"The Coward" by Steve Skeates and Jim Aparo

From Charlton's Gunfighters #52, October, 1967, comes one of Jim's early comics jobs. The Steve Skeates script hints just enough at the supernatural to give the conclusion an eerie vibe, and Jim demonstrates the strong artistic skill that saw him quickly graduating out of Charlton's minor league publications up to DC. Fortunately for us, Charlton allowed Jim to do his own lettering, sparing us the work of "A. Machine" on this 9-pager.

Aparo inked by Bill Draut--Girls' Love #142

Here's a rarity! From DC's Girls' Love #142, an uncredited story pencilled by Jim Aparo, and inked by Bill Draut! If you're having trouble spotting Jim's work underneath Draut's oppressive inks, you're not alone...but look at panels 3 and 4 of page 3 to see the most distinctive evidence of Aparo's style!
Click the pages to expand for a good look at the original art pages!

Career Girl Romances

Originally posted February 2009:

Here's an Aparo job so rare that it's not in my collection...yet! Career Girl Romances #40 has an Aparo cover and an 8-page story illustrated by Jim.

Our cover girl here strikes me as very reminiscent of the girls that John Romita used to draw when he was one of DC's primary romance artists...and, for that matter, when he was drawing groovy chicks like Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson on Spider-Man! The jazzy backing musicians, though, are a bit more in the Aparo style.

This one's from 1967, during Jim's first year in the comic book business, toiling away at Charlton. At this stage, Aparo's line work is delicate, which was generally expected of artists on romance comics. The inking is, in fact, barely recognizable as Jim's, but he was doing what was expected as he started to make his way in the business.

Note that he's drawn a left-handed guitarist here...I wonder if he was working from some photo reference of a lefty, or whether he just opted for a figure that better suited the cover composition? Whatever the case, I've got to give him credit for drawing a more convincing guitarist than many comics artists of the era that attempted to depict musicians. The microphone position is a little off, and the drum kit is sparse, but over all, it's a good stab at drawing a combo with a sexy girl singer, don't you think?

UPDATE:
Now that I've got a copy of the actual issue, here's Jim's splash page from the interior story:

It looks like Dick Giordano did the cover, based on Jim's interior work. Dick altered the girl's face and adjusted her pose, but the guitarist and drummer adhere to Aparo's work. 

Something Very Different

Here's a sketch Jim did in his retirement years for a commision job of Sherlock Holmes! Well, he was a DC comics character, I suppose, appearing in one issue of his own comic as well as in Batman and in The Brave and The Bold Special (in an issue with a Jim Aparo cover)! But Jim never got to draw any of those issues. Click it to see it big!

Holmes underwent a surge in popularity in the early 70's, when Jim Aparo was in his prime. I was a big Holmes fan as well as a comics fan, so I really love this piece!

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.

Pogs by Aparo

POGS! I don't honestly have much to say about these. To my thinking, pogs were one of the stupidest "collectibles" ever perpetrated on the gullible kids of the early 90s. In case you missed the craze, pogs originated as a sort of prize available under the caps of a brand of mixed fruit juice (hence the acronymic name, from the words 'passion fruit', 'orange', and 'guava') popular, I believe, in Pacific island states. Pogs are small cardboard disks with a picture on them. There was a simple game associated with them, which involved stacking your pogs, flipping a special disk at the stack, and then scooping up those pogs which landed face down (or maybe it was face up--I saw my nephews playing the game once, but I forgot the very simple rules). The game reduced trading to a game of (mostly) chance between kids who'd pool their pogs into the stack. Or something like that...I've already admitted that I thought the whole thing was pretty stupid, haven't I?

Sensing that the collectible card craze was waning, comics publishers joined in on the pog craze, pumping out tons of pogs with comic book connections. I didn't care much for the card craze, either (although we'll see some cards soon with exclusive Aparo artwork), but at least they were a little better at depicting an actual story, given the larger size (and a complete collection).

DC put out a series of pogs spotlighting the then-recent story in which villain Bane broke Batman's back, and Jim Aparo was one of those whose art was featured. I'm not very impressed with the selections, including an unattractively-drawn Poison Ivy and a bizarre scene of Robin cutting Azrael's hair! It's not clear from the scan, but the Bane pog (#B2) was a "chase pog" (Please don't get me started on "chase" collectibles!): it has a metallic-looking background on an otherwise ordinary cardboard disk. (NOTE: As noted in the comments, the art on the Bane pog is from the talented Graham Nolan, not Jim Aparo!)

It's not Aparo at his best, but it's something that many Aparo fans would never even have thought of looking for, now that the pog is (so far as I can tell) extinct.

And that's ok with me, since I've got my Aparo pogs.

The Last Monkees!

After only three 2-page stories in their pop music magazine Teen Tunes, Charlton apparently lost the license for official Monkees comics to Dell, who were about to begin a short run of four-color Monkees comic books with art by, I believe, Jose Delbo. Charlton saved the best for last, though, as Jim Aparo was teamed with Steve Skeates, writer, to produce this mini-masterpiece. In Skeates' only job as Monkees scripter, he challenged himself to use as many titles of Monkees songs in the script as he could fit. How many can you spot?

I especially like Jim's sound effects lettering in this little tale!

Texas Rangers

And another not yet now in my collection: Jim's cover for Charlton's Texas Rangers #72. Jim didn't contribute any interior art for this one. What's interesting here is that Charlton's now letting Jim do the lettering on the cover. He didn't have that latitude at DC, but Charlton let him do quite a lot of cover blurbs. Jim was an ace letterer, and the effect usually worked quite well when he was allowed to fill in the text.

The History of the DC Universe Poster

Here's a bit of Aparo work that's not especially easy to come by. The History of the DC Universe was a two-issue prestige format miniseries published after Crisis on Infinite Earths, laying out the post-Crisis history of, well, the DC Universe. The miniseries was compiled into a hardback--back when it was exceedingly unusual for DC to publish hardbacks--and the hardback added a "jam" poster featuring a variety of characters drawn by different DC artists, with many of the artists asked to draw a character that they were especially associated with. Aparo was, naturally, one of those asked to contribute, adding the Phantom Stranger to the assembly of heroes in this fold-out. Despite being the Aparo fan that I am, I had to resist shelling out the bucks for this compilation, having bought the miniseries. I picked up a copy eventually, just so that I could have this (somewhat) rare piece of Aparo's published art. If you missed out, here's your chance to look over a terrific All-Star work. And it's a fun test of your art-spotting eye to match the artists' signatures to their contributions: Can you spot Dave Stevens' character? Dan Spiegle's? Gilbert Hernandez's?

Teen Tunes #4: More Monkees!

As promised, here's the Monkees story from the very rare Teen Tunes #4. These are from Jim Aparo's personal collection, which he shared with me to make copies from back in 1992. Steve Skeates was the writer for this two-pager which appeared in a black and white music magazine from Charlton back in 1967. More great caricature work from Jim in his humor mode! The writer for this installment is unknown, but the upcoming, final episode is a special treat from Steve Skeates. Until then, enjoy this one!

Click to enlarge:

Stern Wheeler at Dave Karlen's Original Art Blog

From Dave Karlen's Original Art Blog:

How many artists do you know that would draw a daily strip for free just to get the publicity? Well that is exactly what illustrator Jim Aparo did for The Hartford Times back in March of 1963.

Dave proceeds to give a brief rundown of the short run of Aparo's newspaper strip Stern Wheeler. The strip's definitely a rarity, since it was only published in a single newspaper for a few months nearly half a century(!) ago, but it's not completely unavailable for today's fans. A small publisher called "Spotlight Comics" published a single issue of reprints in the black and white boom of the late 80's. (They also published an excerpt in another comic called L. T. Caper. You'll only want that if you can't find the Stern Wheeler comic itself, unless you get a kick out of amateurish 80's-style vanity comic books.)

But lucky for you, it's not that difficult to obtain: Mile High Comics lists it for only $1.75 (cover price!) in near mint. That's a steal, if you ask me! Too bad the company didn't last long enough to reprint the entire run. Recommended for Aparo fans and lovers of classic style newspaper adventure strips.

Finally, Teen Tunes #3: The Monkees!

Yes, in Teen Tunes #3, Miss Bikini Luv was replaced by The Monkees in the 2-page black & white comics section of Charlton's pop music magazine! While this is obviously an officially-licensed appearance, Charlton didn't hold on to the rights for long. After three 2-page stories in this and the following couple of issues, The Monkees moved on to a new comic book from a different publisher: Dell Comics published 17 issues starring the Pre-Fab Four starting in 1967. No offense to Dell artist Jose Delbo, but I think very few fans would disagree that Charlton's writer (unknown) and artist Jim Aparo did the better job at translating Davy, Mickie, Peter, and Mike onto the comic book page. Dig Jim's terrific caricatures and manic cartoonery! Could Jim handle humor comics? Judging from this, I can only say "I'm A Believer"!

More Bikini Luv from Teen Tunes!

And here's the story from the second issue of Teen Tunes. Miss Bikini Luv returns for her final spotlight in the pop music magazine, before being replaced by a surprise feature, coming soon to this blog! But for now, enjoy Jim Aparo at his cartoony best (click to view each page!):

Miss Bikini Luv from Teen Tunes #1

In 1992, Jim Aparo surprised me by loaning me (by mail) his personal file copies of Teen Tunes issues 1-5. This was a pop music magazine published by Charlton. It featured the typical profiles of popular musical groups, with pinups, lyrics, etc. It also featured, in each of the five issues, a 2-page comics section, pencilled, inked, and lettered by Jim Aparo. In the first two installments, the star was Miss Bikini Luv, which was Jim's very first assignment at Charlton, in the Go-Go comic book (actually, that job in Go-Go was his first professional comic book assignment, period)!

Although his work on Go-Go is relatively well-known (at least it's documented in the Overstreet Price Guide!), Teen Tunes is long forgotten, and nearly unknown. Here's your chance to see that first story, from that extremely rare and hard-to-find magazine. And just wait 'til you see what feature took over the slot as of issue 3! The rest of Jim's contributions to this magazine are coming soon to this blog!

Click on the thumbnails to read 'em!

Aparo, Orlando, and Andru--Together!

Back in 1992, when Chris Khalaf and I first revived the Jim Aparo Fan Club and began publishing our Newsletter, Chris lamented that he wished he had bought a "young readers" Batman book that featured art by Jim Aparo inked by Joe Orlando (his old Phantom Stranger and Spectre editor!). Chris couldn't remember the details of the book, which is surprising given his astounding skills at recall in the world of comics, but I knew it was something I had to look out for; after all, I've always aimed at amassing a complete Aparo collection. About 5 years ago, I found the book Chris had remembered. I stumbled upon it at an antique store, marked at $3.00.

It's this:

"The Case of the Laughing Sphinx", written by Andy Helfer, and illustrated by Ross Andru, Jim Aparo, and Joe Orlando. It's a hardback, heavily illustrated book that originally came with a cassette tape, presumably with a reading/dramatization of the story (several familiar names from DC are listed in the voice credits).

Chris hadn't remembered Ross Andru's contribution, which was obviously the layouts. I've got a lot of love for Ross, but I've never liked the layouts he produced for other artists. Aparo pencilled from his layouts for many covers, including Detective Comics in its "Dollar Comic" era. I can spot Andru's hand most easily by looking at the legs: Ross seems to have believed that a dynamic cover required knees bent at rather extreme angles. Batman's bended knee here is not too bad, but some of the squats that Aparo had to draw on those 'TEC covers were pretty awful looking.

How about the interiors? Here's a sample for you all:

Savograns!

My pal Mac, a.k.a. Comic Book Resources forum member Red Oak Kid forwards this treasure from Jim Aparo's early career in advertising: a spot from an 1965 issue of Popular Science:

Trained eyes will recognize that even then, Jim was doing his own lettering. You might recognize the cartoony style from Aparo's first published comic book work, Miss Bikini Luv in Charlton's Go-Go comic book. He had few chances to revisit this sort of drawing for the remainder of his career.

UPDATE: I've confirmed that a series of Aparo ads for various Savogran products appeared throughout 1965 issues of Popular Science! The earliest ones are unsigned, but are definitely Jim's (with his distinctive lettering), and they are replaced in 1966 by generic ads with photos of the product containers rather than cartoon panels. I'll post the entire set as soon as I get the time to photocopy them from the bound editions at the library (and the time to scour each issue more carefully, so that I can be certain to have the entire set...at least the entire set that was published in this magazine).