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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We’ve used the phrase artist’s artist here a few times. Simply put, it’s an artist that other members of the craft more than admire and appreciate; they are often awestruck by the talent.
Talented, speedy, and reliable. Did I say talented again? It’s worth repeating. He did a lot of terrific work for Gold Key (Space Family Robinson, Doctor Spector, Korak, etc.) and a ton of licensed material including a well-regarded run on Maverick (James Garner’s TV series), only occasionally finding time for DC and Marvel.
So I’m fortunate that he did manage a few DC war stories, including this one from 1983. It’s a typical example of Spiegle’s talents —creative storytelling and great spatial arrangements, inventive camera angles, and, of course, detailed and clean draftsmanship.
From a fan perspective, his lack of consistent work on “mainstream” titles often meant less recognition than he deserved: An underrated talent if there ever was one — except by the people that knew his work.
The single greatest compliment I ever heard abut John Severin’s art — and there were many others — came from Jack Kirby, via Mark Evanier:
“Jack used to say that when he had to research some historical costume or weapon for a story, it was just as good to use a John Severin drawing as it was to find a photo of the real thing.”
Severin’s lavish attention to detail caught my eye early. The line-work was so precise and polished. It was amazing stuff, especially considering that those details needed to reproduce on cheap, pulpy newsprint running on industrial web presses.
As a kid, especially remember his pitch-perfect inking on Herb Trimpe’s pencils for The Incredible Hulk. I also loved John’s pairing with sister Marie Severin on some of the earliest issues of Kull. John’s had one weakness was that occasionally his realistic line work could come off as stiff and inking Marie’s more dynamic layouts solved that issue.
Severin was best known for three non-superhero genres: Westerns, humor, and war. He was a pro at all three, and everything else he touched as well.
As Evanier wrote, “They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”
Indeed they don’t.
(These two pages, along with others, were especially selected for the exhibit “War No More” at the Words & Pictures Museum in Northampton, Mass. in 1993.)
John Severin’s first published war story appeared in EC’s Two Fisted Tales; inks by Will Elder and layouts by Harvey Kurtzman.
Early issues of Kull The Conqueror featured pencils (& colors) by Marie Severin and inks by brother John.
Roy Lichtenstein never met a DC war stories artist he didn’t like — including Russ Heath.
More accurately, Lichtenstein probably never met a comic book artist he didn’t like.
Lichtenstein, the legendary “Pop” modern artist of the 60s referenced much of his work from contemporaneous romance and war stories. The critics raved, and art fans swooned, but hardly anyone paid much attention to the original source material.
That changed, but only (and slowly) over time. To this day, there’s never been an official Lichtenstein catalog that identifies all the source comics. In many cases, the works are only occasionally acknowledged.
There is a great website about all this, although the author is reluctant to share the specific issues and dates. Still with all the examples visually presented, it is pretty mind blowing. It’s nearly impossible to find an original Lichtenstein without a corresponding comic book reference.
But as always, we digress.
Behind Joe Kubert, Russ Heath is probably the single artist most identified with DC’s classy war books of the silver and bronze age.
He was a terrific artist, who could accomplish inventive storytelling, polished lines and wonderful detail.
And he was quite the character too. But those are stories I will save for another day… Except…
When Russ was dealing with some health and financial issues the Hero Initiative stepped in and provided some much needed support. In return, Russ created this special strip below to pay tribute to that support.
Sounds good. Except…
Heath choses to reference Lichtenstein’s “Whaam” a DC war panel that was actually created by Irv Novick. Russ’ art is the inspiration for “Blam” an equally powerful, but lesser known painting. (Both are originally from the same issue of Men of War.)
That is an odd one.
Despite the autobiographical strip’s premise, Russ created the inspiration for “Blam” above, not “Whaam”, below. Whaam, Blam… this stuff writes itself, sometimes.
Sam Glanzman tackles Archie Goodwin’s story set in the Yugoslavia during World War II with a scene that inspired the cover of the issue.
The “split-screen vibe” of the page artfully deals with the Yugoslav civil war, which quickly became a confusing round robin of divided loyalties and shifting allegiances. There were far too many examples of the “enemy of my enemy is my friend ” adage not working out very well.
Fascists. Communists. Nationalists. Separatists. It was an indeed an extra challenging situation for the allies to sort out.
Like many artists of his generation, Glanzman, a stellar member of DC’s war stories crew, was also a veteran of WWII. Later on, he created a graphic novel memoir about his experience on the USS Stevens, entitled A Sailor’s Story.
One of the few WW II films to deal with the conflict in Yugoslavia, Force 10 From Navarone is a guilty pleasure of mine. It features a great cast and talented director (Guy Hamilton) exceeding the limitations of a so-so script and some goofy and groan-worthy cheesy moments.
Spoiler alert — the commandos accomplish their mission, but film has a terrific coda that is surprisingly witty and unexpected.
Robert Shaw supplies the dialogue for the film’s pitch-perfect postscript. And I would have listened to Robert Shaw recite a technical manual with rapt attention.
Weird War Tales wasn’t in my wheelhouse as a kid. I liked most of the DC war books, but I especially enjoyed the realistic stories, many, if not most, imbued with an anti-war spirit.
Weird War, with its robots, ghouls and goblins, just didn’t do it for me.
Come to think of it, I wasn’t a Haunted Tank guy either. Like I said, realism was more my cup of tea in the war books. (Meanwhile I was a big fan of DC’s “conventional” horror titles like House of Secrets and House of Mystery. Go figure. And, as always I digress.)
But… as I became more fascinated by the visual aspects of comic book storytelling, I realized I had missed a few things, including some great art in that title.
Here’s a nice example from José García-López on a page that clearly inspired Joe Kubert’s cover. (And not too weird at this point in the story, yet.)
