Star Spangled War Stories #169, April 1973
The late Ken Barr was a terrific painter. I’ve been fond of his work since his eye-popping Marvel Magazine covers jumped out at me from among the two gazillion mag titles at a typical newsstand.
Barr, Scottish, broke in professionally with art in British war comics. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to find an example of his pen and ink style that appeared in DC’s war stories, before his painted work became his primary focus.
Barr’s Wikipedia entry is sorely lacking, but fan Tim Janson provided a nice overview in his Amazon review of a small book collection of Barr’s paintings:
“Barr got his start in the early 60’s doing covers for British war comics such as Commando before coming over to the United States in 1966. Barr first came to notoriety with his work for Warren Publications on titles such as Creepy and Eerie. Over the next thirty-five plus years Barr would go on to work for both Marvel and DC Comics, do movie posters, book covers, trading card series, and even a collectible plate series for the Danbury Mint.”
You can also find a detailed tribute here, with links to other sources as well.
