New Pop Culture Paper Goodies for Perusal and Purchase on NenoWorld

 

Click here: Pop Culture Paper Ephemera (nenoworld.com)

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Magazines I've Read Recently, March 25, 2020

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Recently Read: Golden Age Captain America Vol. 1

It's easy to see why Captain America was such a hit for Timely Comics in 1941. Many previous action comics had portrayed Hitler and Nazi Germany under safe pseudonyms. Here was a brash, explosive book which socked Hitler on the jaw on the cover of the very first issue! Don't read these stories for characterization; unlike Bill Everett's concurrent Sub-Mariner stories, there was none. Do read it for Jack Kirby's masterful, ballet-like and violent action sequences, in which he literally wrote the book on fight scenes in superhero comic books for decades to come (and on into the future). I was surprised to see the crossover influence of the shudder pulp magazines (like Timely publisher Martin Goodman's Uncanny Tales and Uncanny Stories pulps), with lots of creepy monsters and dungeons featured. Issue No. 4's "Horror Hospital" is a good example, with a Peter Lorre-like mad scientist who keeps a one-eyed, hunchbacked patient on a leash.

My favorite story in the volume was the first appearance of Hurricane. It's all Kirby (script, pencils and inks). Hurricane's an intriguing character and Kirby uses scenes and characters - a masquerade party and Pluto, ruler of the underworld - that he'll revisit decades later in series like Machine Man and Thor. Hurricane is a great character in his own right, but in 1998 was retconned (by Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras?) as an identity of the Eternal Makkari. What a gyp! Marvel, after Kirby's death, merged two of his self-created characters into one out of a misguided attempt to interlock every tiny, dark corner of the Marvel Universe into a cohesive whole.

Captain America co-creator Joe Simon writes an afterward in the paperback edition in which he tells how he, Kirby and Martin Goodman visited the offices of John Goldwater to hash out Cap's visual similarity to MLJ Comic's The Shield. It turns out Goodman and Goldwater had a shared history; they had both worked at one time for magazine publisher Hugo Gernsback!

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Recently Read: Naruto, Vol. 3

Naruto Vol. 3, the strongest of the series so far, first gives us some quiet scenes explaining the back story of the village of Konohagakure (and the evil of antagonist Gato). It then culminates in a thrilling 100-page battle sequence which seems far from over at the end of the book. This isn't your dad's Hulk vs. Thor sort of fight; it's a strategic, character and ability-revealing competition with amazing graphics and pacing.

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Comics I've Read Recently, November 23, 2017

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New Adventure Time Variant Cover

Here's an Adventure Time cover I penciled, inked and colored, an homage to the classic Jack Kirby Thor cover below. I'm eager to submit the cover to Kaboom, but they are not taking submissions and a link on their site to a gallery where freelancers can post examples of their work is down. Does anyone know if the Kaboom gallery is permanently down?

In any event, here's a link to a larger, better quality version of the cover: http://www.nenoworld.com/Adventure_Time.html

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A Marvel Tribute Poster

Penciled by my friend Sterling Clark. I inked and colored it. Enjoy!

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Petra Goldberg, Unsung Colorist

I love the colors Petra Goldberg used in these panels from Machine Man #5; colors so vivid they look good even through Marvel's then-crappy printing on low-quality paper, using plastic printing plates.

Petra Goldberg was a pseudonym for Petra Scotese, whose work I also remember enjoying on Thor and other mid-'70s Marvel comics.

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