Category: Cartooning Classics

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If You Loved Me, You’d Think This was Cute – Uncomfortably True Cartoons About You


By Nick Galifianakis (Andrews McMeel)
ISBN: 978-0-7407-9947-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

Delivering biting wit, groundbreaking revelation or an excoriating assault with an unforgettable drawing and a few well-chosen words is one of the greatest gifts humans might possess. Even those stuck-up holdouts who pointedly claim to have “never read a comic” certainly enjoy strips or panels: a golden bounty of brief amusement demanding no commitment other than a moment’s close attention.

Truth be told, it’s probably in our genes and a bit like love, no?

According to the text preface by Carolyn Hax in this astoundingly funny collection, the cartoons gathered here by immensely gifted illustrator Nick Galifianakis were originally intended as little pictorial add-ons to accompany and supplement her nationally syndicated Advice Column (cited by Time magazine as America’s best…).

Apparently, Nick kept making them so funny that the pictures became an intrinsic and unmissable companion and in 2010 a whole bunch of the very best of them turned into this book.

Also included are an outrageous Foreword by his cousin Zach – yes, that movie comedian guy – sharing the kind of intimate incident insights and past humiliations only a close family member can; as well as a vast Acknowledgments section and insider information on the way Nick works in his Introduction. There are also concrete clues that his one true love is his dog ZuZu…

All that aside, what’s on offer here is a spellbinding examination of human relationships as seen from a natural raconteur’s perspective: devastatingly penetrating, sharp to the point of cruelty, warmly sympathetic, ultimately understanding and forgiving and, most importantly, laugh-out-loud, Horlicks-jetting-out-of-your-nose funny.

Or whatever your shared evening tipple of choice might be. I’m not saying that his gags make your body mysteriously manufacture Horlicks. That would be weird…

In this delicious monochrome paperback (or eBook, you choose: it’s an officially free albeit expensive world and you’re most likely some sort of consenting adult) you’ll see all the perilous wonders and tribulations of human relationships. Crucially, you will also find the search for love reduced to simple, forthright categories stuffed with beautifully rendered line drawings exemplifying the rights and wrongs of finding and keeping – or satisfactorily jettisoning – a partner.

It kicks off with the male perspective as seen through female eyes in ‘The Bastard Files’ before naturally offering an opposing viewpoint in ‘The Unfair Sex’…

The eternal hunt is deconstructed in ‘Finding the Ones(s)’ and expanded upon in ‘So This Was The One’ before learning how to negotiate deadly traps and bile-filled traumas of ‘The Bridal Industrial Complex’.

Weddings avoided or survived, everybody’s all reconciled to being one great big joyous clan, as proved here in the acerbically astute ‘Putting the Eff in Family’, but please remember, Love’s all about the children really, isn’t it? Thus a close-up-and-personal dissection of procreation in ‘Just Kidding’ which leads to the conclusion that some sons and daughters don’t ever grow up in ‘When We’re Five We’re All Artists…’

If confused or in trouble, the natural thing to do is depend on your closest comrades in the Battle of the Sexes, but ‘With Friends Like These’, clarity and understanding are early casualties. Still, if we’re being truly honest we can only trust our ‘Lusting Impressions’ before settling for ‘A Little Something on the Side’ to avoid getting ‘Ego-Tripped’.

At least our animal companions still offer us unconditional love… don’t they? Perhaps not, if the bestial examples in ‘Ark Types’ are to be believed and if you ‘Catch My Riff’…

When all’s said (sad?) and done then, perhaps it’s best to play safe and just try the ‘Flair of the Dog’ when looking for truly lasting love…

With recurring themes including Frogs and Princesses, malevolent Cupids, uncomprehending Adams and Eves, weary Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates and the absolutely crucial role of Lawyers and Counsellors in all relationship matters, this compendium of situational quandaries and unromantic entanglements is a superbly cathartic look at love and one every new home and generational estate should have in pride of place on the mantelpiece – near the heavy candlesticks, poker, poisons and matching tasers…

© 2010 by Nick Galifianakis. All rights reserved.

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Popeye volume 2: Wimpy and His Hamburgers (The E.C. Segar Popeye Sundays)


By Elzie Crisler Segar with Kevin Huizenga & various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1- 68396-668-5 (TPB/digital edition)

Popeye embarked in the Thimble Theatre comic feature with the instalment for January 17th 1929. The strip was an unassuming vehicle that had launched on 19th December 1919: one of many newspaper cartoon funnies to parody, burlesque and mimic the era’s silent movie serials. Its more successful forebears included C.W. Kahles’ Hairbreadth Harry or Ed Wheelan’s Midget Movies/Minute Movies – which Thimble Theatre replaced in media mogul William Randolph Hearsts’ papers.

All the above-cited strips employed a repertory company of characters playing out generic adventures based on those expressive cinema antics. Thimble Theatre’s cast included Nana and Cole Oyl, their gawky, excessively excitable daughter Olive, diminutive-but-pushy son Castor and Olive’s sappy, would-be beau Horace Hamgravy.

The series ticked along nicely for a decade: competent, unassuming and always entertaining, with Castor and Ham Gravy (as he became) tumbling through get-rich-quick schemes, frenzied, fear-free adventures and gag situations until September 10th 1928, when explorer uncle Lubry Kent Oyl gave Castor a spoil from his latest exploration of Africa.

It was the most fabulous of all birds – a hand-reared Whiffle Hen – and was the start of something truly groundbreaking…

Whiffle Hens are troublesome, incredibly rare and possessed of fantastic powers, but after months of inspired hokum and slapstick shenanigans, Castor was inclined to keep Bernice – for that was the hen’s name – as a series of increasingly peculiar circumstances brought him into contention with ruthless Mr. Fadewell, world’s greatest gambler and king of the gaming resort dubbed ‘Dice Island’.

Bernice clearly affected and inspired writer/artist E.C. Segar, because his strip increasingly became a playground of frantic, compelling action and comedy during this period…

When Castor and Ham discovered that everybody wanted the Whiffle Hen because she could bestow infallible good luck, they sailed for Dice Island to win every penny from its lavish casinos. Big sister Olive wanted to come along, but the boys planned to leave her behind once their vessel was ready to sail. It was 16th January 1929…

The next day, in the 108th episode of the saga, a bluff, brusquely irascible, ignorant, itinerant and exceeding ugly one-eyed old sailor was hired by the pathetic pair to man the boat they had rented, and the world was introduced to one of the most iconic and memorable characters ever conceived.

By sheer surly willpower, Popeye won readers hearts and minds: his no-nonsense, grumbling simplicity and dubious appeal enchanting the public until, by the end of the tale, the walk-on had taken up full residency. He would eventually make Thimble Theatre his own…

The Sailor Man affably steamed onto the full-colour Sunday Pages forming the meat of this curated collection covering March 6th 1932-November 26th 1933. This paperback prize is the second of four that will contain Segar’s entire Sunday canon: designed for swanky slipcases. Spiffy as that sounds, the wondrous stories are also available in digital editions if you want to think of ecology or mitigate the age and frailty of your spinach-deprived “muskles”…

Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester, Illinois on 8th December 1894, son of a handyman. Elzie’s early life was filled with the solid, earnest blue-collar jobs that typified his generation of cartoonists. The younger Segar worked as a decorator and house-painter, and played drums accompanying vaudeville acts at the local theatre and – when the town got a movie house – he played for the silent films. This allowed him to absorb the staging, timing and narrative tricks from close observation of the screen, and would become his greatest assets as a cartoonist. It was whilst working as the film projectionist, aged 18, he decided to draw for his living, and tell his own stories.

Like so many from that “can-do” era, Segar studied art via mail: in this case W.L. Evans’ cartooning correspondence course out of Cleveland, Ohio – from where Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster would launch Superman upon the world. Segar gravitated to Chicago and was “discovered” by Richard F. Outcault (The Yellow Kid, Buster Brown), arguably the inventor of newspaper comics.

Outcault introduced Segar around at the prestigious Chicago Herald and soon – still wet behind the ears – Segar’s first strip Charley Chaplin’s Comedy Capers debuted on 12th March 1916. Two years, Elzie married Myrtle Johnson and moved to Hearst’s Chicago Evening American to create Looping the Loop. Managing Editor William Curley saw a big future for Segar and promptly packed the newlyweds off to the Manhattan headquarters of the mighty King Features Syndicate.

Within a year Segar was producing Thimble Theatre for the New York Journal. In 1924, Segar created a second daily strip. The 5:15 was a surreal domestic comedy featuring weedy commuter/would-be inventor John Sappo …and his formidable, indomitable wife Myrtle (!).

A born storyteller, Segar had from the start an advantage even his beloved cinema couldn’t match. His brilliant ear for dialogue and accent shone out from his admittedly average melodrama adventure plots, adding lustre to stories and gags he always felt he hadn’t drawn well enough. After a decade or so – and just as cinema caught up with the introduction of “talkies” – he finally discovered a character whose unique sound and individual vocalisations blended with a fantastic, enthralling nature to create a literal superstar.

Incoherent, plug-ugly and stingingly sarcastic, Popeye shambled on stage midway through ‘Dice Island’ and once his very minor part played out, simply refused to leave. Within a year he was a regular. As circulation skyrocketed, he became the star.

In the less than 10 years Segar worked with his iconic sailor-man (January 1929 until the artist’s untimely death on 13th October 1938), the auteur constructed an incredible meta-world of fabulous lands and lost locales, where unique characters undertook fantastic voyages spawned or overcame astounding scenarios and experienced big, unforgettable thrills as well as the small human dramas we’re all subject to.

This was a saga both extraordinary and mundane, which could be hilarious or terrifying – frequently at the same time. For every trip to the rip-roaring Wild West or lost kingdom, there was a brawl between squabbling neighbours, spats between friends or disagreements between sweethearts – any and all usually settled with mightily-swung fists.

Popeye is the first Superman of comics, but he was not a comfortable hero to idolise. A brute who thought with his fists, lacking all respect for authority, he was uneducated, short-tempered and – whenever hot tomatoes batted their eyelashes (or thereabouts) at him – fickle: a worrisome gambling troublemaker who wasn’t welcome in polite society… and wouldn’t want to be.

The mighty marine marvel is the ultimate working-class hero: raw and rough-hewn, practical, with an innate and unshakable sense of what’s fair and what’s not, a joker who wants kids to be themselves – but not necessarily “good” – and someone who takes no guff from anybody. Always ready to defend the weak and with absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows, he was and will always be “the best of us”…

This current tranche of reprinted classics concentrates on the astounding full-page Sunday outings (here encompassing March 6th 1932 to November 1933, but sadly omits the absurdist Sappo toppers. You’ll need to track down Fantagraphics’ hardback tabloid collections from a decade ago to see those whacky shenanigans…

Since many papers only carried dailies or Sundays, but only occasionally both, a system of differentiated storylines developed early in American publishing, and when Popeye finally made his belated sabbath day move, he was already a well-developed character.

Ham and Castor had been the stars since Thimble Theatre’s Sundays since the ancillary feature began on January 25, 1925; they all but vanished once the mighty matelot stormed that stronghold. From then on, Segar concentrated on gag-based extended dramatic serials Mondays to Saturdays, leaving family-friendly japes for Sundays: an arena perfect for the Popeye-Olive Oyl modern romance to unfold. With this second volume, however, we get to play with Segar’s second greatest character creation: morally maladjusted master moocher J Wellington Wimpy…

Preceding the vintage views, this tome offers a lovely laudatory comic strip deconstruction, demystification and appreciation in ‘“Segar’s Wimpy” – An Introduction by Kevin Huizenga’. The experimental fabulist (Glen Ganges in The River At Night, Comix Skool USA, Riverside Companion) probes everything from how different illustrators handle the human dustbin to how Wimpy’s eyes are drawn…

When the wondrous weekend instalments began last volume, we saw Ham Gravy gradually edged out of romancing Olive. From there onwards, done-in-one gag instalments outlined an unlikely but enduring romance which blossomed (withered, bloomed, withered some more, hit cold snaps and early harvests – you get the idea…) as Olive alternately pursued her man and dumped him for better prospects.

To be fair, Popeye always vacillated between ignoring her and moving mountains to impress her. Since she always kept her options open, he spent a lot of time fighting off – quite literally – her other gentlemen callers. A mercurial creature, the militantly maidenly Miss Oyl spent as long trying to stop her beau’s battles (a tricky proposition as he spent time ashore as an extremely successful “sprize fighter”) as civilise her man, yet would mercilessly batter any flighty floozy who cast cow eyes at her devil-may-care suitor…

In those formative episodes, Castor became Popeye’s manager and we revelled in how originally-philanthropic millionaire Mr. Kilph moved from eager backer to demented arch enemy paying any price to see Popeye pummelled. The sailors’ opponents included husky two-fisted Bearcat, Mr. Spar, Kid Sledge, Joe Barnacle, Kid Smack, Kid Jolt, The Bullet, Johnny Brawn, an actual giant dubbed Tinearo and even trained gorilla Kid Klutch.

None were tough enough and Kilph got crazier and crazier…

History repeated itself when a lazy and audaciously corrupt ring referee was introduced as a passing bit player. The unnamed, unprincipled scoundrel kept resurfacing and swiping more of the limelight: graduating from minor moments in extended, trenchant, scathingly witty sequences about boxing and human nature to speaking – and cadging – roles…

Among so many timeless supporting characters, mega moocher J. Wellington Wimpy stands out as the complete antithesis of feisty big-hearted Popeye, but unlike any other nemesis I can think of, this black mirror is not an “emeny” of the hero, but his best – maybe only – friend…

As previously stipulated, the engaging Mr. Micawber-like coward, moocher and conman debuted on 3rd May 1931 as an unnamed referee officiating a bombastic month-long bout against Tinearo. He struck a chord with Segar who made him a (usually unwelcome) fixture. Eternally, infernally ravenous and always soliciting (probably on principle) bribes of any magnitude, we only learned the crook’s name in the May 24th instalment. The erudite rogue uttered the first of many immortal catchphrases a month later.

That was June 21st – but “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” – like most phrases everybody knows, actually started as “Cook me up a hamburger, I’ll pay you Thursday”. It was closely followed by my personal mantra “lets you and him fight”…

Now with a new volume and another year, we open with more of the same. The romantic combat between Olive, Popeye and a string of rival suitors continues, resulting in the sailor winning a male beauty contest (by force of arms), and brutally despatching a procession of potential boyfriends.

As hot-&-cold Olive warms to the moocher, there’s more of Wimpy’s ineffable wisdom on show, as he reinvents himself as the final arbiter of (strictly negotiable) judgement…

Whether it’s her beaux or who’s hardest hit by government policies – sailors like Popeye or restaurant owners like Rough-House – Wimpy has opinions he’s happy to share… for a price.

Mr. Kilph turns up again, arranging a bout between Popeye and his new million-dollar robot, but even with Wimpy officiating, the sailor comes up trumps. The moocher briefly becomes our matelot’s best pal, but blows it by putting the moves on Olive after tasting her cooking…

Another aspect of Popeye’s complex character is highlighted in an extended sequence running from May 29th  through July 17th1932, one that secured his place in reader’s hearts.

The sailor was a rough-hewn orphan who loved to gamble and fight. He was proudly not smart and superhumanly powerful, but he was a big-hearted man with an innate sense of decency who hated injustice – even if he couldn’t pronounce it.

When starving waif Mary Ann tries to sell him a flower, Popeye impetuously adopts her, inadvertently taking her from the brutal couple who use her in a begging racket.

Before long the kid is beloved of his entire circle – even Olive – and to support her, Popeye takes on another prize fight: this time with savage Kid Panther and his unscrupulous manager Gimbler…

He grows to truly love her and there’s a genuine sense of happy tragedy when he locates her real and exceedingly wealthy parents. Naturally Popeye gives her up…

That such a rambunctious, action-packed comedy adventure serial could so easily turn an audience into sobbing, sentimental pantywaists is a measure of just how great a spellbinder Segar was. Although rowdy, slapstick cartoon violence remained at a premium – family values were different then – Segar’s worldly, socially- probing satire and Popeye’s beguiling (but relative) innocence and lack of experience keeps the entire affair in hilarious perspective whilst confirming him as an unlikely and lovable innocent, albeit one eternally at odds with cops and rich folk…

Following weeks of one-off gags – like Olive improbably winning a beauty contest and a succession of hilarious Wimpy episodes (such as cannily exposing himself to score burgers from embarrassed customers and ongoing problems with sleep-eating) – a triptych of plot strands opens as Miss Oyl engages a psychiatrist to cure Popeye of fighting, even as the sailor discovers Wimpy has such an affinity with lower life forms that he can be used to lure all the flies and sundry other bugs from Rough-House’s diner…

The third strand has further-reaching repercussions. Popeye has been teaching kids to fight and avoid spankings which has understandably sparked a riot of rebellion, bad behaviour and bad eating habits. Now, distraught parents need Popeye to set things right again…

Naturally it goes too far once the hero-worshipping kids start using the sailor-man as a source of alt-fact schooling too…

We constantly see softer sides of the sailor-man as he repeatedly gives away most of what he earns – to widows and “orphinks” – and exposes his crusading core with numerous assaults on bullies, animal abusers and romantic rivals, but when the war of nerves and resources between Wimpy and Rough-House inevitably escalates, Popeye implausibly finds himself as “the responsible adult”.

That means being referee in a brutal and ridiculous grudge match settled in the ring, with all proceeds going to providing poor kids with spinach. The bout naturally settles nothing but does have unintended consequences when the moocher is suddenly reunited with his estranged mother after 15 years…

Tough men are all suckers for a sob story and even Rough-House foolishly amplifies the importance and regard people supposedly feel for the now-homeless little old lady’s larcenous prodigal. It’s a move the moocher can’t help but exploit…

As the Sunday Pages followed a decidedly domestic but rowdily riotous path, the section was increasing given over to – or more correctly, appropriated – by the insidiously oleaginous Wimpy: an ever hungry, intellectually stimulating, casually charming and usually triumphant conman profiting in all his mendicant missions.

Whilst still continuing Popeye’s pugilistic shenanigans , the action of the Sunday strips moved away from him hitting quite so much to alternately being outwitted by the unctuous moocher or saving him from the vengeance of the furious diner-owner and passionately loathing fellow customer George W. Geezil. The soup-slurping cove began as an ethnic Jewish stereotype, but like all Segar’s characters swiftly developed beyond his (now so offensive) comedic archetype into a unique person with his own story… and another funny accent. Geezil was the chief and most vocal advocate for murdering the insatiable sponger…

Wimpy was incorrigible and unstoppable – he even became a rival suitor for Olive Oyl’s unappealingly scrawny favours – and his development owes a huge debt to his creator’s love and admiration of comedian W.C. Fields.

A mercurial force of nature, the unflappable mendicant is the perfect foil for common-man-but-imperfect-hero Popeye. Where the sailor is heart and spirit, unquestioning morality and self-sacrifice, indomitable defiance, brute force and no smarts at all, Wimpy is intellect and self-serving greed, freed from all ethical restraint or consideration, and gloriously devoid of impulse-control.

Wimpy literally took candy from babies and food from the mouths of starving children, yet somehow Segar made us love him. He is Popeye’s other half: weld them together and you have an heroic ideal… (and yes, those stories are all true: Britain’s Wimpy burger bar chain was built from the remnants of a 1950s international merchandising scheme seeking to put a J Wellington Wimpy-themed restaurant in every town and city).

The gags and exploits of the two forces of human nature build riotously in 1933, ever-more funny and increasingly outrageous.

Having driven Rough-House into a nervous collapse, plundered farms, zoos and the aquarium and committed criminal impersonation and actual fraud, Wimpy then relentlessly targets the cook’s business partner Mr. Soppy: bleeding him dry as visiting royalty Prince Wellington of Nazilia…

Even being run out of town and beaten so badly that he’s repeatedly hospitalised can’t stop his crafty contortions. He does, however, discover a useful talent: musical gifts that all but enslave his audiences…

Eventually, the master beggar triumphs over all and gets to eat his fill… and must deal with the consequences of his locust-like consumption…

Popeye seems unable to stop him. Half the time he’s helpless with laughter at the moocher’s antics, and when not. there are his major prize fights with 500lb wrestler Squeezo Crushinski and human dinosaur Bullo Oxheart. Naturally Wimpy is referee for both those clashes of the titans and makes out like a bandit…

The only real pause to the seeming dominance of the schemer is when he falls for new diner waitress Lucy Brown. She’s currently spending all her time with manly stud Popeye, but a quiet word with Olive Oyl should have cleared Wimpy’s path.

Should have, but didn’t, and in truth results in Popeye and Olive opening their own eatery in competition with Rough-House, leading to a ruthless cutthroat culinary cold war with the polite parasite reaping the spoils…

The laugh-out-loud antics seem impossible to top, and maybe Segar knew that. He was getting the stand-alone gag-stuff out of his system: clearing the decks and setting the scene for a really big change….

These tales are as vibrant and compelling now as they’ve ever been and comprise a world classic of graphic literature that only a handful of creators have ever matched. Within weeks (or for us, next volume) the Thimble Theatre Sunday page changed forever. In a bold move, the dailies blood-and-thunder adventure serial epics traded places with the Sunday format: transferred to the Technicolor “family pages” splendour where all stops might be pulled out…

Segar famously considered himself an inferior draughtsman – most of the world disagreed and still does – but his ability to weave a yarn was unquestioned, and grew to astounding and epic proportions in these strips. Week after week he was creating the syllabary and graphic lexicon of a brand-new art-form: inventing narrative tricks and beats that generations of artists and writers would use in their own cartoon creations. Despite some astounding successors in the drawing seat, no one has ever bettered Segar’s Popeye.

Popeye is fast approaching his centenary and well deserves his place as a world icon. How many comics characters are still enjoying new adventures 94 years after their first? These volumes are the perfect way to celebrate the genius and mastery of E.C. Segar and his brilliantly flawed superman. These are tales you’ll treasure for the rest of your life and superb books you must not miss…
Popeye volume 2: Wimpy and His Hamburgers is copyright © 2022 King Features Syndicate, Inc./™Hearst Holdings, Inc. This edition © 2022 Fantagraphics Books Inc. Segar comic strips provided by Bill Blackbeard and his San Francisco Academy of Comic Art. “Segar’s Wimpy” © 2022 Kevin Huizenga. All rights reserved.

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The Complete Peanuts volume 7: 1963-1964



By Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics Books/Canongate Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-723-0 (HB) 978-1683960058 (US PB) 978-1847678140 (UK HB)

Peanuts is unequivocally the most important comic strip in the history of graphic narrative. It is also the most deeply personal. Cartoonist Charles M Schulz crafted his moodily hilarious, hysterically introspective, shockingly philosophical surreal epic for half a century: 17,897 strips from October 2nd 1950 to February 13th 2000. He died from the complications of cancer the day before his last strip was published…

At its height, the strip ran in 2,600 newspapers, translated into 21 languages in 75 countries. Many of those venues are still running perpetual reprints, as they have ever since his death. In his lifetime, book collections, a merchandising mountain and television spin-offs had made the publicity-shy artist a billionaire.

None of that really matters. Peanuts – a title Schulz loathed, but one the syndicate forced upon him – changed the way comics strips were received and perceived: proving cartoon comedy could have edges and nuance as well as pratfalls and punchlines.

Following animator Bill Melendez’s Foreword – relating how he became the TV arm of the Peanuts phenomenon – the timeless episodes of play, peril, psychoanalysis and personal recrimination resume as ever in marvellous monochrome, with more character introductions, plot advancements and the creation of even more traditions we all revere to this day…

As ever our focus is quintessential inspirational loser Charlie Brown who, with increasingly fanciful, high-maintenance mutt Snoopy, remain largely at odds with a bombastic, mercurial supporting cast, all hanging out doing what at first sight seems to be Kids Stuff.

As always, daily gags centre on playing, musical moments, pranks, interpersonal alignments and a seasonal selection of sports, all leavened by agonising teasing, aroused and crushed hopes, the making of baffled observations and occasionally acting a bit too much like grown-ups.

However, with this tome, the themes and tropes that define the series (especially in the wake of those animated TV specials) become mantra-like yet endlessly variable. A consistent theme is Charlie Brown’s inability to fly a kite, and here the never-ending war with wind, gravity and landscape reaches absurdist proportions…

Mean girl Violet, prodigy Schroeder, self-taught psychoanalyst and world dictator-in-waiting Lucy van Pelt, her brilliantly off-kilter little brother Linus and dirt-magnet “Pig-Pen” are fixtures honed to generate joke-routines and gag-sequences around their own foibles, but some early characters – like Shermy and Patty – gradually disappear as new attention-attracting players join the mob. Here that’s thoroughly modern lad “5” and his forward-looking non-conformist family “the 95472s”…

At least Charlie Brown’s existential crisis/responsibility vector/little sister Sally has settled into being just another trigger for relentless self-excoriation. As she grows, pesters librarians, forms opinions and propounds steadfastly authoritarian views, he is increasingly relegated to being her dumber, yet always protective, big brother…

Resigned – almost – to life as an eternal loser singled out by cruel and capricious fate, the Boy Brown is helpless meat in the clutches of openly sadistic Lucy. When not playfully sabotaging his efforts to kick a football, she monetises her spiteful verve via a 5¢ walk-in psychoanalysis booth: ensuring that whether at play, in sports, flying that kite or just brooding, the round-headed kid truly endures the character-building trials of the damned…

At least she’s consistent and equally mean to all. Over these two years, her campaign to curb that weird beagle and cure her brother of his comfort blanket addiction reaches astounding heights and appalling depths – such as when she wins a school science fair by exhibiting Linus as a psychological case study.

This volume opens and closes with many strips riffing on snow, and with Lucy constantly and consistently sucking all the joy out of the white wonder stuff…

Her family ally in the Blanket War is Grandma, but that never-pictured elder’s efforts to decouple Linus from the fabric comforter that sustains him in the worst of times are becoming easier to counter, even as Snoopy’s schemes to swipe the shroud become more elaborate and effective…

Lucy also finds time to master skipping and train others in the wonders of her “jump rope”, but ultimately her unflinchingly high standards lead to accusations of “crabbiness”. The prodigy cannot, however, master the intricacies of kicking a football herself, to the woe of all around her…

Perpetually sabotaged, and facing abuse from every female in his life, Charlie Brown endures fresh hell in the form of smug, attention-seeking Frieda, who demands constant approval for her “naturally curly hair” and champions the cause of shallow good looks over substance. Even noble Snoopy is threatened, as she drags – literally – her boneless, functionally inert but still essentially Feline cat Faron into places where cats just don’t belong. When not annoying the ever-hungry, entertainment-starved beagle, Frieda constantly cajoles the unconventional hound into chasing rabbits like a real dog!

Endless heartbreak ensues once Charlie Brown foolishly lets slip his closet romantic aspirations regarding the “little red-haired girl”: a fascination outrageously exploited by others whenever the boy doesn’t simply sabotage himself…

With great effect, Schulz began assiduously celebrating more calendar occasions as perennial events in the feature: adding Mothers and Fathers’ Days, the Fourth of July and National Dog Week strips to established yearly milestones like Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween/Great Pumpkin Day and Beethoven’s Birthday.

Other notable events include persistent scholastic prevarications and a futile quest to attain that one elusive baseball bubble-gum card for Charlie’s set (Joe Shlabotnik, if you have a spare…), and the gang’s epic and sustained attempt to clean Snoopy’s labyrinthine multistorey doghouse.

At this time, the beagle was growing into the true star of the show, with his primary quest for more and better food playing out against an increasingly baroque inner life, wild encounters with birds, dance marathons, philosophical ruminations, and evermore popular catchphrases. Here, that sense of untrammelled whimsy leads to drama and rabies shots for Snoopy…

Sports injuries play a major role too, with baseball manager/pitcher Charlie Brown benched by “Little Leaguers elbow”, leading to a winning streak for the team. The event also spawns a late diagnosis of “eraserophagia” (nervous chewing of school pencil rubbers). At least the gang gamely rally round, with Linus becoming a lauded sporting superstar of the pitcher’s mound, whilst all and sundry are happy to scream at Charlie whenever he puts a pencil anywhere near his mouth…

The bizarre beagle magnified his strange interior development in all ways. Other than an extended Cold War duel for possession of the cherished comfort blanket, the manic mutt adapted to that darn cat and sundry rabbits but still made time to philosophise, eat, dance like a dervish, stand on his head, converse with falling leaves, play with sprinklers, befriend and battle birds, eat more, stoically brave the elements and discover the potent power of placards and marches…

The Sunday page had debuted on January 6th 1952: a standard half-page slot offering more measured fare than regular 4-panel dailies. Thwarted ambition, sporting failures, explosive frustration – much of it kite-related – and Snoopy’s inner life became the segment’s signature denouements as these weekend wonders afforded Schulz room to be at his most visually imaginative, whimsical and weird…

Particular moments to relish this time involve an increasingly defined, sharply-cornered romantic triangle involving Lucy, Schroeder and Beethoven; Charlie Brown’s backyard camping excursions; copious “pencil-pal” communications; poor penmanship; the power of television and decline of comic books; Lucy’s invention of “immoral” sporting tactics; an outbreak of tree-climbing in advance of the regular autumnal leaf collapse; horrendous rainfall; the growth of avian protest marches; Linus’ mural of the Story of Civilisation and eventual run for School President (with Charlie Brown as Veep!) and a new feature declaring what “Happiness Is…” at the start of each Sunday strip…

To wrap it all up, Gary Groth celebrates and deconstructs the man and his work in ‘Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000’, preceded by a copious ‘Index’ offering instant access to favourite scenes you’d like to see again…

Readily available in hardcover, paperback and digital editions, this volume guarantees total enjoyment: comedy gold and social glue metamorphosing into an epic of spellbinding graphic mastery that still adds joy to billions of lives, and continues to make new fans and devotees long after its maker’s passing.
The Complete Peanuts © 2007, United Features Syndicate, Ltd. 2014 Peanuts Worldwide, LLC. The Foreword is © 2006, Bill Melendez. “Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000” © 2007 Gary Groth. All rights reserved.

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The Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories



By John Stanley, Walt Kelly, Richard Scarry, Jack Bradbury, Klaus Nordling, Mike Sekowsky, Alberto Giolitti & various: edited and designed by Craig Yoe with Clizia Gussoni (IDW Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-60010-773-3(HB); 978-1-68405-009-3(TPB); eISBN: 978-1-68406-352-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: The Clue is in the Title… 10/10

Justifiably revered for brilliant, landmark newspaper strip Pogo, or perhaps his wonderful Our Gang tales, the incredible Walt Kelly also has a pretty strong claim to owning traditional western culture’s Christmas – at least in terms of childhood experience. From 1942 until he quit comic-books for newsprint, Kelly produced stories and magazines dedicated to the season of Good Will for publishing giant Dell.

Santa Claus Funnies and Christmas with Mother Goose were a Holidays institution in both their Four Color and Dell Giant incarnations, and the sheer beauty and charm of Kelly’s art defined what Christmas should be for generations. Kelly transferred his affinity for the best of all fantasy worlds to the immortal Pogo but still was especially associated with the Festive season. Many publications sought out his special touch. The Christmas 1955 edition of Newsweek even starred Kelly and Co on the cover.

Thanks to dedicated preserver of America’s Comics history Craig Yoe, we can add more great creators and stories to our communal archive of seasonal joy, with this cracking tome celebrating Yuletide comic classics.

Wrapped up here are old masters and vintage delights from Santa Claus Funnies # 61, 91,128, 175, 205, 302, 361, 867, 1154 & 1274 (spanning 1944-1962) plus 1962’s Santa Claus Funnies #1 and material from A Christmas Treasury #1 1954; Sleepy Santa (1948); Ha Ha Comics #49 (1947); Santa and the Pirates (1953); Here Comes Santa (1960); Christmas at the Rotunda, Giant Comics #3 (1957) and Christmas Carnival volume 1 #2 (1954). This superb funfest opens with a silent short by Kelly revealing the Big (in red) Man’s working practice, & Mo Gollub introducing ‘The Christmas Mouse’ (from Santa Clause Funnies #126 and #175) before we enjoy a Seasonal message (illustrated by Mel Millar) revealing ‘Hey Kids, Christmas Comics!’

‘How Santa Got his Red Suit’ is a superbly imaginative, gnome-stuffed origin fable by Kelly from Santa Claus Funnies # 61, after which H.R. Karp & Jack Bradbury reveal the salutary saga of ‘Blitzen, Jr.’ as first seen in Ha Ha Comics #49, whilst a tragically uncredited team disclose in prose-&-picture format the magical adventure of ‘Santa and the Pirates’, taken from a booklet Premium released by Promotional Publishing Co. NYC.

As rendered by the inimitable John Stanley, SCF #1154’s ‘Santa’s Problem’ explores the good intentions and bad habits of polar bears, before Mike Sekowsky contributes a concise, workmanlike adaptation of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ (from A Christmas Treasury #1) before Kelly returns with the heart-warming tale of ‘A Mouse in the House’ (SCF #128).

Stanley strikes again with ‘The Helpful Snowman’ (Here Comes Santa) offering aerial assistance to Kris Kringle whilst Christmas at the Rotunda offers a classy version of ‘The Shoemaker and the Elves’ courtesy of Elsa Jane Werner & Richard Scarry, after which cognoscenti can see potent prototypes for Pogo characters in 1945’s ‘Christmas Comes to the Woodland’ (SCF #91): another whimsical Kelly classic.

Imbecilic but well-meaning elf Scamper causes mayhem, prompting ‘Santa’s Return Trip’ in a wry delight from John Stanley & Irving Tripp (from SCF #1274), after which Stanley & Dan Gormley craft an epic voyage for determined rugrats Cathy and David as they deliver ‘A Letter for Santa’ (Santa Claus Funnies #1).

Another masterful Kelly prose-&-picture fable then recounts the sentimental journey of ‘Ticky Tack, the Littlest Reindeer’ (SCF #205) and the animal crackerz continue as a lost puppy finds friendship and a new home in ‘Sooky’s First Christmas’ (Stanley & Gormley from SCF #867)…

Charlton Comics were late to the party for X-mas strips, but their glorious Giant Comics #3 from 1957 provides here both Frank Johnson’s anarchic ‘Lil’ Tomboy in It Was the Day Before Christmas…’ and an extra-length action-packed romp for Al Fago to masterfully orchestrate in ‘Atomic Mouse in The Night before Christmas’. Separating those yarns is a deft updating of Clement Clark Moore’s ubiquitous ode in ‘The Night before Christmas’ by Dan Gormley from A Christmas Treasury #1…

In 1947, Kelly set his sights on consolidating a new Holiday mythology and succeeded with outrageous aplomb in ‘The Great Three-Flavoured Blizzard’ (Santa Claus Funnies #175) as an unseasonal warm spell precipitates a crisis and necessitates the making of a new kind of snow, before fabulous Klaus Nordling contributes a stylish comedy of errors with ‘Joe and Jennifer in the Wonderful Snowhouse’ from Christmas Carnival volume 1 #2.

Bringing things to a close Dan Noonan concocts a staffing crisis for Santa to solve with the aid of ‘Teddy Bear in Toyland’ (SCF #91, 1950) after which we enjoy a moment of sober reflection as ‘The Christmas Story’ – according to St. Matthew’s gospel and illuminated by Alberto Giolitti – (A Christmas Treasury #1) reminds us that for many people it’s not just about loot, excess and fantasy.

Kelly then ushers us out with a brace of end pieces encompassing a poetic hunt for the old boy and a silent silly symphony from ‘The Carollers’…

It absolutely baffles me that Kelly and his peers’ unique and universally top-notch Christmas tales – and Batman’s too for that matter – are not re-released every November for the Yule spending spree. Christmas is all about nostalgia and good old days and there is no bigger sentimental sap on the planet than your average comics punter. And once these books are out there their supreme readability will quickly make converts of the rest of the world.

Just you wait and see…
The Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories © 2018 Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Material reprinted: Sleepy Santa © 1948 Belda Record & Publishing Co. Ha Ha Comics #49 © Creston Publications Corporation. Santa and the Pirates © 1953 Promotional Publishing Co. NYC. Christmas at the Rotunda © 1955 Ford Motor Company and Artists and Writers Guild, Inc. Giant Comics #3 © 1957 Charlton Comics Group Christmas Carnival vol. 1 #2 St. John Publishing Corp. ©1954. © Western Printing & Lithographing Co. 1948, 1950, 1951, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1961, 1962. © 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, Oscar Lebek/Dell Publishing, Western Printing & Lithographing Co.

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Some Frightful War Pictures illustrated by W. Heath Robinson


By W. Heath Robinson (Last Post Press)
ISBN: 978-1-4733-3483-0 (PB/Digital edition)

Not many people enter the language due to their own works and efforts. Fewer still last the course and remain relevant. Can you recall what “doing an Archer” means? We’ll soon be calling it “doing a Boris”… or “Truss” or “Sunak” or…

Moreover, when such endeavours also challenge egregious public perceptions and seek to correct outrageous out-of-control attitudes whenever  governments seek to enflame the worst of humanity for immediate political gain – and yes I am drawing parallels with now – these heroes need to be remembered just as much as The Fallen of so many wars. On this day of all days, never forget that, and also please recall that all the dead we commemorate are only that way because politicians and diplomats on all sides of every conflict failed to do their jobs right and only cartoonists and satirists ever called them out for it…

William Heath Robinson was born on 31st May 1872 into an artistic dynasty. His father Thomas was chief staff artist for Penny Illustrated Paper and older brothers Thomas and Charles were also illustrators of note. After proper schooling, William tried – unsuccessfully – to become a watercolour landscape artist before turning to the family trade.

In 1902, he released fairy story Uncle Lubin before finding graphic work at The Tatler, Sketch, Strand, Bystander and London Opinion. During this period, he developed the humorous whimsy and penchant for eccentric over-engineered mechanical devices for simple tasks which made him a household name.

During The Great War, Heath Robinson uniquely avoided the jingoistic stance and fervour of many of his competitors, preferring to satirise the absurdity of conflict itself in every periodical venue and volumes of collected cartoons. When the shooting stopped, he went on to a career of phenomenal success and creativity in cartooning, illustration and advertising.

Sadly he found himself doing it all over again in World War Two…

William Heath Robinson died on 13th September 1944.

There was a mild resurgence of interest in his efforts some years ago (from whence stems this timely collection) and if you’re interested you could scour the internet or even real bookshops for Hunlikely! (1916) or The Saintly Hun: A Book of German Virtues (1917). More general joys and niggles can be seen in Flypapers (1919), Get On With It (1920), The Home Made Car (1921), Quaint and Selected Pictures (1922), Humours of Golf (1923) and Let’s Laugh (1939), and in larger compendia Heath Robinson At War (1941) and The Penguin Heath Robinson (1946)

His literary collaborations can be found in The Incredible Inventions Of Professor Branestawm – 1933, accompanying the novels of N Hunter – or in Mein Rant with R. F. Patterson (1940).

In the 1970s and 1980s Duckworth reprinted a selection of albums including Inventions, Devices, The Gentle Art of Advertising, Heath Robinson at War, Humours of Golf, How To Be A Motorist, How To Be A Perfect Husband, How To Live in a Flat, How To Make your Garden Grow, How To Run a Communal Home, How To Build a New World, and, ominously and rather perspicaciously foresightfully, How To Make the Best of Things…

Some of these may still be found at or ordered through your local Library Service. Both Ribaldry and Absurdities were reissued in the 1990s and were readily available online last month…

There is very little point of in-depth analysis in the limited space available here, but surely some degree of recommendation is permissible. In Absurdities (1934), Heath Robinson personally gathered his favourite works into a single volume that more than any other describes the frail resilience of the human condition in the Machine Age and particularly how the English used to deal with it all. They are also some of his funniest panels.

In Railway Ribaldry – a commission from The Great Western Railway Company to celebrate their centenary in1935 (and more power to them; can you imagine a modern company paying someone to make fun of them?) – he examined Homo Sapiens Albionensis, as steel and rails and steam and timetables gradually bored their way into the hearts and minds of us folk. Much too little of his charming and detailed illustrative wit is in print today, a situation that cries out for rectification more than any other injustice in the sadly neglected field of cartooning and Popular Arts.

I apologize for the laundry-list nature of the above, but I’m not sorry to have produced it and neither will you be when you find any the wonderful, whimsical, whacky work of William Heath Robinson, Wizard of Quondam Mechanics.

In the spirit of his unique contribution to war and peace, this review ostensibly concerns his first combat collection which is readily available in digital editions. Published in 1915, Some Frightful War Pictures reprinted gags and observations first published in The Sketch and The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News: assaulting both the despised and press-pilloried “Boche” and the Empire’s own inept High Command with genteel mockery.

In complex, convoluted cartons with titles like ‘The True Reason of the War (July 1914)’, ‘Nach Paris!’, ‘Hague Convention Defied!’, ‘Kolossal!’, ‘The War Lord at the Front!’ and ‘War Komforts!’, the artist repeatedly points out how alike all sides are, whilst subtly hinting that other ways of settling issues are always available…
© 2017 The Estate of William Heath Robinson.

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Popeye Classics volume 8: I Hates Bullies and More


By Bud Sagendorf, edited and designed by Craig Yoe (Yoe Books/IDW Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-676-8 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-68406-044-3

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Sweet & Sour Salty Sailor Celebrations… 9/10

How many cartoon classics can you think of still going after a century? Here’s one…

There are a few fictional personages to enter communal world consciousness – and fewer still from comics – but this grizzled, bluff, uneducated, visually impaired old tar with a speech impediment is possibly the most well-known of that august bunch.

Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester, Illinois on 8th December 1894. His father was a general handyman, and the boy’s early life was filled with the solid, dependable blue-collar jobs that typified the formative years of his generation of cartoonists. Segar was a decorator, house-painter and also played drums; accompanying vaudeville acts at the local theatre.

When the town got a movie-house, Elzie played silent films, absorbing all the staging, timing and narrative tricks from keen observation of the screen. Those lessons would become his greatest assets as a cartoonist. It was while working as the film projectionist, at age 18, that he decided to become a cartoonist and tell his own stories.

Like so many others in those hard times, he studied art via mail – W.L. Evans’ cartooning correspondence course out of Cleveland, Ohio – before gravitating to Chicago where he was “discovered” by Richard F. Outcault: regarded by most in the know today as the inventor of modern newspaper comic strips with The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown. The celebrated pioneer introduced Segar around at the prestigious Chicago Herald. Still wet behind the ears, the kid’s first strip, Charley Chaplin’s Comedy Capers, debuted on 12th March 1916.

In 1918, Segar married Myrtle Johnson and moved to William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago Evening American to create Looping the Loop, where Managing Editor William Curley foresaw a big future for Segar and promptly packed the newlyweds off to New York: HQ of the mighty King Features Syndicate. Within a year Segar was producing Thimble Theatre, (launching December 19th 1919) in the New York Journal: a smart pastiche of cinema and knock-off of movie-inspired features like Hairbreadth Harry and Midget Movies, with a repertory of stock players acting out comedies, melodramas, comedies, crime-stories, chases and especially comedies for vast daily audiences. It didn’t stay that way for long…

The core cartoon cast included parental pillars Nana & Cole Oyl; their lanky, cranky, highly-strung daughter Olive; diminutive-but-pushy son Castor and the homely ingenue’s plain and (so very) simple occasional boyfriend Horace Hamgravy (latterly, plain Ham Gravy).

Thimble Theatre had already run for a decade when, on January 17th 1929, a brusque, vulgar “sailor man” shambled into the daily ongoing saga of hapless halfwits. Nobody dreamed the giddy heights that stubbornly cantankerous walk-on would reach…

In 1924, Segar created a second daily strip. Surreal domestic comedy The 5:15 starred weedy commuter and would-be inventor John Sappo and his formidable spouse Myrtle. This strip endured – in one form or another – as a topper/footer-feature to accompany the main Sunday page throughout the author’s career, and even survived his untimely death, eventually becoming the trainee-playground of Popeye’s second great humour stylist – Bud Sagendorf.

After Segar’s premature passing in 1938, Doc Winner, Tom Sims, Ralph Stein and Bela Zambouly all took on the strip as the Fleischer Studio’s animated features brought Popeye to the entire world, albeit a slightly variant vision of the old salt of the funny pages. Sadly, none had the eccentric flair and raw inventiveness that had put Thimble Theatre at the forefront of cartoon entertainments. And then, finally, Bud arrived…

Born in 1915, Forrest “Bud” Sagendorf was barely 17 when his sister – who worked in the Santa Monica art store where Segar bought his drawing supplies – introduced the kid to the master cartoonist who became his teacher and employer as well as a father-figure. In 1958, after years on the periphery, Sagendorf finally took over the strip and all the merchandise design, becoming Popeye’s prime originator…

With Sagendorf as main man, his loose, rangy style and breezy scripts brought the strip itself back to the forefront of popularity and made reading it cool and fun all over again. Bud wrote and drew Popeye in every graphic arena for 24 years. When he died in 1994, his successor was controversial “Underground” cartoonist Bobby London.

Bud had been Segar’s assistant and apprentice, and in 1948 became exclusive writer/artist of Popeye’s comic book exploits. That venture launched in February of that year: a regular title published by America’s unassailable king of periodical licensing, Dell Comics.

On his debut, Popeye was a rude, crude brawler: a gambling, cheating, uncivilised ne’er-do-well, but was soon revered as the ultimate working-class hero. Raw and rough-hewn, he was also practical, with an innate, unshakable sense of what’s fair and what’s not: a joker who wanted kids to be themselves – but not necessarily “good”. Above all else he was someone who took no guff from anyone…

Naturally, as his popularity grew, Popeye mellowed somewhat. He was still ready to defend the weak and had absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows, but the shocking sense of dangerous unpredictability and comedic anarchy he initially provided was sorely missed… except not in Sagendorf’s yarns…

Collected in this superb full-colour hardback/digital edition are Popeye #35-39, crafted by irrepressible “Bud”: collectively spanning January-March 1956 to January-March 1957.

Stunning, nigh stream-of-consciousness slapstick sagas are preceded by an effusively appreciative ‘Society of Sagendorks’ briefing by inspired aficionado, historian and publisher Craig Yoe, offering a mirthful mission statement, and enhanced by another tantalising display of ephemera and merchandise in ‘A Bud Sagendorf Scrapbook’. This time we focus on the 1980 Robert Altman movie with candid cast photos, Sagendorf illustrated tie-in magazine articles, and multi-lingual cartoon iterations.

We rejoin the ceaseless parade of laughs, surreal imagination and thrills with quarterly comic book #35, opening with a monochrome inside front cover gag concerning the latest hobby of the sailor’s ward after which ‘Thimble Theatre presents Popeye and Swee’Pea in “Wishing” or Spinach is Still King!”’, wherein the bored “infink” shambles upon an alien incursion and tricks the haughty invaders out of their irresistible, unbeatable Wish-o-Matic machine…

Soon the impressionable kid is king of the world and Popeye is forced into drastic action…

The family is afloat for follow-up bedtime tale ‘I Hates Bullies!’ as the mariner, Olive and Wimpy are lured to an exotic island and seduced into liberating its people from enslaving Boss Black Allen…

Back-up feature Sappo was by now reduced to gullible foil and hapless landlord to the world’s worst lodger. Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle – The Professor with the Atomic Brain would callously inflict the brunt of his genius on the poor schmuck. Here that means inventing super-fast growing redwoods but being too self-absorbed to keep the seeds out of the rain…

The issue ends with an endpaper prose fable about a scientist who regretted getting cats to chase his lab mice and a back cover gag of bath night for Swee’Pea…

Issue #36 (April-June) began with ‘King Popeye of Popilania!’ as the sailor man sets out to create the perfect country, but soon finds kinging it is a lot of work, especially if your friends are all ambitious traitors and other nations think they can push you around…

For a while things look bleak for the Popilania, until the desperate King unleashes secret weapon General Wimpy…

An engaging Micawber-like coward, cad and conman, the insatiably ravenous J. Wellington Wimpy debuted in the newspaper strip on May 3rd 1931 as an unnamed, decidedly partisan referee in one of Popeye’s pugilistic bouts. Scurrilous, aggressively humble and scrupulously polite, the devious oaf struck a chord and Segar made him a fixture. Preternaturally hungry, ever-keen to solicit bribes and a cunning coiner of many immortal catchphrases – such as “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” and “Let’s you and him fight” – Wimpy was the perfect foil for our straight-shooting action hero and increasingly stole the entire show… and anything else unless it was very heavy or extremely well nailed down. He proved to be the ultimate deterrent in an extended war that depended on keeping troops fed…

Popeye an’ Swee’Pea then turn the tables on villainous reprobate Poopdeck Pappy after the sailor’s crooked father fakes his own death in ‘Pappy’s Spook’, before Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle – The Atomic Brain! conjures fresh chaos with his terrifying reducing pills in advance of another text tale. ‘Canned Nuts’ details the downfall of a prudent squirrel who had a plan (but no tin-opener) in advance of a back cover gag of Popeye and Wimpy fishing…

Cover-dated July-September, Popeye #37 opens with a monochrome inside cover about Swee’Pea’s garden before main event ‘The Search for the Spinach Icebox’ sees our well-travelled hero targeted by secret society WAFPOM (World Association For Prevention Of Muscles) after he buys two million tons of the miraculous mineral rich vegetable. With attacks mounting, he needs someplace safe to store his leafy treasure and on Wimpy’s suggestion heads to Antarctica, where WAFPOM and even stranger foes are waiting…

‘Amateur Inventor!’ Sappo gives O.G. Wotasnozzle a taste of his own medicine next, before ‘The Big Sting’ heralds the end of another issue with the prose history of a bullying bee…

Issue #38 opens with a monochrome pet gag and an extended colour epic as Popeye and The Gang meet ‘The Dog Who Wore A Crown” – or – Going To the Dogs!’ A quick visit with King Blozo finds the scatty ruler absent and his dog ruling in his stead. Most annoyingly, the monarch has appointed Popeye Royal Dog Sitter. As the dutiful sailor surrenders to the inevitable, things get more complicated when the moody pooch – AKA “Birdseed” – decides Swee’Pea should be in charge…

‘Bottle Fish!’ sees the text fixture shift to the comic’s centre with the tale of a mean bully stuck behind glass, after which Wotasnozzle and Sappo both go overboard in a fishing contest augmented by weird science and the chaos concludes with another black-&-white inner cover pet prank, preceding a new year of fun and frolic as #39 (January-March 1957) feature more monochrome madness for Swee’Pea’s pooch…

The gang are rattled in lead story ‘The Mountain that Talked Back!’ as Olive’s deteriorating nerves prompt a vacation on ominously named “Thunder Island” and a badly-timed stay on a volcano in full eruption mode…

Everything changes once Popeye realise the shakes are fakes and a gang of criminals are making them patsies in a plot and our hero breaks out the spinach…

Prose parable ‘Cow?’ reveals how bovine Mildred briefly lived her dream to be a horse, after which Wotasnozzle seeks to improve communication by reinventing words in ‘What Did He Say?’ before Swee’Pea and Birdseed monopolise interior monochrome and exterior color gags with devasting effect.

Outrageous and side-splitting, these universally-appealing yarns are evergreen examples of narrative cartooning at its most surreal and inspirational. Over the last nine decades Thimble Theatre’s most successful son has delighted readers and viewers around the world. This book is simply one of many, but each is sure-fire, top-tier entertainment for all those who love lunacy, laughter, frantic fantasy and rollicking adventure. If that’s you, add this compendium of wonder to your collection.
Popeye Classics volume 8 © 2016 Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Popeye © 2016 King Features Syndicate. ™ Heart Holdings Inc.

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Popeye Classics volume 7: “Nothing” and More


By Bud Sagendorf, edited and designed by Craig Yoe (Yoe Books/IDW)
ISBN: 978-1-63140-447-4 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-62302-786-5

How many cartoon classics can you think of still going after a century? Here’s one…

There are a few fictional personages to enter communal world consciousness – and fewer still from comics – but a grizzled, bluff, uneducated, visually impaired old sailor with a speech impediment is possibly the most well-known of that select bunch.

Elzie Crisler Segar was born in Chester, Illinois on 8th December 1894. His father was a general handyman, and the boy’s early life was filled with the solid, dependable blue-collar jobs that typified the formative years of his generation of cartoonists. Segar worked as a decorator, house-painter and also played drums; accompanying vaudeville acts at the local theatre.

When the town got a movie-house, Elzie played silent films, absorbing all the staging, timing and narrative tricks from keen observation of the screen. Those lessons would become his greatest assets as a cartoonist. It was while working as the film projectionist, at age 18, that he decided to become a cartoonist and tell his own stories.

Like so many others in those hard times, he studied art via mail, specifically W.L. Evans’ cartooning correspondence course out of Cleveland, Ohio, before gravitating to Chicago where he was “discovered” by Richard F. Outcault – regarded by most in the know today as the inventor of modern newspaper comic strips with The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown.

The celebrated pioneer introduced Segar around at the prestigious Chicago Herald. Still wet behind the ears, the kid’s first strip, Charley Chaplin’s Comedy Capers, debuted on 12th March 1916.

In 1918, Segar married Myrtle Johnson and moved to William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago Evening American to create Looping the Loop, where Managing Editor William Curley foresaw a big future for Segar and promptly packed the newlyweds off to New York: HQ of the mighty King Features Syndicate. Within a year Segar was producing Thimble Theatre, (launching December 19th 1919) in the New York Journal: a smart pastiche of cinema and knock-off of movie-inspired features like Hairbreadth Harry and Midget Movies, with a repertory of stock players acting out comedies, melodramas, comedies, crime-stories, chases and especially comedies for vast daily audiences. It didn’t stay that way for long…

The core cartoon cast included parental pillars Nana and Cole Oyl; their lanky, highly-strung daughter Olive; diminutive-but-pushy son Castor; and the homely ingenue’s plain and (very) simple occasional boyfriend Horace Hamgravy (latterly, just Ham Gravy). Thimble Theatre had successfully run for a decade when, on January 17th 1929, a brusque, vulgar “sailor man” shambled into the daily ongoing saga of hapless halfwits. Nobody dreamed the giddy heights that stubborn cantankerous walk-on would reach…

In 1924 Segar created a second daily strip. The 5:15 was a surreal domestic comedy featuring weedy commuter and would-be inventor John Sappo and his formidable wife Myrtle. This one endured – in one form or another – as a topper/footer-feature accompanying the main Sunday page throughout the author’s career, and even survived his untimely death, eventually becoming the trainee-playground of Popeye’s second great humour stylist: Bud Sagendorf.

After Segar’s premature passing in 1938, Doc Winner, Tom Sims, Ralph Stein and Bela Zambouly all took on the strip, as the Fleischer Studio’s animated features brought Popeye to the entire world, albeit a slightly variant vision of the old salt of the funny pages. Sadly, none had the eccentric flair and raw inventiveness that had put Thimble Theatre at the forefront of cartoon entertainments. And then, finally, Bud arrived…

Born in 1915, Forrest “Bud” Sagendorf was barely 17 when his sister – who worked in the Santa Monica art store where Segar bought his drawing supplies – introduced the kid to the master cartoonist who became his teacher and employer as well as a father-figure. In 1958, after years on the periphery, Sagendorf finally took over the strip and all the merchandise design, becoming Popeye’s prime originator…

With Sagendorf as main man, his loose, rangy style and breezy scripts brought the strip itself back to the forefront of popularity and made reading it cool and fun all over again. Bud wrote and drew Popeye in every graphic arena for 24 years. When he died in 1994, his successor was controversial “Underground” cartoonist Bobby London.

Young Bud had been Segar’s assistant and apprentice, and in 1948 became exclusive writer and artist of Popeye’s comic book exploits. The series launched in February of that year in a regular title published by America’s unassailable king of periodical licensing, Dell Comics.

On debut, Popeye was a rude, crude brawler: a gambling, cheating, uncivilised ne’er-do-well. He was soon exposed as the ultimate working-class hero: raw and rough-hewn, practical, but with an innate, unshakable sense of what’s fair and what’s not; a joker who wanted kids to be themselves – but not necessarily “good” – and someone who took no guff from anyone…

Naturally, as his popularity grew, Popeye mellowed somewhat. He was still ready to defend the weak and had absolutely no pretensions or aspirations to rise above his fellows, but the shocking sense of dangerous unpredictability and comedic anarchy he initially provided was sorely missed… except not in Sagendorf’s yarns…

Collected in this superb full-colour hardback/digital edition are Popeye #30-34, crafted by irrepressible “Bud”: collectively spanning September/November 1954 to October/December 1955. Stunning, nigh stream-of-consciousness slapstick sagas are preceded by an effusively appreciative ‘Society of Sagendorks’ briefing by inspired aficionado, historian and publisher Craig Yoe, offering a mirthful mission statement.

Augmenting that is another tantalising display of ephemera and merchandise in ‘A Bud Sagendorf Scrapbook’ presenting Coca-Cola Company-funded comic strip themed postcards distributed to WWII servicemen; original art, tin toys; a Popeye Chalkboard; Get Well Soon and Birthday card art plus images on cups and mugs.

We rejoin the ceaseless parade of laughs, surreal imagination and thrills with quarterly comic book #30, opening with text tale ‘The Bigger They Are -’ detailing, across the inside front-&-back covers, the story of Throckmorton …biggest tomcat in the world!

Another wild ride in begins in ‘Desert Pirates (a story of Evil Haggery)’ as Popeye’s ruthless nemesis The Sea Hag uses witchcraft, seduction, brainwashing and principally hamburgers to turn Wimpy into her weapon against the old sea salt. Naturally, when the hero blunders into her arid ambush, the scurvy faithless traitor then betrays her to Popeye – it’s just his nature…

An engaging Micawber-like coward, cad and conman, the insatiably ravenous J. Wellington Wimpy debuted in the newspaper strip on May 3rd 1931: an unnamed, decidedly partisan referee in one of Popeye’s pugilistic bouts.

Scurrilous, aggressively humble and scrupulously polite, the devious oaf struck a chord and Segar gradually made him a fixture. Preternaturally hungry, ever-keen to solicit bribes and a cunning coiner of many immortal catchphrases – such as “I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” and “Let’s you and him fight” – Wimpy was the perfect foil for our simple action hero and increasingly stole the entire show… and anything else unless it was very heavy or extremely well nailed down…

Follow-up yarn ‘Popeye An’ Swee’Pea in “Danger, Lunch!”’ resorts to tireless domestic themes as a quiet meal with Olive becomes an assault course after the anarchic and precocious “infink” gets bored and amuses himself with a hammer and chemistry set…

Smartly acknowledging a contemporary trend for sci fi fun, Sagendorf had introduced ‘Axle and Cam on the Planet Meco’ in #26: a robotic father and son indulging in wild romps on other worlds. Here they observe Earth television shows and the lads decides what his world needs is beanie hats, sidewalk refreshment stands and fun with dragons…

Cover-dated January/March 1955, #31 also opens and closes with a prose yarn adorning inside front and back. ‘Apple Vote!’ exposes the shocking behaviour of a retired racehorse with a sweet tooth after which ‘Thimble Theatre Presents Popeye An’ Swee’Pea in “Mud!”’ finds unconventional family unit Popeye, Swee’Pea and villainous reprobate Poopdeck Pappy deemed dysfunctional by Olive. Her eccentric efforts to save the kid and make him a gentleman are resisted by all involved with extreme vigour…

Just as the sailor man idly daydreams of being a monarch, the wacky ruler of Spinachovia returns in ‘Popeye and King Blozo in “Exile!” or “Bein’ King is Fer de Boids!!!”’ with the maritime marvel unwisely trading cap for crown  and learning a salutary lesson about people in general and being careful of what you wish for, after which ‘Axle and Cam on the Planet Meco’ sees the mechanical moppet pay a fraught and frightening visit to Earth…

The issue concludes with a back cover strip starring ‘Popeye and Swee’Pea’ inspired by baby pictures…

Popeye #32 (April/June) opens with epic thrill-fest ‘Alone! or Hey! Where is Everybody? or Peoples is All Gone!’ as humans are abducted from all over the coast, leading the sailor man into another ferocious battle with evil machines and his most persistent enemy, after which our stars swap sea-voyages for western climes in “a tale of gold and cactus” entitled ‘Lorst!’

Set some years previously, the story reveals how Popeye made his fortune prospecting – despite and ultimately because of a little trouble with his newly adopted kid…

Sagendorf was a smart guy in tune with popular trends and fashions as well as understanding how kids’ minds worked. His tales are timeless in approach and delivery. As television exponential expanded, cowboys were king, with westerns dominating both large and small screens and plenty of comics. Thus, many episodes saw Popeye as a horse-riding sagebrush wanderer who ran a desert railroad when he wasn’t prospecting or exploring. I don’t think he ever carried a gun though…

The changing times dictated a shift in back-up features and the final ‘Axle and Cam on the Planet Meco’ exploit saw their world in chaos after Cam tried to transplant the human fashion for lawns to his own planet. Text tale ‘Catfish! detailed a meeting between fish feline and mutt and a wordless desert inspired back cover strip starring ‘Popeye and Swee’Pea’ wrapped thigs up.

The next issue (#33 July/September) offered a monochrome ‘Popeye and Swee’Pea’ house-wrecking short before main feature ‘Trouble-Shooter’ sees the tireless “hoomanitarian” set up as a helping hand for folk with troubles. Sadly, the gesture attracts some real nuts like cowardly King Hinkle of Moola who needs a patsy to fight rival ruler the King of Boola…

Returning to western deserts, Popeye and Swee’Pea swap sea-voyages for arid plains in ‘Monskers!’ and encounter a gigantic dinosaur which is not what it seems…

The replacement back-up feature was actually a return of Segar-spawned old favourites. Sappo was now hapless landlord to world’s worst lodger Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle, who callously inflicts the brunt of his genius on the poor schmuck. In ‘I’m the Smartest Man in the World!’, the lunatic fringe scientist decides to end late payment harassment by uninventing money…

A prose vignette reveals the fate of cowboy pony George who has ‘A Long Tail!’, before the fun pauses with a back-cover baseball gag starring Popeye An’ Swee’Pea.

The year and this archive close with #34, starting with more ‘Popeye An’ Swee’Pea’ baseball exploits on the monochrome inside front cover before Thimble Theatre Presents sailor man, Olive, Wimpy and the kid who endure a nautical nightmare storm that leaves our cast castaway on an island of irascible, invisible folk in eponymous saga ‘Nothing!’

Next, Popeye An’ Swee’Pea revisit western deserts to dig in the dirt and face ‘Uprising! or The Red Man Strikes Back! or Birds of a Feather!’ as the kid contends with and eventually befriends Indian infant Big Chief Thunder Eagle Jr. Sadly their play war on the white man is misunderstood by Wimpy who calls in not the cavalry but the US Army…

The manic mirth multiplies exponentially when Professor O.G. Wotasnozzle proves his insane ingenuity and dangerous lack of perspective in ‘Stop Thief!! or Please Halt! or Burglarproof House!’ before the fun concludes with one last text treat in transformative tale ‘Fish Fly!’ and a back cover gag proving why adults like Popeye should listen to kids like Swee’Pea…

Outrageous and side-splitting, these all-ages yarns are evergreen examples of narrative cartooning at its most surreal and inspirational. Over the last nine decades Thimble Theatre’s most successful son has unfailingly delighted readers and viewers around the world. This book is simply one of many, but each is sure-fire, top-tier entertainment for all those who love lunacy, laughter, frantic fantasy and rollicking adventure. If that’s you, add this compendium of wonder to your collection.
Popeye Classics volume 7 © 2015 Gussoni-Yoe Studio, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Popeye © 2015 King Features Syndicate. ™ Heart Holdings Inc.

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Edwurd Fudwupper FIBBED BIG – Explained by Fannie Fudwupper with Berkeley Breathed Helping Slightly


By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co./Storyopolis)
ISBN: 978-0-316-14291-5 (HB) 978-0-316-14425-4 (Album PB)

I’ve been watching The News and getting upset by politicians’ obnoxiously blatant disregard for probity and dearth of ethical standards, not just in my own bankrupt-in-every-aspect Britain, but everywhere else too – except maybe New Zealand (Nice One, Jacinda).

As is always the case in such circumstances, I turned to comics and cartoons for solace and found this. Please read, enjoy and act according to the dictates of your conscience, if you have one…

Please Note: any similarity to other malign, malformed, bribe-fattened, emotionally stunted, eternally misbehaving overprivileged schoolboys currently serving at the Nation’s expense is just the way things are these days…

Throughout the 1980s and for half of the 1990s, Berke Breathed dominated the newspaper strip scene with agonisingly funny, edgy-yet-surreal political fantasy Bloom County and, latterly, Sunday-only spin-off Outland. They are all fully available digitally – so don’t wait for my reviews, just get them now!

At the top of his game and swamped with awards like Pulitzers, Breathed retired to concentrate on books like Red Ranger Came Calling, Mars Needs Moms! or Flawed Dogs: The Year End Leftovers at the Piddleton “Last-Chance” Dog Pound and sequel Flawed Dogs: The Shocking Raid on Westminster. They rank among the best America has ever produced. Get them too.

His first foray into the field was 1991’s A Wish for Wings That Work: a Christmas parable featuring his signature character, and the most charmingly human one. Between 2003 and 2008, Breathed revived Opus as a Sunday strip, before eventually capitulating to his career-long antipathy for the manic deadline pressures of newspaper production and often-insane, convoluted contradictions of editorial censorship.

It seemed his ludicrous yet appealing cast of misfits – all deadly exponents of irony and common sense residing in the heartland of American conservatism – were gone for good, until the internet provided a platform for Breathed to resume his role as a gadfly commentator on his own terms. Since 2015, Bloom County has mocked, exposed and shamed capitalism, celebrities, consumerism, popular culture, politicians, religious leaders and people who act like idiots. Donald Trump figures prominently and often, but that might just be coincidence…

These later efforts, unconstrained by syndicate pressures to not offend advertisers, are also available as book collections. You’ll want those too, and be delighted to learn that all Breathed’s Bloom County work is available in digital formats – fully annotated to address the history gap if you didn’t live through events such as Iran-Gate, Live-Aid, Star Wars (both cinematic and military versions), assorted cults and televangelists experiencing less than divine retribution and sundry other tea-cup storms that make us Baby Boomers so rude and defensive…

Not quite as renowned, but every inch as crucial to your enjoyment, is the lost gem on display today: a paean to the power of principles and effects of honesty, all wrapped up in a children’s book about a mean kid with no moral compass…

As previously stated, after the all-too-brief, glittering outing as a syndicated strip cartoonist and socio-political commentator (usually the very same hallowed function) Breathed left strips to create children’s picture books.

He lost none of his perception, wit or imagination, and actually got better as an artist. Even so, he never quite abandoned his entrancing cast of characters and always maintained the gently excoriating, crusading passion and inherent bittersweet invective which underscored those earlier narratives.

Moreover, he couldn’t ignore that morally uplifting component of his work that so upset hypocrites, liars, greedy people and others who let us all down while carping on about being unfairly judged and how we don’t really understand complex issues. Trust me, we – and Breathed – understand perfectly…

This crushingly captivating cartoon catechism ruminates on the cost and worth of family and idiocy of arrogant aggrandizement and self-congratulatory self-importance. It is lensed through the fabled truism of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, as little sister Fannie complains again about her idiot brother…

Edwurd Fudwupper tells lies because he wants to, because he can and because of the chaotic consequences his dissembling causes. The only thing he isn’t, is convincing. Always in trouble, he narrowly and perpetually weasels out of instant retribution due to his facility for fibs, but now Fannie recalls the day when that stopped working…

After a couple of whoppers lead to the disappearance of a neighbour and destruction of beloved family property, Edwurd’s automatic response of lying big and compounding nonsense with bigger balderdash sparks community calamity, mass military deployment and imminent alien invasion. As the Earth stands still in the moment before utter disaster, a small voice speaks out…

Delivered in sharp and lyrical rhyme like a weaponised Dr. Seuss story, and with lush lavish illustrations painted in the stunningly grotesque exaggeration beloved of Ralph Steadman and Terry Gilliam cartoons, this is a book to trigger personal reflection, audit consciences and promote better behaviour, but it will make grown citizens howl and children sit up and pay attention. It’s also deliciously funny. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll think hard before calling in sick or blaming the dog – or opposition or asylum seekers – for eating your homework…
© 2000 Berkeley Breathed. All rights reserved.

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Ken Reid’s Football Funnies – The First Half


By Ken Reid (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-883-8 (HB/Digital edition)

If you know British Comics, you’ll know Ken Reid.

He was one of a select and singular pantheon of rebellious, artistic prodigies who – largely unsung and regularly uncredited – went about transforming British Comics, entertaining millions and inspiring hundreds of those readers to become cartoonists too.

Reid was born in Manchester in 1919 and apparently drew from the moment he could hold an implement. Aged nine, he was confined to bed for six months with a tubercular hip, and occupied himself by constantly scribbling and sketching. He left school before his fourteenth birthday and won a scholarship to Salford Art School, but never graduated.

He was, by all accounts, expelled for cutting classes and hanging about in cafes. Undaunted, he set up as a commercial artist, but floundered until his dad began acting as his agent.

Ken’s big break was a blagger’s triumph. Accompanied by his unbelievably supportive and astute father, Ken talked his way into an interview with the Art Editor of the Manchester Evening News and came away with a commission for a strip for its new Children’s Section.

The Adventures of Fudge the Elf debuted in 1938 and ran until 1963, with only a single, albeit lengthy, hiatus from 1941 to 1946 when Reid served in the armed forces.

From the late 1940s onwards, Reid dallied with comics periodicals. Super Sam, Billy Boffin, Foxy were published in Comic Cuts and he sent submissions to prestigious market leader The Eagle, before a fortuitous family connection – Dandy illustrator Bill Holroyd was Reid’s brother-in-law – brought DC Thomson managing editor R.D. Low to his door with a cast-iron offer of work.

On April 18th 1953 Roger the Dodger debuted in The Beano with Reid drawing the feature until 1959. He created numerous others, including the fabulously mordant doomed mariner Jonah, Ali Ha-Ha and the 40 Thieves, Grandpa and Jinx amongst many more.

In 1964, Reid and fellow under-appreciated superstar Leo Baxendale jumped ship to work for DCT’s arch rival Odhams Press. This gave Ken greater license to explore his ghoulish side: concentrating on comic horror yarns and grotesque situations in strips like Frankie Stein, and The Nervs in Wham! and Smash!, as well as more visually wholesome but still strikingly surreal fare as Queen of the Seas and Dare-a-Day Davy.

In 1971 Reid devised Face Ache – arguably his career masterpiece – for new title Jet. The hilariously horrific strip was popular enough to survive the comic’s demise – after a paltry 22 weeks – and was carried over in a merger with stalwart periodical Buster where it thrived until 1987. Ken Reid died that year from the complications of a stroke he’d suffered on February 2nd . He was at his drawing board, putting the finishing touches to a Face Ache strip. On his passing, the strip was taken over by Frank Diarmid who drew it until cancelation in October 1988.

All his working life, Reid innovated; constantly devising new strips like Harry Hammertoe the Soccer Spook, Wanted Posters, Martha’s Monster Makeup, Tom’s Horror World, Creepy Creations and World-Wide Weirdies. He was also always open to fresh opportunities. This collection gathers a quartet of series he created for specialist comics weeklies Scorcher and Scorcher and Score: both specialist boys’ periodicals blending strips, photo-features and general sports journalism dedicated to the beautiful game.

Preceding them is text feature ‘Kicking it Off…’ by Reid’s son Antony J., describing the circumstances that saw a man in his 50s with no appreciable interest in or knowledge of football accept an offer from a desperate editor and pull off a hat trick (plus one!) of unique series by displaying the seldom seen side of the great scribbler: his inspirational and ironclad professionalism and admirable “have-a-go” attitude…

Scorcher kicked off on January 10th 1970, became Scorcher and Score after 77 issues (by merging with Score ‘n’ Roar in early July 1971) and called “time” with the October 5th 1974 issue – a further 171 outings. Its best bits were ultimately absorbed into Tiger, but Annuals and Summer Specials continued to appear until 1984.

As suits the nature of the magazines, each Reid picture riot (originally running from January 1970 to mid-1972) is individually hilarious but in total a bit formulaic. That was never a problem at the time as editors held the belief that readers had a definite shelf-life and would quickly move on to better things… like Chaucer, Len Deighton, or the back pages of The Sun or Daily Mirror…

Moreover, Reid was meant to be a half-time palate cleanser. Straight football comics content was already covered by traditional – if often unconventional – strips like Kangaroo Kid, Royal’s Rangers, Bobby of the Blues, Paxton’s Powerhouse, Lags Eleven, Jack of United, Jimmy of City, and later classics Hotshot Hamish, Nipper, and Billy’s Boots.

The line-up for Scorcher #1 included Reid’s Sub (He’s always on the sidelines!), with unfit, unloved and decidedly fiendish Duggie Dribble on the touchline. He was always there: as well as being hated by Biggleswick Wanderers’ manager and other players, Dribble was useless on the field. His disappointment turned to malice and he spent his days trying to take out his own teammates just so he could get a game…

Before being replaced in the August 15th edition, Duggie conspired to maim, poison, hypnotise, overfeed, electrocute his colleagues, and regularly employed other tactics, like sabotaging kit, relocating matches, wrecking pitches and even occasionally offering to play for the opposition in his fervour for a kickabout in front of roaring crowds – who didn’t much like him either.

Each episode is a single page masterclass in black comedy, macabre timing and grotesque excess that would do the Addams Family proud…

Substituting for Dribble’s doomed tactics, Football Forum (August 15th 1970-January 16th 1971) took a satirical and often absurdly surreal swipe at TV pundits as a panel of experts answered questions posed by readers – for the usual £1 postal order despatched to the lucky cove who fired Reid’s imagination that week. The panel included referee Percival Peeps, Centre-Forward Charlie Cannon and a guest speaker carefully tailored to deliver maximum laughs. Subjects covered included ‘The best way to take a penalty’; ‘is soccer too dirty?’; ‘players’ hair length’; ‘are players overpaid?’, ‘are referees too soft?’ and ‘how to deal with teams who play the offside trap’ but the answers were never helpful and frequently led to mayhem, carnage and use of the damp sponge…

Arguably, Reid’s most well-regarded contribution was Manager Matt, who began his career in the January 23rd edition. Pompous and self-important Matt was fed up with the standard of positions he was offered at the Labour Exchange and was fortunate enough to be passing by Mudchester United’s ground just as the corrupt and doddering Board of Directors agreed that what they needed was a complete fool to take the blame for their mismanagement and malfeasance. Soon the perfect scapegoat was in situ: a man who knew nothing about anything…

To be fair, it was the perfect set-up, because the stadium was a shambolic neglected ruin and the players were little better than beasts and bullies. Over the next 29 weeks, team and neophyte tyrant slowly gelled into a bunch of useless strangers who hated each other but somehow managed to win a few matches and even go on a world tour that enabled them to bring home a sack full of European silverware…

Manic and compulsive, these tales are less about football than the fundamentals of slapstick comedy, but they are astoundingly entertaining.

Concluding this first foray into football fun comes a strip you can’t help but feel is Reid being utterly honest with himself and the readers.

Hugh Fowler – The man who HATES football! launched in the August 14th issue (and ran until May 6th 1972), with a man very much the prototype of Basil Fawlty fulminating and thundering over his loathing for the Beautiful Game.

Each week he attempted to spoil matches, maim players and even excise the sport from the ken of mankind. Obviously he ultimately failed in his endeavours as people still gather to sing songs, eat pies and cheer on fit people as they chase a ball, but that’s probably due more to the interference of pesky kids spoiling his schemes than his facility with explosives, superglue, kidnapping, pitch sabotage, match fixing, ball tampering and so forth.

He even tried to remove the sport from libraries and stop the printing of Scorcher and Score, but somehow his divine crusade never achieved its aims…

There’s a bit of extra time left in this initial foray, and an Annuals sections calls up a couple of Sub shorts from the Scorcher Annual 1970 whilst the 1971 seasonal package finds Manager Matt languishing in laundry woes and the 1973 edition sees Hugh Fowler extend his campaign to include arcade games with equally unpleasant outcomes…

This astoundingly absorbing comedy classic is another perfect example of resolutely British humorous sensibilities – absurdist, anarchic and gleefully grotesque – and these lesser known cartoon capers are a welcome reintroduction to the canon of British comics history: painfully funny, beautifully rendered and ridiculously unforgettable. This is one more treasure-trove of laughs to span generations which demands to be in every family bookcase. Part of Rebellion’s ever-expanding Treasury of British Comics, this is a superb tribute to the man and a brilliant reminder of what we all love…
© 1970, 1971, 1972, & 2021 Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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Buz Sawyer volume 4: Zazarof’s Revenge


By Roy Crane, with Henry G. “Hank” Schlensker & Edwin Granberry (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-975-2 (HB)

Modern comics evolved from newspaper strips: pictorial features that were, until relatively recently, utterly ubiquitous. Hugely popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as a weapon to secure sales and increase circulation, strips seemed to find their only opposition in blinkered local editors who often resented the low brow art form, which cut into potential ad space and regularly drew complaint letters from cranks…

It’s virtually impossible for us today to understand the overwhelming allure and power of the comic strip – especially from the Great Depression to the end of the 1950s. With limited television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comics sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. “The Funnies” were universally enjoyed recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality of graphic sagas and humorous episodes.

From the start comedy was king; hence our terms “Funnies” and “Comics”. From these jest and stunt beginnings – blending silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and vaudeville antics – came an entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Debuting in April 1924, Washington Tubbs II was a comedic, gag-a-day strip which evolved into a globe-girdling adventure serial. For years, Crane spun addictive high-quality pictorial yarns – until his introduction of moody swashbuckler Captain Easy ushered in the age of adventure strips with the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929.

This led to a Sunday colour page which was possibly the most compelling and visually imaginative of the entire Golden Age of Newspaper strips (see Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips volumes 1-4). Improving almost minute by minute, it benefited from Crane’s relentless quest for perfection. His fabulously imaginative compositional masterpieces attained a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The influence of his pages can be seen in the works of near-contemporaries like Hergé, giants-in-waiting such as Charles Schulz or comic book masters Alex Toth, John Severin and many more.

The material was obviously as much fun to make as to read. In fact, Crane’s cited reason for surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA/United Features Syndicate’s abrupt and arbitrary diktat that all strips would henceforward be produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate their being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated.

They just didn’t lift the artist any more so he stopped making them. At the height of his powers, Crane walked away from the astounding Captain Easy Sunday page; concentrating on the daily feature until his contract expired in 1943 whereupon he left United Features: lured away by that grandee of strip poachers William Randolph Hearst.

The result was an aviator strip set in then-ongoing World War II: Buz Sawyer.

Where Wash Tubbs was a brave but largely comedic Lothario and his pal Easy a surly, tight-lipped he-man, John Singer “Buz” Sawyer was a joyous amalgam of both: a handsome, big-hearted, affable country-boy who went to war because his country needed him…

Buz was a fun-loving, skirt-chasing, musically-inclined pilot daily risking his life with his devoted gunner Rosco Sweeney: a bluff, brave ordinary Joe – and one of the most effective comedy foils ever created.

The wartime strip was – and remains – a marvel of authenticity: portraying not just action and drama of the locale and situation but crucially also capturing the quiet, dull hours of training, routine and desperate larks between the serious business of killing and staying alive. When the war ended the action-loving duo – plus fellow pilot/girl-chasing competitor Chili Harrison – all went looking for work that satisfied their thirst for action and adventure…

Crane had mastered popular entertainment tastes, blending adventure with drama and sophisticated soap opera, all leavened with raucous comedy in a seamless procession of unmissable daily episodes. He and his team of assistants – which over decades comprised co-writers Ed “Doc” Granberry, Clark Haas and Al Wenzel, and artists Hank Schlensker, Joel King, Ralph Lane, Dan Heilman, Hi Mankin & Bill Wright – soldiered on under relentless deadline pressure, producing an authentic and exotic funny romantic thriller rendered in his stark signature style as well as a prerequisite full-colour Sunday page.

This fourth stout and sturdy hardcover edition is a mostly monochrome tome re-presenting more magnificent strip shenanigans starring a dynamic All-American good guy, but now Buz is just another fading war hero: albeit admittedly a globetrotting, troubleshooting one and a newlywed husband to boot.

Having – after much kerfuffle, procrastination, intrigue, bloodshed, sexy skulduggery and delay – finally married extremely understanding childhood sweetheart Christy Jameson, our clean-cut boy-next-door then dragged her into his regularly perilous and frequently lethal working world as prime problem-solver for Frontier Oil: a company with fingers in many international pies and one most modern readers will find hard to consider “the Good Guys”…

These strips – made in collaboration with Granberry & Hank Schlensker – cover the societally turbulent period spanning July 1949 to June 1952, as America leaned hard into its dreams of Exceptionalism and enjoyed domestic boom times while embracing it’s self-appointed role as the World’s Policeman. Crane and his creative laboured long, hard, often acrimonious hours to produce each daily strip; all beguilingly rendered in black-&-white through Crane’s masterly techniques employing line art and craftint (a tricky mechanical monochrome patterning effect which added greys and halftones to produce miraculous depths and moods to the superb base drawing) but the toll was heavy on personnel and feelings.

Before the ten self-contained tales here kick off, heavily-illustrated preliminary prose piece ‘The Three of Us are a Team’ (‘remarks at the New York Banshee Society’ from transcripts donated to Syracuse University) revisits Crane’s acceptance speech on winning the 1961 Silver Lady Award as determined by a collation of contemporary communications executives. Effusive and reminiscent, it sees him give his partners all the credit for the hard work in crafting the feature…

Buz Sawyer began on November 1st 1943 and ran until 1989. Crane officially retired with the April 21st 1977 episode (dying on July 7th) while it continued under Granberry, Schlensker, Haas, Wenzel and John Celardo until cancelation on October 7th 1989.

The story resumes with an example of contemporary trends…

Chimpanzees were becoming a popular story addition for most media as the 1940s ended (just look at movies or comic books) and ‘Monkey Business’ finds our happy couple back in the USA after an African honeymoon (of sorts) which left the them owners of a young chimp named Junior…

Anticipating decades of future sitcoms, the tale details how Junior plays up during a critical dinner party/holiday weekend held by Sawyer’s boss Colonel Harrison but the resulting debacle at a swish soiree on Harrison’s palatial estate fails to impress potential business partner Mr Tidley Bragg. A cheeky excuse for manic screwball comedy and social gaffes, the chaos generates explosive hilarity, humiliation and Buz’s sacking before fate intervenes to show everyone that Junior was a boisterous blessing in disguise…

Swiftly rehired, Buz heads south, encountering ‘Revolution’ (September 19th 1949 – January 18th 1950) in a Central American republic. Frontier Oil was seeking an oil concession, but apparently their agent – Barstain – had played a double game. Before long, Buz is using his war experiences to lead a counter revolution to save democracy…

January 20th- June 17th offers a grimly chilling change of pace as ‘Buz Alone’ sees Christy and her husband on a well-earned vacation at a Florida honeymoon cottage. Tragically, danger is never far from them, and the brief idyll is shattered after a nature-watching boat trip leaves them stranded on a sandbar with no food, water, shelter or prospect of rescue.

A true champion, Buz survives a gruelling swim to the mainland and returns in a seaplane only to find three men on the sandbar and no trace of Christy. When he gets agitated, he’s accused of making it all up and – if she ever existed – doing away with the woman…

Beaten up when he tries to search their boat, Buz is left to pick up the pieces and track down Christy. In his hunger for clues, he is manipulated by a woman seeking a new husband – and someone to remove her current one – before eventually clashing with vengeful old enemy Harry Sparrow. At no time does he ever get near his missing better half…

While he flounders, a comely, capable lady with no memory is picked up on the mainland before losing herself amidst the sleazy local underworld. With the police now assisting, Buz sets out on the fresh trail, aided by trusty pal Sweeney. After more trauma and tribulation, Christy is found, but it’s not the girl Buz married yet – not by a long shot…

A return to lighter intrigue and enterprise comes when spoiled debutante ‘Diana’ (June 19th – November 24th) makes Daddy find her a job. Unluckily for Buz, Remington Chase is a bigwig at Frontier and his bored hellion of a daughter likes the idea of being Sawyer’s secretary – or at least the idea of Sawyer…

Even debonair Chili Harrison can’t sway her aim and when Buz “escapes” into work – despatched to Iron Curtain nation Sovmania just when he and Christy began looking at homes to buy – Miss Chase infuriatingly follows. Negotiating with the Soviets is tricky enough, but when it’s a US corporation demanding the communists hand back wells and refineries they illegally annexed and expropriated, Sawyer knows he can’t win and may end up mysteriously deceased. It’s no surprise to find Diana draws attention and danger like a magnet, but her response when the oppressors decide to arrest them is a life-changing revelation.

Spectacular spy games give way to a lighter interlude when Buz reunites with Christy and they babysit a parrot named ‘William Shakespeare’ (November 24th 1950-January 6th 1951). The beloved baby of a poetry professor, with an astounding talent for repeating what he hears, the bird proves to be even more trouble that their chimp was…

Clearly qualified in policing difficult customers, Buz is then assigned to locate a wandering landowner with 6,000 prime acres to lease. ‘Wish Jones’ (January 8th to April 19th) is old, homely, rich, romantic, suggestible and (suddenly) married to exotic dancer Taffy Fawn. However, he hasn’t signed the contracts Frontier needs, leaving Buz playing catch across all the love nests of the South Pacific. The fixer’s greatest asset is Taffy herself, who never thought wedded bliss and matchless wealth included so much sand, birds or bugs. His biggest problem is that even desert island paradises have crooks, radios and newspapers…

Another episode of animal husbandry catastrophes – this time a dachshund and a voracious baby heron – leads implausibly to a sojourn in ‘Alaska’ (26th April – August 22nd) with Sawyer undercover as John Singer.

While seeking a geologist’s killers, he’s also acting as courier for the Government in a serious and solid spy escapade worthy of Alfred Hitchcock with abductions, misreported deaths, murderous sailors, devious twins, fake relatives and hidden uranium reserves all in play, with Buz’s survival skills pushed to the limit before his mission is accomplished.

In dire need of relaxation, the reunited Mr & Mrs Sawyer trust to fate and pluck a name out of an atlas for a vacation. They land in a lakeside resort boasting peace and quiet but dreary ‘Doldrums’ (August 23rd – September 29th) is soon a pandemonium of envy and excitement as bored couples seek to spice up their passionless lives by emulating the infamous, glamorous newcomers…

Eponymous epic ‘Zazarof’s Revenge’ spans October 1st 1951-January 10th 1952, opening with a global sabotage campaign against Frontier, leading Buz to Switzerland where there’s no doubt of mystery man Igor Zazarof‘s guilt, but apparently no way to find or face him.

Ultimately, persistence and charm break down the villain’s obvious pawn Neri, whilst all attempts to bribe, frame, frighten or kill the American fail, leading to an extended and brutal duel to the death on a mountain peak as the only way to deal with Sawyer…

We conclude for now with home-grown bad men ‘The Hawks Boys’ (January 10th – June 19th) terrorising and sabotaging a Frontier installation in Utah. As assault escalates to murder, Buz discovers why the Hawks’ – already well-paid for the oil rights to their land – are doing everything they can to force the company to pull out. What could be worth more than oil and what won’t they do to keep their secret?

Completing this vivid vintage venture is a wry glimpse of Crane’s early days. With text written by Jeet Heer, ‘A Cartoonist’s Travels’ offers a brief gallery of cartoons about bums, hoboes, tramps and voyagers, with the artist drawing upon his own youthful experiences as an itinerant bindlestiff and drifter…

This a sublime slice of compelling comics wonder is an ideal way to discover or reconnect with Crane’s second magnum opus. Bold, daring, funny and astonishingly enthralling, these episodic exploits influenced generations of modern cartoonists, illustrators, comics creators and storytellers. The series ranks amongst the very greatest strip cartoon features ever created: always delivering comics tale-telling unforgettable, unmissable and utterly irresistible. Try it and see for yourself.
Buz Sawyer: Zazarof’s Revenge © 2016 Fantagraphics Books. All Buz Sawyer strips © 2016 King Features Syndicate, Inc. All other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.