• Jiggs and Maggie

    As if George McManus‘s art isn’t enough to please, the story, the characters, the side characters are all done just right. I grabbed this from Jiggs and Maggie #14 from May, 1950. This story is from the comic strip Bringing Up Father.

  • Joe Kubert

    Joe Kubert (1916-2012) got his first job comics job as a teenager, quickly developed and was a professional comic book artist before he was out of his teens. He drew continuously until his death in 2012. He worked for DC Comics for about 30 years, drawing Sgt. Rock of Easy Company. He worked on many…

  • Real Screen Comics

    I guess the field of animation is still thriving, but the comic books that featured talking animal characters has shrunk significantly. There used to be a DC comic called Real Screen Comics, which featured the Fox and the Crow, originally created as characters in their own Screen Gems cartoons. These cartoons ran from 1941-1950. Real…

  • Illos by Lawrence

    Recently, I posted a piece on the ever-wonderful Virgil Finlay. I said he was the best pulp illustrator. I may have jumped the gun. Lawrence Sterne-Stevens (1884-1960) may have been just as good. It is, after all, subjective. Lawrence had an earlier corporate career as a designer and illustrator. He entered the pulp field in…

  • The Mad Beginning

    In August of 1952 a new kind of comic book hit the newsstands. It was called Mad, and it was a humor comic. It was something new. Revolutionary. After three years, the publisher (Entertaining Comics) converted it to a magazine format, setting the stage for it to become one of the best-selling titles for decades.…

  • Katy Keene of the Future

    Through the years Bill Woggon (1911-2003) (with the help of readership suggestions) came up with a zillion paper doll fashions for his long-time, girl-favorite-character, Katy Keene. By issue #40 (1958) Woggon went futuristic. All of Katy‘s fashions were strictly out of this world.

  • Comics as an Advertising Medium

    As soon as comics were discovered as a storytelling medium, the business world adopted it in their advertising. Comic-style ads really escalated in the 1930s and slowed down in the 1950s. It amuses me that the various components of comics infiltrated so many ads: word balloons, sequential storytelling and panel breakdowns.

  • We Got Covers #8

    Here’s a cover I’ve always liked. And it’s an important one, too. It’s Our Army at War #81 from April, 1959, with the first appearance of Sgt. Rock of Easy Company. It’s drawn by Jerry Grandenetti (1926-2010), a fifteen-year mainstay of the DC army titles.

  • More DC Ads

    Whatever it’s appeal I’ve enjoyed reading comics. I’m not sure I can do an adequate job of quantifying the main reason(s). However I view them, or feel about them, these ads seem to be selling the idea of comics from a different place than mine. I do enjoy the idea of a comic book advertisement.…

  • Here Come the Censor Police!

    Comic books had had a good decade run. It was now May, 1949 and Marvel Comics issued this statement in their comics. They must have really begun to feel the pressure from the censor-based part of the public that believed comic books needed a big make-over. The public wanted comics to be non-violent, non-salacious, wholesome.…