Does anyone know the story behind this? 1 1

[Ecclectica]

Browsing eBay, I just came accross this ad for a volume containing reproductions of Gil Kane's preliminary sketches and layout:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/126022532878

Looking the inside images, I discovered this prelim:

I recognized instantly the final cover for a comic, a cover done by...

 

... Alex Toth !!!

I just had a nice moment comparing the two, and noticing the difference between Kane and Toth styles (faces, knees, etc...) :

But I was wondering why this Kane prelim became a Toth cover... Does anyone know the story behind this?

More generally, as a coincidence (?), someone told me recently that at DC in the 50's, 60's and even in the 70's the cover prelims were not necessarily done by the same artist.

At the contrary.

So would it be a common example? (and in that case, can you pinpoint to me books, mags or website that would have done a study on this?)

Many thanks in advance.

  

Edited July 22, 2023 by Ecclectica

[MyNameIsLegion]

Well, when this comic came out- Kane was working almost exclusively at Marvel. He had pencil credits in Johnny Thunder  #2 &#3. But Toth did all 3 covers. The other Kane work for DC was sporadic, mostly genre related. Given that Marvel and DC were not keen on artists freelancing at the competition it may be these stories were in the can at DC already, and maybe Kane had done a prelim cover for #3. Probably not even specifically for #3, just a a cover.  Because the stories are just one-shots, no real continuity, it may be that they hired Toth to do all 3 when they needed 3 covers with only one from Kane in the tank, so Toth just redrew it. 

Edited July 22, 2023 by MyNameIsLegion

[Ecclectica]

Thanks for the input.

Your hypothesis fits perfectly the context for Kane and Toth at the beginning of the 70's. I had this kind of ingredients in my mind (Kane working mostly for Marvel, for example) and it was unsettling.

The problem is : you and I didn't see that the "Johnny Thunder" series from 1973 was... a reprint series...

Here is the cover in its original comic (I just made the discovery this afternoon...) :

So that changes everything... We're not anymore in 1973 but in... 1951 !

And at the time, in 1951, both Kane and Toth were common providers of stories for “All-American Western”, sharing the art shores on the comic… and on the covers (Toth did most of the last ones, and Kane the ones before)

So, I suppose either Kane couldn’t pencil the cover after the prelim, which has finally executed by Toth following him, either the covers efforts were routinely shared between the two… Maybe a specialist from this era could tell us.

 

Edited July 22, 2023 by Ecclectica

[The Voord]

Maybe they just produced  a stat cover re-working Toth's 1951 All American Western cover image (cropping the left hand side, slightly, and extending to the bottom and right side)?  I haven't done a line-by-line inspection, but at face value they look pretty close.

 

Edited July 22, 2023 by The Voord

[MyNameIsLegion]

hmm...

https://www.paulmartinsmith.com/content/inking-gil-kane-2-johnny-thunder

Paul Smith seems to suggest that Toth inked Kane for the #122 cover.  

heres' another thing to consider: I read somewhere that Kane was apt to do drawing demonstrations for some type of audience or class, and often would recreate works of his that he previously penciled on other types of paper other than standard comic paper. The implication thus being that many of the "prelims" that have been sold of Kane may not have been prelims that preceded the final pencils, but studies done for education purposes years or decades later. this has always made me leery of any Kane prelims for that reason. 

I also found this interesting quote- specifically about Kane and Toth:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/aberrant-behavior-on-alex-toth/

"Gil Kane, a cartoonist and contemporary of Toth’s, was one of those aforementioned admirers, who was able, to his credit, to separate his personal feelings about the man — Toth and Kane hated each other’s guts, apparently from the day they met — and continue to worship the work despite that lifelong animus. He said, and I quote, “Toth has never had the popular regard of [Jack] Kirby, [Frank] Frazetta, of [Wallace] Wood, because the bravura styles of these men are infinitely more appealing to comic book readers than the complex subtleties and abstractions of Toth’s style.”

Oh, and this is on Pinterest:

[Ecclectica]

Great investigation.

About what you found on Pinterest : the style of the "Red Ts / Yellow Ts" cropped mentions at the left seems to match the boards used at the begining of the 50's, so this is the original cover indeed.

The view of the cover as sold by Hank K, and the more detailled view (Pinterest) matches so...

The fact that the cover was not inked is the last aspect that bugs me : if Toth inked Kane on this cover (and that fits, because Kane had most of the time his covers inked by someone else on AAW - Giella, Giunta, etc... - ), why do inks and pencils are not on the same page ? Was it possible to ink on copies ? (We know Kirby was fortunate enough to have a personnal copier, but he was an exception, I think, in the late 60's, because his son was working for Xerox...)

Edited July 24, 2023 by Ecclectica

[buttock]

Adding to the confusion, GCD has it as Toth pencils and Sy Barry inks.  Was this at a time when DC (Kanigher should have been in charge of the All American line, but maybe Schwartz) was keeping records?  @adamstrange

[adamstrange]

On 7/24/2023 at 5:40 PM, buttock said:

Adding to the confusion, GCD has it as Toth pencils and Sy Barry inks.  Was this at a time when DC (Kanigher should have been in charge of the All American line, but maybe Schwartz) was keeping records?  @adamstrange

Jim Vadeboncouer, who we sadly lost not long ago, created the "Indispensable Toth Index" that he verified with Alex.  AAW 122,  a masterpiece, was pencils by Toth and inks by Sy Barry.

The sketch above has floated around for a long time but is basically a homage or learning exercise by Gil Kane.

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by adamstrange

[Ecclectica]

Great input, guys !

About Kane's admiration for Toth in the westerns context :

"Beginning about 1950-51, things were looking up a bit.

All-Star Comics had just been transmogrified into All-Star Western with #58, and Gil got a job penciling a regular feature in it called "Don Caballero," a sort of mask-less Zorro in the days when Spain ruled California. Gil rose to the occasion, turning this minor hero into a Douglas Fairbanks/Errol Flynn clone, though "Don Caballero" didn't last too long.

Westerns became a specialty of Gil's for the period when they were the coming thing. He succeeded Alex Toth on the cowboy "Johnny Thunder" who had begun in All-American Comics/All-American Western, and then (when that title became All-American Men of War) changed horses in midstream to wind up in All-Star Western-more or less as a replacement for "Don Caballero," if my memory serves me right.

Gil, an ardent admirer of Toth, threw himself into the feature, and some of his "Johnny Thunder" work bears favorable comparison with Toth's own pace-setting art. When, in 1970, he drew me a huge montage of various heroes he had drawn, Johnny Thunder was the western character he chose to depict..."

https://twomorrows.com/alterego/articles/04kane.html

 

Ray Cuthbert has another interesting hypothesis about the Kane cover on its CAF entry :

https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1298516

"If I were to guess, I would say that Kane was recreating Toth's page when DC was reprinting Johnny Thunder in the early 70's, and that before it was inked the mechanicals for the original cover were found. It's still a great piece, though!"

(The fact that this cover was cropped, and especially below at the right as it was for published pages after use, is strange anyway).

 

Maybe the key to date approximately this penciled cover would be to check if Kane signed covers (or art) in the early 50's the way he signed this one. Seems I will have to do my homework !

 

Edited July 25, 2023 by Ecclectica

[KirbyCollector]

The very small details found in the cover are the best indicators the Kane pencils are a homage or lesson. On the covers, Johnny's bullets on his belt are much clearer and his holster has 3, not 4 sections... the woman's bodice is scalloped, not clean... and with the three onrushing figures in the background, the covers show a clear tie on the center figure and a bell guard (the part of an epee which protects the hand) in front of the figure to the right. No inker would have made these changes.

The cover screams Toth. He uses an unconventional body angle with classic technique to bring your eye back to the center. Toth always thought composition first -- so Johnny's red neckerchief making a modified "X" where it does is no accident. Lastly, it is consistent with his other Western work, in particular his Zorro art.