RIP Jerry Grandenetti.

Word has reached the Internet, and by extension me, that Jerry Grandenetti passed away back in February. You may recall, if you've been reading my blog for any period of time, that I have written several posts praising his work in the 60's and early 70's, especially in the black and white Warren Magazines line, via titles like Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella. Although I was infatuated with the work of many of the artists represented in those pages, such as Alex Toth, Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, Wally Wood, Angelo Torres, Al Williamson, and many others, none of them grabbed my attention or captured my fancy like Grandenetti's surreal, expressionistic, almost hallucenogenic renditions of (mostly) Archie Goodwin's stories. Here are links to two previous posts, one an entire story, a personal favorite called "Rub the Lamp", and a single page from a later story called "Type Cast". As the years went by, I would read a bit about him here and there; I soon became acquainted with his work for DC, especially his run on the 60's Spectre, succeeding Neal Adams, inked by Murphy Anderson. The difference in styles was too jarring for many, and eventually the book was cancelled. Like Frank Robbins when he took over from Mike Kaluta on The Shadow several years later, fans didn't take it well...but I really liked his stint, although it wasn't until the mid-70's that I read them. Eventually, I found out about his beginnings working for Will Eisner, and his stint on DC's war comics. After a while, he moved into the greener pastures of advertising, but kept his hand in by illustrating a hodgepodge of things for DC in the 70's, mostly Joe Simon projects like Prez and in the pages of First Issue Special, The Green Team and The Outsiders. Sadly, his work was unappreciated by many at the time, who only seemed to appreciate the flashier, more modern-style artists of the next few decades. Regardless, I never forgot the charge I got from that 60's stuff, and he became one of the artists I was always evangelizing about to whoever would listen. When I started blogging, I was excited to discover his website, through which he solicited commissions, and I always thought it would be so great to get him to do something for me, but alas I never could afford it. The website is no longer online.

Anyway, short story long, of all the great artists I've admired, appreciated and loved over the years, few have given me as much pleasure as Grandenetti did in the 60's, my formative years. His was such a challenging style, it definitely could be an acquired taste, so I can see why it didn't receive the accolades I thought it deserved. In way of tribute, I want to post a series of pages and covers from different points in his career; I hope it will provide some insight into his talent and yes, genius, and perhaps enlighten you about why I revered it so. It's a very incomplete sample set, but I hope it will be satisfactory.

Two Eisnerish Dr. Drew pages, via Four-Color Shadows.

War comics covers for DC, many done with wash tones.

The uncut funk here, Warren pages from Creepy and Eerie. Grandenetti also did several stories as a ghost for Joe Orlando. Now, some DC pages from roughly the same period; the Spectre pages are inked by Murphy Anderson:

And from the 1970's, Prez and the Green Team:

Always wanted to see a Batman-Green Team teamup. You'd think the cartoon guys would be up for that. Anyway, finally, the one page bio that appeared in Creepy #42:

And that's all. Rest in peace, Mr. Grandenetti, and thanks for everything.

(click to supersize each page)

For your reading pleasure, one of my absolute favorite Jerry Grandenetti Warren stories, from Eerie #9: "Rub the Lamp"- in which an antiques dealer finds a magic lamp, and gets more than he bargained for. This is the story which got me to notice Grandenetti's hallucinogenic 60's style when I was a kid, even though I'd seen it in other stories in previous issues. Everything in this story, with its distorted figures, brittle, jagged panel borders and vertiginous perspectives literally radiates dismay, greed, and fear; I don't know if the term "expressionistic" applies exactly, but I think it's awfully close. His was never an attractive in a conventional sense sort of style, especially when compared to the Adamses, Woods, Crandalls, Kirbys and Morrows that were his contemporaries, but when it came to helping the reader get a feel for the vibe that this sort of horror tale was trying to get across, as far as I'm concerned it really did the job in excellent fashion. Joe Orlando's work at this time looked a lot like this- in fact, there were a couple of Warren stories that I had associated with Grandenetti for decades that I came to find out were actually Orlando's. But Grandenetti, I think, did it with a bit more gusto. I'm not familiar with the writer of this tale, one Allan Jadro; I wonder if it wasn't a pseudonym. Archie Goodwin wrote most of the stories in those days for this magazine, but it stands to reason that he couldn't write everything...someday I'll have to dig out my Warren Companion and see if it can shed some light on Mr. Jadro's identity.

These days, when comics readers think of JG at all, it's mostly in terms of the mostly lackluster work he did later in his career with Joe Simon on stuff like The Green Team and Prez, or perhaps even the Eisnerish work he did pre-DC War comics...but for me, this is genius stuff, and I wanted to share.

Thank you, Manny.

First up today, kiddies, some show & tell.

A while back, you may recall me writing about horror comics and in one particular case the Warren Magazines work of Jerry Grandenetti. But even though he has a website (link in the blogroll section) it features mostly newer stuff and doesn't have many examples of the stuff from the mid to late 60s that blew my preteen socks off.

Yesterday I was over at my Mom's house. My mom recently had her hot water heater spring a leak on her, and as a result had to clean up a lot of water from her basement floor. She had to move a lot of the cardboard boxes (my Mom's a bigger pack rat than me, if that's possible), and she found one which contained a lot of old, musty, beat-up comics which I had left behind when I left home about a hundred years ago. I remembered them, because I had chosen not to put them in my original collection when I actually started "collecting" in my late teens, due to their extremely poor condition, and that box was where I had put them. Still, it was a lot of fun going through the box and seeing a lot of those old books. One of these books was a coverless and marked on (by 8-year-old me) copy of Eerie #8, which featured scripts by Archie Goodwin and a great inkwashed story by Gene Colan, the classic "Demon Sword" story by Steve Ditko (inkwashed beautifully as well), a mind-blowingly detailed post-apocalypse story drawn by the often overlooked Dan Adkins, a excellently drawn weird western by John Severin, and "Type Cast", the story from which the above page is taken, with a gloriously hallucenogenic, expressionistic art job by Grandenetti, just like I've been talking about. I thought that this would be a great opportunity to scan a page and put it out there for all to see.

It's a tale of an actor named Bryce who gets cast in, against his wishes, horror films back in the Thirties. He just can't get motivated, he complains to his manager, to play such ridiculous and sordid roles. When his manager suggests that he try to draw inspiration from immersing himself in the surroundings of the characters he's expected to play, then he reluctantly agrees and goes walking in a graveyard later that night. He really begins to enter into the midset of the hunchback character he's asked to play. When he's accosted by the caretaker, he panics and attacks the man, which gives him the necessary experience to play his part with the proper conviction. Now a success, his manager keeps getting him more horror roles, much to Bryce's chagrin, and the desperate actor keeps doing his increasingly violent research, until things come to a head when he strangles his manager, before filming a movie about an insane strangler. Quite insane by now, he is arrested and committed. The story opens with his release thirty years later, and ends with the discovery that the asylum staff released the wrong man- a patient named Brice, not Bryce, should have been released. When the director checks on him, and discovers that he has taken a role in a movie now filming...and when the director asks the name of the picture, both men in the office gaze at the newspaper on the table with the headline "Knife-wielding manic strikes again!" as the director intones "The Story of Jack the Ripper...!"

Ooh, hey kids- very scary, huh!

Anyway, it is a nice little story with a couple of clever EC-ish twists, which is what Goodwin and Warren were all about. But one of the things that makes this tale so effective is the chaotic rendering of Grandenetti, with its unconventional layouts, adventurous use of lettering, and effectively moody wash technique. I've always appreciated how, the farther the story goes along and the more deranged the protagonist becomes, Grandenetti's figure rendering becomes more jagged and harsh, and in moments of great stress he chooses to depict this by means of radiating lines eminating from Bryce's body.

A little blast from the past from a past master.