Zip Tyro

Steven "Booksteve" Thompson spotlights Jim Aparo's Zip Tyro strips in a new post at his Hooray for Wally Wood blog. Like many comic book artists of his day, Jim longed to break in to the newspaper adventure strips, and "Zip Tyro" was one of a few of his attempts to do so. ZT was a traditional outer space science fiction adventure, with rockets and space stations and dashing astronauts, and it seems like it should have had a good shot at syndication in the mid-1960's, when America was in love with the space program.

Green Aparo

Back when I was producing the print version of the Jim Aparo Fan Club Newsletter, Jim sent me an exclusive heads-up that he was about to take over the art on Green Arrow as of issue #81. It was (to me, anyway) an unexpected reassignment, but it wasn't one that I objected to. Jim had done some good work on the character in Brave & Bold, and had done one of the few Green Arrow solo covers during that long stretch between his Golden Age days in More Fun Comics and Mike Grell's Green Arrow: The Long Bow Hunters miniseries:

Jim informed me that his inker on this one was to be Gerry Fernandez, and that this guy was Eduardo Barretto's brother-in-law.

Fernandez brought a very different feel to Jim's pencils, and even after all these years, I haven't quite decided whether or not I really like Gerry's inks on Jim.