Kurt Caesar--Part 2 of 2

Rendering unto Caesar those things that weren't Caeser's

As much as I like Kurt Caesar's work, I always feel a little guilty about it because of his rampant swiping. I'm of two minds about swiping. In the fannish days of my youth I adopted a self-righteous zero tolerance policy. I was one of several apa hacks (the 1970s equivalent of bloggers) who delighted in excoriating Dan Adkins for stealing almost every panel. Adkins would swipe from s-f magazine artists when drawing comics, and from comics artists when illustrating science fiction mags; it seemed like a calculated effort to reduce the chances of readers recognizing his source material. I changed my tune about swiping once I found myself on the other side of the page. I saw how, in the face of looming deadlines or insufficient skill, swiping could save one's neck Still it's hard to view Caesar's best-known work, the Urania covers, without noting that this planet came from Bonestell, this robot from Mel Hunter, this spaceship from Alex Schomburg.

In his comics work Caesar was hardly alone in being awash in influences. In the late 1930s Alex Raymond and Milton Caniff were the twin gods of the comic strip. Almost every “realistic” cartoonist of the time was influenced by one or the other. Not only in America: American strips were enormously popular in Europe. There, Raymond was undisputed king. Kurt Caesar was one of a shipload of European strip cartoonists who based their work on Flash Gordon's master. Not only cartoonists admired Raymond ; he was equally popular with the public. A Serbian comics website describes how one publisher tried to boost sales by packaging Caesar's “Il Pirata del Cielo” as “the latest creation of the great A. Raymond,” going so far as to paste Raymond's signature onto the artwork!

Another source of Caesar's work was photos, especially movie stills. Working from stills is a time honored tradition. These photos are readily available, often dramatically lit and posed, and treat the same themes as comics. The practice seemed quite popular in pre-war Italy. To give one example, the South Pacific adventures of Franco Caprioli were littered with American movie stars. It's kind of fun to watch a character morph into Wallace Beery and back depending upon whether Caprioli had a movie still that matched his layout.

It's worth noting that comics didn't flow one way across the Atlantic. Some Italian strips appeared translated in American comics. Among them was the ubiquitous “Il Pirata del Cielo,” which appeared as “Sky Pirates” in Sky Blazers #1 (1940).

In Roy Thomas' Alter Ego magazine Alberto Beccatini has documented how after the war several Italian cartoonists worked for Archer St. John's comics. Other Italian work appeared in Fiction House titles, though I'm unsure whether it was new work or translated reprints. I suspect it was both. Kurt Caesar drew a Wings feature under his “Jack Away” byline, and the panels show extensive cut edges, meaning they might have been existing art reformatted to fit the American page. However the cuts may simply have been evidence of pasted over dialogue. I no longer own the comics so I can't go back to figure it out.

After the War, Caesar's covers for Il Vittorioso resembled those of the American “popular science” magazines. He romanticized racing cars, speedboats, new aircraft, and future predictions. The cover at left was from a 1961 issue (sorry about the extreme cropping; I scanned it in two pieces from a bound volume). In his comics work Caesar had simplified and modernized his style somewhat. But he hadn't thrown out his reference library--note the guest appearance by The Mangler in this fictitious strip about the X-15 rocket plane!

(Sky Pirates page from a reproduction of the story at goldenage comicbook stories. blogspot. com. Urania cover from mondourania.com. Other pix from my collection.)

Kurt Caesar, illustrator--part 1 of 2

Italian comic artist Kurt Caesar (1906-1974) is best known today for having illustrated the adventures of “Romano il Legionario,” a daring pilot who fought the good fight for Mussolini in the years before World War II. Almost as well known is his series of cover paintings for the science fiction magazine Urania in the 1950s. During his busy career Caesar specialized in hardware stories, with an emphasis on aircraft. Caesar's love for planes showed especially strongly in his strips from the 1930s, when dashing aviators, explorers, and air pirates filled the pages of kids' weekly newspapers like Topolino and Il Vittorioso.

Caesar was born Kurt Kaiser (or Kaisar?) in Montigny-les-Metz, France. Though his German father would rather he'd have been a surgeon, Kurt preferred the arts and wound up at the Prussian School of Fine Arts in Berlin. An able sportsman, Caesar became a professional boxer and even captured a German title. Following his graduation he became a journalist, working for a variety of German magazines. While at Die Kultur he married the magazine's owner, Elfriede Ensle. Soon he took a job as a roving journalist for a Zurich-based periodical. He traveled throughout Europe and Asia, learning to speak several languages. Finally, in the mid-1930s, the Kaisers settled in Italy, where Kurt began his successful career as a comic artist.

Kaiser changed his name to Caesar, and confused later generations of fans by using several variations on this name during his career. At various times he was Kurt Caesar, Curt Caesar, Cesare Avai, Caesar Away, Jack Away, and Corrado Caesar. His first strip, written by legendary Italian comics scenarist Federico Pedrocchi, was “I Due Tamburini” for Mondadori's paper I Tre Porcellini. Shortly thereafter he illustrated the serial “Il Pirata del Cielo,” one of Italy's first strips featuring a “bad guy” protagonist, renegade American aviator Will Sparrow. I've reproduced a page below.* The love Caesar lavished on the strip--especially the airplanes--is obvious.

Caesar's biggest success, as already noted, was “Romano il Legionario (1938).” Flying for the Fascist air force, Romano first fought nobly in the Spanish Civil War, then branched out to battle on air, land, and sea. Some of Caesar's finest work appeared in this strip, as shown in the reproduction below, shot from the original art. Caesar left the series in 1943. During the war he served as a journalist in Spain and northern Africa. He wound up in Africa as an interpreter for General Rommel. There he was captured by the English and spent the remainder of the war as a POW. He resettled in Rome after the war and began producing strips and illustrations for Il Vittorioso.

[Sidebar: Oddly, the Lambiek entry on Kurt Caesar states that he was actually working for the Resistance during the War, and that “his activities were recompensated” afterward. While I have no grounds to challenge this statement, it seems incredible that the author of such unabashed propoganda as “Romano” would be working for the enemy. What's more, the statement doesn't appear in any other Caesar biography I found online. Stranger things have happened, though. Can anyone supply details?]

In 1952 Caesar accepted the assignment of painting covers for Mondadori's Urania, the first Italian science-fiction magazine (sample below.) Over the next six years he produced some 160 covers, which were quite popular with readers and today capture much of the spacefaring spirit of those years--even though large pieces of many covers were lifted from other artists. Unfortunately the death of his wife following a long illness broke Caesar financially. He was replaced at Urania and moved with his son to a village north of Rome. There he continued to paint covers for other s-f magazines. He also drew features for England's Fleetway magazines, including Jet Logan. Beginning in 1968 Caesar illustrated many of German publisher Moewig-Verlag's comics adaptations of the Perry Rhodan science fiction novels.

Kurt Caesar died of a heart attack in 1974 at the age of 68.

*(Most of the biographical material here was found in lambiek.net's “Comiclopedia” and the Italian and German language versions of Wikipedia. The page from “Il Pirata del Cielo” was scanned from an Albo d'Oro reprint, and the Urania cover came from the fantastic gallery of Urania covers at mondourania.com. The “Romano” original was found at dandare.info)