"Punisher War Zone" by Joe Kubert

I recently acquired this page from the comic Punisher War Zone by Joe Kubert from 1994. I love Joe's work, especially beacuse, at first glance, his drawings look loose, sometimes almost unfinished (check out the detail of the shoe) because of how much he pays attention to details. I almost exclusively bought this particular page because of one detail that one does not notice immediately, especially in this black-and-white copy of the comic. It may look different in the color version, which I have never seen. The detail that fascinates me is how the door opened by the policemen pushed the debris in its way. 

One needs to be brilliant and logical to think of that.

 

"Tarzan" by Joe Kubert

In 1972, when I was hitchhiking through Europe, I came across this Tarzan comic book. I never cared for Tarzan, but this cover grabbed me. Partly because of the composition, and partly because of how Tarzan was drawn. He had more tendons and scratches than muscles. It seems very appropriate. 

That's also how for the first time I got introduced to the work of Joe Kubert.

 In 1978, I was already deeply involved with comics. Because of that, I was invited to the Lucca Comics Festival in Italy, and there I had the pleasure, among others, to meet Joe. He was kind to offer me to come and teach in his comics school in the United States. Unfortunately, at that time I had some other ideas about my future, so I politely declined. That is what he is referring to in the second part of his note from 1991.

 

 

Joe Kubert "Winnie Winkle" 3

Recently I acquired this original Winnie Winkle, daily comics strip. Dated September 29, '81. This one is drawn by Joe Kubert and his school. And it actually turned out that Joe drew most of the comics, especially towards the end. As Joe told The Comics Journal in 1994: "I suddenly found myself doing the whole strip by myself. So I just dropped it."

 

I bought this stip is not only because I already own one, which was published a day before, on September 28, '81, but also because it seems to me because of crunch time, Joe decided to almost recycle the drawing of the face from the day before. 

I always said if you must steal, it's best to steal from yourself. Nobody can sue you.

Joe Kubert "Winnie Winkle" Part 2

I just acquired another Joe Kubert & the Joe Kubert School Winnie Winkle daily original strip from 1981.

 

Joe Kubert and his influential school of comics artistry took charge of the pioneering soap-opera feature Winnie Winkle to fulfill an objective for "my students [to] gain experience and make a couple of bucks", as Kubert told The Comics Journal in 1994, adding this: "I suddenly found myself doing the whole strip by myself. So I just dropped it."

 

I acquired this comic exclusively because of the last frame, it is so Joe Kubert.

 

More of Winnie Winkle acquisitions here. 

 

Survival

I was introduced to Les Lilley by Ervin Rustemagic in 1978 at the Lucca festival in Italy. We socialized there for a couple days together with Joe Kubert, Dino Battaglia, José Antonio Muñoz, Bobby London, Sergio Toppi, and Hugo Pratt.

Three months later through Irwin, I received a one page scenario for comics title Survival. I liked the scenario  a couple months later I drew a six page comic and I sent it to Les. He was quite surprised because he originally intended that the page which he sent to me was just a draft for a comic. Because of my poor english, I had misunderstood. Luckily he loved the comic as I had drawn it.

In 1980, that comic was published in Heavy Metal magazine among other places. That same year Heavy Metal, bought rights to turn the comic into an animation for their Heavy Metal animated movie. Unfortunately turned out that the drawing was too complicated for the technology of animation at that time.

Joe Kubert "Winnie Winkle"

I just acquired this Joe Kubert "Winnie Winkle" daily original strip from 1981.

The Kubert Art School took on the creation of the strip, but because of the schools pressure to keep up with the daily art duties, Joe Kubert ended up handling the bulk of the work.