When I began reading comix at age 8, the first years of the American art form seemed like ancient history. But now my 50 years of reading cover MOST of the whole history, so my adult and professional life as a cartoonist have helped me knit the whole story together. I've met some of my heroes from the Golden and Silver Age of American comix; I never met Kubert, and this biography helped me to know better someone who was there at the beginning and whose career stretched into my own professional career.
In 1938, a 12-year-old Joe Kubert learned how to take a streetcar into Manhattan to spend afternoons practicing his drawing side by side with the inventors of American comic books. He got his first paying job in comix at age 13. It's astounding to think about the bravery it would take to get that opportunity.
By the time I started reading comix in the 1970s, Kubert was distinctly a legend -- but one off to the side of what was sizzling. His art was rough and dark. Animalistic! He didn't mean much to the Spider-man fans. But I was fascinated by his style, and that fascination has only grown year by year. Reading this biography of an artist who cut his own way, decade after decade, has made me admire Kubert even more. He managed the sensitive work of creating anti-war comix during the Vietnam War while telling the story of the most rah-rah World War II comix character outside of Captain America. And then he deployed his lifetime of lessons in the award-winning "Fax from Sarajevo," an intensely personal and almost documentary story about his friend caught in the genocidal warfare there in the early 1990s.
There's a small audience for this bio-- people who know Kubert's career but who didn't know a lot of this industry information (which business staff and diehard convention fans would know). I am part of that audience, and I'm glad for this closer look.
In 1938, a 12-year-old Joe Kubert learned how to take a streetcar into Manhattan to spend afternoons practicing his drawing side by side with the inventors of American comic books. He got his first paying job in comix at age 13. It's astounding to think about the bravery it would take to get that opportunity.
By the time I started reading comix in the 1970s, Kubert was distinctly a legend -- but one off to the side of what was sizzling. His art was rough and dark. Animalistic! He didn't mean much to the Spider-man fans. But I was fascinated by his style, and that fascination has only grown year by year. Reading this biography of an artist who cut his own way, decade after decade, has made me admire Kubert even more. He managed the sensitive work of creating anti-war comix during the Vietnam War while telling the story of the most rah-rah World War II comix character outside of Captain America. And then he deployed his lifetime of lessons in the award-winning "Fax from Sarajevo," an intensely personal and almost documentary story about his friend caught in the genocidal warfare there in the early 1990s.
There's a small audience for this bio-- people who know Kubert's career but who didn't know a lot of this industry information (which business staff and diehard convention fans would know). I am part of that audience, and I'm glad for this closer look.