Lee's Comic Rack: Grace Gay Betts and Bill Molno

Grace Gay Betts (1883-1978) was a highly gifted painter, muralist, and children's book illustrator--some of her superb work from Fleetfoot--The Cave Boy (William L. Nida, 1929) is shown below. (All captioned illustrations are hers.) I found Fleetfoot last week at a candy-store antique mall (!) for the highway-robbery price of one dollar, and Betts' comic book-style illustrations were the reason for my purchase. (I'd have gladly paid more, but a buck is fine with me.) They reminded me of 1950s and 1960s Charlton art--especially Bill Molno's.

And so I've interspersed scans from Fleetfoot with Charlton panels (and/or portions of panels) by Molno, with the Molno images doctored to match the color scheme and dark, shadowy style of Betts' wonderful work. I see much similarity between the two artists--in particular, the angularity, the busy detail, and the sense of motion--and the cool contrast between compressed and elongated shapes. To be sure, Molno's renderings are noticeably less realistic (or at least noticeably less conventional). but both illustrators are on the same page in their skillful merging of foreground and background, giving equal weight to both, with accurate perspective a secondary consideration. Again, Molno's approach is less literal, featuring shapes that depart further from real life than Betts', yet the two artists' images beautifully compliment one another.

That his drawings compare on any level to the masterful work of Betts is the best case for Molno's talent I could possibly make. I'd love to think that Molno, born in 1923, encountered some of Betts' work at home or in the classroom and found his muse. I can only imagine what kind of impression Betts' inspired and dazzling work would have made on a young Lee: