#drawntolast

Artist Steve Bissette attempted an ambitious dream project back in 1994, creating and self-publishing a comic book series about the life of a T Rex. He figured it would take him ten years worth of books, but sadly he didn’t make enough money from initial sales to make it feasible to last more than four incredible issues. At least in the fourth issue we got to see the star of the book, finally, as he hatched from his egg.

A recent video on that Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube channel examined the series, and though the story pages were as impressive as I remembered, about 20 minutes in it was one of the text features that really stood out to me.

Bissette was telling new readers in the feature how to order future issues, and included contact info for three comic book shops — one of them being UCity’s own Starclipper Comics at its old address when they were west of the Loop, where I bought my own issues of the series!

Continuing an alphabetical look at favorite Silver Age artists of my youth, here's Murphy Anderson!

Anderson's line work, to me, defines the artwork of the Julius Schwartz-edited books of the time. Kane, Infantino, and Sekowsky may have drawn the bulk of those stories, but Anderson's cover and frequent inking jobs on both covers and stories of these artists' works gave the line a real pristine signature look.

Most of my Murphy Anderson comics were acquired -after- they were published, my first purchased book of his off the stands was the Batman issue cover-featuring the Joker's new assistant Gaggy. Since that image was just on this board a couple of days ago, I'm showcasing different aspects of Anderson's pencils and inks. Also trying to avoid things more widely-seen.

It seems Anderson's most frequently thought of, in the Silver Age, as the regular inker to Carmine Infantino, due to their partnership on the Adam Strange series in Mystery in Space. Here I'm offering one of their infrequent Flash jobs, from the Weather Wizard intro in Flash 110, January 1959. Although he did a lot of the cover inks on the Flash, it seems like Joe Giella was the most-frequent partner to Infantino on the title's stories. Anderson on the inside was always a treat.

2nd up: In an informal fan-poll at the time, Anderson was the fan's choice to draw the Justice League but they had to settle for his great work only on many of the book's covers, including the team's first issue shown here from July/August 1960.

3rd: One of his frequent covers to the science fiction anthology, Strange Adventures, issue 132 from September 1961.

4th: The Atomic Knights stories in Strange Adventures were some of Anderson's most fondly-remembered solo works, from stories by John Broome. Here's a page from a story in March 1962. DC had a nice omnibus of these stories a few years ago.

5th: Anderson also inked many of Gil Kane's stories, sometimes on Green Lantern -- including the one introducing the Guardians -- but most regularly on the first issues of the Silver Age Atom. This one's from Atom issue 11, February/March 1964.

6th: Schwartz and Fox tried a few more revivals of Golden Age heroes towards the late-middle of the Silver Age. Here's Showcase 55, dated March/April 1965, featuring Dr. Fate and Hourman but in this example reviving Monday's bad seed, Solomon Grundy.

7th: His other big regular series of solo work was his pencils and inks on the Gardner Fox Silver Age stories of Hawkman. Although it was quite different from the revival's opening pieces drawn by Joe Kubert, Anderson did a great job as shown on this page from issue 9, August/September 1965.

8th: Also from August/September 1965, a first try at a series feauring Starman and Black Canary in The Brave & The Bold 61. The Mist was the perfect villain for Anderson's style, I think.

9th: And here's a page from that same Starman/Black Canary team-up, just because.

10th: The final attempt at bringing back a dead Golden Ager to life, The Spectre, in Showcase 60, dated January/February 1966. Anderson is not what you'd normally think of for drawing a ghostly ghastly avenger character, but remember this incarnation was more of a weird-mystery do-gooder and a far cry from the violent spirit of Fleischer/Aparo's stories.

11th: Near the end of the Silver Age, Anderson started making his mark on some non-Schwartz books. In Action 393, dated October 1970, Anderson inks a complete Swan-drawn Superman story, and their team would become the signature look of the Man of Steel for the beginning of the Bronze Age.

To my eyes now, though I still enjoy reading the stories and checking out these pages, Anderson smoothed things out in a sometimes too-pleasing manner for Infantino, Kane, and Sekowsky. His partnership with Swan, I think, was his best match -- where he brought out the quality of the pencils without over-powering it with the Anderson style.

One final set of reflections on improv comedy legend Del Close…. The documentary “For Madmen Only” uses many of the stories Close wrote for his Wasteland comic anthology, published by DC Comics back in 1987.  It was the closest a mainstream comics publisher had ever come to full-blown underground comix and it’s amazing he got away with it for almost two years.

Close was assisted by Chicago comics writer John Ostrander in putting these unique retellings of his life stories into comics format.  The stories were drawn by a regular roster of amazing, yet idiosyncratic, artists, George Freeman, David Lloyd, William Messner-Loebs, and Donald Simpson.  DC recently digitally-reprinted the series in their app, but so far no sign they’ll commit the book to a more traditional paper-format.  Fortunately, I’ve still got my copies from the 1980s and…they’re still some really crazy and startling little gems.