Thanks. 100% agree. This could have been run as a house ad in 1962. Not enough is said about that awesome cover Paolo did for this book, either!

Hi - yep! 

“Those that you see over there,” responded his master, “with the long arms—some of them almost two leagues long.” “Look, your grace,” responded Sancho, “what you see over there aren't giants—they're windmills; and what seems to be arms are the sails that rotate the millstone when they're turned by the wind.”

Hi Malcolm. 

What continues to amaze me is that there is more clear and coherent story-telling in a set of 6 Kirby panels (such as these) than in pages of some recent comics I have attempted to read and follow. 

Except for the visual drama of it all, there is no real reason to have the interior of the ship falling apart in the first panel. Magneto just snags the ship, anyhow.

As a 13 year old kid, it was sooooo confusing why the characters suddenly looked so dramatically different from the only way I had ever seen them.

Of all the "color" stories, the Hulk one was distinctively great. All of the 'monster' panels were famtastic.

Thanks. "Hulk Smash!"

Thanks! High praise coming from you, sir!

Thanks for all the notes and comments, CJ Design! You have a keen eye for the 1960s Marvel stuff... picked up in the Dark Ages when it did not take a new mortgage to finance a single page of art.

It's hard to say how much I like this without being ultra-narcissistic, but it really came out great. These guys are wizards.

Agreed! Watching the video him do the other airport scene (not on YouTube yet, 02/10/23) is really cool - cutting out the masks for the figures and spritzing the ink to make the fog.

Thanks, Marcus.

This pair of strips from sequential days is just a delight together. I love the drawing on BUF which is why I collect them, but the "of-the-time" dialog here is worth the price of admission.

And the SOB does this with brush to paper, no prior sketching. 

Argggh. How can he do that? 

Hi Marcus - 100% agree - the timely and relevant-to-the-moment nature of editorial art conveys much more mindset than essays, editorials, and news reports because, I think, you're right at the pointy end of the stick. I think this art is overlooked. I am assembling a WW2 chronology at another site right now. Even for me, it is striking when you start to experience them in the context of each other compared with the randomness of purchase and posting.

Truth to the word on that. I posted this on the start of the Jan 6 hearings for a reason.

I'm assemblng my WW2 era stuff into a dedicated site to map out the chronology, and I am definitely going to be tagging the ones that fall into the "The more things change..." category. I do not think the number is small, and gathering those into a contemporary exhibition could be an interesting target.

The effect of a drawing to illustrate an explanation of text is simply underscored here. I "knew" about the spheres of influence, but when you need to work through a visual metaphor, you get closer to the meaning of the text.

Or, what we say in the old country: that's all to the good.

He does a great job. I told Carson if he ever needs a pen name (or a porn name) he can use "Mark Bold."

Thanks! My pleasure! 

Thanks, guys. Have I mentioned enough times that he freehands these things? The time-lapse for this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbiJWCYHWQg&t=4s

You wonder if the humor of him "Aye Aye Sir"-ing himself was caught by the general reader. I think it's a quite funny bit. The last panel today would be "We cannae outrun these f&%$^ing pirates!" "Aye-yi-yi, sir"

The panel I zoomed in on is as good as any Lichtenstein!

Hi Marcus - Agreed all around. And I love the whimsy of the motorcycle rider flying out from the picture frame in that last panel.

Capturing the sensitivity in the style that Carson created this is completely beyond my ken.

I got a thing for flying books and libraries. One of my all-time fave mine-all-mine Gerhard pieces:

https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1559192

Thanks, Ron. Agreed! The man is as sharp as ever.

Agreed, Rob.

Blank page. Ink to paper. No sketch.

Time lapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiyVmyAu6kE

Real time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke1Lwcdt92Y&t=1s

Thanks, Marcus. If you have never watched Carson do one of these, it really freaks me out from a raw talent level. Blank piece of paper... brush with ink... no sketch. Every line is a commitment.

He's not posted the sped-up version yet, but here is the hour it took to do this Morpheus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIjAe7YyHHE

"I can only lead you to it, Neo, but I cannot make you watch it."

Ha. You are hitting the highlights, now. This is such a spectacularly designed page. Right down to the fact that the top and bottom edges of the narrow panels were not all lined up and even adds to the disharmony. B.

Thanks, Jason.

I was struck by the composition and flow when I saw these pages in the comic, and when you see it this way as the pure image the intentionality of the artist really pops out. 

Brian

Hi Mark - Heh. I always regretted posting 1500 or so pages of stuff in the space of a few days back when I finally got to it in 2014. And with ~200 Cerebus pages, it's an undertaking for a visitor to even stroll the grounds. 

Some can correct me, but I think this was the first "shit" page in the series, if not the best, coming as it does at a pivotal moment in the center issue of that 3-issue run. There were a reasonable number of pages with no dialog (I have pg 19, too), so it added to the effect, I'd say.

Thanks for noticing. 

Agreed! (this was the speediest comment to a posting ever.... I was still putting up the other 3).

My distinct pleasure, Mark. I was pretty happy to see this Sketchbook topic. No hesitation what I was going to pull out of the collection at all.

100% agree! From the first TOS appearance through this new movie, the character has been as much a Marvel mainstay as any. 

agreed! And you just don't see a comics panel with some character's feet CRASHHHHHING through a window any more!

That last panel is easily a top favorite of mine. You can see it being lifted by either Lichtenstein or Faile and used as a stand-alone poster.

Thanks, JH. High praise coming from someone who recently posted a Buscema Surfer page. I'm envious on that one. One of the few things that I had wanted that I could never score a win on. Congrats on that pick-up. I posted another view of the orginal fishnet costume, this time by Don Heck from issue 32, in a femme fatale/noir scene with an out-of-costume Hawkeye.

"The Widow's Bite" 221 E 58th --- first round's on me

Woah. Awesome idea. I hope someone thought about that. Even if it was just meant to be a disguise. Marvel Studios has been so deferent to the source material that you have to believe it was on the table, at least.

Haha. Good point! And thanks!

Not a flashback! The real deal from 1967. Totally agreed on the earrings and button. Such a nice touch. 

Not a flashback! The real deal from 1967. Totally agreed on the earrings and button. Such a nice touch. 

I have been wondering how much of the movie might have been inspired by this run. 

The story, which ran about 4-5 issues, was set in classic cold war /James Bond politics. The Chinese had a super-weapon (The Psychotron) that attacked people with their fears. They needed a way to get it closer to the US (apparently all their own boats were in dock) and teamed up with the Soviets. The Widow went in under cover for SHIELD, something about submarine plans, and her former husband shows up on behalf of the Soviets, as the Red Guardian. 

Our own view of life in "The East" was informed by the paranoid mentality of the day. China did not even have enough technical skill to make reasonable steel (and the attempt to industrialize by crowdsourcing to villages contributed to the Great Famine during the Great Leap Forward), so this vast industrial complex is more of a fever dream view.

The monolithic view of communism had fractured between China and Russia, and in the 1960s most if not all communication between the two countries was handled in writing.

In 1967, the disasterous Cultural Revolution was just underway in China, and there is an irony to the selection of "Red Guardian" as the name for the Soviet superhero (and Natasha's presumed dead husband) who gets introduced in a few issues, given that the name for Mao's student-led insurrectionists was "Red Guard."

These few issues set up a lot of the back story for the character of the Black Widow.

Thanks. 

The man knew his way around the comic book page. The old "telling a story with pictures" addage applies here. Rip the dialog away and the story stands.

"nuff said, Fanfare! :)

"catch of the day"

bwah hah hah

If Moncuse had been teamed with a skilled writer of epics, they might still be rolling out issues today. His linework is Just.So.Pretty. 

I've one page from the SM story and one page from the IM story. 

Back in the Dark Ages, the incredible weirdness of this IM/SM book popping up on the newstand in a pre-internet era just cannot be appreciated unless you were ~10-12 years old when this stuff was coming out. 

Thanks, Nils. Every pose is a memorable classic.