I really liked the story as a kid.
However, Jacck Sparling's art is rough sketches, none of it finished art. Probably Dell paid less for art and stories after reducing price from 15¢ to 12¢.
By positronic1
As I study Jack Sparling's artwork more carefully, I find that there's absolutely nothing wrong with it in the pencilling stage. His storytelling, pacing, layout, figure construction and placement, lighting, background and prop design are all perfectly good. If you de-focus your eyes a little, it almost looks like something in the general vicinity of Alex Toth, or Dan Spiegle, Doug Wildey, or even a bit of Lee Elias or a dozen others. It's that obviously rushed inking that ruins all the good work that preceded it. Just that general lack of care that fairly screams "Got to hurry up now and finish this off!"... all inked with what looks like the same pen, except for spotting the major blacks. That hasty going-over of the pencil lines just destroys what could have been a good page by making it all look boring -- nothing stands out distinctly, it just looks blah. I bet a really good exercise for aspiring comics inkers would be to trace some of these pages on a lightbox, and without making any alterations, just try inking everything *carefully*. I would bet the results would be surprising.
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