Photo by Daniel Barer
Warren Kremer: Harvey Comics Cover Genius (53:51, 123mb)
On the panel was Jim Thompson, Alonso Nuñez, Jerry Beck, Maryanne Kremer-Ames, Suzanne Kremer Petrozzino, Peter Kremer and Allen Ames. They went over some covers, what Kremer does that other artists and Harvey allowed him to do that other publisher did not, particularly with playing with the logo and complex cover changes, how Hot Stuff was created by Kremer from an initial more traditional devil character sketch by Steve Muffatti, Stumbo the Giant, spoke about Mrs. Kremer and her lettering work for Harvey Comics, Peter Kremer did colouring for Harvey and was trained by Warren, spoke about Ernie Colon and how fast he was, they spoke about Warren’s having a stroke and having to switch his drawing hand – which he could do as he was left handed and ambidextrous, how Warren loved drawing comics and it wasn’t just a job for him, the changes in the covers in the 70s with the added word balloons and how that frustrated Warren, said Alfred Harvey had a stroke and how that changed him. Prior to that Alfred was a great boss to work for and gave Warren bonuses, but after the stroke his personality changed and he started taking credit for creating Richie Rich. Alfred Harvey did create Little Dot. They talked about how Warren would ignore all the rules about accurate colours for things but did so to make the cover & the gag work better, how editor Harvey editor Sid Jacobson praised Kremer and what he did to others, how Sid and Warren would get together and would brainstorm on just covers as they viewed them as a separate thing from the insides, said Kremer was particular about spacing within his work as he didn’t like things to be too cluttered, how well thought out the covers are and how you don’t recognize it until you examine a lot of them to see the patterns, they spoke about how well he did black covers which nobody else did as well, how they coloured over the comics code to hide it while the publishers kept it white and visible, how there is characterization within the cover gags, the monster theme covers in 1967 and surprisingly dark they got for kids books.
Special thanks to Jim Thompson for recording this for me.
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