Michael Ryan wrote to ask…
I recently picked the new soft cover collections of Kamandi and, as I was when I bought the original issues off the newsstand, I'm struck by the Joe Kubert covers on the last seven issues (#34 to #40) of Jack's run on the book.
While Joe's art can be quite loose, these covers seem to me to be overly sloppy or at least rushed. Joe's covers start with Gerry Conway taking over the editorial and eventual writing duties on the book. Joe certainly knew how to draw powerful covers and did hundreds, if not thousands, for DC and they trusted him to produce images that would sell books, but his Kamandi covers are not his finest work, IMO.
Perhaps I'm just being overly critical, but is there a story behind this that I've missed you telling before?
Here's my answer but first, I should answer another question. A lot of folks have written to ask why Joe Kubert was suddenly doing the covers on Jack Kirby comics. The answer is that back then at DC, all covers started with either a rough sketch by Head Honcho Carmine Infantino or with a rough sketch by someone else and that sketch was approved, perhaps after modification, by Infantino. Sometimes, as I've explained here, the cover was designed before the insides of the book were drawn or even written. Sometimes, it was done after. I believe these were all done after.
Jack was working for DC on a contract that called for him to finish one issue of something and then immediately start on something else. So as he neared the end of one story, he'd call up Carmine's office and ask "What do you want me to do next?" Carmine would check the schedules or have someone else check the schedules and Jack would be told to next do an issue of this or that.
Near the end of his contract, they had him backlogging issues of Kamandi. And when that contract expired and he stopped working for DC, there were many issues for which Carmine had never gotten around to designing covers for or having Jack design something. So they had Kubert do them.
I have nothing but admiration for Joe Kubert as an artist but I would agree with you that those covers were not his best work. And I think if you look over all the covers on all the DC books from that period, you would find a lot of very talented artists doing not their best work. The firm no longer had the services of Neal Adams or Nick Cardy as cover artists and Infantino seemed to have forgotten all he'd learned over the years about designing attractive covers. They'd also adopted a new cover format with an ugly banner across the top and…
Well, I just think DC was putting out a lot of weak comics then with a lot of weaker covers. Kubert was pretty unhappy that his Tarzan series was failing and a lot of other comics in the line weren't doing so well. Infantino knew that his bosses weren't too happy with him. He was fired not long after. It was not a good time for the company and I think it showed in their comics.
