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8 • The ArT of Joe KuberT

The ArT of Joe KuberT • 9

Given that he began in the field in the late 1930s and is still writing and draw-ing comics now, Joe Kubert is the long distance runner of comic book artists. Before his bar mitzvah, this son of Jewish immigrants was earning $5.00 a week (then a goodly sum) in the first comic book production shop. His extraor-dinary career has encompassed the entire history of the medium in America.

Kubert has drawn some of the most exciting, distinctive, and memorable comics in each decade of his career, from the Golden Age in the 1940s to the present day. Mike Richardson, the publisher of Dark Horse Comics, recently stated, “Joe’s work stands the test of time, because his style is original. It’s all his own. Although he had his influences like anyone else, his work has never looked derivative. Those are the artists we look to for inspiration.”

Yet Kubert’s fully-developed style, instantly recognizable as it is, didn’t spring forth fully formed. To a greater extent than most artists, his work has undergone pronounced changes over the years. Most summaries of Kubert’s greatest accomplishments focus on his efforts in the 1960s on the “Sgt. Rock of Easy Company,” “Hawkman,” and “Enemy Ace” series, on his 1970s run on the Tarzan comic book, or the graphic novels of more recent years, such as his award-winning Fax from Sarajevo. But if one takes the time to explore Kubert’s artistic evolution from its inception, through a succession of distinct stages, one gains enhanced appreciation for his mature style.

Such an investigation naturally begins with his years as a student artist, the cartoonists who influenced him, the extent of his formal training, and the effect his early experiences in the comic book production shops had on his work. Then, one gains perspective on the development of a recognizable

“Kubert style” as he became a journeyman artist, when he began receiving assignments on his own. One can also see the impact of the tutelage he received from Sheldon Mayer, the legendary All-American Comics editor, when Kubert began drawing the “Hawkman” series while still in high school: It was Mayer who awakened the youth’s understanding of the medium itself and taught him to become a full-fledged professional.

IntroductIon

An Artist’s Evolution

OPPOSITE: Kubert covers from 1945 (Flash

Comics #63), 1959 (G. I. Combat #78),

1975 (Tarzan #236), and 2006 (Sgt. Rock:

The Prophecy #6).


Kubert’s subsequent stint as a comic book entrepreneur, mainly in conjunction with the pub-lisher Archer St. John, highlights another facet of his approach to the medium: The romantic, color-ful side of his creative personality. Also evident is the innovative spirit that led to the introduction of 3-D comic books, and the creative intelligence that resulted in Tor the Hunter, his caveman with a con-science, which showed what Kubert could do when he was both writing and drawing.

Then follows the great variety of genres Kubert handled in the mid-to-late 1950s after the 3-D experiment crashed and burned. With his auteurist aspirations now on hold, how would his art develop as he toiled for a variety of publishers, all of whose editors had different requirements and expectations? Kubert shuttled among many of them, including Harvey Kurtzman at EC, Stan Lee at Atlas, Charles Biro on the last issues of Crime Does Not Pay, and Robert Kanigher on the DC war comics. Having achieved a reputation for professionalism, versatility, and unstinting commitment to the work, Kubert unsurprisingly became one of DC’s top-tier artists by the decade’s end.

Yet if one were to stop with the heights his art reached on “Rock,” “Hawkman,” and “Enemy Ace,” as Kubert approached his 40th year, one would miss the further growth that came when he drew the Tales of the Green Beret newspaper comic strip, or when he became the editor, writer, and artist of DC’s relaunch of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan in the 1970s. These accomplishments reveal new fac-ets of the Kubert aesthetic. Similarly, the curriculum of the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Art, founded in 1976, tells a great deal about his personal approach to telling stories in sequential art form. The way Kubert dealt with the multitude of changes that came to the comic book industry in the 1980s and 1990s, both technical and creative, is also illuminating.

Throughout his career, Joe Kubert has shown a questing creative spirit, remarkable energy and commitment to the work, and an exceptional ability to evoke all the excitement and emotional potentialities the four color medium can offer. Thus his work is deservedly ranked with other writer-artists who loom largest in the history of comics.

—Bill Schelly

“Joe’s drawings seemed, from the very first, to come from a very primitive place. Like Frazetta,

he ignored the boring and mundane and went directly to the powerful and dramatic. As Joe

matured, he never lost that gut-level powerful style. In a world of technically proficient artists,

Joe’s gristle stands out and hits you in the face. My own style gains its grit almost totally from

Joe Kubert.”

—Neal Adams

ABOvE: Weird War #38 (6/75).

OPPOSITE: An almost op-art effect amplifies

Sgt. Rock’s anguish, Our Army at War #196

(8/68).

NEXT SPREAD: Artwork for Tarzan #235

(2-3/75). Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.


Joe Kubert has often been called a “first generation” comic book artist. Since he began working in comics in the late 1930s, he would at first glance appear to fit within the group of artists who were there at the start of the industry. But when one looks closely at Joe Kubert’s influences and artistic evolution, it’s both more accurate and more useful to place him in the “second wave” of such artists.

The cartoonists whom Harry “A” Chesler and Will Eisner rounded up in 1936 to produce original material for comic books were generally twenty-somethings who had been born before the United States entered World War I. Charles Biro was born in 1911; Jack Cole in 1914. Irv Novick, Bob Powell, and Mort Meskin were all born in 1916. When they were growing up, comic books as they are now known did not exist. There weren’t even adventure comic strips in the newspapers. Syndicated funnies existed, but when it came to “serious” fare, this generation of young artists looked to the illustrators of the 1920s. They were inspired by the work of J. Allen St. John, N. C. Wyeth, Joseph Clement Coll, James Montgomery Flagg, and J. C. Leyendecker. Joe Kubert, on the other hand, was born a full decade later, and had a whole new world of four-color wonders to inspire and influence him.

Joe Kubert was born Yosaif Kubert on September 18th, 1926 in Ozeryany (or alternately Yzeran), a small shtetl (village) in what was then southern Poland. (Today, that village still exists, but a re-drawing of borders after World War II places it in southern Ukraine.) Historically, it had been a destination for many of the Jews who had been driven from Jerusalem after the Romans’ destruction of the city in 135 A.D. Kubert’s parents, Jakob and Etta (b. Reisenberg), left a comfortable life in the fertile plains of Southern Europe to emigrate to America because Jakob was convinced America offered a better future for his family. Yosaif was but a babe during the Atlantic crossing, passing through Ellis Island into the welcoming arms of waiting relatives.

cHApter one

Student Artist

OPPOSITE: Art from Kubert’s graphic novel

Jew Gangster (2005), semi-autobiographically

depicting his family’s emigration to America

through Ellis Island.


While his parents were country folks adjusting to city life in Brooklyn, New York, Yosaif (and his sister Ida, two years older) grew up as city kids. Concrete was their grassy field, the sounds of automobiles their nocturnal crickets. No city in the United States was more congested than the five bor-oughs of New York City at the dawn of the 1930s, and no city could be as dark and frightening, especially during those desperate Depression-era days when so many were unemployed. Survival was a challenge for the penniless Kuberts, because Jakob—now Jacob, and soon just Jack—had no trade. Eventually Jack opened a butcher shop (with the help of his father-in-law Leib Reisenberg) and Etta opened a small restaurant. To economize, the family lived in the back of that restaurant. Yussie (as preschooler Yosaif was nicknamed) soon had two more sisters, Roslyn and Eva. (Sheila, the fifth and final sibling, was born in the 1940s.)

In 1933, when Maxwell C. Gaines (born Maxwell Ginsburg or Ginzberg) was pasting ten-cent price tags on copies of his promotional comic book Funnies on Parade and putting them on newsstands in New York City as an experiment, Yosaif Kubert was six years old and just beginning elementary school. When the first comic production shops were being formed, he was nine, and finishing up fourth grade. He was too young to be among the earliest comic book artists, but the perfect age to be drawn to the colorful covers of the comic books that had by then gained a substantial presence on drug and candy store display racks. While Kubert was too young to qualify as a “first generation” comic book artist, he became a “first generation” comic book fan.

Yussie’s interest in comics was instantaneous and intense from the moment he saw the four-color strips in the Sunday newspaper. Sunday funnies had been a popular adjunct to American newspapers since the turn of the cen-tury, when the giant presses became sophisticated enough to print in multiple colors with sufficient precision. Immigrant families like the Kuberts especially loved the medium, which didn’t require a strong grasp of the English language to enjoy.

The comics captured Joe’s imagination and inspired him to pick up a pen-cil before he could read. He exhibited a prodigious desire to draw, and glimmers of talent when he did so. If the roots of an artist’s style begin with the work that inspired him, Kubert’s beginnings were born of admiration for the great adven-ture strips that appeared in the early 1930s. He later wrote, “I guess I always wanted to be a cartoonist. I knew it… the first time I picked up the New York Daily Mirror and saw Tarzan, done by Hal Foster. Only to be reinforced by Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim (Alex Raymond) in the New York Journal-American, and Milt Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates in the New York Daily News.”

Sunday Tarzan strips began in 1931; Flash Gordon and Terry and the Pirates in 1934. Foster, Raymond, and Caniff were Kubert’s idols. He was largely unaware of the illustrators who were still riding high in the popular books and magazines of the day. Whatever illustrative values he absorbed came to him secondhand, through the work of older cartoonists.

From interviews Kubert has given over the years, and directions his later career took, it’s clear that Harold Foster’s art on Tarzan made the deepest impression on him. This may partly have been a function of how young he was when he discovered the four-color adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s feral ape man, because such early impressions go deep. Yosaif turned five years old just eleven days before Hal Foster’s first Tarzan Sunday strips began appearing in the Mirror. He wouldn’t enter first grade for another year.

Kubert later expressed that youthful wonderment, recalling,

[There] in those beautifully rendered yet deceptively simple draw-ings, Tarzan, the Ape-Man, became a living, breathing entity. The figures were real and alive. The credibility of characters and back-ground transported a kid living on Sutter Avenue in East New York Brooklyn into the mysterious green and vibrant world of the African jungles. When the huge black-maned lion challenged the Lord of the Jungle, I could feel the strength of the Ape-Man’s legs


circle the great cat’s body, while he drove his blade again and again into the raging beast’s heart. The ability with which Hal Foster was able to engender that sense of total realism and believ-ability was magic.

Despite Kubert’s intense admiration for Foster’s artwork, its influence wouldn’t become apparent in his own drawings until much later. Perhaps because Foster’s formal art training and illustrative approach may have been too difficult for the boy to emulate, the influence of the Tarzan artist’s work wouldn’t become obvious until Kubert had not only reached adulthood, but found a subject matter that called for a more sophisticated approach to comic art. Until then, it’s as if Foster’s influence remained locked somewhere in Kubert’s psyche until he could understand and make use of it. Its primary impact on Kubert the boy was that it enthralled him with the comic strip medium to such a degree that it literally set his life’s direction.

By the time Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates and Raymond’s Flash Gordon arrived, Yosaif was well along in grammar school, and his nickname had become Anglicized into “Joseph” or “Joe.” These newspaper features were three among many that Kubert admired and imitated, including The Phantom, Dick Tracy, and Little Orphan Annie. He covered any blank sheet of paper with doodles and sketches. His artistic ability was recognized first by his family, and then his neighbors, who gave him chalk to draw on the black macadam of the streets of East New York. Once in grammar school, being a “good artist” gave “Joseph” an identity and reputation. Teachers enlisted him when a poster or sign was needed. His peers asked that he draw on their arms, often a comic strip character. Kubert found acceptance and a sense of identity this way, and dreamed of one day creating his own newspaper strip.

Comic strips weren’t the only form of entertainment that fascinated the boy. He went to the movies whenever he could. Like most kids, he enjoyed the serials and B-Westerns, the prime fodder of Saturday matinees. While the imaginative elements of Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and King Kong (1933) thrilled young Kubert, it was the darker films of the era (which he probably saw in re-releases) that he later said were particular favor-ites. Foremost among them were Public Enemy with James Cagney, Scarface starring Paul Muni, and most influential of all, Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff, whom Kubert would forever cite as his favorite screen actor. Frankenstein influenced his later aesthetic both in terms of the dark, evocative visuals achieved by director James Whale, and the images of the Monster himself.

The new comic books were like manna from heaven to young Kubert. Famous Funnies and the other early titles that followed reprinted the comic strips, giving readers access to large helpings of fea-tures that weren’t necessarily in the family’s news-paper of choice. When new material rather than reprints began appearing in the pages of these comic books, Joe was a ten-year-old fifth-grader. This was exciting not only because the characters weren’t in any newspaper, but because of the generally wilder, more fantastic adventures they lived, making them especially appealing to younger readers.

If Kubert wanted to draw comics for a living some day, a determination that he had no doubt expressed by this time—just as his friends talked of wanting to become firemen, cowboys, or pilots—this new comics medium kicked the desire into high gear. Moreover, every comic book was required to include

Earliest known drawing by Joe Kubert, 1938.

From Man of Rock (2008), courtesy of Joe

Kubert.


the name and address of its publisher, and most of them had editorial offices in New York City. It wasn’t long before Kubert realized that he might visit those offices for the mere price of a subway token.

So far, the budding cartoonist’s teachers had been the comics them-selves. None of his grammar school instructors could help, and his parents could offer nothing more than encouragement. Jack Kubert’s comment after examining his son’s latest drawing was always, “It’s about ninety percent perfect.” This was his way of both giving praise and suggesting there was room for improvement. One can almost hear him make that comment about a certain early drawing by his son: a portrait of Joe’s matriarchal grandfather, Leib Reisenberg. The piece demonstrates considerable ability (the resemblance to images of the man in existing photographs is strong), especially if it was done “circa 1938” as indicated in a notation near the signature, which would mean Kubert was 11 or 12 years old when he drew it. Jack and Etta never tried to discourage their son’s artistic aspirations, as many another parent born in the Old Country might have done. They bought him a professional-type, freestanding drawing board with a tilting surface, though they could ill afford the eleven-dollar price tag. Joe’s portrait of his grandfather was likely drawn on that board.

Joe Kubert made his first forays to Manhattan to knock on publishers’ doors before he was a teenager. Not only did he have to leave his insular ghetto, but he had to summon up the nerve to show his early sketches and cartoons to whoever was on the other side of those doors. He later explained,

“It just seemed like a natural thing for me to do. I didn’t have any hesitation about it. I guess I was so naïve and innocent that the fact that my stuff looked like junk and didn’t anywhere near resemble anything at the professional level just didn’t stop me from doing it.” Kubert added, “Also, this was in the late Thirties. It was a different kind of world. Guys like me—and this included


my friends and the people that I hung with—whatever we wanted to do, we felt we could do it. Or at least take a good shot at it.” At that point, the lad was looking for suggestions on how to improve, rather than hoping for an actual assignment.

Some confusion exists with regard to the exact time frame of these early events. It has been thought that Kubert first appeared in the Harry “A” Chesler comic book production shop in the summer of 1938, not long after Action Comics #1 introduced Superman to the world. He would have been eleven years old, just finished with sixth grade. Kubert himself has often dated his first trip to Manhattan (for this purpose) in that year, at that age. However, in other accounts, he has stated with certainty that his first visit was to the offices of MLJ Publications, at the behest of a young relative of one of the firm’s owners. His memories of that initial visit are clear and detailed. But if that was really his first such visit, then it had to be in 1939 when he was twelve years old, because MLJ didn’t publish its first comic books until the latter part of that year. Moreover, the first MLJ comics were products of the Chesler shop, rather than being written and drawn by MLJ’s own hired hands; it was only later, after a pay dispute, that much of Chesler’s staff moved to MLJ to form an in-house bullpen. It seems most likely that Joe first got to Manhattan in 1939—not 1938—and upon showing up at the MLJ office, he was referred to Harry “A” Chesler where “their staff” was ensconced (though they were still working for Chesler). This squares best with Kubert’s memory and the facts of the day, meaning he entered the industry only a year later than has been previously supposed. The date may never be able to be pinned down with a hundred percent certainty.

Certainly Kubert’s first stint in a comics shop was with Harry Chesler, though it only amounted to being paid to sit at a table in the large studio and practice. For this, Chesler paid Kubert $5 a week. He recognized the boy’s

OPPOSITE: Kubert’s Bar Mitzvah. Back row:

Jacob’s uncle, Jacob’s aunt, Jacob’s great aunt,

Ida Kubert, Aunt Helen Eisner. Front row: Eva

Kubert, Jacob Kubert, Etta Kubert, Joe Kubert,

Kubert’s maternal grandmother Reisenberg,

maternal grandfather Leib Reisenberg, and

Roslyn Kubert.

ABOvE: Joe Kubert at the age of thirtreen.

Photos from Man of Rock (2008) courtesy of

Joe Kubert.


enthusiasm, and figured he was an up-and-comer who would eventually be able to produce acceptable material. Thus the fledgling cartoonist found him-self in a room full of men at drawing boards, where he could look over their shoulders, ask questions about drawing tools and techniques, and receive sug-gestions. A high percentage of these men became major figures in the field. Jack Cole would create Plastic Man, Charles Biro originated the crime comics genre with Crime Does Not Pay, and Bob Powell produced some of the fin-est visuals in comic books throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Mort Meskin’s work, which earned him a spot as one of DC’s top artists during World War II, became one of the most important influences on Kubert’s style.

These comic book artists were weaned on the illustrators and comic strips of the 1920s and early 1930s. They wanted to create their own syndi-cated newspaper strips (many of them succeeded) or work as illustrators, or in some other type of commercial or fine art. Yet they found themselves toiling in a whole new medium to “make a dollar” until their big break.

For all of comic books’ similarities to newspaper comic strips, they pre-sented a different set of challenges for their creators. Some of the new material for comics initially aped Sunday newspaper formats, devoting only a half page or a page for each feature. Gradually, the strips grew in length, as the editors realized that there was no reason to operate in such constricted space, and the splash panel was developed. Of course, such stories would not need to be continued to the next issue, because there was plenty of room in the sixty-four-pages-plus-covers format which became standard. It turned out comic books had a structure and syntax of their own, and offered almost unlimited freedom, as opposed to the rigid dictates of daily and Sunday newspaper strips.

Kubert has always said that not only did Chesler make him welcome, but the men in the loft studio on 23rd Street (just west of Broadway) patiently answered his ques-tions and critiqued his efforts. He saw what the artwork looked like before it went to print, as well as the kinds of pencils, brushes, and ink that were being used. Before long, Kubert realized cre-ating comic art wasn’t easy.

It was one thing to be able to produce a drawing that would impress his buddies and schoolmates, and quite another to fill up eight or nine panels on a page. A young artist may be able to draw a face in a full shot or a profile—but what about all the other angles the human face might assume in the course of a story? Or the many positions, both expressive and utilitar-ian, that hands must take? What about drawing cars, women’s clothing, city buildings, and so on? Then there was the technical aspect, the ability to use a pen or brush to apply the ink over the pencil drawings. One generally had to execute the lettering of the captions and balloons as well, placing them in the panels so that the strip read easily and correctly. These were things the twelve- and thirteen-year-old Joe Kubert became aware of when he entered the arena where professional comic book art was crafted.

By the summer of 1939, the comic book field had established itself fairly well, and the number of publishers was growing steadily. When Superman #1 went on sale on May 18th, 1939, it was clear to all that the public wanted more of the Man of Tomorrow. Other colorful costumed heroes appeared, some of them out-and-out copies of


Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s character: DC brought out the mysterious Bat-Man in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) and toward the year’s end, Captain Marvel leapt forth in the pages of Fawcett’s Whiz Comics. Kubert loved the cos-tumed heroes in the same way as most other boys his age, but he also began to recognize certain artists that he particularly admired. His earliest favorite from the comic books themselves was Lou Fine, whom comics historian Greg Theakston has called “comics’ first great star.”

Perhaps Kubert saw the features Fine had done in Fiction House’s Jumbo Comics, which began reprinting his “The Diary of Dr. Hayward,” “Count of Monte Cristo,” and “Wilton of the West,” originally produced for overseas cus-tomers of the Eisner and Iger shop. Fine was an admirer of the famed illustra-tors J. C. Leyendecker, Saul Tepper, Joseph Clement Coll, and Dean Cornwell, as well as the great German pen artist Heinrich Kley. He had received formal art training at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League in New York City. His figures showed excellent knowledge of anatomy and attention to detail, which made the material in Jumbo and his covers for Mystery Men and Fantastic Comics stand out from the rest. (Some of the covers were drawn over layouts by Will Eisner.) Lou Fine’s early strip work on “The Flame” in Wonderworld Comics and “Doll Man” in Feature Comics was much admired and studied by his colleagues. Hal Foster was Kubert’s original favorite, but Lou Fine became his idol when he began seriously applying himself to his own work.

Much has been written about Lou Fine’s mastery of human anatomy, especially when compared to many of the other progenitors of comic art from this time period (or, really, any time period). While it’s true that Fine learned anatomy from life-drawing and formal study, one finds that his style developed from 1940 to 1942, moving away from the strictly accurate. Bodies became attenuated, with limbs twisting and often contorting into unnatural positions. Faces grew grotesque, often ape-like or with other kinds of exaggerated fea-tures. Still, Fine’s attention to detail remained constant, and his inking with the Japanese brush superb, qualities that would serve him well after he left comics in 1946 to go into advertising and other forms of illustration.

The Lou Fine influence can be found in Kubert’s first published stories of “Volton, the Human Generator,” four brief episodes in Holyoke’s Cat-Man Comics. In late 1939, editor William Z. Temerson gave the thirteen-year-old Kubert a real, honest-to-goodness comic book assignment. He was paid $5 to letter, pencil and ink each page. The first of them appeared over two years later, in Cat-Man #8, dated March 1942; three more six-page Volton adventures by Kubert followed. The long delay between these strips’ execution and their appearance in print is probably due to the vagaries of the publishing schedule

ABOvE: Lou Fine’s “Stormy Foster” in Hit

Comics #22 (6/42). Fine was comics’ first

great star artist.

OPPOSITE: The Flame on the cover of

Wonderworld Comics #11 (3/40), also by

Lou Fine.


of a hole-in-the-wall outfit like Holyoke. It would be Kubert’s only solo assign-ment until two years later, after he had paid his dues as part of three more production shops.

Volton was a character neither better nor worse than many of the day, lacking an origin story—again, not unusual—but the victim of scripts that bor-dered on incoherent. The stories consist of nothing but brief narrative captions and quippy dialogue balloons, featuring stock hero-versus-villain melodrama of the most rudimentary kind. Volton’s costume, which Kubert was allowed to design, changed from issue to issue. The gimmick was that Volton could manipulate electricity to do his will: He was able to travel along telephone wires and emerge from telephone receivers on the other end (shades of the Silver Age Atom), shoot electrical bolts from his hands, and so on. It’s only worth describing to convey the types of visual concepts Kubert was trying to portray. The art itself is clearly that of a very young cartoonist: enthusiastic, displaying evidence of concentrated effort, yet deficient in just about every way. Later, Kubert would deem it “the crudest possible, most juvenile comic book artwork imaginable.” It was, as with his summer with Chesler, more or less a situation where he was being paid to practice. The “Volton” strips are interesting only because they are the starting point of the career that followed.

The Lou Fine influence can be found in the attention to detail on the figures and the grotesquery of the faces. Apparently Kubert was fascinated with contorted faces and physiques, though he would occasionally give his protagonist a heroic profile or stance. One notices incremental improvement from issue to issue. By Cat-Man #11, the design work in the panels has become somewhat more imaginative and varied. Panel shapes change to suit the action at times, and there are more reasonably effective panels. As the starting point of Kubert’s creative growth, “Volton” repays study for the artist’s serious fans.

ABOvE: Kubert managed a heroic stance for

volton in Cat-Man #8 (3/42), but grotesquery

ruled in the splash page in that same issue.

OPPOSITE, TOP: Already improving in Cat-

Man #10 (5/42).

OPPOSITE, BELOW: The High School of Music

and Art. Image from Benjamin M. Steigman’s

Accent on Talent, New York’s High School of

Music and Art (1964).


Shortly after Harry Chesler formed his shop in 1936, another entrepre-neur, named Will Eisner, started a shop in partnership with Jerry Iger. Eisner was not only a good businessman, but a gifted writer-artist who set the cre-ative tone for the pages produced by Eisner and Iger. Yet, in March of 1940, less than four years later, Eisner broke from his successful operation with Iger to form his own production operation in Tudor City. It was located at 202 East 44th Street on Manhattan Island. The new shop was formed to produce “The Spirit” in special newspaper sections that were set to debut on June 2nd, as well as to turn out material for Busy Arnold at Quality Comics. Eisner took with him the cream of the Eisner and Iger art staff: Bob Powell, Lou Fine, Reed Crandall, Jack Cole, Nick Viscardi, Bob Fugitani, Alex Kotzky, Chuck Guidera, Chuck Mazoujian, and Tex Blaisdell. One day Tex Blaisdell showed up in Tudor City with the thirteen-year-old Joe Kubert: “This kid wants to be a cartoonist. Can he hang around in the afternoons here?”

Kubert had just finished eighth grade at Winthrop Junior High. He was hired at $12 a week, though he wasn’t initially permitted to do any actual artwork. Instead, he was kept busy erasing pencil lines, inking panel borders, sweeping the floor and, perhaps, filling in solid black areas in the artwork as a time-saver for Lou Fine and the others. When these tasks were done, he practiced. Kubert had the precious opportunity to observe his idol, Lou Fine, doing the last of his “Doll Man” stories for Feature Comics. This constituted Kubert’s “school” that heady summer.

In the fall of 1940, Kubert entered a new phase of his formal educa-tion, one which would have an important formative influence on his artistic development. The New York School of Music and Art (M&A), established in 1936 in the castle-like building on 135th Street in upper Manhattan, was a four-year high school for artistically-talented students from the city’s five boroughs. Its curriculum combined course study in the arts with a roster of normal academic classes. To gain admittance, students who wished to study art were required to submit a portfolio and take an entrance examination. Kubert was accepted, henceforth riding ninety minutes on the subway to and from school each day.

At M&A, Kubert received his only formal art training. In the well-appointed and well-supplied classes, he studied life drawing, painting, design, and art history. There he met a slender, short-of-stature fellow named Norman Maurer who became Kubert’s best friend. Kubert and Maurer were both fix-ated on the idea of breaking into comic books, and often skipped classes to show their latest stuff to downtown publishers.

If “Volton” was an example of what Kubert was capable of doing before he entered M&A, he clearly needed to gain a better understanding of human anatomy. The life-drawing classes at M&A were probably the most important and immediately useful in the curriculum. He was also exposed to some of the great artists of the past in classes held by the school’s art history instruc-tor, George Patterson. Kubert later recalled, “While I was attending the High School of Music and Art, I would go up to the library and grab hold of a book of Michelangelo’s painting. The art impressed me so that I’d keep looking and examining the work at every opportunity. Those things that really impressed me, rubbed off just a little, and never disappeared from my mind’s eye. They gave me the impetus to find out how I could improve my own work.”

During the summer of 1941, Kubert was employed by Will Eisner again, under different circumstances. Eisner had opened yet another studio, this time located in Stamford, Connecticut. It was a smaller operation set up to produce just “The Spirit” while the boss would be in the military. The United States wouldn’t declare war on the Axis until the attack on Pearl Harbor some six months later, but the handwriting was on the wall. A peacetime draft had been adopted by Congress, and Eisner knew it was only a matter of time before he was called up for service. He rented space in the Gurley Building in Stamford for the new operation. Once again, the key man was Lou Fine, whose child-hood polio exempted him from the military. Fine was to pencil most of the

OPPOSITE: Kubert gained valuable experience

in the Iger comics production shop. Clockwise:

“Spark Stevens” (Blue Beetle #13, 8/42 and

Blue Beetle #19, 3/43), “Espionage” (Smash

Comics #41, 3/43), and “Phantom Lady”

(Police Comics #16, 2/43).


strips featuring The Spirit. Jack Cole, Gil Fox, Alex Kotzky, Joe Kubert, and a letterer made up the rest of the team.

That summer in Connecticut was a different experience than Tudor City for Kubert. A year older, with a year of art study at M&A under his belt, Joe was now considered the apprentice of the operation. He continued to erase pages, white-out mistakes, rule the panel borders and perform other strictly mechanical tasks, but he was now allowed to ink backgrounds in the panels. Over the course of the summer, he acquitted himself well enough to be given an enlarged scope of inking, including background figures and even main characters—though not faces. Alex Kotzky, the lead inker, would be called upon to make sure the look of The Spirit’s face and those of the other key characters was right.

Will Eisner was not yet gone, though he was mostly focused on building up an inventory of scripts and layouts for the artists to follow in his absence. Nevertheless, Kubert heard many discussions between Eisner and his crew, and at the same time studied his work. This was when Kubert gained his first understanding of the importance of storytelling to the medium. He later recalled, “At first, all I was interested in was pretty pictures. It was after read-ing [Eisner’s] stuff that I started to understand how important it was to tell a story. That’s what it’s all about. Being a cartoonist is being able to tell a story in a graphic form. I don’t care how pretty your pictures are, if you’re not telling a story with those pictures, you’re not a cartoonist.”

Did he consider comics an art form at the time? “No,” Kubert responded in a later interview. “I know that I loved and enjoyed what I was doing. I got a thrill out of seeing a good piece of artwork. When I saw stuff that Lou Fine or Will Eisner did, it would raise the hair on the back of my neck. But an art form, or a lower form of art? I never thought of that. I just loved to do it.”

Kubert studied the way chief inker Alex Kotzsky embellished Lou Fine’s pencils, and tried to emulate Kotzsky’s style—based on Eisner’s—as much as possible. Later, the backgrounds he did on his own strips as a young journey-man artist showed a pronounced similarity to the backgrounds of “The Spirit.” He also liked the creative splash panels which integrated the feature’s title into the artwork, and came up with his own versions in later assignments. Kubert’s inking began showing up in the August 1941 Spirit Sections, though it’s not possible to identify his contributions. He may also have done a little inking on the first Spirit daily strips, which began appearing on October 13th, 1941. Kubert was just fourteen years old.

At year’s end, Kubert experienced the simultaneous exaltation and cha-grin when the first of the “Volton” strips appeared in Cat-Man Comics #8 after a two-year delay. Such was his artistic growth that he must have been morti-fied to show these crude efforts to his classmates at M&A.

An atmospheric panel from a six-page

“Phantom Lady” assignment (Police Comics #14,

12/42).


By the time Kubert completed his stint in the Stamford shop, hav-ing brushed shoulders with some of the best artists in the business, he had picked up just enough craftsmanship to draw comic book stories on his own, as opposed to assisting others. Both Norman Maurer and he were hired by Emmanuel Demby to work in his studio after school each day. By January or February of 1942, Maurer was drawing “Bombshell” starring in Lev Gleason’s Boy Comics, and Kubert was doing “Alias X” and “Flagman” for Holyoke’s Captain Aero Comics. An improvement over “Volton,” Kubert’s efforts appar-ently impressed Demby less than Maurer’s, because Kubert didn’t receive a raise when Maurer did. Incensed, Kubert quit, only to quickly beat a path to another production mill.

Will Eisner’s former partner Jerry Iger had continued to operate the shop on his own and had prospered. His operation was bigger than Demby’s place, in a nicer building, was receiving orders for hundreds of pages a month from Quality, Fiction House, Fox, and Harvey. Iger assigned Kubert to “Spark Stevens,” a light-hearted, semi-humorous sailor feature that carried the blurb

“Spark Stevens and his happy-go-lucky pals bring you fun, thrills, and high adventure in every issue of Blue Beetle Comics!” Spark, his pal Chuck and their talking parrot Squawk appeared in short backup strips. The young art-ist’s work was rudimentary but just good enough to deliver the basics: The stories were readable, the faces were no longer so grotesque, and the overall appearance was reasonably appealing. Kubert’s handling of facial structure and anatomy had improved, but still left a lot to be desired. He occasionally

“cheated,” for example avoiding drawing an entire tiger by showing only the beast’s head in a silhouetted (all black) profile.

But Kubert was also a fast learner, as evidenced by the strips he was producing by summer’s end. “Stuart Taylor” (Jumbo Comics), “Phantom Lady” (Police Comics), and “Espionage” (Smash Comics) were much more elaborate, and far better executed. Kubert began showing faces with chiaroscuro-type shading in some shots, or created shadow effects that give a “back-lit” quality to some of the figures. The splash panel to “Spark Stevens” in Blue Beetle #19 (March 1943), drawn in the fall of 1942, demonstrated a level of sophistication that is astonishing compared to his efforts only a few months earlier.

Identifying Kubert’s work on these strips is tricky, as Kubert jumped around a lot, and nearly all of it is unsigned. According to Al Dellinges, a lifelong Kubert fan,

“Kubert definitely drew episodes of “Phantom Lady,” “Espionage,” “Stuart Taylor,” and others. Having studied Joe’s work for many years, I recognize certain aspects of his early style, such as repeated panel compositions and figure placement. Of course, this can become especially difficult because in the comic production shops, it was not uncommon for artists to assist others, to help with the inks, or to pencil some figures, to expedite the process if a strip was needed by a certain deadline.”

While Kubert primarily penciled and inked his own material in his stu-dent/shop period, it would not be unheard of for other hands to work on his pages.

Kubert’s key influences up to this point (Fine and Eisner) are appar-ent in these early jobs, which sometimes changed significantly from assign-ment to assignment. He was doing what was necessary to complete the work, including using occasional swipes where he was uncertain and needed help, just as one would expect from any neophyte artist. But as his apprentice period ended, the beginnings of what would become the recognizable Kubert style were about to emerge.

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