Tartag Countdown

Yesterday i made mention of stumbling across a story drawn by John Tartaglione which i enjoyed the splash panel artwork, but we went off in a different direction.

Today, we loop back. Here's that 7 page story...

This 6 page tale is the first confirmed story pencilled by Tartaglione...
 

This 5 pager continues our cycle of picking up one thread one pulling at another. In this case, Joe Maneely - how have we not seen him at all yet on this blog? (Same way we hadn't seen Tartag, obviously. But we'll be back)...
 

This 4 page tale is probably my favorite of the batch, just because...

This 3 page story is the first time i know of John working directly with Stan Lee, long before his best known works for Marvel...

This 2 pager is or is not the first of his 2 page tales, depending on whether or not you count illustrations for the 2-page text features. (Today, we're not)
 

And, lastly - his first confirmed cover for a 1 page piece -
 

By the way - did you know that his son, John C., is an artist in his own right? I'll try to herd the ol' brain around so show some of his paintings.

page art by John Tartaglione from Justice #23, Young Men #11, War Comics #6, Venus #14, Adventures Into Weird Worlds #14, Romantic Secrets #15, and Secrets Of Love And Marriage #9 (1951, 1953, 1958)

Random Post Day

I've been feeling rather disconnected from the outside world (even more than my norm), and very wrapped up in the painting and design work. So there was no blog post planned at all this morning. Oh, sure, we've got more Space Mice and things lying in wait, but the ol' frenemy brain wasn't going there just now.

So, i decided to just grab a random comic out the back corners of the cave and see what we got. It turned out to be Justice #23 from Atlas Comics back in 1951. The first page was the start of a sweet bit of art from John Tartaglione, a name familiar to old fans.

"Perfect!" thought i. 

We won't be seeing that today. (But soon)
The book ended with a tale from Bill Molno. Well, that's a nice bit of intersection - we just saw how Molno was ghosting for Jerry Shuster only a week ago.

Sometimes Random works pretty well. Better yet, i found two more tales drawn by Molno in a couple other random issues pulled from the same year. So, enjoy some random Crime and Romance comics from the brush of Bill Molno -

Oh - and if you're wondering about how the painting is going...   The current batch would have to appear in our back room, so we won't be going there just now.

Even Kelly is embarrassed to be there...

page art by Bill Molno from Justice #23, Lovelorn #14, and Crime And Punishment #37 (1951), paint art by -3- (2020)

2020 Calendars - Week 05

This week we've got a few names that'll be very familiar to some and rather obscure to others.

To start off, Edward Runci supplies the artwork for our Pin-Up Calendar -

  
And we've got Earle Bergey for our Covers Calendar -

For a nice bonus, here's the uncluttered original art for that cover -

For this week's Blue Monday Calendar, we've got plural. Al Buell leads off with a classic beauty, and i just couldn't let the first month pass without at least one from our favorite calendar artist, Gil Elvgren. (Don't fret - i made sure it wasn't a repeat from our 2018 calendar) 

Head on to our 'back room' for the adult content calendars. 

As always, the calendars are sized to print 8"x10" at 150dpi, with 1" square spaces for notations.

art by labeled artists, of course (20thC)

Spacing With The Mouse (One Of 'Em)

It's time for some Sunday Morning Funnies, so let's join Space Mouse again.

This morning we've got a trio of tales featuring a delightfully odd mix of science fiction in faerie tale realms. That tickles one of the right parts of my ol' broken brain.

As obvious from the top image, Space Mouse had his own title for a brief period, but today's tales are back-up stories from Peter Rabbit and Funny Tunes. He popped up in several titles beyond his own.
 
The big question:
If this is Space Mouse...

...then who's this guy...?
 

I guess we'll have to come back this way again, eh?

page art by Frank Carin from Peter Rabbit #s 30 & 34 and Funny Tunes #2 (1953, 1956)