Bracket Is Up - Golden Age Artist May Madness Tournament 3 3

[jimbo_7071]

20 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

Actually, it was billed as Golden Age Artists in the header.  There was no mention of the poll being limited to comic books.  That said, it is generally accepted that the golden age comics start in 1938 with the first appearance of Superman.  Technically, that would preclude most comic strip artists who achieved their greatest fame for work prior to 1938.  Notice that I mentioned Gearge Rozen, famous for his evocative Shadow pulp covers. Of course, some of his painted covers were transferred to early Shadow Comic covers in 1940, so his work would fit here even if limited to GA comics.  

All of this doesn’t really matter in the slightest anyway, as the poll is fun regardless of how the criteria is sliced.

Now it’s on to the brackets! 

 

Wikipedia says Winsor McCay died in 1934, before the Golden Age started. I missed this round, but I probably would have voted for George Herriman (depending on who was up against him); he must have had some strips reprinted in GA comic books, right?

[Cat-Man_America]

3 hours ago, jimbo_7071 said:

Wikipedia says Winsor McCay died in 1934, before the Golden Age started. I missed this round, but I probably would have voted for George Herriman (depending on who was up against him); he must have had some strips reprinted in GA comic books, right?

Perhaps a future poll will establish different parameters or guidelines where only GA comic book artists are included.  It would really be cool to see a separate poll for newspaper comics and later GA (Atomic) and SA art.  Alas, many classic Platinum era Sunday newspaper strips were just cut and pasted reprints during the early development of comic books. I’m just not sure how recycling great newspaper strip art contributes to the growth and development of GA comics.  That’s a stretch Plastic Man would envy, but there’s always room for more polls.

In a newspaper comic strip artist poll Windsor McCay would have to be a strong contender, but there’d be a wide range of other artists in the mix including Richard Outcault, Bud Fisher, Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, Burne Hogarth, Al Capp, EC Seeger, George Harriman, Chic Young, Sidney Smith, Frank King, Harold Gray, etc., etc.  I’m pretty sure that 100 noteworthy candidates could be compiled just from the Platinum era (pre-1938).

Also, a good cut-off date for polling GA would’ve been around 1950 as new artists and types of comics started to dominate the market post WWII. There’d certainly be room for an Atomic and transitional (early SA) artists poll that’d fit snuggly into GA as a sub-set.  More polling wouldn’t necessarily generate more fan participation, but it could potentially increase interest in other genres.  A thorough vetting of comic illustration art would endeavor to add relevant major league players and each genre or sport has it’s own distinctive draft picks.

One way of building a representative list is to use exclusionary criteria.  IOW, create a minimal bar each artist under consideration must clear before nomination to a list.  For instance, a logical example for comic books might be to include published cover art to the criteria.  If each considered artist had to have at least one attributed cover in their career it would likely narrow the list of candidates noticeably.  But this is just thinking out loud as we already have an excellent list of artists to choose from for telerites May Madness brackets.

Sorry, ...got carried away in the moment; I really need to cut back on the caffeine!