"This day's experience, set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside." –Alice Munro, "What is Remembered"
From Girls’ Love Stories #1 (August – September 1949), here’s “Unlucky Heart,” with script by Robert Kanigher (uncredited), pencils by Alex Toth — who had graduated from the High School of Industrial Art less than two years earlier, in 1947 — and inks by Bernie Sachs:
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From the Charlton romance comic, Time for Love #18 (September 1970), here’s “A Kiss to Remember” with uncredited but signed comic art by Spanish artist, José Luis García-López, who was only about 22 years old at the time but was undoubtedly already turning the heads of American comics editors and readers alike with an attractive, naturalistic fine-line style that aficionados would immediately have recognized as falling squarely within the Alex Raymond/Leonard Starr/Stan Drake school of comics photorealism:
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I’m not a big fan of comics photorealism, but when I accidentally come across accomplished but uncredited artwork like the above in an otherwise lacklustre Charlton romance comic, I am compelled to find out who the artist is, though in this instance, it was easy: I recognized the signature!
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BONUS LINKS:
The Bronze Age of Blogs: “Cimmeria,” poem by Robert E. Howard, art by Barry [Windsor-]Smith and Tim Conrad, Savage Sword of Conan #24 (November 1977).
Barry Windsor-Smith Unofficial Blog: “Cimmeria,” poem by Robert E. Howard, art (in pencil) by Barry [Windsor-]Smith, Savage Tales #2 (October 1973).
Here’s a JPEG of Jack Davis’s original artwork for “Cigar Store Indian, 1957” (with the note “HUMBUG #3” at the top), along with a scan of the piece as it was printed in Humbug #4:
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What is immediately evident when one compares the two images above is how much detail was “lost in translation” from the original artwork to the printed page. In the original, Davis’s precisely crosshatched shadows are alive with atmosphere and reflected light. In the reproduction, however, the ink has sunk into the cheap paper to such an extent that Davis’s linework is made to appear a lot more heavy handed that it really is, with carefully designed tonal values congealing at the darker end of the scale into unintended masses of inky blackness. The loss of crucial detail is nowhere more obvious than on the plinth of the statue, which actually contains a lot more text — text that is integral to the joke that the drawing is intended to convey — than was visible to the readers of Humbug (see above), or even to the readers of the two-volume, slip-cased Humbug reconstruction that was published by Fantagraphics Books in 2009. However, unlike the fine folks at Fantagraphics, who clearly didn’t have the original artwork for “Cigar Store Indian, 1957,” on hand when they produced their magnificent tribute to the genius of Harvey Kurtzman and his co-conspirators at Humbug, Kurtzman and Davis would have been painfully aware what sort of damage the dodgy reproduction of Humbug #4 had inflicted on the gag on page three.
UPDATE (16 March 2011):
In an interview with Jeffrey H. Wasserman published in the fanzine Inside Comics #2 (Summer 1974), Kurtzman explained how Humbug came into being and why, in his view, the project was fatally flawed from the first:
KURTZMAN: HUMBUG was a very sentimental undertaking. We all sat around the day after TRUMP was dropped… wondering whether to slash our wrists. Arnold Roth was the only one who kept his head about him. I was sitting with Jack Davis and Al Jaffee and Harry Chester and Arnold was the only one who could think constructively. He went down and got some booze. And in our subsequent drunken state, we decided to carry on and we came out with HUMBUG.
WASSERMAN: TRUMP was a super-slick effort, obviously intended to be well-financed. But HUMBUG was different. It retailed for 15 cents and…
KURTZMAN: HUMBUG was an attempt to work with 15 cents and publish a sensitive cartoon satire magazine. It was a disaster because it wasn’t a realistic effort at all. It totally ignored fundamental business sense. We were carried away by our talent and camaraderie and went ahead with HUMBUG anyway. But I think we turned out some of the most charming stuff that’s ever been done. The format was just so bad. It was like a fart in the wind.
It was a teeny-tiny book in black and white. It had nothing going for it except talent — at least that’s what we told ourselves. We were satisfied with that, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
You can read the entire interview here.
From Eerie #90 (February 1978), here’s “A Woman Scorned,” with story by Bruce Jones and art by Richard Corben:
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From Young Love #74 (May-June 1969), here’s “Hide Your Love,” with art by Alex Toth and story by an uncredited writer:
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I happen to love beautifully drawn romance comics, but even if you don’t, you will surely recognize the brilliance of Toth’s design of the opening page, with its elegant panel arrangement that steps down in a curve from left to right around the title of the story, which, for our eyes only, Toth has written on the troubling engagement-party invitation card that the main character, Betty, has just received from her “friend” Elaine, a card that is half-hidden inside an envelope the outlines of which define the panel — Betty’s arrival at Elaine’s party — that closes the opening page! If you have read the story, you’ll know why this is significant…
From Our Army at War #241 (February 1972), here’s a four-page classic with story by Bob Haney and art by Alex Toth:
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I love how Toth uses the silhouetted panel that extends across the top of page three to provide variety within the six-panel grid while at the same time he cheekily reestablishes/reinforces the grid by breaking the panel into two halves, each framed by the structure of the building, with a support beam where the panel border/gutter would have been. And those word balloons — the tails all go the way from the visual foreground, where the text balloons reside, between and behind the silhouettes of Roman soldiers caught in the act of brutalizing the native population, and into a doorway in the background! It’s an audacious choice, but Toth makes it work!
From Adventure Comics #431 (February 1974), here’s “Is a Snerl Human?” with story by Shelly Mayer and art by Alex Toth:
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From Conan the Barbarian Movie Special #1 (October 1982), here are four consecutive pages, with art both pencilled and inked by John Buscema, along with the original art for each page:
Unlike many of the inkers who were hired to embellish his pencils over the years, John Buscema never had a reputation as a gifted technician with a quill or a brush, though he did have an instantly recognizable style. His simple, vigorous brushstrokes could suggest fur and grass and hair realistically enough, but look carefully and you’ll see that very similar strokes also delineate musculature, armour, leather clothing, rocks, trees, shadows, etc., etc. Realistic details and textures were simply not Buscema’s strong suit. This was partly because the artist didn’t enjoy research — as he said in several interviews, one big reason he loved to work on Conan was because he could rely on his memory and imagination for everything — and partly because he viewed any “extra” time spent slaving over his comics work as money out of his pocket! But that’s not a bad thing, because what you do get when Buscema inks his own work is nothing less than an object lesson in basic form and gesture by a master draughtsman. And that’s more than enough.
From Lost Worlds #5 (October 1952), here’s “Alice in Terrorland,” with pencils by Alex Toth and inks by Mike Peppe:
In a previous roundup of links to stories with art by Alex Toth, I sent readers to Karswell’s “The Horrors of It All” blog, where you’ll find a copy of “Alice in Terrorland” as it was reprinted/recoloured in Seduction of the Innocent #1 (Eclipse, November 1985). For those who would care to compare the two versions, here’s that link again.
Ragged Claws Network 