A confession about superhero comics and sacrilegious comments on classic creators from the silver age.
Broken Frontier is known for its focus on the fringe side of comic books published around the world with the odd DC or Marvel book sometimes popping up in our review section whenever one of our reviewers feels like it. However I can safely say that we are all comic fans that do embrace superhero comics – old and new – as firmly as any other comic fan. A sense of history is as essential to comics reviewing as a keen critical eye and the works of past creators like Kirby, Kane, Meskin, Toth etc are all a part of our comics collection.
For example, I myself am a big Mort Meskin fan, preferring Meskin over Toth on many occasions. And while I’m busy getting excommunicated from the comics community, I can also say that I think Vince Colletta’s inks on Kirby’s The Mighty Thor run elevated that particular series to heights it would never have reached (even if he did butcher Kirby’s pencils due to time constraints) if f.e. Mike Royer would have inked it.
While searching for a missing Gil Kane Superman comic for my collection, I ran across a Howard Chaykin tribute on Carmine Infantino following his passing in April 2013. Infantino is one of the Silver Age’s most important creators, having paved the way for a more realistic and dynamic drawing style in comics. It is a tremendously interesting article from a creator who himself is a connoisseur of comics history. It is full of little gems like the following:
Infantino’s Flash was infused with a sleek modernism absent from other work of the period, a look and sensibility utterly different from that of his peers.
Read the article at the Los Angeles Review of Books
I know his ‘Man of two worlds’ cover for The Flash is his most famous but I was always impressed by the dynamism present in this Batman cover and the Flash cover following.
