Here we have Stuart Taylor in Weird Tales of the Supernatural. The excitingly named Stuart is sort of a Flash Gordon type...or more accurately a Brick Bradford type as his adventures involve a time machine. The artist, Seymour Reit, is credited as being co-creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost and went on to publish scores of books for children and adults.
It's easy to see a little Lou Fine influence here and a lot of Will Eisner influence. It's not as easy to see that this is some very early work by someone who would go on to be equally if not more influential himself--Joe Kubert. Flagman and Rusty were definite also-rans in the grand tradition of patriotic heroes but in Kubert was--and is still--here to stay!
From the mid-fifties war comics boom era, here's some early Atlas John Romita for Memorial Day weekend with a story about Okinawa. Although he had no reason to suspect it at the time, Romita's work would, after Kirby, come to define Bronze Age Marvel and his son would carry on his legacy well into the 21st Century.
Comic book superheroes have long been snidely referred to as "long underwear characters." This guy, The Enchanted dagger, seems to have taken that literally! Other than his red footie flannels,all he wears is a mask. Some nice early work by the great George Tuska doing what seems to be a bit of a Lou Fine impression.
Journeyman artist George Papp, an illustrator in the tradition of "Bob Kane," was the perfect choice to draw the early Green Arrow, a character very much in the tradition of Batman! This colorful 1948 story in particular, "the Red, White and Blue Arrow," evokes the style of the Dynamic Duo's tales from the mid-forties on. Papp would later go on to a long, successful but not particularly memorable run on SUPERBOY.
One of the first Golden Age artists I ever learned about was Fred Guardineer, profiled in an early seventies fanzine. His art was stiff and often clearly traced from photographs but all that gives it an unusual style that works well in this movie adaptation. 3 HUSBANDS was a 1951 comedy about a ghost helping save the marriages of his friends from the afterlife. The stars were Eve Arden, OUR MISS BROOKS on radio and television, the great Howard DaSilva--soon to be blacklisted for being a communist--and, in a smaller role, Louise Erickson, one of several actresses who portrayed Marjorie on radio's THE GREAT GILDERSLEEVE (and whom I enjoyed performing with in a re-creation of a GILDERSLEEVE script in 1991).
Here we have Sargon the Sorcerer, one of the last Golden Age characters to be revived in the late Silver Age...and then as a villain, albeit briefly. This piece, with its highly stylized Joe Kubert art, was actually the last Sargon tale of the original ALL-AMERICAN COMICS run and spotlights his typically goofy sidekick, Maximillian.
