Admiring Adams: "Thou Shalt Not Kill!"
Here's a heavy tale by
Steve Harper and Neal Adams from
Weird War Tales #8 (August 1972). Dig it, Groove-ophiles!
Kudos to
The Old Warrior for the far-out scans!
Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!
Note to "The Man": All images are presumed copyright by the respective copyright holders and are presented here as fair use under applicable laws, man! If you hold the copyright to a work I've posted and would like me to remove it, just drop me an e-mail and it's gone, baby, gone.
All other commentary and insanity copyright GroovyAge, Ltd.
As for the rest of ya, the purpose of this blog is to (re)introduce you to the great comics of the 1970s. If you like what you see, do what I do--go to a comics shop, bookstore, e-Bay or whatever and BUY YOUR OWN!
Okay, who's Steve Harper? I've never heard of him. And did he draw the story, too? Because I definitely see Adams inks but those don't look like his layouts and there seems a different style in the pencils.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting. I've never seen this story before, and I used to enthusiastically collect Neal Adams art. I've never heard of Steve Harper. Wonder who he is/was?
ReplyDeleteAll I can find on Harper is that he worked at Continuity Studios for a while during the 1970s. He both wrote and drew, so my idea is that Steve and Neal collaborated on the writing and drawing "Thou Shalt Not Kill", while Neal inked it up real good. Just a guess, but like Booksteve, the layouts and most of the figure work doesn't cry out "Neal Adams" to me. Any experts out there in the know on who did what and/or have more info on Steve Harper?
ReplyDeleteWe have a saying over here - 'You're the bees knees' - and you so are.
ReplyDeleteCheers
P.S. This reminded me of 'The Haunted Tank' stories. I don't think they're that similar. It's just the cover triggered a memory. Weird.
Coincidence of coincidences, tonight I was looking through one of the 2 HERITAGE books on Flash Gordon from the early seventies and I come across a vaguely remembered story from...Steve Harper!
ReplyDeleteLong before The Studio with Berni Wrightson, Jeff Jones, Mike Kaluta, and Barry Windsor-Smith, there were three artists (all in NYC by way of Virginia) looking to break into comics and magazine/book illustration in the late '60s. They were Michael Wm. Kaluta, Steve Hickman, and Steve Harper. They met Jeff Jones and Berni Wrightson on the convention, circuit, I believe (circa 1968 - as well as meeting their hero Frank Frazetta), and they all contributed to fanzines while making inroads into pro comics and illustration work. Steve Harper did an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Outsider" for Skywald, as well as this story for DC, but otherwise I've not seen any of his other narrative art. His work was much like Jeff Jones in many ways, but by 1974 he had packed up and moved to New Mexico to paint semi-abstract landscapes which he still does to this day.
ReplyDeleteChris A.
Harper also assisted Kaluta on a few of his splash pages (which you posted a complete set of in one of your earlier posts here, Groove-guy.)
ReplyDeleteAnother talented newcomer that did very little work in comics, mostly for DC in 1972-1973 is William Payne. He did two fantastically creative stories in HOUSE OF MYSTERY 206 and 207. Both highly Groove-worthy.