Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Black and White Wednesday: John Albano and Russ Heath's "Tough Cop"

I know, I know, Ol' Groove has mentioned many times that Atlas/Seaboard's Thrilling Adventure Stories #2 might just be the greatest black and white comic published in the Groovy Age--or ever! I've shared the awesome "Temple of the Spider" by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson with ya already. I've laid Ric Meyers and Alex Toth's magnificent "A Job Well Done" 'pon ya. Well, there are a couple more truly remarkable stories in that incredible ish, so I figured I'd share them with ya both this week and next. Today we're going dig into John Albano and Russ Heath's "Tough Cop". Albano was the master of writing "manly men" comics, and Heath's art is some of the slickest, most eye-pleasing to ever hit the comicbook page. Even when he messes with the laws of physics (dig the positions his men get into when they get shot--gymnasts, all!), he makes it look so realistic you can almost believe it happened exactly the way he drew it!

Next week: Steve Mitchell and John Severin's "Town Tamer"!

2 comments:

  1. These pages are just stunning! The grey washes, the highlights on the cop's leather jackets, Heath was just the MAN in any kind of genre you gave him. He had a brief run on the Punisher, wish he would have done a lot more.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for posting this. Love that Russ Heath art. The man never got the recognition he deserved.

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
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!