As reported by The Jack Kirby Comics Weblog, Diamond has stated that “The Best of Simon and Kirby” will be out this week. I cannot verify that the book will truly be in stores so soon. Further Amazon is still listing a May 12th release. But in anticipation of its not too distant release I thought I would do a small post about how the art was prepared. Everything starts with a scan.

Stuntman #1 (April 1946) “Killer in the Bigtop”, original scan

Unfortunately the original comic book pages were not that well printed to begin with, the paper invariably has yellowed with age, and the colors faded to some extent. The original scan is not a pretty thing but more importantly it is not a good representation of Simon and Kirby’s original intent.

Stuntman #1 (April 1946) “Killer in the Bigtop”, color correction

Fortunately there is Photoshop, an application by Adobe made for manipulating images of all kinds. For “The Best of Simon and Kirby” each scan was optimally adjusted using Photoshop to remove the paper’s yellow color and correct the faded colors.

While these adjustments make the page look like new, they do nothing to correct the problems caused by the original poor printing. Problems like registration, where the different colors are shifted in relationship to one another. Or incomplete printing. While these defects were in the original comic they still are detrimental to appreciating Simon and Kirby’s efforts. Photoshop does provide tools for correcting these problems as well although not without much effort.

Stuntman #1 (April 1946) “Killer in the Bigtop”, fully restored

The final result looks much more attractive then the original scans. At their heart the images still remain scans. Flaws that did not distract from the art were left. Compare the before and after and you will see that original coloring was adhered to and most importantly the line art was unaltered. What you get is pure Simon and Kirby. You cannot get better then that.

I developed the Photoshop techniques that are so briefly outlined above by myself. Apparently others have figured them out as well. Lately a small number of books have been published using restored scans. Most notably the Sunday sections in the “Terry and the Pirates” (IDW Publishing), “I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets” (Fantagraphic Books) and “Supermen” (Fantagraphic Books). They share with “The Best of Simon and Kirby” a desire to present the original masters and not some recreation by a modern artist. It is a goal that was generally ignored in the past but that I hope will become increasingly prevalent in the future.

Alarming Tales #2 (November 1957)

Trying to provide the proper credit for comic book art is always filled with uncertainties in certain cases. All one can do is use what evidence is available and make the best judgment possible. The willingness to try must be joined with acceptance of the errors that will sometimes be made. Case in point, the cover for Alarming Tales #2.

Alarming Tales #4 (March 1958), art by Joe Simon

My original take on the cover for AT #2 was that Joe Simon was the artist. Joe can be a difficult artist to identify. While he signed much of his work at the start of his career a lot of his later work lacks a signature. An even greater difficulty lies in Joe’s skill in adopting different styles. Experts have attributed some Fox covers to Lou Fine having overlooked Joe’s small signature. Joe did so good a job at mimicking Jack Kirby that much of the admittedly limited amount of work Simon did while collaborating with Kirby continues to be attributed to Jack. I do not claim to be able to identify all Joe Simon’s work; there is some late romance cover work that I do not a good understanding of and I sometimes doubt that it will ever be possible to confidently determine which Dick Tracy covers Simon ghosted. The Art of Joe Simon provides an overview of Joe’s career although I have changed my opinion about a few of the attributions in that serial post*. Among the styles Joe used was one more personal in that it does not seem to be an attempt at mimicking another artist. One of the best examples of this style can be found on the cover for Alarming Tales #4. The man in the cover for Alarming Tales #2 shares that style and for that reason I first assigned AT #2 to Joe Simon.

Alarming Tales #2, original art from the collection of Paul Handler

But there were problems with my original attribution of this cover to Joe Simon, the most important of which was that the spaceman look like he was done by Mort Meskin. Mort Meskin had not worked for Joe Simon since the breakup of the Simon and Kirby studio and there are no examples of Mort’s work in any Joe’s productions after that time. However when the original art for the cover surfaced I reevaluated my position. The original art clearly shows that the cover was made by joining two separate pieces of art. I therefore concluded that Joe had used an old piece of art by Mort Meskin combined with new art by his own hand. But a Simon and Meskin joint attributions was not completely satisfactory. What was the original source for the Meskin art? It was too large to be story art. The only comic that the art might have been meant for was Black Magic. Jack Kirby did all the covers for the first run of Black Magic so this left the possibility that the spaceman was originally for a splash page of a story meant for Black Magic left over from the sudden cancellation of that title.

Black Magic #5 (June 1951) “Sleep, Perchance to Die” page 3 panel 4, art by Mort Meskin

That is how my opinion stood for almost two years. Recently, however, I was reviewing some Black Magic comics when I noticed a page from Mort Meskin’s “Sleep, Perchance to Die”. The story concerns a rivalry so intense that it carried over into prophetic dreams. The protagonist was a bookish student and one of his dream involved being chases by an overgrown version of his athletic rival (but no bites from a radioactive spider). There can be no doubt that the oversized and somewhat monstrous figure was the bases for the spaceman of the Alarming Tales #2 cover. The final, and almost certainly the correct, conclusion was that Joe Simon drew the entire AT #2 cover using the panel from Meskin’s Black Magic story from 1951 as source material. While the AT #2 figure retains enough of the original that Meskin’s touch can still be recognized, a comparison between the two shows how much Simon has transformed it. This is the first case of Simon swiping from Meskin that I have seen but I am sure there are other examples yet to be found. Joe still has great admiration for Mort Meskin’s talent. The Joe Simon collection includes a group of proofs of various Meskin splash pages. No other artist received a similar treatment, not even Jack Kirby.

footnotes:

* I no longer believe Joe Simon penciled “The Woman Who Discovered America 67 Years Before Columbus” (Black Cat Mystic #60, November 1957) or the cover for The Spirit #12 (Super Comics, 1963).

I guess I was not the only one to get an advance copy of Titan’s soon to be released “The Best of Simon and Kirby”. There is already a short review on the web by Mike Rogers. . Among the many complements:

Dazzling from beginning to end, The Best of Simon and Kirby is a monumental piece of comics’ history

So what comic book web page was Mike Roger’s doing the review? None, the review appeared in LJXpress the Library Journal’s newsletter. While I believe fans will love this book, my biggest hope is that it will give Simon and Kirby exposure outside of comicdom.

What is with Marvel and their numbering? Captain America Comics #1 was indexed back in 1941 as volume 2 number 1. What happened to volume 1? There was no issue 1 for silver age Captain America, the first issue of that title was #100. Prior to that Captain America appeared in Tales of Suspense starting in issue #59 but he appeared in the Iron Man story for TOS #58. The first volume of Captain America did have a long run ending with, I believe, #454. It was not bad sales that ended that run but rather the desire to increase profits by issuing a new first issue for speculators to grab up, never mind it was just the first issue of an arbitrary volume. Did it work? I do not know but current run of Captain America is volume 5. But now Marvel has seen the light and will be returning to volume 1 numbering starting with issue #600. I do not know about you, but I think this concern about numbering is all somewhat bizarre.

But there is a good reason for Simon and Kirby fans to pick up Captain America #600 whenever it comes out. It will include “My Bulletin Board” an essay by Joe Simon. I was going to say that it was the first time that new work by Joe appeared in Marvel since he and Jack Kirby left the original Captain America Comics in 1942. But then I remembered Joe did a variant cover for Captain America issue from volume 3. In any case Joe is a great writer and story teller and I think fans will enjoy his latest essay.

No Joe is not being thrown out on the street; his old house at Stony Brook is currently up for sale . At $2,950,000 it is a little out of my price range (okay, okay, a lot out of my price range) but as Joe said “worth every penny”. Here is the real estate agent’s pitch:

A Rare Opportunity! A Truly Magnificent Waterfront Home In The Heart Of Stony Brook Village With Direct Access To The Water And Superior Panoramic Views In Every Season.This Property Epitomizes The Charm Of Refined Country Living While Maintaining Easy Access To All. Separate Guest Quarters Privately Situated On Property.Call For Further Details And Private Showing

The house was original built in 1910 and is therefore three years older then Joe but both have remained in great shape.