Category: Cartooning Classics

Posted on

Behind the Scenes with Burt – A Breaking Cat News Adventure


By Georgia Dunn (Andrews McMeel)
ISBN: 978-1-5248-7127-7 (TPB) eISBN: 978-1-5248-7769-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Joys of the Season – and Some Cats… 10/10

Cats rule the world. Everybody knows it. Just ask social media and the internet. In fact, just ask your cat – if you dare. Those of us “blessed” with designated feline overlords also learn pretty quickly that they run the house too. In 2016, illustrator and cartoonist Georgia Dunn found a way to make her hairy housemates (the ones with more than two feet) earn their keep after watching them converge on a domestic accident and inquisitively – and interminably – poke their little snouts into the mess.

Breaking Cat News began as an irresistibly beguiling web comic strip detailing how her forthright felines form their own on-the-spot news-team with studio anchor Lupin, and field reporters Elvis (investigative) and Puck (commentary) delivering around-the-clock reports on the events that really resonate with cats – because, after all, who else matters?

And now they’re all over books like this recapitulating delight, as well as a slew of delightful merchandise…

Here then, after far too long an interlude, is the fifth collection of outrageous, alarming, occasionally courageous but always charming – and probably far too autobiographical for comfort – romps, riffs and devastatingly debilitating sad bits starring a growing family of people and the cats and assorted critters they share space with.

If you’re a returning customer or already follow the strip, you’re au fait with the ever-expanding cast and its ceaselessly surreal absurdity, but this stuff is so welcoming even the merest neophyte can jump right in with no confusion other than that which is intentional…

Be warned though, Dunn is a master of emotional manipulation and never afraid to tug heartstrings. Keep hankies close.

Under the conceit that the BCN station needs technical upgrades, this collection revisits earlier evergreen episodes (more on that later) but – professionally unable to simply coast – Dunn kicks off with an extended special saga pulling together plotlines from the in-world telenovela/soap opera Our IX Lives Christmas Special: an outrageous, hilariously histrionic sequence of episodes piling up millionaire skulduggery, murder, nuns, piracy, abductions, romance and forced marriages upon unsuspected siblings and secret parents, medical crises, legal shenanigans, warring families, ghosts and prophecies. The non-stop dramady culminates in a many aborted weddings, and a multi-vehicle ambulance chase in a snowstorm. Pretty much any day at Viejo Gato, in fact…

Accompanied by deliciously whimsical behind the scenes commentary, such as how Puck “changing colour”, and plenty of cartoon interjections and graphic stage whispers about how and when the strip moved from pixels to print, the recollections then commence. On March 27th 2017, a suitably modified (for which read fully redrawn and recoloured) version of the web wild world began newspaper syndication, alternating with new material designed expressly for print consumption: a situation mirrored in this tabby tinged tome…

(Re)Drawing attention on the home front are items such as ‘The Woman is Cooking Bacon’, The Woman is in a Room We Can’t Get Into’, ‘The People Bought Some Stupid-Looking Thing For the Dining Room’, ‘The Woman is Trying to Use a Laptop’, and expansionist future tearjerker ‘That Cat is in the backyard again, Elvis’ – opening salvo in a lengthy but subtle discussion on lost cats that would pay off in many hankies over the years ahead…

Rolling news was backed up by In-Depth packages devoted to moving house (‘The People are building box forts’, and ‘Packing tape: Dangerous Hazard?’) and the entire household undertook a lengthy brush with maternity as seen in ‘The Woman is Slowing down’, ‘The Woman is Trying to Make the Bed’ and ‘The People are Awake in the Middle of the Night’…

Perennial favoured topics include animals who aren’t cats, the war with vacuum cleaners, weather and changing seasons, vet visits, what constitutes food, lamps and house plants and Puck’s lifelong efforts to prove the existence of fabled cryptid “The Mailman”…

Most crucially you’ll also learn the derivation of household boon the “bellywarmer”, how trees fall apart, see the traditional ‘Bi-monthly 2 AM “Running of the Cats”’, the joy and wonder of takeout, how cats enjoy Halloween and Christmas and why kale must be eradicated…

We pause (tee hee) for now with Breaking Cat News More to Explore: presenting a selection of the first strips reformatted for newspaper consumption in ‘Digitally Colored BCN Strips’ (as opposed to Dunn’s preferred and now restored method of hand water-colouring her artwork.

Smart, witty, imaginative and deliciously whimsical, Breaking Cat News is a fabulously funny infinitely re-readable feel-good feature rendered with artistic elan and a light and breezy touch to delight not just us irredeemable cat-addicts but also anyone in need of a good laugh.

Felis Navidad, y’all.
Behind the Scenes with Burt © 2022 Georgia Dunn. All rights reserved.

Posted on

The Complete Peanuts volume 8: 1965-1966


By Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics Books/Canongate Books UK)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-724-7 (HB) 978-1-84767-815-7 (UK HB)

Halloween’s just around the corner and so, in the spirit of beleaguered, embattled diversity, here’s a sop to those devout devotees of the sectarian offshoot awaiting with nervous anticipation the spiritual harvest of The Great Pumpkin. The rest of you can just relish the timeless cartoon mastery of a pictorial comedy genius…

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 surreal philosophical epic for half a century: 17,897 strips spanning October 2nd 1950 to February 13th 2000. He died – from complications of cancer – the day before his last strip was printed.

At its height, Peanuts ran in 2,600 newspapers, in 21 languages and75 countries. Many of those venues still run it in perpetual reprints, as they have ever since his death. During his lifetime, book collections, a merchandising mountain and television spin-offs had made the publicity-shy doodler an actual billionaire at a time when that really meant something…

None of that 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 and meaning as well as soon-forgotten pratfalls and punchlines.

Following a thoughtful Foreword from screenwriter, director, producer, composer and independent filmmaker Hal Hartley (Trust, Henry Fool, The Unbelievable Truth, Simple Men), the timeless episodes of play, peril, psychoanalysis and personal recrimination resume. Rendered in marvellous monochrome, there are some crucial character introductions, more plot developments and the creation of even more traditions we all revere to this day. Of particular note is the end of the de facto soft revolution leaving the wonder beagle in the driving – or rather pilot’s – seat…

Mostly, though, our focus and point of contact is quintessential, inspirational loser Charlie Brown who, beside fanciful, high-maintenance mutt Snoopy, remains squarely at odds with a mercurial supporting cast, hanging out doing what at first sight seems to be Kids Stuff.

Always, gags centre on play, varying degrees of musicality, pranks, interpersonal alignments, the mounting pressures of ever-harder education, mass media through young eyes and a selection of sports in their season. 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, themes and tropes that define the entire series (especially in the wake of the animated TV specials) become mantra-like yet endlessly variable. One deliciously powerful constant is Brown’s inability to fly a kite, and here war with wind, gravity and landscape reaches absurdist proportions…

Mean girl Violet, prodigy Schroeder, self-taught psychoanalyst and 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 signature foibles, but some early characters have faded away in favour of fresh attention-attracting players joining the mob. At least the Brown boy’s existential crisis/responsibility vector/little sister Sally has grown enough to become just another trigger for relentless self-excoriation. As she grows, pesters librarians, forms opinions and propounds steadfastly authoritarian views, Charlie is relegated to being her dumber, but eternally protective big brother…

Resigned – sort of – to life as a loser in the gunsight of cruel and capricious fate, the boy Brown is helpless meat in the clutches of openly sadistic Lucy. When not 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, kite-flying or just brooding, the round-headed kid truly endures the character-building trials of the damned. She’s so good at it that she even expands the franchise and brings in locums…

At this time, the beagle grew 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, skateboarding, dance marathons and skating trysts with a “girl-beagle”, philosophical ruminations, and evermore popular catchphrases. Here, the burgeoning whimsy leads to the dog’s first forays into drama (“It was a dark and stormy night…”), a hunt for the brothers and sisters he was so cruelly torn from as a pup, and the opening shots in his WWI other life, peppered with classic dogfights against the accursed Red Baron…

Snoopy is the only force capable of countering Van Pelt. Over these two years, her campaign to curb that weird beagle, cure her brother of his comfort blanket addiction and generally reorder reality to her preferences reaches astounding heights and appalling depths…

This volume opens and closes with many strips riffing on snow, and television – or the gang’s responses to it – become ever more pervasive. As aways, Lucy constantly and consistently sucks all the joy out of the white wonder stuff and the astounding variety offered by the goggle-box. Perpetually sabotaged, and facing abuse from every female in his life, Brown endures more casual grief from smug, attention-seeking Frieda, demanding constant approval for her “naturally curly hair” and championing shallow good looks over substance. Linus meanwhile is pulled in many directions: primarily between his beloved blanket and the eerie attractions of his teacher Miss Othmar…

Schulz had established way points in his year: formally celebrating certain calendar occasions – real or invented – as perennial shared events: Mothers and Fathers’ Days, Fourth of July, National Dog Week strips accompanied in their turn yearly milestones like Christmas, St. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween/Great Pumpkin Day and Beethoven’s Birthday were joined this year by another American ritual as first Charlie Brown and latterly Linus are sent to summer camp. The experience heralded big changes and led to two permanent additions to the cast: camp mate and distant acquaintance Roy (debuting June 11th 1965) and eventually – on August 22nd 1966 – his pal Patricia Reichardt AKA bluff tomboy Peppermint Patty…

Endless heartbreak ensued – and escalates here – after Charlie Brown foolishly let slip his closet romantic aspirations regarding the “little red-haired girl”: a fascination outrageously exploited by others whenever he doesn’t simply sabotage himself, but the poor oaf has no idea how to respond to closer ties with his dream girl or why Patty cares…

Sports loom large and terrifying as ever, but star player Snoopy seems more interested in surfing and skateboarding than baseball and Lucy finds far more absorbing pastimes after picking up a croquet mallet and a sack for trick-or-treat candies…

Her brother, however, endures more disappointment (twice!) when again The Great Pumpkin spends Halloween night in someone’s patch. Poor Sallie also ends 1965 on a downward spiral after being diagnosed with amblyopia and forced to live with an eyepatch, just as everybody is drawn into a massive, unstoppable snowball war…

Another year and even more of the above sees lovesick sad sack Charlie sent to the Principal’s office (twice!) whilst his best bud is AWOL: continually shot down by phantom Hun The Red Baron or distracted by his growing cohort of bird buddies. Anxiety-wracked Brown even steps down from the baseball team to ease his life, but being replaced by Linus only intensifies his woes. Peppermint Patty eases some of his baseball problems but only until Linus seduces her away with impassioned proselytizing for the Great Pumpkin. As with so many others, Patty’s conversion is brief and doesn’t survive a dark night in field…

And then before you know it, there’s the traditional countdown to Christmas and another year filled with weird, wild and wonderful moments…

The Sunday page debuted on January 6th 1952: a standard half-page slot offering more measured fare than 4-panel dailies. Thwarted ambition, sporting failures, crushing frustration – much of it kite/psychoanalysis related – abound this time, alternating with Snoopy’s inner life which diversifies and intensifies into dogfights and other signature sorties as the sabbath indulgences afforded Schulz room to be his most imaginative, whimsical and provocative…

Particular moments to relish include the sharply-cornered romantic triangle involving Lucy, Schroeder & Beethoven; snow escapades, Snoopy v Lucy deathmatches; Charlie Brown’s food feud with the beagle, Lucy’s solutions to complex questions; toothbrush discipline: “tricks or treats”; doggy dreams; the growing power of television; sporting endeavours; and more…

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 all formats, 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 © 2007, Hal Hartley. “Charles M. Schulz: 1922 to 2000” © 2007 Gary Groth. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Nine Lives to Live – A Classic Felix Celebration


By Otto Messmer, edited by David Gerstein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-308-9 (HB)

It might surprise you to know, but funny kitties actually pre-date the internet. They are still big at trick or treat time though…

Unless you’re as old as me, Felix is a hilarious, antic-enjoying talking cat of incredibly ancient vintage. His origins are confused, contentious and still challenged. I’m going with…

Felix was created by Otto Messmer for Australian Pat Sullivan’s animation studio between 1915 and 1917 and was an overnight global hit. Those moving picture cartoons led to a long supplementary career as a newspaper strip, as well as a plethora of merchandisable products in many other media.

Messmer wrote and drew the Sunday newspaper strip – which first premiered in London papers – before the feature finally launched in the USA on August 19th 1923. As Messmer’s employer and boss, Sullivan re-inked those initial strips, signed them, and then took the credit for both strips and even the animated cartoons, which Messmer carried on directing until 1931.

Otto quietly toiled on, producing Sunday pages and daily strips for decades. In 1955, his assistant Joe Oriolo took over the creative duties: simultaneously starting a campaign to return the credit for Felix’s invention and exploits to the “true” originator. It wasn’t until the 1960s that shy, loyal, brilliant Otto Messmer finally admitted what most of the industry had known for years…

As the cat evolved via successive movie shorts – and eventually numerous TV appearances – an additional and ever-expanding paraphernalia of mad professors, clunky robots and the fancy feline’s fantastical Bag of Tricks gradually became icons of Felix’s magical world, but most of that is the stuff of a later time and – hopefully one day – another collected volume.

The early work collected here comes from the halcyon 1920’s and displays a profoundly different kind of whimsy. Fast-paced slapstick, fantastic invention and, yes, a few images and gags that might arch the collective metaphorical eyebrow of our more enlightened times; these are the strips that caught the world’s imagination more than a century ago.

This was a time when even the modern citizens of America and Great Britain were social primitives compared to us – or at least so I’d like to think… until I read a paper or watch the news…

The imagination and wonderment of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and Cliff Sterrett’s Polly and her Pals – both so similar to Felix in style, tone and execution – got the same responses from their contemporary readership and with the same sole intent: make the reader laugh.

Our modern response of casually and frequently lazily labelling as racist or sexist any such historical incidence in popular art-forms, whilst ignoring the same “sins” in High Art, is the worst kind of aesthetic bigotry, and usually prompted by opportunistic bias or dog-whistle opportunism and it really truly ticks me off.

Why not use those incensed sensibilities to confront the still-present injustices and inequalities so many people are still – and often increasingly – enduring rather than take a cheap shot at the bygone, far-less-enlightened world when most creators had no conception of the potential ramifications of their efforts?

Sorry about that, but the point remains that the history of our artform is always going to be curtailed and covert if we are not allowed the same “conditional discharge” afforded to film, ballet, opera, painting or novels. When was the last time anybody demanded that Oliver Twist was banned or shunned because of its depiction of a Jew? And if you’re going to legislate against Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, Nuns on the Run or Twelfth Night, don’t do it unless you want bigots and cretins to vote for you.

The modern rush to brand or Other any form of existence lived after Oliver Cromwell died actually shuts down debate before anything can be achieved to fix or even address the issue…

And it’s rants like that that really scare people…

None of which alters the fact that Felix the Cat is a brilliant and vitally important comic strip by an unsung genius. The wonderful work collected here – which include hundreds of rowdily phantasmagorical Daily and Sunday strips plus a comprehensive biography, filmography and TV videography section – perfectly encapsulates the wonder, universal charm and rapid-fire, surreal gags that enchanted generations and will still delight and enthral youngsters of all ages.

It’s long past time that this cat came back…
© 1996 O.G. Publishing Corp.

Posted on

Mac Raboy’s Flash Gordon volume 2


By Don Moore & Mac Raboy (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-56971-911-4 (TPB)

By almost every metric, Flash Gordon is the most influential comic strip in the world. When the hero debuted on Sunday January 7th 1934 (with the equally superb Jungle Jim running as a supplementary “topper” strip). It was a slick, sophisticated answer to Philip Nolan & Dick Calkins’ revolutionary, ideas-packed, inspirational, but quirkily clunky Buck Rogers (which had also launched on January 7th – albeit in 1929), two fresh elements were added to the wonderment: Classical Lyricism and Poetic Dynamism. The newcomer became a weekly invitation to stunningly exotic glamour and astonishing beauty.

Where Buck merged traditional adventure with groundbreaking science concepts, Flash reinterpreted fairy tales, hero epics and mythology, draping them in the spectacular trappings of contemporary futurism, with the varying “rays”, “engines” and “motors” of modern pulp sci fi substituting for trusty swords and lances. There were also plenty of those too – and exotic craft and contraptions stood in for galleons, chariots and magic carpets. The narrative trick made the far-fetched satisfactorily familiar – and it was initially continued by Mac Raboy and Don Moore in their run of Sunday strips.

Look closely, though, and you’ll see cowboys, gangsters and of course, flying saucer fetishes adding contemporary flourish to the fanciful fables in this second superb volume which is long overdue for a fresh edition.

Most important of all, the sheer artistic talent of Alex Raymond, his compositional skills, fine linework, eye for clean, concise detail and just plain genius for drawing beautiful people and things, swiftly made this the strip that all young artists swiped from. When original material comic books began a few years later, literally dozens of talented kids used Gordon as their model and ticket to future success in the field of adventure strips. Almost all the others went with Milton Caniff’s expressionist masterpiece Terry and the Pirates (and to see one of his better disciples check out Beyond Mars, limned by wonderful Lee Elias).

Flash Gordon began on present-day Earth (which was 1934, remember?) with a wandering world about to smash into our planet. As global panic ensued, polo player Flash and fellow passenger Dale Arden narrowly escaped disaster when a meteor fragment downed their airliner. They landed on the estate of tormented genius Dr. Hans Zarkov, who imprisoned them in the rocket-ship he had built. His plan? To fly the ship directly at the astral invader and deflect it from Earth by crashing into it!

Thus began a decade of sheer escapist magic in a Ruritanian Neverland: a blend of Camelot, Oz and a hundred other fantasy realms promising paradise yet concealing vipers, ogres and demons, all cloaked in a glimmering sheen of sleek scientific speculation. Worthy adversaries such as utterly evil yet magnetic Ming, emperor of the fantastic wandering planet; myriad exotic races and shattering conflicts offered a fantastic alternative to drab and dangerous reality for millions of avid readers around the world.

With Moore doing the bulk of the scripting, Alex Raymond’s ‘On the Planet Mongo’ ran every Sunday until 1944, when the artist joined the Marines. On his return, he forsook wild imaginings for sober reality: creating gentleman-detective Rip Kirby. The public’s unmissable weekly appointment with wonderment perforce continued under the artistic auspices of Austin Briggs – who had drawn the monochrome daily instalments since 1940.

In 1948, eight years after beginning his career drawing for the Harry A. Chesler production “shop” comic book artist Emmanuel “Mac” Raboy took over illustrating the Sunday page. Moore remained as scripter and began co-writing with the new artist.

Raboy’s sleek, fine-line brush style – heavily influenced by his idol Raymond – had made his work on Captain Marvel Jr., Kid Eternity and especially Green Lama a pinnacle of artistic quality in the early days of the proliferating superhero genre. His seemingly inevitable assumption of Flash Gordon’s extraordinary exploits led to a renaissance of the strip and in a rapidly evolving post-war world, it became once more a benchmark of timeless, hyper-realistic quality escapism which only Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant could match.

This second 260-page paperback volume, produced in landscape format and printed in stark black-&-white (although one or two strips appear to have been scanned from printed colour copies) covers May 17th 1953 to February 23rd 1958, and opens with a scholarly Introduction on ‘Comic Strip Godfathers’ from Bruce Jones before the previous volume’s cliffhanger is addressed…

With a new spaceship, far-flung travellers Flash, Dale and Zarkov set off for Earth but are forced to land on the Moon where a secret human base had been established. For unknown reasons Dr. Stella and her thuggish aide Marc detain and delay them, but after an increasing number of close shaves and mysterious accidents, a little digging by our heroes reveals that they are the unwitting guests of ruthless space pirates…

After expediently dealing with the planetary privateers, our heroes head for Earth, and are promptly seconded to spearhead an urgent exploratory expedition to a newly discovered satellite body. Suitably dutiful, they hurtle off into the void again…

‘(Life on) Titan’ ran from 14th June to September 20th 1953: detailing how the little world is populated by giants. However, after capturing one of the hulking inhabitants, Zarkov concludes that the truth is far stranger than the Earthmen could have imagined…

The tireless boffin then builds a single-seater spaceship and requires Flash to take a test run out to Jupiter’s moon ‘Callisto’ (27th September 1953 to 17th January 1954). A sudden illness causes a crash and Flash awakens in care of elderly hermit Phylo, who cunningly embroils the dauntless troubleshooter in his own struggle against invisible psychic dictator The Mind…

After overthrowing the hidden tyrant, the indomitable Earthman heads home and actually enjoys a little rest before an ancient mystery unfolds in ‘Flash Gordon and the Thanatos’ (17th January-2nd May).

After archaeologist Dr. Sark finds incontrovertible evidence of a prehistoric atomic blast in the Libyan desert, our ever-inquisitive action man uncovers an alien in a bottle but is too late to save Dale from being abducted by the mind-bending survivor of an antediluvian starship crash…

Dashing in pursuit as his beguiled beloved heads off-world, Flash is drawn into the parallel dimension of Cortinus where god-like beings dwell. They welcome intruders from fondly-remembered Earth, but are sadly unaware that one of the visitors carries the malevolent spirit of their outcast brother Loki. Once freed, the villain proudly boasts how he influenced and dominated many bellicose humans such as Alexander, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan, and now intends ruling two realms for his own benefit and amusement. Sadly, nigh-omnipotent Loki vastly underestimates the ingenuity and resolve of his mortal opponents…

In a ship donated by head deity Zustra, Flash and Dale re-cross the dimensional divide, arriving in deep space to encounter a scene of horrific barbarity at an Observatory Station. When the ‘Outlaw of the Asteroids’ (9th May-25th July) took the outpost’s oxygen, the crew almost died in hibernation. After reviving the deep-frozen scientists, our adventurers set off after the ruthless bandit and discover the reason for his heinous theft was both noble and desperate. The bandit perishes for his sins, but not before leaving young space orphan Pebbles with the only humans he can trust…

By the time Flash, Dale and Pebbles reach Earth the next exploit is already well underway as a seed of ‘The Star Tree’ (1st August-17th October) survives a meteor crash in the Amazon and immediately propagates itself in fertile soil. By the time our bold wanderers accidentally land in the region, it has transformed into an arctic wilderness where a gigantic plant voraciously consumes every living thing its grasping branches can seize…

The vegetable invasion is no accident, and as Flash leads the frozen rain forest’s indigenous inhabitants in spirited resistance, cold-blooded aliens appear. They lived on Earth when it was a giant ice ball and after eons on Pluto want their original world back! They would have succeeded too, had not one of the invaders found his heart warming to the plight of the disputed world’s current tenants…

With that threat ended normality returns, but soon after packing Pebbles off to boarding school Flash, Zarkov and many other unsuspecting Earth folk are shanghaied by eerie metal globes and transported to ‘The Lonely Planet!’ (24th October 1954 to 9th January 1955)…

Here, Herculean extraterrestrial barbarians and wily midgets conspire and compete to find fresh fodder for gladiatorial contests, before, with the aid of a usurped king, Flash upsets the unlikely alliance and overthrows the twisted regime. However, just as the liberated Earthlings enter home orbit, their always-embattled birthworld is attacked by insectoid Antomni who require a fresh colony to exploit. The bug beings expect little resistance as they possess the power of Time Migration…

The invaders travel millions of years ‘Into the Past’ (16th January-27th March) to prevent the evolution of humanity but accidentally catch Flash and Zarkov in their temporal backwash, allowing our heroes to inspire a band of Nearly humans to exterminate the insectoids before returning to their proper time and place…

Restless Zarkov then organises an exploratory expedition to ‘Venus’ (3rd April -19th June) where Flash and Dale find a feudal civilisation in turmoil beneath the planet’s impenetrable cloud layers. Before long, they are assisting scientific prodigy Viko and his fellow exiled “Mistiks” in overturning oppressive, superstition-ruled authorities and introducing rational enlightenment to the Second Planet from the Sun…

Next, Africa is beset by a strange sleeping plague. Investigations reveal the source is escaped gasses from an unsuspected ‘City Within the Earth’ (26th June – 28th August). The accident causes toxic oxygen to contaminate the subterranean metropolis of Centra, and when its bravest warriors surface to investigate, a concatenation of misfortunes compel them to take Flash captive. Imprisoned and soon to become the treasured possession of flamboyant Princess Amara, Gordon is rescued by indomitable Dale who braves the depths and deadly air to save her man and seal off the underworld forever…

‘The Dark Planet’ (4th September – 6th November) has lurked undetected at the edge of the solar system for all of humanity’s history, but that occlusion ends when murderers Stragg, Rust and Tula are exiled from their advanced culture on the distant world of Ur and dumped on the frigid world. When Flash, Dale and Zarkov’s planetary mapping mission brings them to the bleak outpost, they are ambushed by the killers who then steal their ship. The aliens have never encountered human cunning though, and are soon back where they started and engaged in a lethal duel for control of the ship and their liberty…

Human trafficking underpins ‘Station Crossroads’ (13th November 1955 – 15th January 1956) as our heroes stumble upon a scheme to kidnap and sell human technicians to scientifically backward aliens. The vile human mastermind behind the plot operates out of Earth’s most popular orbital rest-stop, but before the slavers are crushed Flash discovers a close friend is deeply involved in the abductions…

When Gordon discovers a hidden base at Earth’s North Pole is being used by aquatic aliens, he is embroiled in an ‘Arctic Adventure’ (22nd January-March 25th) where unscrupulous Earthmen use the freezing waters as a cost-free fish-farm to grow giant monsters for mysterious offworlders to consume…

After a far-distant world experiences an atomic accident, the aftermath produces a voracious ‘Radioactive Man’ (1st April – 3rd June) who can only exist by absorbing deadly fallout. The authorities’ solution is to blast the mutant into the void where, after years of lonely travel, atomic exile Djonn Toth lands on planet Rota just as Flash and Dale pay a visit.

Before long the humans’ vast troubleshooting experience is employed to frustrate Toth’s efforts to enslave the population and consume all their radium.

When the fantastic wonder planet’s eccentric orbit again intersects with Earth, Flash, Dale and Zarkov ‘Return to Mongo’ (10th June 1956- 13th January 1957) after six years. However, their proposed sightseeing trip inevitably involves them in an icily arctic cold war between Wolf Men and Walrus Men, a face-off with would-be supreme tyrant Gant, and clashes with leather-winged Dactyl Men. This leads to capture by arrogant cloud dwellers of Paxora where robot duplicates intent on conquest end Mongo’s most secretive sub-culture.

Upsetting the artificial men’s plan eliminates all but one of the inimical automatons, but ‘Rok’ (13th January – 10th March) is like no android the Earthlings have ever encountered before: patronising protector and unstable enemy in one. Despite safeguarding them through Mongo’s wildest regions, the mechanoid’s ultimate aims remain unclear and his manner of demise most unexpected…

Brought to the edge of civilisation Flash, Dale and Zarkov enter a spaceship race, intent on winning a craft able to take them home to Earth, but the ‘Suicide Run’ (17th March-19th May) almost proves their undoing, as most other competitors indulge in sabotage and subterfuge of every sort to secure the glittering prize…

Eventually victorious, our heroes ‘Escape from Mongo’ only to be lured into ‘The Space Tomb’ (26th May – 14th July) of the Gatherer: a nebula-dwelling desperado who wants to imprison them beside a legion of other valiant explorers in his vast Sargasso of Space.

After outwitting the deranged collector, the humans resume their homeward flight but are again diverted, this time by ‘The Space Genie’ (21st July-1st September): a fearsome yet affable, lethally literal-minded being who brings them to planetary paradise Superba. The inhabitants are not pleased: they only just survived the Genie’s last visit and used all their ingenuity and wish-making ability to get rid of the interstellar pest…

The odyssey home is then interrupted by a string of short interconnected adventures (‘Space Voyage/Strange World/The Wheel Men’: spanning 8th September to 24th November) detailing clashes with space moths, elastic primitives and woman-stealing whirling dervishes engaged in all-out war with sky-residing Gyromen. After brokering a lasting peace between these eccentric extraterrestrials, the humans finally reach Earth in a borrowed flying saucer only to fall prey to ‘The Mystery of the Lonely Crowds!’ (1st December 1957 through January 12th 1958). A telepathic plague of depression and rapidly-spreading isolation has an otherworldly cause but is not intended to be a menace. It still culminates in tragedy, however…

This non-stop rollercoaster ride concludes with the merest start of ‘Missiles from Neptune’ (19th January 1958 to the cliffhanging last page of February 23rd) as the Tyrant of Neptune decides to impress the captive populace. This he does by testing his latest Weapons of Interplanetary Destruction against the Earth, prompting Flash to go and discourage him…

Every week that he toiled on the strip, Mac Raboy produced ever-more expansive artwork filled with distressed damsels, deadly monsters and all sorts of outrageous adventure that continued until the illustrator’s untimely death in 1967.

Perhaps that was a kindness. Raboy was the last great Golden Age romanticist illustrator: his lushly lavish, freely flowing adoration of the perfect human form was beginning to stale in popular taste (the Daily feature had already switched to the solid, chunky, He-Manly burly, realism of Dan Barry and Frank Frazetta) but here at least the last outpost of ethereally beautiful heroism and pretty perils prevailed, and you can visit as easily and often as Flash and Dale popped between planets, just by tracking down this book and the ones which followed…
© 2003 King Features Syndicate Inc. ™ & © Hearst Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Face Ache volume 1: The First 100 Scrunges


By Ken Reid, with Ian Mennell & various (Rebellion Studios)
ISBN: 978-1-78108-601-8 (HB/Digital edition) 978-1-78108-865-4 (TPB)

Time flies and it’s not long to Halloween now, so if you need a bit of practise making scary faces to extract sweets from suckers, here’s a classic “how-to” manual to get you back up to speed…

If you know British Comics, you’ll know Ken Reid. He was another of those youthful yet rebellious artistic prodigies who, largely unsung, 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 drew from the moment he could grasp an implement. Aged nine, he was confined to bed for six months with a tubercular hip, and occupied himself with constant scribbling and sketching. Ken left school before his 14th birthday, winning 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.

The big break was a blagger’s triumph. He talked his way into an interview with the Art Editor of the Manchester Evening News and came away with a commission for a strip in its new Children’s Section. The Adventures of Fudge the Elf (Stop it! It’s not that sort of strip) launched 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: his work (Super Sam, Billy Boffin, Foxy) were published in Comic Cuts and with submissions to The Eagle, before a fortuitous family connection (Reid’s brother-in-law was Dandy illustrator Bill Holroyd) 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. Reid drew the feature until 1959 and created numerous others including the fabulously mordant doomed mariner Jonah, Ali Ha-Ha and the 40 Thieves, Grandpa and Jinx among many more.

In 1964, Reid and fellow underappreciated 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 debuting weekly Jet. The hilariously horrific strip was popular enough to survive the comic’s demise – after a paltry 22 weeks – and carried over in a merger with stalwart periodical Buster where it thrived until 1987. During that time, Reid continued innovating and creating in a horde of new strips like Creepy Creations, Harry Hammertoe the Soccer Spook, Wanted Posters, Martha’s Monster Makeup, Tom’s Horror World and a dozen others.

Reid died in 1987 from the complications of a stroke he’d suffered on February 2nd, whilst 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 until its cancelation in October 1988.

The astoundingly absorbing comedy classic is a perfect example of resolutely British humorous sensibilities – absurdist, anarchic and gleefully grotesque – and revolves around a typically unruly and unlovely scrofulous schoolboy making great capital out of a unique gift, albeit often to his own detriment and great regret…

Ricky Rubberneck early discovered an appalling (un)natural ability of scrunching (or “scrungeing”) up his face into such ghastly contortions that he can revolt, disgust and terrify anyone who gazes upon him. Over weeks and years, the modern medusa works hard to polish his gifts until his foul fizzog may attain any formation. Eventually his entire body can be reshaped to mimic any creature or form, real or imagined. Naturally, he uses his powers to play pranks, take petty vengeances, turn a temporary profit, deal with bullies and impress his pals.

Just as naturally, those efforts frequently result in the standard late 20th century punishments being dealt out by his dad, teachers and sundry other outraged adults…

Now available in paperback, hardback and digitally this initial celebration is part of Rebellion’s ever-expanding Treasury of British Comics: collecting all 22 Jet episodes (from May 1st to September 29th 1971, plus the remaining 78 weeks’ worth from Buster & Jet, beginning with October 2nd and concluding with March 24th 1973.

The potent package is garnished with an appreciative Introduction by Alan Moore – ‘The Unacceptable Face of British Comics’ – a fondly intimate reminiscence in Antony J. Reid’s ‘My Father Ken Reid’ and a full biography of the great man…

What follows is an outrageous outpouring of raw cartoon creativity as Reid, writing and drawing with inspired effulgence, spins a seemingly infinite skein of comedy gold on his timeless theme of a little boy who makes faces at the world.

Weekly deadlines are a ferocious foe however, and a couple of strips reprinted were written by unsung pro Ian Mennell, whilst – between January & September 1972 – an uncredited fill-in artist (possibly Robert Nixon?) illustrated 16 episodes, presumably as Reid’s other commitments such as Jasper the Grasper, The Nervs or his numerous funny football features in Scorcher & Score mounted.

In these pages though, the accent is on madcap tomfoolery as our plastic-pussed poltroon undergoes a succession of fantastic facial reconfigurations: terrifying teachers, petrifying posh and pushy landowners, mimicking monstrous beasts, outraging officious officialdom and entertaining an army of schoolboy chums and chumps.

Orchards are raided, competitions are entered, plays and school trips are upstaged and aborted and even actual spooks and horrors are afforded the shocks of their unlives as Face Ache gurns his way through an endless parade of hilarious hijinks.

These cartoon capers are amongst the most memorable and re-readable exploits in all of British comics history: smart, eternally funny and beautifully rendered. This a treasure-trove of laughs that spans generations and deserves to be in every family bookcase.
© 1971, 1972, 1973 & 2017 Rebellion Publishing Ltd. Introduction © Alan Moore. Face Ache ™ & © Rebellion Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings


By Craig Yoe and many and various (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-653-5 (TPB)

First things first: yes they are but no they’re not – unless you’re really, really spiritual and old fashioned. Despite the somewhat prurient and sensationalistic – not to say deliberately salacious – title, this compilation of cartoons and illustrations culled from the private files and bins of a number of our industry’s greatest stars (and also many from the drawing boards of those infamous scallywags of the animation industry) – is actually a rather quaint and charming insight into the capabilities, accomplishments and professional ethics of a talented crowd of individualists.

To European eyes there is very little amiss here, but one needs to remember just how prudish and censorious (I personally prefer the terms “daft” and “ridiculous”) the American “family values” lobby is and always has been.

Two brilliantly telling examples would be the covering of Flossie the Cow’s udders; first by a skirt (1932) and eventually (1939) by a full dress. She also had to stop walking on all fours because it was unladylike.

Or perhaps you’d like to consider Mort Walker’s navel collection. Apparently, a syndicate editor had a problem with belly buttons and always returned Beetle Bailey strips that featured one. Walker would scalpel them off the artwork and collect them in a pot on his desk.

Collected and compiled by fan, historian, Renaissance man and truly cool comics bloke Craig Yoe (among his many accomplishments he counts being Creative Director of the Muppets – bet you want to Google him now, don’t you?) and offering an introduction by a properly “Dirty” cartoonist R. Crumb, this is a frothy catalogue of rather chaste naked lady pictures (and often not even that) in colour and monochrome, crafted by some of the best artists and cartoonists in modern history: although you might want to check the oddly incongruous contributions of Gustave Doré and Thomas Rowlandson before giving a copy to your 8-year-old.

So if you’re unflappable, incorruptible or just don’t own a MAGA hat, you’ll want to sneak a peek at this stellar cast of incorrigibles. The roster includes Jack Kirby, James Montgomery Flagg, George Herriman, Joe Shuster, Steve Ditko, Charles Schulz, Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond and Chuck Jones.

Potentially as corrupting are delightful and delicious contributions by Dr, Seuss, Carl Barks, Bob Kane, Rube Goldberg, Bruce Timm, Alex Toth, Fred Moore, Dan DeCarlo, Dave Berg, Ernie Bushmiller, Sergio Aragonés, Jack Davis, Billy De Beck, Hal Foster, Harry G. Peter, Paul Murray, Neal Adams, Al Jaffee, Wally Wood, Nick Cardy, Hank Ketcham, Johnny Hart, Walt Kelly, Adam Hughes, Alex Schomburg, Al Williamson, Henry Boltinoff, Stan Drake, Dik Browne, Matt Baker, Otto Soglow, Al Capp, John Severin, Jim Steranko, Jack Cole, Bill Everett, Grim Natwick, Will Eisner and so many others.

Art is all about establishing a relationship with the beautiful, shocking or thought-provoking. Why not turn your attention to these lesser-known efforts from some of the most familiar names in our world and see what occurs to you?
© 2007 Gussani-Yoe Studio, Inc. All illustrations are © 2007 their respective artist and/or © holders.

Posted on

Breaking Cat News: Cats Reporting on the News That Matters to Cats


By Georgia Dunn (Andrews McMeel)
ISBN: 978-1-4494-7413-3 eISBN: 978-1-4494-7927-5

As I eagerly await the imminent release of the next feline frenzy fact file from Georgia Dunn (Gosh! When willit bee Septemphber?) I feel the need to revisit how it all began… 

Cats rule the world. Just ask the internet. Now, now, now. Those of us with moggies also learn pretty quickly that they run the house too. However, illustrator and cartoonist Georgia Dunn found a way to make her indolent furry overlords earn their keep after watching them converge on a domestic accident and inquisitively and interminably poke their little snouts into the mess.

Thus was born Breaking Cat News: a hilariously beguiling series of strips detailing how – when no-one’s looking – her forthright flurry of felines form their own on-the-spot news-team with studio anchor Lupin, and field reporters Elvis (investigative) and Puck (commentary) delivering around-the-clock reports on the events that really resonate with cats – because, after all, who else matters?

The history and development of the feature is covered in Dunn’s Introduction (which you can read if your own murder-mittened mates give you some time off) before this superbly engaging full-colour digest-sized (165 x 203 mm) paperback concentrates on crucial domestic and foreign issues.

Drawing attention on the home front are items such as ‘Everything is Broken and We Don’t Know Who Did It’, ‘The Food Bowl is Still Empty’, ‘The People Bought Some Stupid-Looking Thing For the Dining Room’, ‘The Woman is Cooking Bacon’, ‘The Woman is Trying to Use a Laptop’, ‘The Woman is Trying to Make the Bed’ and ‘The People Bought a Different Kind of Kibble’ whilst long-range outside broadcasts confirm ‘The Man is in the Backyard’, ‘The Neighborhood is Under Attack’ and ‘The Trees are Falling Apart’…

The rolling news is backed up by In-Depth packages devoted to ‘The People Are Going Insane’ (moving house to us two-foots) and the entire team undertake a dedicated series on a lengthy brush with maternity (‘The Woman is Feeling Under the Weather’, ‘The Spare Room is Filled With New Cat Furniture’, ‘The Woman has a Hair Ball’ and ‘The People are Awake in the Middle of the Night’) to prove that cats don’t just want vapid snippets of information for mayfly attention spans, but can also handle complex issues with no simple solutions…

Smart, witty, imaginative and deliciously whimsical, Breaking Cat News is a fabulously funny regularly re-readable feel-good feature rendered with great artistic elan and a light and breezy touch that will delight not just us irredeemable cat-addicts but also anyone in need of good laugh.
© 2016 Georgia Dunn. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Smilin’ Jack: The Classic Aviator book 1


By Zack Mosley (Classic Comic Strips)
No ISBN, no digital editions

Here’s another forgotten birthday boy seriously in need of an archival revival…

Modern comics evolved from newspaper comic strips. Those pictorial features were – until relatively recently – hugely, incredibly popular with the public and highly valued by publishers who used them as an irresistible weapon for guaranteeing and increasing circulation and profits.

It’s virtually impossible for us to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no social media or television, broadcast radio far from universal and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most poor to middle-income folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from comic sections in daily and especially Sunday newspapers.

“The Funnies” were the most common and practically communal recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality. From the very start humour was paramount – hence the terms “Funnies” and “Comics” – and from these gag and stunt beginnings came hybrids like Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Comedic when it began in 1924, it evolved from mock-heroics to light-action to become a full-blown, rip-roaring adventure series with the introduction of prototype swashbuckler Captain Easy in 1929. From there it wasn’t such a leap to full-on action blockbusters like Tarzan (debuting on January 7th 1929) and Buck Rogers (the same day). Both were adaptations of pre-existing prose properties, but the majority of drama strips that followed were original creations.

The tidal-wave began in the early 1930s when an explosion of action/drama strips (tastefully tailored for a family audience and fondly recalled as “Thud and Blunder” yarns by those who read them) were launched with astounding frequency and rapidity.

Not only strips but entire genres were born in that decade, material that still impacts on not just today’s comic books but all our popular fiction. Always most common, however, were and are general feel-good humour strips with an occasional child-oriented fantasy…

Arguably the most welcome of the new adventure genres was the Aviator serial. With air speed, distance and endurance records bring broken every day, travelling air-circuses barnstorming across rural America and real-life heroes like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart plastered across front pages and in movie newsreels, it wasn’t difficult to grasp the potential of comics strip analogues joining the horde of prose, radio and movie flyers.

The first was Glenn Chaffin & Hal Forrest’s Tailspin Tommy – story of boy pilot Tommy Tompkins. It ran from May 21st 1928 (almost exactly one year after Lindbergh’s epic transatlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis) until 1942, and was swiftly followed by both Lester J Maitland & Dick Calkins Skyroads (May 20th 1929, to 1942) and John Terry’s Scorchy Smith which soared from 1930 -1961. Close on their high-flying heels came such late-arriving classics as Flyin’ Jenny, Buz Sawyer and latterly, Steve Canyon.

Zack Mosley was an enterprising young cartoonist who assisted Calkins on both Skyroads and the legendary Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. He was also a dedicated pilot and avaition enthusiast, and when he heard that Captain Joe Patterson (influential editor of The Chicago Tribune) was taking flying lessons, Zack swiftly pitched a series to the kingmaker of comic strips.

On the Wing debuted as a Sunday page on October 1st 1933, but the name never took off and with the December 31st episode the feature was more snappily re-titled Smilin’ Jack. Apparently, Moseley was surreptitiously called “Smiling Zack” around the Tribune office…

The strip steadily gained interest and syndication subscribers and, on June 15th 1936, was augmented by a monochrome daily strip.

Jack Martin was a nervous student pilot, and the series originally played safe by vacillating between comedy and hairsbreadth thrills as he and his fellow unqualified pilots learned the ropes. Never a top-tier series, Smilin’ Jack nevertheless always delivered terrific entertainment to the masses, moving and morphing with the times into a romance, war-feature, crime thriller (complete with Dick Tracy style villains) and even a family soap opera.

More importantly, the strip progressed in real time and when it closed on 1st April 1973, Jack was a twice-married air veteran with a grown son and a full cast of romantic dalliances in tow. It wasn’t lack of popularity that ended it either. At 67 years of age, Mosley wanted to spend his final years in the air, not crouched over a drawing board…

This fabulous (and shamefully scarce) collection gathers a splendid selection of rousing romps, beginning with that name-changing first episode from December 31st 1933, before concentrating on some classic sequences from the roaring Thirties.

Meet here or be reintroduced to Jack, comedy foil Rufus Jimpson (a hillbilly mechanic), eye-candy air hostess and love interest Dixie Lee (subject of an extended romantic triangle), Latin spitfire (the curvy sort, not the fighter plane kind) Bonita Caliente and sundry spies, thugs, imbecilic passengers, South American revolutionaries and even a foreign Legion of the Skies, with an eerily prescient stiff-necked Prussian flyer named Von Bosch whose type would soon be plastered all over strips and comic books once WWII broke out…

This kind of strip is, I suspect and fear, an acquired taste today like films by Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder or George Cukor, requiring the reader contribute a little intellectual and historical concentration, but the effort is absolutely worth it, and if this kind of stuff is good enough for the likes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg it’s perfectly good enough for you and me…

A grand adventure and one you should definitely undertake if the chance comes. Maybe one day it will even be properly curated and collected for all to re-enjoy…
© 1989, 2009 Chicago Tribune Syndicate. All Rights Reserved. (I’m going on best evidence here: if somebody else actually owns the rights now, let me know and I’ll happily amend the entry).

Posted on

Man I Hate Cursive – Cartoons for People and Advanced Bears


By Jim Benton (Andrews McMeel)
ISBN: 978-1-4494-7889-6 (PB) eISBN: 978-1-4494-8414-9

I love cartoons. Not animated films, but short, visual (although most often text-enhanced) stylised drawings which tell a story or potently and pithily express a mood or tone. In fact most people do. That’s why historians and sociologists use them as barometers of a defined time or era.

For nearly 200 years gag-panels and cartoon strips were the universal medium to disseminate wit, satire, mirth, criticism and cultural exchange. Sadly, after centuries of pre-eminence and ferocious power, these days the cartoon has been all but erased from printed newspapers – as indeed the physical publications themselves have dwindled in shops and on shelves.

However, thanks to the same internet which is killing print media, many graphic gagsters and drawing dramatists have enjoyed resurgence in an arena that doesn’t begrudge the space necessary to deliver a cartoon in all its fulsome glory…

Cartooning remains an unmissable daily joy to a vast global readership whose requirements are quite different from those of hard-core, dedicated comic fans, or even that ever-growing base of intrigued browsers just starting to dip their toes in the sequential narrative pool.

Even those stuck-up holdouts proudly boasting they have “never read a comic” certainly enjoy strips or panels: a golden bounty of ephemeral amusement demanding no commitment other than a moment’s close attention. Truth be told, it’s probably in our genes…

And because that’s the contrary nature of things, those gags now get collected in spiffy collections like this one, intended to be enjoyed over and over again like a beloved favourite song…

Jim Benton began his illustration work making up crazy characters in a T-Shirt shop and designing greetings cards. Born in 1960, he’d grown up in Birmingham, Michigan before studying Fine Arts at Western Michigan University.

Now tirelessly earning a living exercising his creativity, he started self-promoting those weird funny things he’d dreamed up and was soon raking in the dosh from properties such as Dear Dumb Diary, Dog of Glee, Franny K. Stein, Just Jimmy, Just Plain Mean, Sweetypuss, The Misters, Meany Doodles, Vampy Doodles, Kissy Doodles, jOkObo and It’s Happy Bunny in a variety of magazines and other venues. Latterly, he made a move into more conventional but no less entertaining delights. You should especially seek out Attack of the stuff and Fann Club: Batman Squad…

His gags, jests and japes are delivered in a huge variety of styles and manners: each perfectly in accord with whatever sick, sweet, clever, sentimental, whimsical or just plain strange content each idea demands. This particular collection is from 2016 but is still fresh, strange and irreverent enough to have you clutching your sides in approved cartoon manner…

Here you will explore the innocently horrific inner world of children and monsters, learn to appreciate anew the contributions to society of teachers and experience Benton’s satirical side as bigots and racists are convicted out of their own mouths.

There are heaping helpings of animal antics – both wryly sardonic and barbarously slapstick – and wicked observations on the dating scene, plus true love pictured in all its infamy, how robots need a little tenderness too as well as the inside track on what it means to be Death…

You’ll see some of the strangest and most disquietingly surreal gags ever penned – such as the dysfunctional band made of animate body parts or the bizarrely extrovert characters comprising ‘The Sideshow’ – and even a truly unique take on historical personages and superheroes of the screen and comics pages…

As ever, there are trenchant swipes at the worlds of Art and Big Business as well as incisive explorations of the relationship between us and our pets, the perils of inventing stuff and a pants-wetting selection debating the downsides of air travel…

And best of all, the artist sets aside time and space to share with us God’s Plan and proves that the Almighty’s sense of humour is both wicked and petty…

You might discover Not-Facts that will change your life after gleaning Benton’s take on loneliness, fast food, binge eating, farting, periods, disabilities, growing up, Big Pharma, and the business of medicine in single page giggle-bombs ranging from strident solo panels to extended strips; silent shockers to poetically florid and verbose tracts.

There are also some jokes about bears…

Another uproarious compilation to make the sourest persimmon laugh as sweetly as pie (there are no joke about pies in this volume)…
© 2016 Jim Benton. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Hurricane Isle: The Best of Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs


By Roy Crane, edited by Rick Norwood (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-809-0 (HB)

Modern comics evolved from newspaper cartoons and comic strips, and these pictorial features were until relatively recently utterly ubiquitous and hugely popular with the public. They were also highly valued by publishers who used them as an irresistible sales weapon to guarantee and increase circulation and profits.

It’s virtually impossible for us to today to understand the overwhelming power of the comic strip in America (and the wider world) from the Great Depression to the end of World War II. With no television, broadcast radio barely established and movie shows at best a weekly treat for most folk, household entertainment was mostly derived from the comic sections of daily and especially Sunday Newspapers. They were the most common recreation for millions who were well served by a fantastic variety and incredible quality. Crucially this notionally free entertainment kept readers loyal to the papers that ran a family’s favourites…

From the very start humour was paramount; hence the terms “The Funnies” and “Comics”, and from these gag and stunt beginnings – a blend of silent movie slapstick, outrageous fantasy and raucous vaudeville shows – came a thoroughly entertaining mutant hybrid: Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs.

Washington Tubbs II was a comedic gag-a-day strip not much different from family favourite Harold Teen (by Crane’s friend and contemporary Carl Ed). As first depicted on April 21st 1924, Tubbs was a diminutive, ambitious and bumbling young store clerk when the feature debuted, but after only three months Crane re-evaluated his little enterprise, making a few changes which would reshape the entire art form…

Having Wash run away to the circus (Crane did much the same in the name of research). the artist gradually moved the strip into mock-heroics, then through a period of gently boisterous action romps to become a full-blown, light-hearted, rip-roaring adventure series. It was the first of its kind and dictated the form for decades thereafter. Crane then sealed its immortality with the introduction of prototype he-man and ancestral moody swashbuckler Captain Easy in the landmark episode for 6th May, 1929.

As the yarns became more exotic and thrill-drenched, our globe-trotting little dynamo clearly needed a sidekick and sounding board. After a number of bright and breezy types were tried and discarded, Crane decided on one who could believably handle the combat side of things, and thus, in the middle of a European war in the fairytale kingdom of Kandelabra, Tubbs liberated a mysterious fellow American from a dungeon and history was made.

Before long the mismatched pair were inseparable; tried-and-true travelling companions hunting treasure, fighting thugs and rescuing startlingly comely damsels in distress…

The bluff, two-fisted, completely capable and utterly dependable, down-on-his-luck “Southern Gentleman” was something not seen before in comics: a taciturn, raw, square-jawed hunk played completely straight rather than the previously popular buffoon or music hall foil seen in such classic serials as Hairsbreadth Harry or Desperate Desmond.

Moreover, Crane’s seductively simple blend of cartoon exuberance and design was a far more accessible and powerful medium for action story-telling than the static illustrative style favoured by artists like Hal Foster who was just beginning to make waves on the new Tarzan Sunday page at this time.

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

After a couple of abortive attempts starring his little hero, Crane eventually bowed to the inevitable and created a full colour Sunday page dedicated solely to his increasingly popular hero-for-hire. The Captain Easy feature debuted on 30th July 1933, in wild and woolly escapades set prior to his fateful meeting with Tubbs.

Both together and separately, reprinted exploits of these troubleshooters became staples of the earliest comic books – specifically The Funnies from October 1936 and The Comics, from March 1937 onwards.

With an entire page and vibrant colours to play with, Crane’s imagination ran wild and his fabulous visual concoctions achieved a timeless immediacy that made each page a unified piece of sequential art. The effect of these can be seen in so many strips since, especially the works of such near-contemporaries as Hergé and giants in waiting like Charles Schulz. They have all been collected in the 4-volume Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune: The Complete Sunday Newspaper Strips. Sadly, no digital versions yet, but there’s always hope…

Those pages were a clearly as much of a joy to create as to read. In fact, the cited reason for Crane surrendering the Sunday strip to his assistant Les Turner in 1937 was NEA Syndicate’s abruptly and arbitrarily demanding that henceforward, all its strips be produced in a rigid panel-structure to facilitate being cut up and re-pasted as local editors dictated. Crane just walked away, concentrating on the daily feature. In 1943 he quit NEA completely, to create wartime aviator strip Buz Sawyer, and Turner became the able custodian of the heroes’ fate.

Wash Tubbs ran until January 10th 1988.

Before all that, however, Wash was the affable and undisputed star of a never-ending parade of riotous monochrome daily escapades and this superb hardback opens with two of them: part of a cherry-picked compilation of ten of the very best adventures of the bombastic buddies. Hopefully it will one day lead to another complete reprinting such as the 18-volume series covering the entirety of the Wash Tubbs run – 1934-1943 – that was published by NBM from 1987-1992. Good luck finding those…

Before the non-stop nonsense begins author and pre-eminent comic strip historian Ron Goulart details all you need to know about the tales in ‘A History of Lickety Whop’ whilst editor Rick Norwood provides further background information in his copiously illustrated Introduction, after which we’re plunged into astounding adventure on eponymous ‘Hurricane Isle’ (which originally ran from February 23rd to June 6th 1928)…

At this time Wash and fellow inveterate fortune-hunter Gozy Gallup are gloating over securing an ancient map which once belonged to the dread pirate Edward Teach… AKA Blackbeard!

As they research the infamous buccaneer and scrabble to find a ship to take them where they need to go, they are unaware that aggrieved enemy Brick Bane – the “Bandit King of Mexico” – is hard on their heels and hungry for vengeance. Stalking them as they journey from New Orleans to the Caribbean, he takes a nasty sea captain into his confidence and arranges for that sinister salt to hire out his ship to the treasure seekers. The skipper is unsavoury brute Bull Dawson: destined to become Tubbs’ – and later Easy’s – greatest, most implacable foe…

After travelling to the island with them Dawson, having already removed Bane, springs his trap and turns Wash and Gozy into enslaved labourers, digging with the crew to find the fabled horde. The lads soon rebel and escape into the jungle to search on their own, and also abortively attempt to steal Dawson’s ship.

The wily brute is too much for them, however, and even after the boys finally locate the loot, the malicious mariner reappears to take it from them. The sadistic swine is preparing to maroon them when Bane arrives with a ship full of Mexican bandits and a shooting war begins…

With bullets flying and bodies dropping, Wash and Gozy convince affable deckhand Samson to switch sides and the trio take off for civilisation with the treasure in the hold…

Money comes and goes pretty freely for these guys but by the time ‘Arabia’ (July 30th – December 12th 1928) opens, they are still pretty flush and opt for a luxurious Mediterranean cruise. Unfortunately Wash’s propensity for clumsy gaffes raises the ire of very nasty sheik Abdul Hoozit Hudson Bey and the affronted potentate swears vengeance when the ship docks in Tunis.

As if icing fate’s cake, when wandering through the bazaar Wash is glamoured by a pair of gorgeous eyes and inadvertently seals his doom by attempting to rescue a girl from a seraglio: Jada is not only a distressed damsel but Bey’s favourite wife…

Heeding the French authorities’ advice to leave town quickly, the lads take off on a camel caravan into the Sahara. They have no idea they are heading into cunning Bey’s trap…

The fact that Jada is the favourite of the incensed chieftain saves them temporarily, but when the sheik finally finds a way to surreptitiously assassinate them, she and her devoted slave Bola dash into the deep desert to save them, and the quartet strike out for safety and freedom together.

That trek dumps them in the clutches of Bey’s great rival Abdullah Bumfellah and leads to a tribal shooting war. Happily, Bola has been busy and found a Foreign Legion patrol to save the day.

And that’s when Jada drops her bombshell. She is actually a princess from a European principality, sold to Bey by her father’s Grand Vizier so that he could steal the throne. Now that she’s free again, Jada must return to liberate her poor people. Despite having to get back to America, Wash won’t shut up about wishing he’d gone with her…

He soon gets the chance. Spanning April 11th through July 6th 1929, ‘Kandelabra’ became the most significant sequence in the strip’s history: introducing Captain Easy in a riotous, rousing Ruritanian epic which we join after Wash reunites with Jada in the postage stamp kingdom she had been so cruelly stolen from.

Our little go-getter infiltrates the government and rises to the rank of admiral of the landlocked realm before overplaying his hand and beingframed for stealing the army’s payroll. Delivered to a secret dungeon he (partially) escapes and finds a gruff fellow American who refuses to share his name but insists on being called “Easy”…

Busting out his new ally, Wash and the stranger are soon caught in a bloody revolution when the aggrieved army mutinies. Before long the Vizier’s cronies are ousted, the vile villain accidentally orchestrates his own demise and regally restored Jada declares the birth of the continent’s newest democracy…

In ‘Desert Island’ (February 6th – June 7th 1930) Bull Dawson returns to steal Tubbs’ entire fortune, and flies off across America in a bid to escape with his ill-gotten gains. The robbery becomes a nationwide sensation and we join the action as Wash & Easy pursue the fugitive. Tracking Dawson to San Francisco, they continue the chase as the malign mariner takes off in a schooner with our heroes first stowaways and, before long, prisoners…

The sadistic Bull lose face after being thrashed in a no-holds barred fight with Easy, which was mere subterfuge to allow the southern soldier of fortune to pick Dawson’s pocket and recover Wash’s easily portable $200,000 in cash. As the battered thug recuperates, the vessel is hit by a monster typhoon which apparently leaves our heroes sole survivors aboard shattered shards of the schooner.

The wreck fetches up on a desolate Pacific atoll where the boys soon fall into the routine of latter-day Robinson Crusoes. The isolated idyll becomes cruelly complicated when they find the place is already home to a young woman who was the only survivor of an attack by roving headhunters from Borneo. Mary Milton is brave, competent and beautiful and before long the lonely pals are fierce rivals for her affections…

The situation grows dangerously intense and only stabilises when the savages return, forcing the warring suitors to stand together or fall separately…

I think it’s about time that I remind everyone that these stories were crafted a long time ago for audiences with far less progressive ideas than us. There’s no deliberate intention to belittle or deride, but these lovely pages are certainly piled high with outdated assumptions and behaviour. If you are unable to forgive or set aside such treatment, please give this book a miss.

When the brutal battle ends, the westerners are in possession of a sturdy war canoe and opt to risk their lives on an epic ocean odyssey to the nearest outpost of civilisation. It’s only after the voyagers are far out to sea that Wash agonisingly recalls that he left his stash of dollars behind…

The next adventure (running from June 9th – October 1930) immediately follows on, with the weary travellers reaching French Indo-China and, thanks to a friendly soldier, escaping far inland via a mighty river. After days of travel they reach the previously hidden kingdom of Cucumbria and fall foul of the toad-worshipping emperor Igbay Umbay who takes one look at Mary and decides he has to have her…

Being a coward who stole the throne from his brother, this Grand Poobah hasn’t the nerve to simply take her, and so orchestrates a succession of scurvy schemes to get rid of Wash and Easy. Naturally, the boys are too smart and bold to fall for them.

Infuriatingly rising in power and status, aided by young prince Hilo Casino – freshly returned from college in America – the Americans finally seem be out of Umbay’s hair after they agree to lead his armies against supernatural rebel leader ‘The Phantom King’…

Despite deep misgivings “General” Easy and his aide Washington Tubbs embark upon a campaign that will ravage the hidden kingdom, unseat an emperor, cost thousands of lives and lose them the girl they both love…

A year later, ‘Down on the Bayou’ (March 12th to July 25th 1931) found the world-weary wanderers nearing home again, only to be arrested as they approach New Orleans in a stolen plane. They were fleeing a clever frame-up in infamous Costa Grande, but without any proof could only evade their US Navy captors and flee into the swampy vastness of the Mississippi Delta…

Lost for days and starving, they are picked up by vivacious gangster’s moll Jean who recruits them into a gang of smugglers and rum-runners who inhabit a huge plantation somewhere between Pelican Island and Barataria, dedicated to various criminal enterprises. Tubbs & Easy soon comfortably settle in amidst the rogues and outcasts, but everything changes when Jean’s brother returns from a smuggling trip. His name is Bull Dawson…

He is prevented from killing our heroes by Jean and the huge Cajun in charge of the outlaw outpost, but takes it badly. With his gang of deadly bodyguards in tow, Bull decides to take over the whole enterprise. A couple of murders later he’s big boss, but also oddly friendly to his most despised enemies.

Maybe it’s a ploy to put them off guard, or perhaps it has more to do with the gang of Chicago mobsters who have come down South, to put an end to the bootlegging mavericks cutting into their profits…

The troubles and bloodshed escalate exponentially and Jean drops her final bombshell: she’s a federal agent working with the Coast Guard to smash the budding criminal empire!

Once the dust settles she has one final surprise in store. In all the years of their friendship Wash could never get his taciturn pal to talk of his past or even reveal his real name. Now the government girl gives Mr. William Lee a message which sends him rushing across country to an old plantation home. Here the astounded Wash hears all about his pal’s shocking life, sordid scandals and abandoned wife… and then he learns the whole truth…

Soon, the impediments and lies which blighted Easy’s life are all removed and the wanderer settles in to a well-deserved retirement with the girl he always loved but could never have. Tubbs moves on, quickly reuniting with old chum Gozy Gallup…

Some weeks later, ever-restless Wash is riding a tramp steamer headed for Europe, intent on paying Jada a visit in Kandelabra but – falling foul of rustic transportation systems – ends up in the similar but so different Principality of Sneezia…

Apart from pretty girls, the tiny kingdom has only one point of interest: the world’s dinkiest railway service. Run by aged expatriate American Calliope Simpson, ‘The Transalpina Express’ (August 13th – November 21st 1931) links Sneezia to sister kingdom Belchia and is the most unique and beloved (by its intoxicated customers at least) service in the world.

Wash is especially keen to learn the business, since being the engineer has made octogenarian Cal the most irresistible man in two countries, fighting off adorable young women with a stick…

Someone’s greatest dream comes true when Simpson finally elopes with one of his adoring devotees and Washington Tubbs become sole operator of the Express, but his joy at all the feminine attention soon sours when Belchia and Sneezia go to war, and both sides want to use his train to move men and material into combat. Of course, the dilemma can only end in disaster and before long our boy is running for his life again…

There’s a big jump to the next yarn which finds Wash and Easy reunited and stowing away on the wrong-est ship imaginable. Quickly caught, they are understandably assumed to be part of the contingent of prisoners bound for the final destination – ‘Devils Island’ (June 9th to August 30th 1932)…

No sooner are they mixed in with the hopeless prison population than the planning of their inevitable escape begins. However, success only leads to greater peril as they and their criminal confederates take ship with a greedy captain subject to murderous bouts of paranoia and madness…

‘Whales’ (April 24th – August 30th 1933) is probably the most shocking to modern sensibilities of the perennial wanderers’ exploits. Here Wash & Easy are drugged in a Dutch cafe and dumped aboard one of the last sailing ships to work the whaling trade. Elderly and nostalgic Captain Folly has been convinced by psychotic First Mate Mr. Slugg to compete one last time against the new-fangled factory whaling fleets, unknowingly crewing his creaking old ship with shanghaied strangers…

The grim minutiae of the ghastly profession are scrupulously detailed as our heroes seek some means of escape, but with Slugg becoming increasingly unbalanced – and eventually murdering Folly – bloody mutiny leads to the ship foundering. Both factions – or at least the survivors of each – are subsequently marooned on arctic Alaskan ice, where (naturally) our heroes find the only pretty girl in a thousand square miles…

This fabulous treasury of thrills concludes with one last battle against Bull Dawson after the incorrigible monster links up with gorgeous grifter Peggy Lake, who fleeces gullible Wash of his savings and disappears into the endless green wilderness of the swamps of ‘Okefenokee’ (June 13th – July 24th 1935).

The crime leads to a massive police manhunt through the mire before the boys personally track down the villains and deliver one more sound thrashing to the malodorous malcontent and his pretty patsy…

Rounding off this superb collection is a thorough ‘Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs Episode Guide’ by Rick Norwood, a glorious graphic Mexican travelogue feature by Crane in ‘An Afterword in Pictures’ and informative biography section ‘About the Authors’…

If I’ve given the impression that this has all been grim and gritty turmoil and drama thus far, please forgive me: Crane was a superbly irrepressible gag-man and his boisterous, enchanting serials resonate with breezy, light-hearted banter, hilarious situations and outright farce – a sure-fire formula modern cinema directors plunder to this day.

Easy was the Indiana Jones, Flynn (The Librarian) Carsen and Jack (Romancing the Stone) Cotton of his day – and, clearly blazed a trail for all of them – whilst Wash was akin to Danny Kaye or our own Norman Wisdom: brave, big-hearted, well-meaning, clay-footed, irrepressible and utterly indomitable everymen… just like all of us.

This superb monochrome landscape hardback (274 x 33 x 224 mm) is a wonderful means of discovering or rediscovering Crane’s rip-snorting, pulse-pounding, exotically racy adventure trailblazer.

This is comics storytelling of the very highest quality: unforgettable, spectacular and utterly irresistible. These tales rank alongside her best of Hergé, Tezuka and Kirby, irrefutably informing the creations of all of them. These strips inspired the giants of our art form. How can you possibly resist?
Hurricane Isle: The Best of Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs © 2015 Fantagraphics Books. All Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy Strips © 2015 United Features Syndicate, Inc. All other material © the respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.