Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Maybe I'm going insane, but....

Just looking at a few Mandrake the Magician strips and I notice that the art styles of Kurt Shaffenberger and Phil Davis, the artist on Mandrake, are very similar.  Especially in these strips I'm looking at, the hands and faces, and some poses, are similar.  I wonder, could Kurt have worked on the Mandrake strip during this period (late 50s-early 60s)?

Davis had several ghosts/assistants.  He died in 1964 and his assistant Fred Fredericks took over.  Kurt was working as a journeyman in the late-50s, after the end of the Marvel family and right before the beginning of his gig at National and Lois lane.  He worked for ACG and other publishers.  Could he have worked in the strips?

Has anyone read the Kurt bio from TwoMorrows?

a davis original from 62
http://comics.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=17054&Lot_No=16626

The inking style is similar especially on Mandrake's hair.

It's perfectly possible, I suppose. The 1962 version on sale here certainly looks like Shaffenberger inking, and he did sort of have a talent to eclipse the penciller (not always a quality I liked in him). Could one find out by asking United Features? It would be a rather interesting bit of trivia.

In a sort of related note, I have to admit at this point that I always used to confuse Davis' successor, Fred Fredericks, with John Prentice, who succeeded the untouchable Raymond on Rip Kirby. I guess the reason I conflated them was that they both had some pretty big shoes to fill, and frankly, I think they failed. No dishonour, like I say, those were big shoes.

The inks look the same that's for sure.

There's a full 60s Sunday reprinted in Jerry Robinson's history The Comics, part of a sci-fi serial, that looks straight out of Kandor.  Maybe I'll get around to scanning it this weekend. 

Permanus, I know what you mean about his inks.  On the other hand, he had the ability to rescue mediocre pencils.  Not the best when inking Swan, say, but some lesser light.  He would have been good on someone like Alex Saviuk.

Will have to look into this...

If Jerry Bails' website is to be believed, Schaffenberger never worked on Mandrake:

 http://www.bailsprojects.com/(S(3n1hpqiatj4iq4jh3rwo41fs))/whoswho.aspx

I just skimmed through my copy of "Hero Gets Girl! -- The Life and Art of Kurt Schaffenberger", but there's no mention of him ever working on Mandrake the Magician.  He did Ibis the Invincible, but that's another matter.

Hmm, but that's sort of inconclusive, because according to some things I've read, a lot of those deals were sort of handshake things done at the bar or what-have-you: "Hey, I'm in trouble here, someone didn't turn up for work. Can you ink like five strips for me by tomorrow? It's worth a twenty." You know, that sort of thing.

(Come to think of it, it's not unlike the translation biz, which I work in: it is often subcontracted, and often with pretty awful results, in case you wondered why you can't understand some of the instruction manuals that came with your foreign electronic goods. No, you're not stupid. That manual actually doesn't make sense.)

Still, it's perfectly possible that Phil Davis had an assistant whose art looked like KS's - one way to go would be to try to find out who Davis used as assistants and sort of match them up with the art. It would still be pretty inconclusive, I know, but hey, it's a cool theory.