Martinex1: We have a couple of new questions for you:
QUESTION 1: If you could have a comic book artist from any era draw any character(s) in any action in any location, what scene would you request from whom? What is your dream commission?
QUESTION 2: What was your favorite childhood vacation spot and memory?
16 comments:
Good morning!
1) Reed Crandall, Blackhawks, WW II action!
2) As a young boy we visited a great uncle who had a restaurant and inn which functioned as a "house of ill repute" in the Texas port city of Galveston. Uncle Lefty offered me great advice worth sharing: "Never marry an alcoholic or prostitute. I've done both and it doesn't work." I've followed that advice.
Well for one, a great childhood memory was July 1973.. On a two-week trip out west to see my new step-dad's old friends in AZ, NV and CA, I'm stuck in the back seat of a '67 Buick, behind a narrow metal bar with all the vacation clothes sandwiching me to the back of the seat, barely able to see out the window of the days-and-days of miserably-hot desert flatlands, with my two parents puffin' away on cigarettes in the front seats.
We stop at a gas station, where I find a slightly-mangled copy of FF 138, yes 'The Miracle Man' who had returned to bug Benjy, Medusa, Johnny and Wyatt; they left Reed back to sulk about losing Sue and Franklin...
Suffice to say, for the next few days, I spent every hot-waking-miserable hour devouring every word and panel of that IMHO-classic Buscema/Sinnott masterpiece riding in that back seat. They didn't hear a peep.
Unbeknownst to my unnoticing parents, I had morphed into a Marvel Zuvembie.
I had entered my new, personal Kirby 'Negative Zone'.
1. Wally Wood - Daredevil fighting Sub-Mariner.
2. Went to Disney World when I was around 8 years old. That was really the only official family vacation we took when I was a kid (and it was only for one day because we didn't live that far away), but it was memorable. I grew up in Florida so during the summer we took a lot of day trips to the beach and other theme parks (like Sea World and Busch Gardens, etc.), so we didn't really take a lot of out of state vacations. We also had a lot of visits from relatives who lived in other states like Ohio, Kentucky, and Alabama. I grew up in the vacation capital of the world so, when I was a kid hanging out with my visiting aunts, uncles, and cousins was kind of like their vacation was our vacation.
1. Jack Jirby - Darkseid vs. Fantastic Four. I would've loved to see the Fourth World ideas come to live in the Jack Kirby Fantastic Four run. Even though they might perhaps better fitted to the Thor universe.
2. Juist, a small island in the North Sea (Germany). No cars allowed and instead horse carts did all the work. I read my first comic, Tomb of Dracula #17, on my trip to the island.
1. Steve Rude with a non-action scene of the meeting of the Jonny Quest cast and the Fantastic Four cast, with some kind of menacing image of Dr Zin & Doctor Doom plotting in the background, perhaps within the lens of a Robot Spy Spider.
2. In 1967, we drove out west via Route 66, to visit cousins in LA. This was the perfect first visit to Disneyland! Along with the favorite Fantasyland rides, it had the new Tomorrowland with Adventures Thru InnerSpace and so much more, along with New Orleans Square's newly opened Pirates of the Caribbean. It infected that six-year-old me with a love of Disney parks that has never gone away! This two-day visit to Disneyland was a small portion of a 3-week driving trip, but it has stayed vividly with me for 50 years!
1.I thought about slicker artists like Adams, Byrne or Perez. But I'm going with Sal Buscema inked by Sinnott, featuring the Hulk and Abomination slugging it out in New York City.
2.We didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up, we only went on one "real" vacation, that was to Cape Cod. I went on a whale watch cruise, saw Humpback Whales swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. One of those experiences that's so amazing that when we woke up the next morning, it almost felt like a dream.
1. Will Eisner, drawing the Spirit and Batman. Would make a fine counterpoint to Darwyn Cooke's Batman/Spirit comic cover. Second choice- Carl Barks depicting Uncle Scrooge meeting Howard the Duck...
2. Gatlinburg,Tennessee. Our parents took us there several times, always loved the mountains. Great memories of wading barefoot in cold mountain creeks. And then there was plenty of fun to be had in town, too...
@Charlie Horse: What if you married someone who was both an alcoholic AND a prostitute? Would the two things cancel each other out?
1) I'm not sure what to say; there are so many great artists. I love gorillas, so maybe a nice ape drawing by someone like Kubert, Hogarth, or Manning ... or something by Paul Gulacy (his stuff is always so cinematic) ... or a pin up by Matt Baker ... or maybe an SF drawing by Wally Wood ... or a sword and sorcery shot by John Buscema or Mike Grell ... or ... Ron Randall ... or Ditko ... or ...
2)We went to England a couple of times when I was a kid to visit my dad's family (as he's from there); that was pretty cool.
Thanks all. And welcome aboard Chim. Thanks for commenting. Charlie thanks for the colorful story.
1) I think I'd have a Bronze Age master like Perez, Golden or Byrne do a mash-up oddball team (including some Champions, Avengers, and Micronauts) fighting some large villain like Galactus or Eternity.
2) we traveled the American west -Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, Yellowstone, the Tetons- with seven kids in a van, camping in tents and staying in the occasional log cabin. I remember the cowboy hats and rodeo. I also remember the comics I read on the trip.
FYI that will be a future conversation so be ready... what do certain comics remind you of? And I see above those connections seem to be made readily.
Cheers.
Frank Miller drawing a bar scene from Sin City with his take on Sly as Jack Carter in the mix.
Driving down to St. Pete, Florida with Grandparents who brought me along.
Marti- I hope you run the "what certain comics remind you of?" several times! So, so many memories...
Hmm I'll go with John Romita Sr drawing a poster sized Spider-Man!
As for vacations, I took a memorable vacation many years ago to Hong Kong with my mom to see my eldest brother (I was 13 years old at the time) - it was the first time we actually met in the flesh and his wife was already pregnant with their third daughter! Spent my entire summer vacation there. Ah, the memories!
- Mike 'if not Spidey, John Buscema drawing Thor!' from Trinidad & Tobago.
1. Superman and Lois drawn by Joe Shuster.
2. We used to vacation at a house in rural Maine owned by friends of my parents. Dirt road, forest all around, a small pond to swim in, no TV, and the special trip to town where the general store had comics! That's where I caught this disease.
Hiya,
If I could get something like that it would be, as I'll be as greedy as possible, a Little Annie Fannie poster designed by Harvey Kurtzman, art by Willie Elder with assists by Jack Davis and Frank Frazetta.
Nothing too elaborate.
My best summer memories revolve around flooded baseball diamonds, an abandoned Edsel out in the woods, a naturally formed sand pit and a railroad tunnel with cliffs by the river and no parental supervision.
Seeya,
pfgavigan
1) Either Captain America by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott or Batman by Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin......If they were busy, then an Avengers/JLA combo from George Perez.
2) We didn't vacation very much when I was growing up. Instead, we belonged to the area country club, which had a golf course and swimming pool. It wasn't one of those "Muffy and Biff" country clubs.....this was a small southern town where most everyone was in the same income bracket. I mostly remember hanging out there during the summers....the Little League baseball field was there, too. I worked there on the course, beginning in my early teens. During high school, we often had parties and dances there, so lots of great memories.
1. Mike Grell version of Thor, Sif and Valkyrie. Or if he preferred DC characters, then the Legion of Super-Heroes of course.
2. Multiple state road trip vacation through states out west. In Colorado, I obtained Avengers 211, where Jim Shooter and Gene Colan changed the roster.
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