Osgood Peabody wrote:

"It was the cancellation of DC's 2 western titles earlier in '61 that freed Gil Kane up to draw the Atom.

"Between losing Johnny Thunder and Matt Savage, it was just about a wash for him."



As far as the run-up to the Green Lantern chronology is concerned, let's also recall that by early 1959 Kane had been notified that both Hopalong Cassidy and The Adventures of Rex, the Wonder Dog titles were being dropped from the DC lineup, which meant an additional loss of around 270 pages per year (including covers) of pencil art income for him as well.  However, to his good fortune, no sooner had Kane lost those assignments than he was informed by DC editor Julius Schwartz that he was being tapped for the new Green Lantern series.  Indeed, as you can see, the final issue of Rex (cover dated September-October of that year) coincides exactly with the September-October 1959 appearance of the first Showcase Green Lantern on the newsstands:



 
 

It's an interesting side note that unlike his fellow DC staffers Infantino or Kubert who had both turned out a considerable body of work on the 1940s incarnations of The Flash and Hawkman, respectively (and would be given the job by editor Schwartz to draw the later "Silver Age" revivals of those characters) Gil Kane never had a hand, to my knowledge, in either penciling or inking a single "Golden Age" Green Lantern tale. It was only natural that Kane get the GL assignment, though, since he was probably Schwartz's top sci-fi illustrator at the time and his go-to guy for creating most of those beautiful late 1950s Strange Adventures covers and the early Adam Strange Showcase and Mystery in Space ones as well.


And since The Atom has been mentioned here, as a sidebar to the discussion there is also this interesting bit of early "Silver Age" history from Bill Schelly's site:


Quote:

"Jerry [Bails] revealed that he had suggested to Gardner Fox (in a letter dated August 29, 1960) that a revival of The Atom would be the next logical step after Hawkman, who was slated to make his debut in December. He and Roy [Thomas] set about concocting a concept for the new Atom, which they planned to submit to Schwartz. (Jerry envisioned a new, more Dollman-like Atom.)

"Bails put the outlines of their suggestions in a letter to Schwartz on December 8th, which reads in part: "A brilliant young experimenter [Al Pratt, a physics professor in ordinary life] discovers how to compress the atoms of his body to make himself only six inches tall. In this meta-stable state, the mighty mite has the power to leap great distances and to smash through ordinary matter in his battle against crime, but he can only safely remain in this miniature form for one hour."

"Schwartz wrote back on January 6, 1961, "Many thanks for your ideas on the Atom revival, but by a fantastic coincidence I had already had some similar ideas on the same subject; even went so far as to have artist Gil Kane do some sketches." Both Bails and Thomas believed, probably correctly, that their enthusiastic letters and suggestions played a part in DC's decision to revive the Atom.  Bails urged Thomas to consider revival ideas for Dr. Fate... "


[End quote]

 
The "fantastic coincidence" referred to above is that according to Gil Kane, he was the one who pitched the concept of a new version of "The Atom" to Schwartz first, and one of the main reasons for him doing so was the fact he [Kane] needed more work after further losing DC's last two western titles in 1961 that you mentioned, Osgood.


A portion of an interview with Gil Kane at "Comic Art and Graffix" from some years back confirms this:

 http://www.comic-art.com/interviews/kanegil1.htm


Quote:

COMIC-ART.COM: How did you happen to do Green Lantern?

GIL KANE: Uh, well, Carmine (Infantino) and Joe Kubert were doing The Flash for Showcase and they decided they had so much success with The Flash that they would try a second character. So they decided on The Green Lantern and they picked me to do it.

COMIC-ART.COM: You designed his costume didn't you?

GIL KANE: Oh, yeah. And I, in fact, I did another book for them called The Atom, which I pitched to them myself. I designed the character and the costume and everything else, and showed them my drawings and sketches and they decided to build a magazine around it.

COMIC-ART.COM: What inspired you to rework the Atom character?

GIL KANE: Well, first of all it was very much like characters done by my favorite artists Louie Fine and Reed Crandall and so I, and they owned the title, The Atom, and it just seemed to me it would be a perfect situation, so I suggested it and the book was, you know, successful for, for a very long time, and as was The Green Lantern, but I must admit that I, it was sort of boring doing it. I really didn't enjoy it.

COMIC-ART.COM: Oh, really?

GIL KANE: No. First because I longed to ink my own pencils, which they wouldn't let me do, and, the only time they would let me ink pencils is when I did westerns. It just so happens I like westerns better than superheroes, so I started to ink more and more of my westerns and then finally when the opportunities came, they would let me ink [my own pencils] just little by little...
 

[End quote]

 

So one of the main reasons why Kane lost some measure of artistic interest in GL after the first couple of years is simply that he wasn't allowed to ink his own work to any degree (and he didn't like the inking that he was getting from Giella).  Personally, I'd rather have seen Gil Kane doing the complete art on Green Lantern any day [he inked that first GL Showcase cover above] as opposed to either Giella or Greene getting their hands on it.  Murphy Anderson's finishes were fine, though he was a rather dominant inker.


What Schwartz should have done in my opinion is allow Kane to ink a decent amount of his own penciling on Green Lantern (if that's what he wanted to do) move Giella not only off the strip entirely but out of his artistic "stable" altogether and hire Reed Crandall to replace him.  Crandall, who had been one of Quality's very best artists (and that's saying a lot) would have been an excellent inker for Kane.  Not only would Gil have been delighted by the choice, but as a bonus Crandall could have done some solo artwork on a few of the historical "Time Pool" stories in The Atom as well-- a perfect assignment for him.  DC comics readers of the era used to seeing the rather sparse and simplified work of an Infantino or Kane would have been absolutely bowled over to encounter the level of detailed pen and ink artistry that Reed Crandall would have brought to that strip. 


     

Last Edited By: alizarin1 Mar 28 10 9:35 PM. Edited 3 times.