Sal Buscema, R.I.P.

 Just heard of the passing of Sal Buscema at age 89.  A talented and prolific artist with a long career in comics, mostly at Marvel, with long runs on Spider-Man, Hulk, ROM, Captain America, Thor and Defenders, plus work on almost everything else at some point.

A couple of covers he drew:

Good mid-career interview with him in that issue of CI to go with the career spanning one in the TwoMorrows book (still available digitally).  That THOR cover is the only one he did on his run with Walter Simonson on the book in the 1980s, drawing most of the second half of Simonson's run, including the BALDER THE BRAVE mini-series.

And some interior pages

A page from the aforementioned BALDER mini-series with Simonson, maybe my favourite work of his.

A Christmas story featuring Jack Kirby's Orion and Highfather, also written by Simonson, from a brief late 1990s stint at DC where he mostly worked as an inker, but did a few pencils and even fewer full art jobs like this one.  I especially like the sequence at the bottom of this page.

Another Christmas story, this time from Marvel in the early 1990s, featuring the X-Men, written by Karl Bollers.

A 1970s page from THE INCREDIBLE HULK, maybe the character Buscema is most associated with, written by Bill Mantlo, one of his most frequent collaborators.

Another Mantlo collaboration, this one from ROM #1 in 1979, a character ostensibly based on a toy, but one where the comic book creators pretty much had to create all the back-story for.  

And another Simonson collaboration, from their final issue of THOR in 1987, an action packed conclusion to a classic run.

Stephen Bissette's TYRANT The Original Art Edition upcoming

Just announced from new publisher Lighthouse Press is S.R. BISSETTE'S TYRANT THE ORGINAL ART EDITION, an archival collection newly scanned from the original art of Stephen Bissette's classic but short-lived 4-issue series from 1994-1996, which just scratched the surface in the life story of a Tyrannosaurus rex in the late Cretaceous period.

There will be a crowd-funding campaign for the book early next year.  You can go here right now to sign up for information once the campaign is active.

Really good news, I can't think of a modern age comic that more deserves the format, and hopefully it'll lead to more material in the future.

EC - Destruction of the Earth (Feldstein)

Destruction of the Earth
by Al Feldstein
Weird Science #14[#3] (1950)

A scientist who helped develop the atom bomb approaches some government officials to warn them about the consequences that his calculations show for their upcoming hydrogen bomb test, which you can guess from the title of the story.  They dismiss his concerns and head down to the test in the Bikini Atoll.  Does not go well.

It's a little dry but well illustrated, with some interesting scenes, and a nice little twist in the last panel.

EC - The Sounds From Another World (Kurtzman)

The Sounds From Another World
by Harvey Kurtzman
Weird Science #14[#3] (1950)

Story swiped from a 1949 Roald Dahl short story "The Sound Machine", Kurtzman does a great job bringing the story to life.  It's about a scientist who is obsessed with building a machine that detects sounds beyond the limits of human perception. Hearing mysterious screams he investigates and begins to suspect that the only source must be the suffering plant life. Some great faces on a descent into madness by Kurtzman, and also the framing sequence is an original extrapolation of the Dahl story.

EC - Split Second! (Kamen)

Split Second!
art by Jack Kamen, story by Al Feldstein
Shock SuspenStories #4 (1952)

Steve Dixon, the mean-spirited boss of a remote lumber camp marries beautiful big city singer Liz and brings her to live at the camp, even though he doesn't allow any of the lumberjacks to bring their wives to live there.  She's soon bored and starts to cause trouble, but the lumberjacks know enough to avoid her.  Ted, a new young kid joins the camp, impressing everyone with his chopping skills which they hope will win them the upcoming big lumberjacking tourney.  Liz also sets her sights on him, bringing on the wrath of her husband. This leads to the usual revenge plot from the other lumberjacks.

Pretty story with the usual sexy woman, rugged men and lush backgrounds from Kamen, but the story is a bit cruel and doesn't age too well.

EC - Old Soldiers Never Die (Wood)

Old Soldiers Never Die
art by Wallace Wood, story by Harvey Kurtzman
Two-Fisted Tales #23[#6] (1951)

A story set in France in the last few months of World War I, as veteran American soldier Pappy Davidson tries to impart some of his hard won experience on recent replacement Caruso.  Two page vignettes for each month from August to November as they withstand attacks from air, artillery and gas until they finally get to the end of the war.

Very nice story, Kurtzman and Wood were always a good combination, with good attention to detail, using silent panels and sound effects well and even adding a few touches of humour to the overall messiness of war in the trenches.

Cerebus #104 [1987] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Cerebus #104 [1987]

CEREBUS was a Canadian funny animal comic published for 298 issues from 1977 to 2004 by Dave Sim out of Kitchener through his company Aardvark-Vanaheim, featuring the wacky adventures of the titular Cerebus, an aardvark in a mostly human world.  By this point Sim had been joined by Gerhard on the bankgrounds and tones.

This issue is part of the climax to the long-running Church&State storyline (#52 to #111), where Cerebus is ascending to the moon on a tower of giant heads.  I think it made sense in context, it's been about 30 years since I read the full Church&State story, and I've only ever sampled some of the later stuff.

In the middle of all this we get a crossover with Bob Burden's character the Flaming Carrot, which had also briefly been published by Aardvark-Vanaheim back in 1984.  The Carrot shows up in the middle of Cerebus' ascension, throws around the usual string of non-sequiturs, many of them anachronisms in the context of the usual Cerebus world of the time. The art and script for the Carrot is provided by Burden and lettered by usual Carrot letterer Roxanne Starr. Towards the end of the issue we get a callback and resolution to one of the Carrot's greatest failures, from the story "The Bandit Moons" in A-V In 3-D #1 [1984].

Entertaining issue, I remembered a few parts of it quite vividly from reading it decades ago.