Friday, January 21, 2011

Making a Splash: Jim Aparo's Aquaman, Round 1

What's happening, Groove-ophiles! Today's tasty treat is a pile of perfect splash pages from the hand of Aquaman's main man, Jim Aparo! Today we're planting our peepers on Aquaman #'s 40-56 (March 1968-December 1970). Along with his fellow Boys from Derby, writer Steve Skeates and editor Dick Giordano, Jim set the comicbook world on fire with innovative and fun tales featuring DC's King of Atlantis. In Ol' Groove's humble opinion, Arthur Curry and friends were never in better hands!
 











 Note Ol' Groove used several first or title pages, because the S.A.G. team's experimental bent oftentimes led them to eschew the use of traditional splash pages. Far-out stuff, ain't it?
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6 comments:

  1. Mike MikulovskyJanuary 21, 2011 at 5:49 AM

    Jim always drew great characters. Aquaman, Batman, Phantom Stranger & the Spectre. I loved his Brave & the Bold. I was always disappointed beside's doing one cover for the Comic Reader using Capt.Marvel/Shazam.

    That DC never let him draw the Big Red Cheese as a back up atleast or in the B & the B with Batman a few times. There's alway room for Aparo, like Jello. Their both awesome! I will always regret not having him. As well as John Buscema & Dave Cockrum do commissions for me.

    By the time I realized they were doing them. They were either too ill, or passed away like a month later.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joe SlabJanuary 21, 2011 at 8:23 AM

    Totally awesome! Great post. Aparo draws the definitive Aquaman and cast.

    I used my favorite Aparo panel as my twitter page backgroud: @Jslab424

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dave BlanchardJanuary 21, 2011 at 11:41 AM

    As great as Aparo was, and these examples sure point that out, I guess I'll always prefer Nick Cardy. Cardy's Aqua-work occurred in the pre-Groovy days, though. So here's a request for any interior artwork (as opposed to all the covers he did for DC) you can find by Cardy during the Groovy Age.

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  4. BobJanuary 21, 2011 at 12:18 PM

    Love all the pages, except for Aqualad: he looks like he has a 35 year old face and a 15 year old body. (I should be so lucky myself...)

    ReplyDelete
  5. giantsizegeekJanuary 21, 2011 at 1:48 PM

    Nice! I read these as a kid, brings back memories. You can see Aparo improve through the years through these splash pages.

    ReplyDelete
  6. JL CancioJanuary 22, 2011 at 8:21 AM

    Nice post. Aparo's work of the seventies is much better than his last years.

    ReplyDelete

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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!