#Mort Meskin

[alternateworldcomics]

DC Hero the Golden-Age Vigilante with the secret ID being a singing cowboy on the radio by Mort Meskin

[browsethestacks]

Leading Comics #01 (Winter1941)

Art by Mort Meskin

[comicartarchive]

Adventures into Darkness 15 Cover (Unpublished) by Mort Meskin

[chernobog13]

LEADING COMICS #2 (March, 1942). Cover by Mort Meskin.

The Seven Soldiers of Victory, aka Law's Legionnaires, take on the evil Black Star!

The SSV were DC Comics' (then known as National) second super-hero team, after the more famous Justice Society of America. And like the JSA, all the SSV members appeared in anthology titles, but not their own comic books (that rule would eventually be lifted for the JSA).

The Justice Society was comprised of heroes from both National (Doctor Fate, Hourman, the Spectre, Sandman, Starman, and honorary members Superman and Batman) and affiliated publisher All-American Publications (Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, Johnny Thunder, Wildcat, Doctor Mid-Nite, Black Canary, and Mr. Terrific)*. The Seven Soldiers, on the other hand, came only from National's books.

Unfortunately, this second-hand team with second-tier heroes didn't last. The Soldiers' feature ended in Leading Comics #14 (March, 1945), although the individual members did manage to last a little longer in their own features before disappearing by the end of the decade.

Although The Vigilante managed to get his own 1947 movie serial. And Green Arrow and Speedy became part of a handful of DC superheroes (along with Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman and Aquaman) who were published continually from their first appearance until well into the Silver Age.

(That's right - Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Johnny Thunder, Atom, Wildcat, Doctor Mid-Nite, Black Canary and Mr. Terrific weren't originally DC characters! They only became part of DC officially when National and All-American merged into one company in 1944.)

[weirdlookindog]

Out of the Shadows #14 - Standard/Pines, August 1954.

Cover art by Mort Meskin? and George Roussos?

[onlylonelylatino]

Bob Phantom by Mort Meskin

[tomoleary]

Mort Meskin - Leading Comics #1 (DC, 1941) The Seven Soldiers of Victory

Source

[ufonaut]

Title page from the Johnny Quick story in More Fun Comics (1936) #91. Art by Mort Meskin.

[dailyjsa]

Leading Comics #2

Writer: Bill Finger

Artist: Mort Meskin

Inker: Mort Meskin

[why-i-love-comics]

Action Comics #42 - "The Origin of the Vigilante" (1941)

written by Mort Weisinger art by Mort Meskin

[holyrgbatman]

Jerry Robinson and the Joker

NY Times

In 1939 Bob Kane came a cross a young man playing tennis with a jacket covered in cartoon drawings. The artwork was really good and so Kane, needing help on his new feature, went to ask the man where he got it. As it turned out it was the young man who drew on it and Kane was impressed enough to offer the man, Jerry Robinson, a job. Robinson needed money to get through college for journalism and got into cartooning, and selling ice cream, to achieve that. After checking in on his Columbia application to see if it was still good, and joined Kane's team. Robinson said in an interview with David Armstrong that he actually wasn't impressed with the first, and only at the time, issue but he needed the cash. Jerry Robinson would balance college and cartooning for the first few years before dropping out to fully pursue drawing.

Robinson attempted to match the approach of Bob Kane's more simpler style but ultimately kept to his own style and fortunately not much issue came up. Soon, he would move to directly working for DC around 1941 after DC offered him and Bill Finger a position to keep working at Batman when they got wind of other publishers asking for them.

The move to working for DC rather than for Kane wouldn't be the only big event. In the Batman series, starting in 1940, Robinson would create the Joker and also name the boy wonder, Robin for Detective Comics #38. When Batman (1940) came into the scene, the creative team was meet with greater work than before---3 13pg stories and 1 12pg story for the quarterly Batman series and a 13pg story for Detective Comics. Plus there was Worlds Finest. All that workload was too much for Finger and Robinson volunteered his help for Finger, maybe get paid and have it serve as a writing credit. Robinson decided to start off with the villain to to a high level of interest for the antagonists, finding them "inherently more interesting than heroes". He wanted to create a villain that could really match up to Batman, someone that was larger than life and memorable in a way the crooks and hijackers of earlier stories wasn't.

Finding it more interesting to make a contradicting villain with a sense of humor. Robinson associated that humor with the Joker card, due to a family that was very good at and loved card playing (one of his older brother's graduated on a scholarship from a Bridge tournament).

While Jerry was suppose to be the one writing the story, as he described the idea of a villain messing around with Batman, Kane and Finger loved the idea so much that they felt that the writing of the story should go to Bill, being the best and because Jerry hadn't wrote a story before. And while he was sad that he couldn't write the first Joker story, Robinson had to admit that it would be best for Bill to do it and unsurprisingly but fortunately still, the story was great.

Though Kane would dispute this "Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That's the way I sum it up. [The Joker] looks like Conrad Veidt — you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs... Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, 'Here's the Joker.' Jerry Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it. But he'll always say he created it till he dies. He brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card." Bill Finger isn't entirely sure who came up with the idea first, "apparently Jerry Robinson or Bob, I don't recall who, looked at the card and they had an idea for a character".

After about seven years Robinson would leave Batman, wanting to do his own thing, a run down and a bit done with his name not being on any of the work---Robinson would sign it as Kane's name. For many years Jerry would do political cartoons, though he did still do comics as well with Mort Meskin, joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

He was a teacher starting in the 50s, bringing in professionals, and even calling publishers about promising students. Robinson was also president of the National Cartoonists Society for 3 years, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists for 2 years, and founded Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate in 1978. In 1984, a branch CartoonArts International was made to represent political cartoonists, freelancers, and humor panel cartoonists. The organization would team up with Hallmark, an arm of the New York Times, and the United Nations.

Jerry Robinson alongside artist/comic rights advocate Neal Adams as a supporter of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster against DC to win full recognition and compensation as the creators of Superman. And won in the mid 1970s.

Jerry created a manga, Astra, in 1999 with various Japanese's artist.

[alternateworldcomics]

The Golden-Age Vigilante's arch enemy, The Dummy.

[browsethestacks]

Wildcat

Art by...

1) Alex Toth

2) Alex Ross

3) Steve Rude

4) Jim Aparo

5) Jeremy Massie

6) Mort Meskin

7) Neal Adams

8) Kerry Callen

9) Dave Watcher

10) Ramon Villalobos

[lazypastry]

If you want something minimalistic, May I suggest his semi official signature that was made by mort meskin? 👀

Here's his full artwork if you wanna see

Ok vigilante fans should my first tattoo be of vigilante or smth else?

[rodrigobaeza]

Mort Meskin: “Wildcat” original art from Sensation Comics #69 (1947)

[onlylonelylatino]

The Wizard and Roy the Super-Boy by Mort Meskin