Welcome to ACES WEEKLY Volume 32, Week Four!

During my early learning years, some key inspirations of mine were the Warren comic magazines of the mid-60's. They were buzzing places of creativity within described limits - a bit like Aces Weekly is.  The Warren limits rarely restricted style choices in the way that they necessarily restrained content, so experimentation happened there.  Alex Toth introduced multi-shaped panels on his pages, and Neal Adams saw it and said, hey, let me have a crack at that.  Johnny Craig did a whole story in pencil only.  No-one else was doing that kind of thing then. One of the more radical uses of strip storytelling in those books came from the pen of Jerry Grandenetti, and it was one that gave me pause to question my belief that at almost all times artistic freedom should be given to comic artists.  At that time, it just stretched things too far for me.  But that work grew on me - and all these years later, those images he produced for an adaptation of Poe's, Berenice, are still with me. This world of comics, that is mainly still produced in a very controlled production manner, needs the kind of freedom that was given in those Warren books - and more besides.  As I said above, Aces Weekly is a bit like those books.  We have the intensely disciplined work of the amazing Fraim brothers, on The Flight, and a little bit of Jerry Grandenetti to see in the liberated work of Daniele Afferni!  I can't say that we're intentionally keeping the flame burning of those early Warren magazines, but I'm happy if we're doing it by accident... : )

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