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Monday, November 26, 2018

A Roll-Out of the Welcome Mat to Friend and Foe Alike!


Thanks for stopping or stumbling by! This is the inaugural post on a blog where I hope we'll both find a lot of fun.

For those who don't know me, I was one of the co-proprietors on the Bronze Age Babies blog that published from 2009-16. My partner Karen and I, along with staff writers Mike and Robert (and others who guest-posted from time-to-time), offered many topics for conversation and developed a wonderful community of commenters. Among the hallmarks of that blog were our reviews of comics, films, and books. Using the link embedded above or also at right, don't hesitate to go spelunking and certainly don't shy away from leaving a comment - we'll see it and respond. Since the BAB's closing, I've had a presence on Twitter using the handle @bronzeagebabies.

What I'm wishing to do in this space will have a different feel from the BAB. First of all, this won't have the frequency of posting that we offered (or endured, at some points when life tossed us curveballs) back then. I think I'm looking at maybe getting something live once or twice a week; Mondays and Thursdays seems ambitious enough to start (although come back each day this week through Friday as I jumpstart this project!). While I'd love a community of conversationalists to develop, this blog may focus more on presentation and less on queries for reader exposition. But I do hope you'll leave a note of your impression of the day's content - I'd love to have a little discourse.


So what's in store? As I type this, my initial ambition is to highlight Bronze Age artists who excelled in the black and white format. In the future, you might see reviews of full stories or of pages or even panels. I'll identify the penciler and inker, and sometimes we may just discuss that pairing  - was it a good fit? On other days you may see sketches, or pages of original art. And we won't necessarily be limited to just the Bronze Age - watch for anything from Golden Age Batman newspaper strips to Jeff Smith's Bone to pencil art from Batman comics of the last decade. While my personal comics wheelhouse of 1973-1980 may receive the bulk of attention, hopefully there will be at least a little something for everyone!

Just to give an idea of where this may go, here's an incomplete inventory from my comics library:

  • Planet of the Apes Archives, volumes 1-4
  • Savage Sword of Conan, volumes 1-4
  • Doc Savage Archives, volume 1: The Curtis Magazine Era
  • Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume
  • Batman: The Dailies, 1943-1944, 1944-1945, 1945-1946 
  • Spider-Man Newspaper Strips, volumes 1-2
...and several Marvel Essentials collections, numerous Artist Editions, etc.

If you didn't see something to whet your appetite, leave me a suggestion. If I don't have it to review, I'm not opposed to acquiring new material. And if you do have a discussion topic that's been gnawing at you, let me know and perhaps I can craft a post around your idea. I do want to be clear from the start: I am no authority on any of the above topics - not B&W comics, nor original art, and not inkers. But I hope we can all have fun in our admiration of such things and find some common ground on which to interact.




Again, thanks for the visit, and I hope to see you back again -- even as soon as tomorrow!


26 comments:

  1. Ha! First comment, yeah baby!
    Seriously, though: it's great to see this site launch, Doug, and I'm glad you're keeping the Bronze Age fire going in the comics blogosphere.
    Looking forward to your posts - I'll readily admit, I've always preferred the 4-color material, but I've nonetheless learned to appreciate black and white and will readily acknowledge that the work of some artists indeed looks better in b&w.
    Anyway, I have the first two Savage Sword phonebooks, as well as a bunch of Essentials, so I think I'll be able to follow along for many of these reviews. Also, you'll probably get me to finally crack open my copy of the complete Bone (it's been sitting on my to-read pile, better known as the shelf of shame, for years now).

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  2. Thanks, Edo, and welcome!

    I have only very recently gotten into the Bronze Age B&W material. I think my first foray was in the Marvel 1970s trades, and then in the Monster of Frankenstein trade. Now the B&W stuff is mostly what I've been purchasing lately. We are indeed in the golden age of comic book reprints!

    Doug

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  3. Hi Doug, and welcome back! Great idea for a blog. I've always had a fondness for black/white art. Obviously I love the color variety as well, but black/white art really highlights the illustrator's skills.

    Your inclusion of Jeff Smith's wonderful "Bone" offers an early source of anticipation. Indeed, many indie books from the 80's onward used the b/w format, so there's another rich source of material.

    And your Romita Artist Edition- wowwwwww.....

    Thanks for bringing back your interesting and insightful voice to the blogscape . Best of luck; I'll be following along...

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  4. Great to hear from you, Redartz! I feel like there are big shoes to fill after the run you guys put together at Back in the Bronze Age. Hopefully some of your regular visitors/commenters find their way over here.

    I don't know if it was a financial decision or just a lack of interest, but I really stayed away from B&W comics until very recently. Now I just have this sense of "time lost".

    Doug

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  5. Great to see you back Doug!

    It will be fun exploring the B&W books and mags and original art. I too know very little about this topic, so it will be fun to jump into an unexplored treasure trove. Looking forward to Conan, the monster mags, and I hope some MAD Magazine as well. Perhaps?

    Cheers to you - best of luck!

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  6. Thanks, Martinex! Great to hear from you.

    I don't have any MAD magazines, but that's something I'm certainly not averse to pursuing. I dabbled ever-so-slightly in MAD, Cracked, Crazy, etc. Often, I'd thumb through the Spy vs. Spy paperbacks at the dime store. Loved Don Martin's art as well.



    A note about comments here at the BWBC - I've enabled comments moderation to try to stem the tide of spam that sometimes gets through. If you don't see your comment publish right away, it's because I haven't gotten round to it. I've noticed, too, that there seems to be as much as a 30-minute delay today between the time you comment and when I am notified. Hopefully this is a temporary glitch.

    Thanks, everyone...

    Doug

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  7. Looking forward to your blog about the b&w mags.
    Here in the UK we only got b&w, admittedly these were the regular marvel comics but they did look good - and we got a number of them published weekly.
    One example is the POTA b&w magazines. The UK caught up with the USA version very quickly so they adapted the killraven stories and just redrew the martians as apes!

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  8. Hey, Moveover0 - welcome!

    I had heard that before about the Killraven stories. Weird...

    Question about the UK comics: Were they line art, that is shot from the original art, or were they the colored versions of Marvel Comics but printed in black and white? The difference to me would be that a color comic printed in B&W would have lots of gray tones. The original art for a comic intended for color printing would just be B&W line art. Hope that makes sense! And I appreciate any thoughts/memories you'd have on that.

    Thanks,

    Doug

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  9. Hey, Doug, good to see you back again; once a blogger, always a blogger, eh? I've never been big into the B&W stuff, but maybe this'll give me an excuse to check out some of those Savage Sword stories! I'll second the call for MAD Magazine ... great stuff, especially in the 60s/70s, when their satire still had bite to it.

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  10. Hi, Mike! Glad to hear from you!

    So it looks like I'll need to scout up some reprints of MAD magazine... ;)

    Savage Sword is incredible. I've read the first two "phonebooks", as Edo calls them. Nary a bad story in the bunch. Just last week I bought volume 2 of the Savage Sword of Kull - now there's a character I know next to nothing about. I was a little disappointed to see that the stories in that volume are all from the 1980s. But... the art was still wonderful. I'd like to pick up the first volume if I could find it so I could see the art by the Severin siblings.

    Planet of the Apes and Deadly Hands are also Marvel mags that have come out as reprints recently. Bot of those are beautiful as well.

    Hopefully we have some fun together in the coming weeks!

    Doug

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  11. Welcome back Doug! It is wonderful to have you blogging again!!!

    I really love the idea of a blog devoted to comic book penciling and inking. I've seen blogs post that feature pretty artwork before, but I don't think I've ever seen a whole blog devoted to artwork and what makes it special. It is a great idea and I think I'll learn to appreciate certain artists and comics more.

    I'm glad that you are including comic strips and non-super hero comics. Those are two areas that don't get covered enough. For years, the funnies in the newspaper were the only comics I'd ever read.

    All my best,
    Karen

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    1. Karen, thanks very much for your kind words. Perhaps we'll be co-conspirators in January's Super-Blog Team-Up?

      Doug

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    2. There is always a place for you in the SBTU family! I'd love for you to participate in the next round.

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  12. Hey there, Doug!

    I am looking forward to this endeavor and my hope is the less frequent posts will mean I will get more of an opportunity to feel "caught up" and take part in ongoing discussions.

    I am not a HUGE fan of b&w superhero art, but I do have the second Deadly Hands of Kung Fu omnibus for the White Tiger stories and was a fan of Savage Sword of Conan and stuff like the 70s Creepy and Eerie back in the day. I also have an issue of Tales of the Zombie that concludes the color Brother Voodoo stuff from Strange Takes in b&w.

    Good luck!

    - Dr. O

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    1. Dr. O -

      Your academic treatment of anything B&W would always be welcome here. I would be honored to host your thoughts on the White Tiger, or on some of the other material you mentioned. You know how to get hold of me...

      Thanks for stopping by,

      Doug

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  13. Sounds good Doug, look forward to reading your thoughts on the b&w Marvels.

    On your question about the British Marvels, I'm not sure of the exact source but they were clearly derived from the original line art somehow rather than colour comic proofs. Unfortunately they often had letratone (thats zipatone to you on the other side of the Atlantic) added ):

    -sean

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    1. Hi, Sean -

      Nice to hear from you!

      Thanks for the info. on the "look" of the Marvel material. When Marvel started their Essentials line, it was pretty obvious when their source material was the original B&W line art and when said source was shot from color comics. I don't know that either way is a bad presentation... I was curious what they boys on Madison Avenue were sending our friends in the UK!

      Doug

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  14. So glad to have you back in the blogosphere! I've just started to dig into black and white magazines of the 70s and 80s, since many have recently been made available in nice reprint collections (and on Comixology). I've already bookmarked this url and I'm looking forward to see what you'll post here!

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  15. J.A. -

    Great to hear from you.

    Now if we can get a Mike from T&T sighting, the gang will just about be accounted for!

    Doug

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  16. I would toss Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo on the suggestion pile.

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  17. Hi, Dan -

    Thanks for stopping by! I'll admit to having no background with Sakai's work - I always saw it on the racks at the LCS, but just never purchased any. Same with Lone Wolf & Cub, which seemed big when Frank Miller was doing the covers.

    So... if you would want to pull something together, let me know. We can discuss where this might lead!

    Thanks,

    Doug

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  18. Hey, Doug! I'm late for the party as usual but it's great to see you blogging again! I was a huge fan of Marvel's B&W comics so I'm really looking forward to future posts. ( And, if you're looking for suggestions of other mags to cover, how about Warren's Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, Jack Kirby's DC one-shots Spirit World and In The Days Of The Mob, the Hernandez brothers' Love & Rockets, or even the much-maligned Dave Sim's Cerebus? I had to mention that last one, didn't I? )

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    1. Simon - Thanks for stopping by!

      As to your suggestions, I am going to make you an offer you (hopefully) can't refuse. I have a Vampirella trade, along with some other things in addition to what I'd mentioned above. I do not, however, have most of what you suggested. So... I would be privileged to work with you on hosting a review of yours concerning certain stories or even a retrospective of any of that material. Let's talk, if you're interested. You can shoot me an email at bronzeagebabies AT Yahoo DOT com.

      Thank you, sir!

      Doug

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    2. Thanks Doug, I'll drop you an email.

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  19. Welcome back Kotter, er, I mean Doug! Ah, it feels great to post on a blog hosted by you! I guess now the gang's all accounted for! :)

    - Mike from Trinidad & Tobago.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Mike! Glad you found your way here. Hopefully we'll see you each night as back in the BAB days, leaving that final thought on the day's post.

      Be well,

      Doug

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