Two Standard Stories, But Great Art
What allowed DC and Marvel to emerge as a virtual duopoly from the 1970s forward was a near complete lock on all the best artists in the field. Take a comic like Jonah Hex #47. There are two stories in this issue, one the Jonah Hex cover feature, the second, a backup story featuring Scalphunter. Neither of these two stories is particularly notable, they are average (Scalphunter) or better than average (Jonah Hex), but not particularly memorable in the canon of either character. But the artwork in both stories - particularly the Jonah Hex one - is extremely good. It incorporates, depth, use of shadow and creative compositions, thanks to Dick Ayers, penciller of both stories, and the inkers of each, DeZuniga and Villamonte, respectively. DeZuniga was part of a wave of fantastic Filipino artists that DC scouted in the early 1970s. Such talent helped push a comic like this one from being "pretty good" to "can't wait to see what will happen next". Comic art really hasn't improved much since the Bronze Age, and the middle issues of Jonah Hex exemplify DC as it was approaching its artistic high water mark of the 1980s.