John Severin - Two Fisted Tales #39 - "Slaughter"

I think that John Severin is probably the best artist in the Western genre in American comics; his style had a gritty realism that suited the genre so well. Who would your choice be? His inking style had something in common with Jack Davis -- loose and a bit scratchy if you look close - but without Davis' cartoony distortions: Severin's drawings are realistic and SOLID. The panel compostions are strong enough to be story-boarded frames for a Western film (or maybe better to say of a film that the frames are strong enough to be John Severin panels). I particularly like how in panel # 3, the un-inked pencils show how Severin opted against a street background, to show the figure and action to better effect. This page is from the story "Slaughter," the final story in EC's Two Fisted Tales" #39, published 1954 (this issue seems to have been all John Severin)

This was one of the first pages of EC art I was fortunate enough to acquire, 20 years ago on ebay, and I was surprised by the size of it: about 9x14, much smaller than any other Golden Age art I've seen, including earlier EC art. Originals I've seen from the EC "New Direction" books were about this size, so maybe it was a cost-cutting move as the code cut into their sales?