Green Hornet #7 (June 1942)

Green Hornet #7

I love the way Simon and Kirby make a cover tell a story. The Green Hornet is rushing to attach a killer clown. If the clown carrying a wicked knife wasn’t enough, the lady on the lower level carries a newspaper with headlines that are hard to make out completely but clearly includes “CLOWN … CRIMINAL …”. Behind her is a fallen policeman, his gun laying at his side, clearly the Green Hornet will be taking on one tough clown. The press above is printing the front page for the latest edition declaring “DIES IN ELECTRIC CHAIR” with a picture of the clown, obviously printed ahead of time because the clown escaped before facing his execution. The Green Hornet had better be careful because this clown has nothing to loose.

The Green Hornet cover for June is a bit of a puzzle. The floating head looks like it was done by Joe Simon, The killer clown and the running Green Hornet seem to be Jack Kirby’s hand. The rest of the figures have bits of both. My take on this is that it was original penciled by Jack without the floating head. Joe added the large head and maybe touched up some other parts. Truly a joint effort. Once again signed as Jon Henri.

The inking on this cover includes irregularly patterned “hay” that we have seen before on the cover to Speed #17. When discussing that cover I noted that the same pattern appears in some of Al Avison’s work, including the splash from Pocket #1. Both Speed #17 and GH #7 covers also share some inking styles and lack the S&K shop style that appears on other Harvey covers. I now suspect that both covers were inked by the same artist and that artist may have been Al Avison.

2 thoughts on “Green Hornet #7 (June 1942)

  1. Héctor

    Soy un coleccionador de comics de México de las Editoriales La Prensa y Editorial Novaro entre otras, de los años ´50,´60,´70 y de soldaditos de diferentes escalas, materiales y Paises.
    Su pagina me parecio Excelente y magnifica ya que no conocia la revista de Green Hornet comics y otras que presentan en su web.

    Saludos desde Morelia, Michoacán México

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