First Kingdom!

How is it that First Kingdom by Jack Katz has never been successfully reprinted? One of the comic book industry's rare true "graphic novels", this is a for real saga, expanding over twenty-four issues and countless years. This is the opus that Katz spent much of career creating and getting into print at great cost to himself and ultimately through the largesse of others.


But surely this achievement should be admired, collected and made available to the larger audience it has always deserved. How is it possible when one sees every gram of comics material produced by Marvel and DC material, no matter sometimes how trivial get a fancy reprint, that something this significant and important remains mostly unknown. It's a shame, and hopefully it will be eventually corrected. I'd love to read this saga all the way through in a handsome trade or series of them.
























A company dubbed Century Comics tried to reprint this material, but only two volumes emerged reprinting about half of the story. That's been several years ago now. It's time for some company to step up and give this material the production it deserves.


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Dragonslayers!

Jeff Jones
This poster by the late Jeffery Jones is a pretty sweet image for a pretty sweet movie. Dragonslayer was a neat little mini-epic with outstanding special effects, even by today's standards, and an above average story of an apprentice dragonslayer having to fend off not only the monster but an entire village to boot.

The movie loses its way a bit in the spectacular ending which while visually compelling is at odds in tone to the rest of the movie, a bit too high octane.


Vermithrax Pejorative, the dragon remains the best evocation of a dragon on the screen that I've ever seen, and that's saying something given the advances in special effects since that time.


Here's a sketch Jones made as he constructed the poster.

Earl Norem
Marvel adapted this movie with art by Marie Severin, and the cover above by Earl Norem is effective if not especially opulent.

Marie Severin
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The Giant Sword!

I'll admit this work by artist Tom Jung doesn't really have all that much to do with the essence of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but the image of Gandalf the Wizard holding up an impossibly enormous sword with two little Hobbit forms staring up at him does sell the notion of sword and sorcery and that's not unimportant.


Here is a small glimpse at the original pencil work by Jung.


And here is the complete poster in all its glory. This poster for Ralph Bakshi's entertaining but ultimately unsuccessful adaptation of the great saga sells this movie as a mainstream event. For all its flaws, I wish Bakshi had been able to complete the story, at least in some small way. The ultimate cartoon version by Rankin and Bass is okay, but falls short in tone.

Still, it's a pretty poster.

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John Severin RIP

John Severin was exactly the kind of artist I most admire, a rock solid professional who worked and worked and then worked some more. He was immensely skillful and his finishes were like no one else in the industry. I most admire him as a fantastic inker, but his complete artwork was also quite fabulous. I read Cracked for years because it always contained new John Severin artwork.

Rest in peace Mr.Severin.

Here is a very detailed interview with Mr.Severin conducted by The Comics Journal.







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First & Last Kisses!

When the late great Charlton Comics company was going under, one man who was able to see a future for the hapless publisher, or at least some of their vintage material. John Lustig saw gold where most men saw only trash and purchased outright the material related to First Kiss comics and some other romance material from Charlton. He has been successfully mining that material to offer up hilarious satires of American society ever since.



Taking the artwork of Dick Giordano and other great talents, Lustig replaces the sometimes vapid dialogue with biting sarcastic lines which put the images into brand new contexts, always funny.



Last Kiss is a website mostly. And you can check it out here. But it was also for a brief time a comic book, and the four issues are troves of outstanding artwork and biting comedy. From time to time, Lustig was able to get new material from some great talents to include in these issues. The late Dick Giordano supplied a brand new story, as well as the outstanding comics man Ernie Colon.



So if you've never sampled Last Kiss, I highly recommend it this Valentine's Day. You'll love what you find.

Here's a link to the comics themselves. Happy Valentines Day!

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