Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Tag: Artist Editions

Jack Davis — Wolfman Jack

Original Art and The Artists

Tales From The Crypt #46, March 1955

2020 is the 60th anniversary of the legendary EC “New Trend” comics. William Gaines and his masterful crew published some of the most enduring comics and stories in the medium’s history, raising the bar in all categories — humor, science fiction, war, crime, and of course, legendarily, horror.

To celebrate this anniversary, we take a look at one of EC’s greats — Jack Davis.

This Davis page is from Jack’s last horror story, “Upon Reflection,” from Tales From The Crypt #46, the final issue. Gaines, under censorship pressure — and unable to ensure distribution — raised the white flag and cancelled his horror and crime titles.

Davis telltale style drips all over this page. The old crone, the angry mob, and the tense claustrophobia in each panel spell out impending doom… for someone. (If we know the EC M.O., it will be a twist.)

The cover from this werewolf story has become one of the most iconic in horror comics history.

By 1955, Davis had easily become one of the most important artists in the EC “bullpen.” He was unfailingly reliable, tremendously gifted, and ridiculously prolific. Under the gun, he could pencil and ink three pages in day, without taking quality shortcuts.

Gaines, Davis, and nearly all of the rest of the EC mainstays reunited at the 1972 EC fan convention, organized by fans Bruce Hershenson and Ron Barlow. At various panels throughout the event, they reminisced about EC’s halcyon days, and the two spoke about Jack’s association with horror stories:

JACK DAVIS:  I enjoyed doing the horror bit and they liked it, and so I kept at it.  But when I looked back on it after things began to get very ticklish with the Code and everything, I began to ask – am I doing something constructive or good.  I still, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s really that bad.

WILLIAM GAINES:  You have to understand Jack comes from another era, and another kind of background.  Jack was, and still is, a very moral, religious person.  He came up here from Georgia… [laughter]…I’m serious now…and Jack did this stuff because it was his job as an artist.  Jack has always had some misgivings about it, and I respect his misgivings.  Jack has been more comfortable with other types of material than horror.  But the fact that he’s a real pro is evident from the fact that although he wasn’t 100% comfortable with it, you see the job he did.

“Upon Reflection” is collected in both black and white and color versions, and the Tales From The Crypt cover adorns the Jack Davis EC Stories Artist’s Edition from IDW.
Three EC-related publications that warped my (very young) brain, and the rest, as they say, is history: The 1971 bio of Gaines that includes tremendous detail about EC’s rise and fall — and rise; Woody Gelman’s 1971 Nostalgia Press oversize collection of EC stories was my intro to the tales themselves; and the brilliant 1972 EC fan convention program which featured bios and caricatures of all the EC creators.
EC publishes its own obituary.

Watchmen — Odds and Sods

Original Art and The Artists

Random Thoughts and Observations

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons early concept art for Watchmen

The Price Of Greatness

  • Each time I consider a purchase of an original Watchmen page, the price becomes too rich for my taste and I get cold feet. And then, each succeeding time, the price is much higher. Lesson learned? Not yet.
  • That said, at IDW, we published a beautiful Watchmen Artifact Edition, so I did get to browse quite a few pages and see some impressive scans.

Archie’s Efforts

  • The MLJ/ Archie superhero universe is fascinating:  Since the 80s there have been multiple attempts to launch and sustain the characters, and none have quite worked. Fingers crossed for the most recent efforts, although I’m not certain any new titles featuring the latest iterations were published last year. It’s also interesting that Archie has licensed them to DC a few times.

DC’s Appetites

  • And speaking of DC, it’s fascinating to me that they would own so many superhero characters, add more, and then license even more. To wit: They purchased the Quality library, the Marvel family, The Charlton superheroes, and Wildstorm. At one point or another, they’ve licensed the Archie superheroes, The T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents, The Spirit, The Conde Naste pulp characters and Fighting American. And a host of other ones I’m likely overlooking. Whew.

Moore’s Luck

  • Did Alan Moore’s familiarity with the Charlton and Archie characters come from childhood? Or later perhaps when he attends some fan gatherings/ early UK conventions? You could barely find some of those comics in New York, so it’s intriguing (and ultimately fortunate) that they made their way into the UK.

Morisi Gets His Rights

  • Why did Peter Cannon Thunderbolt revert back to creator Pat Morisi? Why was his deal so different than Steve Ditko’s? Or, did he manage to find a copyright loophole later on? Questions, so many questions…

Not Too Desolate:

  • If Bob Dylan receives a royalty for the Desolation Row lyrics included in the Watchmen comics, it’s probably the easiest and most surprising money ever. If his people took a flat fee, all I can say is… oops.

Chris Sprouse — Always Terrific

Original Art and The Artists

Tom Strong #26, June 2004

2019 is somehow the 20th anniversary of Alan Moore’s ABC line of comics at Wildstorm / DC, which included Tom Strong and company.

Seems like only a few years ago that Wildstorm published the first issue of the cool retro-modern Strong, Moore’s obvious love letter to Doc Savage and other pulp heroes. Sprouse’s art was of course perfect for the character designs and storytelling. As noted previously, I’m a big fan of the Sprouse and Story team. (Al Gordon also did a nice job on inks of the earlier issues, but Karl gets my vote anytime Chris is penciling.)

Moore left the regular series shortly before this issue appeared, and in fact, it is “guest-written” by Mark Schultz, and “guest-drawn” by Pascual Ferry. The only Sprouse / Story art in this issue is this terrific cover. (To see it at full-size, check out the amazing and somewhat overlooked America’s Best Comics Artist’s Edition from IDW.)

Moore would team-up one more time with the art duo to wrap up the storyline in the final regular issue (#36), but fortunately for us, Sprouse and Story came back for both mini-series that followed, written by Peter Hogan. (Strong also ultimately appeared in a separate anthology series, Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales, featuring different creative combos.)

Now, of course, the ABC line is dormant and I’m pretty sure the Wildstorm imprint is as well. But Strong and his crew live on for now in the greater DCU, as part of the Terrifics, a quirky multi-verse title. Still, it is definitely worth revisiting the original 36 issues and the spin-off appearances.

Hey DC, how about an Omnibus?

Walter Simonson — Cover Me

Original Art and The Artists

Walter Simonson’s The Mighty Thor: Artist’s Edition HC, Original Art Cover

Editor/Original Art expert Scott Dunbier brought his Artist’s Edition idea to IDW Publishing, and the rest as they say, is history. In 2011, Walter Simonson’s groundbreaking Thor run became the very first of the many Marvel Artist’s Editions in this extraordinary series. (And the second IDW Artist’s Edition overall, following Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer the year prior.)

Scott also had the wild idea to do actual original art covers of these original art reprint books on a super-limited basis, and Walter went along with it. These are not “sketch” covers, but rather very nicely detailed individual pencil and ink full-figure drawings of Thor done on blank cover variants. Walter only did about 10 of these — 15 at the most.

The only drawback — I can’t think of any way to frame it. (It’s also the heaviest piece of original art I own. Artist’s Editions are not light, but that is definitely the textbook definition of a first world problem…)