The Second Comic Career of
Mort Meskin - an opinion piece
by Dylan Williams
To a comics reader Mort Meskin's name brings
to mind the Vigilante and Johnny Quick. What I rarely hear or read,
even in historical articles, is that this "Golden Age great"
had a long career after that canonized work. Even more amazing and
rarely heard: I think Meskin only got better.
Just like with type casting in films, a comic artist is often destined
to carry the burden of their "greatest work" for the rest
of their lives. This is especially true when they become associated
with a dynamic character early on in their career. In many instances
comic artists are measured by their first and loudest note, not by
their last. With few others is this more obvious than with Meskin.
The measure of an artist's ability and prowess are subjective. In
comics there are wild differences between what any two people see
as "good." For me, story telling, composition and draughtmanship
are the standard of well drawn comics. There is no one artist better
at these things than Mort Meskin. He was a graduate of the Pratt Institute
in New York. When he entered comics in 1938 he was already considered
a skilled artist by his peers. Joe Kubert recalled the first time
he saw Meskin's work ( at the Eisner and Iger shop): "' That's
beautiful,' I said as my jaw dropped to the floor when I saw his drawing..."
By the time he drew Vigilante, Meskin was wielding the pencil ( and
occasionally the brush ) with a Rembrandt like ease.
Meskin's work on the DC books in the '40's was, admittedly, the most
accomplished work of a non writing artist being done. When he was
driven from DC to take up temporary residence in a hospital for a
short time, his notoriety seems to have vanished. You would think
that he had suddenly become a second rate talent. Ron Goulart describes
Meskin's career from 1948-1965 with this sentence: "When heroes
declined in the late 1940s, he switched to romance, horror, true crime,
and western." I think he forgot science fiction ( hah )...I mean
how crazy is that...3-4 mammoth paragraphs are devoted to the rest
of Meskin's career.
That wasn't even the half of it. Listen to this quote from the obituary
for Meskin in the Comics Journal:" Towards the end of
his comics career he worked with Simon and Kirby on their comics Boys'
Ranch and Black Magic." That's it, in a 10 paragraph
obituary...amazing. This bit of his career fared better with other
sources: " In 1949 Meskin moved on to Prize and drew a whole
range of features until 1956. Between 1952 and 1958 he drew weird
and horror stories for the Atlas group, and in 1956 he returned to
National. Remaining there until 1965, Meskin drew some fine war, science
fiction, and love tales, but the Mark Merlin adventure strip was the
finest work he produced in the last part of his comic book career.
He was also a member of the Simon and Kirby shop [ who fed Prize their
comics ] between 1949 and 1955 where he helped create the Black
Magic book." That is, without question, the best documentation
of this 17 year period ( after quitting DC the first time in '47-'48
) of Meskin's 27 year career as a comic book artists, that I have
found. The rest, I've pieced together.
Meskin was never interviewed, not for lack
of trying though. Alex Toth wrote me this account of an attempted
interview:" I phoned Meskin long ago, our first/only real chat,
about him, etc., since my pesky visit to his flat in the 1940s, tho'
we met briefly with a gaggle of inkdippers in the late '40s/early50s-but
upon his retiring from his 'boarding job at an ad agency of 20-odd
yrs' tenure. I phoned to set up a NYC intrvw twixt him and I believe
it was, Jhon Benson, for his short lived 'Panels' fanzine-well, we
chatted on and on, Longhorn me here [ in LA ], him in NYC, to set
it up for Jhon, but no, at the end, the very quiet, shy, stammering
Mort said no-he'd rather not- the up/down years of comic book biz
and its editors/deal makers, etc. wasn't a pleasant topic to comb
through-so no sale- I think Jhon tried a call-finally, he asked me
to write a think piece about Mort as I'd done for 'Panels', about
Jessie Marsh and Jack Cole..."
The piece Toth wrote on Meskin never made it into Panels but
was reprinted in Robin Snyder's amazing the Comics newsletter
. This article offers many insights into Meskin's working methods
throughout his career. In it, Toth explains the emphasis on straightforward
storytelling and design that seems to have dominated those 17 years,
as well as the rest of Meskin's. Meskin was becoming the consummate
comic book artist. He was abandoning "illustrative" techniques
that only serve to drag the readers eye to individual points on the
page and confound the story as a whole. Occasionally during this period
( mostly in work from '48-'58 ) his art would resemble the earlier
work. He would go back to the feathered brush line or the thick to
thin inking technique. Once in a while he would return to the detail
he used so much in his venerated '41-'48 period. So if that is the
Meskin work you are looking for, it's there after '48.
While still working at DC in '48 Meskin and long time Batman artist
Jerry Robinson were sharing a studio. They were hired to draw two
characters for Nedor publishing: The Black Terror and The Fighting
Yank. Meskin would pencil and Robinson ink. The results were quite
good, yet are quite hard to come by as comics today. They have been
reprinted though. Roinson learned a lot from the tight-lipped Meskin:
"If I asked him how to draw something, he wouldn't tell me a
damn thing except ' work it out.'" Longtime Meskin inker George
Roussos also cut his teeth on Batman early on. Looking at Mort Meskin's
art will give you a lot of insight into the work of both Roussos and
Robinson.
Meskin had worked with Joe Simon and Jack Kirby while at DC in the
'40's. Editor Jack Schiff gave this description of typical comic shop
contest from those days: " We once had a sort of race in the
front office. We had a big artist room. Jack [ Kirby ] and Mort Meskin
were sitting next to each other and there was some copy that we needed
pretty quickly from both of them. Each of them turned out five pages
of pencils. Beautifully. It was really something. After a while, people
began to crowd around watching. And they would both go ahead undisturbed.
Meskin was a more careful artist than Kirby." Meskin seems to
have impressed Simon and Kirby so much that they gave him a job as
soon as he was a free agent. The majority of his Simon and Kirby work
published through Prize is quickly shrugged off by most historians,
except for the Black Magic pieces. What is amazing is that
Prize is where Meskin's work began to really soar. The Simon and Kirby
studios gave Meskin the respect that editors Mort Weisinger and Whit
Ellsworth seem to have refused him at DC. During this period, there
is much made of Meskin's shyness by those who worked with him, like
George Roussos: "Mort was a very uncertain guy, extremely sensitive."
This shyness may have caused him a fair amount of anxiety over his
art.
Joe Simon respected Meskin's work so much that he employed in spite
of an initial inability to produce work for their studio . Soon enough,
though, Meskin was rolling along. He drew for Young Romance,
Young Love, Black Magic, Prize Western, Justice
Traps the Guilty, Tom Corbrett, The Westerner, Captain
3D, Boys' Ranch, Captain Flash, Headline
and the Strange World of Your Dreams ( a comic title that Meskin
is said to have proposed to Simon). Some of these books are still
obtainable and well worth finding since much of the art is also inked
by Meskin. Headline and Justice Traps the Guilty are
particularly rich in his art and some issues have two stories by him.
When the art is inked by some one else, you have your choice of Marvin
Stein, George Roussos or a few of the other amazing Simon/Kirby employees.
Once in a while you will even come across a collaboration with Kirby
or Ditko ( Captain 3D ). This work is a treasure trove of relatively
unknown Meskin. The best thing about it, for me, is that as he did
more comics he only got better and the later issues are easier to
get. Years later Joe Simon had this to say about Meskin stay at Simon
and Kirby: "He was probably the fastest, most inspired artist
in the room, and certainly one of the most dependable."
The Atlas books he did are wonderful but hard to come by for under
$20 in today's market. For Stan Lee/Atlas he drew not only horror
and sci-fi stories but some amazing war stories. His style at this
point was perfectly suited for the grimness of war. Dan Barry had
this to say about Meskin's career during the post comics code hard
times of the '50's: "...nobody could get work, even Meskin couldn't
get work-and I got so many scripts that I gave Mort work. I couldn't
shine Mort's shoes as an artist, but I was getting work for him."
He could have very well been talking about the Atlas jobs. A large
portion of the '48-'65 work was inked by Jerry Robinson ( Prize/Nedor
) or George Roussos ( Prize/Atlas/DC ) who would add their own inking
effects to the surface of Meskin's art. They had both inked some of
that early work. Their styles had matured, as did Meskin's. The job
Robinson and Roussos did wasn't bad, it just doesn't look like the
'41-'48 work. In fact, during the later years Meskin did a lot more
of his own inking. There are wide variations in his finishing technique
during this period, making it even more enticing to any one interested
in Meskin as a creative artist, rather than simply a craftsman. The
truth is that all those variations in his "style" have to
do with technique; what is just on the surface. In the later years
Meskin still had all of that much lauded ability and technique...he
was just more reserved in its use. He was telling the story as simply
and straight forward as he knew how. He used the same brain power
that he had once spent on thick to thin lines and gothic shadows towards
cropping, stage setting, and storytelling and to what effect! Joe
Simon relates a opinion of Meskin common among his peers by saying:
"Mort was ( or is ) the best. No question."
I know of no better way to say what I feel about this period than
to illustrate it. "I Fought the Clocks of Doom" is a perfect
example. Done for DC in the late '50's (originally in My Greatest
Adventure #14, 1957 and in the version below from DC 100 Page
Super Spectacular #4, 1971), this art has everything I want from
a comic. Meskin would sign pieces he inked himself during this period
in big block letters. The reprint I have , has this signature on the
bottom left conrner of the splash panel, though it may be hard to
make out in the reproduction. Pacing and layout in "the Clocks"
is done only with its effect on the reader in mind. Every choice made
is that of a genius and learned story teller. Remember, he was doing
this all by himself. The writer's descriptions may have given him
a structure ( who's to say exactly what they did or didn't provide).
But, I'm betting dollars to doughnuts, that the didn't say things
like: "Place Pietro in the visual center of the splash and let
the clock take up most of the space in the rest of the panel to provide
an immediate sense of the menace of time. Then draw the fountain directly
behind him to provide a contrary shape for his vertical black shape
to play off of surrounding both in a negative space that creates a
tension, immediately drawing your eye to his figure and nothing else
on this page." No matter what colors the colorist laid over this
page there is no way to destroy the flow of the design. It leads you
from text block to picture to text block. All of the pages in this
story have an uncharacteristically unsettling approach to angles for
Meskin. It's not because this is a "comic book and needs exciting
angles." As with everything in Meskin's art, it is there to cause
a desired effect based on the subject matter: natural disasters. The
detail here may add a certain appeal to the art but, more than that,
it adds a sense of place and a felling claustrophobia that mirrors
Pietro's mind state while having to deal with the forces of nature
whirling out of control. On page three we are treated to a moment
of introspection, illustrated by a close-up with only blank space
in the background since he is unconcerned with his surroundings. Pietro
is reflecting and "wracking his brain" so his face is partially
obscured to indicate an internal process.(Please allow a little time
for the large scans to come up)
