RIP: Steve Ditko

Steve Ditko

Steve Ditko

Steve Ditko

Farewell to a Funny Man: RIP Jonathan Winters (1925-2013)

Jonathan Winters As An Airline Pilot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGorCSnIHF4


Jonathan Winters, Funny Man and Comedic Inspiration, Dies at 87
by William Grimes

Jonathan Winters, the rubber-faced comedian whose unscripted flights of fancy inspired a generation of improvisational comics, and who kept television audiences in stitches with Main Street characters like Maude Frickert, a sweet-seeming grandmother with a barbed tongue and a roving eye, died on Thursday at his home in Montecito, Calif. He was 87.

His death was announced on his Web site, JonathanWinters.com.

Mr. Winters, a rotund man whose face had a melancholy basset-hound expression in repose, burst onto the comedy scene in the late 1950s and instantly made his mark as one of the funniest, least definable comics in a rising generation that included Mort Sahl, Shelley Berman and Bob Newhart.

Mr. Winters was at his best when winging it, confounding television hosts and luckless straight men with his rapid-fire delivery of bizarre observations uttered by characters like Elwood P. Suggins, a Midwestern Everyman, or one-off creations like the woodland sprite who bounded onto Jack Paar’s late-night show and simperingly proclaimed: “I’m the voice of spring. I bring you little goodies from the forest.”

A one-man sketch factory, Mr. Winters could re-enact Hollywood movies, complete with sound effects, or create sublime comic nonsense with simple props like a pen-and-pencil set.

The unpredictable, often surreal quality of his humor had a powerful influence on later comedians like Robin Williams but made him hard to package as an entertainer. His brilliant turns as a guest on programs like “The Steve Allen Show” and “The Tonight Show” — in both the Jack Paar and Johnny Carson eras — kept him in constant demand. But a successful television series eluded him, as did a Hollywood career, despite memorable performances in films like “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,”
“The Loved One” and “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.”

Jonathan Harshman Winters was born on Nov. 11, 1925, in Dayton, Ohio, where his alcoholic father (“a hip Willy Loman,” according to Mr. Winters) worked as an investment broker and his grandfather, a frustrated comedian, owned the Winters National Bank.

“Mother and dad didn’t understand me; I didn’t understand them,” he told Jim Lehrer on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” in 1999. “So consequently it was a strange kind of arrangement.” Alone in his room, he would create characters and interview himself.

The family’s fortunes collapsed with the Depression. The Winters National Bank failed, and Jonathan’s parents divorced. His mother took him to Springfield, where she did factory work but eventually became the host of a women’s program on a local radio station. Her son continued talking to himself and developed a repertory of strange sound effects. He often entertained his high school friends by imitating a race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

A poor student, Mr. Winters enlisted in the Marines before finishing high school and during World War II served as a gunner on the aircraft carrier Bon Homme Richard in the Pacific.

After the war he completed high school and, hoping to become a political cartoonist, studied art at Kenyon College and the Dayton Art Institute. In 1948 he married Eileen Schauder, a Dayton native who was studying art at Ohio State. She died in 2009. Mr. Winters’s survivors include two children, Jonathan Winters IV, known as Jay, of Camarillo, Calif., and Lucinda, of Santa Barbara, Calif., and five grandchildren.

At the urging of his wife, Mr. Winters, whose art career seemed to be going nowhere, entered a talent contest in Dayton with his eye on the grand prize, a wristwatch, which he needed. He won, and he was hired as a morning disc jockey at WING, where he made up for his inability to attract guests by inventing them. “I’d make up people like Dr. Hardbody of the Atomic Energy Commission, or an Englishman whose blimp had crash-landed in Dayton,” he told U.S. News and World Report in 1988.

After two years at a Columbus television station, he left for New York in 1953 to break into network radio. Instead he landed bit parts on television and, with surprising ease, found work as a nightclub comic.
A guest spot on Arthur Godfrey’s “Talent Scouts” led to frequent appearances with Jack Paar and Steve Allen, both of them staunch supporters willing to give Mr. Winters free rein. Alistair Cooke, after seeing Mr. Winters at the New York nightclub Le Ruban Bleu, booked him as the first comedian ever to appear on his arts program “Omnibus.”

In his stand-up act, Mr. Winters initially relied heavily on sound effects — a cracking whip, a creaking door, a hovering U.F.O. — which he used to spice up his re-enactments of horror films, war films and westerns. Gradually he developed a gallery of characters, which expanded when he had his own television shows, beginning with the 15-minute “Jonathan Winters Show,” which ran from 1956 to 1957. He was later seen in a series of specials for NBC in the early 1960s; on an hourlong CBS variety series, “The Jonathan Winters Show,” from 1967 to 1969; and on “The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters,” in syndication, from 1972 to 1974.

Many of Mr. Winters’s characters — among them B. B. Bindlestiff, a small-town tycoon, and Piggy Bladder, football coach for the State Teachers’ Animal Husbandry Institute for the Blind — were based on people he grew up with. Maude Frickert, for example, whom he played wearing a white wig and a Victorian granny dress, was inspired by an elderly aunt who let him drink wine and taught him to play poker when he was 9 years old.

Other characters, like the couturier Lance Loveguard and Princess Leilani-nani, the world’s oldest hula dancer, sprang from a secret compartment deep within Mr. Winters’s inventive brain.
As channeled by Mr. Winters, Maude Frickert was a wild card. Reminiscing about her late husband, Pop Frickert, she told a stupefied interviewer: “He was a Spanish dancer in a massage parlor. If somebody came in with a crick in their neck he’d do an orthopedic flamenco all over them. He was tall, dark and out of it.”

One of Mr. Winters’s most popular characters, she appeared in a series of commercials for Hefty garbage bags, which also featured Mr. Winters as a garbage man dressed in a spotless white uniform and referring, in an upper-class British accent, to gar-BAZH. Mr. Carson kidnapped Maude Frickert and simply changed the name to Aunt Blabby, one of his stock characters. Mr. Winters said that the blatant theft did not bother him.

Although Mr. Winters often called himself a satirist, the term does not really apply. In “Seriously Funny,” his history of 1950s and 1960s comedians, Gerald Nachman described him, a little floridly, as “part circus clown and part social observer, Red Skelton possessed by the spirit of Daumier.”
He was hard to define. “I don’t do jokes,” he once said. “The characters are my jokes.” At the same time, unlike many comedians reacting to the Eisenhower era, he found his source material in human behavior rather than politics or current events, but in him the spectacle of human folly provoked glee rather than righteous anger.

In 1961 Variety wrote, “His humor is more universally acceptable than any of the current New Comics, with the possible exception of Bob Newhart, because he covers the mass experiences of the U.S. common man — the Army, the gas station, the airport.”

Mr. Winters did much of his best work in nightclubs, but he hated life on the road. In 1959 he suffered a nervous breakdown onstage at the Hungry I in San Francisco and briefly spent time in a mental hospital. Two years later he suffered another collapse, and soon after that he quit nightclubs for good. Between 1960 and 1964 he recorded his most-requested monologues for Verve on a series of albums, notably

“The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters,” “Here’s Jonathan” and “Jonathan Winters: Down to Earth.”
The conventional television variety show did not suit Mr. Winters, but film did not seem the right medium for him either. Scripts stifled him. “Jonny works best out of instant panic,” one of his television writers in the 1960s said. He thrived when he could ad-lib, fielding unexpected questions or pursuing spontaneous flights of fancy. In other words, he made a brilliant guest, firing comedy in short bursts, but a problematic host or actor.

In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Mr. Winters was a frequent guest on “The Andy Williams Show,” “The Tonight Show” and “Hollywood Squares.” He played Robin Williams’s extraterrestrial baby son, Mearth, on the final season of “Mork & Mindy,” and he kept busy with voice-over work in animated television series and films. He also published a book of his cartoons, “Mouse Breath, Conformity, and Other Social Ills,” and a collection of whimsical stories, “Winters’ Tales.”

More influential than successful, Mr. Winters circled the comic heavens tracing his own strange orbit, an object of wonder and admiration to his peers. “Jonathan taught me,” Mr. Williams told the correspondent Ed Bradley on “60 Minutes,” “that the world is open for play, that everything and everybody is mockable, in a wonderful way.”

In Loving Memory of My Friend: Marilu Flores Gruben



The great Marilu Flores Gruben.


Marilu Flores Gruben, noted artist and former Dallas art teacher, dies at 68

Joe Simnacher The Dallas Morning News Staff Writer

Marilu Flores Gruben drew, painted and taught with her perspective of “all the different ways to see.”

Her art has been exhibited in galleries, museums and universities across the state, nation and world from Dallas to Buenos Aires and Los Angeles.

She also taught art for more than 30 years in Dallas, first at the arts magnet and later at the Greenhill School.

Flores Gruben, 68, died March 12 of cancer in Houston.

A Mass was celebrated for her March 16 in Laredo, where she had lived for about the past six years. She was buried in Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Laredo.

Flores Gruben stayed so busy as a mother, teacher and artist that not even her family knew the full extent of her success, said her daughter Adrienne Gruben of Los Angeles.

“She was raising us, working full time — part of the time she was getting her master’s — and then she was painting,” Gruben said. “She would get dinner on the table, talk to us — ‘go do your homework’ — and keep painting.”

Flores Gruben’s drive added to her own modesty.

“There was modesty, but there was also just this ‘we are driven forward,’” her daughter said. “There was always this productivity and output in that household.”

Flores Gruben was born in Laredo, where her father, Porfirio Flores, was Webb County sheriff for 25 years.

She graduated from Martin High School in Laredo and earned twin baccalaureate degrees in studio art and English from Incarnate Word College in San Antonio, now the University of the Incarnate Word.

She continued her education at the University of Texas at Austin, where she met William Charles Gruben, who became her husband.

In 1975, the couple moved to Dallas, where she completed her master’s degree at Southern Methodist University.

Flores Gruben was a founding faculty member of what is now the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where she taught drawing and painting.

“She was in a founding group, along with Paul Baker and a few others, that really got it off the ground,” Gruben said.

In 1987, she joined the Greenhill School, where she taught until 2007.

Her theme of “all the different ways to see” is evident in many letters Flores Gruben wrote throughout her career, her daughter said.

“When her students wrote me letters — she has some famous students — they all kind of referred back to that same theme,” Gruben said.

Flores Gruben moved back to Laredo when her husband left the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas to teach at Texas A&M International University, where he is now a professor and director of the doctoral program.

The return to the Rio Grande inspired her art.

“She found she was most productive … because of the conflict on the border and the inspiration of the Rio Grande,” her daughter said.

In addition to her husband and daughter, Flores Gruben is survived by another daughter, Anna Gruben of Los Angeles; and three sisters, Rosario Garcia, Gloria Dickinson and Silvia Jones, all of Laredo.

Nursing, 2006
Screen Print
Edition of 50

Like many artists that grew up in the Mexico-Texas border, inspiration often manifests itself in the form of vibrant appreciation for two countries. Marilu Flores Gruben is no exception. Born in Laredo, Texas, Gruben received her BA from Incarnate Word College at San Antonio in 1966 and followed up with her master’s degree in 1981 from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Though her formal art education has supplied her with an impressive resume, Gruben’s solo and group exhibitions provide her domestic and international experience throughout Texas and in California, Mexico, and Argentina.

Much of Gruben’s work is a reflection of mystic and religious artifacts that she often finds in Mexican homes. On several occasions, Gruben crossed the Rio Grande River to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and literally painted within homes to capture the raw essence of life across the river-a river that Gruben says does not separate, but rather, brings people together.

An advocate of using various materials in her work, Gruben has most recently found fabrics to be her preferred medium. Gruben enjoys making installations mostly because of the varying ways viewers can perceive Gruben’s preferred subjects-women.

By anticipating light that will fall on her pieces, Gruben believes a part of everyone can be glimpsed, but not quite revealed: “I wrap and cut gauze over chiffon to make collages. They are always sheer and translucent, but just how depends on the angle at which you see them, or the light. A color that screams at you from one angle hides itself at another. Women like to conceal things, but depending on the other party involved, not always the same thing. We all have our secrets.”

Doug Sahm and The Sir Douglas Quintet, Live from Austin Texas 1975 - "Nuevo Laredo"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb0yHJOOU-U

Robert Hughes (1938-2012), Art Critic

 

Robert Hughes in 1999. The New York Times once proclaimed him the world's most famous art critic. / DAVID HANCOCK/AFP/Getty Images

By Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times

 

Robert Hughes -- a sometimes lacerating reviewer who may have commanded a larger audience than any other art critic in history, reaching the masses through Time magazine and documentaries for the BBC and PBS -- has died. He was 74.

Hughes, who also authored "The Fatal Shore," an acclaimed history of his native Australia's founding as a British penal colony, died Monday at Calvary Hospital in New York City after a long, unspecified illness, according to a statement issued by his wife, painter Doris Downes Hughes.

The critic rose to star status by introducing TV audiences to the development of 20th-Century modernism in "The Shock of the New: A Personal View," an eight-hour series that ran in Britain in 1980 and the U.S. in 1981.

Hughes became known for blasting new art-world luminaries such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel and Jeff Koons.

"What we are seeing, in the last years of the 20th Century, is a kind of environmental breakdown in the art world," Hughes wrote in "Nothing If Not Critical," a 1990 collection of his essays for Time, the New Republic and the New York Review of Books.

Hughes had fervent adherents. In 1987, when he lectured at Royce Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles, 1,400 listeners greeted his broadsides against the commodification of art "with hoots and hollers and stompings of the feet, all of which grew in fervor and intensity as the preachment pressed on," according to a 1990 account in the Los Angeles Times.

Robert Studley Forrest Hughes was born in Sydney, Australia, on July 28, 1938, the grandson of a former mayor of the city, and the youngest of four children of a lawyer who, he later wrote, was a "righteous and inflexible man ... a war hero who shot down 11 German planes in the First World War, a fiercely orthodox Catholic, and an intense patriot."

Although his father died when he was 12, Hughes saw his adult life as a form of rebellion: "I became an expatriate, a political skeptic, an atheist, a liberal, a voluptuary, and, in most ways, a disappointment to the ethos he lived by."

After studying architecture and dabbling as a painter, Hughes began covering the Australian art scene in the late 1950s. He left his homeland in 1964 at the urging of a mentor. Time magazine hired him in 1970.

Despite some traumatic times, Hughes remained productive in his last years.
In 1999, while filming "Beyond the Fatal Shore," a multipart TV documentary about contemporary Australia, Hughes was almost killed in a head-on auto collision in which three people in the other vehicle were less seriously hurt. He was tried and acquitted of reckless driving.

In 2001, the second of his three marriages ended in divorce, and his only child, Danton, a son from his first marriage, committed suicide at age 33.

Hughes credited his third wife, whom he married in 2001, with getting him through those crises.

Hughes told Britain's Daily Telegraph in 2002: "Looking at pictures is one of the ways in which you increase the pleasure ... of living in a visual world. ... It's not a narcotizing pleasure. It's the pleasure of having more sense made of our experience of the world."

John Severin (1921-2012): 80 Years of Excellence

By Don Mangus, Heritage Auctions Comic Art Specialist, HA.com newletter 2012

John Severin was not only one of comicdom's top talents, he also was one of its most prodigious.

Years ago, comics historian Robin Snyder captured my full comics-obsessed attention when he posed this riveting question in his indispensable newsletter, The Comics, "Who has written the most scripts in the history of the comics?" Robin took up a monumental task, and didn't just guess or speculate, but actually counted the stories, and narrowed the champion to a handful of candidates: Paul S. Newman, Robert Kanigher, Carl Wessler, Otto Binder, and a few others. Eventually, Newman took the lead, but many years later, Robin is still counting "hanging chads." Inspired by his outrageous feat, I wondered, "Who drew the most comic pages?" Fan-favorite Jack "King" Kirby set a blistering pace. Devoted indexers meticulously compiled his stats. Kirby's career total was 20,318 pages of art, including 1,158 pages in 1962 alone. (The complete statistics can be found in The Art of Jack Kirby by Ray Wyman Jr., Blue Rose Press, 1994). The King logged a hefty career span of 58 glorious years.

Several cartoonists have since had the benefit of a few extra decades of work to catch or pass the King. Challengers to the throne include Dick Ayers, Steve Ditko, Tom Gill, Sam Glanzman, Russ Heath, Gil Kane, Warren Kremer, Joe Kubert, George Tuska, and my personal favorite, John Severin. "Big John" matches, or perhaps even tops, the unbelievably early start of comics prodigy Kubert. Tyro John Severin saw print in The Hobo News at the age of 10. Severin continued working until his passing, for a near-inconceivable career span of 80 years. In order to get solid Robin Snyder-like stats for John Severin, someone is first going to have to index nearly 45 years of Cracked magazine. Good luck. Since Severin typically did two features, as well as most of the covers, his page tally from Cracked alone is sure to be staggering.

John Severin's output is remarkable not just for its amazing quantity, but also its high quality and consistency. A childhood friend of Harvey Kurtzman, Severin sent the future MAD creator and others a steady stream of brilliantly illustrated letters that were inspired by the example of Western artist Charles M. Russell. When Severin's comics work debuted in the late forties, it appeared in full flower, and never really changed all that much — there was just no need.

In his early comic book career, Severin teamed with fellow High School of Music & Art alum Will Elder, with Severin penciling and Elder inking. It was a crackerjack team, and the two soon teamed with Kurtzman who had landed at EC. Unfortunately, after working on nine issues of MAD and many war, adventure, and Western yarns for EC, creative tensions erupted between Severin and the editorially autocratic Kurtzman. They tore a painful rift in the friendship, and Severin opted out of the collaboration for more creative freedom elsewhere.

In the many years since his legendary EC term, Severin worked steadily at Timely/Atlas/Marvel, DC, Charlton, Gilberton, Warren Publishing, Atlas/Seaboard, and Cracked magazine, as well as many other publishers. At Atlas, Severin was counted as one of "the Big Three," along with Bill Everett and Joe Maneely, and in friendly competition with Russ Heath, the four men turned out show-stopping war, Western, and horror work, always trying to top each other.

At MAD and later, Cracked, Severin showcased his endlessly entertaining talent for caricature and humor. His work stands alongside the best the field has to offer. Like all true masters of the art of cartooning, Severin was able to adjust his basic cartooning approach ever so slightly for the demands of the humor genre, while the style still remained uniquely his own.

John Severin received late notoriety in the twilight of his career when he illustrated 2003's controversial limited series, The Rawhide Kid. As quoted on wikipedia, Severin wryly quipped, "The Rawhide Kid is rather effeminate in this story. It may be quite a blow to some of the old fans of Rawhide Kid, but it's a lot of fun, and he's still a tough hombre."

Mr. Severin is survived by his loving family — sister Marie, his wife of 60 years, Michelina, six children, thirteen grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and a step-great-granddaughter. Our warmest sentiments go out to his family and friends.

In the final analysis, despite the obsession I have displayed in obtaining a page count tally, there is really only one bottom line that counts — that John Severin's many fans will continue to enjoy his brilliant legacy, preserved in the many pages of the comics we love so much.

Some Favorites:

Comics:

Blazing Combat: #1-4

Cracked: A vast body of regular issue and special issues from a 45-year run

Creepy: #7, 10, 11, 14, 17, 62, 68, 73, 75-77. 78 (inks Wally Wood), 79, 81, 83, 84 and 86 (inks Carmine Infantino), 87, 89, 91(reprints 78), 92, 93 (inks Infantino), 100, 105, and 112

Eerie: #2, 6, and 8

Frontline Combat: # 1 (Kurtzman inks); 2-6, 8-11 (Elder inks); 7, 12, and 15 (solo)

Incredible Hulk: #109, 110, 131, 132, and 141-155 (mostly inking Herb Trimpe)

Kull the Conqueror: #2-9 (inking his talented sister, Marie Severin)

Mad: #1-7, 9, and 10

Our Fighting Forces: # 131 (inks Ross Andru); 132-150 (The Losers stories with writer Robert Kanigher)

Sgt. Fury: #44-46; 50-79 (inking himself, Dick Ayers, and others)

Strange Tales: #136-138 (Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L. D., over Jack Kirby breakdowns)

Two-Fisted Tales: #19-27, 29, 31, 36 (with Elder), 28, 33, 36-41 (co-edits with Kurtzman #36-41)

Unknown Soldier: #251-253; and 260-261 (Enemy Ace stories with writer Robert Kanigher)

Fanzines:

Graphic Story Magazine #13 (Spring, 1971): Interview

Comics Journal #215 and 216 (August and October 1999): Interview

Squa Tront #11 (Spring 2005): Special John Severin Issue

Jack Adler (1918-2011): Father of the Grey Tone Cover

  

by Don Mangus, Heritage Auctions, HA.com newletter, 2011

After a lengthy illness, DC production legend Jack Adler has passed away.

Adler began his outstanding career working on the color separations for the Prince Valiant feature as well as other syndicated Sunday comic strips. In 1947 he took on production and coloring assignments exclusively for the National/DC line.

In the Fifties, Adler became the "father" of the celebrated greytone cover process for DC. The process was called "washtone" by Adler, who created a separate wash on three or more overlays for each color to be printed over the "base" grey tone art. When the comics were printed with the four-color presses, Adler's washes were thus printed over the artist's base painting or drawing, giving the covers their distinct three-dimensional quality, different from, say a Gold Key or Dell painted cover.

Adler also invented a special photographic process for removing the printed color benday dots of a printed comic book story, leaving only the black line art for clean reprints. Unfortunately, the process was deemed too expensive by DC's publishers.

Adler's career was outlined in the Amazing World of DC Comics #10, and he was interviewed by Jim Amash in Alter Ego #56. After some industry controversy, Jack Adler retired from DC in 1981. Our best wishes go out to his family, friends, and fans. Meanwhile his legacy is on view, in the pages of the comics.

Jeffrey Jones (1944-2011): Fantasy Master

  

by Don Mangus, Heritage Auctions, HA.com newsletter, 2011

With the passing of Jeffrey Jones, fantasy art has lost one of its stellar talents. On at least one occasion the great Frank Frazetta himself was said to have proclaimed Jones "the greatest living painter." As IDW Publishing, producers of the lavish monograph, Jeffrey Jones: A Life in Art, put it, "Over the past 40 years, there have been few artists who have received as much acclaim and garnered as much attention as Jeffrey Jones."

Like so many young fantasy artists, Jones began his career as an enthusiastic fanzine contributor. In the late sixties and early seventies, he sporadically appeared in mainstream comics, along the way creating an early yarn that debuted in Charlton's Flash Gordon #13, a handful of moody Gothic romance covers for DC, a brood of blood-chilling horror blockbusters for Warren, Skywald, and Major Magazines, and a delightful smattering of Underground and Ground-level comix.

By the mid-sixties, Jones had established himself as a prolific, much-in-demand paperback cover artist, and he often painted in a bravura style that was inspired by such giants of "the Golden Age of Illustration" as Howard Pyle, Harvey Dunn, Dean Cornwell, J. C. Leyendecker, and N. C. Wyeth.

Among Jones' regular comic features was the whimsical and poetic "Idyl" for National Lampoon and "I'm Age" for Heavy Metal.

From 1975-79 Jones shared a work space in Manhattan's Chelsea district with fellow artists Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Michael W. Kaluta. The group was collectively dubbed "The Studio" by fandom, and in 1979, Dragon's Dream produced a celebrated volume of their work by that name.

Underwood Books, publishers of the splendid, in-depth 2002 monograph, The Art of Jeffrey Jones, aptly noted, "Comfortable as both a book cover illustrator and as a comic artist, Jeffrey Jones gained a large and loyal following that resulted in the artist being honored with a World Fantasy Award for Best Artist. Though he left the commercial field in the late eighties to devote full attention to fine art, Jones continued to explore the worlds of science fiction and fantasy — sometimes heroic, sometimes erotic, occasionally hilarious, and always breathtakingly beautiful."

Jeffrey Jones' glorious legacy of fine artworks assures that this artist will long be remembered as one of the greatest talents of our generation. We offer our heartfelt condolences and best wishes to the family, friends, and fans of this unique, evocative, and ethereal artist.

Taps for Jerry Grandenetti (1927-2010): Greytone Cover Innovator

  

By Don Mangus, HA.com comicsnewsletter, 2010

Farewell to Jerry Grandenetti, one of the finest of the "Big 5" DC war comic cover artists. For the record, he was my personal favorite.

Grandenetti studied art at the School of Visual Art and Pratt Institute and his main field of study was architectural drawing. Upon making the rounds of the comic houses in 1946, "Busy" Arnold at Quality Comics steered him to Will Eisner's studio where he assisted on the Spirit. At first Eisner would rough in the composition and Grandenetti would create the environment and backgrounds, but eventually he did more of the drawing. While in the Eisner shop he drew The Secret Files of Dr. Drew in a dead-on Eisner-based style for Ranger Comics. In the 1950s, he drew "Crimebuster" for Lev Gleason's Boy Comics and war and western stories for National/DC.

Before the arrival of Joe Kubert, Grandenetti could be said to have been the main war artist for editor Robert Kanigher. This period of Grandenetti's produced some of my favorite art. He excelled at creating dramatic scenes from unusual angles and skewed perspectives while still maintaining a realistic style. While working at National/DC he also pioneered the legendary greytone covers.

Perhaps my favorite of these greytone covers was Our Fighting Forces # 71, spotlighting Gunner, Sarge, and Pooch hidden in the jungle, in a tense close up, complete with sweat rolling down their faces.

Probably the first DC greytone cover was Grandenetti's All American Men of War # 35 (7/56). The art was executed as an ink wash drawing and then in the production process, a halftoned photostat of the art was made , the logo added, and finally, the color was laid in over this statted wash drawing during the four-color printing process. Thus the resulting effect has almost a three-dimensional quality.

In the Amazing World of DC Comics #10 (1/76), Jack Adler, DC's ace production man, confirmed, "It was suggested that we start doing washes for covers, and we were talking about doing it for so damned long, but nobody attempted it. I think Grandenetti did the first one, an army cover with someone floating in the water. I think that was the first wash cover that was done. That one ended up looking like a full color painting."

In the October 1995 issue of Robin Snyder's The Comics, DC war comic editor/writer Robert Kanigher wrote, "... and it was in this atmosphere that I created the rugged Tank Killer, illustrated by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, and the change-of- pace Gunner and Sarge which they also drew. I chose Jerry Grandenetti to follow them. He managed to get the grime and the humor of the two Marines (and, eventually their wonderful Pooch) fighting in the jungle as no one else could. Jerry liked to experiment and I had to sit on him to get him to stop it. Especially in his covers, which were outstanding, when I forced him to draw as realistically as possible."

In the sixties Grandenetti's art did get a little "looser" and less realistic, some might even say surreal, perhaps due to fatigue from the continuing grind on Gunner and Sarge. When he began working for Warren Publishing, Grandenetti's interest seemed to be rekindled and his work returned to a much more expressionistic and experimental phase, building on what he had begun at Eisner's studio, or perhaps it was due to the freedom from Kanigher's realism edict. Maybe it was the subject matter or the fluid nature of the wash medium, but whatever the case, he produced brilliant work at Warren in the late 1960s and early1970s.

For Warren, Grandenetti produced, among others, these memorable stories, all in dark wash tones: "In Close Pursuit" (with sound effects and a mood very reminiscent of Eisner), "The Art of Horror", the Washington Irving adaptation "The Adventure of The German Student," "Type Cast," "House of Fiends," the Poe adaptation "Bernice," "The Carrier of the Serpent," and "On the Wings of a Bird." Grandenettti was profiled in Creepy # 42 and rendered a self portrait for Vampirella # 16.

Jerry Grandenetti ultimately phased out of comics and made his living in advertising art at the agency of Young and Rubicam, but by then he had established himself as a major comic art innovator and a master at the use of wash tones. He was especially suited for stories in the war, mystery, and horror genres.

Jerry Grandenetti leaves a legacy of brilliant, innovative work, and "Big 5" and greytone cover fans everywhere salute him and mourn his passing.

-Don Mangus

Jerry Grandenetti Greytone Cover Checklist:

All American Men of War #35 (7/56)

G. I. Combat #44 (1/57)

G. I. Combat #51 (8/57)

G. I. Combat #69 (2/59)

G. I. Combat #75 (8/59)

G. I. Combat #76 (9/59)

G. I. Combat #77 (10/59)

G. I. Combat #79 (12/59)

G. I. Combat #81 (4/60)

G. I. Combat #82 (6/60)

G. I. Combat #83 (8/60)

G. I. Combat #89 (8/61)

G. I. Combat #90 (11/61)

G. I. Combat #92 (2 /62)

G. I. Combat #100 (6/63)

G. I. Combat #101 (8/63)

G. I. Combat #102 (10/63)

Our Army at War #57 (4/57)

Our Army at War #60 (6/57)

Our Fighting Forces #20 (4/57)

Our Fighting Forces #71 (10/62)

Showcase #3 ("The Frogmen) (8/56)

Star Spangled War Stories #45 (5/56)

Four Star Battle Tales #4 (9-10/73, reprint of OAAW # 57)

Frank Frazetta (1928-2010): "Worldbeater."

Originally written by Don Mangus for the HA.com blog
May 11, 2010

(It is both a pleasure and a sad duty today to give the reins of the blog to Don Mangus, one of our comics and illustration art experts, and a fine gentleman who has graced these digital pages before. A pleasure because, well, Don is that good a writer, and a sad duty because of the task he has been asked to undertake: Eulogizing Frank Frazetta, who passed away yesterday at the age of 82. He was indeed the greatest living sci-fi and fantasy artist and one of the world's great talents, period. The forces of good are mourning the passing of a great talent. He is pictured there, to the right, scarce three weeks ago, holding The Frank Collection Catalog, of which his Warrior With Ball And Chain was the centerpiece. Surely we will never look on his like again. - Noah Fleisher)

Sadly, the passing of Frank Frazetta marks the end of a modern fantasy era.

Frazetta's iconic cover images for Lancer's paperback reissues of Robert E. Howard's immortal Conan series marked a sea-change for fantasy art. The athletic and movie-idol-handsome artist's work has inspired and influenced every fantasy artist since the 1960s, and spawned scores of bald-faced "art pirates," often dubbed "Faux-zettas" by fandom's sardonic wits.

Without doubt, Frazetta was a one-of-a-kind artistic prodigy. Though justly celebrated for his barbaric fantasy paintings, he was a master of every cartoon and illustration genre -- action-adventure, caricature, costumed hero, crime, funny animal, jungle, romance, horror, humor, satire, science fiction, Western, and everything in between.

To measure the scope of Frazetta's legacy, it's worth taking note of both the fickle nature and short memories of the publishing industry and the reading public. All too often "today's super-star" becomes tomorrow's forgotten creator. For most, "Glory days – well, they'll pass you by..."It's sobering to ponder how close to this fate even the supremely talented Frazetta came.

In 1954, after creating a superb (and highly collectible) body of early comic book work for Standard, Eastern Color, DC, ME, Toby, ACG, and EC, Frazetta found himself in need of a steady paycheck, and began anonymously assisting Al Capp on the syndicated Li'l Abner comic strip. In 1961, after being refused a raise, Frazetta quit the Abner job, put together his latest and greatest portfolio, and hit the streets looking high and low for work from the few comic book companies that had survived the huge implosion following the industry-stifling 1954 U. S. Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency.
Despite a no-doubt superlative portfolio, the now-forgotten Frazetta came away with only a few comic book jobs, thanks almost entirely to the good graces of his old EC stable mate and friend, George Evans.

To the discerning eye, the Frazetta touch can be found submerged in the panels of Dell Comics' The Frogmen #1-3 (1962). These last-gasp comic book jobs helped keep Frazetta going during a turbulent transitional period.

The breakthrough in Frazetta's fortunes came thanks to another caring friend, fantasy legend Roy G. Krenkel, who had scored a series of Edgar Rice Burroughs illustration assignments from Ace Books, and was largely carrying on a tradition pioneered by J. Allen St. John.

At first, Frazetta helped the perpetually procrastinating Krenkel fulfill a few of these assignments. Then because of the wildly enthusiastic Krenkel's urging, he struck out on his own. Not content to merely knock at the door of opportunity, Frazetta savagely kicked it off its hinges with his visceral Conan covers. A bunch of enchanting fantasy paperback cover assignments followed, as well as spine-tingling horror magazine covers for Warren Publishing, and other strikingly successful commercial art assignments -- all of which ended up crowning Frazetta the "king of living fantasy artists."

Always mindful of getting his originals back from the publishers, Frank and his wife Ellie purposefully built the Frazetta legacy. Starting in the mid-60s, the Frazetta legend grew and grew among creative art directors, fans, and collectors alike, thanks to a wealth of posters, fanzines, portfolios, calendars, record album covers and books.

Among the important career milestones were a series of five Frank Frazetta books from Bantam Books, the triumphant appearance of the Death Dealer on the cover of the May 1976 issue of American Artist, Ralph Bakshi's 1983 animated Fire and Ice movie, based on Frazetta's paintings and co-directed by Frazetta himself, the 2003 feature documentary Frank Frazetta: Painting with Fire, and perhaps most importantly – the opening of the Frank Frazetta Museum in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania in 2001.

As Jim Halperin, Co-Chairman of Heritage Auction Galleries, aptly notes, "Frazetta was, quite simply, the greatest comic book artist of the 20th Century. Amazingly, he was also a modest soul, and a true gentleman in every way. He will be missed, but never forgotten."

Gene Colan (1926-2011)

 

by Don Mangus, Heritage Auctions

With his recent passing, comics legend Gene Colan has left a sterling career highlighted by his superb comic art. During his 60+ year run he worked for Fiction House, Timely/Atlas, EC, DC, Marvel, Warren, Archie, and many other publishers.

Colan had a robust illustrational style, but he wasn't bound by it; he was able to adapt to every comic book genre -- war, Western, superhero, action-adventure, crime, humor, horror, or whatever else was needed. He had a rich pencil line that was nuanced and evocative, and often used subtle modulations of intermediate grey tones that posed a challenge for inkers to interpret. For some, Colan was his own best inker and although he seldom inked his own work, top-notch examples can be found among his early war stories for Atlas, and his later wash tone horror and war tales for Warren Publishing. On several occasions, comics were produced directly from his pure, unadorned pencils.

In the mid-sixties, following John Romita's lead, Gene Colan left the romance comics of DC for the super-heroics of Marvel, where as "Gene the Dean" Colan or "Genial" Gene Colan he built a loyal following. After making a splash on the Sub-Mariner feature at the House of Ideas, he soon established himself as a key creator on the Iron Man and Daredevil franchises. He also enjoyed celebrated stints on Doctor Strange and Captain America.

Colan drew all 70 issues of Tomb of Dracula.

A natural visual storyteller, Colan thrived using Stan Lee's "Marvel method," with its bare-bones art direction and scripting. He plotted and laid out his stories freely in a fast-moving "cinematic" manner with varied panel shapes and points-of-view. In contrast to so many illustrational cartoonists of his era, Colan had managed to learn from the Noel Sickles/Milton Caniff school of storytelling without actually appropriating their art styles.

In the seventies Colan chalked up long, fan-favorite runs on the startlingly offbeat Marvel series, Tomb of Dracula and Howard the Duck.

In the eighties, after an unhappy dispute over changing editorial dictates, Colan left the "Batty Marvel Bullpen" to return to DC, lending his distinctive touch to such icons as Batman and Wonder Woman, as well as on the new series Night Force and Jemm, Son of Saturn.

Like so many comic artists of his generation, Colan was extremely talented, hard working, and dependable. As a reader, it was a luxury to be able to count on his fine work with its consistent drama and verve, month-after-month, like clockwork. We mourn the loss of this towering talent, and offer Gene Colan's family and friends our best wishes; meanwhile, his many fans will continue to enjoy his legacy in the pages of the comics.

A Tribute to Ernie Schroeder

by Don Mangus

Heritage Auctions Comic Art and Illustration Specialist

A sterling talent has passed on - sadly, another link to the Golden Age has slipped away.

Ernest "Ernie" Schroeder received his early art instruction at the Art Students League, studying under noted art-world figures George Bridgman and George Grosz.

In the mid-forties, Mr. Schroeder began his comics career working for another Golden Age great, Bob Powell. Mr. Schroeder turned out exhilarating tales for such Harvey Comics super-folk as Captain Freedom and the Spirit of '76. Revisit any of the Ernie Schroeder originals found in the Heritage Auction Archives and you are sure to be swept away by the free-wheeling spirit and high-energy action that infused his storytelling.

During his World War II military service, Mr. Schroeder continued cartooning and drew gag cartoons for his Fort Blanding, Florida camp newspaper, The Bayonet.

Perhaps Mr. Schroeder's most fondly remembered comics work was done in collaboration with Ed Cronin on the Airboy and The Heap features for Hillman Periodicals. These yarns were unsigned and years after their publication, indefatigable comic-art sleuth Hames Ware was able to identify Mr. Schroeder's hitherto anonymous art using a few scant clues garnered from credited pulp magazine illustrations. At last, the long sought-after identity of the anonymous "good artist" on The Heap became known to fandom at large - Ernie Schroeder.

Meanwhile, Mr. Schroeder had retired from comics. In the late fifties he operated his own marina. In the sixties, Mr. Schroeder produced commercial art for Boeing. In the seventies, he was active in creating specialized designs for the Franklin Mint. A skilled artist and hard-working craftsman, Mr. Schroeder was accomplished in sundry art-related fields. He personally built forty boats, a public fountain, and even a full-sized saber-toothed tiger display for a natural history museum.

For those who wish to read much more about this modest man with a most remarkable talent, comics historian Jim Amash published a heart-warming interview with Mr. Schroeder in Roy Thomas' Alter Ego #42 (November, 2004). It's a rewarding read.

We extend our sincere best wishes to Mr. Schroeder's family and friends. We comic book fans will long treasure the joyous legacy of excellence he left us.

Hardin "Jack" Burnley (1911-2006)

By Don Mangus

Starman artist Jack Burnley has passed away at age 95.

After establishing his artistic credentials during a ten-year stint as a top-notch sports cartoonist at King Features, Jack Burnley was hired by DC editor Whitney Ellsworth in late 1939. Burnley drew many memorable covers for DC's Golden Age titles. Among the first and most notable was for New York World's Fair Comics 1940, with Superman, Batman, and Robin sharing a cover for the very first time.

Burnley brought a sleek, dynamic, and polished look to his earliest assignments as a "ghost" on the Superman and Batman characters in both the comic books and the newspaper strips. Burnley's figure draftsmanship ranks among the very best in the field. He brought a clean-cut, energetic, and fun-loving flair to his superheroic work that is irresistible.

In 1941, Jack Burnley designed the scintillating superhero, Starman, for Adventure Comics #61. For a detailed, first-hand account of the Astral Avenger's origin, read Burnley's foreword for The Golden Age Starman Archives, Volume 1.

It's worth mentioning that Jack Burnley was not the only artist in his family to work in the comic book field. His brother Ray was a noted inker and his sister, Betty Bentley, lettered many of Jack's features.

Burnley led an extraordinary life outside of his accomplishments at the drawing board. He cavorted with a colorful newspaper crowd during a Damon Runyonesque era in New York City and married Dolores Ferris, a celebrated cabaret dancer. Burnley published an entertaining excerpt from his biography of Dolores in Alter Ego #27 (August, 2003).

In 1947 Burnley left the comic book field to return to sports cartooning for the newspapers. His work appeared in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph and the San Francisco Examiner. He was a boxing aficionado and illustrated a terrific paperback on the subject.

Burnley remained active in the field of comic books through fanzines and contributed drawings, letters, and articles to such publications as Robin Snyder's The Comics, Alter Ego, and others.

Jack Burnley leaves comic book fans a shining legacy of brilliant art. Truly, he was one of the top rank of artists who made the Golden Age golden.

We Will Not Forget... A Tribute to Alex Toth (1928-2006)

by Don Mangus, Comic and Illustration Art Specialist

The comic book and animation industries lost one of their brightest talents Saturday, May 27, when Alex Toth passed away. Mr. Toth leaves behind a stellar legacy that will continue to entertain readers and viewers, and inspire and inform generations of comic book artists, animators, designers, illustrators, and writers.

Alex Toth launched his comic book career in 1943 while still attending Manhattan's High School of Industrial Arts. The ambitious high school student was soon tutored on the job by another brilliant comic book cartoonist, Sheldon Mayer. Mr. Toth found early direction and inspiration from the savvy, uncompromising approaches of comic strip artists Noel Sickles, Milton Caniff, and Frank Robbins; comic book artists Jerry Robinson and Mort Meskin; and illustrators Harold Von Schmidt, Albert Dorne, and Robert Fawcett.

Alex Toth once remarked that he approached his pen-and-ink characters as "silent actors and actresses who speak lines, express, emote, feel, react, and give life to dialogue, scenes, and plots." His preternatural drawing ability allowed him to do just that.

By the 1950s, Mr. Toth's elegant design and film-like storytelling had revolutionized and revamped the romance, crime, Western, and mystery comic book genres. His bold art style became the template for the "house style" at Standard Comics.

In the late fifties, Alex Toth traveled west to California and broke into the animation business. His "model sheets" and character designs for Hanna-Barbera Productions set a new standard for animated television action-adventure shows. Among the many fondly remembered programs he contributed to were Jonny Quest, The Fantastic Four, The Herculoids, and Space Ghost.

A tireless innovator and seldom-satisfied perfectionist, Mr. Toth enthusiastically continued to break new ground in storytelling techniques throughout the sixties and seventies with his ever-evolving comic book work for Dell, Warren Publishing, and DC. The eighties found him at the peak of his powers.

By 1983, Mr. Toth's career in comics was winding down. For the most part, he was finished with long continuities. By then, he had started a final, far more personal phase of his career -- that of unparalleled educator, perceptive commentator, and hard-spoken critic of the fields that he loved so dearly. His running correspondences with a host of fans and his articles for such pro-zines as Robin Snyder's The Comics and Roy Thomas' Alter Ego, titled Before I Forget... will be studied and re-read for years to come. Also not to be missed are the three fine career retrospectives published by Mr. Manuel Auad. Mr. Toth was elected to the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1990 and to the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 1991.

I started a correspondence with Mr. Toth in the seventies, and count some of his other devoted fans as my closest friends. Like them, I mourn this loss, and will not soon forget Mr. Alex Toth or his wonderful works. Godspeed Alex.

In Memoriam: Don Ivan Punchatz

 
By Don Mangus, Heritage Auctions

The passing of Don Ivan Punchatz (1936-2009) is a hard blow, the loss of a fine friend. Beyond his unparalleled talent for science fiction and surreal fantasy illustration, Don will be lovingly remembered as an insightful, enlightened, and compassionate creative talent who mentored and inspired generations of younger artists. Don Punchatz absolutely obliterated the sardonic wise-crack of "Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach."

Don grew up in Hillside, New Jersey, and after he graduated from high school he won a scholarship to the famous Cartoonists and Illustrators School in NYC. There, comic strip legend Burne Hogarth took the youthful artist under his wing. When I last saw Don, he reminisced over lunch how much Hogarth's staunch support and enthusiasm had meant to him. Such warm sentiments, still felt fifty-plus years later, must have shaped Don's own nurturing attitude towards his many students and assistants.

Check the world-wide web or any first-rate reference book on science fiction illustration, and you will quickly recognize the hyper-realistic, magical pieces that Don created. You might even experience a "eureka moment" as you recall the impact they've made in popular culture. In his autobiography on askart.com, Don modestly summarized his career, "At first, Punchatz was known primarily as a paperback artist, producing science fiction, fantasy, and horror covers for Ace, Berkley, Dell, Avon, Macmillan, New American Library, and Warner Books among others. However, as his work became better known, he soon began receiving commissions from many national magazines including Playboy, Penthouse, Esquire, National Lampoon, Time, Omni, Rolling Stone, and Boys' Life. Many of these commissions were directly related to science fiction and fantasy subject matter." Among his most celebrated works are his cover paintings for Issac Asimov's famous Foundation trilogy from Avon Books, the cover illustration for Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthology, and the packaging art for the best-selling video game, Doom.

Don's autobiography continued, "In 1970, he founded SketchPad Studio where a number of young illustrators began their careers. Later, many of them went on to establish their own national reputations. It was also in 1970 that Punchatz began teaching illustration at Texas Christian University and continued to do so for 35 years. He was also a guest instructor for Syracuse University's Independent Masters Program since the mid-eighties."

While Don was a frequent guest at our local Dallas comic conventions, I actually met him at the home of comic book artist Pat Boyette in the early nineties. Before he turned to a career in filmmaking and comics, Boyette had been a San Antonio based TV/Radio broadcaster. Always intensely interested in Boyette's variegated careers, I was delighted to learn that when Don had been stationed in San Antonio during an army stint in the late fifties, he had watched Boyette's newscasts and was a fan. Thirty years later, when he was first introduced to Boyette, Don had remembered him from those newscasts. It's a small, wonderful world.

As visual artists, Punchatz and Boyette had an immense mutual respect for each other. To me, these two kindred creative souls were "cut of the same cloth," and it was a pleasure to watch them interact.

During Pat Boyette's slow, sad decline in health, his friends and family were touched by Don Punchatz's bottomless emotional support for our mutual friend. However it wasn't just Boyette who was the beneficiary of such deeply felt compassion. Don felt that way about all of his friends, whether new or old. He was one of the kindest men I've ever met.

After all is said and done, along with his life's work of awe-inspiring artworks, those who were fortunate enough to know him will never forget the unsinkable spirit and remarkable generosity of Don Ivan Punchatz.