Day of the Locust

Day of the Locust

or: A Plague Upon Your Houses

 

Eeney, meeney, miney, moar, this weeks pick, X-men 24. Shades of THEM, Hollywood's version not Marvel's. The Lovely Locust, no, that can't be right... loquacious, lazy, larvalicious... well, whatever he was, could not only talk to insects, he could super-size them pretty much at will. Given they outnumber us billions to one I'd have expected him to be a more formidable, and more often employed, foe.

 

Without turning this into a weekly installment of the Rodney Dangerfield "Respect" Tour I feel a desire to give a shout out to early X-artist Werner Roth. The X-books have had more powerful stylists but Roth's draftsmanship was solid, his storytelling clear, and was just plain fun to look at. To his sons, Jay and Gavin, Your old man done good.

 

Happy Trails

Smitty

2 Comments so far

Steven Ng's picture

I fell in love with the X-Men during the reprints #78-93. I bought a page of his sketches from an art dealer. Didn’t he use the names Jay and Gavin as professional pen names?
Smitty's picture

Yes, he did. A number of DC artists were testing the waters at Marvel and didn't want the DC editors to know. Roth worked as Jay Gavin. Gene Colan worked as Adam Austin. Jack Abel as Gary Martin. Frank Giacoia was Frankie Ray. Mike Espisito was Mickey Demeo. I think Gil Kane had an alias for a time but I can't remember what it was.

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