Gold Key Comics were always exceedingly well polished productions, featuring seasoned artists who offered up reliable and often beautiful pages of comic art. With talent like Russ Manning and Dan Spiegle, there's no denying the competence of what Gold Key produced. But it could be a bit quiet, it could be overly calm. As lovely as it was it sometimes lacked punch. Not the work of Jesse Santos.
When Gold Key brought on Jesse Santos, an experienced artist from the Philippines they added more than a reliable and competent storyteller, they added raw energy to their line-up. They added someone able to draw pages with the same imposing quality as John Buscema at Marvel and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez at DC. Santos drew then new Dagar the Invincible and The Occult Files of Dr.Spektor.
He also had a hand in some of the venerable Brothers of the Spear stories, even doing the cover for their debut spin-off comic after decades as a back up. He started the Chariots of the Gods inspired comic Tragg and the Sky-Gods and did other covers here and there for Gold Key. One thing you knew when you picked up a Gold Key comic drawn by Santos was that it would be exciting.
Sadly Jesse Santos passed away a few days ago. Below is a small gallery of some of his work for Gold Key among other things.
Here's a link to a trio of exciting Dagar the Invincible stories written by Don Glut and drawn by Santos.
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oh how I love Gold Key...among my favorite heroes are Drs. Solar and Spektor, Tiger Girl, The Owl, Magnus, Dagar, Turok, and Tragg!
ReplyDeleteYep. There was a time when I grew bored with the stuff from Marvel and DC, when I was heading off to college many many moons ago. There wasn't a lot beyond the Big Two in the 70's, but there was Charlton and there was Gold Key. I'd dabbled in Gold Key from time to time, but rarely paid it much close attention. For a few years I was all in and it was a great experience.
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Gold Key had its own look and style, and it seemed to me much higher quality standards than D.C. or Marvel. There are some awfully amateurish comics from the Big Two that I'm amazed ever got published. Plus Gold Key had those distinctive painted covers and best of all no "universe" where you needed to buy any other titles to keep up if you liked one or two characters.
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