Thursday, May 10, 2012
Random Reads: "The Secret of the Spanish Blade" by Haney and Elias
Check it out, Groove-ophiles! Here's another hard-to-find Three Musketeers story from DC and the Groovy Age! "The Secret of the Spanish Blade" by Bob Haney and Golden Age Great Lee Elias was first presented in DC Special #26 (May 1976). Dig it!
When I was a student at the Kubert school I had an instructor by the name of Ben Ruiz...he was a life drawing and methods and materials teacher. I remember having seen some of his own finished works...he had a Curt Swan feel to his style with a splash of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito for good measure. He had about a half dozen pictures of Supergirl that he drew inked and colored around his basement bedroom/office at the Mansion in Dover...just up the street from the school. Anyway...he was telling me a story one day about Lee Elias' work. Ben used to do backgrounds and borders for him and spot blacks. Anyway...he said...before he got the art Lee would ink the figures and so ,on. By the time he got the pages they were a mess lol. Lee would scribble and pen nib and brusch test line strokes and blops and blobs of ink in the side borders of the pages and Ben always had to clean them up with white tape and so on. But even though Lee's methods were a bit on the messy side....his figure work and line quality were the absolute my brilliant and beautiful. I can see from the examples in the pages here that Lee was a master on par with Eisner and Kubert.
ReplyDeleteWonderful work the man produced. What counts is the printed art. This is a great story with wonderful work by the man.
idea? Just sharing a tale told to me by someone who purportedly experienced this story. Whether it's true or fiction I don't really feel concerned about but I liked Ben. He was an intelligent man and I have no reason to believe he'd make it up.
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