Saturday, June 30, 2018

Kate Hunter-Joe Kubert/Carmine Infantino-1977


If you missed it, go back and read yesterday's story before this one. You'll see why.

Here we see Joe Kubert's Kate Hunter inserted into a slightly different story than yesterday's original, but not by much. Infantino's art has been simplified here and there and many of the Clansman just disappear from the first version. The dialogue has also been simplified to fit the young audience this version was intended to help teach. By switching the gender of the character, too, the added message of "Girls can do it!"comes into play. Plus she gets a cool logo! Burr never had a logo of his own. 






Friday, June 29, 2018

Warrior Shepherd-Carmine Infantino-1953


What makes this story especially interesting is actually tomorrow's post. Nearly 20 years after it originally appeared, this Infantino-drawn story was reprinted in an issue of ADVENTURE COMICS, which is probably why it was relatively fresh on the mind of whomever decided to also use it in one of DC's educational comics in the mid-70s. Those particular comics, however, all featured new art from Joe Kubert (and students?) making them more ethnically diverse. Sometimes it was as little as coloring white characters as African-Americans. Other times featured wholly redrawn panels or characters. In this case, Burr MacGregor was gone completely, replaced by the young lady seen below in Kubert's model sheet. Come back tomorrow and see how she compares.







Thursday, June 28, 2018

Cyrus Shy-1959


Seeing as how this obscurity was a backup in Dell's I LOVE LUCY, odds are it was done on the west coast. The art style looks real familiar but I can't place it. 




Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Gateway to Horror-Basil Wolverton-1951


We're big fans of Basil Wolverton's humor strips around here but less so his straight stuff, creepy as it is. Here's a relatively late one. By this point he was mostly doing just plain silliness. Seems almost a waste to use basil on a story like this.






Tuesday, June 26, 2018

The Iron Skull-Sam Gilman -1941


Here's another one of those rather "primitive" looking, so bad it's good superhero strips. After WWII service, Gilman gave up comics art for acting, going on to an impressive career in movies and television that included playing the role of Doc Holliday on the STAR TREK episode, SPECTRE OF THE GUN.








Monday, June 25, 2018

Jungle Jo-Joe Orlando/Wallace Wood-1950


Today, we present two of the most important people in the history of comics in an example of that age old truism, "Everybody's gotta start SOMEwhere!"









Just three years later, this was reprinted--with even worse color--in an issue of BLUE BOLT WEIRD TALES.



Sunday, June 24, 2018

Begin-Daniel E. Carroll-1983


In its later years, Charlton gave a lot of wannabe comics artists a shot. This story was sort of made fun of on the cover for its lack of dialogue but it actually works. Carroll's work reminds me of the artist Denis Fujitake. Daniel never went on to great fame in comics but he's still around.