The late, great Marvel Comics Legend, Joe Sinnott
My good friend Bismo from B-Movie Blues… on stage at Terrificon in Connecticut… with legendary comic book writer/editor Roy Thomas… doing a couple of Elvis songs?? It was a fantastic scene, and a once-in-a-lifetime event that was straight from the Bizarro World!
For an extra special bonus, before joining the ranks of Elvis impersonators, Thomas visited with my pal Joltin’ Joe Sinnott, who was one of Roy’s most valuable artistic assets at Marvel Comics.
Before and after working for Marvel Comics, Steve Ditko was an artist for Charlton in Derby, Connecticut. In its Atlas days, before returning to superhero comics, Marvel was a step down from National Periodical Publications, aka DC, with Charlton at the low end of the comic book publishing business.
When Atlas nearly collapsed in 1957, Stan Lee kept the company going by using a large stash of previously unpublished inventory stories. But Stan had to lay off his reliable stable of artists who had drawn those inventory stories, including my pal Joe Sinnott. Joe was desperate for work and he found it at Charlton by anonymously penciling thousands of Romance story pages for Vince Colletta.
Ten years later comic books were back in a big way, and Marvel was taking over the top spot from DC. Joe had returned to the Bullpen, but Steve Ditko left for reasons that will never be fully explained. Ditko returned to Charlton, where he drew mystery stories, undoubtedly for a fraction of the page rate that he was earning at Marvel plotting and drawing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange.
One of the ways that Charlton saved money was by not having staffers who were specialists in hand lettering. Instead, Charlton had A. Machine. One of the fixed links I have on this blog is for Charlton Comics: The Movie. The team behind the project have uncovered the secret identity of A. Machine, and they will reveal it in their upcoming documentary.
Jacob Kurtzberg — aka Jack Kirby — was born the same year as JFK, 100 years ago, in 1917. At the first link below you will find a collection of items about he who is the King of Comics. That’s “comics” as in books, and not comedians, as Johnny Carson once incorrectly interpreted the meaning. You’ll find something about that at the second link.
This isn’t fake news! The great Joltin’ Joe Sinnott is profiled in The New York Times. Click the picture to enlarge it, then look at the brown frame near the upper left corner. It’s a birthday card to Joe drawn by Stan Lee! Here’s a picture I took of it, and you can click this one too to see it full size.
Doctor Doom explains the zero sum game of Nash Equilibrium.
