Superman by Curt Swan and Wally Wood!

Curt Swan is my all-time favorite Superman penciller.

Wally Wood hovers near the top of my list of all-time favorite inkers.

Those two gentlemen never did team up to draw a Superman story, but wouldn't it be great to see at least one drawing of Superman pencilled by Mr. Swan and inked by Mr. Wood? But wait, you can!


In the late 1970s, a dedicated and industrious fan of comic art (whose name is unknown to me) approached a dozen or so comic artists one at a time and asked each one to draw a character of theirs on a single quite-wide page, side-by-side with other characters. The fan's project resulted in a very nifty 'jam' drawing!

No longer must you relegate to your imagination the thought of the steadfastness of a Curt Swan Superman being paired with the majesty of Wally Wood inks! Here it is before your eyes, center-stage on this magnificent artifact! (And all the artwork surrounding the Superman is great too...)

Fred Hembeck and his Re-Creations

Where else but in a Fred Hembeck drawing could you enjoy the treat of seeing Sugar and Spike and Scribbly Jibbett and The (original) Red Tornado and The Three Mouseketeers all together in one scene?! I'm very glad that some comics fan commissioned Fred to construct the above homage to the great Sheldon Mayer featuring so many of that gentleman's wonderful characters!

As I mentioned before back at the dawn of The Hayfamzone Blog, once upon a time I myself commissioned the irrepressible and indefatigable Mr. Hembeck to draw in his inimitable style versions of two excellent Jack Kirby covers, 1970's The Forever People #1 (my single favorite comic book of all time) and 1974's The Sandman #1.

And you can see plenty more of Fred's fun artwork over at hembeck.com!

New York Tom's

The New York Times published no ongoing comic strip features but from time to time the newspaper does dabble with one-off narratives in comics form. I do appreciate their effort and I like to share with you the dabbles because you might not otherwise see this fun artwork by Jessica Olien.

Many of the projects seem to focus on food and that is true about this page that salutes Tom's Diner in Brooklyn, New York. Please enjoy!

Jack Kirby's First DC Cover

Up until 1971 I had never heard of The Newsboy Legion or The Guardian. But that year all the DC Comics jumped from 36 pages for fifteen cents to 52 pages for twenty-five cents, and the editors filled up those extra pages with prime Golden Age reprints that opened up the World of Comics to me and countless other fans. The first Newsboy Legion story from 1941's Star Spangled Comics #7 was reprinted in September 1971's Jimmy Olsen #141, and even the above cover was reprinted on an interior page of that Jimmy issue.

The original artwork to this cover (annotated at the bottom with "from the collection of [Batman artist and Joker co-creator] Jerry Robinson") has shown up on the internet and it is definitely worth a look! This was Jack Kirby's first cover for DC Comics, and the gentleman would draw so many more covers for that company over the subsequent forty years! Hooray for Jack Kirby!