37 - 'PS' Covers Without Sigs

Reactions to our recent Blogpost 36 regarding new offices for the PS Magazine staff included this from Erwin K. Roberts: “Thank you for the update. It got me curious. Obviously Joe's [Joe Kubert’s] organization is carrying on, and very well, I'm sure. But, who, if anyone yet, is the new cover artist?”

Roberts is a life-long comics fan who joined the U.S. Army in September, 1969. A week or so later he saw Will Eisner's familiar signature on an issue of PS. With the exception of a few breaks, he followed PS until he retired from the Missouri Army National Guard in 1996. When his son prepared to deploy to Iraq in 2004, Roberts was relieved to find PS still going strong with Joe Kubert as the signature artist. Following Will Eisner’s death, Roberts founded a Yahoo group devoted to PS. These days Roberts writes thrillers in several genres. Several of Erwin K. Roberts’s works are available on Amazon. 

Questions regarding the absence of an artist’s signature on Front Covers of PS are not new, but they have been heard with increasing frequency since the death of Joe Kubert last year.

The image displayed above (a repeat from our Blogpost 35), the Front Cover of PS Magazine Issue 719 (October 2012), is the last PS cover that is attributable to Joe, even though it does not bear his iconic sig. He penciled the entire piece and inked the principal foreground character in what turned out to be his last session at the drawing board before he went into the hospital.

This discussion is accompanied by displays of the Front Covers of the first six PS Magazine issues of 2013, all unsigned.

Beginning late last year, I’ve had several conversations regarding this subject with Stuart Henderson, the PS Production Manager, and Pete Carlsson, Senior Art Director for Tell-A-Graphics, the Kubert business entity that has held the PS contract for creative art, design, and pre-press services since PS 579 in February of 2001.

Pete says that the presence of Joe’s signature on PS covers indicated, as it should, that Joe was an overarching presence who was involved to some degree in every production aspect involving a cover. “Following Joe’s death, a more pronounced division of labor has evolved that results in team-effort covers for which a single signature would be inappropriate,” Pete said.

“For that reason, and with the concurrence of the PS leadership, our decision for now is that the covers will not be signed,” Pete said.

Henderson points out that this is not unprecedented. “Backes Graphic Productions, which produced Issues 429 through 578, from August 1988 through January of 2001, did so with unsigned covers,” Stuart said.

At this point in time, the 150 issues produced by Jack and Diane Backes represent the second longest period of PS production. Will Eisner’s 227 issues still stand at the top of the stack.

In two months, with PS 729 (August), the Kubert shop will have equaled the Backes Graphic Productions record and in September (PS 730) will move into the second-to-Eisner spot. That will still be 76 issues short of Maestro Eisner’s tally.

The historic information provided here is derived from a time-line graphic that includes PS Editors, Artists, and U.S. Army Duty Stations, and is available in Appendix A of Will Eisner and PS Magazine. 

—Fitz

UPCOMING POSTINGS:

¶ Master Sergeant Bull Dozer Revisited

¶ PS Magazine's Immediate Military Commander

¶ A View of PS at the Four-Star Level

¶ Best of PS by Perspective Instructional           

     Communications

¶ A Covey of Connies—World War II to Today

36 — New Offices for ‘PS Magazine’ Staff

PS Magazine staff operations recently moved into new offices in this recently refurbished building on Redstone Arsenal (Huntsville, Alabama). The space allocated to the publication’s activities faces the second set of windows from the near-front corner of the building pictured above.

PS has been located at Redstone Arsenal since June of 1993. Its move there followed a four-step circuitous routing from Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland (June 1951-January 1956) to Raritan Arsenal, New Jersey (January 1967-October 1962) to Fort Knox, Kentucky (October 1962 to July 1973) to Lexington-Blue Grass Army Depot (July 1973 to June 1993).

The picture below shows the general PS Magazine office area.

Stuart Henderson, PS production manager, is pictured, at right, in his new space, and, below, escorting visitors through the new publication offices.

 

The picture below shows the spacious access way outside the PS offices.

These photos were made available through the courtesy of Creed Henderson, Stuart’s son.

An interesting footnote—for the first time since the autumn of 1953, the PS Magazine editor (Jon Pierce, ninth in the succession of editors) has an honest-to-goodness real office, door and all! Sixty years ago, Jim Kidd, as editor, and I, as his managing editor, made a drastic and deliberate change to the then existing culture of the publication by converting the office layout to a newsroom “bullpen” arrangement (as I described in detail in Will Eisner and PS Magazine).

The PS program continues as an element of the US Army Logistics Support Activity (LOGSA), under the US Army Materiel Command, all located at Redstone Arsenal.

-—p.e.f.

UPCOMING POSTINGS:

¶ The Return of Master Sergeant Bull Dozer

¶ PS Magazine's Immediate Military Commander

¶ A View of PS at the Four-Star Level

¶ Best of PS by Perspective Instructional Communications

¶ A Covey of Connies—World War II to Today

35 – A Birthday Remembrance of Joe Kubert

Today would have been Joe Kubert’s 86th birthday. He missed it by about five weeks, having left this world and us on August 12. This humble Birthday Remembrance is intended as a respectful appreciation of his masterful creativity as an artist and the absolute effervescence of his presence.

The image displayed below, the Front Cover of PS Magazine Issue 719 (October 2012), is the last PS cover that is attributable to Joe, even though it does not bear his iconic sig. He penciled the entire piece and inked the principal foreground character in what turned out to be his last session at the drawing board before he went into the hospital.

This final Joe Kubert cover for the U.S. Army’s famous graphic communications pacesetter publication is the second in a two-step introduction process for a new female character named Cloe. (No! It’s not supposed to have an “h” in it.) The name is an acronym representing Common Logistics Operating Environment. The lady herself says it stands for Cool Logistician and Operator Extraordinaire!

Joe’s death occurred just a little more than halfway through his twelfth year (beginning in February of 2012) as the PS contractor for creative art, design, and pre-press services. His organization continues to meet all production schedules.

I had the pleasure of getting to know Joe over a three-day span in June of 2011 in Huntsville, Alabama, where we participated in the official celebration at Redstone Arsenal of the sixtieth anniversary of PS Magazine. The formalities took place in a roadhouse-style steak-joint where the floor was covered with discarded peanut-shells.

We had made reservations at the same hostelry and were supposed to have met there, but tremendous thunderstorms 

intervened and delayed the arrival of his flight. My driver, bodyguard, and general factotum (who also was my youngest son, Clay) and I seized the opportunity to leave word for Joe at the check-in desk and hustle on foot during a lull in the downpour to the most readily available establishment.

A similar subsequent interlude in the storm heralded the arrival of Joe and his Segundo, Pete Carlsson, threading their way around tables and shuffling through the peanut-shells.

It was a confabulation of kindred spirits.

To paraphrase the diplomatic dispatches, the talks were far ranging and productive.

I was surprised to learn that Joe and I both belonged to the Crop of 1926, but even more so when he disclosed that he was ten weeks older than I—his vibrant vitality had me thinking that he was ten years younger, what with me and my cane and my keeper.

The meter did not rise to “raucous” or “ribald,” but it hovered around “rousing.” Joe was at his liveliest when he was discussing his adventures as an infantry “ground-pounder” during the Korean War.

And, it set the tone for our interface during the entire event. Especially enjoyable—and it surely must have been mutually so because we both kept coming back to it—were conversational meanderings down the Memory Lane of changing graphic 

production technology, from acetate overlays to “bogus” four-color separations to the simple logistical challenges of getting a product from an artist in Podunk to a printer in Oshkosh.

In my eyes, Joe was a “people” person. He liked them, and they knew that he liked them.

Whether he was signing posters…

…or chatting with General Dennis Via (center) and Colonel William (Pat) Sullivan…

…or hamming it up with one of his drawings of Master Sergeant Half-Mast…

   

…or presenting a serious speech…

…it was always the “real” Joe Kubert and with a twinkle in his eye.

If you would like to see a video clip of the speech Joe was making in the picture above, just click here.

The icing on the cake was our continued collaboration in presenting this blog. I shall endeavor to continue it in the spirit in which it was created.

—p.e.f.

UPCOMING POSTINGS:

¶ Key military leaders’ presentations complete Video Collection

¶ Best of PS by Perspective Instructional Communications

¶ A Covey of Connies—World War II to Today

—The photos in this post were taken during the Sixtieth Anniversary Celebration of PS Magazine, June 27, 2011, at Redstone Arsenal, by Pete Carlsson and Clay Fitzgerald.

34 – Video: Fitz Describes Early PS Perils, Challenges, and Near Crib-Death

My invitation to participate (above) in the official U.S. Army celebration of PS Magazine’s 60th Anniversary on June 27, 2011, at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama, included the request that I address the early trials and tribulations of that famous publication, “back in the day.” That was a tough task, considering the parameters of time and propriety.

Viewed through the prism of fifty intervening years, the precarious period in which PS tottered close to being strangled in its crib and then struggled through an almost probationary continuance is readily understandable. In the fifth and early-sixth decade of the last century, PS itself was marching through unmapped conceptual terrain while tasked with serving an array of virtually autonomous authorities scattered across the logistics landscape of that time.

My greatest pleasure at the event derived from sharing the platform with Joe Kubert and two sterling representatives of the U.S. Army Logistics Command (AMC), the overarching control element whose creation addressed the systemic springs from which many of the magazine’s early problems flowed. Both Lieutenant General Dennis L. Via, Deputy Commanding General of AMC, and Colonel Robert P. (Pat) Sullivan, who as the Commanding Officer of AMC’s Logistics Support Agency (LOGSA) is the immediate military commander of the PS program, voiced in ringing terms their enthusiasm for, and support of, PS Magazine.

It truly was a great day.

—p.e.f.

It was a thrill for me to be present at the warm reception given to Fitz, at the 60th Anniversary of PS, having been involved in the publishing business for most of my life. I really appreciated the wide swath and accomplishments of this man, who made it over some very, very rough roads and accomplished so much.

—j.k.

UPCOMING POSTINGS:

¶ Video: Colonel ‘Pat’ Sullivan, Head of PS’s Home Command

¶ Video: Lieutenant General Via Salutes PS Program

¶ Best of PS by Perspective Instructional Communications

¶ Joe Dope Meets Beetle Bailey in PS

¶ A Covey of Connies—World War II to Today

¶ Wrap-Up: A Wonderful Year of Celebration

The close-up below shows Fitz at the lectern during the big 60th Birthday Party for PS Magazine. To view his entire presentation at that significant event, just click HERE.

33 - Video: Sequential Art Icon Joe Kubert Speaking At PS Magazine 60th Birthday Celebration

Joe Kubert, shown above, the sequential art icon who has been the creative artist and pre-press services contractor for PS Magazine since PS 579 in February of 2001, was one of four featured speakers at the impressive official Celebration of the magazine’s 60th Anniversary on June 27, 2011, at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama. Joe's moving remarks lifted up and lauded the creative ingenuity of the publication's initial artist, Will Eisner, and praised the U.S. Army's command vision and the magazine staff's dedicated professionalism in nurturing the program through six decades of tumultuous technological advancement in the arena of graphic communication. You will find a link, below, to a video that preserved Joe's complete remarks on that great day.

—p.e.f.

The only people who could really appreciate the feelings and emotions that grabbed me on June 27, 2011, are those (who like myself) were drafted into the Army.

I was inducted in 1950, during the Korean War. I acquired the vaunted rank of P.F.C. when my two-year hitch was up.

Then to be treated as an honored guest by high-ranking officers and officials at Redstone Arsenal just blew me away. If the guys who took Basic with me at Ft. Dix could see me now!

—j.k.

UPCOMING POSTINGS:

¶ Video: Fitz Describes Near Crib-Death of Early PS, ‘Back in the Day’

¶ Video: Colonel ‘Pat’ Sullivan, Head of PS’s Home Command

¶ Video: Lieutenant General Via Salutes PS Program

¶ Best of PS by Perspective Instructional Communications

¶ Joe Dope Meets Beetle Bailey in PS

¶ A Covey of Connies—World War II to Today

¶ Wrap-Up: A Wonderful Year of Celebration

The close-up below shows Joe at the lectern during the big 60th Birthday Party for PS Magazine. To view a video of his entire presentation at that significant event, just click HERE.