Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Author: Greg Goldstein

Greg Goldstein is a veteran publishing and media executive; most recently, he was the Chief Operating Officer, President and Publisher of IDW Publishing, managing all aspects of the company’s book and games business from 2008 to 2019. Throughout his career, Greg has developed creative and profitable publishing programs for dozens of the world’s best-known entertainment brands including Star Wars, Transformers, Star Trek, James Bond, TMNT, Spider-Man, Batman and Godzilla. In 2013, Greg led IDW’s acquisition of Top Shelf, an independent publisher best known for Congressman John Lewis’ March trilogy, which has become the most lauded non-fiction graphic novel series in the history of the medium. In 2011, Greg won an Eisner award for his editing on the first-ever collection of Bob Montana’s Archie newspaper comic strips. (Published under IDW’s Library of American Comics imprint.) Prior to joining IDW, Greg was VP of Entertainment and Gaming for Upper Deck, responsible for the company’s blockbuster slate of games, including Yu-Gi-Oh, World of Warcraft and The VS Superhero system. During his tenure, he created Marvel Ultimate Battles, the first-ever trading card game that focused exclusively on Marvel’s popular mass media characters. As VP of Brand Development for Activision from 2000-2002, Greg established strategic partnerships with the largest Hollywood studios, and worked closely with Marvel Entertainment to successfully develop Spider-man into one of the biggest blockbuster licensed videogame brands in interactive history. Greg’s career has also included a successful stint at Topps, where he helped launch and manage Topps Comics in the mid 1990s. Additionally, Greg serves as an adviser for to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBDLF). He is also a frequent guest lecturer at San Diego Sate University and has presented at dozens of panels and conferences throughout the US. He is also a well-known collector of original comic book art and rues the day he sold his collection the first time around in the late 1990s.

George Tuska — In The 25th Century

Original Art and The Artists

Buck Rogers Daily Strip, July 5, 1965

George Tuska closes out Buck Rogers’ run as a comic strip — at least the first time around. 

The strip had lasted nearly 40 years, debuting in 1929 and ending in 1967.  The earliest strips have been collected, but it seems doubtful that commercial considerations will allow for the entire run to be reprinted. (I’d like to be wrong about that.)

Ironically, Tuska’s depiction of Rogers is 15 years ahead of its time. Gil Gerard, who played Buck in the 1979 -1981 television series pretty much matches the likeness of Rogers that Tuska employed.

Well, they do say science fiction often becomes science fact.

(When the strip returned to newspapers to capitalize on the TV show in 1979, Tuska was already re-established in comic books. Gray Morrow picked up the illustration chores for that run.)

Take the helmet off, and Tuska’s Buck Rogers looks a lot like… TV’s Buck Rogers (Gil Gerard), 15 years ahead of the fact.

    Al McWilliams — Futurist

    Original Art and The Artists

    Twin Earths, Daily Strip, April 14, 1958

    Al (Alden) McWilliams gives us an uncanny glimpse of a cool flip phone — about 40 years ahead of its time.

    (Of course, there’s the terrific use of shadows and light to admire as well. But, as always, we digress.)

    Twin Earths was one of the few strip collections that we could never make happen at IDW and The Library of American Comics. (For reasons involving both rights and availability of materials.) It’s too bad, because it was a fun and well-rendered adventure strip — one of the few that dealt with “flying saucers.” Capatilizing on UFOs in the news headlines, it was part of an overall more realistic trend in SF post World War 2.

    Also, McWilliams is a terrific artist who never quite achieved the fame of some of his contemporaries — seemingly never quite being in the right place at the right time.

    Continuing our month long celebration of the great adventure comic strips:
    Week 1: Superheroes
    Week 2: Detectives
    Week 3: SF
    Week 4: Comic Book Giants

    Sporadic reprints of Twin Earths have appeared from time to time, but as of now (2021) the full run has yet to be collected.

    Al Williamson — Flight To Glory

    Original Art and The Artists

    Secret Agent Corrigan (X-9), Daily Strip, October 17, 1969

    As noted in a previous post, the amazing Al Williamson spent 13 years illustrating Secret Agent Corrigan as a daily strip. (With writing by Archie Goodwin — also great.) 

    Here’s a nice example from the earlier period of Al’s strips with a gorgeous final panel. 

    (Of course as I also previously noted, Williamson could have illustrated a guide to Windows XP, and I would have devoured it anyway.)

    Al’s Corrigan strips are relative bargains in the original art market today: Nice examples can often be found in the $400-$500 range.

    The complete five-volume collection of Williamson’s Corrigan (Also referred to as X-9) is one of my favorite series form the Library of American of Comics (LOAC), and one of my favorite projects at IDW Publishing. 

    Yes, that makes me biased. So?

    Continuing our month long celebration of the great adventure comic strips:
    Week 1: Superheroes
    Week 2: Detectives
    Week 3: SF
    Week 4: Masters Of The Form

    Secret Agent Corrigan (X-9) has an outstanding pedigree: Created in 1934 by Dashiell Hammett and Alex Raymond for King Features, he was quickly featured in two movie serials. (1937 and 1945, pictured here.)

    Chester Gould — The Trusty Detective

    Original Art and The Artists

    Dick Tracy, Sunday Strip, March 12, 1961

    One panel. That’s all it took to get my attention on this page.

    Which one? Trust me, it’s not a quiz: It’s panel three, featuring the CLASSIC Dick Tracy profile by creator Chester Gould

    And, as a bonus, our trusty detective is holding a gun.

    Of course, it’s an overall great Sunday page with nice action to complement all that detecting. But that specific panel is iconic to a strip and creator that were inexorably tied together for nearly 50 years.

    IDW Publishing and The Library of American Comics collected the entire Gould Tracy run — 29 volumes in all.
    The New York News water no time promoting the return of Dick Tracy — and the rest of the comics — after a devastating NYC newspaper strike in 1962/1963.

    Alex Raymond — Watching The Detectives

    Original Art and The Artists

    Daily Strip, December 11, 1950

    Every so often, I have this daydream, that I will sell most, if not all, of my art and use the proceeds to buy just one piece: An Alex Raymond Flash Gordon Sunday.

    First time I ever saw that art as a kid, I recognized that I was looking at something extraordinary.

    Nearly 50 years later, I still feel that way.

    In the meantime, I have this great Raymond Rip Kirby to enjoy. Frankly, they are all pretty great, but this one especially spoke to me because of the terrific use of light and shadows. (And smaller word balloons than typical means more art to enjoy.)

    Publishing the complete Raymond Rip Kirby — and Flash Gordon, with the Raymond Jungle Jim toppers — at IDW was a joy. An absolute joy.

    And I’m still thinking about saving my pennies…

    Continuing our month long celebration of the great adventure comic strips:
    Week 1: Superheroes
    Week 2: Detectives
    Week 3: SF
    Week 4: Masters Of The Form

    Fun fact: This is Volume 2 of the complete Alex Raymond Rip Kirby, despite the fact that the years contained within are misidentified here.

    Alex Saviuk — Spider-Man’s Amazing Friends

    Original Art and The Artists

    Newspaper Strip, Sunday, January 20, 2008

    Pencils: Alex Saviuk. 

    Inks: Joe Sinnott

    Letters: Stan Sakai.

    Story: Stan Lee. (With ghostwriting help likely from Roy Thomas.)

    It’s an all-star team of creators contributing to this Sunday Spider-Man strip, and signed by everyone.

    (Well almost. If I’m correct about Roy, I hope I can get his John Hancock at a convention. Whenever conventions become the norm again, that is.)

    Fun Fact: I acquired this Sunday directly from Alex, who was kind enough to Remarque it for me to distinguish from the few others that had all four autographs. A talented artist and a super nice guy.

    Nuff said.

    (*You can read about Stan Lee and the legend of “Nuff Said” here and here.)

    The very final Spider-Man Sunday, concluding a successful 40-year run.
    The first volume of the classic Spidey strips features art by John Romita.
    Alex’s very first Spider-Man story featured Mary Jane saying yes to the big question back in 1985.

    Wayne Boring — Superman Powers Up

    Original Art and The Artists

    Superman Daily Strip, September 29, 1965

    Classic Superman artist Wayne Boring provides us with an excellent and rare daily strip at the end of Superman’s 27-year newspaper run.

    The excellence is obvious; Superman uses three different super powers in each of the three panels. 

    Rare because, well, pretty much the same reason: Many, many strips from this period only feature Clark, Lois or other characters in “civilian” garb, with soap opera style plots and stories. In other words, there are many strips where Superman is nowhere to be found.

    In fact, in the 80s, Boring would often Remarque those “plain” originals with a Superman figure to make them more desirable in the collectors market.

    But of course, no need to add an “extra” Superman here. He’s doing just fine in this good-looking example.

    We managed to collect most of the Superman strips at IDW and LOAC, but couldn’t find any collectors with complete runs from the earliest silver age period. (Late 50s.) That era of strips includes the introduction of a Brainiac prototype (“Romado”) drawn by the great Curt Swan.

    Back in the Golden Age, Newspapers ruled New York, and Superman ruled the Sunday comics section (16 color pages!)of the New York Daily Mirror. A Golden Age, indeed.
    A classic example of a Wayne Boring Superman Remarque, drawn right over the panels.

    Al Plastino — Batman’s Watery Doom!

    Original Art and The Artists

    Batman Daily Strip — July 8, 1969

    Bat sheets. Bat soap. Bat pajamas. Bat-a-rangs…

    As nearly any pop culture fan knows, (especially — ahem — older ones like myself) the hugely successful camp 1966 Batman TV show launched a plethora of bat merchandise.

    So it’s no surprise that DC launched a revival of the Batman comic strip, which had a successful, but brief run in the Golden Age.

    The daily strips initially mimicked the campiness of the TV show, but ultimately moved closer to more traditional DC superhero stories, as did the comics after the show was cancelled in early 1968.

    Al Plastino handled the art chores for many of the strips, following Sheldon Moldoff and Joe Giella.

    The strip managed to soldier on until early 1973. Finally managing to collect all of them — the dailies and Sundays — into a three-volume LOAC series was an archival highlight of mine at IDW. 

    (It only took five years or so to convince DC to let us do it. Perseverance won the day.)

    The original art for the third and final volume of the Silver Age Batman strip books is featured here.

    Butch Guice — Alternate Vision

    Original Art and The Artists

    Storming Paradise #5, July 2009

    General Patton dramatically fires on… Japanese soldiers? 

    In this alternate reality version of World War II, anything is possible. America’s atomic test goes horribly wrong in New Mexico, and the US is unable to produce a working A-Bomb. So the only way to attempt to defeat the Japanese forces is to invade.

    Created by Chuck Dixon and Jackson “Butch” Guice the series ran into some scheduling and deadline challenges. At a minimum, there was a six-month gap between issues #4 and #5.

    Hence, other artists were called in to help out. Some pages — like this one — look 100 percent Guice, and others, less so. Rich Burchett gets credits for pencils this issue but I’m guessing that many pages are rough breakdowns only.

    But like I said, that’s a guess.

    Guice ‘s art style has changed dramatically over the years. I enjoyed his early superhero work, but I find his contemporary “photo-realistic” style more appealing.

    And perfect for a series that features the aforementioned General Patton, Harry Truman, George HW Bush and other recognizable historical figures.

    Even if that history actually never happened.

    Alex Toth — Illuminating

    Original Art and The Artists

    Weird War Tales #6, August 1972

    One picture is worth a thousand words.  At least, that’s what they say. (“They” say a lot.)

    In the case of this beautiful Alex Toth war page, I will eliminate 999 of them.

    All we need to really say is: Astonishing.

    Every single time I examine the page, I marvel at how Toth created those lighting effects using only India ink and negative space.

    Every. Single. Time.

    The art tricks the brain into seeing the illumination as three dimensional as if it were celluloid in a darkened theater. Hell, most cinematography fails to capture lighting as brilliantly as this.

    Oh, and the storytelling and camera angles are terrific, too. And of course, the sound effects in the trademark Toth style, add to the drama.

    Astonishing.

    The five-page Toth story (written by Bob Haney) serves as a “framing device” for the other stories in the issue.