Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery
Panels and Pages… Art and Artists… Creators and Conventions… Musings and Memories…
Aces High #3, August 1955
An entire case of Champagne might be a bit much for a New Year’s celebration — unless you have a big crowd, and they all like to drink the bubbly.
Either way, Jack Davis brings us a killer EC title page from Aces High. A lovely way to start the new year.
(Fun fact: This page kicked around for a while as part of the complete story. When it was finally broken up, the pages sold very quickly — and at an aggregate price greater than the entire story.)
Rawhide Kid #35, August 1963
Jack Davis and Stan Lee only worked together a handful of times. Jack drew six Rawhide Kid stories at the dawn of the “Marvel Age,” after Jack Kirby became too busy designing and developing Marvel’s earliest superheroes.
Davis’ cartoony style is unmistakable, and definitely a departure from the typical Marvel western art line-up that included Kirby, Dick Ayers and Larry Lieber, among others.
These Davis Western stories are some of the final color comic book stories to he ever drew. Shortly after their publication, Davis returned to Mad Magazine and became a Mad mainstay for more than 20 years.
And of course, we can’t forget the Time Magazine covers. The TV Guide covers. The film posters. The advertising work. Trading cards for Topps. Etc.
Just a few things to occupy the drawing board of one of America’s most talented and recognizable commercial illustrators.
Too bad Stan couldn’t persuade Davis for a bit more work. I’m not sure how it would have worked out on the traditional superhero stories * but a few short pieces for Not Brand Echh would have been right on the nose.
(*Well, actually I’m certain it would have been jarring to see Jack on “straight” superhero stories…)
Jell-O Storybard, 70s
Concluding our brief series on the start of a new school year.
What’s a school day without an after school snack? In fact, I probably started thinking about my after school snack a few minutes after lunch period ended.
The prolific and terrific Jack Davis did quite a few storyboards for advertising campaigns and commercials. Apparently he did quite a few for Jell–O
Which is definitely appropriate in my neighborhood, as it seemed all my friend had Jell-O or instant pudding for snack or desert.
Jell-O did not make it high on my list at that point, but Jack Davis is always high on my list, so I’m pleased to own this close-up of a kid about to dive into his gelatin.
Not sure if these boards were ever actually used or not —- Madison Avenue commissioned a lot of (expensive) material that never saw the light of day — but I will bet Jack understood that part of the business.
And it doesn’t matter to me much, because either way, it’s a fun piece of color Davis art I can enjoy.
Frontline Combat #5, March 1952
Concluding (for now) our 60th anniversary celebration of the legendary EC “New Trend” comics with another classic piece of great art from the legendary Jack Davis.
“We got into the Civil War thing. It was a favorite project of mine. We were hot to do the story of the Civil War from front to back.”
— Harvey Kurtzman, 1972 EC fan convention panel.
War stories were among EC’s many strengths, and many of those, thanks to Harvey Kurtzman’s obsessive editorial attention, were accurately based on historical events.
“Stonewall Jackson!” is a perfect example. Jackson, a brilliant Confederate military tactician, was accidentally shot by his own men in a nighttime battle. This Kurtzman story retells that tale through the voice of the supposed soldier who shot him.
Lighting is an illusion created by a creative combination of black ink and negative space. On this splash, one of my personal favorites, Davis indeed creates a beautiful illusion of campfire light. There is no actual illumination here of course, but thanks to the well-crafted art, our mind’s eye sees it.
The storytelling is equally effective. The camera work closes in on one figure through multiple panels — we instinctively know that this is our narrator and his story, even without reading the dialogue.
Kurtzman and Davis were a terrific team.
All our stories really protested war. I don’t think we thought war was very nice generally. The whole mood of our stories was that war isn’t a good thing. You get killed. That’s the way war is; you get killed suddenly for no reason. — Harvey Kurtzman, 1972 EC fan convention panel.
In 2011, Davis told The Wall Street Journal about his early career and his breakthrough with EC:
I was about ready to give up, go home to Georgia and be either a forest ranger or a farmer. But I went down to Lafayette St., up in an old rickety elevator and through a glass door to Entertaining Comics where Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines were putting out horror comic books. They looked at my work and it was horrible and they gave me a job right away!
Every time you went in to see Bill Gaines, he would write you a check when you brought in a story. You didn’t have to put in a bill or anything. I was very, very hungry and I was thinking about getting married. So I kept the road pretty hot between home and Canal Street. I would go in for that almighty check, go home and do the work, bring it in and get another check and pick up another story. [Edit: the actual cross street to Lafayette was Spring Street, not Canal.]
Two-Fisted Tales #21, May 1951
Continuing our 60th anniversary celebration of the legendary EC “New Trend” comics with another classic piece of great art from the legendary Jack Davis.
This is actually the fourth issue of EC’s Two-Fisted Tales. William Gaines — and other publishers — used a variety of title and numbering gimmicks to ensure they didn’t lose a slot in the challenging newsstand system.
It’s a Korean War story — ongoing at the time of publication — and one of many published prior to the “ceasefire” that ended the war.
Davis, in one of his early war stories, does a fantastic job following — and enhancing — Harvey Kurtzman’s very specific layouts.
Very specific layouts? Kurtzman was obsessive about the storytelling and the detail. If he couldn’t draw the story himself, e wanted to ensure that the finished result would be as close to his own material as possible. Again, because this is an early Davis war story, even the art style itself is mimics Kurtzman’s in places.
Davis and Kurtzman (and others) discussed Kurtzman’s methodology at the 1972 EC fan convention, and took a question from the audience…
QUESTION: I’d like to know how the individual artists felt working with the very strict layouts.
KURTZMAN: I’d like to hear that, too.
DAVIS: I don’t know. I think the end product came out pretty good – the detail and all. There are a lot of people that appreciate detail and there are a lot of people that don’t. Once you do something you like it to be authentic. Where doing the horror books you didn’t have to be authentic, this was something that you’d like for it to come across as true, and Harvey felt very strongly about truth – the way the weapons worked and everything. We did the best we could, and I enjoyed it. It wasn’t that bad. I’d hate to do it all the time.
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.
Mad #170, October 1974
The Iowa caucuses officially kicked off the 2020 national campaign season yesterday. (Although in the 21st century, it feels like every day, of every year, is campaign season. Sigh.)
Campaign season always makes me think of Jack Davis.
I loved his caricatures of famous politicians. Many of them — especially in the 70s— had plenty of personality, and Davis, like a great illustrator, could show you that personality through his art. And if they were bland, boring, run of the mill politicians, Davis could still manage to find something to say about them — truthful, of course –that would make you smile.
I also liked that Davis, who went from EC horror artist to one of America’s top commercial artists in less than 20 years, never became too successful for appearances in the pages of Mad magazine.
This strip is from a multi-page story called “Wishful Thinking.” It appears to be done on a single board, so in all likelihood all the gags in this story are single pieces of art cobbled together to create story pages. That said, many oversized Mad original art pages have been cut up over the years, to sell individual gags like this separately, so it’s difficult to be definitive.
But it’s not difficult to be definitive about this: In addition to being one of the great American commercial artists, Davis is also one of my personal favorites. Want to offer me an original piece of art for a TV Guide or Time Magazine cover?
I’m all ears.
The Goon, One For The Road (One-Shot), 2014
Imagine if the legendary cartoonist Jack Davis suddenly appeared —as a young man— and promptly joined you on a fantastical adventure.
Eric Powell imagined it, and realized it, in a special one-shot issue of the Goon. When Joe Jackson shows up in your story, you call it “Field of Dreams”. When Jack Davis, one of the all-time great EC horror artists (among many) pops in — I say we call it “Field of Screams.” (Even though the correct title is “Goon One For The Road.” Sue me. I couldn’t resist the pun.)
Davis was easily one of America’s most talented 20th-century illustrators, and one of three main influences Eric cites in his artistic career. See here for a personal story of Powell getting a dream fulfilled by getting Jack to do the cover.
And how great is this page?!? The gorilla is wearing a friggin’ Prussian war helmet! A helmet!
