Friday, June 24, 2016

Sub-Mariner Artist Draws David Bruce Banner's Lookalike

If at first you don't succeed in identifying an artist on a comic book, keep on looking at other comics, and maybe when you go back to that first one you'll have run across some clue and a light bulb will go on.

Courtship of Eddie's Father 1

The Courtship of Eddie's Father (2 issues, Jan/70 and May/70),  a TV tie-in from Dell, stumped me and others. The best I could come up with was that the artist wasn't Jack Sparling.

In the time since, I IDed the artist on a DC romance story by some girls' faces—


—comparing here from my July 9, 2015 post a page from "Two Hearts on a Tree" in Secret Hearts 121 (July/67) with a tier from Carl Pfeufer's known work on Super Green Beret 1 (June/67) at Milson.

Who was expecting Carl Pfeufer at Dell, 1970? He drew all the stories in the two issues of The Courtship of Eddie's Father; D. J. Arneson wrote them.

6 comments:

  1. As you know I am inetereste din the writing of Stan Lee. I am currently maing a list of all T prefaced job numbers, which include the last few westerns, love comics and teen cmics issues produced before the death of Joe Maneely (whose last work was on T-67) as well as everything from the coming of Jack Kirby (whose first story was T-75). Doc Vassallo already helped me with Dick Ayers work list, which showed that he recieved T-71 in the week before Joe Maneely's death. Which means either Jack walked in just after Joe Maneely died or he walked in just before Joe died (a coincidence, but still it's possible). After that, all hell breaks loose, with several new artists being ivited bck, all doing the 'I was/I saw premonster he-man type stories Jack had been doing at DC. Now Jack Kirby's story has always been that he inspired Stan Lee not to pack it all in and go ahead with the new titles. Notwithstanding that Martin Goodman was the one to decie these things and not Stan Lee, the question remains: 'who wrote all of those new stories'. Did Jack Kirby write his own, as some people have suggested? It seems to me that all stories (also those by Don Heck, Steve Ditko, Carlo Bugos, Al Williamson and other hastily gather talents (Tom Gill, anyone?) come from the same basic idea. So I want to read them in order to see what I ca disciver. Well, first dicovery: At leats one of the stories has through instead of thru - which I may have told you is a diqualifier for Stan Lee (because although others may have used thru as well - including Hank Chapman - I have never ever seen a signed or attributed Stan Lee piece with through, And that inlcudes his private correspondence to his agent Toni Mendez. What this writer, whoever he is does use twice is Good Grief! as an exclamation. This is why I am adressing you. Do you know of a writer who habitually used Good Grief?

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    1. Ger, from about a hundred lists of writers' stylistic quirks that I have on hand, I find "Good grief" on fifteen of them. Although, if memory serves, only three of those writers worked at Timely/Atlas/Marvel--Robert Bernstein, Ken Fitch, and Carl Memling--I'm not even sure that it was at this time.

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    2. Thanks. I think Robert Berstein was there. I was very surprised to see that some of those earliest stories were not written by someone else. That opens the possibillity that the whole switch to monster books was not instigated by Jack Kirby but editorally (maybe even before the death of Joe Maneely) and Jack Kirby was among the artists (and writers) enlisted.

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    3. Kirby's story is he suggested that Marvel give the super hero genre a try. Kirby felt the genre was making a comeback. Kirby's first published comments along that line were made when he was interviewed by Mark Herbert in 1969.
      Kirby told Herbert, "I told Stan there might be hope for the superhero. I kept harping on it."

      Michael Vassallo's research has show the post-implosion Fantasy books make use of a good deal of leftover pre-implosion scripts. This continued on for several months during which time Kirby was just one of many creators whose work was filling the pages of those magazines.
      Kirby's stories are notable for being different from the other stories being published at that time. This suggests to me that Kirby was writing his own stories not being assigned the inventory scripts. In less than a year the number of pages filled by Kirby increased greatly and the general type of story in the books by others began to reflect Kirby's work.

      -Patrick Ford

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  2. Here's what I've gathered together from Michael Vassallo's research.

    In 1955-56 Atlas began a huge expansion of post-
    code titles, leading up to the 75 concurrent titles. They were feeding work to over 150 freelancers.
    Kirby began selling freelance work to Marvel (Atlas) late 1956. His first sales were slightly before he began selling material to DC that same year.
    Among Kirby's works were three issues of the YELLOW CLAW, several BLACK RIDER stories as well as, misc. war stories and westerns, and science fiction stories. These stories were published between Dec. 1956 and Sept. 1957.
    In the Spring of 1957 Martin Goodman encountered a very serious distribution crisis which resulted in what is called The Atlas Implosion. The crash was abrupt and unexpected.

    There were no assignments for Kirby after the Spring Implosion. Stan Lee let the freelancers go in spring of 1957. After that and through the first half of 1958 Stan Lee was just using up 1956-57 inventory and feeding a small number of new stories to Dick Ayers and a handful of teen and romance artists.

    Kirby returned in July of 1958. Stan Lee who had been using over 150 freelancers just 14 months before began relying on a small number of freelancers to fill the eight titles a month Goodman was allowed to publish.
    During the first 8 months of the pre-hero period, cover dates from Dec/58 to Sept/59, all of the books also feature stories by Ditko, Heck, Reinman, Baker, Davis, Sinnott, Ayers, Williamson, Buscema, Forte, Severin, Forgione and Burgos. Inks on stories by Kirby range from Rule to Wood. Covers during this first 8 months, in addition to Kirby, feature Heath, Ditko, Heck and Sinnott. It seems that the entire pre-hero period started as a way for Stan Lee to get books out again once Goodman reorganized from the distribution fiasco and inventory dried up.

    During those first eight post Implosion months Kirby was selling freelance work to Marvel (Atlas), DC, Harvey, and Crestwood. As Kirby's assignments at DC were taken away by Jack Schiff Kirby began to fill the pages of Goodman's magazines.

    -Patrick Ford

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