BOOT

That is about as seizure-inducing as Porcupine48's avatar!

Working backwards in the thread... See if your... ...with any of these. One is a coloring book, not a comic. Just remember, it's all in your mind.

Those maps are beautiful!

52-page Atlas Suspense!

Hey Scrooge! Love love love this thread! I know it's way late, but wanted to say this looks like Rudy Palais. One can tell by the copious sweat and blood!

Hey Robot Man! Started a thread about these a couple years back: Counterfeit, Bootleg, and Otherwise Not-Quite-Legit Comic Books I'll post a few here to whet your appetite!

By the way, as others have mentioned, many of these have been reprinted in Four Color Fear, one of the greatest collections of precode horror. And Craig Yoe produced a great book reprinting Powell horror stories. Here are some scans of some Powell original art gathered over the years from various sources. They show Powell's craftsmanship, sometimes lost in the substandard reproduction in the comic books themselves. I am puzzled why Powell didn't do more horror covers. His Shadow Comics covers are classics.

Like George Evans, Powell was able to stretch his artistic muscles more in Fawcett's longer stories. In "Wall of Flesh" from This Magazine is Haunted #12, a mad doctor has created a giant wall of living flesh. He pushes a nurse into the wall to be absorbed. As her boyfriend races to save her, Powell shows her being slowly absorbed, against the face of a clock. As the hands tick forward, she becomes more and more engulfed by the living protoplasm. A great storytelling device to show time passing and to heighten tension, and another often-reprinted story.

In "Walking Dead" from Chamber of Chills #23, a blind man gets an eye transplant. He starts to see strange sights, possibly those of the eyes' former owner. To show the point of view of the transplant recipient, Powell actually shows the view from inside the eyeballs, complete with blood vessels and muscles framing the action.

Great idea for a thread! The pre-code horror era is when the art of American comic books really started to grow up. Mature subject matter, fantastic themes, and a more adult intended audience allowed creators to really stretch their creative muscles and invent new storytelling techniques. ECs featured some great artists, but their formulaic stories and cramped panel layouts stifled artistic invention. It's frustrating to see some of the best artists that ever worked in comics cramped in tight panels and nearly buried beneath the acres of Leroy lettering. There were so many great artists who flourished in pre-code horror. Here are a few of my favorites: Harry Anderson Bill Benulis Lou Cameron Jack Cole Reed Crandall Steve Ditko Joe Kubert Rudy Palais Pete Tumlinson C.A. (Charles/Chuck) Winter Basil Wolverton And all those guys from the Iger shop who produced horror comics for Ajax Farrell and Superior. The cream of the cream: George Evans Known mainly for his EC work, he really shone in a handful of works he created for Fawcett. His extended narratives for Worlds of Fear and This Magazine is Haunted are some of the best American horror fiction of any medium - intense, sustained, masterfully drawn fear fests! "Metamorphosis of the Gkmlooms!" (Worlds of Fear #3) and "Slithering Horror of Skontong Swamp" (This Magazine is Haunted #5 - posted in full here.) are stone cold classics. Bill Everett While Everett's horror stories for Atlas was often in their "house" style, he still managed to innovate, like with his wordless story from Marvel Tales 108. He really hit his stride with his classic run on Venus. Russ Heath Again, Heath worked almost exclusively for Atlas. But even restrained by their house style, his draftsmanship and storytelling abilities towered above many of his contemporaries. A classic example of his work is "Death and Doctor Parker!" from Suspense 14, with its horrific tale of a man who learns the curse of eternal life. Unforgettable! Graham Ingels Sure wish he would have had a chance to work outside of EC's strict format, though! If I had to crown a king of pre-code horror artists, it would undoubtedly be Bob Powell. How Powell's work matured from the early 1940s superhero comics to the late 1940s through the 1950s is an amazing artistic transformation. His run on The Shadow comics produced a series of classic covers and dozens of well-told stories. But when precode horror fully erupted, Powell's innovation went into overdrive. He worked for Harvey, St. John, Fawcett, and Ziff-Davis. Powell and his studio pioneered a host of storytelling techniques. Some stories are workmanlike, but in his prime period, he seemed to challenge himself to come up with new perspectives, new framing, new panel designs, new ways to tell a story. Here are just a couple of examples: In the well-known classic "Colorama", from Black Cat Mystery #45, a man has intense sensitivity to colors. He finds an optometrist whose glasses bring him relief. The man won't sell the glasses, so he kills him and steals them. The unknown side effect of the glasses is that they cause the man to go blind. For the last page of the story, we see a street scene. As the action changes, the color fades away, from moment to moment, panel to panel, until only darkness is left. This story is probably one of the most reprinted precode horror stories because of its masterful innovation in storytelling.

Here's the back cover. It was made by Max Gaines to give to the fellow campers of young Bill and his sister Elaine.

It is getting tougher, but there are still many undocumented comic books out there. That is one of the appeals of comic book collecting - there are still chances to make real discoveries...

Check it out. (thumbs u

I know, I know , but what kind was it?

You know, I wondered that very thing about a year and a half ago. Check this thread. It also has some photos of the young Stan Lee. I also wondered about the Love Romances #6, but that one doesn't look quite as much like Stan.

Seeing Colletta's work on romance covers here gives me new respect for him as an artist. For a long time I didn't like his work based on his inking of Kirby on Thor. But seeing these covers, one can tell that he really loved the romance work, and that he just wasn't wild about cranking out Marvel's superhero product. Another artist that tried to fit into Marvel's superhero world and didn't was Bob Powell. He was a fantastic artist but his work for Marvel is really uninspired. Thanks to all for sharing the Colletta covers. The romance inspired him to really bring a flair to his work!

Doesn't that also have a nice B. Krigstein story?

Another beauty! Wonder how they'd do against these guys?

What a comic!

Thank you so much for sharing these deep thoughts and emotions. Your artwork is wonderful as well. How fortunate you are to have had a chance to change so many lives for the better, and to be changed in return. Thank you again for sharing your rich questing spirit with us here!

That is a great scary cover for a code book!

Sign of the impending Bearpocalypse? Apawcalypse?

Hey Robot Man, been enjoying your posts! Been meaning to start a Sports Comics thread. Your posts gave me a push. Why don't you post your sports beauties over there, too? It will be nice to see what sports comics people have!

This one?