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A Look Back at
Nestor Redondo
Shawn Caffrey
Nestor Redondo was born in the Philippines in 1928.
He gained an interest in comics at a very early age,
having been influenced by American comics like Tarzan,
Buck Rogers and Superman. Along with his older brother
Virgilio, he soon ventured into drawing comic books.
His first professional job was with Bulaklak Komiks,
where it soon became apparent that he was a better artist
than his brother. Virgilio turned his talent to writing,
and the two of them teamed up to produce some of the
best comics ever published in the Philippines.
By the late fifties Nestor was illustrating several
comics at the same time, in which he did all the penciling
and inking himself. Unfortunately, within ten years
the company where he worked began experiencing financial
difficulties and closed its doors, leaving Nestor unemployed.
Luckily, by that time editors at DC and Marvel had noticed
his work, and DC asked him to follow Berni Wrightson's
run on Swamp Thing. From then on he illustrated stories
in nearly all of the DC horror titles published in the
70's, especially House of Mystery and House of Secrets.
His line work and shadowing brought his characters to
life, and his attention to detail seemed to lift the
panels right off the page. One of his most fondly remembered
projects was Rima, the Jungle Girl, where he contributed
some wonderful good-girl art to each of the title's
seven issues.
After a distinguished career with DC, Marvel recruited
him to work on Conan, and to paint covers for other
titles. At Marvel he not only expanded his repertoire,
but also set new standards for an artist to produce
so much material without compromising the quality of
his work. Sadly, he passed away in 1995, but he has
left a legacy for all aspiring young artists to follow.
Nestor's career spanned over forty years, from the Philippines
to America, where he established himself as a legendary,
yet sometimes overlooked, artist of Bronze and Modern
Age comics.
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Atlas Science-Fiction:
Missing in Action
Phil Kaltenbach
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At the beginning of the 1950's, E.C. set a high standard
for horror comics, one that Atlas measured up to very
well. Bill Gaines' outfit, however, also published,
and took considerable pride in, an outstanding line
of science-fiction comics. At Atlas Martin Goodman and
Stan Lee responded with some sf material of their own,
but with remarkably less success.
The first Atlas title dedicated to science-fiction
turned out to be one of their longest-running titles,
Journey into Unknown Worlds, with number one bearing
a cover date of 9/50 and featuring a multi-eyed alien
on the cover, an End of the Earth story, and two beautifully
drawn Russ Heath efforts. The second issue boasts a
wonderful sf cover and story by Bill Everett. The dominance
of sf themes began to wane, though, and the stories
became increasingly weird, until by issue #10 the title
was pretty much devoted strictly to supernatural and
horror stories.
As we saw last time, another title that threw itself
into the sf swirl was Venus, but that flirtation lasted
only three issues (#10-12) before, once again, horror
assumed command. In 1951, as Journey was beginning to
morph, Atlas launched an all-sf title, Space Squadron,
but its contents were pretty unsophisticated and it
lasted only six issues, including a feeble name change
with the last issue. In 1953 Atlas tried one more time
with Speed Carter, Spaceman, but it suffered the same
indifferent fate as its predecessor and lasted just
as many issues. With that, the publisher threw down
its blaster and raised its many arms in surrender.
All this, of course, stands in stark contrast to the
distinguished competition at DC, who started and maintained
the two most successful and long-running science-fiction
titles of all, Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space,
the former running for more than twenty years. It is
curious, though, that DC never had much of a presence
in the horror field. Next time we'll examine these two
powerhouse titles, and speculate on how each company's
success in its respective genre illustrates the most
basic differences between the two. See you next month!
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