A weird 'n wild Atlas double header to wrap-up November 2012-- Morris Weiss illustrates the first story, and the great Bill Everett helms the second-- Russ Heath on cover duty!
A beautiful piece of Everett work here and a fantastic robot design. I'm not going to guess Stan or not in case I get called on it, I've learned my lesson :)
The one thing I never liked about Atlas was the restricted cover space. That said, this is a wonderful pre-code cover. The unnecessary skull (with eyes!) and knife, breasts front and center (the monster is basically grabbing around and looking at them), and the wild eyed stare from the guy. A haunted house (on a cliff!) in the background, and they seem to be in the neighboring haunted house!
Another colorest who should be fired, though. Check out the hand/hair mess.
I would hasten to state that "Freddy's Friend" is indeed indicative of the hand of Stan Lee. It reads and especially, ends, like so many of the five-pagers of the 1959-1963 era of Marvel. Special nokhes to Everett for this one!
The Murder Mirror was really interesting because Morris Weiss has a hole right in the middle of his otherwise brilliant ability. He draws clothes and faces with verve and crosshatches very well (and uses blacked-in shadows and hatching together with a grace that shouldn't be possible). Even his characters fail to "overact" in that hammy way a lot of otherwise strong portrait artists tended to rely on in the fifties. He can even put together a compelling panel composition. But he can't seem to stage his characters in objective space at all, and his static backgrounds are mostly awful. Look at page two. The top and bottom are nearly sublime--excellent characterization and storytelling--but that middle row is just useless. Visually, everything works out a lot better when he crowds these inert elements out of the frames with more dynamic stuff, like he does on the excellent page five.
(The colorist did good work on this story too, I think.)
This Heath cover is on ehe redrawn as a handcolored print. He gave me one when I visited him a couple of years ago. An amazing recreation down to the sie bar illustratation, whch he confessed, "didn'thave anything to do with the insides, I just made something up from the titles".
15 comments:
I dig the polka dot paint!
A beautiful piece of Everett work here and a fantastic robot design. I'm not going to guess Stan or not in case I get called on it, I've learned my lesson :)
The one thing I never liked about Atlas was the restricted cover space. That said, this is a wonderful pre-code cover. The unnecessary skull (with eyes!) and knife, breasts front and center (the monster is basically grabbing around and looking at them), and the wild eyed stare from the guy. A haunted house (on a cliff!) in the background, and they seem to be in the neighboring haunted house!
Another colorest who should be fired, though. Check out the hand/hair mess.
The Murder Mirror may have been inspired by The Student of Prague.
real nice--the quality seems to go way up wuth the marvel/Atlas books
I would hasten to state that "Freddy's Friend" is indeed indicative of the hand of Stan Lee. It reads and especially, ends, like so many of the five-pagers of the 1959-1963 era of Marvel.
Special nokhes to Everett for this one!
Good thing to know, Mestiere, always keep fully clothed when dealing with robots or you might end up with the ultimate hard body look.
Looks like Freddy gambled on being a robot but lost his shirt on the bet.
Considering Freddie's wife, looking fine in that little halter top, I can understand Tabor's desperate need to be human in that fine second story.
I just love Bill Everett. It's a very overused word, but his stuff is so "lush." Also, his panel composition just entrances.
The Murder Mirror was really interesting because Morris Weiss has a hole right in the middle of his otherwise brilliant ability. He draws clothes and faces with verve and crosshatches very well (and uses blacked-in shadows and hatching together with a grace that shouldn't be possible). Even his characters fail to "overact" in that hammy way a lot of otherwise strong portrait artists tended to rely on in the fifties. He can even put together a compelling panel composition. But he can't seem to stage his characters in objective space at all, and his static backgrounds are mostly awful. Look at page two. The top and bottom are nearly sublime--excellent characterization and storytelling--but that middle row is just useless. Visually, everything works out a lot better when he crowds these inert elements out of the frames with more dynamic stuff, like he does on the excellent page five.
(The colorist did good work on this story too, I think.)
This Heath cover is on ehe redrawn as a handcolored print. He gave me one when I visited him a couple of years ago. An amazing recreation down to the sie bar illustratation, whch he confessed, "didn'thave anything to do with the insides, I just made something up from the titles".
This really makes me miss the days of horror comics. The stuff now leaves me cold for the most part.
I had planned on killing myself tonight but I guess I'll just read comics and kill myself some other time.
We might stick with the Atlas tales for a few more posts... if if anyone wants to make a month of it let me know, it's all good to me.
From now on I'm starting all conversations with "Pipe the geezer, Morgan!"
Very Intresting and awesome
keep it up..
--------
www.insecuregeek.blogspot.com
Post a Comment