Posted on 08/13/2012 8:03:37 PM PDT by a fool in paradise
Joe Kubert, a titan among comic-book artists whose work stretched from the Golden Age of the superhero to the gritty realism of the graphic novel, died on Sunday in Morristown, N.J. He was 85.
The cause was multiple myeloma, his son Adam said.
Mr. Kubert, who first plied his trade as a teenager in the 1930s and continued drawing in the hospital during his final illness, was among the last of the generation of comic-book illustrators whose work helped define the genre in the years before World War II.
“He’s the longest-lived continuously important contributor to the field,” Paul Levitz, a former president of DC Comics, said in an interview on Monday. “There are two or three of the greats left, but he’s definitely one of the last."
...Through the Kubert School, an academy in Dover, N.J., he founded with his wife in 1976, Mr. Kubert helped train a generation of young colleagues. The country’s only accredited trade school for comic-book artists, it enrolls students from around the world in a three-year program...
Besides Sgt. Rock, whom he drew for decades, and Our Army at War, a DC series of the 1950s and afterward, Mr. Kubert explored war and violence in a series of graphic novels he wrote and illustrated in recent years: “Fax From Sarajevo” (1996), about the Bosnian civil war; “Yossel” (2003), about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; and “Dong Xoai” (2010), about the Vietnam War...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Initially, as a kid, I wasn’t attracted to Kubert’s long, swoopy lines. Always preferred the ‘tighter’ styles of artists like Russ Heath or Curt Swan. But gradually, I started recognizing Kubert’s brilliance, and became a fan.
Joe Kubert’s art was what made Sgt. Rock worth buying (at least for me). I used to have nearly all of them when I was a kid in the 1960’s (a closet-full). One day I came home from high school and my mom had thrown all my comics in the trash!!!
I’d be a wealthy man now if I still had them.
May Joe rest in peace and his family in our prayers.
Plenty of examples at the above website of Joe Kubert's work re-appropriated by Roy Lichtenstein.
Also here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deconstructing-roy-lichtenstein/page2/
I got to meet Russ Heath sometime late last century. I had an opportunity to meet Joe Kubert at a convention this year for $35 admission and $35 signing fee and I couldn’t justify spending $70 for less than a minute meet and greet.
Would have liked to have met him and seen him lecture sometime/somewhere.
I did get to see Will Eisner lecture several times.
A good friend of mine had Will Eisner as a teacher when he was going to the New York School of Visual Arts. Russ Heath drew excellently proportioned babes!
Loved Sgt. Rock as a kid.
R.I.P. Mr. Kubert, and thanks.
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