From Shadow to Light: The Life & Art of Mort Meskin
Recent years have seen a growing interest in the early years of the comic-book industry, shining a light on the pioneers of the art form. Few individuals are more deserving of this attention than Meskin, whose abilities surpassed nearly all of his contemporaries. One of the few comics artists of the era who’d had formal training (at the Pratt Institute), Meskin’s illustration skills, panel compositions, page designs, and dramatic lighting displayed a sophistication that was largely wasted on the mundane superhero and genre stories of the 1940s and ’50s. Although Meskin’s work is today known only to hard-core comics aficionados, he was a major influence on artists who went on to far greater renown, including Joe Kubert, who learned from inking Meskin’s pencil drawings as a teenager, and Steve Ditko. Brower, a former art director at the New York Times, supplies revealing biographical information, insightful critical assessments, and, most of all, page after page of Meskin’s brilliant work, much of it reproduced from the rare original drawings. --Gordon Flagg