WTF?

Linked to from the "Oddball Comics" message board... some most unappealing Carl Barks oil paintings (San Jacinto" looks nice, though.)

And then there's the downright disturbing one.

The oil-painting "Belles of the Klondike.

Why??

Harvey Pekar "Hypothetical Quandry"

I believe this to be one of the more hot-linked images from my brother's blog. He, and I, originally saw it in the anthology "The New Comics Anthology", a trade paperback from the early 1990s that seems to have been an attempt at mainstream respectability garnering. The story was placed somewhere amongst a Will Eisner short and Mary Fleener pieces. (The autobiographical section was heavy on female cartoonists, with the idea that "this is where female cartoonists have gravitated and found a place for themselves.")

Jeff had a low-rent version / parody/ homage in "Struat" once. Where Harvey Pekar rattled off his worries about missing a book-deal opportunity, Jeff rattled off about missing a simple job opportunity. Final panel: "Ah. Cheap Bread."

At this point, when I think Harvey Pekar, I think, sort of subliminably, "Fresh Bread."

Comics on the Wall

I hadn't walked into the Meetro at PSU in a long, long time. (Haven't had too many reasons to be on PSU campus.) But, I saw the drawings of, I presume an art student, on the wall -- a 5 page comic.

The premise of the comic is one that I drew once at the age of 12 or 13. A man jumps off a tall building to committ suicide. He lands safely, brushes himself off, and walks on ahead.

I don't know that this is a terribly original premise or not. Dark? Hopeful? Who knows?

Note the friend from Spain. "He thinks of suicide a lot." How very goth of him, or something.

George Herriman

I wonder. Plowing through the various comic strips George Herriman did, some stick out as pretty doggone great in their own right (go to the Smithsonian Book of Comic Strips and see for yourself) and others seem a little -- contrived?

What's that one about a lack of ozone?

I guess that's his early works, cutting his teeth and all that.

Chuck Colson -- Born Again

A biography of Chuck Colson.

If you go the message board, you'll also find some interesting Nixon apologizing. Though I've seen enough of the message board to know his politics (it'll creek through, and the topic of politics is unavaoidable with a comic about Chuck Colson.)

(To paraphrase a review of a recent autobiography of James Brown, the so-called "Godfather Of Soul", "This comic must be good - it has lots of exclamation points!")

Scott has found himself onto an Al Hartley-ism: exclamation marks liberally used.

PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON: My dream is that your sons - and all young men like them - will never be sent to war!!! I believe we can reach an honorable peace! And if we make it, Chuck - it'll be worth all the FLAK we're getting!!!

What a man, that Richard Nixon. Seeking an honorable... peace...

Is it the same guy? Let's hope not.

Actually, I have something more to add about something. I'll have to do so later.

In the meantime this is a strangely fascinating bit. But, Jughead is largely the domain of Samm Schwartz (final panel an example)... a cartoonist I can actually pretty well dissect in a strangely formalistic way one of these blog-entries.

But back to Decarlo.

I have a couple covers that I have to wonder about.

This one. Someone posted this at the Comics Journal message board with a sort of befuddlement. What is this supposed to mean? Is this another variation of Archie accidentally dating both of them at the same time -- in this instance marrying them? What is Archie's expression of horror about? Did Archie knock up Betty, Veronica, or both of them? (Are Betty and Veronica getting married to each other? Who? What? Why? When? (This is, mind you, a paraphrase of the TCJ message boarder.)

And this one. Okay. It's a sort of cheesecakey cover you could have expected from about a quarter of Decarlo's covers, and the covers of whoever's drawing them now. But... as with this double-entendre... isn't this one a little too (creepily) suggestive? (I ask the same question with this one. But I guess "I Dream of Jeanie" was, in the end, a midrif-baring slave-girl.) (The cover was brought to my attention in a "Oddball Comics" message board thread started from that column entry, regarding "What Archie Comics Got Away With." (This story, incidentally, appears to be in a sort of heavy (print once every five years) rotation in their line of digests.) And... Somewhere in the land of blogs I find a panel from what seems to be a sort of cult sensation, the story where Archie, Betty, and Veronica visit (or rather look on over from a hill) a nudist beach. I just spent about 15 minutes looking for it in vein... if I find it I'll post a link to it.

Sheesh.

A review of Evan Dorkin's Bill and Ted's #11.

Bernie Krigstein

Here's a curious ebay entry. "18 Bernie Krigstein stories clipped from original 1950's comics." It then lists some Atlas stories, and somewhat surprisingly some EC stories. (Surprising for two reasons: (1) EC's comics are generally more redeemable than Atlas's were, and (2) These are from the collection of long time EC fan/collector Rich Hauser and are in VG cond.

I clipped out some comics, separating wheat from chaffe, last summer. But those comics were worthless. I imagine the ebayer here would get more money if the comics were complete. (Then again, you want to see the Krigstin stories separated.)

Incidentally, this collection of Krigstein comics is... kind of disappointing. Mostly due to the recognition that, yes, his best, and second-best, EC work is far superior than the other companies he worked for. (To a large extent I simply don't want to read, say, that story that unfolds with giant ants looking at humanity.) And the post-EC Atlas comics are... thin.

Why does such a thing exist?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3979&item=6538856149&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

I've never seen that as the back of the character. Is this the real "Milk", or an imposter?

For Any Love and Rockets Fans Out there

http://www.fantagraphics.com/LNRcontest.html

PG-RATED VERSION:
Write a paragraph about who you would like to hang out with from L&R and what you would like to go out and do (dumpster diving with Hopey? Clubbing with Luba?)

R-RATED VERSION: Write a paragraph about which character from the L&R cast you would like to get nekkid with and why they're so hot!

You see the prizes there.

I'll probably take this off this blog and put it on struat.com sometime later

I read Daniel Pinkwater's newest book yesterday, The Artsy Smartsy Club. I give it a weary thumbs down, save a few pages toward the end, and a smattering of things here and there.

The problem is that Daniel Pinkwater is taking his position of "single-handedly educating two generations" (paraphrasing something found probably somewhere on the web, I don't know where) a bit... too... much.

I look toward the reviews posted at Amazon, and notice this disagreeable sentence:

Pinkwater has a message to deliver here on the joys of both making and appreciating art, but his conglomeration of eccentric characters and goofy plot twists keep the story from becoming overly didactic.

No they don't.

Okay. That being said... I could try to imagine myself as the "Age 8 to 12" group the book was meant for -- unaware of what happened to Van Gogh's ear or except in an intuitive sense the definition of "didactic", and... I think it would still leave me... cold.

Go ahead and read it... it's redeemable on various levels, and it'd be a quick read. But don't buy it. Buy this one instead.

An Election Summary

I posted this in November at my political blog, and sometime later on the TCJ message board. I don't know if it's terribly funny, but nonetheless... I post it here...

From Dennis Eichhorn's "Real Stuff", we have this story that opesn with a large panel showing Muhammad Ali raping Dennis. Frightened expression on Eichhorn's face. He wakes up thinking, "What a weird dream." Shoot to his office-job, where his coworkers are discussing their weird dreams. "You think that's weird, last night I dreamt I was butt-fucked by Muhammad Ali!" The co-workers fall into awkward slence, and then say "Well, back to work." Dennis is left mulling over the meaning of his dream. "Maybe I'm a latent homosexual?"

The next day we see Dennis Eichhorn at a party, talking with a black woman he doesn't know. She snaps at him in so many words, "You white men have had it easy for so long... but you're about to have your day. Trust me!" and leaves laughing.

Eichhorn is puzzled for a couple of panels, and then the punchline: "Oh! Now I get it!"

The second story comes from an early 1960s Archie comic. Mr. Weatherbee and Mrs. Grundy are walking around, watching various students give inspiring Kennedy-esque speeches before crowds of students, running for student president. Weatherbee can't hide how impressed he is: "They seem to have matured overnight! My children -- they've arrived!" We see Jughead lurking in the background, lackadasically crunching on an apple. He's running too. Weatherbee shows nothing but scorn to Jughead, who's not doing anything to win the campaign. We then see Weatherbee talking with candidate Archie on how impressed he is on everyone's new-found maturity, and Archie jumps right into a stump speech "Yes. It is high-time my generation grabs the world from your generation's faltering hands. I look forward to generations yet unborn who will look back and comment 'THERE Was a Man!" Weatherbee smiles, leaving saying "I wish they could all be President!" Before noting Jughead again "Except him..." and asks Jughead, "Are you still running for president?" Jughead says something like "Golly gee, yes, sir." "How do you expect to win if you don't even give any speeches?" To wit, Jughead responds "I was just about to do that", and runs into the intercom room and announces over the loudspeaker "Free Coffee and Donuts at the coffee shop! My Treat!" Next panel, crowds of students are running over Weatherbee to the coffee shop, and we flash to the next day with Weatherbee talking to Archie. "I can't believe you all lost to Jughead." Archie: "He was just too clever an opponent, and he was the only one with campaign funds." Weatherbee: "He practically bought the vote. How'd he get all that money?" "From us..." And the punchline, "We paid him to write those campaign speeches."

So, in summary, what happened in this election was a hybrid of those two stories. As it always seems to be, actually.

Do you think it's him?

I kind of hope not.

Lewis Trondheim and Manu Larcenet's Astronauts of the Future

Pretty good.

Reminds me of Pinkwater (though the protaganists meeting is more realistic than anything in Pinkwater's books). Reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes.

Reminds me of a book I would have wanted to read at the age of 10 or 11.

Reminds me of a book I want to give to a ten or eleven year old... though that'd be the height of arrogance to assume that they are like me at the age of 10 or 11. (A tendency that annoyed me a young 'un.)

Ah well.

Jack Kirby's Devil Dinosaur

Something that doesn't make sense to me about the 1978 Jack Kirby comic Devil Dinosaur.

In the 1950s, editor Julius Schwartz at DC Comics discovered that a gorilla or a dinosaur on the cover of a comic would send sales up the roof. For the sake of sanity, Schwartz would eventually have to institute a "one gorilla per month" rule -- you can't just glut the market with gorillas!

Devil Dinosaur featured on all nine of their covers a dinosaur and, if not a gorilla an early apelike primate. Yet it only lasted nine issues. What happened there?

In other areas of inquiry:

Now is a good time for me to lay out one of life's great mysteries. Why is it that I can find copies of the Jack Kirby late 70s comic "Devil Dinosaur" in the quarter (or 3 for a buck, or whatever) bin, excellent condition save the purple marking-- in some stores-- and for $8 or $5 in other stores?

Bill Hicks: That's an easy one. I don't know about Devil Dinosaur, but I could come up with similar examples where you may find the same comic in BOTH of those price ranges at my shop.

Say you have one filed in the bins at four or five bucks and one or two copies filed away in your warehouse* for future replacement. Additional copies that come your way in bulk purchases can then be tossed in the quarter bin.

I once thought that I would never sell a three dollar comic if I had them in the quarter bins too. I've learned that this is not the case. Many people never look in the quarter bins. Some never look anywhere else.

I've sold two copies of the exact same comic -- one at a quarter and one at two to four bucks -- on the same day, not just once but many times.

*For most of us small timers, this means spare bedroom or garage.

Jesse Hamm: Depends on their clientele. Stores frequented only by readers of ultra-mainstream, it-came-out-yesterday comics will often throw their indy titles and Silver Age stuff into the bargain bins. I've picked up Silver Age Toth and Cardy, Kirby stuff like KAMANDI #1, and all kinds of recent indy stuff for pennies.

One store I've visited is only patronized by 14-year-old gamers. Ironic, considering the extensive back issue selection. Every time I ask for something from the '80s -- "You're the first person to ask for this in 15 years!"

Winsor McCay's "A Pilgrim's Progress"

I believe there to be a flaw in the collections of Winsor McCay's early works.

The comic strip "A Pilgrim's Progress" oughta be in chronological order. (And by that, I mean the strips that the book is reprinting.)

The basic reason has to do with how one particular strip marks a startling change in the comic strip. It's where the protaganist is given an umbrella. At this point, the strip changes from being hopelessly bleak to just plain bleak... and I mean that quite literally.

The strip is about a man who carries around a valaise with the words "Dull Care", and his inability to get rid of the valaise. But the umbrella? Well... he's sitting there contemplating drinking a full bottle of rat poison... a delivery person gives him a prize, he opens it, it's an umbrella, he unfurls it, the umbrella says "HOPE", and he decides he wants to live.

Thus... he's shielded with "hope".

Actually, what I want to know is... where in the pages of the newspaper that published this did they publish it? The humour is... darker... darker... save, of course, for that slight glimpse of hope that umbrella gives him...

On Peanuts

My post here:

The "Generational thing" is correct. If you're eight years old in the year 1988 and looking at the comics page, you'll snatch onto Calvin and Hobbes and view Peanuts as just... well, at least it's better than "The Wizard of Id", which is better than other strips. Actually, the placement of Peanuts would be after Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County, and the Far Side. Age yourself a few more years to a stage where you can follow politics a bit better, and Doonsebury. A bit more sentimental than I was, For Better or for Worse. You'll have to be exposed to Peanuts of an earlier stripe to "get" it, and move it beyond the Snoopy blimp and greeting cards, and the non-stop calvacade of ever-lamer Peanuts specials on television. (Here I'd throw you to Jonathan Frazen's article about Peanuts. Google it and find it.)
Peanuts would be a non-stop parade of Snoopy's relatives and that whole "Ha ha. Charlie Brown said 'Good Grief'. I didn't see that coming." Not to say you can't toss out a single comic strip from the decade of the eighties as being above par, and cubicles and refrigerators are always able to attract this "aha" strip or that one.

There's not a precise point where Charles Schulz redeemed himself in the nineties. The effect here is that of a hall of fame pitcher, late in his career and having a number of years ago fallen from the "ace" pitching slot, who picks up a new pitching technique because he can't rely on 100 mile per hour fast balls anymore -- and thus being an all-star pitcher again... if that makes any sense.

Josie #40

I am a fan of pre-"Josie and the Pussycat" Josie comics. Pencilled by Dan Decarlo. Written by Frank Doyle. Lighter and fluffier than air, the plots tend to... sort of... go nowhere in particular...

So I bought a copy of "Josie" issue #40, circa February 1969. (The Pussycats would be introduced two issues later. #41 kind of seems to prepare for this, and the new inker kind of wrecks the whole feeling of the comic... and longer sideburns kind of make me welch.) I have a few things to point out about the comic... and all within the first four pages.

There's a situation, with various variations, that the writer and artist have a fairly odd tendency to go toward. And this one strikes me as a bit... nonsensical.

Josie, Melody, and Clyde Didit are in the hall-ways, at their lockers, right before classes. Clyde Didit, a character in the late 1960s who had a few hippy attributes (and an afro), decides he wants to walk around the school barefoot. Melody is inspired by this... enough so that she decides she wants to walk around barefoot and she wants to change into a flowing flowery hippy dress...

And here's the odd situation that Doyle and Decarlo are drawn to: she starts undressing right there in the hall... some guys run up to view the spectacle of Melody undressing... Josie is agasp, and shields her from the view of all the guys, saying "Change if you must, but I'll guard the wolves." To which, all the guys grumble "Spoilsport!" (And, I assume, disperse.)

Some observations: #1: Josie is not big enough to block the view of Melody changing her clothes from the guys... in the real world, they'd still be watching her. Unless she can get pushed into her locker. #2: A better, and more sensical (though it would ruin this plot point which Doyle and Decarlo seem to be drawn to) situation would be to ... have Melody dress in the bathroom or gym locker room?

Next we have Melody and Clyde Diddit walking around barefoot, with the principal watching from out of view. Melody asks "What if the principal stops us?" Clyde Diddit says "Aha!", and then we get a panel with him shouting out "Bill of Rights! Strike! Constitution! Sit-In!" The principal gasps and thinks "Well, he sure knows all the phrases." -- before giving the janitor a break so that large pebbles would remain in the hallway.

This brings to mind the Dan Decarlo Comics Journal interview, and the fading away of the character of Pepper, described by Decarlo as "the original protest girl". The powers that be at Archie Comics objected, saying (from Decarlo's perspective) "We don't let kids like that in Riverdale!" (Didn't know that they lived in Riverdale... which, at that time, they didn't.)

Not that you'd expect the company to be anything but... shall we say... small c conservative in its politics (aside from Al Hartley's Evangelical outlook)... though, I don't think the Supreme Court decision that allowed kids to pretty much wear whatever they want in public schools (in the case before the courts, it was a student wearing a black arm-band to protest the Vietnam War) frowned upon disallowing kids from wandering the halls in bare feet...