Coming Attractions and Other Comments

Well next weekend is the big N.Y. comic convention. Last year I was one of those who spent a couple of hours on line only to be turned away. I did help Joe Simon with his appearance the next day. But helping Joe kept me so busy that I really did not get to see much. Joe will not be showing up this year and I have bought my ticket in advance. Hopefully things will work out better this time. Unfortunately there does not seem to be any Kirby panel. Where is our east coast Mark Evanier? I will be on the look-out for anything of interest concerning Simon and Kirby. We will see if I find anything worth posting about.

I have scans ready from Foxhole #4 so even with the convention going on I am sure I will be posting on that issue. I hope my readers do not mind this review of comics which have so little Kirby art. The artists who worked for S&K may not have been in Kirby’s class (who was?) but they are talented nonetheless. Focusing on this one title has helped me clear up some attribution errors I have previously made. My biggest surprise was how often Joe Albistur shows up. S&K really relied on him a lot during this period. I plan to give this sort of treatment to the other Mainline titles and Win A Prize.

Recently I have been trying to inventory Joe Simon’s collection of original art. It is so great to look at so much stuff, including the art from Foxhole that I have been posting about. One of the surprises is how much work Joe did with DC during the ’70s. When I posted on the Sandman #1 cover I mentioned that the comic art was given the job number SK-2. Well DC also used JS numbering for work that Joe provided and they go up into the mid 300’s. Much of it was for romance comics Young Romance and Young Love. There are a few pieces, some with JS job numbers, that were “Written Off”. I suspect this means that DC felt they would not publish them even though they paid for the work. I suspect that they were concerned about getting Comic Code approval.