Fred, if you're out there and see this, I am so sorry these scans are so small. Your commentary is unreadable. If you would like to provide a link to better scans, please help.
If it's any help. I did buy all Fantagraphics books around 1980 or so....
Drat, darn, heck. ANYWAY.
Anyway, I liked the early Thing with dinosaur hide and no neck. Dick Ayers started a sort of dried mud look and I think it was George Roussos who started with the broken rocks appearance, someone said it looked like the Thing was made of flower pot fragments glued together.
Just a preference but I preferred the heavy black collars on the FF uniforms. They got thinnet and thinneruntil sometimes they were just a line. I dont know if this was Kirby or the pencillers doing this.
Speaking of Joe Sinnott, he lived out by Saugeries maybe fifteen miles away from me. I never felt like I should pester him, but maybe he would have enjoyed a few minutes visit from a fan.
My doctor's office had a framed black and white drawing by Sinnott, It was a FF page including Black Bolt. The dialogue balloon read something like, "We have to see Dr Han. He keeps us super-heroes in good shape." My doctor retired unexpectedly years ago and I wonder how attached he was to that art...
See, these are the trivial details I fret over.
That's Joe Sinnot's early inks on #5, where the Thing turned into Blackbeard. Can you tell I read too many comics as a kid?
The absolutely wonderful Steve Ditko inks over Jack Kirby pencils. The Thing griping and complaining as usual. So much personality, his hands clasped behind him as he trudges along. If Ditko had been available, I would have been happy to see inking a lot more Kirby.
Now, this cover is where George Roussos renders the Thing as a rocky creature for the first time.
But on the inside, Dick Ayers is still going for the tough leathery hide. Why did the rocks look win out? Did Stan or Jack see it and think it looked better. Honestly, I figure it was more trouble for the artists,
And here's Chic Stone inking Kirby as Thor smacks Magneto around a little. I think Stone is my favorite Kirby inker from that period. He had a glossy brand-new look to his inks that suited the sci-fi themes and the general optimism of 1964 or so. And he popularized the Chin Squiggle.
Speaking of Thor I know Sinnott inked John Buscema any all that but we get a glimpse of a Kirby inspired style by Sinnott over Ron Frenz's pencils. This could be what Thor would have looked liked if Joe was on Thor with Jack rather than the FF.
George Roussos inking Kirby for the first big Thing vs Hulk brawl in FF 25, It's funny, I really disliked Roussos when I was a kid reading comics instead of being outside on such a beautiful but he looks a lot better tom me now. He's rough and hard-edged but that suits the Kirby action. And his inks at least are clear and easy to follow. He doesn't pretty the art up with a lot of noodling. I'd move him up on the list.
That looks pretty good to me. I'm afraid Ron Frenz is only a name to me at this point. I saw so many artists come and go. Sometimes I realize there are vast stretches of comics after 1976 or so that I haven't even glanced at.
I know people like Colletta's inks on THOR and especially on TALES OF ASGARD. I don't how else would have been a good match for the material, it wasn't as shiny and futuristic as FANTASTIC FOUR..
Stan Lee said a few times that he didn't have enough inkers to work with. DC heavily frowned on their artists moonlighting.., this was why Gene Colan was first billed as Adam Austin and Mike Esposito was MIckey Demeo. Also, page rates at Marvel weren't the greatest. Marty Goodman was in publishing to make money, not great art. If comics didn't sell well enough, he would have cheerfully axed them and published crossword magazines or song lyrics.
So Lee did a lot of juggling and scratching his head over the assignments. It wasn't usually "Who would be best for this story" as it was "Who's available and can get it done by Monday afternoon?"
>Ron Frenz
I sure you've seen his Spidey somewhere before. He drew The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man.
Pretty much this. Stan wanted Sinnott from the beginning as an artist and inker but Goodman wouldn't up his page rates and Joe went to work on that comic about the Pope. He got to ink Doom's first appearance and draw some Thor issues.
>I know people like Colletta's inks on THOR and especially on TALES OF ASGARD
I'm on that camp that likes Colletta's inks on Thor. Even Sinnott has said Thor was Colletta's best work and I agree in terms of his superhero work but Colletta's best work is in the normal settings like romance. They should have had Colletta on the covers and strictly for Tales of Asgard (that's where he shone with the crosshatch style) and have Everett on the main story. Everett is my favorite inker on Thor.
But, I was an art-oriented child and these things resonated with me. Check this out. The Destroyer first appeared in JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY# 118 in 1965 (there he or it is being discovered by a hunter). When he next reared his helmet in THOR ANNUAL# 2 not long afterwards, all the little straps and buckles and spikes and whatnot on his hide were gone. He looked like a metal mummy. Both stories were inked by Vince Colletta, and the inking for the Annual seemed even more rushed and slipshod than usual. In my little fanbrain, the Annual story seemed less authoratative and "real" than the earlier story. It was stuff like this that started me dividing stories into different categories of authenticity.
The more I've read about Goodman over the years, the more I see him as the bad guy. I'm trying to get his viewpoint. He looked at comics as just a product, like selling furniture or produce. If one item sold well, he tried more of it. If something wasn't making money or he thought a different product would do better, that's where he went.
I guess to Martin Goodmen, these artists were like the guys in the warehouse unloading trucks. Unless one of them was obviously more popular or really was disliked to the point of affecting sales, I don't think he paid much attention to them. That was Stan's job.
I don't know what the deadline situation was on this Annual but it was a lot of new material in addition to what the crew was already turning out. Maybe Kirby left off all the doodads on the Destroyer to get the job done. Maybe Colletta erased the straps and buckles so HE could get the job done. Unless stats of Kirby's pencils turn up,. I don't see how we can ever know.
Yes in fact he would flood the market with his books which were most knock off of whatever was popular. It actually worked on his behalf that National kept him on a leash of 8 titles. Kind of wish they would have done the Inhumans book. As much as people bash on Stan he actually treated his artist better than Goodman. Goodman was notorious for paying for one story and then reusing it twice to cut cost. Struggling artists during the depression would go to Stan to sell stories and while he couldn't pay much because he had a tight budget he would do his best to help anyone. Because he bought so much Stan created a backlog of stories he could produce if a book was late. Goodman was just waiting for the comic department to fail so he could shut down the whole comic division and only focus on his magazine titles but somehow Stan kept things afloat by himself because he was the only one officially on staff. He had an office the size of a closet.
Frank Giacoia! Love this inking. I get it confused with Chic Stone. He was another artist that worked at first under an alias.
And it may be just me but Captain America looks best against a background of burning buildings, barbed wire, ack-ack bursts and searchlights in the sky. It's his natural element.
If he haven't moved away, Joltin' Joe is still alive and kicking, though he looked very frail in his retiring party last year.
Oh, I think Stan stood up for the artists as much as he could. He answered to Goodman directly and he could easily get himself fired for being too uppity. It was Stan who first started putting credits right on the splash page and he made a point of praising everyone on the letters page and the Bullpen Bulletins.
He did tease Artie Simek and Sam Rosen all the time. They got the goofiest credit lines, especially after Lee and the artists were bombastically described. I loved one box where the letterer's name was twice as big as anyone else's. and Stan said it was cheaper than giving him a raise;
I like ditko but his inking over Kirby made me mainly see his work over Kirby’s. Definitely not one of the better Kirby inkers
Oh gosh, I didn't mean to imply Joe Sinnott had passed away. I'm sure I would have read about that in the local papers.
He's what, in his early 90s? I wish him the best. The Hudson Valley isn't a bad place to live in your golden years.
Hmmm, well I see your point but I don't agree with it. That's okay. To me, Ditko brought as darker element to Kirby's work. Their version of the Hulk was scary.
Wally Wood, though. No matter who he inked, it looked like Wally Wood art. His CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN is one of the few times I've seen an inker overpower Kirby's pencils. Not complaining, just an observation.