Here we are. After all this time, former ADVENTURE back-up character Aquaman becomes the regular cover feature for a while! As usual, the nifty retro-backup here--a selling point to myself and many others-- starring the 7 SOLDIERS OF VICTORY doesn't get any mention at all.
The previous brief Aquaman run was written by his former writer Steve Skeates but former artist Aparo was busy doing Spectre. Now that that was out of the way, Jim returned to the Sea King but Skeates was nowhere to be found.
The Star Spangled Kid's forties adventures always seemed to show him drawn awkwardly for some reason. Thus, artist Ernie Chan here continues that tradition!
By the way, I've just found out that the upcoming, May 2013 issue of Twomorrows BACK ISSUE magazine features an article on how this retro 7 Solders series came to be.
The coolest thing about this short-lived MANBAT series was getting to see Steve Ditko's version of Batman!
I remember being astonished by the, err, quality of Chan's art in that SSK story. My theory was that Orlando gave him a copy of one of the Kid's poorly drawn Golden Age stories as reference and Chan assumed the assignment was to draw in that style. I doubt that Joe Orlando really wanted the kid to look like a dwarf, or the surrounding art to be so bland (although Chan was, around this time, one for skimping on the backgrounds: just check out his tons of DC covers with blank backgrounds!).
ReplyDeleteI had a page of original art from this issue's Aquaman story, which revealed that Aparo had originally lettered a different script (presumably by Paul Levitz). The story was rescripted by Michelinie, with new lettering by Ben Oda pasted over all of Aparo's lettering. If you look close at the printed comic, you can find some orphan word balloon tales and evidence of touch-ups here and there.