What about Jesse Marsh? 0

[drdroom]

Anybody collect him? He was the first to create original Tarzan content for comic books and his run lasted for nineteen years! He was super fast, mentored Russ Manning and inspired Alex Toth and Gilbert Hernandez with his elegant simplicity. He was tremendously prolific, but there are only a handful of examples on CAF. Where's all the art? I have one, from Dell FC 161, only the second Tarzan comic ever, so this is an early example, but you can already see the clarity of his page design.

[drdroom]

So, like, do people think Jesse Marsh actually sucks? Crude, static? Be honest! It's fine. Or is it just that he worked on properties that are rapidly losing pop cultural valence? Am I the only one that would like to find this page?

[tth2]

I'm a Tarzan collector, but it's in spite of Marsh.  Not a fan of his art. 

[The Voord]

I seem to recall Russ Cochran having some pages for sale in the early 1980s.  You say he was 'super fast'?  I think that shows in the examples you highlight which look very rushed and lacking in finesse.  Not something I'd personally want to collect but to each his own.

Edited June 9, 2022 by The Voord

[Rick2you2]

  Crude art to match the dumb dialog.

“Three times the number of fingers on both hands!” 

Wow. I guess the natives have no word for 30.

And “white-winged boats from the ocean” mean the natives didn’t know what a sailboat is either.

Pass. I’d rather watch reruns of Jungle Jim.

[pemart1966]

On 6/5/2022 at 7:35 PM, drdroom said:

Anybody collect him? He was the first to create original Tarzan content for comic books and his run lasted for nineteen years! He was super fast, mentored Russ Manning and inspired Alex Toth and Gilbert Hernandez with his elegant simplicity. He was tremendously prolific, but there are only a handful of examples on CAF. Where's all the art? I have one, from Dell FC 161, only the second Tarzan comic ever, so this is an early example, but you can already see the clarity of his page design.

"He was super fast..."  "He was tremendously prolific..."  Being fast allowed him to be prolific.  Editors love guys that work fast.  Not much detail in Marsh's art.  One man's " elegant simplicity" is another man's crude and rudimentary.

"...there are only a handful of examples on CAF. "  I looked at CAF and thought that there were quite a few examples actually. 

"Where's all the art?"  Likely destroyed.  Some of it survived, of course, but the vast majority is likely gone.

Jesse Marsh's style reminds me quite a bit of Rex Maxon's.

 

 

 

 

[tth2]

On 6/9/2022 at 4:16 PM, pemart1966 said:

Jesse Marsh's style reminds me quite a bit of Rex Maxon's

Rex Mason is much better than Marsh.

[Natty Bumpo]

Marsh has his fans… I know the Hernandez brothers dig him. I generally like his work, but mostly because it’s a bit odd and mannered. (This isn’t a “so bad it’s good” thing for me so much as “weird enough to be interesting”)

[drdroom]

On 6/9/2022 at 4:16 PM, pemart1966 said:

 

"...there are only a handful of examples on CAF. "  I looked at CAF and thought that there were quite a few examples actually. 

"Where's all the art?"  Likely destroyed.  Some of it survived, of course, but the vast majority is likely gone.

 

 

 

 

 

I think you're joking, but I count eight or nine panel pages, all Tarzan--nothing at all from his western work. Volume one of the Dark Horse Marsh Tarzan anthology runs to 700 pages, and there are ELEVEN volumes! I'm hoping there might be an old head in this forum with knowledge of the fate of Dell/ Gold Key OA in general. I believe there's very little of Barks originals as well, right?

[drdroom]

On 6/9/2022 at 3:31 PM, Rick2you2 said:

  Crude art to match the dumb dialog.

“Three times the number of fingers on both hands!” 

Wow. I guess the natives have no word for 30.

And “white-winged boats from the ocean” mean the natives didn’t know what a sailboat is either.

Pass. I’d rather watch reruns of Jungle Jim.

OR, we could more charitably read these examples as literal translations from the native language, rather than awkward constructions in English. In a later episode I just read, Tarzan and young Korak ("boy") encounter a tribe Tarzan knows, and Korak apologizes for not having learned their language yet. Broad language fluency is one of Tarzan's signature "powers". But in any case, Marsh didn't write the -script. I find his depictions of the African characters graceful and devoid of the caricature we might expect from artists like Will Eisner or Lou Fine.

[pemart1966]

On 6/10/2022 at 8:53 AM, drdroom said:

I think you're joking, but I count eight or nine panel pages, all Tarzan--nothing at all from his western work. Volume one of the Dark Horse Marsh Tarzan anthology runs to 700 pages, and there are ELEVEN volumes! I'm hoping there might be an old head in this forum with knowledge of the fate of Dell/ Gold Key OA in general. I believe there's very little of Barks originals as well, right?

No, I wasn't joking   

I counted 19 entries of differing material and for a guy who's likely had most of his art destroyed and whose style is esoteric, I think that's a lot of examples.

As an "old head" I can tell you that yes, some of the art survived but a lot of it was destroyed...

Edited June 10, 2022 by pemart1966

[The Voord]

On 6/10/2022 at 1:53 PM, drdroom said:

I'm hoping there might be an old head in this forum with knowledge of the fate of Dell/ Gold Key OA in general. 

Space Family Robinson/Lost in Space was the main Gold Key title I collected as a kid, though there are other titles like Magnus, Robot Fighter I collected.  Although a lot of the George Wilson painted covers have survived (I luckily own my favorite Wilson LIS cover), there doesn't seem to be a lot of Dan Spiegle's interiors, for example . . . with the exception of #1, which I own some pages from, and a close friend in Los Angeles who owns the bulk of that 1st issue interiors.

[drdroom]

On 6/10/2022 at 9:07 AM, pemart1966 said:

No, I wasn't joking   

I counted 19 entries of differing material and for a guy who's likely had most of his art destroyed and whose style is esoteric, I think that's a lot of examples.

As an "old head" I can tell you that yes, some of the art survived but a lot of it was destroyed...

Ok, I guess one man's very few is another man's more than we need!

[drdroom]

I guess the mystery is, what did Toth & Manning see in Marsh that many collectors here don't? Both of them wrote appreciations of Marsh, which broadly agreed on both his strengths--design and storytelling--and weakness: lack of dynamic musculature. His Tarzan is the polar opposite of Burne Hogarth's. Toth identifies Marsh as a West coast artist along with Dan Spiegel, and comments on the more laid back approach of the Whitman artists in comparison to the intensity of the New York artists like Eisner, Kirby, and Fine. Marsh was an Angelino, like the Hernandez brothers, and as I've been reading through the Dark Horse volume 1, I'm constantly reminded of Gilberto especially: not just graphically, but in the freshness of incident, the breathing room in the story, and the humanity of the characters. There's a lot of Pal-Ul-Don in Palomar. 

[Rick2you2]

On 6/11/2022 at 8:09 AM, drdroom said:

Both of them wrote appreciations of Marsh, which broadly agreed on both his strengths--design and storytelling--and weakness: lack of dynamic musculature.

Those strengths are not what collectors want in art, like dynamic musculature, even though they are critical to moving the story along. We buy pages and admire panels, not pieces of stories to study things like story flow.

[vodou]

On 6/11/2022 at 8:09 AM, drdroom said:

Marsh was an Angelino, like the Hernandez brothers, and as I've been reading through the Dark Horse volume 1, I'm constantly reminded of Gilberto especially: not just graphically, but in the freshness of incident, the breathing room in the story, and the humanity of the characters.

Great insight! I've been quiet to now, leaving space for others to comment but yes I'm a Marsh fan too and agree with all that you've been writing.

On 6/11/2022 at 8:42 AM, Rick2you2 said:

On 6/11/2022 at 8:09 AM, drdroom said:

Both of them wrote appreciations of Marsh, which broadly agreed on both his strengths--design and storytelling--and weakness: lack of dynamic musculature.

Those strengths are not what collectors want in art, like dynamic musculature, even though they are critical to moving the story along. We buy pages and admire panels, not pieces of stories to study things like story flow.

Okay, for most, but this collector does and specifically collects in that direction.

[Rick2you2]

On 6/11/2022 at 8:50 AM, vodou said:

Okay, for most, but this collector does and specifically collects in that direction.

Fair enough. I collect to the character even if story flow and muscle development are both weak. I want clean images imaginatively done. I also tend to downgrade massive fight scenes which a lot of people love because I consider them, in most cases, a detriment to the plot. 

[davidtere]

I like Jesse Marsh. Different art speaks to different folks for all kinds of reasons. I am a comics / comic book fan and I have a humble OA collection. One of the greatest things about OA for me is that for that brief moment in time the creator of the art was focused on creating the page. If I like the artist, I would always like to have a representative example of his / her work. To have a piece of comic book / comic art history that the creator of the art actually had their hand on...to me, that is special. 

Sign me up for any available JM page.  

[drdroom]

On 6/11/2022 at 8:42 AM, Rick2you2 said:

Those strengths are not what collectors want in art, like dynamic musculature, even though they are critical to moving the story along. We buy pages and admire panels, not pieces of stories to study things like story flow.

I've had a deep love for the comics medium since I was a kid. I very much look for examples from the masters that showcase both their drawing and storytelling strengths. Character is lower down on the list, with more of a nostalgiac pull. I've got no interest in a weakly designed page of any character at all.

[Rick2you2]

On 6/17/2022 at 7:20 AM, drdroom said:

I've had a deep love for the comics medium since I was a kid. I very much look for examples from the masters that showcase both their drawing and storytelling strengths. Character is lower down on the list, with more of a nostalgiac pull. I've got no interest in a weakly designed page of any character at all.

Ironically, I like getting mediocre pages (within limits) with a less than brilliant character drawing. I also have excellent pages, and admittedly prefer them, but the so-so ones also let me compare and highlight what makes one better or worse. You might be surprised how many mediocre pages have something to say for themselves. And don't forget, a page is part of a story. Who buys pages that in of themselves aren't interesting but may do a great job of moving the story along? Not many and not often, I bet.