Bulls Eye #4 Pg 25- Ghost Town Ambush Pg 4

This was a very interesting pick up for me recently and will be the second of four art posts from the story Ghost Town Ambush in Bulls Eye #4 from Mainline Publishing. My descriptions will all be interconnected, so please follow along starting with page #29 and then view this after.

The cause of lengthy research regarding this piece, was the fact that the artists accredited to the piece by the dealer site were Mort Meskin and Charles Nicholas. My guess is that it was the result of looking online at the Grand Comics Database for credits to Ghost Town Ambush. However, upon investigating GCD I noticed that there were question marks after the credits for both artists. Not only that, but there were also empty question marks for the writer, Inks, Colors, and Letterer. Additionally, there is an indexer note under the story that identifies someone by the name of Saltarella for attaching credit to Mort Meskin and Nick Caputo for attaching credit to Charles Nicholas. It also identifies Harry Mendryk for suggesting that this story may have been produced outside the Simon & Kirby studio (S&K) and acquired by them as the comics market was crashing. With this information I then did a brief search online for the comic, which took me over to the Kirby Museum where I found my page online. Of note, under the comment section was the fact that Nick Caputo stated he could not positively ID Charles Nicholas as the artist for the story, which led me to believe that neither of the credits are positive Id’s with questions behind the listings on GCD. Also of note, is that the article entitled “The Mainline Comics Story: An Initial Examination” in Jack Kirby Collector issue #26, did not give credit to any artists for the Story titled Ghost Town Ambush as it specifically stated artist unknown in 1999. Thus, this led me to researching the artists and their art styles on the Kirby Museum site to help me better ID an artist.

I then decided the artists in question for this piece, Mort Meskin and Charles Nicholas, needed to be studied further. I went online to try sifting through their art and personally cannot disprove either claim due to my novice understanding of artist styles. However, I am basing my statements from what I read and leaving it open for further discussion and interpretation. Please feel free to educate me as I am always happy to learn something new. Regarding Mort Meskin I noticed some similarities of his normal techniques, but possibly more differences as well. To understand the rest of this conversation you might need to view the Inking Glossary on the Kirby Museum site, which can be found at the following address: https://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/simonandkirby/inking-glossary. There is mention of Mort Meskins precision of picket style fence use, which I can possibly see in some of the art pieces where the fence pickets are fully surrounded by the rails and there is continuity of equal width pickets. Then on the other hand, the picket fence shadowing on the horses far exceeds the rails. Furthermore, I am not seeing picket style fencing used as a technique in almost any of the character bodies, which I am frequently seeing in other Mort Meskin work. I do not see any abstract arches, so I cannot speak to them. I do not see the angled eyebrows spoken about in some of his other art and there is little use of shoulder blotting on these pieces. Yet the fact that there is use of the studio style inking techniques on these pieces to me does not preclude them from coming from within Simon and Kirby Studios. Then when researching the inking styles of Charles Nicholas, I found documentation that made me question that accreditation as well. It was noted in the Kirby Museum that Charles Nicholas did not do studio style inking; however, from my understanding of studio style inking you can find such traits throughout the Ghost Town Ambush story. Additionally, a trait of his inking style was swirling crosshatching lines, but in none of the panels do I see a swirling crosshatch. Thus, with this investigation and what I found, I am more apt to following in the footsteps of Robert Lee Beerbohm and accrediting this piece to artists unknown.

Please follow along with the next post to better understand lettering with this piece and the implications of the unknown letterer. Learn about unique attributes of these pieces that I found on other Bulls Eye art, and what questions still lie ahead.