Renee and I went to the Jewish Museum to see the Masters of American Comics exhibit yesterday. The museum is sharing the exhibit with the Newark Museum so we weren't able to see the original pieces by Charles Shulz or Milton Caniff but what was there was amazing.
The exhibit is spread across four rooms and laid out in a strange way. When you enter you get an entire room of Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan pages. A fun imaginiative comic but hardly an opener. The next room fares much better with Golden Age Superman and Batman pages, as well as a few Kirby Captain Americas. The only non artwork exhibits are here as well; a script page from an early Detective Comics and Superman creator Jerry Seigel's typewriter.
After a corridor of Harvey Kurtzman Mad covers and Robert Crumb pages, we got to the final room. They had saved the best for last. This gallery is devoted soley to later Jack Kirby and Will Eisner. You get close up to original artwork from Fantastic Four, Thor, Silver Surfer and Captain America as well as later works like New Gods, Kamandi and Devil Dinosaur. The Will Eisner half was mainly devoted to The Spirit but Eisner's constant innvovation made every piece different.
If you're any kind of comic fan, you need to go before it closes January 28. And go on Saturday cause it's free. See what they got!
2 comments:
Jon,
I was there yesterday, as well! But I must tell you that you entered at the end of the exhibit. The start of the 'MOAC' was to the left after the entryway with Will Eisner. There was an easily missed little sign pointing left to the start. Panter and Ware were the end - a reasonably chronological ordering.
Anyhow, glad you enjoyed it. the Devil Dinosuar spread is pretty amazing, isn't it?
Rand HOPPE
Jack Kirby Museum
kirbymuseum.org
Oh, now that is just to cool. I really wished I lived in New York.
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