Todd Klein's Blog, page 161

And Then I Read: CAVE CARSON #10

Image © DC Entertainment.

I keep thinking I’m going to drop this title, and then I read another. I liked this one more than the last few.

Cave and friends are on another world, one where The Whisperer they unleashed has conquered the populace and moved on. There’s a forest that seems out to capture them, giant dead inhabitants, and more strangeness, like the spirit of Cave’s dead wife that only he can see. Then a new character arrives, Cave Carson Junior! Even Cave is puzzled by him, son of another Cave on another version of Earth, apparently, and one where The Whisperer is now attacking. Cave Junior has been sent to retrieve an item that will help them against the evil entity. He brings our Cave and gang home with him, where this world’s Magnus and his Metal Men are waiting to greet them…but not fondly.

While the story is still confusing at times, and not helped there by the art, the character moments saved it for me, and the new direction seems interesting. If only the entire book were as cool as the variant cover above by Benjamin Dewey.

Mildly recommended.

And Then I Read: BUG! #1

Image © DC Entertainment.

What an interesting mix this is: Kirby Fourth World characters including his version of Sandman and Bug himself, a few regular DC characters in cameo, and the oddly dreamlike atmosphere of Gerard Way’s Young Animal imprint, all filtered through the minds and talents of the Allred family. Writer Lee Allred is the brother of artist Mike Allred, with colorist Laura Allred rounding out the family group. Somehow Nate Piekos of Blambot snuck in there as letterer, and does an equally super job.

I don’t recall the adventures of the original Bug by Kirby, but we are quickly caught up on that in the first few pages: a rebel spirit from Apokolips (like Mister Miracle), Bug found his way to Earth hoping for freedom and respect, but has not found much of either yet. In this series he wakes from a deathlike state in a cocoon inside a spooky house, and interacts with a silent ghost girl and some monsters before meeting his old enemy General Electric who is, of course, bent on destroying the world.

Fun stuff, recommended.

Pulled From My Files #63: Four Marvel Logos

This and all images © Marvel.

Here are what materials I have on four Marvel logos, three from 1994, one from 1990. Above, my revised first sketch for Annex. It’s hard to think of a more boring name for a superhero, but I did what I could with it. My note says I’ll make the spacing more consistent.

Sketch #2 is very square, but still readable. I like the first one better.

My finished logo, probably inked on Denril vellum, follows 1A exactly except evening things up, as suggested.

Here it is in print, looking more dynamic than anyone might expect for such a dull name!

Next up is Bishop, and I only have this one sketch, though the note says there were two originally. Marvel was flooding the market with titles in 1994, and I was getting lots of logo work from them. So much, that many of them tend to look rather similar. I still find this one appealing, though.

The finished logo is exactly the same as the sketch, just done more precisely.

In print, and looking pretty good. Editor Suzanne Gaffney had a penchant for stretching my logos vertically, but she mercifully skipped that this time. Also my cover lettering on this one.

Here’s the third, Blackwulf, using the very sharp and dangerous approach that Marvel was fond of at the time. I like the style here, and the overlap of the L on the A is a bit daring. Note all the arrows which addressed changes the editor asked for on this revised sketch. As usual, it was done in markers over pencils.

Again, the finished logo is exactly like the sketch. Once I had approval, I would simply put the vellum over the sketch and ink the design.

Looks good to me in print, and they even managed to avoid covering any of the logo.

This logo sketch from 1990 is unusual in that it’s a tight pencil sketch, not inked. It’s marked #5, but I don’t have the others. Possibly I didn’t ink it in case they wanted any small changes. I don’t have a photocopy of the finished logo.

The printed book shows the sketch was copied exactly for the final inked design. I like the teeth on the C, and the wing on the B.

That’s all I have on these, and this wraps up all the hand-drawn logo sketches I have in my A and B folder. More to come.

The First Annual Letterer Appreciation Day!

I’m not sure whose idea Letterer Appreciation Day was, but I first heard of it from letterer Pat Patrick Brosseau and letterer/font creator Nate Piekos. Of course I heartily approve, especially since the date honors the birthday of my late inspiration, role model and friend, Gaspar Saladino, seen here on our last meeting in 2014. Below are links to previous articles I’ve written about his work, in some cases just the first of multiple parts.

Gaspar Saladino 1927-2016

Celebrating Gaspar Saladino

Gaspar Saladino’s First Lettering for DC Comics part 1

NYCC 2014 with Gaspar Saladino and friends

NEW Lettering from Gaspar Saladino!

NEW Gaspar Saladino logo for JOE FRANKENSTEIN!

Toth, Saladino, Schwartz

The DC Comics Offices 1930s-1950s Part 4

 

Pulled From My Files #62: BIZARRO LOGO

Images © DC Entertainment.

In 2015 I was asked by Ken Lopez at DC to design a logo for a new Bizarro series. Ken suggested it might look like the Superman logo, but flipped left to right, something like the one above. I thought that was a fun idea, and was happy to accept.

Putting that flipped Superman logo on my light box, I used it as a template to create “IZARRO,” and since the initial B still needed to be larger for the word to read well, I then worked that out from the proportions of the original S. This was pretty wacky, but I had another idea. What if we made the O a cube, just as the Bizarro world is a cube rather than a sphere? I suggested this to Ken, and he said he’d like to see it.

I worked this up in Adobe Illustrator, tracing my pencils there, making some adjustments, and creating the cubed O. In this version the B is a little smaller, and the rest of the letters a little larger, for instance. I sent it in, everyone loved it, and I was done. Easy peasy! Me am so unhappy when logo work this hard!

Here’s the first issue cover. As it was against black, the logo’s black areas became dark blue, which I think works well. The number 1 is also flipped, a nice touch. It was fun to be part of this goofy project.

Jack Kirby’s 100th!

Image © DC Entertainment.

Today would have been Jack Kirby’s 100th birthday. I loved his work, though didn’t recognize the earliest examples I saw as a child, on DC’s CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN. When I discovered the Marvel superheroes around 1962, I loved his work there on FANTASTIC FOUR, THOR, X-MEN, AVENGERS and more, and he and Steve Ditko, along with Stan Lee, made me a Marvel Comics fan, as I left staid DC behind for a few years. When Kirby came to DC with his Fourth World titles like NEW GODS, MISTER MIRACLE, and THE FOREVER PEOPLE, I was happy to return for them to that company, and loved Jack’s work there, too.

I have two personal Kirby stories. Around 1975 I saw him at an New York comics convention surrounded by fans and admirers, holding court in the dealer’s room, or nearby. I enjoyed listening to his comments and stories, but was too shy to speak to him.

In 1984, Jack was back at DC to oversee the deluxe reprinting of his NEW GODS series from the early 70s. Jack was visiting the offices, and I was told to come in to talk to him. He asked me to design a new logo for NEW GODS, something reminiscent of the original, but new, modern and exciting. The one above is what I did, and he said he liked it. I was thrilled.

 

And Then I Read: THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS by Neil Gaiman

Photograph by Allan Amato, cover design by Adam Johnson.

This is a collection of essays, forwards, introductions, speeches and other similar short non-fiction. If you’ve been a Neil fan for a while, you’ve probably read some of them before, but it’s great to have them collected. It’s a large collection at 522 pages, and divided into ten sections, so while perhaps not perfectly complete, close enough, at least until the next one.

You can learn a lot about Neil from reading his fiction, and plenty of interviews are out there too, but if you want to know more about what Neil likes, and what he thinks about what he likes, or what he dislikes (ditto), this is the place. There are also many personal anecdotes that fill out Neil’s story in one way or another, assuming a life is a kind of story. There is some repetition. Some anecdotes are told more than once or even more than twice, but as they are relevant to the context, that’s okay, and the retellings are all a little different anyway. Neil is a complex person with a wide variety of interests, and a life-long voracious reader, so there’s lots to discover and enjoy in that area. Neil has strong opinions about big subjects too, and his speeches and essays about things like the importance of libraries, the harm of censorship, making good art, and the crisis in Syria are here too.

Perhaps the pieces I liked the most were on authors and artists we both love, as it reminded me of conversations we used to have about such things in the early days of SANDMAN, when we were both getting to know each other and had the time. There are also entries on authors and artists I don’t know, which make me want to read or explore them.

I perused this over a long number of days, one or two entries per evening, and it was a delightful way to spend some time in the mind and words of a friend I rarely get to see, but one I feel I know even better now. As a rule, I am not a non-fiction reader these days, but this book is a wonderful exception.

Highly recommended.

Mr. and Mrs. Harry Donenfeld, 1954

Comics Historian Steven Thompson has turned up this photo of the Donenfelds from The Honolulu Advertiser, July 1954. The accompanying article has Donenfeld commenting on the then-current crackdown on crime and horror comics led by Dr. Frederic Wertham. Harry, of course, says he’s against that kind of trash, and doesn’t publish any of it, which is essentially true of his comic books, but he had a long history of just that kind of thing in his pulp magazine empire of the 1930s and 40s. That had died out by 1954, though.

What interests me most about the article is the photo. This is by far the best one I’ve seen of Harry’s wife Gussie. Born Gussie Weinstein, she was a few years younger than Harry, and they married in 1918. Here’s what Gerard Jones writes about her in his book, “Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book.” Jones:

“[Harry] needed a helpmeet, a money manager, someone to bear him children and give him respectability. He met her in the Seward Park Public Library…her name was Gussie Weinstein, and she’d arrived from Russia only a few years before. She was hardheaded and practical, intent on moving up in the word; she studied business skills when she could afford the time….she was just what Harry needed.”

Gussie is seen above with the traditional flower necklaces given to arriving steamship passengers in Hawaii, suggesting this was a typical tourist photo of the trip. Honolulu reporters may have covered arriving guests to see who might provide a story.

Here’s a woman in the 1945 National (DC) Comics Christmas Party photo I had tentatively identified as Gussie Donenfeld based on her clothes, which suggested “boss’s wife” to me, and the fact that she’s standing not far from Harry. You can read that article HERE. They look like the same person to me. There’s even a similar uneven mouth position. This kind of suggests Gussie may have had a stroke, but could also just be the way her mouth worked. In any case, it’s great to get confirmation of my earlier guess and put a face to the name of the wife of DC Comics’ owner (or co-owner) Harry Donenfeld.

Hold Our Banners High!

Images © Todd Klein.

I don’t know when the banner thing began at comics conventions, but they’ve grown in number and popularity over the years. I’ve seen many I liked, and I have to admit to banner envy. As I’m going to be at a guest table at the Baltimore Comic-Con (Sept. 22-24), I decided last week I should get one myself. I looked at many options, and chose this one from UPrinting. I wanted a retractable banner that rolls up like the old projector screens, and has feet to hold it up and a long folding pole to attach to the top of the banner. The standard size is 34 by 80 inches. I went with this narrower one, 24 by 80 inches. A little lighter, smaller and cheaper, and plenty of room for what I wanted on it. UPrinting made it easy once I had my image ready. (That took a bit of cut and paste, as an image that large takes a lot of computer memory, but I was able to do it in two halves in Adobe Illustrator, then combine them in Photoshop.)

Here’s a closer look at the top half with the important information on it. I decided to go with a limited color scheme of black, white, ivory and a few bits of pale orange. It’s printed on plastic, so waterproof, and pretty non-glare, despite the glare spot seen here. The back is non-see-through material.

The bottom showing the feet, and the carrying case. I added a black gradient to the bottom of the image, as I thought it should fade to black to avoid reproducing that entire print, and keep people from trying to see all of it. I’m quite pleased with the banner, and look forward to using it in Baltimore, and any shows where I have a table in the future.

And Then I Read: ASTRO CITY #46

Image © Juke Box Productions.

The Broken Man, the character in lavender at the top here, has been popping in and out of this series for a while, talking to us the readers in a crazy way, introducing stories about music-related characters throughout Astro City’s history. This issue finally resolves many of the questions and mysteries surrounding Broken Man and all the related musical rebels. Because there’s a lot to explain, there’s a lot of narration, and the action feels somewhat distant, but the revelations make up for that in my opinion. We also learn more about The Oubor, who has been threatening The Broken Man and others in a Lovecraftian way. Kurt Busiek’s writing, and the art of Brent Anderson and Alex Ross (cover) as well as colors by Peter Pantazis and letters by John Roshell and Sarah Jacobs of Comicraft, all mesh perfectly in the crazed lavender saga told here. (I don’t envy Comicraft all that wonky lettering for The Broken Man.) A good read.

Recommended.