The self-taught Jack Keller broke into comics in 1941, a year after graduating from West Reading High School, creating a single-appearance feature called "The Whistler" in Dell Comics. This led to work the following year with Quality Comics, where he worked in lesser or greater capacities on such comic-book series as Blackhawk and such features as "Man Hunter" and "Spin Shaw". As well, Keller drew backgrounds for Will Eisner's (https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/04/will-eisner-originator-of-graphic-novel.html) eight-page newspaper Sunday-supplement comic The Spirit.
In 1950 Keller showed up at Stan Lee's Timely Comics doorstep and would begin an association that would last the entire decade.
At this point in Timely history, Martin Goodman had just dissolved the long-standing Timely bullpen. Originating in 1941, this was a means for Goodman to save money by weening away his dependence upon the Lloyd Jacquet shop, Funnies Inc. for artwork. Goodman started an "in-house" staff to churn out the scores and scores of features appearing in his comic book line's myriad titles. Known as the "cataclysmic closet catastrophy" (as coined by Stan Lee in his "bio-autography"), the story goes that Goodman opened a closet to find a six foot stack of bought but never printed artwork. Going ballistic, he instructed Stan Lee to fire the staff and everyone went freelance.
Jack Keller shows up right at this moment and is immediately given work with stories for Western titles, early pre-code horror and even the rare romance story.
He illustrated Kid Colt, Outlaw for Marvel Comics from 1952 to 1964,and may hold the record for drawing the most stories of any Marvel character.
Following Atlas' comic-book 1957 cutbacks and firings, Keller supplemented his income by working in a car dealership in his home town, and was indulging his love of race cars and model cars by writing and drawing such Charlton comics as Grand Prix, Hot Rod Racers, Hot Rods and Racing Cars, Teenage Hotrodders, Drag 'n' Wheels, Surf 'n' Wheels and World of Wheels. He left Marvel in 1967
He was drawing a small number of stories for DC Comics from 1968 to 1971, including for the licensed toy-car comic Hot Wheels.
After the comic books he drew fell out of style in 1973, Keller returned to selling cars at Marshall Chevrolet in Reading, Pennsylvania
Alex Toth, https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/12/dan-gurney-and-aar-cuda-for-hot-wheels.html and Steve Ditko, who is best known as a co-creator of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, were also artists at Charlton comics, which didn't just have a goal of printing comics, and that meant the comic book line could experiment with many more genres without much editorial oversight of the artists, at a time when Marvel and DC focused on superheroes.
Charlton was a publishing company, who had their own printing presses producing magazines like the rock and roll publication Hit Parader, and only printed comics to keep the presses running
Charlton did feature what they called "action heroes," because "superhero" is jointly trademarked by Marvel and DC. Another way that Charlton stood out, and kept the cost down, was by doing everything from one location in Connecticut.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Keller_(artist)
https://picclick.com/DRAG-N-WHEELS-37-G-VG-Jack-Keller-254039098644.html
http://www.wnpr.org/post/fans-revive-connecticut-based-charlton-comics-30-years-after-it-closed
https://www.webcitation.org/5uU5vje4Q?url=http://www.comicartville.com/jackkeller.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment