Say It Ain't Joe

Saturday Leftover Day.

This week I announced my new book from Yoe Books and IDW, available now from comicshops (through the new Previews catalogue) and on Amazon. It's about Mad magazine imitations and apart from a complete historoy of these magazines, you will also get a 160 reprint section. Putting togethr that section was hard work. Here is one of the pieces by Joe Kubert (probably with some unsigned help by Bob Bean) I had to drop in favour of another, shorter one. There are only so many pages in the book and frankly, the four page parody of Walt Disney's nature shows is just as well drawn and a lot more fun to read.

I have many more gems that did not make the cut and I will be showing them here (and on a speial Facebook pagedevoted to the book and the subject) as soon as the book sells out.

By the way, I don't really know how to read these thingsm but the ranking of this book seems to be pretty good or it's genre on Amazon. I don't know how this translates to hard sales, but you can join the ranks by using the link on the right.

Old Kubert

Friday Comic Book Day.

I love the early work of Joe Kubert. What he is producing these days is pretty impressive as well, back in the late forties and early fifties when he was still using loads of inkin his lines, it had a mesmerizing quality for me. I have shown several samples of this work over the years, most recently from his late forties oddjobs for DC titles. After that he roamed for a bit doing work here and there. He ended up at St. John's doing his own imprint with Norman Maurer, including the 3D comic, Mad imitation Whack and Tor. When those failed, he flaundered for a bit, doing jobs for Stan Lee and in 1955 he worked for Norman Maurer's most important employer for many years, Gleason. He started doing stories for the later issues of Crime Does Not Pay and sonn added the lead story for Boy Comics (from #110 to #118). I have two of those stories here. It looks as if Bob Bean was involved, who worked with Kubert on serveral features at St. John's.