Category: Cartooning Classics

Posted on

The Complete Crumb Comics volume 13: the Season of the Snoid


By Robert Crumb and others (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-296-9

Like crisps, chocolate and bad puns; once you get the taste of Robert Crumb on your palate, it’s almost impossible to shift the craving for more. Here’s another re-released edition from the superb and multi-award winning Complete Crumb Comics series that will tickle the bad-taste-buds of discerning comics cognoscenti and is bound to make a whole new generation of fans among the cool kids who will take my usual disclaimer in the full spirit which it is intended.

This book contains really clever and outrageously dirty pictures, rude words, non-condemnatory drug references and allusions, godless questioning of authority and brilliantly illustrated. highly moving personal accounts and opinions. If you – or those legally responsible for you – have a problem with that, please skip this review and don’t buy the book. That will certainly teach us…

Robert Crumb is a unique creative force in the world of comics and cartooning with as many detractors as devotees. His uncompromising, excoriating, neurotic introspections, his pictorial rants and invectives, unceasingly picked away at societal scabs and peeked behind forbidden curtains for his own benefit, but he has always happily shared his unwholesome discoveries with anybody who takes the time to look… In 1987 Fantagraphics Books began the nigh-impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s vast output and those mesmeric volumes are now being reissued.

The son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943, into a functionally broken family. He was one of five kids who all found different ways to escape their parents’ highly volatile problems and comic strips were paramount among them.

As had his older brother Charles, Robert immersed himself in the comics and cartoons of the day; not just reading but creating his own. Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks and John Stanley were particularly influential, but also strip artists such as E.C. Segar, Gene Ahern, Rube Goldberg, Bud (Mutt and Jeff) Fisher, Billy (Barney Google), De Beck, George (Sad Sack) Baker and Sidney (The Gumps) Smith as well as illustrators like C.E. Brock and the wildly imaginative and surreal 1930’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts.

Defensive and introspective, young Robert pursued art and self-control through religion with equal desperation. His early spiritual repression and flagrant, hubristic celibacy warred with his body’s growing needs…

Escaping his stormy early life, he married young and began working in-house at the American Greeting Cards Company. He discovered like minds in the growing counterculture movement and discovered LSD. In 1967 Crumb relocated to California and became an early star of Underground Commix. As such he found plenty of willing hippie chicks to assuage his fevered mind and hormonal body whilst reinventing the very nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and a host of others.

He worked on in what was essentially a creative utopia throughout the early 1970’s but the alternative lifestyle of the Underground was already dying. Soon it would disappear: dissipated, disillusioned, dropped back “in” or demised. A few truly dedicated publishers and artists stayed the course, publishing on a far more businesslike footing as Crumb carried on creating, splitting his time between personal material and commercial art projects whilst incessantly probing deeper into his turbulent inner world.

After an introduction from his brother Maxon Crumb, this re-issued 13th tome opens with ‘Treasure Island Days’ an autobiographical junket of the young Crumb boys from Lemme Outa Here in 1978, produced in collaboration with brother Charles, after which come the nigh-legendary pieces produced for CoEvolution Quarterly #23-26 in 1979-1980, still powerfully impressive after all these years.

The gently biting ‘A Short History of America’, the subversively salacious ‘Bearzie Wearzies’ as well as the stunning black, white and yellow covers to #24, the wildly manic ‘Bop It Out’ (with a canny cameo from the amazing “No-Shit Sherlock”) and the gloriously dry and acerbic fable ‘Adventures of Onionhead’, is followed by the first of a clutch of fabulous American Splendor collaborations with uniquely Ordinary Hero Harvey Pekar in ‘Excerpt’ (from Cleveland Magazine 1980). ‘Me and My Sweetie’ (Portfolio of Underground Art) and the superbly expressionistic cover to Tele Times (vol. 2 #21) end the initial black and white section of the book.

The middle section is full colour and comprises covers and album art; beginning with Bizarre Sex, #8, American Splendor #24 and Snoid Comics, before presenting the rarer (for comics readers at least) material: Blind Boy Fuller: Truckin’ My Blues Away, Banana in Your Fruit Basket, Cheap Suit Serenaders (Crumb’s own Swing nostalgia band), Cheap Suit Party Record, Memphis Jug Band, Yazoo’s History of Jazz, Wild Family Orchestra, a selection of record labels designed by Crumb and Eddie Lange: Jazz Guitar Virtuoso. In addition to these magical concoctions there are also four superb pages of Heroes of the Blues Trading Cards and an Early Jazz Greats poster ad.

The comics section resumes with Crumb’s crudest, most abrasive, confrontational and possibly most cathartic creation: an arrogant, abusive, sex-crazed little homunculus called Mr. Snoid.

Unpleasant and usually unwelcome, Snoid was utterly self-obsessed; a rampaging animate artistic impulse which nevertheless managed to sway or bully those around him into complying with whatever gratuitous flight of the Id he might contemplate or require instant gratification for…

Always his own harshest critic and ever-searching for artistic perfection, it was still hard for even his biggest fans to look at Crumb-the-creator in the same way after the Snoid hit town.

The character debuted in 1980 in – what else – Snoid Comics , grabbing the spotlight from panel one of ‘This Cartooning is Tricky Business’ before declaring his unpleasant manifesto and attitude on everything from art to women in ‘The Snoid Goes Bohemian.’ The most unsavoury origin in comics followed in ‘How Snoids are Born’ after which ‘One Foot to Heaven’ finds the little stinker looking for a little action and ‘Mr. Snoid Among His Fellow Humans’ gives a final insight into his obscenely unique philosophy of life.

As liberating, challenging and guiltily, wrongly funny as Snoid was, his creation – or perhaps escape – certainly reinvigorated Crumb creative juices, both as auteur and artistic collaborator.

‘Freddy Visits for the Weekend’ and the two strips that comprise ‘Vox Populi’ (drawn for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor #5) resonate with new vehemence and understated tension, whilst the illustrations for Michael Bloomfield’s ‘Me and Big Joe’ from High Times #64 sparkle with affection and warmth.

‘Hospital Fun’ #1-2, scripted by Pekar, first appeared in Village Voice #25, after which Crumb’s next breakthrough series began in Zap #10, 1982, as the introspective, retrospective autobiographical ‘My Troubles With Women’ shockingly and hilariously opened more doors into Crumb’s troubled soul for us all to peer uncomfortably at…

This incautiously appealing edition ends with a selection of covers, ads and illustrations by Crumb from the ecologically proactive (we would now call it “Green”) Californian magazine Winds of Change (volume 2, #1-9 from 1980-1981) and includes articles by wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb and five of their collaborative strips ‘Everyday Funnies’ before this 13th chronicle closes with a typically effective (unpublished) book cover for ‘King of the Freaks’.

None of these collections is free of potentially offensive material and Crumb’s work is riddled with his often hard-to-embrace obsessive self-exploratory concerns. As always his work gouges out the creator’s most intimate and disturbing idiosyncrasies about women, sex, racial stereotypes, unchecked social change and a million other daily beefs and niggles. But there’s no disparagement intended or harm meant – except perhaps to himself – and his staggering honesty, incisive inquisitiveness and neurotic, intimate over-sharing is always leavened with a devastatingly ironic wit and rendered in imagery too powerful to ignore. Be warned but please don’t misunderstand what you’re looking at…

Crumb’s sublime cartooning has brought cachet and serious critical thought to our once ghettoised art form and, love or loathe him, no one can diminish his contribution to the broad world of graphic narrative. These superb books are the perfect introduction to any (definitively over 18) newcomers unaware of grown up comics… so if you are intrigued snatch up this book and all the others as soon as conceivably possible…

All material from American Splendor © 1980, 1998 Harvey Pekar & R.Crumb. All other material © 1976, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1998, 2011 R. Crumb. All rights reserved.

Posted on

The Complete Crumb Comics volume 15: Featuring Mode O’Day and Her Pals


By Robert Crumb and others (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-413-0

Robert Crumb is a unique creative force in the world of comics and cartooning with as many foes as fans, but his idiosyncratic, unflinching, uncompromising, controversial and always bewitching work is impossible to ignore.

Therefore if intemperate language, putative blasphemy, artfully grotesque cartoon nudity, fetishism and comedic fornication are liable to upset you, stop reading this review and don’t buy the book. Stop reading now, check out an old, archived review instead or just come back tomorrow…

In 1987 Fantagraphics began the almost impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s output.

Son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943 to a large and troubled family. After a tempestuous early life, he began working as an in-house art-drone at the American Greeting Cards Company and trading card giant Topps Publishing, married early and briefly before “dropping out” and joining the Counterculture movement, where he changed the nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and a host of others.

Within a decade the explosively reactive underground movement was gone; dissipated, disillusioned, dropped back “in” or dead, with only a few notable independent and truly dedicated publishers staying the course. Always his own harshest critic and ever-searching for artistic perfection, in 1981 Crumb convinced Ron Turner of Last Gasp to publish a new anthology of underground/alternative/cutting edge commix in a new anthology.

Weirdo – with Crumb as editor and major contributor until 1983 when he handed over the editor’s role to his “discovery” Peter Bagge (who provides a fascinating introduction and overview for the tome under review here) – was, for many of us, the last bastion of a real gone world.

With the onus of deadlines and responsibility of magazine production removed Crumb resumed his quixotic search for artistic satisfaction…

Recently re-released, this 15th softcover volume (originally published in 2001) collects Crumb’s comic strips from Weirdo #9-15, assorted gags, private commissions, freelance illustration work, album covers and other pictorial ephemera plus strips from American Splendor and Zap Comix, covering the hedonistic, greed-soaked early 1980s which were such a painful anathema to someone of the Artist’s socialist/liberal leanings.

After Bagge’s aforementioned text recollections the graphic magic begins with the Crumb contributions in Weirdo #9 (Winter 1983-1984), a stunning and meticulous frontispiece, ‘Arline ‘n’ Bob and that Thing in the Back Bedroom’ – an autobiographical account of the “joys” of parenthood crafted in collaboration with second wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb plus the first snide and sardonic appearance of Reagan-era, appalling and avaricious anti-icon ‘Mode O’Day and Her Pals’ in a barbed observation of fame-hungry wannabes and the pathetic, empty gullibility of the nouveau-riche.

More of Mode (dabbling with the chic of being a benefactor and coffee-magnate of the so-troubled Nicaraguans) and nothing else appeared in Weirdo #10 in Summer 1984 whilst #11 featured a stark and salutary updating of an old favourite in ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and a magical selection of single panel cartoons declaring ‘Love’s Like That!’

Mode stalked and blagged her way into the good graces of an ugly plutocrat with her usual lack of success or happiness in #12, but Weirdo #13 (Summer 1985) was given over to Crumb’s stunning ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’ wherein the case histories of a number of “deviants” were brought to incredible grimy, sordid, evocative life as Crumb sampled the truly bizarre nature of humanity described by giant of psychology Richard Freiherr von Krafft–Ebing.

Issue #14 featured the far lighter and whimsically bombastic anti-pop (or is it simply anti-maximum decibels?) inquiry ‘Where Has It Gone, All the Beautiful Music of Our Grandparents?’ and the marvellously introspective yet light ‘Life Certainly Is Existential!’, whilst #15 opened with the surreal domesticity of ‘Comics from Other Planets Dept’, slipped comfortably into two pages of splendid ‘Gags’ and closed with a captivating ad parody.

The covers of Weirdo #9-15 (including a heartfelt ‘Parting Shot‘ at Ayn Rand), lead off the expansive central, full-colour section, which continues with record and book covers for The Klezmorim’s Streets of Gold, The Otis Brothers, Charles Bukowski’s Bring Me Your Love and There’s No Business Like Show Business, novel covers Texas Crude and The Monkey Wrench Gang; a Louis Bluie poster plus incidental illustrations and sticker art.

Back in black and white there’s a page of miscellaneous ads and illustrations from 1983, after which ‘Hypothetical Quandry’ (written by Harvey Pekar for his magnificent American Splendor on-going graphic autobiography: issue #9, if you’re keeping count) appears, showcasing Crumb’s far bolder and more liberated big-black-brush art style.

Crumb’s long creative association with author Charles Bukowski produced phenomenal results, and here, after a portrait of the writer and promotional art, follows a sequence of illustrations from Bring Me Your Love and There’s No Business Like Show Business, as well as Ken Weaver’s Texas Crude. More miscellaneous illustration art for Pepper & Stern Rare Books, The Magazine, Co-Education Quarterly and seven pages of vignettes and cameos from The Monkey Wrench Gang round out this section.

‘Constipated Chaos Consortium’ is a mind-bending jam-collaboration with fellow underground luminaries Spain Rodriguez, Bosirus Eerie, Victor Moscoso, S. Clay Wilson and Robert Williams and the first of three contributions to Zap #11 from 1985: the other two being ‘Jesus People USA’ (a hypothetical interview between a fundamentalist Christian reporter and ‘R. Crumb, Underground Pornographer and All-Around Lost Soul’) and the powerful and engaging biography of lost Blues legend (Charley) ‘Patton’.

This sublime – and key – transitional tome in the development of one of the art form’s greatest living proponents concludes with another section of miscellaneous illustrations including collaborations with wife and daughter Aline and Sophie and a poster with Dan O’Neill, Victor Moscoso and Bob Crabb.

As always this varied and impressive selection of Crumb’s craft is riddled with his often hard-to-embrace themes and emblematic declamatory and potentially offensive visual vocabulary: as always the work touches on the creator’s most intimate and disturbing idiosyncrasies regarding sex and women, both in the unsettling Abstract and the painful, side-splitting, lustful, painful and loving Concrete and, as always, the reader’s response can only be Love or Loathe…

Crumb’s subtle mastery of his art-form and obsessive need to reveal his most hidden depths and every perceived defect – in himself and the world around him – has always been a unquenchable wellspring of challenging comedy and riotous rumination. This superb series charting the perplexing pen-and-ink pilgrim’s progress is the perfect vehicle to introduce any (definitively over 18) newcomers of your acquaintance to the world of grown up comics. And if you need a way in yourself, snatch up this book and the other sixteen as soon as conceivably possible…

All material © 2011 R. Crumb and its respective owners or co-owners. All other material © 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 2001, 2011 R. Crumb. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Willie and Joe: Back Home


By Bill Mauldin (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-351-4

Throughout World War II William Henry “Bill” Mauldin fought “Over There” with the United States Infantry whilst producing cartoons about the fighting men and for the fighting men. He told as much of the real nature of the war as his censors and common sense would allow and became an unwilling international celebrity as much because of his unshakable honesty as his incredible artistic talent.

He was in controvertibly one of the guys and American soldiers and civilians loved him for it. During his time in the service he produced cartoons for the folks back home and intimately effective, authentic and quirkily morale-boosting material for military publications 45th Division News, Yank and Stars and Stripes.

They mostly featured two slovenly “dogfaces” – a term he made his own and introduced to the world at large – giving a trenchant and acerbically enduring view of the war from the point of view of the poor sods ducking bullets in muddy foxholes and surviving shelling in the ruins of Europe.

Willie and Joe, to the dismay of much of the Army Establishment, gave an honest overview of America’s ground war. In 1945 a collection of his drawings, accompanied by a powerfully understated and heartfelt documentary essay, was published by Henry Holt and Co. Up Front was a sensation, telling the American public about the experiences of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands in a way no historian would or did. A biography, Back Home, followed in 1947.

Willie even made the cover of Time magazine in 1945, when 23 year old Mauldin won his first Pulitzer Prize. Like so many other returning soldiers, however, Mauldin’s hard-won Better Tomorrow didn’t live up to its promise…

Mauldin’s anti-war, anti-Idiots-in-Charge, anti-bigot views never changed but found simply new targets at home. However, during the earliest days of the Cold War and despite being a bone fide War Hero, Mauldin’s politically strident cartoons fell ever more out of step with the New America: a place where political expediency allowed racists to resume repressing ethnic sections of the nation now that their blood and sweat were no longer needed to defeat the Axis; a nation where women were expected to surrender their war-time freedoms and independences and become again servants and baby machines, happy to cook suppers in return for the new labour-saving consumer goods America now needed to sell, sell, sell: a nation far too eager to forget the actual war and genuine soldiers in favour of massaged messages and conformist, inspirational paper or celluloid heroes.

The New America certainly didn’t want anybody rocking their shiny new boat…

When Sergeant Bill Mauldin mustered out in 1945 he was notionally on top of the world: celebrity hero, youngest Pulitzer Prize winner in history, with a lucrative 3-year syndicated newspaper contract and Hollywood clamouring for him.

Unfortunately, the artist was as dedicated to his ideals as to his art. As soon as he became aware of the iniquities of the post-war world he went after them, using his newspaper cartoon as a soapbox, Mauldin attacked in bitterly brilliant barrages the maltreatment and sidelining of actual soldiers (during the country’s entire involvement in WWII less than 10% of military men actually fought, or even left their home country) whilst rear-echelon brass seemed to increasingly reap the benefits and unearned glory of the peace.

The ordinary enlisted men and veterans were culture-shocked, traumatised, out of place and resented by the public who blamed them disproportionately for the shortages and “suffering” they had endured. Black and Japanese Americans were reduced to second class citizens and America’s erstwhile allies demonised, whilst everywhere politicians and demagogues were rewriting recent history for their own advantage… His fondest wish had been to kill the iconic dogfaces off on the final day of World War II, but Stars and Stripes vetoed it, and the demobbed survivors moved into a world that had changed incomprehensibly in their absence…

Always ready for a fight, Mauldin’s peacetime Willie and Joe became a noose around the syndicate’s neck as the cartoonist’s acerbic, polemical and decidedly non-anodyne observations perpetually highlighted the iniquities and stupidities inflicted on returning servicemen, attacked self-aggrandising politicians, advocated such socialist horrors as free speech, civil rights and unionisation, affordable public housing and universal medical care for everybody – no matter what their colour, gender or religion. He even declared war on the Ku Klux Klan, American Legion and red-baiting House UnAmerican Activities Commission: nobody was too big. When the Soviet Union and United Nations betrayed their own ideological principles Mauldin went after them too…

An honest broker he had tried to quit early, but the syndicate held him to his contract. Trapped in a situation that increasingly stifled his creative urges and muzzled his liberal/libertarian sensibilities, he refused to toe the line and his cartoons were incessantly altered and reworked. During six years of War service his cartoon had been censored three times; now the white paint and scissors were employed by rewrite boys almost daily…

The movie Up front – which Mauldin wanted to reflect the true experience of the war – languished unmade for six years until a sappy flimsy comedy bearing the name was released in 1951. The intended screenplay by Mauldin, John Lardner and Ring Lardner Jr., disappeared, deemed utterly unsuitable and unfilmable until much of its tone reappeared in Lardner Jr.’s 1970 screenplay M*A*S*H…

As the syndicate bled clients, mostly in segregationist states, and contemplated terminating his contract, Mauldin began simultaneously working for the New York Herald-Tribune and with a new liberal outlet changed his tactics in the Willie and Joe feature: becoming more subtle and less bombastic. He still picked up the best of enemies however, adding J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to the roster of declaimers and decriers…

When his contract finally ended in 1948, neither side wanted to renew. Mauldin left the business to become a journalist, freelance writer and illustrator. He was a film actor for awhile (appearing in Red Badge of Courage with Audie Murphy among other movies), a war correspondent during the Korean Conflict and an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1956.

He only finally returned to newspaper cartooning in 1958 in a far different world and worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before moving to the Chicago Sun-Times, winning another Pulitzer and a Reuben Award for his political cartoons

He retired in 1991 after a long, glittering and properly- appreciated career. He only drew Willie and Joe four times in that entire period (for an article on the “New Army” in Life magazine; for the funerals of “Soldier’s Generals” Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall and to eulogize Milton Caniff).

This magnificent hardback companion volume to Willie and Joe: the WWII Years covers the period of work from July 31st 1945 to 31st December 1948, supplemented by a brilliant biographical introduction from Todd DePastino: a superb black and white compendium collecting the bittersweet return of the forgotten heroes as they faced confusion, exclusion, contention and disillusion: but always with the edgy, stoic humour under fire that was Mauldin’s stock in trade.

Moreover it features some of the most powerful assaults on the appalling edifice of post-war America ever seen. The artist’s castigating observations on how a society treats returning soldiers are as pertinent now as they ever were; the pressures on families and children even more so; whilst his exposure of armchair strategists, politicians and businessmen seeking to exploit wars for gain and how quickly allies can become enemies are tragically more relevant than any rational person could wish.

Alternating trenchant cynicism, moral outrage, gallows humour, sanguine observation and uncomprehending betrayal, this cartoon chronicle is an astounding personal testament that shows the powers of cartoons to convey emotion if not sway opinion.

With Willie & Joe: the WWII Years, we have here a magnificent example of passion and creativity used as a weapon of social change and a work of art every citizen should be exposed to, because these are aspects of humanity that we seem unable to outgrow…

This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. Cartoons © 2011 the Estate of William Mauldin. All right reserved.

Posted on

Willie and Joe: the WWII Years


By Bill Mauldin, edited by Todd DePastino (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-439-9

During World War II a talented, ambitious young man named William Henry “Bill” Mauldin (29/10/1921 – 22/01/2003) fought “Over There” with the 45th Division of the United States Infantry as well as many other fine units of the army. He learned to hate war and love his brother soldiers – and the American fighting man loved him back. During his time in the service he produced civilian cartoons for the Oklahoma City Times and The Oklahoman, and intimately effective and authentic material for his Company periodical, 45th Division News, as well as Yank and Stars and Stripes; the US Armed Forces newspapers. Soon after, his cartoons were being reproduced in newspapers across Europe and America.

They mostly featured two slovenly “dogfaces” – a term he popularised – giving a trenchant and laconic view of the war from the muddied tip of the sharpest of Sharp Ends. Willie and Joe, much to the dismay of the brassbound, spit-and-polish military martinets and diplomatic doctrinaires, became the unshakable, everlasting image of the American soldier: continually revealed in all ways and manners the upper echelons of the army would prefer remained top secret.

Willie and Joe even became the subject of two films (Up Front -1951 and Back at the Front – 1952) whilst Willie made the cover of Time magazine in 1945, when 23 year old Mauldin won his first Pulitzer Prize.

In 1945 a collection of his drawings, accompanied by a powerfully understated and heartfelt documentary essay, was published by Henry Holt and Co. Up Front was a sensation, telling the American public about the experiences of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands in a way no historian would or did. A biography, Back Home, followed in 1947.

Mauldin’s anti-war, anti-Idiots-in-Charge-of-War views became increasingly unpopular during the Cold War and despite being a War Hero Mauldin’s increasingly political cartoon work fell out of favour (those efforts are the subject of forthcoming companion volume Willie & Joe: Back Home).  Mauldin left the business to become a journalist and illustrator.

He was a film actor for awhile (appearing in Red Badge of Courage with Audie Murphy among other movies), a war correspondent during the Korean War and, after an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1956, finally returned to newspaper cartooning in 1958.

He retired in 1991 after a long, glittering and award-studded career. He only drew Willie and Joe four times in that entire period (for an article on the “New Army” in Life magazine; for the funerals of “Soldier’s Generals” Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall; and to eulogize Milton Caniff). His fondest wish had been to kill the iconic dogfaces off on the final day of World War II, but Stars and Stripes vetoed it.

The Willie and Joe cartoons and characters are some of the most enduring and honest symbols of all military history. Every Veterans Day in Peanuts from1969 to 1999, fellow veteran Charles Schulz had Snoopy turn up at Mauldin’s house to drink Root Beers and tell war stories with an old pal. When you read Sgt. Rock you’re looking at Mauldin’s legacy, and Archie Goodwin drafted the shabby professionals for a couple of classy guest-shots in Star-Spangled War Stories (see Showcase Presents the Unknown Soldier).

This immense mostly monochrome (with some some very rare colour and sepia items) softcover compendium – 704 pages, 229 x 178mm – collects all his known wartime cartoons originally released in two hardback editions in 2008, featuring not only the iconic dog-face duo, but also the drawings, illustrations, sketches and gags that led, over 8 years of army life, to their creation.

Mauldin produced most of his work for Regimental and Company newspapers whilst under fire: perfectly capturing the life and context of fellow soldiers – also under battlefield conditions – and gave a glimpse of that unique and bizarre existence to their families and civilians at large, despite constant military censorship and even face-to-face confrontations with Generals such as George Patton, who was perennially incensed at the image the cartoonist presented to the world. Fortunately Supreme Commander Eisenhower, if not a fan, knew the strategic and morale value of Mauldin’s Star Spangled Banter and Up Front feature with the indomitable everymen Willie and Joe…

This far removed in time, many of the pieces here might need historical context for modern readers and such is comprehensively provided by the notes section to the rear of the volume. Also included are unpublished pieces and pages, early cartoon works, and rare notes, drafts and sketches.

Most strips, composites and full-page gags, however are sublimely transparent in their message and meaning: lampooning entrenched stupidity and cupidity, administrative inefficiency and sheer military bloody-mindedness whilst highlighting the miraculous perseverance and unquenchable determination of the ordinary guys to get the job done while defending their only inalienable right – to gripe and goof off whenever the brass weren’t around… Moreover Mauldin never patronises the civilians or demonises the enemy: the German and Italians are usually in the same dismal boat are “Our Boys” and only the war and its brass-bound conductors are worthy of his inky ire…

Alternating trenchant cynicism, moral outrage, gallows humour, absurdist observation, shared miseries, staggering sentimentality and the total shock and awe of still being alive every morning, this cartoon catalogue of the Last Just War is a truly breathtaking collection that no fan, art-lover, historian or humanitarian can afford to miss.

…And it will make you cry and laugh out loud too.

With a fascinating biography of Mauldin that is as compelling as his art, the mordant wit and desperate camaraderie of his work is more important than ever in an age where increasingly cold and distant brass-hats and politicians send ever-more innocent lambs to further foreign fields for slaughter. With this volume and the aforementioned Willie & Joe: Back Home, we should finally be able to restore the man and his works to the forefront of graphic consciousness, because tragically, his message is never going to be out of date…

© 2011 the Estate of William Mauldin. All right reserved.

Posted on

Drought Chic – a Dry Analysis of the Water Shortage


By Shary Flenniken (Shary Flenniken)
No ISBN

I’m feeling nostalgic, thirsty and in need of a laugh all at once so here’s an intriguing self-published gem from the mid-1970s whose theme and subject matter seems to be coming back into vogue as the days seep by…

Do you remember that sweet pretty girl you admired and day-dreamed about from afar? All glowing soft focus summer afternoons and sherbet refreshers, scents of new-mown hay, tinkly bells and soaring strings? And after a lifetime you found the courage to talk to her and she swore like a trooper, cackled like a loon, pulled your hair and was all loud and boisterous and not at all serious and girly and your heart broke just a little?

Shary Flenniken’s sense of humour is like that. With her affable, underplayed, deceptively simple line drawing style (so devastating effective in the glorious Girl and her Talking Dog strip Trots and Bonnie) everything looks clean and sugary and chocolate-coated, but then you realise there’s a devastatingly sharp mind and a tungsten-tipped razor-edged scalpel sense of humour at play as you’re hit with a really spiky and heavy giant pink boxing glove…

Flenniken is a scripter/artist/editor/illustrator/screenwriter of enormous talent who contributed to and edited the funniest years of National Lampoon, has published her own books – such as the slim gem under review today – and has illustrated some of the funniest books even written by other people, with titles such as When a Man Loves a Walnut, Blood-Lust Chickens & Renegade Sheep and Nice Guys Sleep Alone.

She started out as an underground cartoonist in 1971 with the fabulously notorious Air Pirates Collective (the other bold cartoonists taking on Disney whilst preserving the classic heritage of past cartoon masters and waving the flag for free speech and the Right to Parody and Satirise were Dan O’Neill, Bobby London, Gary Hallgren and Ted Richards).

Her own drawing style is often likened to pioneering strip artists Clare Briggs (When a Feller Needs a Friend!!, Danny Dreamer, The Days of Real Sport, Mr. and Mrs, Real Folks at Home, Someone’s Always Taking the Joy Out of Life) and the laconically mordant master Harold Tucker Webster (Our Boyhood Ambitions, How to Torture Your Wife, Life’s Darkest Moment, How to Torture Your Husband and the legendary Caspar Milquetoast/The Timid Soul) – especially in the long-running(1971-1990) and aforementioned sardonic comedy masterpiece Trots and Bonnie which I simply must get around to…

In recent years Flenniken has edited Seattle Laughs: Comic Stories about Seattle and worked for DC’s Paradox Press and Mad, freelanced in Premiere, Details and The American Lawyer whilst winning critical acclaim for her adaptations of the works of Mark Twain, O. Henry and others.

Drought Chic was self-published in 1977, and this tiny tidal wave of crafty cartoons and satisfyingly salty asides resulted from close observation and experience of the global heat-wave (can you remember that Long Hot Summer of Punk in the UK?) and the perennial water paucity of America’s West Coast; extrapolating on the sage advice offered by those in power as the country all-too briefly saw the (fashionably faddy) sense in dabbling with water discipline.

Suggestions to the trend-setters of society riffed-on here include “share baths and showers”, “don’t flush toilets”, “import icebergs”, “replant your lawn with cactus” and “drink something else”… directives I’m fairly sure we’ll all be considering again in the months and years ahead.

Of course here in Britain we’ve already taken the most effective step to conserve water consumption by selling off the water utility, privatising a natural resource and pricing it out of the reach of ordinary folk…

Still, if you’re saving a little time and money as a new member of the Great Unwashed at least you can spend your grubby free hours seeking out this wry, dry and slyly sophisticated soupcon of delightful disinformation.
© 1977 Shary Flenniken. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volume 2 1936-1937


By Roy Crane (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-391-0

The comics industry evolved from newspaper strips and these circulation boosting pictorial features were, until relatively recently, utterly ubiquitous, hugely popular with the public and thus regarded as invaluable by publishers who used them as an irresistible sales weapon to guarantee consumer loyalty, increase sales and  ensure profits. Many a scribbler became a millionaire thanks to their ability to draw pictures and spin a yarn…

It’s virtually impossible for us to today to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comic sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. “The Funnies” were the most common recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality.

From the very start humour was paramount; that’s why we call them “Funnies” or “Comics”, after all. From these gag and stunt beginnings, blending silent movie slapstick, outrageous antics, fabulous fantasy and vaudeville shows, came a thoroughly unique entertainment hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Debuting on April 21st 1924 Washington Tubbs II was a comedic gag-a-day strip not dissimilar from confirmed family favourite Harold Teen (by Crane’s friend and contemporary Carl Ed).

Tubbs was a diminutive, ambitious young shop clerk when the strip began, but gradually he moved into mock-heroics, then through harm-free action into full-blown, light-hearted, rip-roaring adventure series with the introduction of pioneering he-man, moody swashbuckling prototype Captain Easy in the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929.

As the tales became increasingly more exotic and thrill-drenched the globe-trotting little dynamo clearly needed a sidekick who could believably handle the combat side of things, and thus in the middle of a European war Tubbs liberated a mysterious fellow American from a jail cell and history was made. Before long the mismatched pair were inseparable comrades; travelling the world, hunting treasure, fighting thugs and rescuing a bevy of startlingly comely maidens in distress…

The two-fisted, bluff, completely capable and utterly dependable, down-on-his-luck “Southern Gentleman” was something not seen before in comics, a raw, square-jawed hunk played straight rather than the buffoon or music hall foil of such classic serials as Hairsbreadth Harry or Desperate Desmond. Moreover Crane’s seductively simple blend of cartoon exuberance and compelling page-design was a far more accessible and powerful medium for action story-telling than the static illustrative style favoured by artists like Hal Foster (just starting to make waves on the new Tarzan Sunday page).

Tubbs and Easy were as exotic and thrilling as the Ape Man but rattled along like the tempestuous Popeye, full of vim, vigour and vinegar, as attested to by a close look at the early work of the would-be cartoonists who followed the strip with avid intensity: Floyd Gottfredson, Milton Caniff, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and especially young Joe Shuster…

After a couple of abortive attempts starring his little hero, Crane bowed to the inevitable and created a full colour Sunday page dedicated to his increasingly popular hero-for-hire. Captain Easy debuted on 30th July 1933, in madcap, two-fisted exploits (originally) set before his fateful meeting with Tubbs.

Following a foreword from historian, archival publisher and critic Rick Norwood, ‘Stealing Color From Black and White’ a fascinating extended introduction by award-winning cartoonist Paul Pope and ‘Three Strip Monte’ a brief history of Crane’s career gambles by legendary strip historian Bill Blackbeard, this second volume (of four) really begins with ‘Gold of the Frozen North’ as the dour, sour soldier of fortune reaches the chilly snow-swept mining boom-town of Bugaboo.

Exhausted after his part in the war between Nikkateena and Woopsydasia (as seen in Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volume 1) all Easy wanted was a meal and a bed, but his innate chivalry defending a bar-girl’s honour soon had him on the run from Nikky Eskota, the savage gang-boss who ran the town. He then compound the error by helping beautiful Gizzy escape the brute’s amorous attentions and escorting down the frozen river to trade her fathers’ diamonds.

Of course the wicked thug dispatched an army of heavies to stop them…

This spectacular icy wilderness adventure ran from 8th December 1935 to 19th April 1936, after which ‘The Hook-Nosed Bandit’ (4th April -8th August 1936) found the footloose hero heading to the trouble-soaked nation of Hitaxia where his penchant for trouble soon branded him a wanted criminal fugitive and landed him in the midst of a civil war. As usual a pretty girl was the immediate cause of his many woes and the method of his eventual escape… that and the advent of a bombastic new companion – unconventional millionaire inventor Mr. Belfry.

With Easy and Belfry’s daughter languishing in a Hitaxian jail the sagacious entrepreneur acted to end the crisis in unique manner with a handy shipment of pigs…

When the Belfry’s returned to America, Easy accompanied them only to become embroiled in a whirlwind cops ‘n’ robbers thriller as mobsters and businessmen alike tried to obtain by every means fair and foul ‘The Diamond Formula’ (16th August – 13th December 1936): the inventor’s new process for creating gems from coal or sugar…

After this wild and woolly New York set romp, Crane opted to take the theme into wholly different territory as Easy takes a mild-mannered old daydreamer from Belfry’s Gentleman’s Club on the Screwball comedy of ‘Dinwiddy’s Adventure’ – a fast-paced rollercoaster romp of intrigue, suspense and multiple practical jokes, with a twist and turn on every gloriously rendered page first published between 13th December 1936 and March 14th 1937…

The Club also provided the maguffin for ‘Lost at Sea’ (March 21st – May 9th 1937) as hen-pecked and harassed Benjamin Barton hired the laconic Southern Gentleman to engineer his escape from his ghastly social climbing wife and wastrel children. Barton even left them all his money: the rattled old goof simply wanted peace and quiet and perhaps a little fishing. Despite all Easy’s best efforts he didn’t get it…

Clearly on a roll with the emphasis on comedy Crane then introduced one of his wackiest characters in ‘The King of Kleptomania’ (16th May – November 14th 1937), as an audacious, freeloading, lazy, good-for-nothing hobo actually turned out to be Kron Prinz Hugo Maximillian von Hooten Tooten; the audacious, freeloading, lazy, good-for-nothing spendthrift heir to a European nation who was paid by the Dictator of Kleptomania to stay away and not seek his rightful throne.

Saving the bum’s life in America only caused the lovable leech to attach himself to Easy, but after going through his bi-annual stipend of $25, 000 in mere days “Hoot” decided to welsh on his deal with the despot and take back his country. Against his better judgement and to his lasting regret, Captain Easy goes along for the ride and is soon knee deep in ineptitude, iniquity and revolution…

With the war over Easy is stranded in Ruritanean Europe and stumbles into an espionage plot culminating in a welcome reunion and ‘The Firing Squad’ (21st November 1937 – 15th May 1938). Framed and jailed again Easy is to be shot so it’s luckily that the captain of the aforementioned executioners is his long-lost pal Wash Tubbs!

Risking life and diminutive limb to save his old pal, Wash also rescues sultry spitfire Ruby Dallas who promptly entangles them in her desperate tale of woe. Ruby was unfortunate enough to have witnessed a murder in America and has been on the run ever since. The killer was a prominent millionaire with too much to lose so he’s been hunting her ever since, but once the trio escape murderous cutthroats, slavers and assassins they soon settle his hash…

When he began the Sunday page Crane’s creativity went into overdrive: an entire page and vibrant colours to play with clearly stirred his imagination and the results were wild visual concoctions which achieved a timeless immediacy and made each instalment a unified piece of sequential art. The effect of the pages can be seen in so many comic and strips since – even in the works of such near-contemporaries as Hergé and giants in waiting like Charles Schulz.

These pages were a clearly as much of joy to create as to read. In fact, the cited reason for Crane surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA Syndicate’s abrupt demand that all its strips be henceforward produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate them being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated. You can actually see the day that happened in this volume.

Whilst the basic drawing of Crane and Turner is practically indistinguishable the moment when the layout and composition were shackled stands out like a painful sore thumb. Crane just walked away from his playground, concentrating on the daily feature, until in 1943, contract expired he left the NEA to create the aviation adventure strip Buz Sawyer.

In this selection Roy Crane’s irrepressible humour comes perfectly into focus and this enchanting serial abounds with breezy light-hearted banter, hilarious situations and outright farce – a sure-fire formula modern cinema directors still plunder to this day.

Easy is Indiana Jones, Flynn (the Librarian) Carsen and Jack (Romancing the Stone) Cotton all at once and clearly set the benchmark for all of them.

This superb hardback and colossal second collection is the perfect means of discovering or rediscovering Crane’s rip-snorting, pulse-pounding, exotically racy adventure trailblazer. The huge pages in this volume (almost 14 ½ by 10½ inches or 21x14cm for the younger, metric crowd) provide the perfect stage to absorb and enjoy the classic tale-telling of a master raconteur.

This is storytelling of impeccable quality: unforgettable, spectacular and utterly irresistible. These tales rank alongside the best of Hergé, Tezuka, Toth and Kirby and unarguably fed the imaginations of them all as he still does for today’s comics creators. Now that you have the chance to experience the strips that inspired the giants of our art form, how can you possibly resist?

Captain Easy strips © 2011 United Feature Syndicate, Inc. This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books, all other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights

Posted on

The World of Pont

New, Revised Review

By Graham Laidler, with an introduction by Richard Ingrams (Nadder Books 1983)
ISBN: 0-90654-038-0

Graham Laidler was born in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne-on July 4th 1908, son of a prominent painter and decorator. Educated at Newcastle Preparatory school and Glenalmond in Perthshire, he was 13 when his father died and the family relocated to Buckinghamshire. Always captivated by cartooning he channelled his artistic bent into more traditionally profitable avenues to support his widowed mother and trained as an architect at the London School of Architecture from 1926-1931.

Always dogged by ill-health Laidler moonlighted as a cartoonist and in 1930 began a long-running domestic comedy strip entitled The Twiffs for the Women’s Pictorial. In 1932 he was diagnosed with a tubercular kidney and advised to live in healthier climates than ours. In August of that year he sold his first cartoon to that prestigious bulwark of British publishing Punch.

He was so popular that editor E.V. Knox took the unprecedented step of putting him under exclusive contract. With financial security established and his unique arrangement with Punch in place Laidler travelled the world and drew funny pictures, mostly of The English both at home and abroad generating 400 magnificent, immortal cartoons until his death in 1940, aged 32.

A charmingly handsome and charismatically attractive young man, Laidler visited Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, America and many other places. He won his nickname and nom-de-plume in Rome during an incident with two “Vestal Virgin” travelling companions after which he was forevermore “Pontifex Maximus”…

His greatest gift was a surgical gift for observation of social and cultural minutiae: gleaning picaresque detail and broad attitude which translated through his gently humorous graphic commentaries into simultaneously incisive and gentle, baroque and subtle picture plays encapsulating the funniest of moments on every subject pertaining to the great Enigma of Being English in Public and Getting Away with It…

His work was collected into a number of books during his lifetime and since, and his influence as humorist and draughtsman can still be felt.

Although he excelled in the strip cartoon format Pont’s true fully mastery was in telling a complete story with a single perfect drawing. His cartoons exemplified the British to the world at large and to ourselves.

During World War II the Nazis, with typical sinister efficiency, used his drawings as the basis of their anti-British propaganda when they invaded Holland, further confirming to the world the belief that Germans Have No Sense of Humour.

As Pont, for eight too-brief years, Graham Laidler became an icon and global herald of English life and you would be doing yourself an immense favour in tracking down his work. If you like Ealing comedies, Alistair Sim and Margaret Rutherford, St Trinian’s and the Molesworth books or the works of Thelwell or Ronald Searle, you won’t regret the search.

Unbelievably, despite his woefully small output there still doesn’t seem to be a definitive collection of his work. One again I implore any potential publisher reading this to take the hint, but until then, for the rest of us there’s just the thrill of the hunt and the promised bounty in seeking out The British Character, The British at Home, The British Carry On, Most of us are Absurd, Pont and this magical compendium The World of Pont, which comprises the perfect primer by sampling the best of his drawn divinations from his themed Punch series’ ‘The British Observed’, ‘The British at War’, ‘Popular Misconceptions’, ‘The British Woman’ and last but certainly not least, ‘The British Man’.

If you love good drawing and sharp observational wit you’ll thank me. If you just want a damn good laugh, you’ll reward yourself with the assorted works of Pont.
© 1983, 2007 the estate of Graham Laidler.

Posted on

Axa volumes 5 and 6


By Donne Avenell & Enrique Badia Romero (Ken Pierce Books)
Vol. 5 ISBN: 0-912277-21-1   Vol. 6 no ISBN: 0-912277-22-X

Although the “Swinging Sixties” is thought of as the moment when we all lost our prudish innocence, the real era of sexual liberation was the early 1970s. In that period of swiftly shifting social and cultural morés and rapidly evolving attitudes to adult behaviour British newspapers radically altered much of their traditional style and content in response to the seemingly inexorable wave of female social emancipation and reputed sexual equality.

All the same, this still allowed newspaper editors plenty of leeway to squeeze in oodles of undraped women, who finally escaped from the perfectly rendered comics strips and onto the regular pages (usually the third one), the centre-spreads, pop pages and fashion features…

However the only place where truly affirmative female role-models appeared to be taken seriously were the aforementioned cartoon sections, but even there the likes of Modesty Blaise, Danielle, Scarth, Amanda and all the other capable ladies who walked all over the oppressor gender, both humorously and in straight adventure scenarios, lost clothes and shed undies repeatedly, continuously, frivolously and in the manner they always had…

Nobody complained (no one important or who was ever taken seriously): it was just tradition and the idiom of the medium… and besides, most artists have always liked to draw bare-naked ladies as much as blokes liked to see them and it was even educational for the kiddies – who could buy any newspaper in any shop without interference even if they couldn’t get into cinemas to view Flashdance, Trading Places or Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone without an accompanying adult…

Sales kept soaring…

Take-charge chicks were practically commonplace when the Star Wars phenomenon reinvigorated public interest in science fiction and the old standby of scantily-clad, curvy amazons and post-apocalyptic wonderlands regained their sales-appeal. Thus The Sun hired Enrique Badia Romero and Donne Avenell to produce just such an attention-getter for their already well-stacked cartoon section.

Romero had begun his career in Spain in 1953, producing everything from westerns, sports, war stories and trading cards, often in conjunction with his brother Jorge Badía Romero. He even formed his own publishing house. “Enric” began working for the higher-paying UK market in the 1960s on strips such as ‘Cathy and Wendy’, ‘Isometrics’ and ‘Cassius Clay’ before successfully assuming the drawing duties on the high-profile Modesty Blaise strip in 1970 (see Modesty Blaise: The Hell Makers and Modesty Blaise: The Green Eyed Monster), only leaving when this enticing new prospect appeared.

In 1986 political and editorial intrigue saw Axa cancelled in the middle of a story and Romero returned to the bodacious Blaise until creator/writer Peter O’Donnell retired in 2001. Since then he has produced Modesty material for Scandinavia and a number of projects such as Durham Red for 2000AD.

Axa ran in The Sun Monday to Saturday from 1978 to her abrupt disappearance in 1986 and, other than these slim volumes from strip historian Ken Pierce, has never been graced with a definitive collection. It should be noted also that at the time of these books the strip was still being published to great acclaim.

In ‘Axa the Eager’ opens with the winsome wanderer and her current paramour Dirk drifting along barren coastlines until they encounter a bird-like man-creature and are drawn inescapably into a clash of ideologies between two factions of tree-dwelling humanoids.

One, led by the boisterous dreamer Zeph, wishes to remain in the safety of the canopies until they evolve into true fliers whilst his brother Galen wishes to return the Sky People to the Earth and the ways of technological progress. The division also splits Dirk and Axa and to complicate matters further the solid ground they’re all squawking about is surrounded by deadly mutated toad monsters…

Powerful and impressively philosophical, this tale of family discord could only end in tragedy…

‘Axa the Carefree’ finds the chastened explorers travelling inland to a new and desolate landscape concealing a sedate well-hidden village. Impossibly it seems to have escaped unscathed the horrors of the Great Contamination and investigating further Axa and Dirk discover a population of simple peasants blithely thriving, unaware of the horrors of the last hundred years. However, as always, things are not as they seem and the farmers are only a satellite branch of specialist technological guilds collectively dubbed “The Artisans”.

Ever curious the nubile nomad sneaks into the mountain citadel of the Artisans to find a virtual paradise where her wild beauty captivates one too many of the masters of the Craft Guilds that run the place. She is also reunited with her lost companion Mark 10, a robotic servant she won and lost in Axa volume 3.

Tensions are already rising when the bored and enamoured Galen stumbles onto the scene and, as her very presence incites the normally-stable creative types into a kind of madness, there looks to be a revolution in the Artisans’ immediate future unless Axa can broker a return to productive rationality…

Axa 6 dispenses with tedious text and dashes straight into the graphic action of ‘Axa the Dwarfed’ with the glorious gladiatrix and Mark 10 abandoning the Artisans to trek across a bleak wasteland until they stumble into an old government research facility where the flora and insect life has grown to immense proportions. Moreover, truly advanced and properly civilised scientists appear to be running the whole show…

Typically however, even this technological Garden of Eden has a serpent in the form of one boffin with a little too much ambition, so it’s a lucky thing old flame Matt has been tracking Axa for months and finally reunites with her just as the unscrupulous mastermind makes his move…

‘Axa the Untamed’ finds the fiery fury dragging Matt and Mark 10 into a different kind of danger when the trio encounter a tribe of Gipsies who have proliferated into a modern horde of nomadic Mongol plainsmen, trading horses and other valuable commodities in a mad, macho wonderland of testosterone and arrogance.

Even Axa’s freedom-fuelled head is turned by the attentions of Gipsy Prince Django, much to Matt’s dismay, but it isn’t too long before the glamour fades and the worth of women in Django’s world leads her to reassess its value. It’s a lot harder to cure her love affair with his magnificent horses though…

These tales are superb examples of the uniquely British newspaper strip style: lavishly drawn, subversively written, expansive in scope and utterly enchanting in their basic simplicity – with lots of flashed flesh, emphatic action and sly, knowing humour. Eminently readable and re-readable (and there’s still that dwindling promise of a major motion picture) Axa is long overdue for a definitive collection. Here’s hoping there’s a bold publisher out there looking for the next big thing…
© 1984 Express Newspapers, Ltd.

Posted on

Jak volume 15 (1983)


By Jak (Express Newspapers)
ISBN: 0-85079-133-2

The truly sad if not terrifying thing about rereading topical news cartoons this long after the fact is how distressingly familiar the subjects and hot topics still are.

For example this volume taken from 1983 features crass greed and duplicity amongst our financial elite, Prince Andrew starring in all the wrong sort of headlines, returning British soldiers, children easily subverting electronics systems designed to deny them access to things they shouldn’t see, all the wrong sorts of weather in the most inconvenient places, Sectarianism (Irish and otherwise), railways under-performing, overcharging and under the cosh, football violence and footballers peccadilloes (look it up if you must), Middle East madness, industrial action and business inaction, heat waves and water shortages, crises in Greece, controversies in definitions of rape, strangers making themselves at home in Buckingham Palace and a Tory Government that simply adored shooting off its collective mouth whilst simultaneously shooting itself in the foot…

This compendium even closes with looming public cynicism about an impending global sporting event…

Sometimes our industry is cruel and unjust. This collection of cartoons by Raymond Allen Jackson, who, as Jak, worked for thirty years as political cartoonist for London Evening Standard and its later incarnation The Standard – is one of many that celebrated his creativity, perspicacity and acumen as he drew pictures and scored points with and among the entire range of British Society.

His gags, produced daily to a punishing deadline as they had to be topical, were appreciated, if not feared, by toffs and plebs alike and were created with a degree of craft and diligence second to none. Even now, decades later, they are still shining examples of wit and talent… and they’re still bitingly funny too.

Artists like Jak who were commenting on contemporary events are poorly served by posterity. This particular volume (re-presenting a selection of single panel-gags from September 15th 1982 to August 12th 1983), like all of these books, was packaged and released for that year’s Christmas market, with the topics still fresh in people’s minds.

Decades later the drawing is still superb and despite perhaps the wry minutiae escaping a few the trenchant wit, dry jabs and outraged passion which informed these visual ripostes are still powerfully effective. And obviously human nature never changes and there’s nothing new under the sun…

It’s a terrible shame that the vast body of graphic excellence which topical cartoonists produce has such a tenuous shelf-life. Perhaps some forward looking educational institution with a mind to beefing up the modern history or social studies curricula might like to step in and take charge of the tragically untapped and superbly polished catalogue of all our yesterdays.

Clearly they’re all short of a bob or two these days and I’m pretty sure these cartoon gems could find a willing market eager to invest in a few good laughs…
© 1983 Express Newspapers Limited.

Posted on

Omaha the Cat Dancer Complete Set (part 2)


By Reed Waller & Kate Worley with James M. Vance (NBM/Amerotic)
Set ISBN: 978-1-56163-601-3
Vol. 4 ISBN: 978-1-56163-451-4, vol. 5 ISBN: 978-1-56163-451-4, vol. 6 ISBN: 978-1-56163-451-4, vol. 7 ISBN: 978-1-56163-451-4

These books are intended to make adults laugh and think and occasionally feel frisky. If the cover images haven’t clued you in, please be warned that these items contain nudity, images of sexual intimacy – both hetero and homosexual – and language commonly used in the privacy of the bedroom and probably school playgrounds whenever supervising adults aren’t present.

If that sort of thing offends you, read no further and don’t buy these books. The rest of us will just enjoy one of the best graphic novel experiences ever created without you.

Omaha the Cat Dancer began during the 1970s as an “underground” venture and over slow torturous decades grew into a brilliant but controversial drama of human fallibility were all the actors just happened to be ordinary people with animal characteristics. What most people noticed was the matter-of-fact and constant inclusion of graphic sex acts, extremely well rendered.

As there’s only so much a man of my hard-lived years can endure and certainly only so much me you can stand, I’ve divides this graphic novels review of the series and specifically the glorious seven-volume complete set that prompted it in two (see yesterday’s post for the rest). The entire supremely economical shrink-wrapped gift set is available for your reading pleasure and you’d be bonkers not to not take advantage of the fact, but if you are of a cautious nature most individual editions can still be obtained through internet retailers.

The stunning, addictive saga of the erotic dancer, her bone-headed boyfriend and the anthropomorphic extended ensemble cast takes a dark and dreadful turn with Volume 4 (re-presenting the Kitchen Sink Omaha issues #10-13 and the one-page gag strip ‘Alterations’ from Fire Sale #11988-1989) as the mysterious death of Charles Tabey Sr., the increasing violence and oppression of the Campaign for Decency and a seemingly constant stream of personal revelations strain Omaha and Chuck’s relationship to the breaking point.

The Story resumes after an introduction from writer James Vance (who married Kate Worley after she split up with Waller and worked with the artist to finish the saga from her notes after her untimely death in 2004), before the tense drama kicks into high gear as Chuck comes to terms with the shocking knowledge that his mother didn’t die decades ago. The pressure seems to be affecting him badly – or perhaps the thought of all the wealth and responsibility – and the decent young man is becoming as exploitative, abusive and creepy as his manic dad was, but even though he’s acting paranoid, it doesn’t mean he’s hasn’t got real and deadly enemies. The situation isn’t helped by learning that somewhere his beloved Omaha has a husband she hasn’t quite divorced and never ever mentioned…

The sinister Senator Bonner is ratchetting up the pressure of his anti-smut campaign and even close ally Jerry is working to his own agenda, with the assistance of avaricious partner Althea. Confused, lonely and neglected, Omaha devotes her energies to dancing for the upcoming video for Shawn’s band, and Rob confronts Shelley whom he believes ordered the attempt on his life and torching of his studio…

At long last the will is read and Chuck does indeed inherit the bulk of his father’s holdings and, apparently, many of Tabey Sr.’s deranged obsessions. The far more intriguing than she appears Shelley acts on Rob’s misperceived accusations whilst her lover/carer Kurt Huddle finds part-time employment with the mysterious Mr. Lopez – the last major player in an increasingly complex game. Meanwhile high-powered call-girl, blackmailer and keeper of Secrets Joanne re-insinuates herself with Jerry and Chuck and Bonner in a terrifying confrontation threatens to destroy Omaha and Chuck in his own blackmail scheme…

During the video shoot Omaha and Joanne compare notes on Bonner, after which the capable call-girl enlists Rob’s photographic aid in a scheme to get the goods on the hypocritical Senator – with whom she shares a highly secret and extremely specialised professional relationship…

Whilst both Joanne and Rob are practising their unique skills the senator is murdered in the most compromising of all positions and the story moves effortlessly from human drama to dark murder mystery. Abandoned, bewildered, angry and very hurt, Omaha leaves town unaware that both she and Joanne are suspects in the Bonner murder case…

As she heads for a new life in rural Wisconsin, Chuck is learning some long-forgotten personal history from his mother, but no matter how she disguises her appearance that increasingly popular video means the cat dancer will never be truly safe or unseen…

Volume 5 is introduced by Neil Gaiman, after which issues #14-17 (1990-1992) find the lovers painfully adapting to life apart, with all of Omaha’s old friends wondering where she’s gone. Meanwhile in Lawrenceville, Wisconsin, after an abortive stab at office work for an all-too-typical, male-dominated factory, “Susan Johnson” goes back to honest work dancing in the town’s only strip joint, making some reliable new friends and meeting a young man who will become far more…

In Mipple City, Joanne and her lawyer finally clear her of suspicion in Bonner’s murder, Jerry is planning to reopen infamous bordello The Underground as a legitimate nightclub, and Chuck is making new friends and intimate acquaintances whilst spending his days trying to save the Bohemian A Block district from redevelopment, inadvertently getting far closer to the heart of all the various intrigues that threaten the players in the drama, and Jerry’s business partner Althea reveals her true colours and allies. At Senator Bonner’s funeral Lopez reveals an unsuspected connection to the venomous politician…

Shelley has made new friends too (in a scathing and utterly delightful episode exposing unexpected biases in certain sorts of feminists and do-gooders), Joanne is increasingly at odds with Rob regarding the films of Bonner’s last moments and when Jerry invites Chuck to become a partner in his new nightclub Althea tries to secure the deal by offering herself as sweetener… or does she actually have another reason for her bold advances?

Kurt and Shelley’s relationship begins to show signs of strain but in Lawrenceville “Susan” is relaxed and happy, with the strength to contact the friends she ran out on.

In Mipple, the cops are slowly uncovering some uncomfortable facts about everybody in the Bonner case when the Senator’s private secretary comes forward with new information, whilst Joanne is finally securing her final weapon necessary to expedite her plans…

The final Kitchen Sink issues (#18-20, 1993-1994) comprise the major part of the sixth volume, and follow an introduction from Terry Moore, a brief discourse on the cat dancer cast’s other appearances and a few shorts pieces from diverse places.

First there’s a delightful humorous foray into mainstream comics from Munden’s Bar Annual #2 in 1991. ‘A Strip in Time’, wherein the exotic kitty pops up in the legendary pan-dimensional hostelry, after which two short and sexy vignettes originally produced for The Erotic Art of Reed Waller , one untitled and the other graced with the subtly informative designation ‘Waking Up Under a Tent’, act to somewhat offset the angst and drama of the main event.

Rob learns what Shelley’s actual role was in the arson attack on his shop, Joanne takes a live-in position with Mr Lopez and after many abortive attempts Chuck and Omaha finally speak. As Thanksgiving dawns many of Omaha’s friends gather for a momentous dinner, things start to unravel for the bad-guys trying to destroy A Block and in Wisconsin, just as she is becoming reconciled with Chuck, the cat dancer’s fling with appreciative punter Jack intensifies to a crisis point. Meanwhile elsewhere, somebody with an intimate knowledge of her recognises the hot dancer in a rock video and begins making fevered inquiries…

When Shawn’s touring band reaches Lawrenceville and discover “Susie” is Omaha, the scene is set for her return to Mipple City, where, after being arrested in connection with Bonner’s murder, Chuck’s mother reveals the whole story of her past and the sordid truth of Calvin Bonner’s obsessive depravity and Charles Tabey’s bi-polar affliction. In light of the horrific revelations Chuck seems to go completely off the deep end and, far too late, his friends and family realise that money and looks might not be the only things the son inherited from the father…

Next, just a smidge out of chronological order, comes ‘Tales of Mipple City: Rob Steps Out’ a charming first date tale which first appeared in the anthology series Gay Comics #22 (1994) after which the tension and revelations resume as the cops release Maria Elandos Tabey, whilst her son is sectioned. In Lawrenceville, Susie gets an unforgettable farewell from Jack after which she returns to her true love who has never needed her more…

The final volume in this magnificent series features the last four issues published by Fantagraphics as Omaha the Cat Dancer volume 2, #1-4 (1994-1995). The series has at times seemed cursed: plagued by illness and creative problems which have taken its toll on all the creators. The creators ended their relationship in spectacular fashion at this time and only began working together again in 2002. Soon after Kate Worley died from cancer and it seemed the saga was destined to remain an unfinished masterpiece, but in 2006 Waller and Worley’s husband James Vance began to finish the job from her notes, with the concluding chapters serialised in the magazine Sizzle. When those final instalments are finally collected the completed Omaha the Cat Dancer will be possibly the finest adult comics tale in history…

For now however the brilliant yarn reaches a kind of conclusion here as after an introduction from honorary Mipple City resident Denis Kitchen, and a stunning cartoon recap Omaha and Chuck renew their relationship, Jerry and Shelley and Rob and Joanne reach workable détente agreements and that missing husband tracks the cat dancer to her new home. Set over the Christmas/New Year period, all the various plot threads come together during an unforgettable party at Chuck’s palatial new house, although the hung-over aftermath promises that there are still stories to be told and loose ends to be knotted off once and for all.

Even if the saga stopped here, Omaha the Cat Dancer would be an incredible narrative achievement and groundbreaking landmark of comics creation, but with the promise of a final resolution still to come, it looks set to become an icon of our industry, celebrated forever for moving beyond simple titillation and happy, innocent prurience to become a fully matured work of Art.

Captivating, intense, deeply moving and addictively engrossing, Omaha never forgets to be also be fun and fabulous and utterly inclusive: full of astonishingly well drawn, folk (admittedly largely furry or feathered folk) happily naked and joyously guilt – free… at least about sex…

No cats, dogs, birds or ferrets were harmed, abused, distressed or disagreeably surprised in the making of these lovely, lovely books, so if you’re open-minded, fun-loving and ready for the perfect grown-up adventure please take advantage of this unmissable opportunity. You won’t regret it….

© 1987-1996 Reed Waller & Kate Worley. Contents of these editions © 2005-2008 NBM. All Rights Reserved.