This past weekend I went to the Hamilton Public Library to attend the Hamilton Cartoon Foundry event. Our very own Ivan Kocmarek was instrumental in making the event happen; the whole day was a celebration of Hamilton comic booking and cartooning. I said hi to lots of old friends and met a few new ones. Below from left to right we have two greats in Vince Marchesano and Ron Kasman, and just past the lady in the mask we have the equally great Greg Hyland of Lethargic Lad fame. In the middle pic we have young Jake Evanoff showing off his wears and at the far right we have Sharifa Patrick sharing and promoting her creations. Cartooning and creating comics is not an easy road to embark on, along with the talent you need lots of passion to the art form, I wish our young creators all the best with their projects and goals. There were panels held at the event as well, Ivan said the panels were well attended and featured the likes of Michael Walsh, Casey Parsons and Sylvia Nickerson.
OK let’s dive into that “heading for eBay” pile. This week’s feature cover belongs to Luis Dominguez’s jarring cover to House of Mystery #222. There’s something so enduring about those early Bronze Age DC Horror books, and we don’t just have to look to Bernie Wrightson and Neal Adams for inspiration. I ever tell you the one about the moth going into the Pediatrist’s office…?
I watched the first episode of Arnold’s new Netflix series FUBAR. The time period I find the most fun and the most fascinating is that early 1970s Gold’s Gym, Venice Beach era so when I saw this Dave Draper ad I knew it had to be our ad of the week. I used to pump iron in my early 20s and Draper was one of the guys I really admired. Draper and Arnold trained together in the early 70s, Dave “the Blonde Bomber” Draper passed away a couple of years ago at age 79.
I think I may have found a solution for all those ballot rigging conspiracies in the USA, get the Saint on the case! Our splash of the week comes from Allen Ulmer, from the Saint #3, Avon 1948.
This week’s icecollectibles eBay auction produced some strong results. Our CGC 5.5 Detective Comics #187 proved that Golden Age is all the rage right now finishing at $2,025 USD. I think the fact it was a great looking 5.5 helped a bit.
Great stuff! I too wish those cartoonists well. I enjoyed a foray into comic strips in college snd had two different strips for awhile on a weekly schedule. It’s a labor of love and may I add… the non mainstream cartoonists are doing the best work out there. The newspaper daily’s in the US May looked polished but most lack any real love for the medium on their obsession to achieve total blandness. I sometimes look at comics and will read two.
That Batman is for me the iconic image of Batman and Two-Face, hands down. If it were a Joker cover I would have to ponder long and hard on it!
Gerald, you should email me a couple of your old strips, I’d love to see them. Yeah that Batman is nice, but its only grown in stature in recent years, I remember back in the day when this was an also ran issue.