An "Epic" Collaboration

In 1978, I had a show of original drawings of my comics at the prestigious Lucca Festival in Italy. In three days of being there, I managed to meet and socialize with some of my comics idols: Joe Kubert, Dino Battaglia, José Antonio Muñoz, Bobby London, Les Lilley, Sergio Toppi, and Hugo Pratt. I also had the pleasure of meeting a few comics editors/publishers, among them Rick Marschall.

Soon after, in 1979, Rick founded a new magazine titled “Epic Illustrated,” published by Marvel Comics. In the first issue of the magazine, published in the Spring of 1980, he published three of my comics, and that’s how our collaboration started. Despite my 40-year hiatus from drawing comics, we’ve still stayed in touch over all this time.

 

"Dr. Guy Bennett" by Frank Thorne

My recent acquisition is Frank Thorne's (1930 – 2021) newspaper comic strips for "Dr. Guy Bennett" from 1959. I bought these strips because I am fascinated with the ease with which he draws, especially faces. One feels that there is not any construction/architecture behind them. They are totally spontaneous.

Of course, later, Frank moved on to draw famous comics such as Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, The Green Hornet, Tom Corbett Space Cadet, Tomahawk, Mighty Samson, Enemy Ace and he was best known for the Marvel Comics character Red Sonja.

But I still like his early work.