Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Charles Voight's HE-MAN!

The one and only issue of Tally-Ho Comics is best known for the John Giunta/Frank Frazetta feature, Snowman -- a thoroughly nutty piece of work, which can be seen in its entirety at Pappy's Golden Age Comics blog. But the unsung gem in this one-shot from 1944 is this He-Man story drawn by an uncredited C. A. Voight.

Voight had drawn the syndicated strip, Betty, starting in 1920, but left the newspapers for comic books in '43. He died in '47, so there are only a few years worth of comic book work by him. I think his drawing is just great -- and this crazy story is a real treat.

But can anyone explain why our protagonist suddenly becomes a miniature version of himself at bottom of page 5 of this tale? I'm mystified!








4 comments:

leifpeng said...

Wow, Terry; What a great find! Voight's drawings really are terrific - and the story's actually pretty well written and a lot of fun. As for that bizarre shrinkage at the end of page five... I dunno... maybe he was trying to symbolically show Sonny in a state of panic? Sort of "are you a man or a mouse" symbolism?

Thanks for sharing this treasure with us! :^)

benton jew said...

Well, obviously he was "feeling small"
since he couldn't just jump in immediately to help his grandma. You saw it a lot more in cartoons back then when people "shrunk" when they were ashamed.

By the way, this Voight guy is FANTASTIC! His figures are so fluid and lively. The only artist today that I can think of who has that quality is Jordi Bernet. I'm definitely going to start looking for more of this guy's work. He's pretty incredible!

Movieboards said...

Yes, Voight is my new favorite too! Benton said he did work in Prize comics. I found them on my Droid phone on the app Vintage Comic Droid. I'll try to get the pages out of there somehow and share.

churnworks said...

Voight's "Boom Boom Brannigan" (similar to "He-Man" and "Sir Prize" (the knight Sir Prize Package) in Prize Comics are both excellent examples of Voight's work. Strong story-telling, with characters that would be at home in Ring Lardner's world, both are well worth reading.