2012.12.28 mail-commissioned Green Arrow
Mike Royer career has covered many aspects of comic art. Starting out his career as an assistant to Russ Manning, on comic book titles Magnus, Robet Fighter and Tarzan, as well as inking the Tarzan and Star Wars newspaper strips. Continuing on various comics including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, Speed Buggy, Space Ghost, Creepy, eerie and Vampirella. Providing layout work for the Spiderman animated series...Worked for 14 years on staff with the Walt Disney Company creative department designing and directing the Dick Tracy and 3D Rocketeer read-along books. He created the new-look Winnie the Pooh in 1993, and a 43 minute video "How to Draw Pooh" tutorial...
The DC comics Green Arrow is credited as having been drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by Mike Royer. Royer provides a different story about the image used on the stamp....
Portion of an interview from the Silver Age Sage, by way of Cartoon Philately and Mike Rhodes (thanks):
Bryan D. Stroud: Did you get credit for the postage stamp that features your Green Arrow?
Mike Royer: No, no. What really gripes me about that…I tried to set the record straight in the Jack Kirby Collector, but I don't think it ever resonated with anybody. Everybody talks about the "Green Arrow stamp inked by Mike Royer." DC sent me a scan of a photo-copy of a western Jack Kirby 1950s character named Bullseye. He was in fringe, leathers, a cowboy hat with a feather, pulling back on a bow and inked by somebody who inked his own personality over Jack's pencils, rather than inking it the way Jack would have inked it. DC asked, "Can you take this pose and make it an early 1970's Jack Kirby/Mike Royer Green Arrow?" Which is exactly what I did. It's his pose, his stance, his dynamics, but I made it Green Arrow with his entirely different costume, all the folds, etc., and everything else the way I believe Jack would have penciled it in the '70's, so I don't think it's fair to just say that it's "Green Arrow inked by Mike Royer." It was printed on a comic book (used on the cover of The Jack Kirby Omnibus, volume one starring Green Arrow); a special one-shot reprint of Kirby's '50's Green Arrow and then a few years later it winds up being on a postage stamp.
© 2012 by B.D.S.
Jack Kirby's Bullseye compared to the Kirby-Royer Green Arrow stamp.
In 1954 Joe Simon and Jack Kirby started their own company called Mainline. One of the titles from Mainline was Bullseye, Western Scout. Bullseye is born during an indian attack, escaping with his Grandfather, Deadeye Dick, who along with an Indian scout, Long Drink raise the boy to become a master marksman. The first issue was drawn by Jack Kirby and inked by John Prentice...
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