S640X480-2At his LJ, which often explores comics fandom and history of the early ’70s, Scott Edelman unearths an issue of Comics Reader from June 1973 with a cover by a “future comic-book writer and editor, not at all known for being an artist.” We’ve posted a bit of the cover — go over to Scott’s blog to play along.

A lot of the writer/editors of the ’70s had artistic aspirations at the start of their engagement with comics, or at least could doodle pretty damned well. We can think of Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, and Mark Evanier off the top of our head. We could swear Mike Carlin actually wrote and drew a comic for SLG back in the day, but the internet has expunged all records of it, so maybe we imagined that? Grant Morrison has been known to do convention sketches of many different Marvel and DC characters. Alan Moore has drawn comics. Our sketchbook includes a drawing of Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Doubtless many more — add to the list!

But anyway, who drew that piece? It isn’t Paul Levitz or Scott himself.

13 COMMENTS

  1. Ed Brubaker and Brian Michael Bendis come to mind. Several writers were listed among the artists of the never-completed ‘Someday Funnies,’ and the TCJ article included a scan of a nice piece of art by Tom Wolfe (not a comics guy, but neat anyway).

    I draw a little, if quite poorly.

  2. Brubaker was born in 1966, and Bendis in ’67. This came out in 1973. I find it hard to imagine that image being drawn by a six or seven year old. Kurt Busiek, maybe? He would have been around 13.

  3. Scratch that guess, Wikipedia says Kurt didn’t start reading comics until he was 14. I’m kind of impressed trivia that obscure is available online.

  4. D’oh totally forgot that Jim actually STILL does sketches and sells them for $5 at cons. I knew the style looked familiar!

  5. Many celebrities also cartoon on the side:
    Carol Spinney
    John Lithgow

    Martin Landau actually was a cartoonist before he was an actor, and Dick Gautier has written books on caricature.

  6. Looking through my old ‘zines, I find all kinds of cool stuff, including oddities like the Salicrup cover. For example, 40-year-old comics written and DRAWN by Mark Evanier! And early pre-Comics Journal reviews by Gary Groth where he is EXTOLLING the virtues of his favorite Marvel superhero comics.

    Yep! Thar’s gold in them thar hills.

Comments are closed.