Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine

Number 259


Happy birthday, Abe


Tomorrow is Abe Lincoln's birthday. We'll celebrate it by showing his death! Illustration Station has Jack Davis illustrations from the children's book, Meet Abraham Lincoln, so I thought I'd post some pages from the 100-page Dell Giant comic from 1958, Abraham Lincoln Life Story.



The one-shot biographical giant comic was probably an experiment that flopped. I never saw another of its type from Dell.

According to the Grand Comics Database it's written by Dell workhorse Gaylord DuBois, and drawn by Italian artist Alberto Giolitti. Giolitti used a lot of photo reference. It shows with his stagey panels, but I'm sure they were going for a narrative that didn't look like a comic book. That's obvious from the use of captions rather than speech balloons.

You all remember Giolitti from Turok, Son Of Stone and Star Trek. He died in 1993.

This is an excerpt of 8 pages from the end of the book, with panels that impressed me 50 years ago: Lincoln's premonition of his own death, and the attention to detail of the assassination.