Bob Oksner would have a 66-issue run on
The
Adventures of Jerry Lewis from
61 (Nov-Dec/60)
to 126 (May-June/71) if it weren't broken up by Neal Adams' doing
101-104 in 1967—and this artist, whoever he may be, drawing issue 80 (Jan-Feb/64).
Any idea who this is?
There are a couple of things here that make me think of Sid Greene. Is he a possible candidate?
ReplyDeleteRichard, it feels to me it's someone who wasn't working otherwise for DC at the time--which certainly doesn't narrow down the list, but it would leave out Greene.
ReplyDeleteBoy, that's a puzzler. I'm pretty sure it isn't Greene. He knew how to draw hands and it's not his inking. The Jerry Lewis drawings are all swiped from earlier Oksner issues and I think the girl's faces may be as well. The art has the feeling of some of the cruder Dell books of the period but I don't recognize any of the guys who were working for Dell.
ReplyDeleteThe one DC name that pops into mind is Morris Waldinger but I'm not prepared to offer that as an actual guess.
I just looked at some Waldinger work and I withdraw my mention of his name.
ReplyDeleteMark, regarding your thinking of the Dell books, my first thought was Henry Scarpelli--and then I looked more closely at his contemporary work and decided not.
ReplyDeleteWin Mortimer?
ReplyDeleteNope...not Scarpelli or Mortimer.
ReplyDeleteYou know, it's entirely possible this is the only story ever drawn by someone whose name was never known to folks like us.
I see some similarities to Warren Sattler (and his mid-60s work), just enough that I offer his name to be rejected.
ReplyDeleteRalf H. Kienzle brought up the possibility of a funny-animals artist working out of his comfort zone; if I recall correctly, Larry Nadle's animation-style titles apart from The Fox and Crow were ending around this time.
ReplyDeleteBut it IS entirely possible, as Mark says, that it's someone whom we'll never identify.
Unknown editorial assistant doing a hasty fill-in for a nasty hole in the schedule that appeared? It would explain the swipes.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I have a serious guess here: Martin Nadle or Nadel. (He spelled his last name a couple of different ways.)
ReplyDeleteJoe Orlando? He did that sort of thing quite often in DC's humor line. Look at some of the covers for Swing with Scooter, for example.
ReplyDeleteProbably a layout/finisher/inker deal... very hard to identify
ReplyDeleteI believe Mark's nominee may ultimately be the best guess. If he needed somebody at the last minute, Larry Nadle's brother Martin would be both a left-field, one-shot fill-in and yet completely logical--even if a step away from his known style. (This is a couple of years too early for Orlando to be at DC.) My only other guess would have been Irwin Hasen, but DONDI (which Oksner was writing) would probably have obviated his participation in a quick comic-book story.
ReplyDeleteI thought about Irwin Hasen but the panel composition is wrong. Irwin didn't do layouts like that but Oksner sometimes did. I seem to remember that Oksner and Martin Naydel were friends and worked together on some unsold newspaper strips.
ReplyDeleteSo here's what I'm wondering. I assumed the Jerry Lewis drawings were Oksner swipes but I didn't start looking for specific poses in other issues. What if Oksner laid this story out, drew Jerry and then left the rest of the work to someone else?
I can't make the connection between Naydel's last more-or-less straight work on Flash in the late 40s, his filler cartoons at DC after that, and this. Is there some of his story work around 1960 that shows what his style had evolved into?
ReplyDelete