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Mar 28 10 11:00 PM
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Mar 29 10 12:02 AM
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Mar 29 10 4:40 AM
Golden Age
alizarin1 wrote: 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.
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.
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Mar 29 10 9:08 AM
DC Forum Moderator
Mar 29 10 12:03 PM
It's interesting to note what happened to Gil Kane at DC during the 1960s, Osgood, particularly in light of the general fan perception that he was one of the company's top artists during that era. As we've said, Kane was doing a great deal of work for National just before that. He was penciling the entire contents of Hopalong Cassidy beginning in 1957 (which was a monthly at the time, until moving to semi-monthly status during the last year of publication), he contributed quite a bit of art for Western Comics and All-Star Western, he was penciling most of Rex and did the preliminary art for the early Mystery in Space Adam Strange covers and some back-up sci-fi stories there too.Then within the space of two years he lost it all.True, he continued to do a lot of interior art and covers for Strange Advantures on a regular basis in the early 1960s, which surely helped. Then he got the plum assignments for two new high-profile superhero books, Green Lantern and The Atom, which was an enormous boost after the severe cut in income he was facing in the aftermath of all those cancellations. But he never really recovered from that loss during the 60s, at least in terms of the artistic workload he previously had at DC. To make matters even worse for him, Schwartz had to give up SA and MIS entirely by late 1963 to oversee the Batman titles, which left Kane with just the two superhero books that he was only penciling, not inking.Unfortunately, it didn't exactly get a whole lot better for him at National from that point on. Infantino got the majority of new work on the Batman titles, Kane received very little, while Anderson launched the 1964 Hawkman book. Schwartz didn't use him on the few remaining Brave and the Bold and Showcase experiments he tried--Infantino penciled five issues of Strange Sports Stories, while Anderson did complete art for the two "Golden Age" team-up revival series in the mid-1960s and for The Spectre. None of the other DC editors seemed to be much interested in using him to launch new titles either; when Metamorpho was in the planning stages it was John Romita, a DC romance artist, who was first offered the new strip, not Kane. But Romita decided instead to jump ship to work for Stan Lee, and Metamorpho eventually went to Ramona Fradon. All of which appears to have left Kane in a rather tenuous position at DC. He did, as you say, get to do some inking of his own work in the mid-to-late 1960s on both Green Lantern and The Atom until he eventually lost those books too. He did some art for Tower and a few other publishers in addition to his work appearing sporatically in other DC strips here and there during the decade-- Teen Titans, Hawk and the Dove, Animal Man, but it didn't amount to much. There was also the self-published magazine format comics novel His Name is... Savage in 1968 (influenced heavily by the brutally violent 1967 crime film Point Blank) which Kane conceived, plotted and illustrated, but it hardly made a ripple. During the late 1960s-early 70s management shakeup at DC, he watched as Infantino was promoted to the position of art director, then editorial director and then publisher, while Kane, just a freelancer, found himself going nowhere penciling Captain Action. He wasn't able to acheive financial stability until he moved over to Marvel in the early 1970s.
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