War Comics 17 17

[Jeffro.]

[thehumantorch]

Just heard the news about Joe. I'm so saddened to hear of his passing, but that sadness is tempered by the joy he brought (and will continue to bring) to fans everywhere. Especially this one.

 

Joe was the artist I most identified with for my chosen genre. His bold line, natural sense of storytelling and deep sense of humanity affected me really deeply when I was a boy.

 

Joe taught me to draw, and while I never became a visual artist, that early interest in visuals and graphic design that I learned at Joe's figurative knee led me to art college, and into my career in advertising. Some of the success that I've had is in part to what I learned from his pages.

 

Joe was kind enough to let me interview him on a snowy day about 12 years ago. He called me from New Jersey, at my office. My assistant buzzed in and said 'Joe Kubert on the line', and I near about died. He gave me an hour of his time, and a memorable interview about his life and work.

 

Joe is the artist who drew more formative images that shaped my young mind than anyone.

 

I'm writing this, and choking back a few tears.

 

God bless you Joe. Please say hi to Bob, to Ric, to Irv, to Sev, to Jack and to all the rest of them who made our lives great with story.

 

Shep

 

Nicely said.

[Wild Bill Kelso-migration]

I am speechless and heartbroken.

 

We will miss you Joe…

[adamstrange]

This is a very sad day.

 

He was one of the giants of the comic book industry for the last 70 years.

[thirdgreenham]

very sad, indeed.

 

The greatest among greats.

[ngh81]

Kubert was THE reason why i was planning on going to the Baltimore comic con next month ...

I pray for him and his family.

[thecollectron]

Sad news. I was fortunate to meet him a couple of times, at a Big-5 War Dinner and lunch during a Wonder-Con. It was difficult to avoid turning into a "We're-not-worthy!" fanboy in his presence and start gushing about the amazing quantity of beautiful artwork that he produced, and he was a nice guy and nice to fans.

[Fazybones]

As soon as I posted in the thread in CG about Joe's passing I logged off

the boards and went to my comic boxes and started flipping through many

of his covers and lucky all are in mylar and after five minutes or so a few

tears started to fall onto his awesome covers.

 

What a sad sad day it was yesterday and wasn't it only six weeks ago that

Matt and Richard had an fantastic chance to interview him and he sounded

like he was a true gentleman and looked quite healthy. I pray for his family in

these hard times.

 

He was one of the biggest reasons I became interested in War comics and

DC comics in general and we are all blessed to have so many examples of

his incredible covers, inside art and his story telling.

 

R.I.P. Mr. Kubert and you will not be forgetten by so many collectors and

many future collector generations to come.

 

 

 

 

Great story Shep and it's so nice to see you around these parts again,

although I wish it was for a better reason.

[comick1]

Rock's pop is gone. I am stunned. He's the reason (along with Russ Heath) that I've collected war comics for so many years now. Actually, Heath was on my map somewhat AFTER Kubert.

 

Kubert's art graced the first comic I ever had a true passion for. . .the Tarzan Limited Collector's Edition C-29. I was about 5, maybe 6 years old when I saw it at this guy's booth at the SD Comicon during the El Cortez years. My mom had just handed me a dollar and said I could spend it as I liked. She was goading me on to buying some kiddie comics in the 10¢ bins. It went something like, "Mickey, you can get TEN comics from over HERE!." I said, "I want THAT [Tarzan] comic!" She even tried a second time: "But that's only ONE comic and you can get TEN right here." My stubborn bean would have nothing of it. That was the first time that I remember seeing a comic book that just blew me away. Check out Tarzan's face:

 

 

To my 5-6 year-old brain, there was something truly compelling about that cover. Maybe the green, maybe the treasury-size, maybe the fact that I had a copy of the LCE C-22 (part 1) kickin' around the house (probably bought by my 8 year-old brother) that I'd pored over many times, but most likely the sheer badåss savagery of Tarzan himself. By reading that, I transformed my scrawny little 1st grade self into the Lord of the Jungle. The moody stuff on the other side of that cover was something I read until the thing fell apart. It didn't really occur to me until a couple years later that there were myriad artists who ALL had their own artistic styles. But in retrospect, it was Joe Kubert whose killer line work and composition made me aware of the notion that NOT all comics were created equally. It began to dawn on me that whoever that guy was that drew Tarzan ALSO was the guy whose art was on the cover of Sgt. Rock comics that I was buying with my milk money (2 days worth) on my way home from school at the 7-Eleven on the corner of 52nd St. and El Cajon Blvd. I started reading the OPG around the time I was reading and collecting Miller DD in the early 80s and seeing that Kubert wasn't just the cover artist to DC war, but he was responsible for the interiors of many of them as well as numerous other classic DC stuff that'd seen print many years before I was born. Pretty soon, it all started to click. Kubert wasn't just some passing fad. . .his work had touched EVERY full decade of comics history (pivotal word "full". . .he wasn't working in the 30s, but neither was that a full decade of comic book history) and his work on Sgt. Rock led me to discover the unbelievable genre of DC war where the brilliance of Russ Heath, Mort Drucker, J. Severin, J. Grandenetti, Sam Glanzman, and Ric Estrada was like discovering buried treasure every time I opened a war book.

 

I met Kubert for the first time in 1991 when he visited the SD Comic-Con. At 21 years of age, I'd seen a number of collectors who'd collected some pretty amazing sketches as a side-hobby to their comics collecting habit. Kubert's appearance was the reason I started my sketchbook. That's as good a reason as you're gonna get. For the purchase of Abraham Stone (which is a good read in and of itself), you could get an incredible sketch. This is the one I asked him for:

 

 

Number of years later, I met him at Wondercon again and got this one.

 

 

"Sketch, please!" (Wimbledon Green reference that Collectron is laughing about right now)

 

Regrettably, I never asked him for a Tarzan. Joe Kubert was such a gentleman and a person who had the respect of EVERY colleague and fan in the industry. He showed up to our Big-5 War Dinner once and happily drew a Rock sketch for our auction not only that year, but in many other years where he made art donations in absentia.

 

A lotta people think of Kirby, Ditko, Sekowsky, Swan, Anderson, Infantino, or G. Kane when they think of the Silver Age. Kubert is always mentioned but more as a side-note because, like Heath and unlike the aforementioned, he isn't really heavily associated with any superhero stuff (with the glaring exception of his jaw-dropping B&B Hawkman work). But what genres he IS associated with are the ones I collect. It's no co-winkidink that I collect the first 24 issues of B&B as much as war comics (Lotta Heath in those, too. If war books were adventure/sword & sorcery, you'd have B&B 1-24). If Kubert had work in DC romance, I'd have gravitated toward it. I'm gonna go take a gander at some Joe Kubert art now. I will meet some of the sorrow of this day with the joy that his art has brought and always will bring to me.

 

Thanks to all of you for writing your own thoughts about this incredible giant.

 

SGT. ROCK ON, Mr. Kubert!

Edited August 13, 2012 by Comick1

[bronze johnny]

Joe Kubert has been in my life since I was a kid and got my first Sqt. Rock and Unknown Soldier books back in the early 70s. I'll never forget the impact his art had on me.

 

God bless you Mr. Kubert!

 

John

[thecollectron]

"Sketch, please!" (Wimbledon Green reference that Collectron is laughing about right now)

 

[comick1]

"Sketch, please!" (Wimbledon Green reference that Collectron is laughing about right now)

 

 

See. . .see?!!!

[comick1]

Alrighty folks,

I finally got around to scanning and assembling (in Photoshop) the art that Sam Glanzman donated to the Big-5 auction. We were focused on trying to save up some $$ to help underwrite Joe Kubert for 2013. I am totally devastated that that's not possible now for a variety of different reasons. Mr. Kubert was an incredibly generous artist with all of his donations over the years to our auctions. At any rate, since that's not possible, I wanted to take a bit of extra $$ from our auctions and kick it RIGHT back to Sam and Sue Glanzman. I can assure you that this is a very worthy cause. If any of you have questions about this, I'd be happy to get in to specifics via PM since I'm trying to show a bit of discretion around their privacy. I'm giving people a sneak preview of the auction that I'll run in the sales thread for Glanzman's donations. It's my plan to take all of the proceeds from that auction as well as about half of what we were planning to spend on Kubert and passing it to Sam and Sue. I'll let you know more specifics about the auction as I get more of my act together. Here are the pieces:

 

It's a Battle Album original art reproduction. Sam's note on the back of the art is that the artwork "is original art. . NOT a copy--the lettering IS a copy." I'm not sure which Battle Album it's from. Ideas?

 

Not sure which issue THIS is from either. The title stamp at the top is JUST barely visible and seems to have been cropped to the point that I can't quite ID it. Ideas?

 

 

 

 

[thirdgreenham]

Dunno, but aiiiiieeeee love it!

[Fazybones]

Very nice Mick I'm not sure which issue?

 

An envelope and a box of comics arrived today.

 

 

 

Despite the flaws it's a solid book I couldn't pass up.

 

 

 

Love this cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And just once more because I love it so much.

 

 

 

[kagemusha7s]

Very nice Mick I'm not sure which issue?

 

An envelope and a box of comics arrived today.

 

 

 

Despite the flaws it's a solid book I couldn't pass up.

 

 

 

Love this cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And just once more because I love it so much.

 

 

 

 

Wow, great books Fay (thumbs u

[thirdgreenham]

Agreed! Great score.

[bill977]

nice pick ups,faye! if you like aamow 24,check out aamow 20!!

[kagemusha7s]

 

 

[kagemusha7s]