Among the artists are some just starting out, who haven't developed the styles we recognize from the Marvel Age. Dr. Michael J. Vassallo has tracked Gene Colan's Timely work, for instance, to the artist's first stories, by working backwards month by month from his earliest signed work later in the Fifties—Colan's style is just the tiniest bit different a month before, and just a tiny bit more different the month before that, until at last it would be just about unrecognizable around 1948 if one didn't follow it step by step through the increments of change.
But Don Perlin's style seems to have sprung forth fully grown, as if from the brow of Zeus. This page is from "He Dreamt of Doom." So far I've looked at only the first two years of the crime books; they're something of a chore to go through before the scripts and arts become more appealing.
The Grand Comics Database has Perlin doing two one-page pieces in Western Winners 6 (Aug/49), but there I must confess I can't see him. When most of the artists start signing their work, Perlin does too; for instance, he has a story in Marvel Tales 110 (Dec/52) signed with inker Abe Simons.
UPDATE: Per Doc V.'s comment, I've dropped the other two stories ("Her Night of Peril" in Lawbreakers Always Lose 8 and "The Witch's Son" in Marvel Tales 96) that I'd listed here originally. I let myself see something Perlinesque in one or two panels in those, but I think "He Dreamt of Doom" shows Perlin in every panel.
early Don Perlin at Timely:
All True Crime Cases
| Sept/49 | 35 | He Dreamt of Doom |
"Dr. Michael J. Vassallo has tracked Gene Colan's Timely work, for instance, to the artist's first stories, by working backwards month by month from his earliest signed work later in the Fifties—Colan's style is just the tiniest bit different a month before, and just a tiny bit more different the month before that, until at last it would be just about unrecognizable around 1948 if one didn't follow it step by step through the increments of change."
ReplyDeleteAn interesting and possibly unique method for identifying artists earlier work, and not one I that would have thought of!
An artist whose style had to tracked both forwards and backwards by Doc Vassallo and others, if I recall correctly, is Mike Sekowsky. He signed some of his earliest stuff in the 40s, but between those stories and the recognizable ones in the later 50s, there's a drawn-out evolution in his style.
ReplyDeleteMartin, no Perlin in any of those 3 stories you mentioned the GCD had listed as such. The Lawbreakers Always Lose #8 story looks like Pierce Rice, The Marvel Tales #96 story looks like Vern Henkel with an inker and the Western Winners #6 1-pager I have no idea but Perlin wouldn't even be on the list.
ReplyDeleteDoc, I don't know who I'd say did those stories after a closer look (I have no clue whatsoever on Pierce Rice's style; I think I've only seen his ghost-penciling IDed at DC). But I've updated the post: they're not Perlin.
ReplyDeleteMartin, I just took a good luck at "He Dreamt of Doom" in ALL TRUE CRIME #35 and I believe that is early John Buscema with a bad Timely staff inker. Buscema is all over these Timely crime issues because he was on staff at the time, working out of the Empire State Building. Very few of the crime stories in 1948-49 were freelanced and Perlin would have been a freelance if he was doing anything at all for them (which I don't believe he did until his work with Abe Simon started cover date October 1952).
DeleteDoc, I'll leave the page as an example of art that manages to end up looking remarkably like Perlin's even if, as you say, he's not known to have been there under the staff/freelance situation in 1948.
ReplyDelete