Stumbled upon this a while ago, then just got a notification it was updated. Somewhat related to compressed ("old school") vs decompressed ("modern") storytelling
http://fourcolorglasses.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/paying-attention-to-the-grim-reaper/excerpt:
"If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you already know that I’m a tremendous fan of Golden Age comic books, particularly “mystery men” books published from the late 1930′s into the war years. I often recommend them to my comic fan friends, who frequently dismiss them (without ever reading one) with comments like, “They were for kiddies!”, “The art is terrible”, or “They’re too simplistic.” It’s always suspect to make blanket comments such as those. While some war era comics definitely fall into one or more of those categories, one certainly can’t make those statements about all of them, not by a longshot. I’ve already popped holes in the first two of those balloons in previous posts (using the art of the “Pat Patriot” features and the rich, twisted, and very adult subtexts of Charles Biro’s work on “Daredevil” as examples). Today I’d like to tackle the “simplistic” criticism by citing The Grim Reaper’s second appearance, the cover feature from May 1944′s Wonder Comics #1 (published by Great Comics Publications, usually classified today as part of the Nedor “family” of comics).
I’m going to do something a bit different with this post. Instead of presenting individual panels from Wonder Comics #1, I’m going to present the entire story, page by page. The scan of this comic is public domain and thus freely (and legally) available online; this particular comic comes to us courtesy of the good folks at the Digital Comic Museum.
Returning to the modern-day complaint that Golden Age comics are “too simplistic”, the defense offers as evidence the second appearance of The Grim Reaper. Debuting in Fighting Yank #7 (February 1944, by Nedor Publishing), The Grim Reaper instantly graduated to headliner status, gracing the cover of Wonder Comics #1 and appearing as the lead-off story in that book (you may recall from my previous nurglings on the subject that most Golden Age comics were “anthology” titles, meaning they were usually forty to eighty pages long and featured multiple characters, often from a variety of genres [sports, adventure, jungle, military, etc.])."
