Black Magic Day!

Jerry Grandenetti was born on tomorrow's date in 1926. He was an assistant to Will Eisner in the Golden Age and worked on many series. He shifted over to DC and Warren doing some fantastic work the war books and mystery tales as well. I personally think he's the best black and white artist I've ever seen. 

I don't know exactly when I became a Jerry Grandenetti fan, but it might 've been when I got a gander at these delightful covers he produced for DC's reprint Black Magic comic book fromt he early 70's. Grandenetti was partnering regularly with Joe Simon at the time, working on such projects as Prez and The Green Team. So when it was time to give the Simon and Jack Kirby classics from the old Prize Comics series, it was Grandenetti who generated seven new covers for the nine issue run. (For the record, Joe Simon drew another and a classic Simon and Kirby original was used for another.) Here are they are in all their glorious weirdness.

(Joe Simon)

(Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Original)

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Will's Gleeful Guides!

The pages above by the master of comics Will Eisner appeared in the pornographic magazine National Screw, an attempt by publisher Al Goldstein to broaden the marketplace appeal of his long-running hardcore opinion paper Screw Magazine. One of the things that the work of Will Eisner in the 70's and 80's did for me was to inform how comics could function if aimed at an adult audience. Now folks might consider a prurient magazine like National Screw only "adult" in the limited way the term is used for pornographic materials, but what adult really means when visited by a man of Eisner's perspective and talent is the use of the medium to say something important. The pages of "Will Eisner's The Gleeful Guide to The Qualities of Life" above will no doubt offend many, but that's what proper satire ought to do and it seems clear to me that it's the attitudes that Eisner is seemingly supporting or expressing in this work which the piece is actually pointing to with derision and mocking.

Will Eisner produced a number of "Gleeful Guides" to life in the modern era, or at least those parts of it on the fringes of what was once dubbed the counter-culture and beyond. All were published by Poorhouse Press. 

Given how reckless my federal government has been the past few months, paying my taxes stings a lot more. I might legally be required to pay for this nonsense, but I sure don't approve of it. 

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The Lost Work Of Will Eisner!

Like most all artists of the Golden Age, Eisner was at first filled with more zeal and talent than training. He learned to make comics by making comics. 

 Above you see one of his earliest fabrications, four panels from a strip entitled Uncle Otto. Uncle Otto was a strip in the silent tradition of The Little King and Henry.  All of the Uncle Otto strips are collected in The Lost Work of Will Eisner from Locust Moon Press. Eisner produced the Uncle Otto strips under the name of "Carl Heck". There's a distinct element of Chaplin's Little Tramp in these gags. 

Also included in the volume are the Harry Karry strips by Eisner which he produced under the name of "Willis R. Rensie", same name he used on his early Hawks of the Sea strip. Harry Karry begins as a somewhat lighthearted crime series but changes gears rather quickly and becomes exceedingly noir. Our hero even dons a mask not that different from one Denny Colt will put on a few years later. 
 

These early strips by Eisner helped fill the maw of what was the booming comics business in its earliest days. Not much in this volume to get too excited about, save that you get to see the earliest flowering of one of the comic book industry's finest talents. 

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Comics About Cartoonists!

Comics About Cartoonists - The World's Oddest Profession is a collection of stories which point back to their very real-world creation by referencing in some way the men (exclusively men in this collection by the way) who actually spilled the ink and fashioned them. The kind of fourth wall breaking stuff is always a hoot and has always been a feature of comics, an artistic form which has a really resilient quality for this kind of thing.

See above for a catalog of the talents contained in the pages within the tome. Besides a horde of public domain comics there are few which might surprise, such as a Will Eisner Spirit tale, a handful of strips from Elzie Segar's Popeye, and some stuff from Al Capp. Throw in great talents like Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, Sheldon Mayer, Basil Wolverton, Joe Shuster, Jack Briefer, Jack Cole and so many more and you have a broad overview of different kinds of comics. There are funny animal tales, science fiction yarns, mystery tales, and simple gag comics. All kinds of weird stuff to tickle the comic book fan's inner self.

Here is a gallery of comic book covers which are featured inside the book, including the Punch Comics cover which serves as the decidedly memorable cover of the entire tome. These will give you a good sense of the wide array of different kinds of comics contained within.  Craig Yoe and his associates have done us all a favor.

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The Good, The Bad, And The Brightly Clad!

This vintage Fred Hembeck cover from those long ago days of 1980 is a crack up of the highest order. Three brilliantly and blindingly hued heroes joined to create a crisis of color in the Hembeckian world at large. It's genius!

Jack Kirby and Mort Meskin

Captain 3-D, created for Harvey Comics during the Atomic Age by the Joe Simon and Jack Kirby duo is the oldest of this trio of colorful protagonists. Created to take advantage of a fad which seems to reappear every several years, Captain 3-D is a surprisingly serious character with echoes of Fawcett's Captain Marvel bonded with the more surreal elements of later comics. Here's a glimpse.

The Prankster is from the final throes of the Silver Age, a one-shot hero created by Denny O'Neil in his guise as "Sergius O'Shaugnessy" and top flight artist Jim Aparo.

Created for Charlton Comics, this futuristic gadfly battles an oppressive and humorless government in the distant future city of Ultropolis.

Pat Boyette

Never cover-featured, the Prankster made his one and only appearance in the tenth and final issue of Thunderbolt, the original Charlton run.

 And perhaps most obscure of all is Steve Ditko's Odd Man. The Odd Man was a truly bizarre creation.

Scheduled to debut in the pages of the ninth issue of Ditko's Shade the Changing Man, the exotically hued hero made his first actual appearance in the dubious offset rarity Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, a victim like so many of the infamous " DC Implosion" of the late Bronze Age.

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Thankfully though he did get a colorful presentation when that story was dusted off, revised and presented to a broader reading public in the pages of Detective Comics.

As you can see, Odd Man is perhaps the biggest eyesore among these disparate brothers-of-the-brightly-clad, his whole look seemingly designed to create a clash.

Only Fred Hembeck would think it a good enough joke to dig out these most obscure heroes (remember it was in those halcyon pre-internet days) for his devoted audience. Good show Fred on a true classic gag!

This Hembeck classic is reprinted in the awesome The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus, though I fear the color might be missing. I hope not.

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