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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 26, 2021 16:27:17 GMT -5
Sal the Pal turns 85 today.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 26, 2021 16:32:47 GMT -5
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 26, 2021 16:34:20 GMT -5
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 26, 2021 17:01:36 GMT -5
Happy birthday!!! Thanks for the great comics, and for teaching me how to draw big superheroic fists!
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Post by kirby101 on Jan 26, 2021 17:47:35 GMT -5
One of my favorites. Couldn't do a comic that wasn't fun to read.
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Post by brutalis on Jan 26, 2021 18:27:50 GMT -5
Sal was a major part of my youth reading comics. The man was everywhere making his presence known in just about every series in his day. Would bet it is a very SHORT list of Marvel comics he didn't work on during the late 70's through the end of the 80s.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 26, 2021 21:46:12 GMT -5
I never saw him draw a bad issue.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 27, 2021 4:37:13 GMT -5
I never saw him draw a bad issue. I would agree with this. He's one of my all-time favorite comics artists. It's nice to know he's still with us.
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Post by Duragizer on Jan 27, 2021 18:25:20 GMT -5
I was introduced to his work through his Spectacular Spider-Man run in the '90s. I know he's not that highly regarded in the comic community, but I thought his work in that title was mostly solid.
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 27, 2021 19:28:12 GMT -5
My favorite Sal Buscema work will probably always be his run of " CAPTAIN AMERICA", mostly with Steve Englehart, and " THE DEFENDERS", mostly with Steve Gerber. Many years later I got ahold of his earlier work on " THE AVENGERS", much of it inked by Sam Grainger. This was before someone apparently urged him to cut back to "breakdowns" (same thing happend with his brother John). I do recall a " BIRDS OF PREY" mini he did for DC, which I thought was the BEST-looking work he'd done since those CAP issues. It's strange, but I've seen many artists do better work at DC than they did at Marvel. Funny thing about DEFENDERS: he got to draw nearly every hero in the Marvel Universe on that book (it was virtually a "team-up" book, except instead of Spidey, the guest-stars teamed with the whole group). But the ONE character I thought he couldn't draw to save his life... was The Hulk. So what happens? I think it was not long after Gerry Conway KICKED both Gerber & Sal off the book, Sal winds up replacing Herb Trimpe on THE INCREDIBLE HULK... and if memory serves, he wound up drawing MORE issues than Herb did. (Crazy!)
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Post by chaykinstevens on Jan 28, 2021 8:19:31 GMT -5
I do recall a " BIRDS OF PREY" mini he did for DC, which I thought was the BEST-looking work he'd done since those CAP issues. It's strange, but I've seen many artists do better work at DC than they did at Marvel. The only Birds of Prey credit I can see for Sal on GCD was Birds of Prey: Manhunt #4. Sal did the layouts, Matt Haley pencilled and Wade Von Grawbadger inked, which was a bit nicer than having Mike Esposito or Vince Colletta provide the finishing, as often happened to Sal at Marvel.
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Post by kirby101 on Jan 28, 2021 9:45:26 GMT -5
Quick story. At a certain point Sal was laying out 5 to 6 books a month. He did this because the editors were relying on him more and more to meet deadlines. (His layouts were usually finished line drawings without the blacks and shading.) Word got to him that he was getting a reputation as a hack, which angered him because he was being a loyal company man. So he went to the Marvel brass and asked if he could just do finished work, and when time allowed, ink himself. This brought on his later career work, especially his run on Spectacular Spider-Man. I won't mention the inker who used "deadline pressure" to justify less than quality work. But Sal was a true professional whose reputation meant something to him. And he ALWAYS turned out quality work, whether it was layouts, pencils, inks or complete art.
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Post by profh0011 on Jan 28, 2021 15:39:57 GMT -5
To me, the whole point of a penciller cutting back to layouts is when you have an inker who's a "finisher" who goes overboard. For examples of the latter, Ernie Chan, Alfredo Alcala, Tom Palmer, Bob McLeod, and so on. Having Mike Esposito inking Sal layouts... let's just kick the editor in his A** like he deserves and be done with it... By the way, I've seen Sal's layouts. Marie Severin once sent me a set of pencil zeroxes by a variety of artists to try my hand at inking. It never got me any work, but it was a lot of fun. Especially the Frank Robbins pages. (NO S***!)
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 28, 2021 17:37:50 GMT -5
By no means a Sal Buscema fan, but I believe his finest work might be the cover of Captain America and the Falcon #156 (December, 1972), with Dave Cockrum inks making a noticeable impact-- Cockrum really brought out something in Sal's work, and would have made a good inker for his interiors (instead of Frank McLaughlin any day), but of course, Cockrum was a growing popular artist at the time (in the middle of his classic run on Superboy), so his talents were not going to be used as regular inker.
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Post by kirby101 on Jan 29, 2021 10:09:47 GMT -5
Here is an example of the breakdown/layout work by Sal. And the finished page.
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