Friday, June 11, 2010

Navy Combat

Torpedo Taylor was a character series in Navy Combat, a Marvel comic of the mid 50s. Don Heck was the artist, but if I didn't see his signature, I'd swear it was Joe Kubert inking Jack Kirby, or the other way around. I detect just of whiff of Alex Toth as well. Nice solid artwork.






4 comments:

Mark Kardwell said...

There's an energy here that just isn't in Heck's superhero work-for-hire. He must have really enjoyed doing this.

Umbriel said...

Odd that they went to the trouble of identifying the Japanese planes as "Bettys" (a twin-engined bomber) but drew them as single engine planes. I guess geeky attention to detail didn't come into vogue for another generation or two.

Thomas Haller Buchanan said...

That's not just lack of geeky attention, that's a major mistake.

There seems to have been a lot of attention paid to detail in this series, boosted by direct experience or a vet's consultation. The war had only been over for 10 years when this story was published, so veterans of all kinds would have known that single engine planes had male names, multi-engine planes had female names.

Thanks Umbriel.

Britt Reid said...

It looks like Kirby did rough layouts and Heck did full pencils and inks.
Many of the figure poses and facial structures look "kirbyish" as opposed to Heck's solo work.