, once I got into my teen years, other boys made fun of me for liking. Today’s Daredevil is an undeniably grittier version than the one I first enjoyed.
A few months after Daredevil #19, this one-shot comic book was published, reprinting Daredevil #1. Ostensibly, the book was to promote the upcoming Marvel Super-Heroes syndicated cartoon series but, curiously, Daredevil wasn’t one of the cartoons.
I read this favorite comic book many times over. Other times I just studied the drawings. The one disappointment was the poor reproduction quality of Bill Everett’s art.
Everett drew the issue while working full-time at Eaton Paper Company in Pittsfield, MA. He missed more than one deadline getting this job done. Some of the inking in the later pages of the story was reportedly completed by Steve Ditko.
It’s obvious in Marvel Super-Heroes #1, that a lot was lost in the photostats. Here are eight examples of the finely detailed original art for Daredevil #1.
After the Daredevil debacle concluded in late 1963, Everett continued working at Eaton but in 1965, the house of cards collapsed again. “He was fired from Eaton,” says [Everett’s daughter] Wendy. “He was such an acute alcoholic at this point, and had such difficulty with authority figures, that he couldn’t hold a job.”*
— ‘Fire & Water: Bill Everett and the Birth of Marvel Comics’, by Blake Bell, Fantagraphics, 2010
Everett joined AA, got sober, and was welcomed back to Marvel. He ended his career producing a wonderful series of Sub-Mariner comics, before dying from heart disease at age 55. While working on this post, I’ve been looking at both the book cited above and this new volume of Everett’s work from his Fifties peak.
* Wally Wood developed similar trouble with alcohol and authority figures.
Panel Discussion
This stat of an un-inked comic book panel is from a 5-page Inhumans backup story, in a 1967 issue of Thor that I remember very well.
It’s an example of why I consider Jack Kirby to be the all-time greatest comic book artist. Original art dimensions would soon downsize to 10″x15″, but this panel was drawn 12″ wide, giving Kirby extra space to convey a sense of depth and solidity in the objects and surfaces.
Joe Sinnott applied his impeccably clean and precise inking to the story. Unfortunately, the coloring is much too bright and flat in this clipping from a digital comic.
Please Look After This Bear Character
Tonight’s PBS News Hour had this segment about the art of Paddington Bear.
In 2018, I was interested in seeing a Paddington illustration exhibit at the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, MA. But between recovering from melanoma skin cancer and being the trustee of my late parents’ estate, I didn’t make it out there.
https://carlemuseum.org/explore-art/exhibitions/past-exhibition/paddington-comes-america
The museum is located at one end of the Hampshire College campus. Today came the shocking, yet not surprising, news that Hampshire College will be shutting down. That leaves UMass and Amherst College in Amherst, along with Mount Holyoke in South Hadley and Smith College in Northampton, with the latter two being schools for women.
I Go Hugo
“Pratt is near the top of a short list of the greatest cartoonists ever to ply the trade.” — The New York Times
Aww, shucks. Such a nice compliment. But, alas, I suppose they could be referring to Ugo Prat. I subtracted letters from my name for Dog Rat, and Prat added letters to his name to come up with Hugo Pratt.
That small sample was my first exposure to Pratt’s work. It came from this book, A History of the Comic Strip, by Pierre Couperie and Maurice Horn.
The book had just been published in English when, in the eighth grade, to my delight I saw a copy at the town library. Over the course of several months I devoured that book, checking it out as frequently as the library allowed. I valued it so much that I later bought a copy.
I felt that my obsession with cartooning and comic books was being validated. I was particularly pleased seeing a page about Marvel Comics with this drawing by Marie Severin.
Hugo Pratt received only a brief mention elsewhere in the book, but I later became more familiar with his work. Pratt’s style combined elements of Alex Toth and Jesse Marsh. Frank Miller in his later work seemed to adopt Pratt’s “flat brush” inking techniques.
In front of me right now is the new book, CORTO MALTESE: Fable of Venice and Other Adventures. There are links to purchase a copy in this NYTimes review.