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Post by profh0011 on Aug 12, 2021 8:27:31 GMT -5
I still remember what an eye-opening revelation it was when someone pointed out that Don Heck's hero was Milton Caniff. All of a sudden, his whole style "made sense" to me. That was after a long, long stretch of younger fans bad-mouthing him and his work relentlessly. All I know is, except for a few I'm missing, I have his entire run of Iron Man in TALES OF SUSPENSE in the original printings. (Marvel's reprints of same tend to REALLY SUCK, as far as line-reproduction goes.) I know Heck was doing a lot of work for various publishers, which no doubt explains the inconsistency of the quality of his inks, EVEN in the original printing. Sometimes it's just average, but sometimes, he SHINES. My own personal favorite remains "Hawkeye The Marksman". Page layouts, drawing, inks, ALL fabulous. After that, he never inked the series again! I wish they would have gotten Wally Wood to ink the rest of that run. Many are unaware that under the flash, Wood's linework tended to be MORE true to whichever penciller he was inking over than just about anyone else who worked at Marvel in the 60s. And it was tight, he brought out the best in their work. (Sadly, the only Heck-Wood collaboration I have in the original printing is TALES OF SUSPENSE #71, "What Price Victory", where I.M. beats the crap out of The Titanium Man.)
Here's Don Heck inks over Jack Kirby-- with STAN GOLDBERG doing eye-popping colors!
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 12, 2021 9:27:13 GMT -5
An inker is important. Romita sr. , Wally Wood and Dave Cockrum, make Heck’s art shine.
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Post by Graphic Autist on Aug 12, 2021 11:14:19 GMT -5
Earlier this week I had read the Iron Man stories from issues 39-72 of Tales of Suspense. I even remember thinking to myself that Don Heck's art wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered it. Some of it was actually very nice, and I never felt that way about his art before.
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Post by badwolf on Aug 12, 2021 11:28:02 GMT -5
Heck never really made an impression on me either way. It's fine, not great, not bad, for its time.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 12, 2021 15:32:31 GMT -5
An inker is important. Romita sr. , Wally Wood and Dave Cockrum, make Heck’s art shine. I've never read any, but I'd love to look at a Don Heck comic inked by John Severin. (I think there are a few war comics by the two gentlemen).
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Post by profh0011 on Aug 12, 2021 16:12:07 GMT -5
An inker is important. Romita sr. , Wally Wood and Dave Cockrum, make Heck’s art shine. One of my favorites, Don Heck & SYD SHORES. When I first saw this, I wish they'd done the entire 18 episodes up to then, from the start.
This turned out to be the climax, Part 18 of an 18-part origin story.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,625
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Post by Confessor on Aug 12, 2021 16:13:30 GMT -5
Heck never really made an impression on me either way. It's fine, not great, not bad, for its time. Yeah, this is my feeling regarding Heck's work too.
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 12, 2021 16:40:13 GMT -5
I really think he suffered from inking himself so much. As others mentioned, he looked better when not inking himself on the Marvel books. But I guess Stan didn't mind letting him do it. John Buscema thought very highly of Heck.
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Post by tarkintino on Aug 12, 2021 16:52:35 GMT -5
An inker is important. Romita sr. , Wally Wood and Dave Cockrum, make Heck’s art shine. Well, most artists' work with Romita's inking and/or alterations usually improved dramatically. Of all of the endless articles written about Romita, his great talent as an inker is rarely covered.
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Post by berkley on Aug 12, 2021 19:20:26 GMT -5
I don't know if it was a speed issue or what, but I'm surprised Syd Shores never became a fan favourite like Toma Palmer did: his heavy black inks were very distinctive and added a lot of mood and depth to the final product. I don't recall the combination with Don heck off the top of my head but it's been a long, long time since I read those early Captain Marvel issues.
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Post by tarkintino on Aug 12, 2021 19:32:39 GMT -5
Shores worked best on Kirby's pencils, adding so much dimension / earthiness to his figures. I've always believed he (and Romita) were Kirby's best inkers, even above Sinnott.
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 12, 2021 20:25:24 GMT -5
Shores is still my favorite inker on Colan. Love their DD. Shores also did nice solo work on Red Wolf.
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Post by profh0011 on Aug 12, 2021 22:21:17 GMT -5
Gene Colan said his favorite artist was Syd Shores! So it must have been a real charge for him when Shores inked his work.
On the other hand, I felt Heck needed Shores more than Colan did...
The early run of CAPTAIN MAR-VELL is a chaotic mess. I know, about 20 years I got all of them, and read that entire era 3 times, and wrote a very lengthy review of it for the KLORDNY a.p.a. If memory serves, I wound up re-posting it in sections at one of my blogs.
I found Roy Thomas's work IMMENSELY annoying, Arnold Drake's a HUGE improvement, Gary Friedrich's TOTALLY INCOHERENT, and Archie Goodwin the best writer the series ever saw. Which annoyed me no end, as Goodwin, Heck & Shores only did ONE issue, and all 3 got kicked off before that issue ever got to the printers, so that Thomas could come back teamed with Gil Kane to do issues I could argue were even worse than the ones Friedrich did.
something that took me completely by surprise, was the certain knowledge that Don Heck was a BETTER designer and visual storyteller than Gene Colan. He was just getting REALLY bad inks at first. (When Vince Colletta is a HUGE improvement, you know there was a problem.)
I bet most people don't know the original green and white costume, and that horribly-klunky Kree spaceship, were the result of them being UNUSED designs for a TOY LINE. (The fat belt, the removable helmet, the weapon that STRAPS onto the guy's wrist...) Somebody should have just SLAPPED Martin Goodwin over all that.
The idea for an alien spy whose loyalties shift to Earth was JACK KIRBY's... but, tragically, he never got to work on it past those first 2 FANTASTIC FOUR issues. Can you imagine what HE might have done with that concept?
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 12, 2021 22:35:44 GMT -5
Sounds like you are not a fan of Starlin's Mar-Vell.
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Post by berkley on Aug 13, 2021 0:37:52 GMT -5
I liked the early Captain Marvel as a small kid and still think the basic concept is very strong.I didn't remember it being one of Kirby's - did Mar-Vell make an appearance or get a mention in those Kree issues in the FF? I'll have to keep an eye out whenever I read them again.
Love the Starlin C-M as well. The in-between stuff started by Thomas and Kane is probably my least favourite but there's some good moments in there too. The Rick Jones body-sharing gimmick wasn't a good idea to me , though. I understand how they might have meant it as a tribute to the original but for me it would hae been better to keep Marvel's CM as different as possible - which it was, really, in every other respect.
Syd Shores, yeah, those DD issues are great. I usually answer Steve Leialoha and Tom Palmer when the question of favourite Colan-inkers comes upbut SHores is right there with them. I tend to forget him because I haven't seen as much of his work as the other two, or not as recently. But as Tarkantino points out, he worked surprisingly well with Kirby too, which I wouldn't have expected given their respective styles. The "Sleeper" story is one of the Captain America comcis I read as a kid and the art left an impression - but so did "Cap Goes Wild!", inked by Giacoia in a very different style to Shores.
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