Number 16





COVERING IT: Classic Golden Age Comics Covers Part 5


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In the neverending quest of Pappy's Golden Age Comic Book Blogzine to overwhelm its readers with trivia and unimportant stuff about Golden Age comics, here is a cover to follow up on Pappy's #15 posting of Ivan's Woe by Howard Nostrand.

Bill Spicer published some of the earliest and most intelligent articles about comics, in one of the most professional formats. This issue, Graphic Story Magazine #16, published with a date of Summer, 1974, contains an interview with Nostrand about his career. At the time it was published he was out of comics, doing advertising art, but shortly after this re-entered the field. He did work for the very short-lived Atlas/Seaboard line of comics (Targitt), and then did work for Cracked Magazine up until his death in 1984.

This issue of Graphic Story Magazine also has some excellent comic art, reprinting a classic Bob Powell horror story, a John Pound EC satire, and even a Basil Wolverton story! A very eclectic issue of an eclectic fanzine, worth searching out.

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Number 4

As a P.S. to my recent blog with the Basil Wolverton story, I'm adding this. The two issues of Graphic Story Magazine, #'s 12 and 14, that came out in 1970-71, were what opened my eyes to Wolverton's diversity as a cartoonist. Bill Spicer, the editor/publisher of Graphic Story Magazine, collected material from diverse places and people, and led to my understanding of Wolverton as both a respected cartoonist and also as a cult figure.

At the time of publication of the two issues of GSM Wolverton hadn't yet suffered his stroke and was creating covers for Plop!, a comic from DC, subtitled "The Magazine Of Weird Humor." Not too much of Plop! was all that humorous, weird or otherwise, but Basil's covers showed he was still as weird as ever, and as funny.

The two covers of Graphic Story Magazine show how much alike and how apart his art styles could be. They are both grotesque depictions of humans, but one is funny and how is gruesomely grim. That was Wolverton, and his work was instantly recognizable, no matter what genre he was drawing in at the moment.

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