Happy Birthday Joe Kubert!

Happy Birthday Joe Kubert!  Kubert easily ranks as one of my all time favorite comic book artists.  Joe Kubert’s first professional work was on Catman Comics #8 (1942) for Holyoke Publishing.  He also worked on Fox Comics’ Blue Beetle and also colored the reprints for Quality Comics of Will Eisner’s The Spirit.  Joe’s started at DC Comics with Leading Comics #8 (1943) featuring the “Seven Soldiers of Victory” super team for All-American Publications which became DC Comics. There was a limited series Seven Soldiers by Grant Morrison in 2005.  Joe became editor of St. John Publications with Three Dimension Comics #1 (1953).  He also created at St. John, the prehistoric hero in Tor, in 1,000,000 Years Ago (1953). Tor was published by DC Comics, a series that ran from 1975 to 1976, Eclipse Comics, Tor 3D (1986), Epic Comics (the creator owned Marvel line) in 1993. Kubert worked on a limited series, Tor, in 2008.  

Joe Kubert at Wonder Con, San Francisco, 2010.

He returned to DC working on Our War at War #32 (1952).  The Brave and Bold #1 (1955) introduced the Viking Prince with the team of Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert as artist. Kubert was exclusive to DC helping to ink Showcase #4 (1956) which introduced the Barry Allen Flash and launched the Silver Age of comics!  In 1959, the Kanigher and Kubert team introduced Sgt. Rock in Our Army at War #83 (1959).  Kubert produced a limited series, Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy in 2006. Gardner Fox and Kubert created the Silver Age Hawkman, Katar, in Brave and Bold #34 (1961).  He returned to the character with Joe Kubert Presents #1 (2012).  In 1972, Joe Kubert started work on Tarzan with issue #207.  I had the good fortune to tell him at Wonder Con in 2010 that his artwork was exactly what was in my head when I read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes (1912).  One of Joe Kubert’s great legacies was forming the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art with his wife Muriel in September 1976.  There is an incredible number of comic professionals from that school. Later, Kubert drew the graphic novel, Fax from Sarajevo, in 1996.  We lost Joe Kubert on August 2012, but his comics and legacy lives on.  Happy Birthday Joe Kubert! 

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