Last night at the CAPS September meeting for 2012, we had a panel of pros who had known Joe Kubert in various ways. The legendary artist made a huge impact on others both personally and professionally – and it was fascinating for someone like me (who only knows Kubert through his art) to hear these folks talk.
Pat McGreal (the current CAPS president) served as moderator to the panel, but he only had to nudge things along. Everyone was quite ready to tell tales.
Sergio Aragonés led off describing his social connection to Joe, particularly how Joe was a very physical personality, with a tendency to heartily hug when greeting others. Since Joe kept himself quite fit, this was apparently a slightly alarming experience.
Mike Carlin indicated his first experience of Joe also happened to be his first encounter with Sergio, back in Mike’s early days with DC Comics as an intern. Sergio had come into the offices to do some humor work for one of Joe’s war books, sat down to do a page and turned to Mike and said “Time me.” (As it turns out, the question had come up with how long it would take Sergio to do the partial page cartoon — Mike says it was about 25 minutes.) Mike admited that at the time, he was intimidated by Joe.
Russ Heath had a number of stories of working with Joe. I was amused to learn that Joe was less concerned about exact detail in drawings than Russ is.
Mark Irwin talked about being a student at the school that Joe Kubert had founded. In particular, he mentioned how he’d felt he was struggling and not getting anywhere and was about ready to quit. He went to talk to Joe, and Joe asked him if he liked to draw. Mark answered that he still loved to draw. Joe: “Problem solved.” Mark stuck it out and graduated.
Scott Koblish talked about attending Joe’s Saturday morning classes for youngsters, starting when he was nine years old. It was obvious to see that his years in those classes had had a huge effect on shaping him as an artist.
This description of the evening doesn’t do justice to the stories about Joe Kubert and the evident affection with which he was regarded. But it was certainly a fine tribute to a towering influence in the history of comic book art. I was glad to be there.
