Golden Age of comics
Shores initially worked as an inker, embellishing some of the earliest pencil work of industry legend Jack Kirby, including the covers of the Simon & Kirby-created Captain America Comics #5, 7 and 9 in 1941.[2][3] After the Simon & Kirby team moved on following Captain America Comics #10 (Jan. 1942), Shores and Al Avison became regular pencilers of the hit title, with one generally inking over the other, both working with writer Stan Lee.[2] At that point, Shores received a promotion, he recalled in 1973: "When Simon and Kirby left in 1942 Stan did all the writing and was given the position of editorial director, while I was the art director, although I got called 'associate editor' in the books that were put out around then."[1] Shores took over as regular penciller on Captain America Comics, inked by Vince Alascia, while Avison did his World War II military service.[1] "For the time that I worked on staff for Marvel from 1940 to 1948, I worked in close association with Vince Alascia, who did practically all the inking on my pencils," Shores said in 1970. "He was used to my style and worked very well with it."
Shores also inked two of Kirby's Golden Age Vision stories, in Marvel Mystery Comics #21-22 (July-Aug. 1941); and the cover and splash page of Young Allies #1 (July 1941). Shores said, "Jack Kirby influenced my sense of dramatics. Jack Kirby influences everybody in comics, though: Before I got really started in the field it was Alex Raymond and Hal Foster, they were my gods back then, but Kirby was the most immediate influence."[1] Shores penciled stories of the Vision and the Patriot in Marvel Mystery Comics, Major Liberty in U.S.A. Comics, and the Captain America portions of the All-Winners Squad stories in the (unhyphenated) All Winners Comics #19 and 21 (Fall and Winter 1946; there was no issue #20).[4]
Shores was inducted into the U.S. Army in early 1944, seeing action as part of General Patton's Third Army in France and Germany, and receiving a Purple Heart for being wounded in France on 16 December 1944.[1] After four months at a convalescent hospital in Warwick, England, he was reassigned to an engineering outfit and became part of the occupation forces in Germany.[1] He recalled in 1970 that "after Al [Avison] left, I started pencilling [Captain America stories] from then on until the Army decided it could use my services to help win World War II. It seemed they needed a lot of men for the infantry at the time. I was called up, and so my artistic eye was used to qualify me as an expert marksman in an infantry regiment. Curiously it was the same regiment that Jack Kirby was in. We never saw each other in combat, and only recently did we find that we were in the same outfit!"
Comic-book artist Gene Colan recalled in 1999, "My first real professional start in the comic-book business began in the summer of 1946, and that is when I met Syd Shores. He was the head man in the Art Department of Marvel Comics. ... I was flying by the seat of my pants ... hoping that everything would turn out. I didn't want the seams to show but that was all part of the learning process and Syd helped me wade through. ... His realistic style, for some time, became an obsession with me. His characters looked like the real thing. Whatever he had them doing was as real to life as you could get.[5]"
