Unpopular Golden Age Opinions Thread! 9 9

[fifties]

Well gang, if we are gonna discuss artists and writers, let's not forget Lev Gleasons bullpen of Bob Wood and Charlie Biro. Decent enough artwork and story telling to sell millions of copies each month...CDNP by itself outsold ALL of EC's books combined in the early '50's.

[MrBedrock]

Well gang, if we are gonna discuss artists and writers, let's not forget Lev Gleasons bullpen of Bob Wood and Charlie Biro. Decent enough artwork and story telling to sell millions of copies each month...CDNP by itself outsold ALL of EC's books combined in the early '50's.

Bob Wood had a certain way with women.

[mrmyst]

Well gang, if we are gonna discuss artists and writers, let's not forget Lev Gleasons bullpen of Bob Wood and Charlie Biro. Decent enough artwork and story telling to sell millions of copies each month...CDNP by itself outsold ALL of EC's books combined in the early '50's.

Bob Wood had a certain way with women.

 

 

 

[Cat-Man_America]

Well gang, if we are gonna discuss artists and writers, let's not forget Lev Gleasons bullpen of Bob Wood and Charlie Biro. Decent enough artwork and story telling to sell millions of copies each month...CDNP by itself outsold ALL of EC's books combined in the early '50's.

Bob Wood had a certain way with women.

 

Yeah, a real lady-killer in a trysted ironic sorta way.

[rjpb]

You guys are aiming too low. You want to see unpopular opinions? These are unpopular opinions:

 

* S&K were LESS influential on GA comic book art than Joe Shuster and Jerry Robinson, let alone Milt Caniff, Alex Raymond, and the Will Eisner shop.

I don't know about less influential, but their influence is probably overstated in relation to the others mentioned.

 

* The greatest patriotic comic book covers are found on DC/Quality not Timely comics.

 

Patriotic in terms of flag waving iconography, perhaps, patriotic in terms of kicking Axis butt, not even close.

 

* Suspense 3 is not even close to Schomburg's greatest cover, let alone the finest cover of the GA.

 

Ageed.

 

* The identifiable later printing(s) of Superman 1 "should" be worth less than the earlier printing(s).

 

Yes, but now that most copies are slabbed, that will never happen.

 

* With the exception of certain Kurtzman and Krigstein stories, the art in EC Comics is adversely impacted by the really overly excessive text.

True, but the quality of story telling still shone through.

 

* The best covers of the 1930s did not feature superheroes.

 

That's because O'Mealia didn't do superhero covers.

 

 

[Badger]

Well gang, if we are gonna discuss artists and writers, let's not forget Lev Gleasons bullpen of Bob Wood and Charlie Biro. Decent enough artwork and story telling to sell millions of copies each month...CDNP by itself outsold ALL of EC's books combined in the early '50's.

Bob Wood had a certain way with women.

 

Yeah, a real lady-killer in a trysted ironic sorta way.

Man, was I confused. I kept reading these comments as "Wally Wood". Which, of course, in no way jived with reality.

 

For those who do not know the story of Bob Wood.

 

http://www.crimemagazine.com/downfall-delinquent-short-unhappy-life-bob-wood

[Big Moov]

Maybe this will fly, maybe not. Let's give it a whirl:

 

-- I love classic precode horror covers, but for whatever reason I don't share the extreme love for Fight Against Crime #20 as reflected in its selling prices. To me the cover is more zany or goofy than horrific.

 

-- I don't enjoy looking at Jack Kirby's GA artwork. I respect that he's a founding father of the industry, but I just don't dig it at all.

 

-- For that matter, aside from the great Schomburg covers, I'm not a fan of GA Captain America either. If I'm going after GA patriotic heroes I prefer the MLJ Peps and Zips.

 

-- I'd rather have a bright, vividly-colored 1.5 GA book with a detached cover wrap than an 8.0 book with dulled colors but amazing structural soundness. (Not talking about *faded* books, which is an easier call... just books with naturally weak colors, like a good many Fiction House, Fox etc.)

 

 

OK, that's what I've got so far. Who's next?

 

As a collecter who started with coins, then sports cards, and now exclusively comics....I couldn't care less about artwork. I couldn't care less about the story inside. I collect first appearances of characters....and that's it. How's that for an unpopular opinion? But to me it makes perfect sense. You don't collect coins or sports cards because of how how the picture looks or what the writing is. Why comics??

Edited August 7, 2016 by Big Moov

[jimbo_707]

Maybe this will fly, maybe not. Let's give it a whirl:

 

-- I love classic precode horror covers, but for whatever reason I don't share the extreme love for Fight Against Crime #20 as reflected in its selling prices. To me the cover is more zany or goofy than horrific.

 

-- I don't enjoy looking at Jack Kirby's GA artwork. I respect that he's a founding father of the industry, but I just don't dig it at all.

 

-- For that matter, aside from the great Schomburg covers, I'm not a fan of GA Captain America either. If I'm going after GA patriotic heroes I prefer the MLJ Peps and Zips.

 

-- I'd rather have a bright, vividly-colored 1.5 GA book with a detached cover wrap than an 8.0 book with dulled colors but amazing structural soundness. (Not talking about *faded* books, which is an easier call... just books with naturally weak colors, like a good many Fiction House, Fox etc.)

 

 

OK, that's what I've got so far. Who's next?

 

As a collecter who started with coins, then sports cards, and now exclusively comics....I couldn't care less about artwork. I couldn't care less about the story inside. I collect first appearances of characters....and that's it. How's that for an unpopular opinion? But to me it makes perfect sense. You don't collect coins or sports cards because of how how the picture looks or what the writing is. Why comics??

I used to collect coins in addition to comics, and I collected those very much for the artwork. I only dabbled in baseball cards as a kid, but I know people who built certain sets of cards (1962 Topps, for instance) specifically because they liked the artwork on the cards for that year.

 

I couldn't care less about first appearances; that's an unpopular opinion too, I reckon.

[rjpb]

I won't say I couldn't care less about first appearances, and I completely understand why they are highly sought after, but they've never been much of a big deal for me.

 

For GA I'm mostly cover driven, and enjoy genres in which recurring characters aren't much of a factor. For more recent stuff, it's all about the writing and interior art. If a character only picked up a strong writer/artist team with their second appearance, I would never bother with their first.

 

 

[fifties]

Horror and crime comics usually don't have any more than a first appearance, since the characters are usually killed off at the end of each story!

[adamstrange]

As a collecter who started with coins, then sports cards, and now exclusively comics....I couldn't care less about artwork. I couldn't care less about the story inside. I collect first appearances of characters....and that's it. How's that for an unpopular opinion? But to me it makes perfect sense. You don't collect coins or sports cards because of how how the picture looks or what the writing is. Why comics??

 

One of these is not like the others:

 

Sportscards: Sports card have nothing "inside" them and their purpose is to have a handy pictorial summary of your favorite players/teams.

 

Coins: Coins have nothing "inside" them and their purpose is to make commerce easier.

 

Comics: Comics have 32 to 64 pages of writing and art on the inside and their purpose is to tell stories.

[sfcityduck]

As a collecter who started with coins, then sports cards, and now exclusively comics....I couldn't care less about artwork. I couldn't care less about the story inside. I collect first appearances of characters....and that's it. How's that for an unpopular opinion? But to me it makes perfect sense. You don't collect coins or sports cards because of how how the picture looks or what the writing is. Why comics??

 

One of these is not like the others:

 

Sportscards: Sports card have nothing "inside" them and their purpose is to have a handy pictorial summary of your favorite players/teams.

 

Coins: Coins have nothing "inside" them and their purpose is to make commerce easier.

 

Comics: Comics have 32 to 64 pages of writing and art on the inside and their purpose is to tell stories.

 

Uh ... that's true up until the point you put the comic in a slab, and then it's just a baseball card. Which is why covers now matter so much more than what's going on inside -- such as first appearances and origins. Which is why I think Detective 33 should be worth more than Detective 31. Another unpopular opinion.

[sfcityduck]

You guys are aiming too low. You want to see unpopular opinions? These are unpopular opinions:

 

* S&K were LESS influential on GA comic book art than Joe Shuster and Jerry Robinson, let alone Milt Caniff, Alex Raymond, and the Will Eisner shop.

 

 

 

I must disagree with this one.

 

Simon and Kirby invented a multitude of characters for several companies. Shuster art was only used in the early Superman stories and then several other artists took over his strip. His Dr. Occult, Slam Bradley and other strips were more representative of his talent than Superman. Those other cartoonists were stuck with a few characters and did their best to keep them original over several years but passed them on. Eisner was a master story teller that few could compete with.

 

Shuster invented the visual look of the most influential comic character of all time. As a result, numerous GA artists used a similar (rather pedestrian) style on their own creations. In fact, I think that the DC GA house style is largely patterned after Shuster and Robinson.

 

Eisner was extremely influential on vast swaths of the GA artists, mainly because many of them worked for him, such as Lou Fine.

 

S&K adopted a GA style that reflected Simon's version of Lou Fine. Yet, this style got little traction in the GA. S&K's GA style was very distinctive -- e.g. largely uncopied -- throughout the GA. Kirby really didn't become widely copied until the Marvel Age.

 

Hard for me to give S&K all that much credit for "inventing" romance comics because romance was a genre in other media long before they decided to test a romance comic (a case of appropriation not invention).

 

Nor do I give S&K much credit for creating Captain America (a rip-off of the Shield) or the "kid gang" genre, because others, such as Timely's own Bill Everett, created more original characters in the GA.

Edited August 8, 2016 by sfcityduck

[fifties]

You don't collect coins or sports cards because of how how the picture looks or what the writing is. Why comics??

Sorry partner, but this is about the dopiest analogy I've ever seen. Each of those three subjects are produced for different purposes, so how can collecting them be directly compared?

[Ricksneatstuff]

You don't collect coins or sports cards because of how how the picture looks or what the writing is. Why comics??

Sorry partner, but this is about the dopiest analogy I've ever seen. Each of those three subjects are produced for different purposes, so how can collecting them be directly compared?

 

I definitely was drawn initially to comics almost purely by cover art. Now, the books I find the least likely to get rid of in my collection are there because of the interior art and/or stories. Planet Comics 55 does not get a ton of cover love but I think the Futura pencils and inks by Bagnoli in the Futura story are dynamite. It doesn't hurt that Whitman and Baker both had stories here too.

 

I am losing interest in the books with the great covers with poor interior work.

[comicjack]

Cover art was meant to hook you, they really didn't care what was put inside as long as you spent your dime.

[Ricksneatstuff]

Cover art was meant to hook you, they really didn't care what was put inside as long as you spent your dime.

 

For the most part this is what I appreciate about Fiction House and Fox- the vast majority of their books bring what was advertised. I digress now, as I am veering away from the topic of this thread. So, to bring my post back online with this Thread...

 

Unpopular opinion of the day; Jungle Comics is the most consistently high quality cover art title that ran throughout the golden age era.

[Point Five]

Unpopular opinion of the day; Jungle Comics is the most consistently high quality cover art title that ran throughout the golden age era.

I like where you're going with this. Lots of killer covers in that run! I've thought before that Jungle would probably be more popular (i.e. prices higher) if they weren't so (relatively) easy to find compared to other GA titles.

 

 

[Scrooge]

Unpopular opinion of the day; Jungle Comics is the most consistently high quality cover art title that ran throughout the golden age era.

I like where you're going with this. Lots of killer covers in that run! I've thought before that Jungle would probably be more popular (i.e. prices higher) if they weren't so (relatively) easy to find compared to other GA titles.

 

 

I'd like to point out that the features in Jungle tend to be weaker: weaker art and weaker stories. Don't know that it matters anymore in the current market but the interiors of Jungle aren't that appealing.

[comicjack]

But the girly covers are