Tagged: Joe Kubert

Ed Catto’s Convention Treasures!

I’m still reeling – in a good way – from Syracuse’s Salt City Comic-Con. It was a fantastic comic convention where I had way too much fun. And I’ve got some observations to share with you about it, but they’ll have to wait until next week.

This week I like to share some of the treasures I found at the show.

Let’s start with the “full disclosure” routine. I’m at the point where my comic collection is way too large, and I’ve been taking the steps to prune it back over the last few years. I’ve found this process difficult to adjust to, but my wife and I are in that downsizing mode. Surprisingly, I’m finding that maybe I am not that much of a hoarder after all. I actually feel better when I get rid of stuff.

But… I can’t help but wander a convention and stumble across a few treasures. And I was delighted with what I found at Syracuse’s Salt City Comic-Con.

In a 50-cent long box, I found this fantastic copy of Fantagraphics’ reprint title from 1987, Untamed Love, showcasing Frank Frazetta stories. Even though this reprint collection was published thirty years ago, the comic felt pretty new. The coloring is vibrant and the high-quality paper really holds up. The stories are a bit silly, but that Frazetta artwork is gorgeous!

deadman-interior-3427574Neal Adams was our guest of honor and, as he often does, told us few stories. Iwas especially intrigued when he revealed he’s working on a new Deadman series. I pressed him for details, and instead of offering just a few coy or cryptic teases, he outlined the whole first issue. And then he showed me the page he was working on. I was really impressed and think it will be his best work in years.
So… in anticipation that new series, I picked up a reading copy of Strange Adventures #209. It was a thrilling story with innovative storytelling and clever page layouts. The big climactic fight atop a Ferris wheel kicked my vertigo into high gear. I have trouble with heights these days, and that frenetic battle above the midway isn’t going to help matters.

Of note: there was a circulation statement in this issue. It turns out Strange Adventures was reported to be selling 146,600 issues each month. I find that so astounding, especially compared to today’s print runs.

I just loved the cover to Girls’ Romances #160 and couldn’t resist snagging it. The brilliant Jay Scott Pike is the artist. While the composition is solid and strong, the non-traditional sketchy, scratchy line work was what grabbed me.

It turns out this was the last issue of this long-running series. By this time, they must have decided it wasn’t worth it to create new stories. Inside are reprints of old John Romita stories – but the women’s hairstyles were retouched to give it a “modern” 1971 feel! These bizarre edits create a double layer of retro.

girls-romances-3517886zorro-5992898Most fans fondly remember those Antonio Banderas Zorro movies from a few of years ago. My dad was just watching it on cable, in fact. And comic fans all agree that Alex Toth’s Zorro comics were a pinnacle for that character. So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself buying Zorro – The Complete Dell Pre-Code Comics from the Hermes Press booth at the con. It’s a totally different version of Zorro.

Hermes Press was an energetic and committed exhibitor. I may be a bit biased, as I do like so many of their books. They created two convention exclusives and they were selling everything at a discount, so all attendees found a lot to like about their stuff.

In the forward of the Zorro collection, ace author Max Allan Collins provides a brief history lesson about the main artist of these stories – Everett Raymond Kinstler. I wasn’t familiar with this artist, but he is work is evocative and often confused with, Joe Kubert’s style from the 50s. “You had me at Kubert,” I thought when reading the forward.

It’s a tremendous book and after I read it, I think it deserves a spot on my coffee table. Then after a while, I’ll lend it to my dad. Another treasure from another comic-con.

Ed Catto’s Comic-Con Conversation with Graham Nolan

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hawkworld-hawkman-2572653I can’t agree with fans that hate big crowds at big comic conventions. I tend to like big crowds. And I am always astonished by the way the San Diego Comic-Con takes over that town. I’m also in awe that the New York Comic Con is the biggest convention held in New York City’s Javits Center. The massive attendees at every big comic-con are both testaments to Geek Culture, and virtual victory laps for all fans everywhere.

To be honest, I also enjoy smaller comic conventions. There’s something special about being able to just wander up to a favorite creator and engage in a conversation with him or her. And at smaller shows, it’s empowering to be able to casually flip through a long box of comics to search for treasures, without elbowing your way through a crushing wall of other fans searching for their own treasures.

I’ll never forget a great experience I had at a smaller show years ago. A local comic con decided to expand with a second show. They decided to hold this spinoff convention in in the open area of a mall. Attendance was abysmal, but that worked out in my favor. Jim Shooter, the headlining professional, very patiently answered all my young fanboy questions for hours and hours. There was no one else waiting to speak to him, after all. I don’t think I talked for 24 hours straight, but I’m sure it seemed that way to Jim. And you know what? That was a kindness I’ve never forgotten.

So it’s no surprise that I’m very excited for Syracuse’s Salt City Comic-Con in June. I’ve recently moved from metro New York to the Finger Lakes, and we’re finding so many cool things going on up here. This convention looks to be a very substantial comic-con with a small show feel.
One of my favorite artists, Graham Nolan, will be a guest at this year’s show. Part of why I like his art so much is that he’s been involved with so many of my favorite stories. I fondly recall the introduction of Bane, the first villain to soundly defeat Batman. And the adventure of two immigrants from Thanagar assimilating to American culture in the Hawkworld series was fascinating and fresh.

phantom-graham-nolan-6766200But the other part of why I enjoy his work is that Nolan’s always been able to deliver solid artwork with a flair for the dramatic. It’s grounded, but it’s fantastic. Every Graham Nolan page is an example of fine draftsmanship, but also always infused with a thrilling level of action and adventure.

So, unable to wait until the convention in June, I wanted to have a one of those
substantial convention conversations with this fine artist. I reached out to Graham Nolan for this pre-con conversation:

Ed Catto: You were an early graduate of the Joe Kubert School. What are your fondest memories of that experience?

Graham Nolan: Actually, I never graduated from Kubert’s. I ran out of money for the third year. The two years I did attend were a great experience though. I learned a lot and was surrounded by people that shared the same passions as I did.

EC: We tend to revere Joe Kubert around here – what was it like learning from him?

GN: Joe was a force of nature. He had a presence that few have. When he spoke, you listened. He made everything he did seem so damn easy.

EC: You worked on Power Of The Atom, an Atom reboot, with CNY-er Roger Stern. Those were exciting times and it seemed to shine through in that series. What stands out in your memory about that series?

GN: It was a fun series that I wish I had been on from issue #1

batman-jonn-jonzz-1520761EC: Our regular readers know how enamored I am with your Hawkworld series. Can you tell us a little about that series, what you were looking to achieve with it, and what your thoughts on it today are?

GN: That was a tough act to follow. I was passed the reigns from the popular mini-series by Tim Truman and Alcatena. I wanted to capture the feel of that series but add my own sense of storytelling dynamism to it.

EC: Follow-up question – Any thoughts on following in the footsteps of Joe Kubert on Hawkman?

GN: Not really. Hawkworld was so far afield from Joe’s work I felt like I was following Truman and not Kubert.

EC: You spent so much time working The Phantom – with fantastic results. Was that a labor of love for you?

bncon-cv1-2275257GN: I always loved The Phantom. When Don Newton did the art for the Charlton books, I really flipped over the character. The Phantom was my Mom’s favorite character growing up. I regret that she passed before getting to see me take over the character.

EC: Comic strips like Rex Morgan, M.D. don’t seem to get the same fan appreciation at comic conventions. Do you find that frustrating?

GN: Comic strips don’t seem to get fan appreciation anywhere! The newspaper is a dying delivery device for comic-strips. They are so small these days that there are some strips I can’t even read!

EC: Monster Island was your own property. How different is it work on something like that as opposed to big company characters?

GN: Everything has to be created from scratch vs. it being established by others. But the creative freedom is wonderful.

EC: Let’s look ahead – can you tell us what you’re working on now?

GN: I’m currently doing my weekly humor strip, Sunshine State for GoComics.com and Chuck Dixon and I are back at DC working on a 12 issue Bane project called Bane: Conquest.

EC: Sounds like fun stuff, Graham, really looking forward to it all.

For more information on Graham Nolan, check out his site here, and for more information on Syracuse’s Salt City Comic-Con, check out their site here.

Ed Catto, Tarzan, Jane, & Tom Yeates – Plus 25

tarzan-the-b-4-covers-9545232

yeates-dark-horse-cover-tarzan-the-b-9893450It’s time for me to review this brand new book for the second time.

Before we get into that paradox, the bottom line is that Thomas Yeates’ recently published Tarzan The Beckoning is a gorgeous book. But there’s a little bit more to this column than that simple appraisal.

Back in the early 90s, a new publisher called Malibu Comics was creating innovative and fun comics. Malibu had just published Tarzan The Warrior by Mark Wheatley and Neil Vokes. As you probably know, Tarzan, perhaps more than any other character, has been rendered by some of the industry’s all time greatest artists – Hal Foster, Burne Hogarth, Russ Manning, Neal Adams, Joe Kubert, John Buscema, Joe Jusko…the list goes on and on.

So when Malibu was promoting this new Tarzan The Warrior comic mini-series in the 90s, they signaled that they were going to try something very different. It wouldn’t be a comic where the art tried to compete with the fantastic artists that came before. No, this comic invited the readers to take a little detour with the King of the Jungle to try something new and different.

pencils-yeates-for-comicmix-5499108It worked! It was fun and it was fresh. Tarzan The Warrior had a very loose artwork style, and it wasn’t all about jungles and animals. I told them as much in letter that I dashed off to the publisher.

Malibu’s assistant editor was a wonderful woman named Kara Lamb. She liked what I had to say and invited me to write more. And then she sent me a preview of the next Tarzan miniseries Malibu was publishing and asked me to write a letter about that as well.

This was a pretty common practice back then. Letter writing fans would be asked for their thoughts based on early previews so the editors could then populate the letters page of the first issue with a few real letters.

I certainly wasn’t one of the “big name” letter hacks, so I felt pretty special to be asked. The comic they gave me, on stapled black and white pages, was Tarzan: The Beckoning. It had spectacular art by one of my favorite artists – Thomas Yeates. Yeates and Henning Kure wrote the story.

yeates-dark-horse-jane-three-quarter-page-6363957The Tarzan: The Beckoning mini-series was a thriller with a fair amount of globe hopping. It presented Tarzan and his wife as mature adults. And it dealt with what was then, and what is still, a real issue – the poaching of elephants and the despicable ivory trade.

The art was jaw dropping gorgeous. Yeates’ brilliant page layouts and strong rendering created a fantastic yarn that could stand shoulder to shoulder with Tarzan classics by Hogarth or Manning.

kubert-tarzan-3182962I essentially said that all in the letter that was printed back then, and I’ll say it again.

Dark Horse has now collected the series in a new volume, also called Tarzan: The Beckoning. It’s fascinating to see the early color cover sketches, which are included. A handful of pencil sketches and brush and ink illustrations help remind readers of Yeates classic art skills.
The new collection of Tarzan: the Beckoning also includes a letter from Allan Thornton, the President of the Environmental Investigation Agency. The letter speaks about elephants and the scourge of poaching for ivory. It helps provides us all with a little perspective.

And if you’re interested in learning more, might I also suggest you check out www.99Elephants.org?

There’s also a nice synergy to this graphic novel. Thomas Yeates was one of the early graduates of the Kubert School. So it’s only fitting to see this gorgeous adventure re-released at about the same time Dark Horse released Tarzan: The Complete Joe Kubert Years volume. (Legendary artist Joe Kubert was also the founder of The Kubert School.) Far be it from me to say the student has surpassed the master… but it’s close.

Dark Horse’s Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan: The Beckoning and Tarzan: The Complete Joe Kubert Years are both on sale now. Yeates current work appears on Prince Valiant each week in many Sunday newspapers, and is available online at http://comicskingdom.com.

 

Ed Catto: Teaching The Teacher at the Bergen Arts Festival

teen-arts-students-in-class-1553228

teen-arts-freida-crying-7761712Kids these days… they’re all irreverent slackers, consumed in the little bubbles of social media and self-absorption, right? Not so fast! That’s not what I just experienced at all.

Each year, Bergen (County New Jersey) Community College is the site for the Bergen Teen Arts Festival. This impressive event invites outstanding high school students to participate in a daylong celebration of creativity, youth and the arts. It’s packed full of live performances – music, theater and more. An art exhibit showcases impressive drawing, painting and sculpting talent. The Festival offers more creative workshops than any student could ever attend in one day.

And the weather gods must support it, because it always seems to be held on a gorgeous, sunny day.

Evan Cooper, the Teen Arts Administrator is a focused and supportive guy with a great skill for setting the stage and then letting the students and teachers shine. Three years ago, Evan, along with creative writing expert Jim O’Rourke, recruited me to teach a class on creating graphic novels.

teen-arts-superhero-guitar-8405833It’s been a fantastic experience. For my part, I try to distill some of my best (art) life lessons, learned from the likes of everyone from Scott McCloud to Joe Kubert to all my own art teachers. My goal is to help spark an interest in kids for the art form of comics. We have a lot fun in these classes, and if you’ll allow me to brag, they are always SRO.

Newsflash – they don’t really need me. They already get it. They’ve already earned their pilots licenses, or are in the process. I’m just the airport runway.

So, in fact, as the teacher, I have the opportunity to learn a lot in these classes. Here are some of this year’s observations:

teen-arts-student-manga-sketchbook-5056323Manga is a Second Language to Many – If you attended the Book Expo and talked with bookstore retailers, they might have told you that the Manga craze (i.e. Japanese Comics) is dead. That’s not what I saw at all. So many of today’s high school students, presumably having enjoyed manga in their formative years, love this style and love to express themselves in this style.

Today’s Cool Kids – Years ago, when I was in high school, I made the mistake of wearing Batman apparel and was mocked (by one of the school’s prettiest blondes, no less) for my absurd, immature pop culture tastes. Today it’s so much the opposite. This isn’t a newsflash to anyone who’s been paying attention, but it’s still just incredible to me.

In each of the three classes I taught that day, there were one or two kids who wore superhero shirts and they were instantly the experts. They’d talk about the recent Captain America: Civil War movie, or Steve Ditko or digital comics or AMC’s new Preacher series. They knew their stuff and everyone respected them.

Lots of Talent – These kids were good! One student had already had his work accepted onto ComiXology’s Submit program (click here for more details) there was such a wide range of imagination and creativity.

What a day! Can’t we just fast-forward to the near future when these kids are published and see what they have to say?

Mike Gold: Buying Comic Books

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For most of those of you who are lucky enough to have grown up near a comic book store, you may be unfamiliar with those hallowed days when we had to go to our local drug store, candy shop), grocery store, and/or newsstand to get our four-color fix.

Right there among the legitimate journals, next to the “men’s sweat” magazines that cover-featured well-dressed Gestapo agents torturing hapless well-endowed American women who somehow got caught up in the war effort, beside the farm magazines and the science monthlies and the news weeklies, awaited our favorite comic book characters ripe for the plucking. We didn’t have fanzines, let alone the Internet, to tell us what was coming out each week. New titles and new characters simply appeared at one or another outlet – no one place had them all – and that element of surprise was vital to our bouillabaisse of comic book entertainment.

Each Saturday my friends and I would hike down Devon Avenue from Kedzie to Western Avenue on Chicago’s north side, stopping at seven or eight different stores that met our needs. Mind you, some of us – most certainly yours truly – had already gone to as many as three different drug stores located nearer to our school. Oh, sure, we did lots of other things kids did back then, like lag baseball cards and scarf down Vienna hot dogs and mock the adult passersby and wise off to the police who seemed to hate us kids (I wonder why?). But that part of our itinerary varied from week to week. The constant was gawking at all those comic book racks.

Afterward we would go to one of our sundry abodes to read our stash, often sharing purchases with one another. Then we would discuss what we read. I remember when my best friend declared he did not think my favorite artist, Joe Kubert, actually knew how to draw. Another in our group declared he was uninterested in the embryonic Marvel Comics line because they were all written by the same guy. “If Stan Lee got hit by a truck,” my pal surmised, “they’d be up shit’s creek.”

Well, I certainly would have been. Fantastic Four #1 came out right when I turned 11 and I was just beginning to tire, just a little bit, of DC’s domination of the superhero genre. Marvel’s continuous growth stoked my interest in the medium.

As Flo and Eddie informed us, before too long those sing-along days were lost to us forever. Contrary to the popular belief of the time, it wasn’t television that really killed comic book sales. It was the slow death of all those mom’n’pop stores as families bought cars, moved out to the suburbs, and shopped in malls and chain stores where the profit margin on a ten or twelve-cent comic book was way too thin to justify retail floor space. Comic books that had been selling a half million or more copies drifted downward to maybe 100,000, and then even lower. Sell-through percentages spiraled down from 70% or more to 40% or less.

Cast-off from the growingly elitist science-fiction fandom, comics fans got organized. Comic book stores started popping up and the wondrous Phil Seuling cut deals with the publishers to get their wares directly into those comics shops. Phil saved our beloved medium’s ass.

The sad by-product of this was if you didn’t live near one of those comics shops, you were out of luck. The average age of the average reader went up as you pretty much had to have access to a car to get to a direct sales store… assuming there actually was one within driving distance. For most… no soap.

It was a deal with the devil but the comic book remains alive in America. Unfortunately, those kids today who live within walking distance of that one-mile stretch of Devon Avenue have exactly zero places to buy comic books and those other three drug stores are all out of business.

Life changes for better and for worse. But it was really fun to be surrounded by all those newsstands.

 

Mike Gold: Comic Books Are Heavier Than Ever!

simon-and-kirby-4558504This time around the honor of writing the last ComicMix column of 2014 falls to me, and I am grateful for the opportunity to taunt the gods and goddesses of irony once more before the Cherub of the New Year arrives, gets a good look around, and shits his diaper.

Many, if not all of my friends seem to be happy that this year is coming to an end. String theory tells us that such optimism is silly, but since I’m starting 2015 with a left arm different from the one I had last January – and the anesthesia almost killed me – well, sayonara old bastard and take your scythe with you. (more…)

John Ostrander: Details, details, details…

ostrander-art-130407-8570674There’s a saying that goes “The devil is in the detailsl, but so is character, whether writing, drawing, or acting. I had the opportunity of teaching at the Joe Kubert School a few times (and the inestimable pleasure of getting to know not only the legendary Joe Kubert but so many others working at the school) and I had the maybe unenviable task of teaching writing to a bunch of art students. Some didn’t take to that right away; after all, they were there to learn how to draw. From talking to some of the graduates over the years, however, I think most found it worthwhile and I enjoyed it.

For me, everything in comics is about character and storytelling. Design to me means nothing unless it is tied to those two points. I’m not interested in a mask or costume whose design is simply “cool” or its what the artist wants to draw.  The character has chosen to make or wear a given mask, costume, or uniform. What does that tell us about him or her? Famously, Batman wants to invoke a bat because criminals are (supposedly) a cowardly and superstitious lot. He wants to invoke fear in them.

One exercise I gave the students was to create their own mask – not for a character but something that would express and freeze some aspect of themself. It would both reveal them and, because it was a mask, it would also conceal them. They were safe behind the mask. It was and was not them.

When the masks were completed, I asked them to wear them. Masks in many societies have power; often, they represent a god and the wearer (supposedly) channels the power of the god. I asked the students to let the mask act upon them; how did they act, how did they feel, how did they move? What – if anything – changed in them?

The purpose was to get them to understand the affects that the masks the characters they wore had upon the characters they were writing and/or drawing. Spider-Man, for example, certainly reacts differently than Peter Parker. Batman, on the other hand, becomes more of who he is when he wears the cowl; his true mask may be Bruce Wayne, as perceived by others.

We do the same thing with what we choose to wear. We say something about ourselves, about who we perceive ourselves to be, of how we want to be perceived by others. Even a careless choice – “whatever is clean” or “whatever I grab” says something. Even if the message being sent out, “I can’t be judged by my clothes; I’m deeper than that.” that is still making a statement. Maybe the message is – I don’t want to be noticed. That is also still a statement. That’s a choice being made and that tells us something about a person – or a character.

What kind of clothes does your character wear? Bruce Wayne may wear Armani; I asked my students if they knew what an Armani suit looked like. Peter Parker is going to shop off the rack. Which rack?

In movies and TV, they have a whole team of people deciding what the rooms look like. Bedrooms, offices, desks, kitchens – depending on the person and what room is most important to them, what are the telling details about them that personalize the space, that say something about the character?

As an actor, I needed to know what my character wore, how he walked, how he used his hands when talking (or did he?). What sort of shoes did he wear? I compared knowing this to an iceberg; the vast majority of the iceberg is under water and only the tip shows. However, for that tip to show, the bulk of the iceberg had to be there. (One of these days I’m probably going to have to explain what an iceberg was.) I have to know far, far more about a character than I’m actually going to use just to be able to pick the facts that I feel are salient to a given moment or story. When Tim Truman and I created GrimJack, we had a whole vast backstory figured out, some of which was revealed only much later; some of it may not have been revealed yet.

Generic backgrounds create generic characters. To be memorable, there have to be details. The more specific they are, the more memorable the character will be. That’s what we want to create; that’s what we want to read.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

TARZAN NEWS!

  • News
  • September 24, 2012
Art: Joe Jusko

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan turns 100 this year, but don’t think celebrating his centennial has slowed down the Lord of the Jungle. Quite the opposite. Here are a few odds and ends from Tarzan’s world happening in 2012 and beyond.

Art: Tom Grindberg
Art: Tom Grindberg

 EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS COMIC SERVICE-
By signing up for the new Edgar Rice Burroughs Comic Service, you will be able to view New and Coming Tarzan comics as soon as they leave our artist’s desk!

Read the recent All Pulp interviews with Tarzan 2012 comic strip writer Roy Thomas and artist Tom Grindberg.

Art: Sterling Hundley

TARZAN ART TO APPEAR ON NEW USPS POSTAGE STAMP-
CHESTERFIELD, VA – Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author who created Tarzan and a host of other sci-fi heroes a century ago, didn’t get much respect for what was considered pulp fiction at the time. Now, the work of a Chesterfield artist commemorating the prolific author is taking a licking literally.

A brand-new postage stamp showing Burroughs and Tarzan is set to take off around the world. It’s the second U.S. Postal Service stamp drawn by Sterling Hundley, an artist, illustrator and Virginia Commonwealth University art professor. (His first was Oveta Culp Hobby, the first woman to hold a presidential cabinet position.)

Learn more about Sterling Hundley and the new Tarzan stamp here.

OFFICIAL TARZAN STATUES NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER-
Details here.

Art: Joe Kubert

JOE KUBERT’S TARZAN OF THE APES: ARTIST’S EDITION COMING IN SEPTEMBER-

Art: Joe Kubert

Joe Kubert is one of the most lauded artists in the history of comics, a true living legend. He has been a vital creative force since the 1940s and remains so to this day. He has had defining runs on Hawkman, Enemy Ace, Tor, Sgt. Rock, and many others. Among his career highlights is Tarzan of the Apes, and Kubert’s rendition could arguably be called the definitive comic adaptation of the Ape-man.

“To have the Tarzan stories I drew commemorate the 100th anniversary of a strip I fell in love with as a kid is the thrill of a lifetime,” said Joe Kubert, writer and artist of all the stories in this Artist’s Edition.

This Artist’s Edition collects six complete Kubert Tarzan adventures, including the classic four-part origin story. Each page is vividly reproduced from the original art and presented as no comics readers have seen before. For fans of Kubert and Tarzan, this new entry in the Eisner-winning Artist’s Edition line must be seen to be believed!

2012 is the centennial year for Tarzan. Created by master storyteller Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan is instantly recognizable to countless fans around the globe. Other notable creations of Burroughs’ include John Carter of Mars, Korak, Carson of Venus, and At the Earth’s Core.

“I first read these comics when I was 10 years old, and they remain some of my favorite stories ever,” said Editor Scott Dunbier, “this is Joe Kubert at his absolute best.”

What is an Artist’s Edition? Artist’s Editions are printed the same size as the original art. While appearing to be in black & white, each page has been scanned in COLOR to mimic as closely as possible the experience of viewing the actual original art—for example, you are able to clearly see paste-overs, blue pencils in the art, editorial notes, and art corrections. Each page is printed the same size as drawn, and the paper selected is as close as possible to the original art board.

JOE KUBERT’S TARZAN OF THE APE: ARTIST’S EDITION ($100, hardcover, black and white, 156 pages, 12” x 17”) will be available in stores September 2012.
Visit IDWPublishing.com to learn more about the company and its top-selling books. IDW can also be found at http://www.facebook.com/#!/idwpublishing and http://tumblr.idwpublishing.com/ and on Twitter at @idwpublishing.

Art: Tim Burgard

SEQUENTIAL PULP/DARK HORSE COMICS PRESENT TARZAN AT THE EARTH’S CORE-
Coming 2013 – TARZAN AT THE EARTH’S CORE Adapted by Martin Powell and illustrated by Tim Burgard. Tarzan At The Earth’s Core © Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., Tarzan ® TM owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. and used by permission. Coming soon from Sequential Pulp/Dark Horse Comics.

Not bad for a guy turning 100, eh?

Mike Gold: Joe Kubert, Personally

gold-art-120815-8105636One of the hardest questions for me to answer begins with the phrase “What is your favorite…?”

My Top 10 movie list has over 100 movies on it. My Top 10 television shows list must first be categorized: is it fair to compare Rocky and Bullwinkle to The Prisoner? Well, maybe that’s a bad example, but I think you get my point. If you were to ask me to name my favorite musician, I’d go into a fugue state and you’d get scared and leave.

There is one exception. If you were to ask me who my favorite comics creator is – and you were to ask me this question at any time in the past half-century – I would immediately and firmly respond “Joe Kubert.”

As we reported, Joe died Sunday evening. It was one of those moments when time… simply… stopped. For the past decade I’ve been in amazement that Joe was still giving us a graphic novel and a mini-series or special or something every year. Jeez, if I make it to 85 (and I’m nowhere in as good a shape as Joe was) I’m planning on lying there bitching until somebody changes my Depends. Joe was still at it, producing great stuff.

I was fortunate to know both Joe and his wife Muriel (predeceased by four years); Muriel knew the depths of my affection for her husband’s work, Joe knew it as well and was quite gracious but, as to be expected from an artist of his caliber, I could tell he wasn’t connecting with my praise for something he had finished months ago. He already was on to the next thing. Or maybe the one after that.

When I first started working at DC Comics back in 1976, my office was two doors down from Julius Schwartz. Denny O’Neil had the office next to me. Joe Orlando – Joe Orlando! – was a few doors down from that. And, three days a week, there was Joe Kubert. The best of the best.

I was a 26 year-old fanboy and if I wasn’t breathing I would have thought I had gone to heaven.

Kubert had been my favorite comics creator since the day my mother bought me Brave and the Bold #34, cover-dated February-March 1961. It featured the debut of the silver age Hawkman. We were getting on Chicago’s L, headed towards the Loop for my first visit to the eye doctor. I was anxious to read the comic; it looked really cool. Exciting. Different. And new superheroes were few and far between in those days of buggy whips and gas lamps.

Of course, my eye doctor did what eye doctors do: she put those serious drops in my eyes and everything got all blurry and then she exiled me to the outer office while my pupils dilated to the size of manhole covers. I was told to sit there quietly for an hour. I was ten years old; the concept of “sitting quietly” was well beyond my understanding. Certainly, not with that awesome-looking comic book on my lap.

I tried to read it. My mother started to scream about how I’d permanently ruin my eyes. She was supportive of my reading comics, she just had odd theories about how I’d go blind. Being me, I continued to try to read the Hawkman debut but now more defiantly, with purpose and determination – despite the fact that each panel was more blurry than the previous. I went through that book several times, trying my damnedest to understand it. To see it.

The book was astonishingly great – a tribute to writer Gardner Fox and editor Julie Schwartz as well as to Joe. After I finally read the comic in focus, it was clear to me that it was worth all the effort. That’s probably what made me a Joe Kubert fan.

By 1976 I had learned first-hand that a lot of the public figures I admired weren’t really worthy of such tribute on a personal level; if you were going to meet a lot of celebrities, you had to learn how to divorce yourself from the person and remain married to that person’s work. This is a lot less the case in the comics field, I’m happy to report.

And it most certainly was not the case with Joe Kubert. We could be diametrically opposed on certain political and social issues, and we were, but it didn’t matter one bit. Part of that came from Joe’s upbringing in the Talmudic arts where discussion and debate is encouraged and honored. But most of that came from Joe’s simply being a great, great guy.

That’s what I have to say about Joe Kubert. He was a great, great guy.

Here’s what I have to say to Joe Kubert.

Thank you.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Joe Kubert, 1926 – 2012

joe_kubert2-8957205Joe Kubert, one of the greatest masters of the comics art form, died today after a short illness, three weeks short of his 86th birthday.

Best known as the artist of the long-running war feature Sgt. Rock, Joe was almost equally well-known for his work on both the golden age and silver age Hawkman and on such features as Enemy Ace, Tarzan, Firehair, Tor (which he created for St. John’s comics in the 1950s and owned and returned to throughout his life), the Tales of the Green Beret newspaper strip, and numerous other features and countless covers. In his later years he wrote and drew a great many graphic novels, both original creations (Jew Gangster, Fax from Sarajevo, Yossel) and based upon his well-established Tor and Sgt. Rock characters. DC is currently publishing his work as an inker on Before Watchman: Nite Owl, pencilled by his son Andy. He also served as an editor at DC Comics in the 1970s.

Over the years Joe received numerous awards, including the Harvey Awards’ Jack Kirby Hall of Fame and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. These honors are dwarfed by his legion of respecting collaborators, fans, students, and medium fellows.

Perhaps his greatest and most enduring contribution to the medium was his establishment in 1976 of The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey, which teaches the craft of comics and boasts such graduates as Timothy Truman, “Rags” Morales, Amanda Conner, Shane Davis, Tom Mandrake, Stephen Bissette, Jan Duursema, Rick Veitch, Matt Hollingsworth, Karl Kesel, Scott Kolins, Steve Lieber, Dave Dorman, Eric Shanower, Alex Maleev, and Bart Sears. His sons, Andy and Adam, received special live-long training from their gifted father.

Joe’s wife Muriel had served as a model — intentionally and, one strongly suspects, unintentionally — lending her image to many of Kubert’s female characters. Muriel passed away in 2008. Their marriage ran an incredible 57 years.

In addition to Andy and Adam, the Kubert family also consisted of sons David and Danny and daughter Lisa Zangara, as well as numerous grandchildren.

A man whose broad smile triggered an enormously infectious laugh, Joe Kubert was one of those artists who looked like he had drawn himself into creation. A fast artist, he often amazed convention-goers by producing a fully-formed intricate Hawkman image in ink within minutes after starting with a couple simple lines drawn on paper. Much of his original art reveals he often did not produce finished pencils, relying upon sketchy blue-lined (non-reproducing) layouts before going on to final inks.

Much can — and will — be said about this pillar of American comics history. For now, we report his passing and our most profound condolences to his family, friends, and students.

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