Category Archives: 6 Mainline

The End of Simon & Kirby, Chapter 2, Problems in the Industry

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Posted in 2006/05, 6 Mainline, Periods, Prize, Serial Posts, z Archive.

Previously in Chapter 1 I discussed the disasterous appearance of Bill Gaines before a Senate committee and the creation of the Comic Code Authority. Simon and Kirby launched their Mainline comics just prior to these events.

But what was the comic industry like at that time? Without sales figures we can only guess based on information gleaned from the comics themselves. But Joe and Jack’s arrangement with Prize meant that they received a share of the profits. They must have had some idea how things were going with Prize Comics at least.

Judging from events that shortly followed the launch of Mainline, things were not going well for Prize. For comics having a September 1954 cover date, Prize had 4 monthly (Justice Traps the Guilty, Young Romance, Young Love and Young Brides) and 5 bimonthly titles (Black Magic, Fighting American, Frankenstein, Headline and Prize Comic Western). When we arrive at a cover date of May 1955 Prize only has 1 monthly (Justice Traps the Guilty) and 5 bimonthly (Headline, Prize Comic Western, Young Romance, Young Love, and Young Brides). This is a substantial decline in production, one way to look at is is to consider a bimonthly as half a monthly. From that view point Prize went from 6.5 to 3.5 titles a month. For Simon and Kirby the affects were even more drastic. At this time S&K were producing Black Magic and the three romances, they stopped producing the crime comics for Prize some time ago. Using the same type of calculations, S&K went from 4 to 1.5 titles a month for Prize. Remember Joe and Jack received a share of the profits, this drop had to have an affect on their cash flow.

The timing of the changes by Prize could be interpreted as a reaction to S&K’s becoming competitors. That would not have been a wise business decision on the part of Prize, but sometimes emotions rule over logic. But that does not explain the cancellation of Frankenstein Comics since S&K had nothing to do with it. With the last Frankenstein having a cover date of October 1954, this was too early to have been due to the The Comic Code. Comic code stamps would not appear on comics until April or May of 1955. I believe the best explanation is that Prize comics had not be selling that well recently, possibly as a result of the rise in anti-comic sentiment.

When the Comic Code did come into affect, Prize did not seem to have much problems with it. Despite all the adverse publicity directed at Headline and Justice Traps the Guilty, the contents of the Prize crime comics really were not objectionable. I don’t find much of a change in these titles with the arrival of the Comic Code. Nor did the stamp seem much of a problem for the Prize romance titles.

With Prize seemingly having problems, what about other comic publishers? Bill Gaines got a lot of undesireable attention at the Senate committee hearings, and not only because he came to defend the comic industry. I think it would be fair to say that Gaines’ publishing company, EC, exemplfied many of the things Dr. Wertham and other critics complained about. I am really not knowledgeable enough about EC to say whether he was experiencing sales problems before the Senate hearings. But clearly Gaines was well aware of the problems his comic line would face with the Comic Code Authority. His first approach to this was to launch a series of new titles just as the Comic Code was coming into effect. These titles (Aces High, Extra, Impact, Incredible Science Fiction, MD, Psychoanalysis, and Valor) had titles that seemed designed to avoid issues with the Comic Code. And all of these new titles showed the Comic Code stamp for the May 1955 covers. But although these titles avoid Code problems, they still seem to have sales problems. All these titles would disappear after a relatively short run, the last has a January 1956 date. Another approach to the code that Gaines tried was to publish his material in a magazine size format, and avoid getting Comic Code approval at all. This allowed him to use new titles like Shock Illustrtated and Terror Illustrated, titles that would be rejected under the Comic Code. Unfortunately this approach also seemed to fail after just a couple of issues with the last having a May 1956 cover date. But there was one exception to the magazine size format failure, that was the juvenile humor comic Mad. Mad remained popular and after the failure of all the rest of Gaines’ comic line, it would become the only publication for EC.

Artist Ross Andru and Mike Esposito started their own comic publishing company, MikeRoss Publications, even earlier then Simon and Kirby’s Mainline. I do not know the specifics of either their company or their publications, but their company also failed during this period.

We have seen from Prize, EC and MikeRoss that there is reason to believe that this was a difficult time for comic publishers. Apparently this was true with Simon and Kirby’s Mainline. April 1955 was the date for the last Mainline publication. Other then one Foxhole cover rejected by the Comic Code Authority that had to be replaced, S&K did not seem to have much problems with the new code. Final issues of Mainline comics had the code’s stamp on the cover. But Simon and Kirby’s attempt at become comic publishers had failed.

Mainline’s problems may not have only been due to low sales. Mainline, MikeRoss and EC shared one thing, they all were using the same distrubuter, Leader News. Now Mainline and MikeRoss were probably a very small part of Leader’s distribution, but EC was not. EC sales problems affected Leader News, and it is likely that Leader’s difficulties got passed on to Mainline and MikeRoss in late payments. Leader News would become bankrupt in July 1956. It is just possible that had Joe and Jack used a different distributor Mainline may have lasted longer. But it was a difficult time for comic books, so who can say?

Frankly this has been a lengthy post without any images. So this seems a good place to examine Prize romances during the period from April 1954 and September 1955. During this interval the Prize romance comics had no Kirby art. April was the same month that the Fighting American started. Also, probably without Prize knowing about it, Simon and Kirby started preparing for the launch of Mainline. It seems typical for Jack to do most of his penciling for new titles. Jack continued to pencil some work for Black Magic but that title would be canceled after issue #33 (November 1955). But it would appear that S&K continued to produce the romance comics. They were listed as editors in the postal declaration in April issues for 1954 and 1955 of Young Love and Young Romance and the May issue of Young Brides. Another indication that S&K were still producing the romances is that Joe Simon still has in his collection proofs for some of the covers during this period.

A couple of other changes occurred to the Prize romance comics in about this period. One was that photo covers were discontinued. Most of the romance comics used a photographic cover starting in 1949. There was one exception, for the period from August 1950 to June 1951 all the Young Love and four of the Young Romance had art covers. But the last photographic cover would be used in March 1954 and this time they would not return. Recently I asked Joe Simon about the printing the photo covers and he said that they cost a little more then art covers but with the large print sizes of the comics it was not much of a differance.

Also starting in 1949 was the use of a label a “Simon and Kirby production” on the first page of the lead story. Once started this label would appear in all S&K productions except for three issues. That is until after September 1954, when the the label disappears on all comics. They would remain off until returning in Young Love #64 in April 1955. But they would not always appear and in December 1955 the the last S&K production label would be used in Young Romance #80. The absence of the label does not necessarily mean that S&K did not produce those comics. The label was also missing from Black Magic #33 but that issue includes art by Jack Kirby and was almost certainly produced by S&K.

Up to this point Kirby was the primary penciler for all the covers for S&K comics that did not use a photograph. So who did the these covers while Kirby was busy elsewhere? Well if you have been reading my posts it may not come to a surprise that most of these covers were done by the usual suspects Bill Draut, Mort Meskin and John Prentice. In fact for me their continued presence is the most convincing evidence that Simon and Kirby were still producing these romance comics.

I have already included Young Brides #21 (March 1955) in a post I did on Bill Draut. Bill did 13 of the 39 covers in question. Below is another Draut cover.

Young Romance #70
Young Romance #70 (June 1954) by Bill Draut

My discussion on Mort Meskin included his cover to Young Love #66 (August 1955). Mort provided 8 of the 39 non-Kirby covers. Let me provide another example.

Young Brides #16
Young Brides #16 (June 1954) by Mort Meskin

John Prentice, the last of the usual suspects, did 15 of the romance covers. In my post on John I have already provided an image of the cover he did for Young Love #58 (June 1954). So here is another example of his fine work.

Young Love #55
Young Love #55 (March 1954) by John Prentice

Did anyone add up the numbers? If you did you would have noticed that the usual suspects did 36 of the 39 covers that Kirby did not do. I admit I am not sure who did one of these covers, but the other two covers were done by Ann Brewster. I have not classified Ann as one of the usual suspects because she only did work for S&K for two limited periods. But she was a fine talent at least for romance, which is the only work I have seen of hers. But there is something quite unique about the two covers the Brewster did. Both covers were made from enlarged and flipped stats made from the splash page of Ann’s stories. I know that the covers were made from the splash and not the other way around because Joe Simon still has the “original art” for the cover to Young Romance #79 (Octover 1955). Except for some very minor touch ups, the cover is entirely stats. This is the first time that S&K have done this sort of thing, but Joe Simon would use a similar technique in the future for Adventures of the Fly #1 and Blast-Off #1.

Young Romance #79
Young Romance #79 (October 1955) by Ann Brewster

Chapter 1, The Beginning of the End

Chapter 3, Unlikely Port in the Storm

The End of Simon & Kirby, Chapter 1, The Beginning of the End

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Posted in 2006/05, 6 Mainline, End of S & K, Foxhole, In Love, Serial Posts, z Archive.

I am going to blog on the ending of the Simon and Kirby collaboration. I would like to go into it in more detail then I can comfortably cover in one post. So I will be dividing it up into a number of chapters.

The May 29, 1947 issue of Saturday Review had an article by Dr. Frederick Wertham. Dr. Wertham had a very dim view of comic books and their influence on the young. I wonder how many comic book artists and publishers knew about the article or had any idea on how it would affect their livelihood? I suspect not many, I am sure it was far from thoughts of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. They were too busy becoming comic book producers by launching crime titles for Prize and more importantly creating a whole new genre, romance comics. Those must have been exciting days for the two, and with the deals they made, Joe and Jack shared the profits from the success of their products. Although the future must have looked bright to our intrepid pair, Dr. Wertham’s efforts started to generate anti-comic sentiments in various communities. It did not all come at once, but built over the years until when his book “Seduction of the Innocent” was published in 1954.

The pivotal date was April 22 and 23, 1954. That was when a Senate committee questioned Bill Gaines. Apparently Gaines appearance was not mandatory, other comic publishers declined to show up. But Bill went to defend the industry, unfortunately his appearance had a completely opposite effect. Gaines testimony was a disaster, public sentiment against comics rose to even greater heights. In a effort to circumvent possible legislation (and perhaps also to drive some competition out of the industry), some comic publishers got together to create the Comic Code Authority. The code was adopted on October 26, 1954. In theory use of the Comic Code was voluntary. But publishers knew that once the Comic Code stamp started appearing on covers, comics without it would not be accepted by many newsstands.

So what were Simon and Kirby doing at the time of the Senate committee hearings? Well comic cover dates were usually two months after the distribution date. Typically it took one month to do the artwork, a month for the printer and a month for the distributor. However even in monthly titles, art may start on an issue before the art for the previous issue was completed. This means an adjustment of 5 or 6 months. So we could expect comics started at about the time of the Senate hearings would have cover dates of about October. Well for some time S&K were producing Black Magic, Young Romance, Young Love, and Young Brides for the publisher Prize Comics. The first issue of Fighting American, also for Prize, came out with an April date. But even more important Bullseye #1 came out with an August cover date. Joe and Jack started this issue before the Bill Gaine’s appearance before the Senate committee. But had they noticed the anti-comic sentiment spearheaded by Dr. Wertham?

Bullseye #1 cover
Bullseye #1 (August 1954)

Bullseye #1 was more then the just the start of a new Simon and Kirby title, it was the start of Mainline Comics. Years back Joe and Jack had gone from being comic book artists to be being comic book producers. Now they were trying to make the transition to being comic book publishers. Bullseye was the first Mainline comic; Foxhole, In Love, and Police Trap would follow shortly. It was a big step but they would still be receiving income for the comics they produced for Prize. S&K probably tried to keep Prize unaware of their involvement in, let alone their ownership off, Mainline comics. Unlike their usual practice, early Mainline issues did not have any Simon and Kirby signature. Only the fourth issues would carry a stamp indicating it was “another Simon and Kirby smash hit”. Starting up Mainline must have taken a lot of time and effort. Kirby’s efforts largely went to work on the Mainline comics only. S&K still produced comics for Prize, but Jack’s pencils would only appear in Black Magic and Fighting American, they would not appear in the romance titles. For the Prize romances they depended on their stable of freelance artists to fill the void left by the absent Jack.

Bullseye #1 splash
Bullseye #1 splash (August 1954)

Simon and Kirby did not do many pure westerns, work of that type was limited to a few covers. Prior to Bullseye they had combined the western and kid gang genre to make Boys’ Ranch for Harvey. They even tried western and romance combo, although that turned out to be much more a romance then a western. Now with Bullseye Joe and Jack mixed the western and hero genre. The idea was not unique, perhaps the most famous example would be the Lone Ranger. But you can count of S&K to make an exciting comic out of it. As a baby, Bullseye is saved by his grandfather from an Indian massacre that takes lives of his parents. As he grows, the hero apparently is a natural genius with rifles and pistols as he surprises his grandfather with his accuracy. An encounter with the Indian Yellow Snake leaves Bullseye with the loss of his grandfather and with a target branded on his chest. Bullseye takes to the road playing the part of a peddler, even his horse has a disguise! Of course there is lots of action in the stories, but often humor as well. It is a shame that this title has never been collected together as a reprint volume.

In Love #2 by Bill Draut
In Love #2 (October 1954) by Bill Draut

As the originator of the romance comic genre, it comes as no surprise that Simon and Kirby would want to include a romance title in their Mainline comics line. But by 1954 there was an abundance of romance comics. So S&K decided that to make In Love unique it would include “novel length” story in each issue. The romances that Joe and Jack produced for Prize Comics often included stories of up to 13 pages long, longer then most of the competition. Now In Love would have stories up to 20 pages long and they would be divided into chapters. I have already described the story from In Love #1 “Bride Of The Star” in a post I did about The First Romance Comic. That story was penciled entirely by Jack. But Jack did only one chapter of “Marilyn’s Men” from In Love #2 the other two were done by Bill Draut. Jack returns to do the entire novelette for In Love #3 “Artist Loves Model”. That story is based on reworking of an unsuccessful syndication proposal. Issues from In Love #4 on do not have these extra-length stories. Whether that was because of S&K felt that the novelettes was not a successful idea, or because of other problems is not clear.

Foxhole #2
Foxhole #2 (December 1954)

With Foxhole Simon and Kirby entered into the war genre. This was new for them as the closest they had done before was the Boy Commandos which was more a kid gang title then a war one. Here Joe and Jack would add their own twist to make the title unique. The stories in Foxhole were written and illustrated by war veterans.

Police Trap #2
Police Trap #2 (September 1954)

Mainline comics would also include a crime comic, titled Police Trap. The special angle to this title was that all the stories would be centered on the police, not the criminal. This may have been a response to all the adverse attention that crime comics had received recently, including ones that S&K had launched (Headline and Justice Traps the Guilty). But it certainly resulted in stories that portrayed the police in a better light and the criminal in a worse one.

Mainline seemed to have a good lineup of titles. I would think that of all the Mainline titles, Bullseye would have the best chance to attract attention. It seems a perfect match for Kirby’s talents, allowing lots of action and humor. Although the western/hero combination may not have been unique, there does not seem to be much competition at that time. S&K have shown previously that they could do excellent crime stories. Here there was competition, but crime comics were receiving a lot of bad publicity. By centering the stories on the policemen, Police Trap could hope to escape some of this adverse attention. The other titles, In Love and Foxhole, were probably the weakest entries. Both had plenty of rival publications, in fact at this time there was an abundance of romance comics. Neither was sufficiently unique to be sure of attracting initial buyers. Still they were S&K productions and were done quite well. Given time they could develop a following.

Chapter 2, Problems in the Industry
Chapter 3, Unlikely Port in the Storm
Chapter 4, A Friend Provides a Helping Hand
Chapter 5, The Return to Romance
Chapter 6, A Friend’s Romance
Chapter 7, On His Own
Chapter 8, If At First You Don’t Succeed
Chapter 9, An Old Romance
Appendum 9, Mea Culpa
Chapter 10, A Fly in the Mix
Epilog

John Prentice, usual suspect #3

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Posted in 2006/05, 5 Studio, 6 Mainline, Artists, Assorted, In Love, Periods, Prentice, John, Prize, Prize, z Archive.

John Prentice was the last of the usual suspects (artists that worked frequently for the S&K studio for an extended period of time). John served in the Navy during the war, in fact he was at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attached. Afterwards he went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for a short time. John arrived in New York in 1947 and the GCD shows him doing work for in Airboy Comics and Gang Buster. The first work he did for the Simon & Kirby studio was Young Love #4 (August 1949). Once John started with S&K he was a frequent artist for their productions. The work he initially did for S&K was pretty good, but John progressed fairly rapidly while until he achieved his mature style which really was exceptional.

YL #4 Two Timer
Young Love #4 (August 1949).

Joe and Jack must have thought highly of John’s work because he was an important contributor to Bullseye #1. The Bullseye origin story was divided into three chapters (“The Boy”, “The Youth” and “The Man”). Jack did all of the first chapter and the splash pages for both of the other chapters, but Prentice penciled all the rest of the story for the last two chapters. Bullseye was part of the Mainline comics, Simon and Kirby’s attempt at self publishing. But while doing Mainline S&K continued producing comics for Prize (Black Magic and the romance titles) during that time. Presumably because of his work load, Jack stopped penciling for these Prize productions. Prentice seems to have taken up some of the work for the absent Kirby because his page output jumps from an average of about 12 pages a month to about 26 during the period from March to October, the last month for Mainline comics.

B #1 The Youth
Bullseye #1, “Bullseye, The Youth” (August 1954).

Like Bill Draut and Mort Meskin, John seemed to worked in all of the genre from the S&K shop. Romance genre were the most frequent stories produced by the studio and Prentice’s style was well suited for them. John was probably the most realistic artist to work for S&K. His men tend to have small eyes and long faces. John’s women are attractive, but are not what I would call glamorous, perhaps sophisticated would be a better description. For some reason Prentice never signed any of his work for Simon and Kirby. Attribution of this work to John is based on work done for the Rip Kirby strip (see below).

YL #45 I Like It Here
Young Love #45, “I Like It Here” (May 1953).

Simon and Kirby’s timing in starting their own comic publishing company, Mainline, was unfortunate because that was the period when anti-comic sediment swept the country fueled by Dr. Wertham and a Senate Investigation Committee. Many publishers felt the effects, but it was probably worst for new companies like Mainline. Mainline’s last comics were dated April 1955. John Prentice’s last work for S&K’s Prize publications was Young Love #69 February 1956. However Joe Simon did some editorial work for Harvey during this difficult period, and Prentice work there on romances until February 1957 (Hi-School Romance #60). If the GCD can be trusted, John returned to work for DC, mostly on their version of the horror genre.

Young Love #58
Young Love #58 (June 1954).

I would like to repeat a cover that I posted earlier, In Love #1. This is one of the few covers that Kirby shared pencil duties with an artist other then Simon. The foreground couple are clearly Jack’s, but the background men were done by John Prentice. Ignoring covers with unrelated inserts, there was only one other cover that Jack shared with another penciler other then Joe during the S&K years. If you don’t know which cover I am talking about, don’t worry I’ll post it shortly.

In Love #1
In Love #1 (September 1954)

On September 6, 1956 Alex Raymond, the artist for the syndication strip Rip Kirby, died. Two months later Prentice took over this popular newspaper comic strip. John would do Rip Kirby until he in turned passed away in 1985. I’ve always heard how much work was involved in producing a comic strip for syndication. But the GCD continues to list comic book work by Prentice from 1957 on into the early 70’s.


Rip Kirby (5/6/58).

Well now I’ve managed to give a brief review on each of the usual suspects. But work by Draut, Meskin and Prentice is so common in S&K productions I am sure to be blogging on them from time to time. Although the usual suspects did a lot of work for the studio, there were other artists who would work for Joe and Jack for shorter periods of time. Many of these artists were quite talented, some later on would achieve fame. I’ll post on some of the other artists some other time.

Mort Meskin, the usual suspect #2

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Posted in 2006/04, 4 DC (early), 5 Studio, 6 Mainline, Artists, Meskin, Mort, Periods, Prize, Prize, z Archive.

I gather that Mort Meskin is most famous for the work he did during the war. I’ve seen some of his Golden Lad covers and they are quite good. Because my main interest is in Simon and Kirby, I don’t have access to very much of the early Meskin material. However Mort worked at National Comics at the same time as Simon & Kirby, and fortunately some of the Adventure Comics have stories by Meskin. So I have some examples, including the splash page below (“Hitch A Wagon To The Stars”) from Adventure #82 with inking by George Roussos. Even at this time Mort had developed a reputation for being a rapid and prolific comic book artist. There is a story about Jack Kirby and Mort Meskin working side by side at DC each working on a rush job. And how their efforts resulting in a crowd gathering to watch both of them. By that time Jack was already well known, but many now began to take note of Mort’s talent.

Adventure #82 Starman
Adventure #82 (January 1943) Starman by Mort Meskin and George Roussos

Mort Meskin’s first contributions for a S&K production were some stories done with Jerry Robinson in Young Romance #6 (see below) and Justice Traps The Guilty #5 both July 1948. It appears to me that most of the penciling was done by Jerry while Mort’s contribution was largely inking.

YR #6 Inferior Male

Over a year later Meskin appears without Robinson as the penciler in Young Romance #16 and Real West Romances #5 both from December 1949. Once started Meskin would be frequently used not only for romance (Young Romance, Young Love, Young Brides and In Love), but also in crime (Headline, Justice Traps the Guilty and Police Trap) and horror (Black Magic).

Young Love #66

As Joe Simon tells the story in “The Comic Book Makers” initially when Mort was supplied with scripts he was unable to do the work. Joe then suggested that Mort should work in the S&K studio. Even in this environment Mort seemed to suffer from “artist’s block”. Then Joe hit on the idea of penciling some random marks on Mort’s page. No longer faced with a blank page, Mort was back to being a rapid penciler. As Joe tells the story, from then on every mourning it was someone’s responsibility to add those first random markings to Mort’s blank art boards. Mort was very prolific and did not seem to work exclusively for the S&K studio. During the period from January 1951 to January 1953 (cover dates) Mort actually produced more pages of art for the S&K studio then Jack Kirby did. Now this is not a completely fair comparison since Jack had more responsibility in the studio then just penciling. On the other hand the inking of Kirby pencils seemed to have been done by more then one hand, while as far as I can tell Meskin did all the inking for his own art at this time. Joe Simon once said about Mort’s work at the Simon & Kirby studio “He was probably the fastest, most inspired artist in the room, and certainly one of the most dependable.” Remember Jack was in that studio also, so this is no small praise.

Simon & Kirby Studio

That’s Mort “passing gas” in the center, along with Jack looking like he is about to hurl himself at the photographer. Joe looks amused by it all in the front. Jim Infantino and Ben Oda (letterer extraordinaire) are on the right but I have forgotten who that is on the left. I am not sure of the exact date for this photo, but Jim Infantino has a signed piece of work (“Let’s Talk Fashion”) in Young Romance #39 (cover date November 1951). Jim only worked for S&K for a relatively short time, so 1951 or 1952 is a good guess for the date of the photograph.

SWYD #1 The Dreaming Tower

Mort Meskin does not seem to get much attention nowadays. Even among the S&K artists he can easily be overlooked. He doesn’t have Kirby’s expressive and powerful drawing. Nor are his women as beautiful as those done by Bill Draut. Finally his comic art is not as realistic as John Prentice’s (usual suspect #3 who I will post on later). I admit when I first encountered Mort Meskin’s work I was not particularly impressed. But over time I began to realize that his strength was in his story telling. Often it is very unobtrusive. As you read Meskin’s work you may not even realize how he is manipulating what he is presenting. But if you have any doubts about how effectively he does it, take a look at the at the above page from “The Dreaming Tower” in Strange World of Your Dreams #1. The scenes he presents are rather ordinary. But the way he depicts them and his use of black gives the page an eerie effect that is just what the story needs. Kirby is one of the best story tellers, but he has never done anything like this. I am not saying that Mort was a better story teller then Jack. Just that each had their own unique approach.

By the way according to Joe, Strange World of Your Dreams owed its creation to Mort Meskin. In fact Mort is listed as an Associate Editor for the series. No other comic produced by Simon and Kirby have anyone other then Joe and Jack listed as an editor.

Sometime after the failure of S&K’s Mainline (about January 1955), the S&K studio disbanded. But I am still not sure if that happened at the same time as Mainline’s failure or if the studio lasted longer. Certainly by 1957 there was no studio since in that year Jack was doing work for DC without Joe. The last work Mort did for S&K was in Young Love #68 (cover date December 1955). Since Mort had been working in the S&K bullpen, perhaps about September 1955 marks the end of the studio also.

Mort Meskin has been nominated for the Eisner Hall of Fame this year. Although four artist will win that honor, there are some other impressive artists that were nominated (such as Jim Steranko). Fans don’t seem to talk about Meskin very much, so I despair that Mort will not receive enough votes. But if anyone deserves to belong in any comic Hall of Fame it sure would be Mort Meskin. There is an wonderful web site on him by his sons with an excellent biography. I really advise a careful visit. In particular be sure to read “The Second Comic Career of Mort Meskin” by Dylan Williams which is in the Comics section.

Bill Draut (usual suspect #1)

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Posted in 2006/04, 5 Studio, 6 Mainline, Artists, Draut, Bill, Harvey, In Love, Periods, Prize, z Archive.

In previous posts I mention three artists that did a lot of work for the S&K studio over a long period of time. Because of the frequent appearance in S&K productions, I often refer to them as the usual suspects. In this post I would like to write about Bill Draut, the first of the usual suspects to work for the studio. During the war Joe Simon served in the Coast Guard. Joe spent a good part of this service in Washington working as a Coast Guard artist. One of the other artist who worked with Simon was friends with Bill Draut, then in the marines. When Joe got to know Draut he told him that after the war Bill should look him up in New York. When Joe rejoined Jack Kirby after the war, they made a deal with Harvey to produce Stuntman and Boy Explorers. Bill Draut joined in this effort and his first comic book work appeared in Stuntman #1. As part of their work with Harvey, Simon and Kirby would create comic series to be done by other artists. For Bill they developed The Furnished Room, Calamity Jane, and The Demon. Unfortunately Stuntman and Boy Explorers got caught in a comic glut, and were discontinued after a very few issues. But Draut’s contribution, the Furnished Room and Calamity Jane, would reappear in other Harvey comics about a year later. They probably represent unused material from the cancelled comics.

The Furnished Room

The Furnished Room was the first to be published appearing in Stuntman #1 in April 1946 (all dates for comics are cover dates). As was pointed out by Stan Taylor, this series was a S&K’s take on the popular syndication strip Mary Worth. The Furnished Room was essentially a soap opera with an elderly dowdy lady (this series version of Mary Worth). This dowdy lady would generally play a more peripheral part in the stories. The real stories were about the people who rented rooms from her. Because of the lack of superheroes, the Furnished Room may have been a little out of place in Stuntman but the series was really well done. The Furnished Room had a short run, all done by Bill Draut:

Stuntman #1 (April 1946) “The Furnished Room”

Stundman #2 (June 1946) “Triangular Troubles”

Green Hornet #37 |(January 1948) “The Smiling Salesman”

Green Hornet #38 (March 1948) “The Furnished Room” (reprint)

Calamity Jane

For Boys Explorer S&K created Calamity Jane which Draut would draw. This series were about a hardboiled detective who happened to be a female. The source for this idea seems to have been what is now called film noire. But in those movies the detective was a man, and women just played supporting rolls. The stories are presented as told by Calamity to the artist Draut. This was another good series which unfortunately did not last long, only three stories. But there is a story by Draut in Justice Traps the Guilty #3 that appears to be a reworked Calamity Jane. The detective was now named Ruth Lang, but a supporting character (the cabbie called Hack) remained unchanged. I previously posted on editorial changes Joe Simon did on one of the Calamity Jane stories.

Boy Explorers #1 (May 1946) “The Case Of The Hapless Hackie”

Green Hornet #35 (August 1947) “The Fat Tuesday”

Green Hornet #36 (November 1947) “The Man Who Met Himself”

Justice Traps The Guilty #3 (March 1948) “My Strangest Crime Case”

The Demon

The Demon was first published in Black Cat #4 (February 1947). The full title of the series is “His Honor the Demon”. The Demon has a rather unusual origin in that the hero is a judge frustrated because the law sometimes is helpless in finding and punishing the guilty. After one such case of a murdered man, he decides to investigate on his own. At one point he wears the same costume that the murdered victim was wearing at a party when he got killed. The judge did this in an attempt flush out the murderer. After a successful conclusion to this case, the judge decides to continue his extra-legal efforts using the same costume of a red demon. Again Bill was the only artist to work on this short run series.

Black Cat #4 (February 1947) “Double Trouble”

Black Cat #5 (April 1947) “The Man Who Didn’t Know His Own Strength”

Black Cat #6 (July 1947) “The Midnight Killer” (origin story)

Black Cat #7 (August 1947) “Too Cold For Crime”

In Love #4

After those failed series, Bill Draut continued to work for the Simon & Kirby studio. Although he did provide some crime (Headline and Justice Traps The Guilty) and horror (Black Magic) work, most of the stories he did was for romance comics (Young Romance, Young Love, Young Brides and In Love). I previously posted on an unpublished Artist and Model cover that he did. His style seems very conducive to romance work. His women have beautiful eyes with simple but effective eyebrows. But Bill’s simple eyebrows seem more awkward on his men. Strong action did not seem to be Draut’s forte, but that was not an issue for the love stories. He was gifted enough of an artist and observant enough of the S&K style, that one of the covers he did (Young Brides #21) has been attributed to Jack by the Kirby Checklist.

Young Brides #21

Joe Simon has always maintained that he and Jack encouraged their artists to sign their work. Bill Draut does seem to have taken advantage of that and often added his signature to his earlier work. Later his stopped signing his material but his style is still easily recognizable. Draut does not seem as productive as the other usual suspects (Mort Meskin and John Prentice). As far as I know during his association with the S&K studio, he worked for them exclusively. When the studio disbanded in the mid 50’s Jack and Joe continued as editors for Young Romance with Kirby penciling a story in most issues. But for whatever reason, Bill Draut did not do any work for those Young Romance comics. I am not sure what Bill did in the late 50’s but he seems to have stayed in comics. When Joe Simon produced some hero comics for Harvey in the mid 60’s, Bill Draut would pencil some stories. I also know he did some work for DC at that time. His work seemed delegated to lesser profile series and I don’t think his style was very popular in the 60’s.

Artist and Model

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Posted in 2006/03, 6 Mainline, 7 Freelance, Featured Work, In Love, Periods, Prize, Topic, z Archive.

The Jack Kirby Comics Weblog has posted a real nice My Own Romance and made the comment

I think there was some rule that said Kirby had to do at least one artist/model themed romance cover for every publisher he did romance comics for

So I checked and I am sad to say Jack did no artist/model theme cover for Harvey. I have already posted the first issue of Young Romance for Prize which does have that theme. Simon and Kirby used the theme again for Young Love #72 also published by Prize

Young Love #72

But for a short time Joe and Jack had their own publishing company Mainline with a romance title In Love. The third issue of In Love had, surprise, surprise, an artist/model theme cover. In fact the contents was a story about a comic book artist and model. I ask Joe about it once and he commented that they always like that theme. Apparently they liked the idea so much that made a proposal for a comic book or oneshot called “Artist and Model”. Two covers were made for that proposal, one by Kirby and the other by Bill Draut. Jack’s cover was used for the In Love #3 but Draut’s was never published.

Artists and Models

Artists and Models

Now For A Not So Little Romance

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Posted in 2006/03, 5 Studio, 6 Mainline, 7 Freelance, Anthologies, Periods, Prize, Prize, Topic, z Archive.

I blogged about Simon & Kirby acting as editors, but now I want to discuss what comics they actually produced. But I will be leaving aside the hero theme comics for which S&K are famous. Comics like Fighting American, Boys’ Ranch, and Bullseye. These were classics but their short runs show that they were commercial failures. Simon and Kirby had their greatest success in comic anthologies. Comics like the long running Young Romance Comics.

Young Romance #1

I once asked Joe about what sort of deal he had with Young Romance, the comic that started a whole new, and very profitable genre. He said that S&K paid all the costs of producing and packaging the art. They received nothing in advance from the publisher. The money would only start coming in when 40% of the printed comic was shipped to the distributor. After the shipping advance they would start sharing the profits. Joe remarked that contrary to his reputation as a savvy business man, it really wasn’t that a great deal. Most of the financial risk was on S&K, and if Young Romance wasn’t as widely successful as it was, they would have lost a bundle.

Young Romance #1 has a cover date of September 1947 and it had a very long run published first by Prize (124 issues) then by National. Like many others, S&K copied their own success and produced Young Love also published by Prize (94 issues) and National. But the romance genre continued to be profitable so S&K later produced Young Brides, that title was not so long running (30 issues) and was only published by Prize. But since YR and YL were so long running, clearly S&K did not produce them all. So which ones did they do? Well they pretty much told us about some of them. Starting with YR #13 (September 1949) the lead story of the comic would be labeled as a “Simon and Kirby Production”. It didn’t matter who the artist was and the label would only show up on the lead story. Once started, the S&K label would appear on pretty much every YR, YL and YB they produced. With only a few exceptions until about around August 1954 (YR #73, YL #61 and YB #16). The S&K label did not reappear until May of 1955. Even then it was used sporadically (YR #78, #80, YL #64 and YB #22, #24 and #25). The last appearance of the label was in December 1955 (YR #80).

So why the gap in use of the S&K label? Well one thing that happened at the beginning of the gap is that S&K started Mainline and became publishers of their own comics. Bullseye #1 first appeared with a cover date of August 1954, the same date the S&K last appears. Mainline was a commercial failure and its last comics was cover dated April 1955. The S&K label reappears in the romance comics in May 1955. One reasonable explanation would be that while Mainline was in operation S&K were not producing the Prize romances. Perhaps there was friction because Prize now viewed S&K as competition, particularly since Mainline had there own romance line, In Love.

As I said it is reasonable to say that between August 1954 and May 1955 (cover dates) that S&K were not producing Prize’s romance comics. It may be reasonable, but I don’t believe it is true. The first reasons is what I refer to as the usual suspects. S&K studio employed a number of artists on a freelance basis. But Bill Draut, Mort Meskin and John Prentice were regulars both in the length of time and amount of art. We may not be able to follow the money, but we can follow the artists. We have to be a little cautious since they did not work exclusively for S&K. But any comic where the usual suspects are prominent was likely to have been produced by Simon & Kirby. And the usual suspects were prominent during the gap. In fact they did most of the covers.

Another reason to believe S&K continued producing the Prize romances is a story Martin Thall tells. The comic company of Mike Esposito and Ross Andru also met their demise during the comic crisis of this period. According to Thall, they sold unused romance artwork to S&K (at a bargain price) and delivering it to Jack Kirby’s house. Three stories penciled by Andru appear in the Prize romances of November and December 1954 (YB #19, YL #63 and YR #75). Andru also did some work for S&K in 1952 but that was too early to be what Martin is talking about. But the 1954 stories fit the timeline perfectly. And this is right in the middle of the S&K label gap.

But if S&K produced these romance comics through the 1954 and 1955, when did they stop? Well if we follow the usual suspects we find them prominent until December 1955. Then something surprising happens, Kirby is all over the place. From YR #80 until YR #86 (December 1956) Jack did pretty much the entire issues for all the Prize romances. This includes YL #69 to #73 as well as YB #26 to #30. Jack did 74 stories and covers over this period. Joe seemed to have been part of this because the cover to YR #83 appears to have both their hands involved. Further the cover to YB #30 depicts a couple with twin babies, Joe had twin girls. Finally Joe still has the original art to YL #71. In these issues John Prentice has only one story (YL #69), Bill Draut 3 (#71 and two in #73) and other artists provided only three more stories (Ann Brewster and Ted Galindo both in YL #70 and an unidentified artist in YR #81).

Young Romance #80

Why was Kirby so prominent in these particular romance comics? Well perhaps one reason is after the failure of Mainline, S&K had financial problems and perhaps could not afford to continue to pay their freelancers. In fact they may have had trouble finding work for themselves. YR and YL were monthly titles. But after the December 1954 issues the next YR would have a cover date of April 1955 and become a bimonthly. YL would not be published again until 1960. Although this is all after the Kirby romance run, it may reflect that the Prize romance comics had become less profitable. Remember Joe and Jack shared in the profits but had to pay the expenses to produce the art.

Starting in 1957, Jack’s pencils would appear in most issues of YR until #103 (December 1959). But the usual suspects would not. There is one other piece of evidence that can help. At one point comics started to include a yearly statement. The statement included the name of the editors. I’ve heard that this statement was not always reliable. But that was for editors that worked directly for the publisher. I think that in the cases of S&K this statement may be more trustworthy. The earliest statement is the February 1950 issue of YL where Joe and Jack are listed as editors. The last time they are so listed is the April 1959 issue of YR. Starting with the June 1960 issue of YR only Joe Simon is listed as editor. The August issue of the resumed YL also list only Joe as editor. My information may be incomplete, but the last time I have a listing for editor as Joe is the April 1963 YL. But in a few months National would take over publication of YR and YL and I suspect they would use their own editors.

So it would appear that Jack’s involvement in the Prize romances ended in early in 1959. Even that is surprising since in 1957 he started to work for other publishers like National and Atlas. Although Jack may have taken S&K ideas to these publishers (such as Challengers of the Unknown), nothing indicates that Joe did any work for them. To me this means that by 1957 there was no Simon & Kirby studio. Whatever working relationship Jack and Joe had, it was a very different one then they had during most of their partership.

Fighting American Checklist

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Posted in 2009/07, 6 Mainline, Artists, Comic Checklists, Fighting American, Fighting American, Kirby, Jack, Periods, Prentice, John and tagged , , 
Last update: 6/7/2020

Codes:
    r:  = reprint
    s:  = script
    l:  = layout
    p:  = pencils
    i:  = inks
  name  = signed
 <name> = signed with an alias
 {name} = signed as Simon & Kirby
 [name] = unsigned attribution

Fighting American (Prize)
   #1 April 1954
       (cover) 1 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Kirby]
       "Break The Spy-Ring" 10 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Kirby] Lt:[Oda]
       "Reuel Gridley" 1 pg  (text)
       "Baby Buzz Bombs" 6 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Kirby] Lt:[Oda]
       "Abracadabra" 1 pg  
       "Eagle Trap" 1 pg  (text)
       "Homer" 1 pg  
       "Duel To The Finish Line" 7 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Kirby] Lt:[Oda]
   #2 June 1954
       (cover) 1 pg P:{Kirby} I:[Kirby]
       "The League Of The Handsome Devils" 9 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Kirby] Lt:[Oda]
       "Gerard" 1 pg  
       "The Champion" 1 pg  (text)
       "Meet Doubleheader" 7 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Kirby] Lt:[Oda]
       "A Blue Note" 1 pg  (text)
       "Gerard" 1 pg  
       "City of Ghouls" 7 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Kirby & Meskin] Lt:[Oda]
   #3 August 1954  
       (cover) 1 pg P:{Kirby}  
       "The Man Who Sold Out Liberty" 6 pg P:[Kirby]  Lt:[Oda]
       "Gerard" 1 pg  
       "Stranger From Paradise" 2 pg P:[Kirby]  Lt:[Oda]
       "Hunted" 1 pg  (text)
       "Poison Ivan" 8 pg P:[Kirby]  Lt:[Oda]
       "Fast Buck" 1 pg  (text)
       "Gerard" 1 pg  
       "Z-Food" 7 pg P:[Kirby]  Lt:[Oda]
   #4 October 1954  
       (cover) 1 pg P:[Kirby]  
       "Tokyo Runaround" 8 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Kirby & Meskin?] Lt:[Oda]
       "I Am Ignorov" 1 pg P:Tomey  
       "Poor Richard" 1 pg P:Malm  
       "Homecoming: Year 3000" 9 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Kirby] Lt:[Oda]
       "Poor Richard" 1 pg P:Malm  
       "Mission Accomplished" 2 pg  (text)
       "Operation Wolf" 5 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Kirby] Lt:[Oda]
   #5 December 1954  
       (cover) 1 pg P:[Kirby]  
       "Jiseppi, The Jungle Boy" 8 pg P:[Kirby]  Lt:[Oda]
       "The Year Bender" 8 pg P:[Kirby]  Lt:[Oda?]
       "Invisible Irving" 6 pg P:[Kirby]  Lt:[Ferguson?]
   #6 February 1955  
       (cover) 1 pg P:[Kirby]  
       "Deadly Doolittle" 8 pg P:[Simon]  Lt:[Ferguson?]
       "The Making Of Fighting American" 3 pg P:[Kirby]  
       "Speedboy" 1 pg P:[Kirby]  
       "Super Khakalovitch" 10 pg P:[Kirby & Prentice]  Lt:[Ferguson?]
   #7 April 1955  
       (cover) 1 pg P:[Kirby]  
       "Sneak Of Araby" 8 pg P:[Kirby & ?]  Lt:[Ferguson?]
       "Three Coins In The Pushcart" 7 pg P:[Prentice] I:[Prentice] Lt:[Ferguson?]
       "Space-Face" 5 pg P:[Kirby] I:[Meskin] Lt:[Ferguson?]

Fighting American (Harvey)  
   #1 October 1966  
       (cover) 1 pg P:{Kirby}
       "Round Robin" 5 pg P:[Kirby]  Lt:[Ferguson?]
       "Roman Scoundrels" 8 pg P:[Kirby]  Lt:[Ferguson?]
       "Yafata's Moustache" 7 pg P:[Kirby]  Lt:[Ferguson?]