An Unscheduled and Unwanted Sabbatical

This is the second week I have been unable to blog. My telephone and Internet connection are out and I am told they will be so for another week or two. I will return to my regular weekly posting once I have unfettered Internet access.

4 thoughts on “An Unscheduled and Unwanted Sabbatical

  1. Ger Apeldoorn

    Well, if you see this… I have been going through some of my older romance books for the GCD (amazing how few Harvey books they have). Interesting stuff, including some story re-editing of previously censoed books when they were reprinted which is very similar to the stuff you described of Joe’s later work. And the odd cover that seems like his work. Have you ever gone over them? For instance, Forst Love #80. Am I right to see Joe Simon there?

  2. Harry Post author

    I look at a number of them but have not gone through them thoroughly. I pulled out First Love #80 and yes the cover and contents page is by Joe.

    Generally I find the Harvey romances a bit frustrating. Harvey seemed to have a policy agains artists signing their works (except for the occassional Elias). But in the earlier stuff there are some interesting Draut and Prentice pieces.

  3. Ger Apeldoorn

    I was less certain about the contents page. That means some of the others around the same time are by Simon as well (which I sort of suspected). There are also contents pages that are first pages of a reprinted story cut up. Mr. Simon certainly new how to cut corners. But the most fun is First Romance #48, which is a complete reprint of First Romance #36, but with the stories restored to their original form before they were butchered for the comics code back in 1955. Except for the first story, which has an altered ending (which was left intact in the 1955 version). And it has an intro page, probably by Simon as well. Another oddball story is the first one from High-School Romance #54, which seems to have had several hands working on it, including a very rough and heavy inking pass, possibly by Simon as well (or at least similar to some I have seen on the S&K books.

  4. Harry Post author

    Many of the content pages were done by Joe but in a style imitating the artist that did the story. Joe was good at this sort of thing and often swiped from the story as well. Jack also did a few of these content pages and I used to think he was imitating the artist as well but now I believe that Jack just drew them as he always did and Joe did the inking that transformed them into the imitated style.

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