Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Mr. Mystic-Bob Powell-1940


The art of Bob Powell on these early SPIRIT SECTON strips of MR. MYSTIC always seems so modern and the stories are quick and entertaining, very different from today's 5 issue story arcs where virtually nothing happens.





1 comment:

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

I find Powell's work at this stage to be very appealing, in part because of what about its appearance is not modern. There are multiple tropes of the early golden age here.* But Powell was one of the finest artists working at that time, so the result is like an idealization of the comic books of that era.

A great story. I'm not sure that Mr Mystic needed to worry that Penny might kill the henchman. Assuming that the fellow were alive in the first place, it would seem Death's prerogative to leave him that way.

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*The colors are attractive, but unrealistic. The panels are laid-out in simple rows. Most of the narrative text is placed not simply in boxes but in sub-panels. The word-ballons are fairly primitive. And there is a relative absences of back-ground props in the building.