An hour chatting with one of my favorite comic book artists, Joe Staton, who is the penciler for the Dick Tracy comic strip. I’m expecting to see Staton this weekend at a memorial service for our late mutual friend, Joe Sinnott. It’s being held in the same town where Joe lives.
Category: Joltin’ Joe Sinnott
The late, great Marvel Comics Legend, Joe Sinnott
Our Marvelous American Heritage
A couple of choice pieces of original art currently on Heritage Auctions.
I can’t say for sure if the Pro-White changes on Doctor Doom were made by Joe and/or someone at the Marvel office. In this collection of Joe’s brushes, in the middle of the container you’ll see one with dried Pro-White.
Ditko’s inking is a good contrast to Joe because he favored a pen for outlines, using a brush for emphasis and solid areas.
What I’d Say If I Were On Twitter
“The Internet really has sped things up. It takes only a minute for me to sort the two Sunday papers I get, and not much longer than that to read the tiny comics sections.” Hmm… that’s 170 characters. Ten too many? I’d better trim it down.
“The Internet has sped things up. It takes only a minute to sort the two Sunday papers I get, and not much longer than that to read the tiny comics sections.” There, only 156 characters.
I’m not on Twitter, but I’m on Facebook, and every time I go there it asks, “What’s on your mind, Doug?” How about what was on my mind 55 years ago?
Let’s Rap About Cap and Crap
Ever since arranging the estate sale at my late parents’ house in Arizona three years ago, I’ve been mulling over the problem of having all of the stuff I’ve accumulated over these many years. When the late publisher and comic art dealer Russ Cochran announced he was selling most of his massive collection, I couldn’t imagine why he would want to do that. But I was much younger then, and now I can imagine all too well. Cochran was getting old, he was planning ahead, and he needed to downsize.
Jerry Beck, the noted animation historian and archivist, moved recently. Beck has announced on Facebook that he is holding a garage sale to clear a storage space of “lots of magazines, toys, plush figures, books, DVDs, VHS tapes, stuff.” Jerry is my age, and I have the same inclination. Yard sale? Craigslist? eBay? I suppose all three will be useful.
While I contemplate divesting myself of possessions, I am of course continuing to accumulate. The “Get Back” Beatles book to accompany Peter Jackson’s documentary is on pre-order. As is Andrew Sandoval’s revised, expanded and definitive Monkees day-by-day book. No date has been announced yet for the long-delayed second volume of IDW’s Artist’s Edition of Jim Steranko’s 1960’s work at Marvel.
The original art for the center spread from Captain America #113 is coming up on Heritage Auctions. The first two Cap issues that Steranko drew, #110 and #111, were inked by my pal, the great Joe Sinnott. The whereabouts of the original art for the center spread to one of those issues was the subject of some controversy. The art had been promised to Joe, but he never saw it again. Joe had only the original production stat for the art. Someone said they saw the original art hanging in the home of a well-known comic book person, but when asked about it later, that person reportedly denied ever having the art. I assume the art was eventually located and scanned for inclusion in the Artist’s Edition volume, but some of the pages in the first volume were taken from stats.
When Steranko couldn’t meet the deadline for issue #112, there was a Kirby fill-in. Jim returned for his trilogy’s big finish in issue #113, which was inked by Tom Palmer. Steranko has always said that he, rather than Palmer, inked the two center pages. This scan confirms it, although the use of Zip-a-Tone was a Palmer trademark.
Kirby/Sinnott — ‘Nuff Said!
“Dougie, it was a job.” — Joe Sinnott
Joe was sincerely modest about his work, but he was also justly proud of it. He used to say he hit his peak in 1961, and stayed there. Which he did.
A Tale of Suspense! A Tale to Astonish! A Strange Tale!
As a sensitive 10-year-old kid, the first time I saw Jack Kirby’s art it looked, well, scary. As I liked to tell my dearly departed buddy Joe Sinnott, his “friendly faces” on Kirby’s art got me started buying the Fantastic Four.
My first comic book from the Marvel Comics Group was Daredevil #19. It was drawn by John Romita, who had previously worked for DC, drawing romance comics. In hindsight, this made the art less intimidating for me.
As a kid I thought of Stan Lee as a sort of Walt Disney, but saying that to anyone in Hollywood would have, at best, elicited a loud laugh. I say “at best” because that would have at least meant the person laughing knew who Stan Lee was. Much more likely would have been a puzzled expression and “who?” Forty years later, after Disney bought Marvel, that’s where Joe Sinnott’s retirement money came from. Joe would joke with me that he’d finally arrived as a Disney artist.
For most of my life, the question of who did what in creating the MCU (Marvel Comics Universe), as it’s now called, was a topic of heated debate only among comic book fans and the True Believers of the M.M.M.S. (Merry Marvel Marching Society). How times have changed. The New Yorker is weighing in with an historical analysis. I haven’t read it yet, so I don’t know what conclusions it reaches.