The Art of Joe Simon, Appendix 7, The Spirit #12

The Spirit #12 (1963) by Joe Simon Super Comics published reprints of comic stories. Producers of comics that had fallen on hard times could sell the plates to Isreal Waldman at what I am sure was a low price. In the “The Comic Book Makers” Joe Simon describes selling Mainline titles to Waldman and the […]

The Art of Joe Simon, Appendix 6, Amazing Man #10

Amazing Man #10 (March 1940) Ranch Dude by Joe Simon In his book, “The Comic Book Makers”, Joe describes being assigned his first comic book work. It was a seven page western. When Joe first started in the industry he worked on a variety of genre; science fiction, super heroes, crime and jungles stories. But […]

The Art of Joe Simon, Appendix 5, Harvey Hits #12

Harvey Hits #12 (August 1958) by Joe Simon The S&K publishing attempt, Mainline Comics, had failed. The last titles from this company were published by Charlton but that ended in September 1955 (cover date). Further Simon and Kirby productions would follow but without much success. By 1957 Jack Kirby was doing freelance work for DC […]

The Art of Joe Simon, Appendix 4, Daring Adventure #16

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 […]

The Art of Joe Simon, Appendix 3, Daring Mystery Comics #3

Daring Mystery #3 (April 1940) Trojak by Joe Simon Joe Simon created the Trojak feature in Daring Mystery #2 (February 1940) under the alias of Gregory Sykes. He continued to work on Trojak in Daring Mystery #3 (April 1940) but this time signing with his real name. Many of Joe’s mannerisms show up in this […]

The Art of Joe Simon, Appendix 2, Daring Adventures #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 […]

The Art of Joe Simon, Appendix 1, Champ #22 Confirmed

Champ #22 (September 1942) by Joe Simon (signed Glaven) When I last wrote about the cover to Champ #22 (Art by Joe Simon, Chapter 7, Glaven) all I had was a very low resolution scan from GCD. At that time I attributed it to Joe Simon because I suspected that the signature would be the […]

The Art of Joe Simon, Chapter 12, Covering the Fly

When I “completed” my recent serial post “The Art of Joe Simon” Stan Taylor pointed out that I had left out Joe’s work on the Archie series “The Adventures of the Fly”. What a slipup! I have renumbered the chapters so that this one gets in the proper sequence. The stories are obviously the work […]

Simon and Kirby Cover Art for Early Harvey Comics

Al Harvey must have been a great salesman. With the failure of his concept of pocket-sized comic books you would have thought that would have been the end of Harvey’s publishing career. Instead not only did Speed Comics return in April as a regular size comic, Harvey took over publishing Champ Comics in May, and […]

Speaking of Art, Secondary Artists

Joe Simon had accumulated a rather large collection of art. Not surprisingly many were works that he created over his long career starting when he was a staff artist for a newspaper. Also as might be expected there are a fair number of works drawn by Joe’s long time collaborator, Jack Kirby. However that does […]