Gray Morrow Borrows a Pose from Robert McGuinness

As an inveterate browser of the Internet and all of the intriguing art related sites upon it, I have found a lot of fascinating things.

One of the things that surprises me most, is my ability to recognize, when I see them, examples of artworks that were repurposed and reused by artists other than the original maker.

This is one of those cases.

I was looking at examples of Austin Briggs artwork and I ran across a Flickr account, compiled by the illustrator Matt Dicke, which had posted a few pages from Briggs' "How I Make a Picture".

After checking out the Briggs pages, I took a browse through whatever else Mr. Dicke had posted, because I love to see what other artists find inspiring and of interest.

That was when I found this:

(Robert McGinnis, Argosy magazine, July 1967)

and it rang a bell, in my memory banks and amazingly, I even remembered why...

Way back, in September of 1977, when I was still living in England but I was here, in Toronto, on vacation and visiting family, I had my first visit to The Silver Snail.

One of the items that I found and bought, at that time, was this fanzine:

Heritage Presents Amora by Gray Morrow (Heritage, 1971)

which I have treasured ever since 

and on it's back cover, was this Jungle Girl:

and it's similarity, to the McGuinness illustration was too close a match, to be accidental.

Robert McGuinness (1967)

Gray Morrow (1971) Flipped Horizontally

Anyway, here I am, forty two years later, chuckling into my cup of coffee with glee and marvelling at the fact that every artist, even those in my personal pantheon, all have used "swipes" at some point in their careers.

There is "nothing new under the sun" and novelty, for the most part, is in how we rearrange and reinterpret, the information at our fingertips.

Just in case anyone should think that this is a "knock" at the amazing and wonderful Gray Morrow, that is not my intent.  I merely wished to show, that the skillful use of reference materials, is all part and parcel of the graphic artists' trade.

The Times They are A Changing!

In the few years that I have been posting, here on the Blog, the amount of traffic, coming here to read it, has been, justifiably, MINIMAL!

My aim, when I began, was to try and preserve and share, some of the history of my comic book collecting obsession.

If only to keep it alive, for just a while more.

Secondary, to that aim, was the demented idea that I could share my own experiences, in learning how to draw cartoons and perhaps, impart a couple of insights that might help others to travel a similar road.

At this point in time, I think that the history lessons are pretty well over and except for a few minor anecdotes, I will be leaving that aspect of the Blog, in limbo.

From here on in, I will concentrate on how to draw comic books and comic strips, illustrated with my own work and any other, "how to" essays, that catch my eye.

In that spirit but also because this stuff is like catnip to me, here are some layouts, from the late Wally Wood, for the story,

"Prelude to Armageddon",

that appeared in Warren's Creepy Magazine

in 1971.

These examples, as rough as they are, clearly show Wood's ability to compose interesting panels and are an insight into how he broke down the page and the events that he wanted to illustrate, to tell an interesting and engaging story.

Vaughn Bode, as anyone who has read any of my earlier posts can attest, is another of my "Gods" and his cartooning was so appealing and cute, while covering topics that ranged from the banal, to raunchy, to violent.

What a talent and sorely missed.