How To Read More About And From The Late Joe Kubert



The comic book illustrator and educator Joe Kubert passed away eight days ago. For those involved in publishing Kubert's work, the question of when to resume to sell that work to an appreciative public must have been nettlesome. It likely continues to be. Lacking a profit motivation, we are under far less rigorous strictures here at CR.

The attention paid the late Kubert and his work over the last eight days may have fostered a desire in some to read more of his comics, that body of work being a significant legacy for the artist. Joe Kubert was a first-rate comics illustrator and an intriguing figure in the medium's history. Individual phases of Kubert's career in comics art can be argued to match the entire professional output of some very considerable artists. I would imagine that no comprehensive comics library -- or, if you're not a keeper, a first-rate comics education -- would be complete without owning or reading some of the following.

Some Joe Kubert comics won't even ask you to leave your computer screen. Yesterday at CR we linked to a sampling of Kubert's early work and various galleries featuring stand-alone illustration and isolated pages. There was a text-based link post here that arranged what that person could find according to date of publication. A search for Joe Kubert on the popular digital comics site comiXology yields a smattering of newer titles, perhaps most significantly Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy, a later-period work featuring a character associated with the late illustrator.

Kubert was an active artist, with projects just completed and still in the works. Work created by and selected by Kubert is set to appear in Joe Kubert Presents, starting this October. I don't think there's been any word about a change in publication plans or how many issues have been completed, but with an October launch date I have to imagine that a bunch of that work is already in.

DC has at time used a "Joe Kubert Library" designation, and it looks like there's at least a few Tor volumes available that way, and an edition of Dong Xoai, Vietnam 1965. More recent PR on planned future releases using that term seem to have gone missing from the DC web site. There are also individual issues of a Tor series from 2008 listed on their site. I'm guessing this may be a collection of that one.

DC's aggressive collection of past works into fancy hardcovers aimed at the collector's market, cheap paperbacks aimed at a reader's market and the occasional book somewhere in between has put a bunch of Joe Kubert's work back into circulation. Here's one of Viking Prince material. You can find work featuring characters/concepts like Enemy Ace, The Unknown Soldier, Haunted Tank, Sgt. Rock and Hawkman with very little effort. The Sgt Rock comes in a couple of those formats. Lots of Kubert work in each book, although I guess it's worth double-checking.

The comics and fandom historian Bill Schelly has through Fantagraphics carved out a small but significant place for Joe Kubert in that publisher's library of offerings. A more straight-forward prose biography, Man Of Rock, was followed by The Art Of Joe Kubert, different ways of approach the artist's life and career. This November should see publication of Weird Horrors & Daring Adventures, the first volume of a planned "Joe Kubert Archives" series, which I'm almost certain presents material from the artist to which he or no one holds current copyright. I've read the first two; I liked them both. You can also still get a copy of Kubert's 1994 issue of The Comics Journal. Work Kubert did for EC Comics will apparently be included in the first author-driven EC book from Fantagraphics, also due this Fall.

You can still find Yossel through Internet booksellers; I think I heard a rumor that one may be reprinted soon, but I'm not able to find confirmation of that this morning.

IDW has a Joe Kubert's Tarzan Of The Apes: Artist's Edition coming out in September; that I haven't heard a peep about that book in what must have been a final order cut-off period speaks well to their circumspection. That should be very attractive-looking. Let's hope if that series continues there's more Kubert work published that way.

Dark Horse published three hardcovers of Joe Kubert-related Tarzan material.

Dark Horse has also kept Kubert's key, later-period Fax From Sarajevo in print, and features a 1998 edition on their web site. Another key book from roughly this same period, Tex, can be had through the Kubert School's bookstore.

This Vanguard book is the only one I know that taps into Kubert's educator role. I could be wrong about that.

Finally, don't forget about the possibility of buying work in comic book form. For instance, it's still possible to get a full run of the elegantly drawn and conceptually odd Ragman for less than $10, or low-grade editions of Kubert's Tarzan work for less than one of this week's superhero comics per issue.

your local comics shop can order just about all of this stuff for you, if you feel like them giving them a crack at it; anything without a direct order-from link in the above might be solely available through comics shops


 
posted 1:35 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives