Monday, November 28, 2011

Star Wars Infantino Style

Like a lot of kids in the late 70's, I loved Star Wars and comics. So naturally I bought every issue of Marvel's Star Wars book that came out right after the movie. For a lot of those early issues, the legendary Carmine Infantino took care of the art chores, ably inked by Bob Wiacek. At the time, I couldn't stand the art. His style didn't mesh with George Lucas' universe in my nine year old mind. But now I really like it. Carmine was great at science fiction, as his stints on several of DC's sci-fi books in the 50's and 60's proved. This page depicting the Millennium Falcon taking on two TIE Fighters proves Carmine had the material down.
I've met both Carmine and Bob Wiacek at different cons and was lucky to get a Carmine style Darth Vader sketch from Bob.
These issues mean a lot to me. They're wonderful reminders of my two favorite things in childhood, comics and Star Wars.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Sgt. Fury Special #3 1967

After watching the Captain America movie again the other night on DVD, I started to get interested in re-reading the exploits of Cap's cinematic band of soldiers, the Howling Commandos. Of course the Howlers were led by Sgt. Nick Fury during the book's run in the 1960's. It was one of the few Marvel war books and since I always preferred DC's war books, I never got many issues of Sgt. Fury, which I'm kind of bummed out about because it was a pretty good book. A lot of the art was done by the great, underrated Dick Ayers. He signed this particular ish for me back in the mid 90's and for some strange reason I had him do a sketch of DC's main war hero Sgt. Rock.
Dick's art in this special from 1967 is really good. I especially enjoyed the pin-ups in the back of the book introducing the Howlers to those who weren't that familiar with them.
Although this particular special dealt with the modern day Nick Fury and his former Howlers in Viet Nam, it still had the flavor of their WWII adventures. Marvel just published the first volume of the Essential Sgt. Fury this week so I'll have a good head start in my collection.

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