Number 1551: The “undiscovered” master

This Rocketman story is from Chesler’s Scoop Comics #2 (1942), credited by the Grand Comics Database to Arthur Pinajian. Pinajian, an old-time comic book artist working with the Funnies, Inc, studio, also drew features such as Madam Fatal and Invisible Justice for Quality Comics.

I’ve been waiting to show work by Pinajian, because he figured in a big art story a couple of years ago. A decorated war veteran, he lived with his sister after the war. He painted landscapes and stored them in their house. He asked that they be disposed of in the county landfill after his death. A relative refused to let the paintings be hauled away, and had them examined by an art historian, Peter Hastings Falk. Falk pronounced Pinajian a brilliant abstract landscape artist, heretofore “undiscovered.” The story made some national news programs on television and in newspapers. At the time the story broke Pinajian, who died in 1999, had been dead for over a decade. As soon as I saw his name I knew that as a comics fan I felt I knew more of Art Pinajian’s early work than all of the art community who pronounced him an unknown, eccentric genius.

Although I knew some of his backstory from his days in comics, the story of his landscapes is one of those tales of some poor artist slaving away in obscurity, starving in a garret. Never recognized in life, suddenly revered in death.* You can read a story about it here.

*There is a similar story of another artist, photographer Vivian Maier. Hundreds of thousands of her photographic negatives were discovered in a storage locker after her death, and rescued by a man who recognized her genius. Her work was completely unknown in life, based on her own preference. She never sought fame, but toiled at her photography as a hobby while working as a nanny. A documentary has been made, and a website set up in her name has her story.

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Some of Pinajian’s early comic book work, featuring Madam Fatal. I showed these stories in 2010. Click on the thumbnail:

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Number 1159: That rockin' Rocketman

Rocketman was a Farrell comic from 1952, which looks to have been drawn several years earlier. The Grand Comics Database claims it is an Iger Shop job.

"Rocketman" has been inserted in the balloons and captions where another shorter name was whited out. Although claiming it as a shop job, GCD also guesses it's drawn by Chas. ("Cat-Man") Quinlan.

Who knows? It's an anomaly, a one-shot, and no more issues were produced. It's also a lesson in how quick styles in comics changed. Rocketman looks to be from the mid-forties, but by 1952 the art style seems archaic. As late as 1953 Fiction House, just before shutting down, was reprinting stories from the forties and the same thing applied. But then you go back to 1940 and there was a whole other style then, too. Comic books have been a living, growing thing, and have gone through many different periods and styles. With practice an art-spotter can just about guess the year in which a story was drawn.

OK, I'm getting away from the story, which is totally silly science fiction hokum. It's set in the year 25,000 (!), and includes a girl getting away from her captor by slamming his nose in a steamer trunk lid. I kid you not.

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