I am certainly no expert on the Golden Age of Comics. I was, in fact, born the year that the Golden Age ended. I am a child of the Silver Age (1956 to the early 1970s) and those were the comics I grew up with. But I admit to a fascination with the initial creation of the characters I love, including Batman, Superman, the Flash, Captain America, the Phantom, Steve Canyon, Wonder Woman and numerous others who were first put on the comic book pages in the Golden Age. And being subject to comic book prices that zoomed upward from a dollar an issue, I was bedazzled by the ten cent price on old comics.
Comic books owe their creation to the popular newspaper comic strips from the Depression era and WWII wartime. Originally, comic strips were gathered and printed on cheap paper. Dick Tracy, Prince Valiant, Terry and the Pirates, Flash Gordon, and other adventure strips would lead to the war comics and hero-centered comics that would morph into superhero comics.
Some of the artwork in Golden Age comics leaves a lot to be desired. Especially original, straight to comic book publications that were produced fast and furiously by publishers who would open one week, produce three issues. and go out of business three weeks later. But in the mad scramble, some truly great artists formed the start of their illustrious careers, Will Eisner, Hal Foster, Milt Caniff, and Bill Elder learned to master their craft in the newspaper strips, and all later created comic books and graphic novels. True geniuses like Jack “King” Kirby and Bob Kane and Jack Davis grew directly from comic book studio madhouses into comic-book-artist immortality.
As with most things that have a Golden Age, the truth was that later comic book eras were superior in most ways. But this Golden Age was the foundational age for an American art-form that I truly love. So, flaws and warts are overlooked. And some of these old ten cent books on super-cheap paper are worth huge amounts of money if you still have a rare one in mint condition. Ah, there’s the rub for a manic old collector guy like me.
Most of the Golden Age comic book images used for this post were borrowed from the ComicsintheGoldenAge Twitter page @ComicsintheGA. If you love old comics like I do, you should definitely check it out.
Lynn Johnston’s For Better or Worse is also an old friend. I used to read it in the newspaper practically every day. I watched those kids grow up and have adventures almost as if they were members of my own family. So the mashed potatoes part of the meal is easy to digest too.
Catch a Falling Star 
Gray Morrow
Comic book artwork grabs me constantly and makes me wonder about the lives behind the pen and ink. Artists basically draw themselves. Whether you are drawing Tarzan, Buck Rogers, or Flash Gordon… when you draw them, you are drawing yourself. My first encounter with Gray Morrow was when he drew Orion in Heavy Metal Magazine (the English version of the French Metal Hurlant).
He was capable of drawing both the grotesque and the beautiful. Violent action juxtaposed with soft and romantic moments filled with subtle colors and complex emotion. I began thinking that Gray Morrow must be a complex and interesting human being. I was soon to discover his other selves. He was the artist behind the Buck Rogers strip starting in 1979. He and Marvel writer Roy Thomas co-created the muck monster Man-Thing.
He also worked on Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and The Illustrated Roger Zelazny. Unfortunately he died in 2001 at age 67. Luckily an artist puts himself into his work, and for that reason we still have Gray Morrow with us. It is a kind of immortality.
This cover from Monsters Unleashed gives you an idea of how well Gray Morrow could draw.
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Filed under artwork, comic strips, commentary
Tagged as Buck Rogers, comic art, Flash Gordon, Gray Morrow, Tarzan