Thursday, May 29, 2014

Holiday Fun

Sunday Meskin Measures.

Another DC adventure by Mort Meskin. He was always at his best when he was not doing space stories (apart maybe for his short run on the Tom Corbett comic book for Harvey). In fact, stories like these would have fitted better in Men's Adventure type of book, which DC didn't have at the time. But still, there seems to be something off to me. Since I am going backward in uploading these storie, here we are coming up to the period when Meskin had some sort of nervous breakdown and had to be assisted by Joe Kubert and Carmine Infantino in a couple of stories (eventhough Meskin biographer Steven Brower says neither of them mentioned that, the art itself shows there was something going on). This jungle story is okay, but for some reason it doesn't seem as exciting as some of his others.

Monday, May 26, 2014

Check, Please!

Saturay Leftover Day.

I had this story in a folder as an early sample of Bernard Baily's signature striped short. Baily rose to fame as the artist of The Spectre and other early DC heroes. He also assisted Walt Whitman on Mister X, took over Vic Jordan from Paul Norris (who had taken it over from Elmer Wexler) and may have assisted Whitman on Debbie Dean. All in a rather primitive style, if you ask me. None of the flamboyance of Mort Meskin, Jack Kirby, Lou Fine or even the 'new' DC crowd of Milt Caniff influenced artists. In the fifties he revented himself along more modern lines, in the fifties illustrators style, with mild Milt Caniff influences. With this new style he first did a couple of horror stories for different companies before landing at DC again, becoming one of their aystays for the fantasy books. In those stories from the fifties, his work is always recognizable by the fact that his main characters have a (usually red) checkered shirt. he really love those things, using them over and over again. But he didn't start using them in the fifties. I have been looking for other samples of the checkered shirt eefect and this story frm MOre Fun #87 is one of the earlier ones.

Gormless

Friday Comic Book Day.

Last week I showed an early issue of Dell's Howdy Doody. I don't think thi ater issue has the same artists, but it is similarely and delightfully wonky.