Tag Archives: artist

Murray Karn

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Murray Karn began his career with Bell Features in early 1942 while the publisher was still under the name Commercial Signs of Canada. Only 18 at the time, much of his original work was done for the Thunderfist and Jeff Waring storylines.

Karn worked on ‘Thunderfist’ in Active comics and was the most consistent artist for the line. His talents were not overlooked at Bell Features; he also did several covers for Active Comics as well as working on the ‘Jeff Waring of the Amazon’ storyline of his own creation. It was released about a month after ‘Thunderfist’ in March of 1942 and was run in Wow Comics, Bell Features’ first comic title.

Karn continued to work regularly for Bell Features for the next two years as artist on these and other lines including Captain Red Thorton, Rex Baxter and Scotty MacDonald. He even contributed artwork to the narrative shorts in Triumph Comics, all under Bell Features. Within a couple years, Karn went into the Medical Corps but continued cartooning for the wounded troops to raise their spirits.

murray karnAs Bell Features continued to gain prominence in Canada’s comic book industry, Karn was easily accepted back into the ranks just shortly before the end of Canada’s Golden Age and finished the last two issues on Jeff Waring. Shortly after, Karn went to New York to pursue other opportunities.

His classic and realistic style make his comics very easy to spot and a pleasure to view. His characters, nothing short of perfection, are elegantly composed, both on the paper and in character. Karn’s style at this time was almost reminiscent of a twenties chic with his big eyed beauties and his men modeled much like Clark Gable. Specifically, Karn’s style was distinctive in such a way that his comics were of a much higher caliber.

Murray Karn currently resides in New York and is a part of the Southampton Artists Society. Find out more on his work in the upcoming documentary Lost Heroes.

George A Walker

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Yesterday, while attending what I thought was a used book sale, I stumbled upon George A. Walker at a Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild (CBBAG) event promoting the work of Canadian artisans and artists. Having only just the other day taken George’s book Graphic Witness out of the library, I was only vaguely familiar with wood engraving and relief printing techniques as a means of wordless graphic narratives. I was much more than vaguely excited by the accident I had made though.

Kiss - A Wood engraving by Walker

What is great about relief printing is its rawness. It’s an art form that can evoke much more in the reader than just its story. The materials are raw: wood, ink and paper. The block itself can make endless amounts of prints. The black and white of the image is raw, based solely on the presence or absence of the wood and ink. And finally, without the presences of words the reader is left to decipher the picture based on emotion and experience through symbolism.

What I didn’t see in Graphic Witness was George Walker’s own work, and when I finally did I was extremely impressed. His most recent work is called the The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson. True to Walker’s inspiration Frans Masereel, The Mysterious Death of Tom Thomson is many images long, and contains not a single word. The book is not yet commercially produced but there are beautiful copies available through Walker on his webpage.

That said, not all of Walker’s work is wordless. He has strategically paired his art with authors such as Lewis Carroll, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe and Neil Gaimon, illustrating works like The Raven and an alternate telling of Snow White. These works have inspired very creative art from Walker who is now working with The Porcupine’s Quill to establish other artists in the art form.

ARG

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Coincidentally, there was another ARG zine released in Québec in 1987. ARG was published by Québec artist Denis Goulet, and is written in French. This does not mean you have to speak French to appreciate the comic. ARG was so titled for the sound we make when we die…arg. This is relevant because the five part series sought to commemorate deceased artists or their creations and they took a strictly satirical approach.

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The comics were produced in the size of a quarter page mini, with the exception of number four which was a half-page size. Here are some of the contributing artists: Jean Morin, Serge Boisvert (Denevert), Michel “Love” D’Amour, André Gagnon, Evan “Boly” Bolduc, Jean-Françoise Guay, Paul “Paulo” Bordeleau, Valium, Mario Giguère, Denis Goulet, Jacques Hébert, Pago, Benoît Joly, Blackwell, Suzanne Payette, Marc

Pageau,”W.M.”, Davio and Blonk. Some of these artists went on to do other things. Jean Morin and Benoît Joly both worked on Bambou, a French alternative comic anthology and Denis Goulet released another zine entitled Teton Magazine dedicated to Gumby. For now, here is a list of the ARG comics and the artists in memoriam.

  • Arg #1 – Hergé
  • Arg #2 – Edgar P. Jacobs
  • Arg #3 – Krazy Kat
  • Arg #4 – Windsor McCay
  • Arg #5 – Batman
A thank you to both André Gagnon and Denis Goulet for giving me a list of contributors and cover scans.

Here are André Gagnon and Denis Goulet‘s current blogs if your interested in checking out more of their work.

Kevin Kurytnik

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Business As Usual – Video 2010

It’s pretty interesting to go through some of the older zines from the 80s and 90s and stumble upon some that exceed the typical standards of zine culture. Today I stumpled upon a zine entitled “ARG: Apocryphal Restituion Guild”. This zine, created and produced in Calgary in 1989 by Kevin Kurytnik, was not only one of the better zines I’ve seen as far as physical appearance and production quality went, but also the content. Later Kurytnik later produced “UGH! Undulating Gods in Heat!”

The editor and greater contributor of content to ARG, Kurytnik’s illustrations and dark humour are more subtle and dry than the genre typically produces. His simple but detailed black and white drawings attract the attention of any reader and pair up remarkably well with the content and style of his writing.

Although Kurytnik strayed from the comic world, he was able to carry out his creations and ideas in animation. From ARG, Kurytnik published “Mr. Reaper’s Really Bad Day” which he later turned into “Mr. Reaper’s Really Bad Morning”; a short film that he directed and co-wrote with Carol Beecher. You can see it here:

Here is a link of his other accomplishments if you’re interested in learning or seeing more. Kurytnik is now an instructor at Alberta College of Art and Design and here is his faculty profile.

Active Comics

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I loved the art for the mummy!

Active Comics was a comic anthology released irregularly from February of 1942 to 1946 and had a total of 28 issues. It was originally released while Bell Features was still called Commercial Signs of Canada, but after the third issue it changed over to Bell Features. Its more regular continuing comic included Dixon of the Mounted, The Noodle, The Brain, Thunderfist, Active Jim and Captain Red Thorton. Later on in the series Dr. Blue and Blackie and Penny’s Diary were introduced. It had short narratives written by Vic Griffin and several smaller “funny” and “gag” comics by Harry “Hy” Moyer, Mickey Lesik, Mickey Owens, Lou Skuce, Frank Keith and Harry Brunt as well as Peterson, Cal, and Thomas.

Some of the quirks. Active Comics was pretty consistent with artists/writers and story lines having a single artist cover a story for at least a couple of issues before passing it on. In the middle of the series the comic began to cover “The Panthers’” in the Toronto Hockey League although I’m pretty sure there were no actual artists on the team. This was also one of the only ways of distinguishing approximately when a comic was released since they ceased to put a date on the comics after the first three or four issues.

Another “funny” thing they did, was for issue 28, their comic line up was as follows: Torr: Interplanetary Space Detective, The Wing, Steve Storms, The Dreamer and the Polite Pirate, Guy Powers: Secret Agent and Tophat ’N’ Tales. I’m not sure if this was part of Cy Bell’s goal to change his lineup to compete with the American comics that were filtering back into the country or what. I guess only further research can tell. That said, only Fred Kelly remained of his original story comic artists.

Here are some of the regular artists that worked on the above storylines: Ed Legault, Murray Karn, Al Cooper, Ted Steele, Ross Saakel, Leo Bachle, Adrian Dingle, Kurly Lipas, Edmond Good, J. Henly, Mel Crawford, René Kulbach, Fred Kelly, Ed and Carl Alton, Patricia Joudrey and Doris Slater and who I believe are Jon Darian and André Kulbach although they did not sign their full name on the comics. Jerry Lazare, Paul Dak and Allan Ross Mendes worked on the final issue.

My favourite art was by Murray Karn, who by issue 13 had kind of disappeared. I’m curious to see if he turns up again in any of the other Bell Features early comics. All in all, the comic itself was pretty consistent, if not consistently issued, with regular cover art by Dingle and Good.