If you ever wonder whether the Rocketeer can fly without Dave Stevens, Bruce Timm answers by lighting the fuse and grinning. His illustrations in IDW’s Rocketeer Adventures #3 “pulp” tale from Joe Lansdale aren’t a tribute—they’re a full-throttle spin.
Timm tears across this two-page spread with a crisp, mid-century snap that makes me think a Rocketeer animated series would be pure rocket-fueled dynamite.
Stevens built a world roomy enough for great artists to play in. He gave us pulp heroics, Hollywood glamour, and Cliff Secord—our beloved jet-propelled knucklehead who means well, screws up spectacularly, and somehow still wins the day—and Betty, too.
Stevens created a timeless hero. Timm shows why he stays timeless. He’s not preserving the legacy—he’s joyriding it.
(And yes, I would love to own that gorgeous faux pulp cover below.)
Batman: The Dailies, 1944-1945 (TPB, 1990, Kitchen Sink)
Here’s yet another great piece of art by the extraordinarily talented Pete Poplaski.
Poplaski has been called an “artist’s artist” by many of his peers. He might not have a household name among art buffs, but his talent is formidable and undeniable.
Pete, who broke into comics in the 70s underground movement, ultimately became Kitchen Sink’s art director, and, among many accomplishments helped give some of Robert Crumb’s projects just the right design touch.
Kitchen had the rights to reprint the DC Batman and Superman Golden Age comic strips in the early 1990s, and Pete created brand new covers that evoked the classic style of those strips.
When we acquired those rights at IDW in 2012, we went back to Pete to see if he would be interested in picking up where he left off, and fortunately he was.
Dick Sprang. Al Plastino. Carmine Infantino. You name it. Pete’s remarkable ability to create brand new material in any and all of these classic styles is astonishing.
Interestingly enough, many if not most of Pete’s covers (front and back) feature hand drawn lettering, but this one does not. Also, the final crop for the book cover is tighter, so the end result of both of these elements is that there much more art visible on the original than in the final published version.
I’m fortunate enough to own a few of these covers — and many of them are prominently displayed.
Superman Sunday Strip, (Syndicate Proof Sheet), December 15, 1940
Not quite original art, this is a syndicate proof sheet for the Superman Sunday comic strip, from December 15, 1940. The proof sheets are printed on higher quality paper, and the colors are extremely vivid — which you can see even though I photographed this example under glass.
(For an amplification of how this proofing process worked, see the new edition of Jack Kirby’s Sky Masters Sunday strips, which explains the process in some detail.)
I enjoy these early strips — Shuster’s art here often seems more polished than the comic books, where some of the art suffers from inconsistency. That’s of course not shocking: Superman’s explosive —and nearly instantaneous —popularity meant that Shuster, with the help of assistants and other artists, had to keep up with a prodigious amount of publishing.
This proof came from co-creator Jerry Siegel’s personal collection , and I was fortunate enough to snag one with a giant robot. (Plus, it is signed!)
Superman, Lois AND a giant robot. Seems like a hat trick to me.
A tear sheet from the Houston Chronicle features the strip in a classic half page format.The original classic Superman strips (first reprinted by Kitchen Sink) are available in at least four different book formats; although they are all technically out of print, most are readily (and inexpensively) available from secondary booksellers. Because they are so easy to obtain, when we launched the Superman reprint program at IDW Publishing in 2013, we started with the next group of strips.Superman fought the “Bandit Robots” a few months later on the cover of Action #36 (great art by Fred Ray.) But… there’s no matching story on the inside!The Man of Steel fights similar (albeit not quite identical) robots in 1941’s “Superman and the Mechanical Monsters,” the classic episode of the wonderful Fleischer animated series of cartoon shorts.
Pete Poplaski turns ordinary looking white-collar criminals into a rogues’ gallery suitable for Dick Tracy in this terrific cover for the short-lived “underground” comic, Corporate Crime. (Two issues, two years apart in 1977 and 1979.)
I’ve said plenty about Pete previously, but it deserves repeating: It’s amazing how he manages to capture so many classic art styles, so well. His originals (and I’m grateful that I own a few) are astonishing.
Seeing this cover for the first time a few months ago made me wistful that we (IDW Publishing) never pitched DC a Batman / Dick Tracy crossover set as a period piece in the 40s. Not sure if Pete would have been up for illustrating an entire series, but I certainly would have hired him for the covers.
I believe Mad Cave currently has the Tracy rights: Guys, it’s never too late.
If you want to sample the golden age of more “traditional” crime comics (1948-1954) you have plenty of opportunities with a plethora of terrific modern collections . Coincidentally, Poplaski also drew the cover for the Crime Does Not Pay sampler from Dark Horse Comics. (The original for that cover also came up for auction recently, but it was too graphic for my own taste.)
The art and the artist: Greg Goldstein and Ashley Holt
I discovered Ashley Holt’s terrific portrait illustrations a few years ago — via Howard Chaykin — and became an ardent admirer from day one. He’s depicted some of our favorite people in colorful and instantly recognizable form.
Now, I’ve joined the club.
Ashley is a pleasure to deal with. He sells prints and books, takes commissions, and has a lovely website that makes it easy to admire or acquire his art.
Additionally, he has a well-written Substack column (“The Symptoms”), where he employs a lively — and occasionally biting — style that matches the spirit of his art.
Follow / subscribe to everything he offers, and you won’t be disappointed.
Trust me on this.
As for Ash’s note about this illustration of yours truly?:
“Greg Goldstein, comics art connoisseur and former CEO of IDW Publishing, posing in front of a Jack Kirby drawing of a comics character who shall not be named for reasons of trademark law but who is definitely not riding a surfboard of any kind.”
How much of a perfectionist was the great Doug Wildey? He knew there was no chance the printed comic books of 1960 could capture the fine details in his draftsmanship, but he drew them anyway.
This is the second Wildey Atlas western title splash I’ve managed to acquire, and like the first, it’s a beauty. In fact, even more stunning.
By chance, this page was only display and offered for sale a few moments during last year’s San Diego Comic Con when I happened on it. I’m sure it would have been gone had I come by an hour or more later.
As I noted previously, Doug Wildey was an amazing storyteller and draftsman. Don’t just take my word for it — ask Stan Lee.
Back in about 2010, we visited Stan in his Beverly Hills office to get some pages signed for the first John Romita Spider-Man Artists Edition from IDW Publishing. Stan’s “people” were kind enough to let us bring some personal items to get signed as well, so I brought a few pages of original art with me.
Stan, who was telling stories and singing while he was signing (Yes, singing, not a typo for signing. Story for another day.) stopped dead in his tracks when he saw this page of art.
He stared at it quietly for a few moments — given the speedy pace of our morning, it seemed like an eternity — and you could see pleasant memories wash over his face. And then the big Stan Lee smile:
“Doug Wildey. Wow. He was great. So terrific. I loved his stuff. I wish we had a chance to do more together.”
He handed the page back to me, still beaming, still examining it up and down as he slowly passed it back. I had seen Stan sign thousands of items; many of them with fond remembrances, but nothing quite like this.
I’m sure he would have had the same reaction to this page as well.
Bye bye details in the sheriff’s face, shirt, et al. Wildey had to know the cheaply-printed page would lose all the great detail and craftsmanship, but he included it in his original anyway.
RIP Jim Silke, the multi-talented artist / art director/ writer who died last week at the age of 93. A great century (ok, nearly) indeed.
One of my favorite facts from Silke’s career is that he essentially started his “new” career as a comic book artist / writer in his early 60s.
Repeat: He started in his early 60s.
I acquired this wonderful painted cover late last year, part of a series he created for Vertigo’s American Century title.
A retro classic.
And readers of this blog, especially any who visited me at the late Liberty Station IDW Publishing offices, know I definitely have a thing for old newsstands. (FYI, that’s Action Comics #183 from 1953, bottom right.)
ScreenshotJust some of the “good girl” / “bad girl” covers from Silke’s portfolio.One of Silke’s four Grammy-nominated album covers. He actually won for a Judy Garland cover, but frankly this is a personal favorite of mine, because I don’t think I have ever looked as relaxed as Sinatra does here. I consider it aspirational.
So… You support much of one party’s political platform, and the other guys win, and you somehow benefit from that opposing victory anyway?
Talk about mixed emotions.
This Bloom County Sunday strip appeared in print six weeks before I had my first “real” job — with a salary that certainly that did NOT benefit from any sort of Reagan tax cut.
And yet this specific strip remained burned in my brain forever. When we (IDW Publishing) added Bloom County reprints to our line-up around 2009, I asked if Berkley still had this specific strip, and if so, would he sell it to me.
He still had it… and he gifted it to me. A gift I treasure, and one that I am indeed very thankful for.
Betrayal Of The Planet Of The Apes #3, January 2012
True Confessions:
When I was at IDW Publishing, we chased the Planet of Thae Apes license hard. And I mean hard. (I’m a super fan.) We had some terrific story ideas, and some talented creators ready to come on board if we acquired it.
The challenge was, that Fox couldn’t provide us with a guarantee that they had proper clearances on the original Marvel material. Reprinting that material would help finance the creative costs on the new series, as well as help fund the licensing fees, so that ended up as a deal breaker for us.
So… Boom swept in and acquired those rights without the reprint guarantee. And did a great job on their new material. And the joke was on us, ultimately, because Boom did end up with at least some of those reprint rights.
Sigh.
That said, we did get to do a super fun Star Trek / Planet of The Apes crossover with Boom, which is mostly a story for another day. But one nugget: Boom asked me to negotiate the “Taylor” (Charlton Heston) likeness rights with the estate, and that was one of the more reasonable and rational Hollywood-style negotiations I have ever had. And even Marvel didn’t originally have those rights. So, there’s that.
Oh, and the great Gabe Hardman did this superb cover for an issue of one the Boom series. Did I neglect to mention that?
I finally checked off a piece of art from my OA “bucket list” with the acquisition of this terrific Russ Manning Star Wars Sunday strip late last year.
I own some great Star Wars original art, but not much focusing on Leia, so I’m especially pleased I won this strip at auction. Coincidentally, I was the underbidder the previous time it had appeared at auction — second time is the charm, apparently.
When we had the opportunity to collect the complete Star Wars strip collection at IDW Publishing, it was yet another box checked off from the publishing bucket list. Dean Mullaney and the Library of American Comics (LOAC) crew produced (as always) an amazing three-volume set.
Welcome to Star Wars “month.” May the force be with you throughout.
Did your newspaper make room for the full strip, or the “abridged” version, featuring Sundays without the top tier?Screenshot
