posted April 12, 2003 11:41 AM               

So i finally get round to reading my copy of All Star Archives 7 and flick through the start of ASA 8 and it hit me - There i am struggling to get thru the solo chapters of characters like Dr Midnite in the early stories and then gradually as i read past ASC 29, 30, 31, 32, without noticing its getting easier for me to plough through and then comes issue 33. I feel like a thunderbolt has struck - the quality of the art and the ease of my reading has quantom jumped forward. Even Mart Naydel, who a few issues before was still cartoony looks as if his art has drastically improved.

By this time it was 4am so i stopped after issue 33, but not before flicking thru the stories in ASA 8 and whetting my appetite for later. Elias and Infantino drawn Flash, Toth drawing the Atom - who to be fair had improved under Kozlak since his earlier days and a much improved Kubert and Hasen.

Then before going to bed i flipped open my copy of Blackhawk with its stories from 1941 - 43 and found myself thinking 'hmmmm, DC art of 47 onwards finally caught up to the quality of Quality.

So a few questions.

For all you experts, where in the 1938 to 46 era and for which superhero characters am i likely to find the best pre 47' art? - thats for National/All American characters not Quality/Fawcett.

posted April 12, 2003 01:08 PM               

As for the features that improved: Flash was good for a long time with Everett E. Hibbard, then dropped for a brief period with Naydel (this period seems to be distortedly longer in some people's minds than it really was), and then improved. GL was never really bad, but if you don't like Hasen or Reinman, you may have a harder time with the middle part of the run. Same with Wildcat who also started with Hasen and Reinman. Shining Knight also had a bit of a leap at the end with Frazetta, and Star-Spangled Kid may have too, but I don't have any later stories from that series.

-Steve

posted April 12, 2003 02:15 PM               

I've never been particularly fond of the E.E. Hibbard Flash or of any of Irwin Hasen's work, from the early Golden Age to Dondi, despite Alex Toth's high opinion of him, so for me the "long middles" of the GA Flash and Green Lantern strips are indeed as long as I think they are. I can read them, but my mind keeps saying "this would look better, and I could take it a lot more seriously, if somebody else had drawn it". I felt that way about them in the late '50s when I first discovered Golden Age comics, too. Reinman is a bit easier for me, but he's still a long way from being a favorite.

posted April 12, 2003 03:36 PM               

A personal favorite for me is one that likely nobody else would say, is Ken Battefield. He did a lot of work for Nedor, and some for Ace, Novelty, Fawcett and some smaller ones. He wasn't the most detailed penciler, but there was a lot of action in his stories, and they kind of give me the same feel as Tom Grummett does today. Here's a sample of his work from Target Comics:
http://home.insightbb.com/~srca1941/KenBattefield.html

-Steve

posted April 12, 2003 05:20 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by James Friel:
No one's mentioned Howard Sherman's Doctor Fate yet--slicker than The Spectre, but maybe not as slick as, say, Starman. A nicely drawn feature.

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posted April 12, 2003 11:48 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by James Friel:
I agree that Hawkman, Starman, and Superman are pretty much where you should be looking for art that's friendly to the Silver Age-oriented eye.
The Simon & Kirby features may or may not also fit that criterion, depending on your individual taste. S&K isn't quite timeless, but if you like their '50s work, you'll like their Golden Age work.
H.G.Peter's Wonder Woman is also very idiosyncratic, but arguably done extremely well.
Sprang's Batman to an extent, of course, though he got a lot slicker later on.
And Meskin, and Baily, and Thompson.

I've never been particularly fond of the E.E. Hibbard Flash or of any of Irwin Hasen's work, from the early Golden Age to Dondi, despite Alex Toth's high opinion of him, so for me the "long middles" of the GA Flash and Green Lantern strips are indeed as long as I think they are. I can read them, but my mind keeps saying "this would look better, and I could take it a lot more seriously, if somebody else had drawn it". I felt that way about them in the late '50s when I first discovered Golden Age comics, too. Reinman is a bit easier for me, but he's still a long way from being a favorite.

Some of the features that people talk about improving radically after '47 or thereabouts really only had less than a handful of stories by the artists that are thought to have improved them--Toth on Atom and Dr.Mid-Nite, for instance, or Krigstein and Kubert on Wildcat (although young Gil Kane did do a good number of late Wildcat stories that I like very much). Even Flash and Green Lantern only have what amounts to a total of about an archive volume each (or a very little more) of stories by the younger artists--Toth, Elias, Infantino, and Kubert.

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posted April 13, 2003 07:17 AM               

The Martin Nodell art on GL was very cartoony and his GL didn't quite look right -Hasen's art was an improvement, although having recently seen some of Hasen's 1946/47 work i could definately tell that he had improved since the early 40's.

Flash on the other hand seemed to be a lot less clunky - the first two stories by Harry Lampert were cartoony but a lot cleaner than Nodell and had their own charm. The E.E.Hibbert art that followed had more detailed linework but also quite clean art - theres some quite nice pics of Flash in superspeed mode where he is virtually blacked out with blurred lines - check out page 45 panel 5 for instance. Hibbert's art on more in depth examination is relatively well detailed but in a clear uncluttered way - i like his buildings and background scenery and if you examine his detail on clothes, the lines are finer and more realistic than Lampert's where thick sixties Marvel lines (but more primative) are common. just looking at a nice pic of Flash grabbing a lion by the tail - page 188 panel one.

The final two stories are by Hal Sharp - his Flash is consistent with Hibbard's - especially the face, but his line work is thicker, more shadowed and comes across therefore as even more detailed. The Flash himsewlf seems more streamlined as a runner should be and like Elias and Infantino would draw him later - check out page 202, panel 4.

All in all i could easily live with this art until GA Flash reaches 1947.

Now i've heard Hibbert was the main Flash artist until circa 1945, but does anyone know how many Flash stories Sharp drew and for what period?

posted April 13, 2003 03:30 PM               

I have one major reservation, but it may not be Sherman's "fault" at all.

One weird thing I have noticed is that middle era Doctor Fate stories often read like they were "cut down" or edited down from the original Gardner Fox scripts. Fox's intricate plots sometimes don't survive the process that well.

Now, at that time Sherman did the whole art job including the lettering. Did he just get tired of drawing the Fox story and "edit" it down himself (sort of a pacing problem by him) Or did Fox get carried away with the script, thereby requiring Sherman to try to conclude the stories "quickly" at the end (a pacing problem by Fox) Or both?

On the other handm perhaps he was directed to reletter the stories occasionally or to cut them down by DC editorial (because Dr. Fate's feature was being de-emphasized in favor of other strips).

For a good example of this "pacign problem", you can look at the "Leopard Girl" story from More Fun Comics # 66, where Doctor Fate first reveals he is NOT an ageless sorceror but a man.

posted April 13, 2003 03:33 PM               

Bug DC.