Saturday, October 19, 2013

Cartoonists Make Better Lovers : George Tuska


In 2006 I had the qualified pleasure to meet George Tuska. I use the term ‘qualified’ for two reasons. First, Mr. Tuska was 90 years old and his hearing was almost gone. Whenever I’ve met the artists whose work I loved as a boy, I normally make it a point to thank them for all the pleasure that their talents have given me. In this case, that seemed impossible and our encounter resulted in an autograph, but not much more. Here he was at that HeroesCon show.


  

The other reason I use ‘qualified’ is because of my own ignorance. I’ve always associated the man with his Silver & Bronze Age work, particularly with Iron Man. But in the last few years I’ve encountered more and more of his Golden Age jobs. Tuska was there at the very beginning of the comic book and helped invent the form. This has raised his status for me and I now regret that I didn’t put more effort into trying to offer those words of thanks to him.

Like all of the cartoonists of that bygone era, George could be called upon to work in any genre his employer called for. This of course included Romance stories. His tenure in the milieu is pretty modest and less than a dozen jobs are cited by him at the GCD. But these two pieces for Standard Comics NEW ROMANCES are top notch.

Pat


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