Category: Cartooning Classics

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Footrot Flats Book 7


By Murray Ball (Orin Books)
ISSN: 0156-6172

New Zealand’s greatest natural wonder and National Treasure is a comic strip. Footrot Flats is one of the funniest comic strips ever created, designed as a practical antidote to idealistic pastoral fantasy and bucolic self-deception and concocted in 1975 by cartoonist and comics artist Murray Ball after returning to his New Zealand homeland, from an extended work tour of the UK and other, lesser climes.

The fantastical farm feature ran for a quarter of a century, appearing in newspapers on four continents until 1994 when Ball retired it, citing reasons as varied as the death of his own dog and the state of New Zealand politics. Such a success naturally spawned a multitude of merchandising material such as strip compendia, calendars and special editions released regularly from 1978 onwards.

Once Ball officially ceased the daily feature he began periodically releasing books of all-new material until 2000, with a net yield of 27 collections of the daily strip, 8 volumes of Sunday pages dubbed “Weekenders”, 5 pocket books and ancillary publications such as “school kits” aimed at younger fans and their harried parents.

There was a stage musical, a theme park and in 1986 a truly superb feature-length animated film. The Dog’s Tail Tale became New Zealand’s top-grossing film (and remained so until Peter Jackson started associating with Hobbits) – track it down on video or petition the BBC to show it again – it’s been decades, for Pete’s sake…

The well-travelled, extremely gifted and deeply dedicated Mr. Ball had originally moved to England in the early 1960s, becoming a cartoonist for Punch (producing Stanley the Palaeolithic Hero and All the King’s Comrades) as well as drawing numerous strips for DC Thompson and Fleetway and even concocting a regular political satire strip in Labour Weekly.

After marrying he returned to the Old Country and resettled in 1974 – but not to retire…

Ball was busier than ever once he’d bought a small-holding on the North Island to farm in his “spare time”, which inevitably led to the strip under review.

Taking the adage “write what you know” to startling, heartbreaking and occasionally stomach-turning heights, the peripatetic pencil-pusher broke most of the laws of relativity to make time for these captivatingly insane episodes concerning the highs and lows – and most frequently “absurds” – of the rural entrepreneur as experienced by the earthily metaphoric Wallace Footrot Cadwallader: a bloke never too-far removed from mud, mayhem, ferocity and frustration…

Wal is a big, bluff farmer. He likes his grub; loves his sport – Rugby, Football (the Anzac sort, not the kiddie version Yanks call Soccer) Cricket, Golf(ish) and even hang-gliding; each in its proper season and at no other, since he just wants the easiest time a farmer’s life can offer…

Wal owns a small sheep farm (the eponymous Footrot Flats) honestly described as “400 acres of swamp between Ureweras and the Sea”.

With his chief – and only – hand Cooch Windgrass (a latter-day Francis of Assisi), and a verbose and avuncular sheepdog, Wal enjoys being his own boss – as much as the farm cat, goats, chickens, livestock and his auntie will let him…

Other persons of perennial interest include Wal’s fierce and prickly little niece Janice – known to all as Pongo, the aforementioned Aunt Dolly (AKA the sternly staunch and starched Dolores Monrovia Godwit Footrot), smart-ass local lad Rangi Wiremu Waka Jones, Dolly’s pompous and pampered Corgi Prince Charles and Pew, a sadistic, inventive, obsessed and vengeful magpie who bears an unremitting grudge against Wal…

When not living in terror of the monumental moggy dubbed “Horse”, teasing the corpulent Corgi or panic-attacking himself in imagined competition with noble hunting hound Major, the Dog narrates and hosts the strip.

A cool, imaginative and overly sentimental know-all and blowhard, Dog is utterly devoted to his, for want of a better term, Master – unless there’s food about, or Jess the sheepdog bitch is in heat again. However, the biggest and most terrifying scene-stealer was that fulsome feline Horse; a monstrous and imperturbable tomcat who lords it over every living thing in the district …

One of the powerful and persistent clichés of life is that to make people laugh one truly needs to experience tragedy and, having only recently lost my own four-footed studio-mate and constant companion of 15 years, I can certainly empathise with the artist’s obvious manly distress as this otherwise magnificently hilarious collection is movingly dedicated to the uniquely charming real-world inspiration for the battered and bewhiskered juggernaut… which only makes the comedy capers contained within even more bittersweet and effective, beginning with the poem to his departed companion and the bluff, brisk photo tribute which opens proceedings…

Once again the funny businesses comes courtesy of the loquacious canine softie, taking time out from eking out his daily crusts (and oysters and biscuits and cake and lamb’s tails and scraps and chips and…) and alternately getting on with or annoying the sheep, cows, bull, goat, hogs, ducks, bugs, cats, horses and geese, as well as sucking up to the resolutely hostile wildlife and the decidedly odd humans his owner knows or is related to.

Dog – his given name is an embarrassing, closely and violently guarded secret – loves Wal but always tries to thwart him if the big bloke is trying to do unnecessarily necessary farm chores such as chopping down trees, burning out patches of scrub, culling livestock, or trying to mate with the pooch’s main rival Darlene “Cheeky” Hobson, hairdresser-in-residence of the nearest town. As is also the case with the adoring comradeship of proper blokes, Dog is never happier than when embarrassing his mate in front of others, which explains the pages extracted from Wal’s old albums, showing the man to be in various humiliating baby shots and schoolboy scrapes…

Following on is the epic adventure ‘The Invasion of the Murphy Dogs’ – barbaric hounds from a neighbouring farm only afraid of one thing…

This extra-large (262x166mm) landscape monochrome seventh volume again comes from Australian Publisher Orin Books and continues the policy of dividing the strips into approximately seasonal sequences, and after a few more all-original cartoons again opens with ‘Spring’ – the busiest season of the farmer’s year (apart from the other three) concentrates on Pew’s first attempts at avian home-making, Dog’s libido, horny farmers and hussy-hairdressers, loopy lambs, wild pigs, killer eels and cricket, as well as an extended sequence in which Wal and the Dog become involved in the local school’s curriculum and cuisine…

Once the long hot ‘Summer’ settles in, bringing fun with chicken-shearing, busy bees, a plague of carnivorous Wekas, thistles, Horse’s softer side(!) and his war with Pongo and Aunt Dolly, Hare infestations, river-rafting, Irish Murphy’s Pigs (far worse than his dogs), Cheeky’s picnic charm-offensive and the growing closeness of Rangi and Pongo…

‘Autumn’ brings piglets, scrub-burning, the revenge of dispossessed magpies, amorous bovines, fun with artificial insemination, fence-lining and back country cattle, honey-harvesting, darts and rugby, a confused ram who’d rather pursue Dolly than associate with eager ewes and Horse’s crucial role in the war against the magpies…

As ‘Winter’ again closes in, offering floods, the mixed messy joy of lambing season, mud, mad goats, whitebait fishing and footy, Wal unwisely agrees to take a class of schoolkids and their puritanical, prudish and priggish teacher on an eye-opening nature-lesson around Footrot Flats. Touched by the painful experience, the bluff cove then volunteers to coach the school’s sports and, after much humiliation, spends the rest of the book discovering how hard – and, for observers, funny – farming in a plaster cast can be…

As you’d expect, the comedy content is utterly, absolutely top-rate and the extended role played throughout by the surly star Horse all the more poignant…

Ball is one of those gifted few who can actually imbue a few lines on paper with the power of Shakespeare’s tragedy and the manic hilarity of jester geniuses such as Tommy Cooper or the Marx Brothers. When combined with his sharp, incisive yet warmly human writing the result is sheer, irresistible magic.

In the early 1990s Titan Books published British editions of the first three volumes and German, Japanese, Chinese and American translations also exist, as well as the marvellous Australian compendia reviewed here – as ever the internet is your friend…

Dry, surreal and wonderfully self-deprecating, Footrot Flats always successfully wedded together sarcasm, satire, slapstick and strikingly apt surrealism in a perfect union of pathos and down to earth (and up to your eyebrows) fun that was and still is utterly addicting, exciting and just plain wonderful.

Plant the seeds for a lifetime of laughs by harvesting this or indeed any volume and you’ll soon see a bumper crop of fun irrespective of the weather or market forces…
© 1981-1982 Murray Ball. All Rights Reserved.

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The World’s Greatest Middle Age Cartoons


By various, edited by Mark Bryant (Exley)
ISBN: 978-1-85015-508-9

Here’s another little dip into the vast library of cartoon comedy generated by Britain’s greatest natural resource (and still un-privatised so it belongs to us all for the moment): folks what make us laugh…

This selection comprises a nice slice of lesser known but still-pithily opinionated pen-smiths and brush-mongers, all turning a jaded and indeed long-suffering, probably myopic and squinty eye on the inescapable fate that awaits most of us. I’m assuming of course, that nobody here today has yet reached those lofty depths of “Middle Age”…

The cartoons re-presented here have been harvested from the pages of such literary colossi as Punch, The Spectator and Private Eye amongst many national and international sources and deftly display the wry, smug, elegant, frantic, resigned and obnoxious attractions of and reactions to the slow bit between adolescence and senescence which seems to revolve around cake, comfy chairs and utter bewilderment at how bad things have gotten…

In these pages you’ll first discover the heartbreak of exhausted skin, creaking bones and meandering waistlines, the joy of taking up hobbies and pastimes, the faithfulness of pets, gardening, vanity, self-delusion, impatience, futility, embarrassingly roving eyes and wandering hands, the brutal cruelty of fashion, an increasing familiarity with Doctors’ waiting rooms, unsuspected ailments, crisis after crisis, hair where it shouldn’t be and not where you’d like it, that first whiff of approaching death, grandchildren, personal “use-by dates”, how love never dies but increasingly needs a little help and especially how one can go off sarcasm…

As usual this particular book isn’t as much what I’m recommending (although if you can find a copy you won’t regret it) as the type of publication that I’m commemorating. Such life-affirming cartoons by Norman Thelwell, Gerard Hoffnung, Bill Stott, Sally Artz, Les Barton, Helen Cusack, Stidley Easel, Charles Rodriguez, Hector Breeze, Tony Husband, Clive Collins, Michael ffolkes, Donegan, David Haldane, Fleo, Grizelda Grizlingham, Bud Handelsman, Holte, Henry Martin, David Austin, Edward McLachlan, Cluff, David Myers, Ken Pyne, Viv Quillin, Bryan Reading, Heath and Roland Fiddy are sitting idly out of touch when they could be filling your bookshelves and giving your somnolent hearts a damned good, potentially invigorating laugh time and time again…
Selection © 1994 Exley Publications, Ltd. The copyright of each cartoon remains with each cartoonist or copyright holder.

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The Fanatics Guide to: Dogs


By Roland Fiddy (Exley)
ISBN: 978-1-85015-272-9

The field of British cartooning has been tremendously well-served over the centuries with masters of form, line, wash and most importantly ideas perpetually tickling our funny bones whilst poking our pomposities and fascinations.

As is so often the case many of these masters of merriment and mirth are being not-so-slowly forgotten in their own lands whilst still revered and adored everywhere else. One of our most prolific and best was a infinitely sharp tool named Roland Fiddy whose fifty year career encompassed comics, newspaper strips and dedicated gag-books such as the one I’m re-scrutinizing here; one of a “Cartoonists Dozen” (that’s eleven, with another “almost finished, just drying, in the post and trust me, well worth waiting that little bit longer for, boss”) assaulting such commonplace perennial Pandora’s Boxes of modern society as Sex, Computers, Dads, Diets, Money, Cats, Husbands, the Bed and more.

His brash, efficient and amorphously loose drawing line winnowed out extraneous detail and always zeroed straight in to the punch-line with a keen and accurate eye for shared experience and a masterfully observational sense of the absurd, whether producing one-off gags for magazines such as Punch, cartoons and strips for comics or even the far tougher discipline of daily features; winning him nearly two dozen international humour awards from places as disparate as Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and many others. His work was particularly well received in the USA, making him an international icon and ambassador of “Britishness” as valuable as Giles or Thelwell.

“Fiddy”, as he signed his work, was born in Plymouth in 1931 and educated at Devonport High School, Plymouth College of Art and Bristol’s West of England College of Art: a dedicated course of study interrupted for three years compulsory National Service which saw him join the RAF.

He had been teaching art for two years before he sold his first professional cartoon to digest men’s magazine Lilliput in July 1949. He quickly graduated to Punch, selling constantly to intellectual powerhouse editor Malcolm Muggeridge. By 1952 he was also a regular contributor of gags to populist papers the News Chronicle, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror.

His first continuity work was for the post-war British comics industry, creating Sir Percy Vere for Clifford Makins, editor of the prestigious Eagle after it was bought by Odhams from original publisher Hulton Press. He followed up the period poltroonery with an army strip entitled Private Proon for Boy’s World before settling back into his comfort zone with a weekly page of one-off gags for Ranger.

The Fun with Fiddy feature was one of the few (others included the legendary Trigan Empire) which survived the high-end comic’s inevitable absorption into Look and Learn.

In 1976 he began a decade-long stint drawing the rather anodyne Tramps (scripted by practising Christian Iain Reid) which featured jovial hoboes Percival and Cedric; an inexplicably well-regarded strip which ran seven days a week. I mention the religious aspect in case you ever see Tramps in the Kingdom: a 1979 collection of the 110-odd, faith-based episodes. To my knowledge the remaining 3000 or more everyday, secularly funny instalments haven’t ever been collected.

In 1985 Fiddy created Paying Guest for the Sunday Express (another 10 year spree) and in 1986 Him Indoors for The People. The home-grown strip market was changing and contracting however and increasingly Fiddy chose to sell gags as an international freelancer and create cartoon books.

Within these pages, available as both English or American editions and going into at least three reprintings, is a wealth of wryly good natured if obviously long-suffering observation of canine co-dependence divided into separate themes – or perhaps breeds – such as ‘Dogs are Diverse’, ‘Dogs are Domesticated’, ‘Dogs are Doted On’, ‘Dogs are Devoted’, ‘Dogs can be Difficult’, ‘Dogs Discovering that Dimensions can be Deceptive’, ‘Dogs Can be Despondent’, ‘Dogs are Dependable’, ‘Dogs Can be Devious’, ‘Some Dogs Dramatize’, ‘Some Dogs are Dangerous’ and more…

Fiddy built a solid body of irresistible, seductive and always astonishingly funny work which enjoyed universal appeal and delighted readers of all ages, appearing in innumerable magazines, comics and papers where his instantly recognisable style always stood out for its enchanting impact and laconic wit.

Other than the Fanatic’s Guide books his most impressive and characteristic collection is probably The Best of Fiddy.

Roland John Fiddy died in 1999 and we all miss him still.
© 1991 Roland Fiddy.

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The Crazy World of Housework


By Bill Stott (Exley)
ISBN: 978-1-85015-314-6

I’m feeling glum today so it’s probably time to roll out another cartoon compendium and give my blue genes a bit of a workout. To remedy matters I’ve selected another collection of dry, droll and stunningly accurate observations by one of our best and most neglected gagsters, Bill Stott.

One more prolific but criminally nigh-forgotten staple of British cartooning, Stott’s manic fluid style, aggressively evocative drawing and trenchantly acerbic concoctions (which could here be summarised as “there’s a problem here, and it’s you…”) were a mainstay of Punch, Private Eye, The Times and many other papers and publications since he began commercial work in 1976.

In his other life he was – and remains – a degree-level painting and drawing tutor. Moreover he’s still in the game – such as it is in these days of magazine and newspaper cartoon paucity – and you can check out his latest stuff or even commission an original simply by visiting billstott.co.uk.

There might even be copies of this brilliant chronicle of chuckles on sale there…

British cartooning has been magnificently served over the centuries by masters of form, line, wash and most importantly clever ideas repeatedly poking our funny bones whilst pricking our pomposities and fascinations, and nothing is more revealing of our darkest drives and social structure than the division of labour necessitated by keeping the cave clean and the provider fed…

Within the pages of the Crazy World of Housework (released in both English and American editions) we see the utter uselessness if not downright genetic incompatibility of grime-attracting children, the adult male’s genetic inability to iron, see dirt or follow instructions on cleaning products, the thin line between sanity and sanitary, the plight of stay-at-home husbands, what does not constitute a suitable gift for a housewife, how “house-proud” goeth before a fall, the wickedness of advertising promises, the burden of snobbery, the cruel seductive lure of gadgets, the mixed joys of pet ownership and just how close to breaking-point all ironers, washers and dusters really are every day…

These kinds of cartoon collection are perennial library/charity shop and jumble sale fare and if you ever see a Stott package (others in this particular series include The Crazy World of Cats, Cricket, Hospitals, Gardening, Marriage and Rugby) in such a place, do yourself a favour, help out a good cause and have a brilliant laugh with another true master of mirth.
© 1992 Bill Stott. All rights reserved.

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Footrot Flats book 6


By Murray Ball (Orin Books)
ISSN: 0156-6172

Footrot Flats is one of the funniest comic strips ever created and seems to have been designed as an antidote to idealistic pastoral fantasy and bucolic self-deception. Created in 1975 by cartoonist and comics artist Murray Ball after returning to his New Zealand homeland, the fantastical farm feature ran for a quarter of a century, with the first of a multitude of strip compendia, calendars and special editions released in 1978.

It appeared in newspapers on four continents until 1994 when Ball retired it, citing reasons as varied as the death of his own dog and the state of New Zealand politics.

Thereafter he only periodically released books of all-new material until 2000, with a net yield of 27 collections of the daily strip, 8 volumes of Sunday pages dubbed the “Weekenders”, 5 pocket books and ancillary publications such as comedy calendars and “school kits” aimed at younger fans and their harried parents.

There was a stage musical, a theme park and in 1986 a truly superb feature-length animated film. The Dog’s Tail Tale became New Zealand’s top-grossing film (and probably remained so until Peter Jackson started fiddling about with Hobbits) – track it down on video or petition the BBC to show it again – it’s been 15 years, dammit…

The well-travelled and extremely gifted Mr. Ball had originally moved to England in the early 1960s, becoming a cartoonist for Punch (producing Stanley the Palaeolithic Hero and All the King’s Comrades) as well as drawing numerous strips for DC Thompson and Fleetway and concocting a regular political satire strip in Labour Weekly.

After marrying he returned to the Old Country and resettled in 1974 – but not to retire…

Ball was busier than ever once he’d bought a small-holding on the North Island to farm in his “spare time”, which inevitably led to the strip under review.

Taking the adage “write what you know” to startling, heartbreaking and occasionally stomach-turning heights, the peripatetic pencil-pusher built a nine day week to make room for these captivatingly insane episodes concerning the highs and lows – and most definitely “weirds” – of the rural entrepreneur as experienced by the earthily metaphoric Wallace Footrot Cadwallader: a bloke never far removed from mud and frustration…

Wal is a big, bluff farmer. He likes his grub; loves his sport – Rugby, Football (the Anzac sort, not the kiddie version Yanks call Soccer) Cricket and even Golf(ish); each in its proper season and at no other time since he just wants the easiest time a farmer’s life can offer…

Wal owns a small sheep farm (the eponymous Footrot Flats) honestly regarded as “400 acres of swamp between Ureweras and the Sea”.

With his chief – and only – hand Cooch Windgrass (a latter-day Francis of Assisi), and an avuncular sheepdog, Wal enjoys being his own boss – as much as the cat, goat, chickens, livestock and his auntie will let him…

Other persons of perennial interest include Wal’s fierce and prickly little niece Janice – known to all as Pongo, the aforementioned Aunt Dolly (AKA the sternly staunch and starched Dolores Monrovia Godwit Footrot), smart-ass local lad Rangi Wiremu Waka Jones, Dolly’s pompous and pampered Corgi Prince Charles and Pew, a sadistic, inventive, obsessed and vengeful magpie who bears an unremitting grudge against Farmer Cadwallader …

When not living in terror of the farm cat, teasing the corpulent Corgi or panic-attacking himself in imagined competition with noble hunting hound Major, Dog narrates and hosts the strip: a cool, imaginative and overly sentimental know-all and blowhard, utterly devoted to his, for want of a better term, Master – unless there’s food about, or Jess (the sheepdog bitch from down the road) is in heat again. However, the biggest and most terrifying scene-stealer is that fulsome feline Horse; a monstrous and invulnerable tomcat who lords it over every living thing in the district …

The comedy is as always, absolutely top-rate and Ball is one of those gifted few who can actually imbue a few lines on paper with the power of Shakespeare’s tragedy and the manic hilarity of manic geniuses like the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy. When combined with his sharp, incisive writing the result is pure irresistible magic.

In the early 1990s Titan Books published British editions of the first three volumes and German, Japanese, Chinese and American translations also exist, as well as the marvellous Australian compendia reviewed here – as ever the internet is your friend…

Once again the funny businesses comes courtesy of the loquacious canine softie, taking time out from eking out his daily crusts (and oysters and biscuits and cake and lamb’s tails and scraps and chips and…) and alternately getting on with or annoying the sheep, cows, bull, goat, hogs, ducks, bugs, cats, horses and geese, as well as sucking up to the resolutely hostile wildlife and the decidedly odd humans his owner knows or is related to.

Dog – his given name is an embarrassing, closely and violently guarded secret – loves Wal but always tries to thwart him if the big bloke is trying to do unnecessarily necessary farm chores such as chopping down trees, burning out patches of scrub, culling livestock, or trying to mate with the pooch’s main rival Darlene “Cheeky” Hobson, hairdresser-in-residence of the nearest town.

This extra-large (262x166mm) landscape monochrome sixth volume again comes from Australian Publisher Orin Books and continues the policy of dividing the strips into approximately seasonal sequences, and after a disturbingly anatomical exploratory self-examination by Mr. Ball, a featuring on ‘This Years Docking…’, Dog’s traditionally extraordinary ‘Introduction’ and selection of cartoon “snapshots” from ace photographer Rangi Jones, ‘Spring’ at last busts out all over…

The busiest season of the farmer’s year – apart from the other three – deals with the over-abundance of every unwelcome weed and bush, the shedding of winter coats, the year’s first crop of Dog’s progeny, dopey calves, horny bulls, horny farmers and hairdressers, piglets, chicks and the general proliferation of life in its myriad forms before the long hot ‘Summer’ settles in, bringing fun with bees, the new enterprise of honey-harvesting, eels and how not to catch them, gently cooling typhoon winds, Christmas (Southern Hemisphere, remember?), reminiscences with aging and unwilling stud ram Cecil and particularly instructive incidents with Horse – such as when the mighty moggy catches the biggest bird he’s ever seen and Wal has to pay for a new hang-glider…

‘Autumn’ brings mushrooms, harvests, haymaking and rugby, plus blackberries, a war with goats, stock sales, inconsolable cows and ewes, golf on horseback (one that whinnies not growls) and how not to worm pets whilst ‘Winter’ again offers floods, lambing season plus, mud, footy, and the canine drama of Dog getting ill.

How do they manage without him? They don’t…

Since these cartoons are culled from 1981-1982 there’s also some few Antipodean observations on the Royal Wedding of the other, two-legged, Prince Charles along with casual – and unnerving – nudity, fun with bullocks and a distressingly obvious love-hate relationship brewing between Rangi and Pongo…

Dry, surreal and wonderfully self-deprecating, Footrot Flats always grafted together sarcasm, satire, slapstick and strikingly apt surrealism in a perfect union of pathos and down to earth (and up to your armpits) humour that was and still is utterly addicting, exciting and just plain wonderful.

If you feel the need to fill your lungs with overly fresh air, your boots with squelchiness and commune with the real countryside why not give the Dog a go?
© 1981-1982 Murray Ball. All Rights Reserved.

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The Crazy World of Gardening


By Bill Stott (Exley)
ISBN: 978-1-85015-355-9

As it’s a Bank Holiday here in Britain and probably raining somewhere, I’ve taken the opportunity to re-examine the so-very-English obsession with domestic horticulture through the medium of cartoon books and in particular a collection of dry, droll and often painfully accurate observations by one of my favourite unsung gagsters, Bill Stott.

Another prolific but criminally nigh-forgotten staple of British cartooning, Stott’s manic loose line, stunningly evocative drawing and mordantly acerbic conceptions (which basically boil down to “no matter how strange, if it can happen it will happen to you, but only if somebody is watching…”) were a mainstay of Punch, Private Eye, The Times and many other papers and publications since 1976.

In his other life he was – and still is – a degree-level college painting and drawing tutor. Moreover he’s still in the game – such as it is in these days of magazine and newspaper cartoon paucity – and you can check out his latest stuff or even commission an original simply by visiting billstott.co.uk.

There might even be copies of this superb little rib-tickler on sale there…

British cartooning has been magnificently served over the centuries by masters of form, line, wash and most importantly clever ideas repeatedly poking our funny bones whilst pricking our pomposities and fascinations, and nothing says more about us than our dark compulsion to mow lawns and torture plants in flood or gale or drought and all points between…

Within the pages of the Crazy World of Gardening (released in both English and American editions as a hardcover and paperback) the wise reader will learn the horror and delight of motor mowers, why men and women mustn’t garden together, how every living thing that sprouts or flies or crawls hates and despises humanity, the wit, wisdom and worth of gnomes, anti-slug tactics, how hosepipes are not our friends, the root cause of garden distress, hedge-warfare, the misery of pond-life, greenhouse etiquette and such various and assorted plant lore as will keep the aforementioned wise ones safely inside whilst letting nature and the seasons – such as they now are – just get on with it…

These kinds of cartoon collection are perennial library/charity shop and jumble sale fare and if you ever see a Stott package (others in this particular series include The Crazy World of Cats, Cricket, Hospitals, Housework, Marriage and Rugby) in such a place, do yourself a favour, help out a good cause and have a brilliant laugh with another true master of mirth.
1987 Bill Stott. All rights reserved.

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Footrot Flats book 5


By Murray Ball (Orin Books)
ISSN: 0156-6172

For one of the most successfully syndicated strips in the world, Footrot Flats seems to have passed from public consciousness with painful alacrity. Created in 1975 by cartoonist and comics artist Murray Ball after returning to his New Zealand homeland, the fantastical farm feature ran for a quarter of a century, with the first of a multitude of strip compendia, calendars and special editions released in 1978.

It appeared in newspapers on four continents until 1994 when Ball retired it, citing reasons as varied as the death of his own dog and the state of New Zealand politics.

Thereafter books of new material were released until 2000, resulting in 27 daily strip collections, 8 volumes of Sunday pages known as “Weekenders”, 5 pocket books and ancillary publications such as “school kits” and the aforementioned, all-new, annual calendars.

There was a stage musical, a theme park and a truly superb animated film Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail Tale.

The well travelled and extremely gifted Mr. Ball had originally moved to England in the early 1960s, becoming a cartoonist for Punch (producing Stanley the Palaeolithic Hero and All the King’s Comrades) as well as drawing numerous strips for DC Thompson and Fleetway and concocting a regular political satire strip in Labour Weekly.

After marrying he returned to the Old Country and resettled in 1974 – but not to retire…

Ball was busier than ever once he’d bought a small-holding on the North Island to farm in his “spare time”. This inevitably led to the strip under review. Taking the adage “write what you know” to startling and occasionally stomach-churning heights, the peripatetic pencil-pusher promptly gave up sleeping altogether to limn these wickedly funny escapades concerning the highs and lows – and most definitely “wildests” – of the agricultural life as experience by the earthily metaphoric Wallace Footrot Cadwallader: an oaf in search of the plot…

Wal is a big, bluff farmer. He’s a regular bloke: likes his food; loves his sport – Rugby, Football (the Antipodean kind, not the girl’s game the Yanks call Soccer) and Cricket; each in its proper season and at no other time…

He owns a small sheep farm (the eponymous Footrot Flats) best described as “400 acres of swamp between Ureweras and the Sea”.

With his chief – and only – hand Cooch Windgrass (a latter-day Francis of Assisi), and a sheepdog who calls himself “Dog”, Wal scrapes a living – and one too many bolshie beasts – but is, at least, his own boss.

Dog is the star (and narrator) of the strip: a cool, if imaginative and overly sentimental know-all and blowhard, utterly devoted to his, for want of a better term, Master – unless there’s food about, or Jess (the sheepdog bitch from down the road) is in heat again.

Dry, surreal and wonderfully self-deprecating, the humour comes from the perfectly realised characters, human and otherwise, the tough life of a bachelor farmer and especially the country itself.

Other notable regular’s include Wal’s fierce and prickly little niece Janice – known to all as Pongo, the sternly staunch and starched Dolores Monrovia Godwit Footrot, AKA Aunt Dolly, wise guy local lad Rangi Wiremu Waka Jones, Dolly’s spoiled Corgi Prince Charles, and Pew, a sadistic, inventive, obsessed and vengeful magpie who bears an unremitting grudge against Farmer Cadwallader …

The biggest and most terrifying scene-stealer is Horse, a monstrous and invulnerable tomcat who lords it over every living thing in the district …

The comedy is as always, absolutely top-rate and Ball is one of those gifted few who can actually imbue a few lines on paper with the power of Shakespeare’s tragedy and the manic hilarity of manic geniuses like the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy. When combined with his sharp, incisive writing the result is pure irresistible magic.

In the UK Titan Books published three volumes in the early 1990s and foreign editions were released in German, Japanese, Chinese and American, but the same material is readily available from a number of publishers and retailers; here more than ever the internet is your friend.

The dry dramas and funny old businesses generally accrue via the laconic raconteuring of “The Dog”, a great lazy canine softie, eking out his daily crusts (and oysters and biscuits and cake and lamb’s tails and scraps and chips and…), alternately getting on with or annoying the sheep, cows, bull, goat, hogs, ducks, bugs, cats, horses, geese, all the resolutely undomesticated wildlife and the decidedly odd humans his owner knows or is related to.

Dog – his given name is an embarrassing, closely and violently guarded secret – loves Wal but always tries to thwart him if the big bloke is trying to do unnecessarily necessary farm chores such as chopping down trees, burning out patches of scrub, culling livestock, or trying to mate with the pooch’s main rival Darlene “Cheeky” Hobson, hairdresser-in-residence of the nearest town.

This extra-large (262x166mm) landscape monochrome fifth volume again comes from the Australian editions series and started the tradition of dividing the strips into approximately seasonal sequences, as well as beginning to show another near unique facet of the series with the ever-expanding cast visibly aging in what approximates real-time in the world of periodical publishing.

After a rather reluctant biography from the artist’s then teenaged son Mason, an appreciation from the canine star’s occasional paramour Jess the sheep-bitch and an introduction from The Dog himself, a selection of spot gags and cartoons describing anti-Cheeky tactics precedes the strip sensations of ‘Spring’ as Wal and the Dog prepare for the grimy, smelly profusion of life which follows the far from gentle rainy season.

When not living in terror of the farm cat Horse, teasing the corpulent Corgi Prince Charles or dreading the competition with noble hunting hound Major, the Dog runs continually afoul of the deer which infest the spread. A hilarious sequence of the humans trying to take Horse to the Vet easily segues into a plethora of close encounters as the livestock all experience the stirrings of love in their prodigious loins…

With ‘Summer’ comes cricket, baby animals, sea fishing, and Pongo for the school holidays: all offering new ways to add to Wal’s blood pressure and Dog’s embarrassment. This year’s particular novelties include water shortages, hang-gliding and using a helicopter to herd deer – and why that’s such a good idea…

‘Autumn’ brings harvests and rugby and more rain and sheep well into the pregnancies that make Wal’s life so rewarding (yeah, more sarcasm, mate) whilst ‘Winter’ offers floods, lambing season – always at night and always in rain or snow – plus, mud, footy, mud, river-fishing for whitebait and mud, although this year the old oaf does try his hefty hand at golf and gets talked into coaching the school rugby team with results any idiot could predict; especially as The Dog is on the team too…

Footrot Flats, whether singly or in collections such as this, always marries sarcasm, satire, slapstick and surreality in a perfect union of pathos and down to earth (and up to your elbows) humour that is utterly captivating; expansive, efficient, exciting and just plain brilliant.

If you feel the need to fill your lungs with country air, your boots with squelchiness and your brain with breathtaking belly-laughs why not give the Dog a go? Let your preferred search engine be your guide…

Go on. Fetch!
© 1981 Murray Ball. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents House of Secrets volume 2


By many and various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-472-5

With superheroes on the decline again in the early 1970s, four of the six surviving newsstand comicbook companies (Archie, Charlton, DC, Gold Key, Harvey and Marvel) relied increasingly on horror and suspense anthologies to bolster their flagging sales. Even wholesome Archie briefly produced Red Circle Sorcery/Chillers comics and their teen-comedy core moved gently into tales of witchcraft, mystery and imagination.

DC’s first generation of mystery titles had followed the end of the first Heroic Age when most of the publishers of the era began releasing crime, romance and horror genre anthologies to recapture the older readership which was drifting away to other mass-market entertainments like television and the movies.

As National Comics in 1951, the company bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology – which nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles – with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

When a hysterical censorship scandal led to witch-hunting hearings attacking comicbooks and newspaper strips (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time) the industry panicked, adopting a castrating straitjacket of stringent self-regulatory rules and admonitions.

Even though mystery titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised and anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, the appetite for suspense was still high, and in 1956 National introduced the sister title House of Secrets which debuted with a November-December cover-date.

Supernatural thrillers and monster stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated genteel, rationalistic, fantasy-adventure vehicles which nonetheless dominated the market until the 1960s when the super-hero (which had begun a renaissance after Julius Schwartz reintroduced the Flash in Showcase #4, 1956) finally overtook them. Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and a host of other costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked myrmidons which even forced the dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books with Martian Manhunter and Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery and Mark Merlin – later Prince Ra-Man – sharing space with anti-hero Eclipso in House of Secrets.

When the caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, Secrets was one of the first casualties and the title folded with the September-October 1966 issue.

However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and at the end of the 1960s the Silver Age superhero boom busted again, with many titles gone and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain too…

This real-world Crisis led to the surviving publishers of the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles at the time but as the liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Great Unknown, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious “no-brainer.”

Thus with absolutely no fanfare at all House of Secrets rose again with issue #81, (cover-dated August-September 1969) just as big sister House of Mystery had done a year earlier.

Under a spooky bold banner declaiming “There’s No Escape From… The House of Secrets”, creators veteran and neophyte churned out a massive deluge of spooky, creepy, wryly tongue-in-cheek and scary tales, all introduced by the innocuous and timid Abel; caretaker of a  ramshackle, sentient old pile temporarily located somewhere in the Dark Heart of the USA…

This second enthralling and economical monochrome Showcase compendium collects the chilling contents of issues #99-119, spanning August 1972 – September 1973, and also features a stellar selection of covers from artists Michael Kaluta, Bernie Wrightson, Nick Cardy, Jack Sparling and Luis Dominguez.

‘Welcome to the House of Secrets’ by E. Nelson Bridwell & Wrightson began another pensive package of terrors after which ‘Beyond His Imagination’ by Bill Meredith & Nestor Redondo saw a comicbook artist travel to the other side of death in search of inspiration, after which ‘Beat the Devil’ (Jack Oleck, Jack Katz & Tony DeZuniga) dealt with a religious thief who repented too late before ‘Goodbye, Nancy’ by John Albano, Vic Catan, Frank Redondo & Abe Ocampo saw a lonely child go to lethal lengths in her attempts to find a playmate…

A huge boost to the battered American industry at his time was the mass hiring of a flight of top Filipino artists whose stylish realism, experience in many genres and incredible work ethic made them an invaluable and highly influential factor of the horror boom. This collection especially is positively brimming with their superb illustrative excellence.

First in issue #100 however is ‘Round-Trip Ticket’ by Lore Shoberg & Tom Palmer, wherein a hippy truth-seeker learns a little more about alternate lifestyles than he bargained for. These comics chillers were frequently leavened by the mordant and wordless cartoon gags of the legendary Sergio Aragonés, who here contributes a trio of gems starring ‘Cain & Abel’ before Oleck, Mike Sekowsky & Dezuniga reveal the fate of an escaped convict who briefly became ‘The Man Who Stopped Time!’ After a page of ‘Abel’s Fables’ cartoons by Shoberg, Oleck & Alfredo Alcala brought the issue to a close with the dark period Voodoo yarn ‘Rest in Peace’…

Clever science fiction courtesy of Sheldon Mayer & Alex Niño opened #101 as ‘Small Invasion’ told a tale of love, double-cross and vengeance when an alien infiltrator discovers true romance whilst preparing to destroy humanity, after which ‘The Sacrifice’ (Oleck & June Lofamia) pitted Witch against Warlock in a game as old as time… Aragonés’ ‘Cain & Abel’ page then precedes ‘Hiding Place’ by Raymond Marais & Ruben Yandoc, with a murderous gangster picking the wrong home to invade after which an ‘Abel’s Fables’ page by Shoberg brings the issue to a close.

‘Make a Wish’ by Oleck & E.R. Cruz, led in #102 as a troubled boy periodically escapes the real world – until well-meaning adults take him in hand, whilst ‘The Loser’ (Oleck, Quico Redondo & Ocampo) details a hen-pecked husband who can’t even get his revenge right, and bracketed between a brace of Aragonés’ ‘Abel’s Fables’ Albano & Nestor Redondo shone with the salutary romantic chiller starring ‘A Lonely Monstrosity’…

House of Secrets #103 began with a tale on con men and time travel in ‘Waiting… Waiting… Waiting’ by Mayer & Rico Rival, whilst ‘No Bed of Roses’ (Albano & Sparling) told a unique tale of reincarnation and revenge, before a post-apocalyptic revelation proved that man could never change in ‘The Village on the Edge of Forever’ by Steve Skeates & Niño, before Aragonés wrapped another issue with one of his ‘Cain & Abel’ pages.

In #104 ‘Ghosts Don’t Bother Me… But…’ by Mayer & Nestor & Virgilio Redondo told the sorry story of a hitman who found that his victims didn’t always rest in peace, whilst ‘The Dead Man’s Doll’, by Bill Riley & Alcala and book-ended by two ‘Abel’s Fables’ by Aragonés and Albano, saw a beloved puppet take vengeance for his owner when the frail fellow was murdered by his uncaring carers, whilst ‘Lend Me an Ear!’ by Oleck & George Tuska, saw merciless college pranksters hoisted on their own petard after playing in a morgue…

Issue #105 featured ‘Vampire’ an effective game of Ten Little Indians played out in an old Nevada mine by Maxene Fabe & Gerry Taloac, the gloriously dry ‘Coming Together!’ (Skeates & Jim Aparo) which showed that courage wasn’t everything when demons invaded a small town, and a great old-fashioned murdered man’s revenge yarn in ‘An Axe to Grind’ by Skeates & Alcala, whilst #106, after a magical ‘Welcome to the House of Secrets’ by E. Nelson Bridwell & Wrightson, opened with ‘The Curse of Harappa’ (Fabe & Yandoc) as a man dedicated to wiping out superstition found it wasn’t all nonsense, after which ‘The Island of No Return’ by Albano & Niño displayed the epitome of monstrous abiding terror, and Oleck and Alcala closed the show with a turn-of-the-century joker getting his just desserts in ‘This Will Kill You’.

In #107 Alcala illustrated Oleck’s ‘Skin Deep’ a dark tale of magic masks and ugly people in New Orleans and, after an Aragonés ‘Cain & Abel’, Arnold Drake’s hilarious hen-pecked howler ‘The Night of the Nebish!’ before ‘Winner Take All’ by Skeates & Bernard Baily restores some lethal gravitas to the proceedings when a greedy tramp learns too late the life-lesson of when to let go…

In #108 ‘Act III Eternity’ by George Kashdan & Jess Jodloman describes how a washed up thespian unsuspectingly took method acting to unfortunate extremes whilst ‘A New Kid on the Block’ (Fabe & Rival) found a new wrinkle in the hoary legend of revivified mummies and ‘The Ghost-Writer’ by Riley & Taloac saw a dissolute author finally pay for taking undeserved credit during his successful career. This issue also featured two more bleak and black ‘Abel’s Fables’ by Aragonés,

HoS #109 held two longer tales; ‘Museum of Nightmares’ by Michael Pellowsky, Fabe & Alcala, in which animated waxworks haunted the last case of a great detective whilst in ‘…And in Death there is No Escape!’, (Albano & Niño) a callous bluebeard and actor of towering ego at last regretted the many sins that had led him to physical immortality and infamous renown. Issue #110 opened with an entertaining vampire tale in ‘Domain of the Dead’ by Oleck & Fred Carrillo, continued with supernatural murder-mystery ‘Safes Have Secrets Too’ by Pellowsky, Fabe & Flor Dery and finished on a beguiling high note with Oleck & Taloac’s ‘Possessed’ as a simple farmer searched in all the wrong places for a deadly witch…

Gerard Conway & Dezuniga provided a haunting tale of lonely lighthouses and other worlds in #111’s ‘A Watchtower in the Dark’, after which ‘Hair-I-Kari’ by Fabe & Romy Gamboa told a sordid tale of a magic baldness cure and Michael Fleisher & Taloac recounted a bold adventurer’s quest to defeat death in ‘The Land Beyond the Styx!’

In #112 ‘The Witch Doctor’s Magic Cloak’ by Fleisher & Rudy Nebres explored the grotesque consequences of alternative medicine and limb regeneration, after which Conway & Luis Dominguez pastiched Sherlock Holmes to great effect in ‘The Case of the Demon Spawn!’ whilst #113 opened with an all-out monster mash in the delightfully dark ‘Not So Loud – I’m Blind!’ by Doug Moench, Nick Cardy & Mike Sekowsky and after another Aragonés ‘Abel’s Fables’ Oleck & Nestor Redondo unleashed a truly nasty tale of child vampires in ‘Spawns of Satan’ …

HoS# 114 led with Fleisher & Frank Bolle’s ‘Night Game’ – a chilling sports-story of corruption in hockey and murder on ice – and close with the same writer’s ‘The Demon and the Rock Star!’, concerning one Hell of a comeback tour and illustrated by Talaoc, whilst #115 featured ‘Nobody Hurts my Brother!’ by Drake & Alcala: a tale of once-conjoined twins who shared each others hurts but not morals, after which ‘Remembered Dead’ (Kashdan & Niño) dealt with a wax museum guard’s unhealthy attachment to one of the exhibits, and ‘Every Man my Killer!’ by Kashdan and Nardo & E.R. Cruz, followed a tormented soul the entire world wanted dead…

‘Like Father, Like Son’ by Oleck & Nestor Redondo in #116 followed the rise and fall of a 18th century peasant who sold more than his soul for wealth, love and power, and ‘Puglyon’s Crypt’ by David Michelinie & Ramona Fradon explored with delicious vivacity the obsession of a man determined never to suffer premature burial…

House of Secrets #117 opened with a tale of medieval feuds and bloody vendettas that inevitably led to ‘An Eye for an Eye’ (Oleck & Ernie Chan), whilst ‘Don’t Cry for Uncle Malcolm’ Gerry Boudreau & Niño provided a phantasmagorical glimpse at the power of modern Voodoo, after which another couple of Aragonés ‘Abel’s Fables’ bracket a wickedly ironic vignette entitled ‘Revenge For the Deadly Dummy!’ by Skeates Alcala.

The sinister magic of Hollywood informs the chilling delayed vengeance saga ‘The Very Last Picture Show’ by Fleisher & George Evans which opens #118, after which a ghostly  ‘Turnabout’ (Skeates & Quico Redondo) proves too much for a cunning murderess, and Oleck & Fradon display a different look at leprechauns in ‘Nasty Little Man’…

This compendium concludes with issue #119 and ‘A Carnival of Dwarfs’ by Fleisher & Arthur Suydam, wherein an unscrupulous showbiz impresario comes between a gentle old man and his diminutive friends, and wedged between two last ‘Cain & Abel’ pages by Aragonés, Pellowsky, Kashdan & Alcala proved that primitive people are anything but when a callous anthropologist provided an ‘Imitation Monster!’ for an isolated tribe and lived to regret his foolishness…

If you crave witty, beautifully realised, tastefully splatter-free sagas of tension and imagination, not to mention a huge supply of bad-taste, kid-friendly cartoon chills, book your return to the House of Secrets as soon as you possibly can…
© 1972, 1973, 1974, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Footrot Flats book 4


By Murray Ball (Orin Books)
ISSN: 0156-6172

You may or may not have heard of Footrot Flats. For one of the most successfully syndicated strips in the world, it seems to have passed from memory with staggering rapidity. Created by Murray Ball on his return to his homeland of New Zealand, it ran from 1975 to 1994, with the first strip compendium released in 1978.

The feature ran in newspapers on four continents until 1994 when Ball retired it, citing reasons as varied as the death of his own dog and the state of New Zealand politics. Thereafter books of new material were released until 2000, resulting in 27 daily strip collections, 8 volumes of Sunday pages known as “Weekenders”, and 5 pocket books, plus ancillary publications such as “school kit”. There was a stage musical, a theme park and a truly superb animated film Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail Tale.

The well travelled and extremely gifted Mr. Ball had moved to England in the early 1960s, becoming a cartoonist for Punch as well as drawing strips for DC Thompson and Fleetway and producing a regular strip in Labour Weekly. After marrying he returned to the Old Country and resettled in 1974 – but not to retire.

Ball was busier than ever after he bought a small-holding on the North Island and farmed in his spare time (for anyone not brought up in the countryside that last bit was called “Sarcasm”). This inevitably led to the strip under review. Taking the adage “write what you know” to startling heights, the peripatetic artist promptly gave up sleeping altogether to craft these wickedly funny episodes about the highs and lows and especially “weirds” of the agricultural life as experience by the earthily metaphoric Wallace Footrot Cadwallader: one oaf and his dog.

Wal is a big, bluff farmer. He’s a regular bloke, likes his food; loves his sport – Rugby, Football and Cricket; each in its proper season. He owns a small sheep farm (the eponymous Footrot Flats) best described as “400 acres of swamp between Ureweras and the Sea”.

With his chief – and only – hand Cooch Windgrass (a latter-day Francis of Assisi), and a sheepdog who calls himself “Dog” Wal makes a living and is his own boss. Dog is the star (and narrator) of most of the strips: a cool know-all and blowhard, he’s utterly devoted to his, for want of a better term, Master – unless there’s food about or Jess (the sheepdog bitch from down the road) is in heat again.

Dry, surreal and wonderfully self-deprecating, the humour comes from the perfectly realised characters, human and otherwise, the tough life of a bachelor farmer and especially the country itself.

The cartooning is absolutely top-rate. Ball is one of those gifted few who can actually draw funnily. When combined with his sharp, incisive writing the result is pure magic. In the UK Titan Books published three volumes in the early 1990s and foreign editions have been released in German, Japanese, Chinese and American, but the same material is readily available from a number of publishers and retailers; here more than ever the internet is your friend.

The dry dramas and funny old businesses generally unfold as big lazy softie Dog, eking out his daily crusts (and oysters and biscuits and cake and sheep tails and scraps and chips and…) interacts with the sheep, cows, a bull, goats, hogs, ducks, bugs, cats, horses, geese and the occasional visiting relative) just trying to get by. He loves Wal but will always try to thwart him if the big bloke is trying to do unnecessarily necessary chores such as chopping down trees, culling livestock, or trying to mate with the pooch’s main rival Darlene “Cheeky” Hobson, the local town hairdresser.

This extra-large (262x166mm) landscape monochrome fourth volume covering strips from 1978-1979 comes from the Australian editions series and introduces still more unique characters with Ball hitting a creative peak and new heights of manic zaniness. There’s also a lovely section of new material created especially for this edition.

Wal’s prickly little niece Janice – known to all as Pongo – was now a regular as was the formidable and unflappable Dolores Monrovia Godwit Footrot, AKA Aunt Dolly, but new characters here include wise guy kid Rangi Wiremu Waka Jones, Dolly’s spoiled Corgi Prince Charles, and Pew, a sadistic and inventive magpie obsessed with revenge after Wal cut down his favourite tree.

Of course the big scene stealer is as ever Horse, a monstrous and invulnerable farm tomcat who terrifies every carbon-based life-form for miles around…

As well as a splendid selection of pieces which include Wal’s problems with Clydesdales (like horses but much bigger), calving season, the weather, Dog at the circus, possum trapping, the art of being manly, the horror of fencing posts and the Dog’s campaign against bloodsports, this tome also includes some too-rare huge single-panel gags showing the artist’s facility with zany, action-packed comedy set-pieces and his sheer cartoon inventiveness.

This collection is utterly captivating; expansive, efficient, exciting and just plain funny.

If I’ve convinced you to give the Dog a go, your favourite search engine will be all the help you need… Go on. Fetch!
© 1981 Murray Ball. All Rights Reserved.

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The Complete Crumb Comics volume 3: Starring Fritz the Cat


By Robert Crumb (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-0-93019-375-1

Robert Crumb is a unique creative force in the world of cartooning with as many detractors as devotees. His uncompromising, excoriating, neurotic introspections, 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 many of those engrossing compendia are now being reissued.

With the material in this third volume the isolated and secretive artist began to break into the wider world as his first great creation escaped from Crumb’s self-published minicomics and into regular paying venues…

Once again, if intemperate language, putative blasphemy, cartoon nudity, fetishism and comedic fornication are liable to upset you or those legally responsible for you, stop reading this review right here and don’t buy the book.

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’ shattering problems and comics were always paramount amongst them.

As had his older brother Charles, Robert immersed himself in the strips and cartoons of the day; not simply reading but feverishly creating his own. Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks and John Stanley were particularly influential, but also newspaper artists like 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 slavish self-control through religion with equal desperation. His early spiritual repression and flagrant, hubristic celibacy constantly 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, Devil Girl and the star of this particular show, the utterly amoral, unpredictable, almost human Fritz the Cat…

The rest is history…

From this point onwards the varied and exponentially impressive breadth of Crumb’s output becomes increasingly riddled with his often hard-to-embrace themes and declamatory, potentially offensive visual vocabulary as his strips grope towards the creator’s long-sought personal artistic apotheosis and this third volume covers material created and published between 1960-1966 as the self-tormented artist began to find a popular following in a strangely changing world.

The mercurial pictorial parade is preceded by another fascinating reminiscence from life-long friend Marty Pahls describing ‘The First Girl That Came Along’…

Crumb’s early artistic style was utterly transformed by the introduction of Rapidograph mapping pens and ‘Fritz the Cat, Ace Salesman’ (August 1964) has a raw, mesmerising scratchy linearity that belies the subversive sexual undercurrent of the piece, after which the feline philanderer went hard-core in ‘Fritz Comes on Strong’ (published in satire magazine Help! #22, January 1965). From the same issue ‘Harlem: a Sketchbook Report’ displayed the artist’s gift for visual reportage.

Fritz appeared in the silent and extremely trenchant bobbysoxer strip ‘Fred, the Teen-age Girl Pigeon’ (Help! #24, May 1965), whilst ‘Fritz Bugs Out’ (Cavalier, October 1964-February 1965) found the cat misbehaving in a Bohemian college setting before setting out on an extended hippie-style vision-quest whilst three dumb-show episodes of ‘The Silly Pigeons’ (November 1964-March 1965) perfectly display the creator’s hardwired slapstick roots.

‘Bulgaria: a Sketchbook Report’ (Help! #25, July 1965) saw the artist turn his probing pens on a Cold-War alien culture after which ‘Fritz the Cat, Special Agent for the CIA’ (March-May 1965) perfectly parodied the political scene and the planet’s fascination with suave super-spies. Next up are three more, increasingly surreal, snippets from ‘The Silly Pigeons’ (Spring 1965) and a swift swipe at the modern working woman in ‘Roberta’ (Spring 1965). Working in the production department of a vast greetings card company gave the insular Crumb access to new toys and new inspiration and he would return repeatedly to the white-collar world to for inspiration and pictorial spleen-venting…

‘Fritz the Cat, Magician’ (Summer 1965, and published in Promethean Enterprises #3, 1971) is a sweetly seductive puff-piece whilst the exigencies of earning a little extra cash clearly influenced the speculative pieces ‘Guitar Models of the Future’ (Yell #3, September 1965), Topps Promotional Booklet ‘The Road to Success’ (Fall 1965), ‘Illustrations for Nostalgia Enterprises’ (Fall 1965), ‘The Heap Years of the Auto’ (intended for Nostalgia Illustrated, Fall 1965) and ‘The Small Small Businessman’ (again intended for Nostalgia Illustrated, Fall 1965): all showing Crumb’s versatility, passion for the past and imagination.

‘Punchlines for Color Cards’ features the interior messages for the artworks amongst the large Colour Section which opens here with a spectacular succession of sketches designated ‘Letter to Marty Pahls’ (covering April 4th, June 3rd, October 30th 1960, May 28th and November 5th 1961), after which two ‘Cards to Mike Britt’ (December 1963-January 1964) are followed by the wonderful covers for ‘Fritz Bugs Out’ (February 1965), ‘Agent of the CIA’ (March 1965) and ‘Roberta’ (Spring 1965).

Swiftly following are the aforementioned ‘Selected Topps Monster Greetings Cards’ (Fall 1965) and general ‘Cards for American Greetings’ (1964-1966) which close the rainbow section. Back in black and white another ‘Card to Mike Britt’ precedes the ‘Cover for Fug #1’ (Fall 1965) and the untitled group sex-romp ‘Fritz the Cat’ intended for that debut Fug, before a copious collection of ‘Greetings Cards for American Greetings’ (1964-1966) and the ‘Cover for Gooseberry’ #2 (Fall 1965) complete this meander through the Master’s formative years.

If Crumb had been able to suppress his creative questing he could easily have settled for a lucrative career in any one of a number of graphic disciplines from illustrator to animator to jobbing comic book hack, but as this pivotal collection readily proves, the artist was haunted by the dream of something else – he just didn’t yet know what that was…

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 an unquenchable fire of challenging comedy and riotous rumination and this chronicle begins to show his growing awareness of where to look.

This superb series charting the perplexing pen-and-ink pilgrim’s progress is the perfect vehicle to introduce any (over 18) newcomers to the world of grown up comics. And if you need a way in yourself, seek out these books and the other fifteen as soon as conceivably possible…
Introduction © 1988 Marty Pahls. Greetings cards © 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1988 American Greetings Corporation. Monster Greetings trading cards © 1965 Topps Bubble Gum, Inc. All other contents © 1964, 1965, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1974, 1988 Robert Crumb. All rights reserved.