COMIC BOOK COMPULSIVE: There’s A New World Coming
As an actual child of the 1960′s (which as previously established means I was born in 1959 and was an actual child, in the 60′s) I faced the end of the world what certainly seemed like a half dozen times. I’d wake in the morning and while my Mother was listening for the weather report I’d frequently hear a voice of authority tell me, “Yep, world’s going to end again and it looks like rain”. Now that we have the miracle of the internet I could easily look up every instance of premature Armageddon - can, but won’t. Suffice it to say it was either a lot or it just certainly seemed like a lot to an already apocalyptically minded Catholic boy with a tendency to worry and a large comic book collection.
I didn’t care for it one bit but I at least I got inoculated not indoctrinated; though now that the novelty of being alive has kind of worn off it’s kind of fun to think about (to quote Xander Harris, “I like the quiet”) most likely it’s just not going to happen in our lifetimes. Damn it.
And so in honor of the world not ending again I present select pages from Hal Lindsey’s There’s A New World Coming drawn by Al Hartley. Although he’s probably now best known for his work for the Christian Spire titles Harley did considerable work for Atlas Comics, co-creating Leopard Girl with writer Don Rico for Jungle Action. And before becoming a born again Christian drew The Adventures of Pussycat for Martin Goodman’s men magazines.
Image via Wikipedia
Nowadays artist specialize but back then to work a working comic book artist had to master any number of styles suitable for any number of genres, and Hartley could do it all. He worked for a decade on Patsy Walker, helping to change the title over from teen comedy to teen soap opera. He was even able to product art in a perfectly respectable funny animal style for Spire’s Barney Bear comics.
Image via Wikipedia
This Barney Bear…
…and not the now most forgotten star of a long-running MGM cartoon series.
And he was responsible for getting Archie president John Goldwater to license the Archie characters for the Spire titles. It’s easy to make fun of the Spire comics or treat them as if they were high camp, but that would be a mistake. The Spire comics dealt almost exclusively with God’s love and mercy instead of pain, fear and punishment that the Jack Chick tracts trafficked in.
I’m not going to post the entire comic, it’s entirely too long plus it’s readily available for both purchase and free download if anyone has any actual interest in reading it.
— Steve Bennett
I’ve always theorized that the first PUSSYCAT story-usually credited to Wally Wood-is actually Wood’s usual heavy inks over someone else’s pencils. Hartley’s maybe? Otherwise, I’ve never seen a PUSSYCAT I can say is Hartley’s work. Bill Ward did most in the one-shot seen here and Jim Mooney carried on for several years afterwards. I know it’s often said that Hartley balked at doing the sexy (but not very) strip but did he actually do any that got published?
As previously established I’m the first to admit I’m no expert when it goes to establishing artists work and I pretty much went by internet sources. I rather like Hartley’s work; he wasn’t flashy, just a solid journeyman and since the chances of ever doing an entire entry on his work was pretty slim I wanted to give him his due.