Last month Michele and I went to the Society of Illustrators to see the Comic Art Sale and Exhibit. It was a great opportunity to see a very impressive & diverse selection of original artwork from comic books was on display, both from mainstream and alternative creators.
Here are just a few highlights from the Comic Art Sale and Exhibit, which ran from July 15th to October 23rd…
The unpublished cover artwork originally intended for Avengers #37 (Feb 1967) drawn by Don Heck for Marvel Comics that was eventually used as a cover by editor Roy Thomas for his comic book history magazine Alter Ego #118 (July 2013) from TwoMorrows Publishing.
A page from the Doctor Strange story “The Many Traps of Baron Mordo” drawn by Steve Ditko from Strange Tales #117 (Feb 1964) published by Marvel Comics.
The cover artwork for Green Lantern #56 (Oct 1967) penciled by Gil Kane and inked by Murphy Anderson, published by DC Comics.
The cover artwork for Hawkman #8 (June-July 1965) drawn by Murphy Anderson, published by DC Comics.
Two pages from Fantastic Four #116 (Nov 1971) penciled by John Busema and inked by Joe Sinnott, published by Marvel Comics.
A page from Incredible Hulk #196 (Feb 1976) pencil breakdowns by Sal Buscema and finishes by Joe Staton, published by Marvel Comics.
Two pages from the underground comix series The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers created by Gilbert Shelton.
The cover artwork for Laugh Comics #182 (May 1966) drawn by Dan DeCarlo, published by Archie Comics.
A daily installment of the newspaper comic strip Sky Masters penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Wallace Wood that ran from September 1958 to December 1961.
“Aqua Nut” illustration drawn by Rat Fink creator Ed “Big Daddy” Roth in 1963.
The cover artwork for Not Brand Echh #9 (Aug 1968) drawn by Marie Severin, published by Marvel Comics.
A page from Red Sonja #6 (Nov 1977) drawn by Frank Thorne, published by Marvel Comics.
While I definitely enjoyed this exhibit, it was slightly sobering to realize that in many cases the artists sold their original artwork many years ago for a fraction of the current asking prices. In some cases some of this artwork was given away by the publishers as gifts to fans, or flat-out stolen. It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances. So I can certainly understand why in recent decades comic book artists have chosen to sell their original work at much higher prices.
Last week I wrote a short tribute to Joe Sinnott, who passed away at 93 years old on June 25th. Sinnott’s career stretched across seven decades. He worked on so many different comic books during his lifetime that I wanted to spotlight some more examples of his work, both doing full art, and as an inker / embellisher. Here are twelve highlights from his career.
1) “Drink Deep, Vampire” is one of Joe Sinnott’s earliest stories. It appeared in Strange Tales #9, published by Atlas Comics with an August 1952 cover date. Decades later Sinnott would cite it as a favorite.
2) Sinnott drew many Western stories for Atlas during the 1950s. Here is a good example of his work in the genre. “The End of the Dakota Kid” appeared in Gunsmoke Western #46 (May 1958).
3) One of the earliest jobs on which Sinnott inked Jack Kirby was the monster story “I Was Trapped By Titano the Monster That Time Forgot!” in Tales to Astonish #10 (July 1960). Right from the start they were doing great work together. They certainly did a superb job depicting Titano, an immense crab.
4) Sinnott did a great deal of work for Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact published by George A. Pflaum. One of his most noteworthy assignments for that educational comic book was “The Story of Pope John XXIII, Who Won Our Hearts,” a 65 page biography serialized over nine issues. Here is the beautifully detailed opening page of the first chapter, published in Treasure Chest vol 18 #1 (September 13, 1962).
5) Journey Into Mystery #91 (April 1963) featuring Thor was one of the very few Marvel Comics superhero stories for which Sinnott did the full art. He did nice work on this one. I especially like the first panel on this page, with the beautiful Valkyries in flowing gowns descending from Asgard to give an imprisoned Thor his belt of strength.
6) Ask who was Jack Kirby’s best inker, and many fans will respond that it was Joe Sinnott. Sinnott did superb work over Kirby at Marvel, especially on Fantastic Four. Issue #72 (March 1968) has one of the most iconic covers from their run, and it doesn’t even feature the FF. Instead we have the Silver Surfer soaring through outer space, with the Watcher in the background, surrounded by a bundle of “Kirby crackle.”
7) Tender Love Stories was a short-lived romance series from Skywald Publications, who were in operation for the first half of the 1970s. The cover of the first issue (February 1971) has the interesting pairing of Don Heck and Joe Sinnott. I’m one of those people who believe Heck was underrated. His style was well-suited to the romance genre. Sinnott’s inking complements Heck’s pencils on this piece.
8) Sinnott remained on Fantastic Four for a decade after Kirby departed. In the early 1970s he was paired with John Buscema. This splash page from FF #137 (August 1973) beautifully showcases Sinnott’s detailed, polished inking. The textures on the castle walls, the forest surrounding it, and the Moon in the sky above are incredibly rendered.
9) Although from the early 1960s on nearly all of Sinnott’s work for Marvel was as an inker / finisher, from time to time he did full art for covers and licensing art. Here is one of his occasional covers, for The Invaders #30 (July 1978) featuring Captain America, Namor the Sub-Mariner and the original Human Torch in battle with a Nazi flying saucer.
10) Sinnott stated a number of times that his favorite character to draw was Ben Grimm, the Thing. In addition to inking the Thing in innumerable issues of the Fantastic Four, Sinnott also did inks / finishes for the character in his solo series published in the 1980s. Sinnott was paired with penciler Ron Wilson, and they made an effective team. Here’s a page from The Thing #24 (June 1985) that has Ben tussling with the Rhino. Just look at the detailed, textured manner in which Sinnott inks the Rhino’s costume.
11) Sinnott did very little work for DC Comics. One of the few jobs he did appeared in the pin-up book Superman: The Man of Steel Gallery (December 1995). Sinnott inked longtime Superman artist Curt Swan, and it was a beautiful collaboration. Looking at this, I really wish Swan & Sinnott could have worked on a few Superman stories together. I got this autographed by Joe at a comic book convention several years ago.
12) Deadbeats is a vampire soap opera written & penciled by Richard Howell and inked by Ricardo Villagran published by Claypool Comics. It ran for 82 issues, and has continued as a web comic. Howell asked a number of different artists to ink the covers throughout the run. The cover to the penultimate installment, Deadbeats #81 (December 2006), was inked by Sinnott, who had previously inked Howell a few times at Marvel. The coloring is by John Heebink.
Originally I was going to show 10 examples of Joe Sinnott’s artwork, but I just could not narrow it down, which is why we have 12…. or 13, if you count Joe’s self-portrait at the top. Even with that I still had to leave out a few examples I really liked! As I said before, Sinnott did so much great artwork over the decades. Please feel free to mention your own favorites in the comments below.
I’m looking out the window right now and all I see is snow. Yep, more snow. I am so sick of snow.
Winter is a funny thing. When it’s late December you think to yourself “Wouldn’t it be nice to get a little snow, have a White Christmas for once?” It usually doesn’t happen. But then January rolls around and you start getting snow… and more snow… and still more snow. So much snow that by the time you hit March and you’ve spent most of the last month suffering from a bad cold you’re literally shaking your fist and crying out “No! Not more snow! When is this winter going to end?!?”
I’m starting to think that Orrgo the Unconquerable is responsible for all of this snow.
Oh, the weather outside is frightful…
Orrgo the Unconquerable is one of those numerous oddball monsters who first appeared between the mid 1950s and early 60s in stories published by Marvel Comics before they began their groundbreaking superhero revival in late 1961. These were pretty formulaic affairs which involved some seemingly-unstoppable menace from beyond threating the whole of humanity, until the day is saved in a convenient last-minute (and often left-field) twist.
What caused many of these monsters to stand out were the bizarre designs they were given by artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, plus the offbeat names that writer / editor Stan Lee gave them. That’s certainly the case with Orrgo.
Orrgo first appeared in Strange Tales #90, cover-dated November 1961 (the same month as Fantastic Four #1) in a story illustrated by Kirby and inker Dick Ayers. According to the Grand Comics Database, the story was probably plotted by Lee and scripted by Larry Lieber.
An alien invader of seemingly-unlimited power, Orrgo sets out to conquer the Earth. All of humanity’s weapons are totally powerless against him. As seen above, he even freezes the city of Washington DC in a sold block of ice.
Eventually Orrgo decides to hypnotize the entire planet into obeying him. Having defeated humanity, Orrgo then returns to the circus where he first arrived on Earth and takes a nap under a tree. Well, even when you are an “unconquerable” menace, I expect that it is still a bit of work to crush whole worlds under your heel, and you eventually need to get some shut-eye.
Pow! Right in the kisser!
Unfortunately for Orrgo, while he is catching some zzz’s, and the Earth’s population is in a hypnotic trance, the circus gorilla Jo-Jo breaks loose, furious that he hasn’t been fed. Sensing that Orrgo is somehow responsible for his missing meals, the gorilla smashes the slumbering alien conquerer in the head, killing him.
Yeah, I did mention those last-minute, left-field resolutions, didn’t I?!?
You can read the entire story “Orrgo the Unconquerable” from Strange Tales #90 on The Golden Age blog.
Anyway, this is comic books, and no one ever stays dead forever. Along with various other “pre-hero” monsters, Orrgo (or at least another member of his race) has been brought back on a few occasions by Marvel. Most notably, Orrgo resurfaced in the bizarre yet fun Defenders revival by Kurt Busiek & Erik Larsen that ran from 2001 to 2002. Orrgo was summoned by that supremely weird group of villains known as the Headmen, who used him to temporarily take over the world.
A mesmerizing comic book!
So, yeah, given his penchant for fast-freezing entire metropolitan areas, I would not be at all surprised to learn that Orrgo the Unconquerable is responsible for this awful winter weather. To which I can only say… knock it off buddy, before I send another gorilla to bop you on the noggin!
This is one blog post that I really wish I did not have to write. I just found out that longtime comic book artist Dick Ayers passed away on May 4th at the age of 90.
Ayers was born on April 28, 1924 in Ossining, NY. He spent the first twelve years of his childhood in White Plains. At age 13, his family moved to a farming community in Upstate New York. He returned to Westchester in his late teens, just in time to graduate from high school. Years later, Ayers would say that his teenage years spent living in that rural area, with its lack of electricity & plumbing and multitude of horses, was the perfect training to become an artist who specialized in drawing Westerns.
Serving in World War II, Ayers was stationed in England & France. Shortly after returning home, he attempted to pitch a comic book series he had devised, Chic ‘N’ Chu. Although unsuccessful, in the process Ayers met Tarzan newspaper strip artist Burne Hogarth and studied under him. In the late 1940s, Ayers began drawing comic books for Vin Sullivan’s Magazine Enterprises, and in 1950 created the Western masked vigilante known as the Ghost Rider for them. Around this time he also began dating Lindy Walter. They soon fell in love, and married in 1951.
In the 1950s, Ayers began working for writer / editor Stan Lee at Atlas Comics, the 1950s incarnation of Marvel. He illustrated a significant number of Western, war, and horror stories, as well as drawing several stories for the short-lived revival of the original Human Torch and Toro in 1954. One of his Human Torch stories was left unseen for 14 years, until editor Roy Thomas had “The Un-Human!” published in the pages of Marvel Super-Heroes #16 (September 1968). I’ve always enjoyed the crazy splash page for that tale, with its titanic eight-headed, six-limbed monster parachuting down from the sky!
In the late 1950s Ayers first began inking Jack Kirby, an association that continued into the 1960s, as Atlas officially became Marvel Comics. I have always felt that Ayers was a really good match to ink Kirby on Western, war, and monster stories. Among those was Strange Tales #89 (cover dated October 1961) which featured the debut of the now-iconic Chinese dragon Fin Fang Foom. Ayers was also a good choice to ink Kirby on the early Fantastic Four issues, which still had one foot firmly in the territory of the recent Atlas monster & sci-fi tales.
Ayers had this sort of “earthy” quality that really suited the war and Western genres both as a penciler, and as an inker to Kirby. In contrast, you had the slick, polished embellishments of Joe Sinnott, which were a much better fit for the high-tech science fiction adventures that Kirby was penciling in his later Fantastic Four stories. That just goes to show the importance not just of finding the right pairing of penciler & inker, but also making sure that their finished work fits the atmosphere of the stories they are illustrating.
One of the best fits at Marvel for Ayers, first as an inker and then a penciler, was the retro World War II series Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, which began publication in 1963. After inking Kirby on the first few issues (plus the Captain America team-up in #13) Ayers took over as the regular penciler with #8, staying on the series for the next decade. Ayers collaborated with writers Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich on Sgt. Fury. He was paired with such embellishers as John Severin, John Tartaglione, and Frank Giacoia, the latter of whom Ayers stated was his favorite inker to work with.
Ayers was the un-credited co-plotter on a number of these stories. In his Introduction to the Sgt. Fury Marvel Masterworks Volume 2, Ayers detailed the genesis of one of his favorites, issue #23, “The Man Who Failed,” which was based on a suggestion from his wife Lindy: “Have the Howlers assigned to rescue a nun who was trying to save children from behind Japanese lines.” The adventures of Nick Fury during World War II were always more slapstick than Saving Private Ryan, and there is a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humor to the scripting of the series. Ayers explained that he regarded the Howlers’ exploits as “Baron Munchausen” stories, the types of colorful exaggerations that he and his fellow soldiers might indulge in after returning from the battlefield.
That said, Sgt. Fury could occasionally be gritty or poignant. “The Man Who Failed” had Stan Lee showing British Howler Percy Pinkerton making peace with his youthful indiscretions & mend fences with his older brother. “Killed In Action” in issue #18 ended with the tragic death of Pamela Hawley, Nick Fury’s first true love. And issue #s 28-29 had Stan Lee & Roy Thomas scripting an apocalyptic confrontation between Fury and his arch-foe Baron Strucker. Ayers did superb work penciling all of these dramatic stories.
With writer Gary Friedrich, Ayers also worked on the Sgt. Fury spin-off title Capt. Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders. That short-lived series’ most memorable story arc is probably the one that ran in issue #s 2-4, wherein Friedrich & Ayers revealed the super-secret origin of Baron Strucker and the terrorist organization Hydra.
In the early 1970s, Ayers was receiving less work from Marvel. They also began reprinting his earlier stories without paying him. For a time Ayers had to work as a security guard to make ends meet. Eventually Ayers had the opportunity to explain his situation to Neal Adams. An early, forceful advocate of creators’ rights, Adams got in touch with DC Comics editor Joe Orlando on Ayers’ behalf. Orlando assigned Ayers to a number of titles including Kamandi, Jonah Hex, Freedom Fighters, Scalphunter in Weird Western Tales, G.I. Combat, and The Unknown Soldier. On that last title Ayers’ pencils were embellished by talented Filipino artist Gerry Talaoc. As I’ve written before, I very much enjoyed their collaboration.
Ayers worked at DC through the mid-1980s. He also did work for the Archie Comics / Red Circle line of books, drawing a revival of The Original Shield. Starting in 1991, Ayers began working on Femforce, the fun superhero title published by Bill Black’s AC Comics. Ayers demonstrated a real mastery of the female form in those comics, illustrating some playfully sexy good girl art.
AC has also brought back into print a variety of public domain Golden Age comic book stories. Ayers’ classic Ghost Rider stories were among the material reprinted in AC’s Best of the West, with the character re-named the Haunted Horseman. Ayers would occasionally contribute new artwork to the book, such as Best of the West #43, which had Ayers collaborating with artist Ed Coutts on a beautiful cover spotlighting the Haunted Horseman and the time-traveling Femforce gunslinger Buckaroo Betty.
In 2005 Mecca Comics Group published Ayers’ three volume graphic novel autobiography The Dick Ayers Story, which was in-depth look at both his personal life and long career as an artist. This was a project that Ayers had spent several years working on, a labor of love on his part.
Dick and Lindy Ayers lived in White Plains for several decades, and so would often make appearances at NY-area comic book conventions. The first time I met them was at a show held at the Westchester County Center in the mid-1990s. I remember asking Dick what he thought about current comic book artists. He told me that he felt many of the more recent artists in the biz were not good storytellers. He explained that a good comic book artist is someone who, if you removed all of the dialogue and narration, a reader would still be able to tell what the story was about just by looking at the artwork, how the action moves from one panel to the next. That was probably the first time I ever heard comic book artwork explained to me in that way, and it helped me to develop an appreciation for the importance of layouts & storytelling.
Dick and Lindy Ayers at the All Time Classic New York Comic Book Convention in June 2000
I would often see Dick and Lindy at comic shows. They were always such friendly people. When I still lived near White Plains, they invited me over to their house on a few occasions. It was a really enjoyable to see Dick’s studio, and to take a look at his original artwork that he had framed. Another time, on a pleasant spring afternoon, we were in their back yard having lemonade & cookies. I also saw them when Dick gave a lecture at the White Plains Public Library.
The last time I saw Dick and Lindy was at a small NYC comic show around 2011. I recall that Dick was walking with a cane, and looking a bit unwell. It seemed like age was finally starting to catch up to him. However, I was recently happy to learn that he was scheduled to be a guest at the New York Comic Fest which is going to be held on June 14th at the Westchester County Center. I was really looking forward to seeing Dick and Lindy again. Unfortunately, that is now not to be.
I’m sad that Dick Ayers is no longer with us. However, I am happy he lived a good, long life. He leaves behind both a large family and an impressive body of work.
In My Not So Humble Opinion 