Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Tag: Greg Goldstein

Darwyn Cooke — Pulp Friction

Original Art and The Artists

Rocketeer Spirit #1 and #2, (Cover Preliminary Art) July/August 2013

Continuing our celebration of “Will Eisner Week,” with other creators’ takes on the beloved and influential character, The Spirit.

As noted last year, the late Darwyn Cooke was likely the closest modern creator to fully realize Will Eisner’s legacy.  Darwyn was an astonishing storyteller, designer illustrator, letterer and more. (Among dozens of awards and nominations, he also received an Emmy nomination for his work on the 2008 animated film Justice League: New Frontier.)

DC launched its ongoing Cooke Spirit series with a Batman / Sprit crossover, and this Spirit / Rocketeer crossover (covers only) brings some closure to that brief run.

The covers are designed to form one single unit, and a limited variant wraparound cover might exist, although I can’t find it in my collection — or on-line. ( I can’t recall if we ended up printing it or not.)

As for these prelims? They are oversize on real art board… and they are spectacular.

“I can remember it was one of those days when I was thirteen, and I was in a comic store, and there was nothing that I wanted to get. On the wall was a copy of Warren’s Spirit magazine. I think it’s number three, where he is running down the elevated track straight at you, and the train is behind him. It’s just one of the most exciting images I have ever seen…”

-Darwyn Cooke interview From Will Eisner: A Spirited Life by Bob Andelman

Bob Montana — Just Joking

Original Art and The Artists

Archie’s Joke Book #2, January 1954

Although the newspaper strip kept Archie co-creator Bob Montana busy, he did manage to continue to find time to provide comic book pages as well, setting (and ultimately evolving) the house style for the Archie family.

Archie’s Joke Book used a similar formula to the newspaper strips: Short gags, either a half page or full page in length, possibly even recycling or amplifying some of the same gags from those strips.

IDW collected one small volume of these “jokes” from that era to minimal success. The format didn’t appeal to collectors, and the joke themselves in all fairness, don’t appeal all that much to a contemporary audience.

Bob Montana — Instructional

Original Art and The Artists

Sunday June 13, 1954

Archie, as noted in the previous blog, rapidly achieved success. Within a few years after the character’s introduction, the Archie family added a hit newspaper strip to the successful comics line.  Bob Montana, Archie’s co-creator, worked on the strip for nearly 30 years until his untimely passing in 1975.

IDW and the Library of American Comics intended to publish a complete sequential series of these strips, but ran into a problem: Finding the actual strips themselves. Archie had no strip archive, and collectors, who had kept clipped strips from the era, concentrated primarily on adventure series and mostly ignored Archie.

Fortunately, we managed one book each of dailies and Sundays from the period, and even a cursory glance reveals Montana’s cleverness in cartooning.

Early solicitations for the Montana dailies book included this preliminary cover, but imprint Editor Dean Mullaney ultimately went in a different direction for publication.

Andrew Pepoy — Happy Birthday, Archie

Original Art and The Artists

Archie Americana Volume 1: Best of the 1940s HC, 2011

Archie Andrews, (along with many of the rest of his timeless Riverdale gang), celebrates his 80th anniversary this year.

Starting as a back-up feature in MLJ’s Pep Comics #22 (cover date December 1941), Archie and his pals gradually took over the whole comic, and eventually, in 1946, the entire company.

Archie’s creation is generally credited to MLJ founder John Goldwater, and cartoonist Bob Montana. Montana apparently based many of the characters on friends and neighbors from his high school days in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

IDW Publishing and Dark Horse both relentlessly chased Archie Comics for archival reprint rights — an area the company itself was slow to develop, and in 2009, Archie ultimately split those reprint rights between the two publishers.

AT IDW, we published hardcover “Best of” collections, based on both era and artist. We also added the Archie strips to our Library of American Comics imprint headed by Dean Mullaney. (More on that later.)

Andrew Pepoy drew era-specific covers for all four Archie’s Americana volumes. This cover from the first volume — Best of the 40s — is a faithful and clever re-working of Montana’s cover for Archie’s Pals and Gals #3. Ironically, Montana’s original is from the 50s (1954), but I don’t think anyone complained.

More Archie coming up in the next few posts as we celebrate his very youthful 80th. 

All four volumes in the IDW “Archie’s Americana” series feature era-specific covers by the talented Andrew Pepoy.
Starting as a back-up feature in MLJ’s Pep Comics #22 , Archie and his pals gradually took over the covers, the comic, and in 1946, the entire company.

Paul Gulacy — Toys For The Holidays (Part 3)

Original Art and The Artists

GI Joe Special Missions #4, June 2013

When I was a kid, G.I. Joe never looked like this.

Of course, there’s an easy explanation for that.  I grew up with the original Joe’s somewhat vanilla representations of America’s fighting forces. I loved them, as did most of my friends, but character development was not in the 60s line-up.

Characters like “bad girl” Baroness here were the result of Hasbro’s re-introduction and revamp of the brand in 1982.  Marvel Comics was essentially paid to create colorful heroes and even more colorful bad guys. And they delivered, mainly with the creativity and guidance of writer Larry Hama.

The rest, as they say (Ok, I say it a lot) is history.

IDW became publisher of record shortly after I cane on board in 2008, and has had some terrific success with various iterations during the last dozen years.

This Special Missions series is a fine example, with script by Chuck Dixon and terrific visual storytelling by fan favorite Paul Gulacy. 

I acquired a few pages from this series, including this dynamic splash, but another one of these pages comes with a unusual annecdote, which I will share down the road. (I’d bet you can’t wait, but I’d lose.)

And so, 2020 finally comes to an end. Whew. Here’s looking forward to a much better 2021. We will be back on Thursday, January 7, with a special year-opening series on… well… that will be telling. See you soon, and thanks again for visiting.

The original G.I. Joe included a desert jeep and related gear, capitalizing on the brief success of the Rat Patrol television series. I was obsessed with this vehicle.
Cobra’s Baroness started out as a sexy character back in the 80s, but became even sexier as figure design and sculpting moved into the digital age.

Alex Toth — Toys For The Holidays (Part 1)

Original Art and The Artists

Hot Wheels #2, June1970

Mattel’s introduction of Hot Wheels in 1968 brought the 60s Cultural Revolution into miniature toy cars.

I had casually collected matchbox cars previously, and enjoyed them, but Hot Wheels’ souped up designs and colors were game changers. I couldn’t get enough.

And those crazy bright orange track sets and accessories? Near the top of my list for Hanukah 1969 and 1970, if I recall correctly.

DC jumped into the Hot Wheels business with a short-lived (six issues) licensed comic book series based on the animated TV series. Alex Toth, who knew both comics and cars well, and had developed the look and feel of the TV series, drew many of the stories.

I’ve tried for years to collect those six issues into a deluxe hardcover. In fact, I’ve had multiple meetings with senior execs at Mattel who all agree that it absolutely should be collected. Then, when push comes to shove, a contract never appears. My theory, and it’s based on similar situations, is that no one wants to take responsibility for the legal time and money spent on a project that ultimately doesn’t have much revenue potential in the scheme of things.

Sigh.  Alex Toth’s art should never, ever remain in limbo.  

Hot Wheels advertising dominated nearly all comic book publishing in the late 60s and early 70s.

Mike Zeck — Will The Real Captain America Please Stand Up?

Original Art and The Artists

Captain America #279, March 1983

Captain America vs.… Captain America?

The “impersonation” trope is one of my favorites in comics, and a long-standing tradition in Marvel’s history. In fact, the first time Captain America “appears” in the Silver Age in Strange Tales #114, it’s not Captain America at all. It’s a Human Torch villain, The Acrobat, in disguise. 

And this trope was consistently employed throughout the early Marvel Comics. The Skrulls impersonate the Fantastic Four in issue #2, The Chameleon impersonates Spider-Man in ASM #1, and the Avengers are nearly defeated by the shape-changing Space Phantom in issue #2 of their launch title. 

Stan was obsessed with this concept, apparently.

For the record, here on this terrific action page by Mike Zeck and John Beatty, the uniformed Cap is the “real” one.  The clown impersonating Steve Rogers is Primus, The Mutate. 

File that under: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Zeck drew one of the most iconic images of the era: Captain America vs. Wolverine.

Shannon Wheeler — Happy Thanksgiving!

Original Art and The Artists

Sh*t My President Says, 2017

To paraphrase an old adage, sometimes you get the bird, and sometimes… the bird gets you.

I’ve discussed my pal Wheeler’s terrific cartooning skills previously. For this book (on which I actually have a co-editing credit, because of all my nagging, nudging and general meddling) he let me have first dibs on any piece, and I chose this one.

Urban legend: Ben Franklin suggested that the turkey should be the national bird. He actually did compare the bald eagle very unfavorably to the turkey, but apparently did not bring forth an official turkey proposal.

Every holiday (hell, every day, actually) feels so bizarre this year, but I’m thankful to all of you who take a moment from our apocalypse-in-training to check in on the blog.

Thanks again, and have a good holiday. Be safe out there!

Zina Saunders — Vote!

Original Art and The Artists

Mars Attacks #1 Cover Variant, 2012

Vote indeed! (Just not for this guy.)

The terrifically talented Zina Saunders — daughter of legendary Mars Attacks painter Norm Saunders — created this card for our 1994 Topps Mars Attacks “sequel” series. So many good cards were created for that set, including many by Zina, that we ran out of room, and this one went unused…

Until 2012, when we acquired the Mars Attacks comic book license at IDW. Legendary comics marketing guru Dirk Wood had this crazy idea: What if we created 55 variant covers, each featuring one of the original 55 cards? Ha-ha. That’s funny.

Then we went ahead and did it.

And we upped the ante: We added an additional variant cover that you could only get if you bought the complete box set of variant covers.

Honestly, I think we all agreed we were nuts  — until some good orders came in. Collectors actually wanted all the covers. It was a novel way to have a complete “set” of the original Mars Attacks.

Maybe those are unrelated thoughts. We might still be nuts.

But I’m not voting the Martian ticket, regardless. Not this year, anyway.