Jess Jodleman
The Sunken Pearls of Captain Hatch
DC Comics, Feb-Mar 1974, Cover Price 20 cents
Although it was state of the art when built in 1948, by the 1970s the printing coming out of the comic book production plant at World Color Press in Sparta, Illinois, left something to be desired. Lousy newsprint paper and heavy color inks that obscured the blacks of intricate pen drawing did not help the collapsing comic book entertainment market. Just looking at the 1974 issue #10 of DC Comics Weird Mystery Tales gives me pause to wonder what DC thought it was paying for when it sent those checks out on its printing bill. And take a look at how careful the coloring is:
Jess Jodloman panel enlargement
In an era in which trends like Glam had shoved out the earthy hippy fashions of the late 1960s, the everything shiny-and-new look certainly doesn't coincide with how comic book pages looked. Though not the most important factor in the demise of the newsstand distribution system that at one time moved millions of comics each month, but it cannot have helped when the physical look of the product makes the word "shoddy" come to mind.
Well, whatever: it was a good 35 or so years ago and DC Comics uses an assortment of very nice (and expensive) printing methods now. The leap from junk-object to something like an art-object has been made. But underneath all that crappy printing of the past is some very nice artwork from Jess Jodloman, one of artists from the Philippines that worked on so many of the American comics of the 1970s (the last comics credit I see for Jodloman is 1986). (According to Lambiek, Jodloman was born February 25, 1925).
You can see a photo of Jess Jodloman with Abe Ocampo and Tony DeZuniga at a January 2007 gallery opening for DeZuniga's "Superheros" exhibit at artist Garry Alanguilan's web site.
The "Sunken Pearls" storyline is a quintessential DC Comics mystery story. A greedy, evil pair of relatives for an old retired sailor plot to swipe the supposed sunken treasure that lays off of Matecumbe Key Island off Florida which only old "Captain Hatch" knows about. Enter Fran Lawrence, hired nurse who actually takes an interest in the old sailor's tales and the two strike up a friendship.
Of course, the two avarice-minded relatives are doomed; DC Comics didn't jump onto the the "evil pays" wagon until sometime after the huge success of the Halloween movie in 1978, so it was strictly an eye-for-an-eye moral universe ruling these earlier comics.
Click to enlarge to view pages (cover is by Luis Dominguez)
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Original page Thursday, July 10, 2008. Updated Aug 2011.
