Your work is very much appreciated Jim. I've been attempting to learn/teach myself art spotting for years, ever since Jerry Bails educated me about the Cazeneuves and Pierce Rice, and pointed out a few spotting tricks to me. Who's Who, and this site as a reference (to double check my identifications against known samples), are invaluable to me. I'm confident enough to make "best guess" attempts with each scan I do, but it is indeed nerve-wracking at times simply because I don't want to accidently contribute to the glut of misinformation already out there. I always try to mark with a question mark when I'm at all uncertain about any I.D., and leave credits as “unknown” when I am really uncertain about something. I know that if I'm not careful I might lead others to bad identifications in the future.
It's always a pleasure to hear from more experienced spotters like yourself, and reassuring when I see you reach the same conclusions I have made, or would make. So it can't be said enough Jim, thank you VERY much for ALL of the contributions you have made to this site, and to fandom in general.
-Eric
You're very welcome, Eric.
I learned Pierce Rice from Pierce Rice, and it MAY have been me who taught Jerry. I no longer keep track of such things, if I ever did. Did you know that Rice roomed with Bernie Krigstein for a few months in the early '50s and that there is a one page Harvey Romance story on which they collaborated? I have a wealth of correspondence from him as well as photocopies of his pencils on some Harvey horror stories. Haven't look at that stuff in years.
I'll always remember Pierce as the man who gave me his duplicate copy of Maxfield Parrish's
Knave of Hearts. Anyone who doesn't know that that is should look it up!
Oddly enough, I just pointed out on the Timely-Atlas-Marvel board some suspected Pierce Rice penciling on The Destroyer strip in
All-Winners #4 and got not a single response. If you have the
All-Winners Marvel Masterworks volume, perhaps YOU might give me some feedback. My comment was:
I'm looking at The Destroyer in this issue and I'm positive that Pierce Rice is penciling the last three pages. Can anyone else recognize his work enough to see if he's also penciling the first nine? It's maddeningly similar, but appears to have been finished more tightly by someone like Al Gabriele. Help!
Another interested set of eyes would be welcome.
The main problem I have with binders and databases is that, eventually, you have to pretty much know the answer before you use them. I'd have to know where to look - which binder, which time period etc. Because IF I had a binder full of samples of every artist, it would have to somehow be broken down chronologically as well: Jack Kirby in 1940 doesn't look much like Jack Kirby in 1960. Matt Baker in 1945 looks different that Matt Baker in 1953 who looks VERY different from Matt Baker penciling quicky science fiction stories in 1959. Bernie Krigstein is virtually unrecognizable in 1943. Gene Colan changed dramatically in the first decade of his career. When I gave him a copy of his first work in a
Wings Comics of 1944, he looked at it and asked me "Why are you giving me this?" despite the fact that he had SIGNED the strip.
So, one sample will NEVER do. But, then, when you come across an unknown style in a 1948 book, you at least narrow your search parameters. Still, if you have pages/entries for EVERY artist, how are you going to find your unknown? Page through what might be THOUSANDS of samples and hope that the style on the crime story you're looking at is similar enough to the superhero story that same artist did six years earlier and signed? Lots of luck.
Doc V's system functions because of Doc V's memory. Would that mine was still that good.
And then there is the problem of artists for whom this is a style but not a name. Hames and I searched for DECADES for the name of our "Mr. Mystery", "Watery Camy", "Stamps Cover Artist" and others for whom we just had "nick names". Now we know them as Mike Suchorsky, W.A. Smith, and Joseph Szokoli, but we're still looking for "The Bubble Artist", "Fox Elkan", "The Great Unknown", and many others. All again tied to memory: finding a story, remembering we'd seen the style before, remembering we'd given it a nickname, remembering the nickname, etc.
A site filled with samples would be wonderful, but you'd have the same problems that GCD and Wikipedia have: who watches over the integrity of the data? Since nobody knows everything and even well-intentioned honest folks often disagree about IDs, it becomes a logistical nightmare to keep such a site pure and accurate.
These notions have been contemplated before, though without the technology that exists today. i would LOVE it if such a site became viable. As often as I can I try to pass on what little (believe me, it's LITTLE) I know with my books or with comments on a DCM scan post. Still, there aren't enough hours in the day to catch everything and, frankly, most of it I DON'T know. I'm certainly open to ideas and willing to help if I can.
Peace, Jim (|:{>