Sarg

Holy cow, this guy is phenomenal. I hope more OA turns up and that eventually it will lead to a book. I can't believe somebody this good has been forgotten. What a shame that he did so few covers for comics. That's what I hate about the comic book publishers' mentality. It was just an assembly line to them and it didn't matter if the artist was really, really good (like Flanagan). The non-superhero covers to the early DC comics by Flanagan, Flessel, Guardineer, and O'Mealia are some of my favorite graphics of all time.

Thanks -- these are amazing. I'm sure most have never even seen these, or even knew they existed.

I guess readers were expected to move up to Big Little Books once they "outgrew" comic books?

"Marijuana Girl" was also one of the few specific paperbacks singled out for abuse by the Congressional Subcommittee on "Pornography" in 1952. But I've seen no evidence that book collectors think that such attention is something that adds interest and value to a book, unlike comic collectors, who have always been interested in the 1954 Congressional hearings on comic books, and the specific issues discussed there.

Gunsmoke #1 ... Isn't that a Graham Ingels cover? Why isn't he credited on the label?

The inking on the Texan is superior to the rather slapdash inking on Western Bandit Trails.

Cover artist unknown? Not Baker or Kamen.

Good lord, that artwork and lettering is unbelievably bad. No wonder Fox went under.

I noticed that no cover artist is credited on the labels. Is the artist unknown? These are some great covers. I love the surrealism of "The Outcast of Time" cover.

Yes, that's why I said "supposedly" the only market were children. Everything written in the press at the time, plus Wertham et al., makes this assumption. I think it's safe to say that the majority were children 14 or under, though how much of a majority will never be known (51 per cent? 70? 90?). I recall reading a lot of letters in EC war comics from army men, but also Shock SuspenStories' letters pages contain many letters from adults.

It is kind of odd, isn't it? Supposedly, children were the only market for comic books. Children don't care about breasts. And yet we find breasts prominently displayed on nearly every crime and horror comic. It's also strange that this phenomenon, as far as I know, is rarely commented on in forums or the literature. You have a woman in negligee on the cover of Weird Mysteries for no reason, except to sell her sexuality to pre-sexual children.

LOL, the publishers of horror comics have ONE demand that all covers must meet, which is to have women's breasts displayed PROMINENTLY. I thought these were only sold to kids???

Nah, Kamen was much better than that.

That's what you do when aliens are firing inside your spaceship. You lay down like you're posing for a Playboy centerfold.

The best Horrific cover, in my opinion. That image is truly bizarre!

The drawing of the woman is unbelievably bad. Who is the "artist" here, Hollingsworth?

Syd Shores = the poor man's Alex Schomburg. Syd's covers are OK but it's like tasting light beer after you've had fine wine.

The misattribution of PL17 happened in the freewheeling early days of fandom, when fans attributed ALL PL covers and interiors to Baker, even the Ajax/Farrell stuff. it was never corrected because people were too lazy and Baker was dead.

The difficulty with Baker is that he often had different inkers of varying ability, so a lot of Baker stuff looks like other artists. The legs on the above totally give it away as Baker pencils. But he may have just pencilled the woman, and other artists filled in the rest. The inks are pretty crude and slapdash. The right arm is ridiculously long -- somebody must have filled that in as an afterthought. Not a good effort.

Why are the Nazi soldiers always wearing green and yellow on Timely covers?

The most famous misattributed cover is Phantom Lady #17 which is NOT by Matt Baker. The misattribution is so entrenched now that it would take an act of Congress to change it. The actual artist is unknown, but Al Feldstein might have been involved with the pencils or inks. It sure looks like him, but he did not remember doing any Phantom Lady covers.

That Hand of Fate cover is such a swipe of Tales From the Crypt #20...not in artwork, but the idea and dialogue are almost exactly the same!

This also demolishes the popular idea that comic book collecting started in the '60s. It actually started in the '30s, but it took awhile before they could find one another and begin trading and selling. Wigransky seems pretty advanced in his collecting (and his thinking about comics) by 1948 when he wrote the response to Wertham. The most remarkable thing to me is that he was already seeking original art by that time.

Fascinating story with a pretty depressing ending. He died at age 36 on October 5, 1969. i'm not clear on why he died in Washington DC but was buried in Mississippi. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/195958792/sidney-david-wigransky

Just a pet peeve, but does anyone else dislike how the Comics Code stamp intrudes into the logo of so many SA comics? Either it should have been smaller, or the logo should have been reduced. Too much clutter.