Joe Kubert’s “Dagon”?

What’s the story behind this Joe Kubert art? Read and learn a possible explanation!

Psst. Wanna hear a cool story?

‘Kay, back in ’92, I was in big time need of artists to collaborate with on some adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft stories Caliber Comics was going to publish. I’d just collaborated with artist Octavio Cariello (Black Lightning, Queen of the Damned) on four HPL adaptations for Malibu Graphics, but Octavio was too busy to continue the series with me at Caliber. Octavio did recommend his brother, Sergio, however, for one of the adaptations.

Could this page from Sergio Cariello and my adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “Dagon” have influenced the sketch by Kubert? What do you think?

At the time, Sergio was a student at The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, who gave him permission to apply this Caliber job as part of his school work. Sergio and I adapted “Dagon,” one of HPL’s earliest stories. “Dagon” is also one of HPL’s shortest stories, so we expanded it, pitting Dagon against the crew of a boomer (nuclear submarine). As Sergio was drawing the adaptation, he took advantage of being a student and showed his pages to Mr. Kubert for the master’s advice and opinion.

Must be nice? Right? Having access to the guy who created Tor, helped revitalize The Flash and Hawkman, drew all those awesome Sgt. Rock and Enemy Ace adventures, and co-created one of my favorite superhero series, Ragman.

Anyway … let’s jump ahead to after Sergio graduated and was an instructor at The Kubert School.

I decided one day to check out what the school’s website had to say about Sergio, and, on the home page, found a montage of Kubert sketches, one of which was a cyclopean humanoid sea-monster clutching a submarine.

“Hey! You don’t suppose … ?”

I had to ask Sergio, who assumes Kubert’s subconscious might have recalled Sergio’s “Dagon” pages, which in turn might have inspired that sketch.

Now, if you’re not a comic book geek, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah? So what?” Which is understandable, but makes me wonder why you’ve bothered to read up to this point.

However, if you are a comic book geek, then you know what Kubert means to the comics medium, and to even be partly or peripherally responsible for inspiring a sketch he drew is FAR FREAKIN’ AWESOME!