 |
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
WRITING
Recent Posts: Jess Jodloman Sunken Pearls of Cap'n Hatch Joe Kubert Tor 2008 The first issue of Kubert's revived primitive hero High Cost of Four Color Fun Reaction to Tom Spurgeon's essay on the state of comic books Madame Sans-Gene Illustration and review of the 1894 play starring actress Gabirlle Rejane Spirit #15 Art by Paul Smith. DC Comics - - - - - - - - ONLINE COMICS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
Joe Kubert Tor 2008 Pre-Historic! Kubert has been in comics since nearly the very start of the industry, and now at his advanced age he is still turning his hand toward embellishing, or if you're a bit more negative about it, repeating, the adventures of the characters most attached to his career. In particular he has produced Sgt. Rock tales (one written and drawn by himself, a multi-part story called "The Prophecy" in 2006) and also a Rock story written by Brian Azarello from 2003 ("Between Hell and A Hard Place"). Neither change the character in anyway, but each are reasonably good riffs on the character made known by Kubert and the late writer Robert Kanigher. But the prehistoric "Tor" series has a longer association with Kubert, dating back to 1953 when Kubert was at St. John, a publishing house that produced a number of comics (for example Mighty Mouse and Abbott and Costello Comics). Set in a world where primitives in loincloth flee from dinosaurs, it seems modeled directly on the caveman movie opus "One Million BC" from 1940. Here in this 2008 version, Kubert has made the existence of Tor seem grittier, though his unique flowing pen and brush work still beautifies everything. The tale begins as a bleeding Tor struggles to get over a savage beating from his home tribe, which he is escaping. He rubs mud into his wounds as medicine to stop and heal the oozing sores, and he also scoops up small reptiles and worms for his food later. After more travel he encounters strange fruit which he devours, and later produce bizarre, psychedelic nightmares. He penetrates into a large white mountain that is thrust up out of the jungle, and he discovers a green world inside the open core of the mountain. He also finds an apelike child tied to a rock, apparently a sacrifice. When a prehistoric alligator in the river comes to attack, Tor, who had dismissed the crying child as none of his business, promptly leaps like Tarzan to the rescue. And therein is the strange overlap between Tor and the King of the Jungle, because they are both characters drawn by Kubert (at DC Comics in the 1970s, Kubert drew and was in charge of the Edgar Rice Burroughs properties there) and his style links them together closely, as Tor could pass for Tarzan (and vice-versa.) Perhaps Kubert will delineate real differences later in this series (this is part one of six issues). The only grating issue at hand is that Kubert's writing interferes in a few places with Kubert the artist. Some panels contain text such as "Tor ignores the desperate pleading and turns to leave" and sure enough the panel art shows Tor ignoring the desperate pleading and turning to leave. Kubert the artist doesn't need Kubert the writer for clarification, the reader can see it. This is the cliché that Japanese manga fans used to level at older American comics, text-heavy descriptions completely mimicked in the artwork, rendering one or the other completely superfluous. But Kubert's artwork is as fluid as ever. Seeing his facial renderings of Tor in 2008 reminds me directly of the same head position and expression found in my older Kubert Sgt. Rock comics, when the battle-weary sergeant was drawn in a slightly more savage way (versus the more retrospect, baggy-eyed version by Kubert that developed in the 1970s.) Click images below to enlarge
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - According to the bio at Wikipedia, Kubert co-created Tor with writer Norman Maurer:
Additional Kubert Tor Books [Below] Cover to the first hard back collection Tor - Volume 1 (The Joe Kubert Library)
Tor - Volume 2 (The Joe Kubert Library)
Tor - Volume 3 (The Joe Kubert Library) [Below] Joe Kubert Tor cover from July 1954 |
|||||||||||||||||||
Thursday, May 22, 2008 
In the 1950s, [Kubert] became managing editor of St. John Publications, where he, his old classmate Norman Maurer, and Norman's brother Leonard Maurer produced the first 3-D comic books, starting with Three Dimension Comics #1 (Sept. 1953 oversize format, Oct. 1953 standard-size reprint), featuring Mighty Mouse. According to Kubert, it sold a remarkable 1.2 million copies at 25 cents apiece at a time when comics cost a dime.
HOSTING AND DESIGN FROM
eeweems.com
