[profh0011]

After wanting to tackle these for months, I finally did my first Bob Powell "JET" cover restoration, from 1950!

Imagine if this guy had done SOLO art on Marvel's DAREDEVIL...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EhX0xsH1hFo/Tt6nhl3uWxI/AAAAAAAAAZM/SpEJIQPUlZQ/s1600/JET+01_cc_HA_HK.jpg

http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/2011/12/jet.html

Henry

[Drusilla lives!]

Always loved Bob Powell's "Shadow" covers.  Some of them were so very innovative in design that they almost remind me of some of the conceptual leaps that Steranko took a generation later.  

BTW, there's a new book coming out of his 50s horror work edited by Yoe... if you're interested in that type of material.

[profh0011]

I decided to look around to see if there were any issues of JET to read here... and while there aren't, I DID find a site with all 4 issues (and no downloading necessary)!  Check it out...

http://furycomics.com/

A TON of Golden Age Comics online, a nice addition to this site.

[josemas]

I love Powell's art from the 1940s and 50s too.  I think he was generally served badly by the choice of inkers given him in 1960s Marvel titles.   I would have much rather seen him inking himself although I wonder how well he would have fit in with the Marvel style.

BTW Powell did draw the Sub-Mariner- in the 1950s during the characters brief revival under the Atlas banner.  Apparently Bill Everett couldn't keep up with the workload and Powell filled in on a few stories.  They look good (certainly better than his 60s Marvel work, IMHO) but compared to Everett's work (and in my opinion, Everett was at his artistic height in the mid 1950s) while they don't exactly pale they certainly don't jump out at you either.

All of Powell's fifties Subby stories have been reprinted in recent years by Marvel in their Atlas Era Masterworks.

Best

Joe

[JVJ]

If you follow Bob's career, Joe,
you'll discover that he badly needed inkers in the Sixties. His work deteriorated a lot towards the end of the Fifties. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't at ALL like what we were used to seeing - and very much NOT in the style of superheroes or Marvel Comics. I don't think ANY inker could have made his 1960s pencils appear to resemble his 1950s work with which we were all familiar.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[josemas]

JIm,   

What I have seen of Powell's work in the late fifties/early sixties looks often very slap-dash as if he was just quickly turning it out to make a fast buck.   I suspect he was having to deal with reduced page rates like many others at the time and could only make up for it by increasing his volume.  Unfortunately his work suffered accordingly.

A number of the romance stories I've looked at from this period seem as if he was drawing primarily with the brush with probably the barest of pencil layouts and have very little in the way of detail with backgrounds being sparse or non-existent.

Certainly he wasn't the only comic book artist who adopted a more spare style to deal with the lower page rates (Maneely and Williamson are two others that come most readily to mind) but he does seem to be one of those who's work suffered the most.

In the few stories that he did for Marvel in the sixties I can occasionally catch some glimpses of the old Powell, but it is usually obscured by an inking job, which to my eyes, just doesn't suit Powell's style.

Perhaps health problems also played an issue in the deterioration of his later art as I know that he died relatively young in the mid 1960s.

Best

Joe

[JVJ]

I think you're right on all counts, Joe,
the pay goes down, the effort goes down and he was definitely having health problems. By the time he came on board at Marvel, I doubt that he was even ABLE to draw like he'd done a decade before. He used to pencil for an inker and, I think you're right here, too, now he was barely pencilling at all and drawing most of it with a brush. Given that approach, it makes me wonder just what those poor inkers were given to ink.

However, having said that, you have to admire that spare style he was using at late Prize. It had an illustrative "feel" to it that was different than anyone else in comics at the time. It was a bold, slap-dash style that worked, especially in the romance books. 

Actually, I truly love the quick stuff that Williamson (and Torres) and Maneely and Colan and Severin did after the Implosion, especially at Charlton. I find it the pure essence of their talents - distilled down to the brain/hand connection with little thought given to the effort except get it drawn and get on to the next page. To me, it SHINES brightly over almost anything else being done (outside of DC and Dell) in comics. Maneely especially. Some folks find his Charlton work almost unrecognizable. I think it's among his best and can't imagine why anyone wouldn't immediately know it was him.

my 2

[profh0011]

"I love Powell's art from the 1940s and 50s too.  I think he was generally served badly by the choice of inkers given him in 1960s Marvel titles.   I would have much rather seen him inking himself although I wonder how well he would have fit in with the Marvel style."

You gotta remember, the deceptively-named "Marvel Style" which many use to refer to a type of art of storytelling, or the assembly-line "plot-pencils-dialogue" often came down to "plot & art-dialogue", with the dialogue guy supplying NOTHING in the way of plot, unless he was making a point of CONTRADICTING the actual plot devised when the art was created. (Some people can't come up with ideas from nothing, but find it easier to RE-write other people's ideas, ruining them in the process-- this goes on in Hollywood all the time!!)

I've noticed some very talented pencillers who did NOT work with Stan Lee because they didn't plot, or didn't want to plot, yet had no trouble working with Jack Kirby who ALWAYS plotted, or the likes of Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, etc. who were full-time writers. John Romita has said repeatedly he plotted AMAZING SPIDER-MAN from the moment he got on the book, and even plotted a number of issues he did no art for, including those done by John Buscema, Gil Kane, Jim Starlin.

Someone pointed out that several of the last few GIANT-MAN episodes had Jack Kirby plots, which, if true, explains why those were better than those HUMAN TORCH & THING episodes, where the stories were just AWFUL. DAREDEVIL, of course, was all Wally Wood's baby. It's no wonder HE got so offended at not being PAID for work he was doing.

Frankly, my favorite Powell work during that brief Marvel period was DAREDEVIL, where Wood dragged up the quality. Yet I'd rather Wood had worked solo, as it felt to me that Powell was dragging him down at the same time.




"BTW Powell did draw the Sub-Mariner- in the 1950s during the characters brief revival under the Atlas banner.  Apparently Bill Everett couldn't keep up with the workload and Powell filled in on a few stories.  They look good (certainly better than his 60s Marvel work, IMHO) but compared to Everett's work (and in my opinion, Everett was at his artistic height in the mid 1950s) while they don't exactly pale they certainly don't jump out at you either."

I didn't even realize that!  Good call, huh?


"All of Powell's fifties Subby stories have been reprinted in recent years by Marvel in their Atlas Era Masterworks."

It blew my mind last year when I was updating the "Reprints" page in the SUB-MARINER section of the SA Marvel site, to learn they had published AT LEAST 22 different MASTERWORKS books featuring Sub-Mariner reprints!!  That's just crazy!!!  And of course, I can't afford any of them right now. What bugs me, of course, is that most of them are anthologies containing tons of other characters I just couldn't possibly give a rat's A** about.

I still hope someday they'll do a single chronological series of SUB-MARINER reprints in the fashion of DC's WONDER WOMAN ARCHIVES-- all of his appearances in order, from whatever magazine he appeared in.

[profh0011]

JET #2 !

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gidV0TBSolc/Tt_LGvTW29I/AAAAAAAAAZk/hDGPtjgJUQQ/s1600/JET+02_cc_HA_HK.jpg

Time machines, dinosaurs and hot Asian chicks! What's not to like?

[josemas]

It blew my mind last year when I was updating the "Reprints" page in the SUB-MARINER section of the SA Marvel site, to learn they had published AT LEAST 22 different MASTERWORKS books featuring Sub-Mariner reprints!!  That's just crazy!!!  And of course, I can't afford any of them right now. What bugs me, of course, is that most of them are anthologies containing tons of other characters I just couldn't possibly give a rat's A** about.

Henry, you sound like you are as big of a Sub-Mariner fan as my old Kubert School classmate Sid Wright.  For Sid though the Everett look was the only correct way to draw Subby.  I remember looking through some of his old TTA issues and saw that he had "squared off"  all of the Gene Colan drawn Subby heads  (which Colan drew in a more realistic rounded off way) with an ink pen.  Sid did this with all of his comics in which anyone drew Subby with any look that deviated from the Everett look.
Sid was so taken with the Sub-Mariner as a kid that he had his afro cut in a squared off way so he could look more like his comic book idol (albeit a young African-American version).

I still hope someday they'll do a single chronological series of SUB-MARINER reprints in the fashion of DC's WONDER WOMAN ARCHIVES-- all of his appearances in order, from whatever magazine he appeared in.

IIRC, even the Wonder Woman Archives lacked her Comic Cavalcade stories (although that may have been corrected with the Wonder Woman Chronicles TPBs.

Best

Joe

[josemas]

I think you're right on all counts, Joe,
the pay goes down, the effort goes down and he was definitely having health problems. By the time he came on board at Marvel, I doubt that he was even ABLE to draw like he'd done a decade before. He used to pencil for an inker and, I think you're right here, too, now he was barely pencilling at all and drawing most of it with a brush. Given that approach, it makes me wonder just what those poor inkers were given to ink.

However, having said that, you have to admire that spare style he was using at late Prize. It had an illustrative "feel" to it that was different than anyone else in comics at the time. It was a bold, slap-dash style that worked, especially in the romance books. 

Actually, I truly love the quick stuff that Williamson (and Torres) and Maneely and Colan and Severin did after the Implosion, especially at Charlton. I find it the pure essence of their talents - distilled down to the brain/hand connection with little thought given to the effort except get it drawn and get on to the next page. To me, it SHINES brightly over almost anything else being done (outside of DC and Dell) in comics. Maneely especially. Some folks find his Charlton work almost unrecognizable. I think it's among his best and can't imagine why anyone wouldn't immediately know it was him.

my 2

[profh0011]

Josemas:
"For Sid though the Everett look was the only correct way to draw Subby."

The guys who murdered the art when Everett was in WW2 were far worse than anything Gene Colan did. I mean, what the hell WAS that they were doing?

In recent years, I've seen some major differences of opinion over certain Subby artists in the 60's & 70's.  Fans who will scream, "OH, I LOVE HIS WORK!!!" whenever I would object to some well-loved top pro's version which, to ME, just DIDN'T DO IT for me.  Like GENE COLAN. Or JOHN BUSCEMA. Or SAL BUSCEMA. Or-- maybe the worst of the bunch-- Don Heck. (He got bad in the 70's, but even in the 60's, his Namor just never looked right.)

To me, of course, Everett's on top-- and it's not just the art, it's the writing. Namor's one of those character, like Wonder Woman, or at least half of all of Jack Kirby's characters, that NOBODY else has ever really gotten right. But on the art front, a few I have liked include Jack Kirby, Wally Wood, Dan Adkins, Marie Severin (she followed Gene's head-shape, but there was just something about the "personality" she brought to him, the body language, etc. that just seemed "right", it was CRIMINAL when Stan pul;led her off the book so she could do covers that everybody else should have been doing themselves-- like on Gene Colan's end-run of DAREDEVIL).

George Tuska I'm not sure about, because he did 3 issues near the end, 2 of them sucked, but the one in the middle I consider a MASTERPIECE. How did that happen? It was, I feel, the ONLY time Roy's terribly ill-advised "SAVAGE" direction worked-- Wolfman, Tuska & Colletta, 3 guys who never should have touched that book, yet somehow, for ONE month, it actually "worked". ("Namor Unchained")

Gil Kane was once scheduled to take over the book... and it NEVER happened!  Of course, he did a pile of covers. The ones that "worked", for me, were where Bill Everett did the inks.  He not only sharpened up the art while remaining true to it, but at the same time, he made a point of RE-DRAWING all the Namor figures & faces. THAT was cool.

Here's my "fantasy" version of one of those... (with MY logo design)
http://www.webspawner.com/users/zodiaccomics/imageGallery/SM%2058_c_G%20700.jpg

[profh0011]

"I've only seen one of the DC stories that he did concurrently with the Charlton work and that was in a more detailed style."

I once pointed out to Arnold Drake a story with Luis Dominguez in Charlton's BATTLEFIELD ACTION.  Arnold said it "didn't look anything like Luis' work", and he was right. But as I pointed out, his SIGNATURE was right there, you couldn't mistake it for anyone else. Apparently, a lot of people who worked for Charlton didn't care HOW BAD the work they turned in was. Charlton didn't care, why should they, I guess.

On the flip side, one guy who did care was Don Newton. there was an example at the DN website where someone posted a published cover side-by-side with the PAINTING he did for it (reviving the tradition of painted covers from Gold Key). The painting was STUNNING! The published book was... not so much. HOW do you print books that badly?  

[JVJ]

I think Alex Schomburg also did a great Sub-Mariner. He never seems to get much credit for the cover renditions, but he was very good at capturing the essence of the characters.

(|:{>

[profh0011]

OH yeah... my intro to him was INVADERS ANNUAL #1.  He did, by far, the BEST art on that book.  (I was proud to supply a scan of that cover for "The Marvel Vault" book.)

[josemas]

On the flip side, one guy who did care was Don Newton. there was an example at the DN website where someone posted a published cover side-by-side with the PAINTING he did for it (reviving the tradition of painted covers from Gold Key). The painting was STUNNING! The published book was... not so much. HOW do you print books that badly?  

I knew Don Newton slightly as he lived out here in Phoenix and taught art classes at one of the local schools.  Don had been trying to break into the comics biz for a while and had been doing some really excellent work in various fanzines (I particularly remember some stunning RBCC covers) to sharpen his skills.  In the 1970s there were very few markets to break into the comics field and Charlton was the easiest for the novice artist to get work from.  Don saw it as an opportunity to audition for DC and Marvel and thus he put a lot of effort into his work on the Phantom and the various mystery stories and covers he was given to do.  It was all moonlighting work while he continued teaching.  His hard work paid off and eventually he became a regular penciller for DC and was able to quit the teaching job and concentrate on drawing full time.

Don, of course, was not the only one to take the fanzine to Charlton to DC/Marvel route in the 1970s.  John Byrne, Joe Staton and Mike Zeck are a few others that come to mind most immediately.

Markets were different in the 70s then they were in the mid to late 50s but Charlton benefited during both periods. 

Best

Joe

[Drusilla lives!]

... In the 1970s there were very few markets to break into the comics field and Charlton was the easiest for the novice artist to get work from.  ... Markets were different in the 70s then they were in the mid to late 50s but Charlton benefited during both periods. 

I'd say it's probably nearly impossible to break into the comic biz as a novice artist today... so in that regard things were better back then.

[profh0011]

It's amazing that I never knew about Don Newton's Charlton work until at least 20 years after he passed away.  Sometimes I think those would be really good books to track down as back-issues (no matter how bad they were printed-- heehee).  Newton followed Jim Aparo, as both worked on THE PHANTOM before becoming regulars on BATMAN.  Sometimes I wish Charlton had paid better rates.  These days, I'd RATHER read stories about THE PHANTOM than one single more damn story about "Batman".  (When the TV cartoons are doing a character better than the comics, and they have been for the last 20 years, you know something's wrong.)

[narfstar]

Newton's Phantom covers are great. I have most of those comics.

[profh0011]

JET #3 by Bob Powell!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AAkZb-yBjkQ/TuJxrp1Oo6I/AAAAAAAAAaU/01I7qMdFypw/s1600/JET+03_cc_HA_HK.jpg

Another one that took at least 4 hours to clean up. The one thing I don't get about this is, Powell went to some lengths to include rendering on the main figure which would indicate where the colorist should add a "shadow" tone-- but the colorist ignored it. Heck, I would have put a 2nd tone in there!

[profh0011]

JET #4  (1951) /  art by Bob Powell

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m_i81uLUqfw/TuKZ8bl56DI/AAAAAAAAAac/JyyxsG1ghBM/s1600/JET+04_cc_HA_HK.jpg

The final issue.  After this, Bob Powell ilustrated an entirely DIFFERENT character, also named "Captain Jet Powers", in THE AMERICAN AIR FORCES; but apparently, the 2 characters had nothing in common, except for the name and artist.

[profh0011]

Josemas wrote:
"BTW Powell did draw the Sub-Mariner- in the 1950s during the characters brief revival under the Atlas banner.  Apparently Bill Everett couldn't keep up with the workload and Powell filled in on a few stories.  They look good (certainly better than his 60s Marvel work, IMHO) but compared to Everett's work (and in my opinion, Everett was at his artistic height in the mid 1950s) while they don't exactly pale they certainly don't jump out at you either."

Thumbing thru Powell's covers at the GCD (their search brings up everything he did as "penciller", I wonder, is there a way JUST to bring up covers?). Just ran across THIS for the first time, from May 1947...

http://www.comics.org/issue/5896/cover/4/

NOT BAD! I mean, at least Namor is recognizable. Comparable to the versions done by Kirby or Ayers in the early 60's.

[narfstar]

Henry just click on advanced search and select covers and Powell as pencil you get 139

http://www.comics.org/search/advanced/process/?target=cover&method=icontains&logic=False&order1=series&order2=date&order3=&start_date=&end_date=&title=&feature=&job_number=&pages=&script=&pencils=Bob+Powell&inks=&colors=&letters=&story_editing=&genre=&characters=&synopsis=&reprint_notes=&notes=&pub_name=&pub_notes=&brand=&brand_notes=&indicia_publisher=&is_surrogate=None&ind_pub_notes=&series=&series_notes=&tracking_notes=&issue_count=&issues=&volume=&issue_title=&variant_name=&issue_date=&indicia_frequency=&price=&issue_pages=&format=&issue_editing=&isbn=&barcode=&issue_notes=&is_indexed=None

[JVJ]

Josemas wrote:
"BTW Powell did draw the Sub-Mariner- in the 1950s during the characters brief revival under the Atlas banner.  Apparently Bill Everett couldn't keep up with the workload and Powell filled in on a few stories.  They look good (certainly better than his 60s Marvel work, IMHO) but compared to Everett's work (and in my opinion, Everett was at his artistic height in the mid 1950s) while they don't exactly pale they certainly don't jump out at you either."

Thumbing thru Powell's covers at the GCD (their search brings up everything he did as "penciller", I wonder, is there a way JUST to bring up covers?). Just ran across THIS for the first time, from May 1947...

http://www.comics.org/issue/5896/cover/4/

NOT BAD! I mean, at least Namor is recognizable. Comparable to the versions done by Kirby or Ayers in the early 60's.

Not bad, but if this is Bob Powell I'll eat my copy of the comic (if only I had one...). I don't know where they got the credit, but I think Powell (and his shop) were totally involved with Harvey and Street and Smith at this time. I've never seen MM #s 81 and 82 up close, but just comparing them with other Powell covers of the time, and looking at Powell's career, these stick out as anomalies.

I believe the Powell credits for these two issues to be in error. ?I'm willing to be convinced otherwise (perhaps with larger scans than can be seen on GCD)?

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[profh0011]

#81 looks more like Powell.  Namora could be her, Namor-- I'd guess no. LOTS of wrong info there. But what bothers me more is SO MANY bad images. Some have said in the past that "old" comics look that way, but these guys scan and post BRAND-NEW comics where the images look THAT BAD.

Meanwhile, I gave Buddy Saunders (of MyComicsShop in Texas) permission to use MY scans on his website if he wants. He appreciates quality!  


Oh, and thanks for the "Search" tip.  But I'm already more than halfway thru, best I keep going or I'll get lost...