Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Ken Landgraf Sells His File Photocopies of Gil Kane's Comic Book Page Pencils




In the 1980s, I was an assistant to comic book artist Ken Landgraf. I took a class of his at The New School, and he let it be known he was looking for inkers to help out. I was working a regular day job then, so I would come over to his Lower East Side studio and assist him after work until about midnight. He helped me learn how to handle a brush, for which I am grateful. Ken had a lot of great copies of penciled and inked comic book pages by some of the major Marvel and DC and EC comics artists. He's now offering some of his Gil Kane pages. Here's Ken:

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"I was Gil Kane's assistant in the early 1970's before I would become a professional comic book artist. I took Gil Kane around and introduced him to all the new comic book convention organizers so he could attend them. Gil always was looking for ways to sell his original art so we took a taxi to all the NYC comic book stores and owners like Dave Miley would buy his pages. I was back from Vietnam and remained in the military reserves so I told Gil I didn't need to get paid so I asked if I could make photo copies of his work. I am showing here how his pencil art looked before it went to Rudy Nebres and Alcala to be inked. If you are an artist and would like to study photo copies of the sets I have for purchase email me at kenlandgraf@earthlink.net. Once the inker worked on the pencil art the pencil pages were lost forever unless an up and coming artist made a photocopy."

 



2 comments:

Manqueman said...

A decades old mystery to me for reasons I can't go into:
There was an issue of DC Special or SuperStars in the 70s that was credited to Rich Buckler but I was told it was pretty much all drawn by Landgraf, his then-assistant with Buckler's work on the job pretty much limited to getting the gig, taking credit and that was it. The 70s is a bit blurry but I think soon after that, Buckler started doing some assisting for Dick Giordano, but whatever.
Anything you can say about that job?
Not naming my source but they were relatively trustworthy.

Mike Lynch said...

Hi Manqueman. I passed your question along to Ken ....