Warren Kremer's Giant Footprints

In his many years at Harvey Comics, Warren Kremer drew every character the company offered, defined the house style, and did virtually every cover (including this one). Among a rich catalog of work, however, Stumbo the Giant - the gargantuan, gentle protector of Tinytown - is his masterpiece.

I can stare at Kremer’s pages of Stumbo until time begins to slip; the way birds fly around his knees, or the way he fans himself with an uprooted tree – giant hands alongside tiny, perfect people half a finger long. With Warren Kremer, every panel is like looking at the facets of a jewel.

Fellow Harvey artist, Ernie Colón, had this to say about Kremer in a Comic Book Artist interview from June 2002: “The guy was like an architect. His drawings were so careful, so beautiful . . . The best example that I can give is when he was given the assignment for Stumbo the Giant; he just worked wonders with that strip. Such an astonishing achievement. Astonishing because here again you have an eight-panel page with a giant so big he’s using a mountain to relax on. . . . He (Kremer) is a complete master of comic book art."

Stumbo the Giant in "Giant Removal Project"

This Stumbo the Giant story goes out by request to my friend, Chuck Wells, at The Comic Book Catacombs. Mr. Wells is clearly a man of discriminating tastes, as he declares himself a Warren Kremer fan. Kremer was one of the finest artists ever to work in comics, and I believe Stumbo to be some of his best work. The subject really gave him a chance to demonstrate his powerful control of perspective and backgrounds. Dig that awesome splash panel! That's the way the big boys do it.

This is from Hot Stuff - The Little Devil No. 86, October, 1968. All scans are from my own comic. Just click the image for the big picture.

Let's throw in an extra Hot Stuff story from the same issue. The art here, I believe, is by Ernie Colon (No Harvey indexes exist for verification). Colon was a major Harvey artist who specialized in Richie Rich stories and loved the dark, demonic shadowing around the eyes for moments of anger. It is definitely in the Kremer style, but the landscapes seem to lack the Kremer texture. If someone disagrees with my Colon diagnosis, I'm all ears!

It’s a fun story. I love the way the kids treat Hot Stuff just like another kid, despite his horns, pitchfork, and burning red skin which nearly par-boils them in the pool. I love the Harvey universe!

Boys, Girls, Men, Women. I remember staring at this ad as a kid and finding it more confusing than algebra. Paragraph after paragraph of text! How could you make $50.00, $100.00, $200.00 and more in your spare time by knowing 10 people? Was this some sort of con? A Ponzi scheme? The constant reminders that IT COSTS NOTHING TO TRY scared the beans out of me. These were clearly some very, very tricky adults. Wallace Brown, Incoroporated, indeed.