Daring Adventure #16 (1964) by Joe Simon

Another cover that Joe Simon did for the reprint title Daring Adventure. Joe describes selling former Mainline titles to Isreal Waldman in his book “The Comic Book Makers”. From his description you would think that Super Comics would do rather cheap productions. Actually the comics I have seen were well done. Some of the interior stories are by great artists and in full color. But the covers are not reprints but original art produced for the various titles. Despite the fact that Joe did a number of these covers I do not think he did any covers for titles that included the Mainline features Joe sold to Waldman.

DA #16 shows Dynamic Man attaching an officer (general?) being tied up and threatened by little green men. A fire is present so I suspect the general will also be tortured. This is all being done within sight of some tents and a plane. The flags indicate that this is a US base, but where are the soldiers to protect this unfortunately officer? But no matter, the Dynamic Man jumps in to save the day. A literal interpretation of this enactment would indicate that Dynamic Man is leaping past his adversaries. But as we have seen before, for example in the cover for Target #10 (November 1940), that Simon would position the hero more to improve his prominence then to provide accurate portrayal. Judging from the interior story, Joe has made some mistakes on Dynamic Man’s costume. The gloves are wrong and the boots have the Captain America type of folding over at their tops. But the most glaring discrepancy is due to the colorist, not Joe. Joe provides the proper shorts for Dynamic Man but the colorist has painted the legs blue not flesh color.

This is not a bad cover, just not as interesting as DA #12 or DA #15. I have not seen the covers for DA #13 and #14 but coming between known Simon covers one might suspect that Joe did them also. I had previously felt that Joe also did DA #11 and DA #17 covers. But having restored DA #12, #15 and #16 I am not so sure. I will post on DA #11 and #17 later when I had a chance to think about them some more.

Art by Joe Simon, Appendix 2, Daring Adventures #12

Art by Joe Simon, Appendix 5, Harvey Hits #12

Daring Adventures #12, (1963) by Joe Simon

If we exclude work done for the humor magazine Sick, Joe Simon’s comic book work is rather modest compared to that of Jack Kirby. Although very incomplete, the Checklist I provide is only about a couple of pages long while The Jack Kirby Checklist has 90 pages of fine print. Yes I believe some of the work in the Kirby Checklist was really done by Simon but even in my most generous estimate that still would be a miniscule fraction of Jack’s output. But to achieve correct attributions it is not enough to recognize Jack’s style, one must also be able to spot Joe’s mannerisms as well. This is particularly important because Joe frequently adopted Kirby trademarks. Because there is not that much solo Simon work I thought it would be useful to extend my previous serial blog “The Art of Joe Simon” with appendices that provide further examples of solo Simon art.

Daring Adventures #12 appeared sometime in 1963. This comic title contained reprinted stories, this issue features the Phantom Lady. But even though the stories were reprints the covers were new. Although unsigned issue #12 was obviously done by Joe Simon. Joe appears to have worked on the entire cover, including designing the logo. The same logo, using different coloring, appears on issues Daring Adventures #15 and #16 for which Joe also did the cover art.

The cover art is more then just a scene composition, it is a complete design. The “The Great Stamp Robbery” is introduced by placing the story title and an image of the Phantom Lady on a stamp. Included on the stamp is a caption “Action Series” in case the young readers were not familiar with this heroine. The whole stamp is made with the fine lines of zip tones and the coloring is subdued. The physically of the stamp is revealed by the lavender shadow that it casts, surprisingly on a tilted background.

In front of the stamp, in bold inking and strong coloring are two figures. One, the hero, provides a solid slug to the other who falls backward. I am unclear why a male hero was used on a cover for a comic devoted to Phantom Lady. Giving Joe’s working method and Kirby’s excelling at this sort of slugfest, one would expect that these figures were swiped from Jack. However the pose of the left figure is extreme even for Jack. A similar extremely wide stride appears on the logo to the Harvey Fighting American but that pose is given to the flying slugged figure. Since that Harvey comic was published in 1966 it does not help in providing the source for the figure on this Daring Adventures cover. I cannot provide any Kirby prototype for this example but I wonder if there truly is a single source. Perhaps this figure is a composite, the torso from a Kirby slugging figure and the legs from a running one. Therefore the left figure is quite possibly not a close swipe. The figure on the right is handled so well that although I cannot provide a source for it either I strongly suspect it was a more close swipe from Jack. The figure is falling back, away from the viewer. That manner seemed more common early in Kirby’s career so I would suspect an early source.

The portrayal of the Phantom Lady is a bit stiff but otherwise this is marvelous work by Joe from a period after the Simon and Kirby breakup. The design is really well done and shows Joe has not lost his touch with this sort of approach.

Art by Joe Simon, Chapter 13, Wrap Up

Art by Joe Simon, Appendix 4, Daring Adventure #16

When I started this serial post on Joe Simon’s art, I outlined for myself what topics I was going to cover. Initially my plan was to end about the time of the Simon and Kirby breakup. I wanted to avoid the final part of Joe’s career as a comic artist because frankly I do not have a very good handle on all of it. But in the end I have decided to discuss what little I know and admit my ignorance. Joe writes about this part of his career in his book “The Comic Book Makers”. But if you are not careful, it is easy to come away from a reading of what he says with the idea that this was an unimportant part of his career. The fact is the covers Joe drew after the breakup of Simon and Kirby outnumbers what he did earlier.

Young Romance v14 n5 (August 1961) by Joe Simon (signed)

With the exception of one publication (Sick), most of what Joe did after S&K was unsigned and for low budget titles. Outside of Sick, the above Young Romance cover is the only signed late work by Joe Simon that I am aware of. Joe was the editor for some of the Prize comics (Young Love, Young Romance and Black Magic) towards the end of those titles. In Chapter 9 of “The End of Simon and Kirby” I had included an image of another of Joe’s Prize work Young Love #77 (August 1960). As I said in the beginning of this post I do not have a very good handle of Joe’s style, that is particularly true with these romances. I believe there are other Young Love and Young Romance covers by Joe. Although I have not located a convincing example yet, I strongly suspect that Joe also did some covers for the relaunched Black Magic series.

Young Hearts In Love #17 (from proof) by Joe Simon

Joe Simon also did cover work for Super Comics. That publisher would buy art from failed comic books and reprint the material with new covers. In his book Joe describes selling them some of the S&K Mainline comics. Super Comics had a lot of different titles but were probably not big sellers and I do not have access to very many of them. The above image of Young Hearts #17 is from a proof in Joe’s collection. Notice the similarity of the title lettering to that originally used for Young Love and Young Romance. Joe also did the cover for Young Hearts #18.

Daring Adventure #15 (1964) by Joe Simon

But Joe not only did romance covers for Super Comics, he also did some superheroes. I believe he did the covers for Daring Adventures #10 to #17 (1963 and 1964). For these Joe used the rather simple style we saw before in Alarming Tales #4. But notice on DA #15 the Kirby-ish leaping figure. Also note the use of the oversized figure, in this case of the villain, that we have seen Simon use all the way back on his work on Blue Beetle for Fox Comics. Joe also did the cover for The Spirit #12 (1964) where unexpectedly the Spirit is attacking a foe with the villain’s own robot.

Jigsaw #3 (unpublished, from original art) by Joe Simon

From 1965 until 1967 Joe did some editorial work for Harvey Comics on some, mostly superhero, titles. I do not believe he did any of the stories, but Joe did supply some of the covers. Perhaps because they were done for his long time friend’s company, I feel Joe put more effort into them then he did on the Super Comics covers. Although Simon still mostly worked in the simpler drawing and inking style, in the cover for Jigsaw #3 he returned to a bold inking not much removed from the old S&K shop style. Joe commented to me that he thought he had copied the Jigsaw figure from the splash page of the story. But I am unable to confirm that since Jigsaw #3 was never published.

Dick Tracy #129 (from proof) by Joe Simon

But the late 60’s covers were not the only ones Joe did for Harvey. Earlier he also did some Dick Tracy covers. Determining which ones is a bit of a problem. Joe was essentially ghosting on these covers, adopting the rather simple and stylized drawing of the original newspaper strips. To make it even more difficult Al Avison was also doing some of these covers at about the same time. The above proof is from Joe’s collection so we can be pretty certain it was done by him.

Harvey Hits Magazine (from proof) by Joe Simon

Simon also did some Phantom covers for Harvey. Here he did not have to copy another’s style. To me they seem like standard Simon art for after the S&K breakup and do not at all suggest work by Jack Kirby. But apparently there must be something in them to suggest Jack, because dealers often credit Kirby for these covers.

Sick #69 (August 1969) by Joe Simon

However it is the covers to Sick Magazine that comprises most of the art work Joe did after Simon and Kirby. Joe was editor for this Mad imitation for a number of years (1960 to 1968) during which he did many of the covers but even afterwards he continued to supply cover art. In this work Joe let loose his visual humor and he obviously put much effort into these covers.

Well that wraps up my serial post on the Art of Joe Simon. I have added a checklist but like all my checklists it is a work in progress. Joe was a talented artist, better them most people give him credit for. Unfortunately that talent, particularly his talent for adopting different styles, has led many experts and scholars to attribute some of his works to other artists. Over and over again I get the uncomfortable feeling that critics have used quality of the work as a means of distinguishing between artists; if a page is good Kirby must have done it, otherwise it was done by Simon. I feel this is a flawed technique and the proper way to determine artistic credit is to examine a piece of work for the traits of the individual artists. It is also to keep in mind that when one artists tries to mimic another that some traits are easy to copy and should not be relied upon. Other features are more unique to one artists and are harder for another artist to duplicate; these are the ones useful for attributions. I did not do this serial post with the idea of convincing everyone of the correctness of the work I credit to Simon. But it would be great if I could help move the problem of attributions toward a discussion of the evidence from the art itself and away from the simple credit declarations that the experts are so fond of.

Art by Joe Simon, Chapter 12, Covering the Fly

Art by Joe Simon, Appendix 2, Daring Adventures #12