Saturday, June 8, 2013

Legend of the Clock-John Buscema-1959


His layouts got better over time but here's an already amazingly accomplished John Buscema from way back in '59! Check out those very modern looking faces. Looking blindly at this art, I'd swear it to be from 10-20 years later. Wow! That guy was good, wasn't he?







6 comments:

Rip Jagger said...

This is very keen. I've never seen this Buscema story before, and I agree his style is much more open than I expected for this era. Other samples of stuff I'd seemed more restrained somehow, more like everyone else. This is clearly Big John through and through. My guess is he's inked himself here.

Rip Off

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

Of course, one of the reasons that work from a decade later would more frequently be as good was that artists such as Buscema had been causing expectations to be raised.

It's remarkable how, in an era in which there was so little respect for comic-book artists, some would pour so much into their work.

For reasons unknown to me, a disproportionate share of that work seems to have been published by American Comics Group. There really ought to be a book or two devoted to ACG.

rnigma said...

I guess "Jonathan Burns" was yet another pseudonym for Richard E. Hughes (which, I understand, was itself a pseudonym).

Booksteve said...

Most likely, yes on your assumption. I remember being freaked out to find that "Richard Hughes" was also pseudonym.

Similarly, writer Ed McBain was really Evan Hunter but when he died I found out that wasn't even close to his original name. And romance writer Victoria Holt wrote under various pen names and when she died it turns out she wasn't really Victoria Holt either!

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

That reminds me, "Steve". We need to discuss our arrangement concerning my silence about your real name.

rnigma said...

Well, many comics creators used aliases - as you may know, Stan Lee was originally Stanley Lieber, Nick Cardy used to be Nicholas Viscardi, and Jack Kirby was once Jacob Kurtzberg.
There was an artist in the '80s who called himself "Christopher Lindberg Hanther" - I think his real name was something like James Petty or Perry.