Category: Comics/Academic

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The Definitive Betty Boop: The Classic Comic Strip Collection


By Max Fleischer, Bud Counihan, with Hal Seeger & various (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-707-8 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Betty Boop is one of the most famous and long-lived fictional media icons on the planet and probably the one who has generated the least amount of narrative creative material – as opposed to simply merchandise – per year since her debut.

She was created at the Fleischer Cartoon Studios, most likely by either by Max Fleischer himself or top cartoonist and animator Grim Natwick – depending on whomever you’ve just read – and had a bit part in the monochrome animated short feature Dizzy Dishes: the seventh “Talkartoon” release from the studio, screened for the first time on August 9th 1930.

A calculatedly racy sex-symbol from the start, albeit anthropomorphised into a sexy French Poodle (!!), Betty was primarily based on silent movie star and infamous “It-Girl” Clara Bow. Or, according to some historians, it was far more than just her distinctive sound Betty took from popular contemporary star Helen Kane. In those pioneering days of “talkies”, Betty was voiced by a succession of actresses including Margie Hines, Kate Wright, Ann Rothschild and ultimately Mae Questel, who all mimicked Bow’s soft, seductive (no, really!) Brooklyn accent. Or possibly Kane’s. There’s a court case involved in this history so opinions are hard held and still very divided…

Although frequently appearing beside early Fleischer Studios stars Bimbo (a homely puppy dog also called Fitz) and Koko the Clown – who both debuted in Fleischer’s earliest screen offerings Out of the Inkwell – Betty had become a fully, if wickedly shaped, human girl by 1932’s Any Rags, and she quickly co-opted and monopolised all the remaining Talkartoons, before graduating to the Screen Songs featurettes. Betty ultimately won her own animated cartoon series to become “The Queen of the Animated Screen”, reigning until the end of the decade.

A Jazz Age flapper in the Depression Era, the delectable Boop was probably the first sex-charged teen-rebel of the 20th century, yet remained winningly innocent and knowledgeably chaste throughout her career. Maybe that’s why she became so astoundingly, incredibly popular – although her appeal diminished appreciably once the censorious Hayes Production Code cleaned up all that smut and fun and sophistication oozing out of Hollywood in 1934 – even though the Fleisher Studio was proudly New York born and bred.

Saucy singer Helen Kane – who had performed in a sexy “Bow-esque” Brooklyn accent throughout the 1920s and was billed as “The Boop-Oop-A-Doop Girl” – famously sued for “deliberate caricature” in 1932. As well as a renowned actor, she was sharp enough to briefly steal the show and actually become the star of the first Betty newspaper strips…

When Kane’s lawsuit failed, Betty took over the paper outlets in her own name, but couldn’t withstand a prolonged assault by the National Legion of Decency and Hayes Code myrmidons. With all innuendo removed, salacious movements restricted and wearing much longer skirts, Betty gained a boyfriend and family, whilst newspaper strip scripts consciously targeted younger audiences. The tabloid feature folded in 1937 and her last animated cartoon stories were released in 1939. The only advantage to Betty’s screen neutering and new wholesome image was that she suddenly became eligible for inclusion on the Funnies pages of family newspapers, alongside the likes of Popeye, Little Orphan Annie and Mickey Mouse….

This superb collection gathers every pre-war iteration associated with Betty Boop – including ones she isn’t in – and is augmented by fond remembrances from Mark Fleischer and Virginia Mahoney in their Foreword ‘About our grandad, Max Fleischer…’ and comes with an informative Introduction tracing Betty’s wild ride of a career. Supplementing his text with candid behind-the-scenes photos and contemporary art as well as advertising items and memorabilia of the time, cartoonist Brian Walker (son of Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois creator Mort Walker) traces the celluloid and tabloid star’s creation, rise, fall and latter day resurgence in ‘Made of Pen and Ink, she can win you with a Wink’.

There was a brief flurry of renewed activity during the 1980s, which led to a couple of TV specials, a comic book from First Comics (Betty Boop’s Big Break, 1990) and a second newspaper strip. Betty Boop and Felix was crafted by Walker and his brothers Neal, Greg, and Morgan, wherein the glamour queen shared adventures with fellow King Features nostalgia icon Felix the Cat. It ran from July 23rd 1984 – January 31st 1988, but even counting those – and we aren’t here – that’s still a pretty meagre complete comics canon for a lady of Betty’s longevity, pedigree and stature…

Confusion and contention abound in Betty’s print career and that’s mirrored in this book. Her first regular strip was as a daily feature in black-&-white, but you’ll see that last, because the comics experience begins in full colour with an experimental Out of the Inkwell – Koko the Klown Sunday strip starring the manic mime in silent surreal romps that have the cachet of being Fleischer’s first work for King Features Syndicate. They ran from November 25th – December 15th 1934 and are followed by The Original Boop Boop-A-Doop Girl: a Sunday feature spanning August 5th to October 12th 1934. As negotiations between Fleischer and King Features stalled in 1933, Helen Kane approached the Syndicate and offered herself as a straight knock-off for the cartoon star. The resultant domestic comedy strip ran for just 11 weeks, and only in the tabloid New York Sunday Mirror. It was dropped as soon as Fleischer signed with King Features…

Attributed to Kane and drawn by Ving Fuller, the succession of manic gag pages are basic, innocently racy vaudeville one-liners, but do still evoke a certain nostalgic charm…

Whilst we’re on a possibly touchy subject: a lot of attitudes to women and visualisations of minorities won’t really pass an earnest examination here, and readers should be aware that these were all created in a different time for far less enlightened audiences. A little patience and forbearance will be your best guides on some pages…

Running from November 25th 1934 to November 27th 1937, the full colour Sunday strips starring the original and genuine Betty Boop were drawn by Bud Counihan: a veteran ink-slinger who had created the Little Napoleon strip in the 1920s before becoming Chic Young’s assistant on Blondie. They commenced a few months after the daily feature and might be a little confusing as they encompass a large supporting cast for aspiring starlet Betty as she navigates a tiresome and treacherous career in Hollywood. I’d advise reading the dailies first and ending your reading enjoyment here, but it’s your choice…

These gag episodes feature the freshly-sanitised, family-oriented heroine of the post-Hayes Code era, but for devotees of the period and comics fans in general, the strip still retains a unique and abiding charm. Counihan’s Betty is still oddly, innocently coquettish yet confidant: a saucy thing with too-short skirts and skimpy apparel. Some outfits – especially bathing costumes – would raise eyebrows even now, and although the bald innuendo that made her a star is absent, these tales of a street-wise young thing trying to “make it” in Tinseltown are plenty sophisticated when viewed through the knowing, sexually adroit and informed eyes of 21st century readers. Well some of them, anyway…

Produced as full-page strips, the Sundays are broadly slapstick, with moments of cunning wordplay: single joke stories regarding the weirdness of acting and the travails of fandom. There’s a succession of blandly arrogant romantic leading men (mostly called Van something-or-other) but none stick around for long as Betty builds her career, and eventually scenarios change to a western setting as cast and crew begin making Cowboy Pictures, leading to many weeks’ worth of “Injun Jokes”, but ones working delightfully and hilariously counter to expected unpleasant stereotypes of those times. However, the introduction of fearsome lower-class virago Aunt Tillie – chaperone, bouncer and sometime comedy movie extra – moves the strip into an unexpected direction and begins Betty’s life as an extra in her own show…

Soon, a clear and unflinching formula sets in with Bubby (see below), Aunt Tillie and her diminutive new beau Hunky Dory increasingly edging Betty out of the spotlight and even occasionally off the page entirely. By 1937 the show was over…

The Betty Boop daily strip began on July 23rd 1934: a raw, raucous comedy gig that ran until March 18th 1935 in an extended sequence of gag-a-day encounters blending into an epic comedy-of-errors. Here Betty’s lawyers do litigious battle with movie directors and producers to arrive at the perfect contract for all parties. That’s clearly a war that still rages to this day and once again it’s happening under the cost restrictions of what is, after all, another Great Depression like the one Betty was a constant momentary antidote to…

Jokes come thick and fast in the same vein, with lawyers, entourage and all extras providing the bulk of the humour whilst Betty stands in for the Straight Man in her own strip… Except for a recurring riff about losing weight to honour her contract, which stipulates she cannot be filmed weighing more than 100 pounds! Geez! Her head alone has got to weigh at least… sorry, I know… it’s just a comic…

Like most modern stars, Betty had a dual career and there’s a lot of recording industry and song jokes as well as fan affrontery and boyfriend woes, as well as the introduction of the first of an extended cast: Betty’s streetwise baby brother Bubby (originally Billy). He’s a riotous rapscallion intended to act as a chaotic foil to the star’s affably sweet, knowingly dim complacency, and he’s another celluloid wannabe in waiting…

By no means a major effort of the Golden Age of Comics Strips, Counihan’s Betty Boop (like most licensed syndicated features the strip was “signed” by the copyright holder, in this case Max Fleischer) remains a hugely effective, engaging and entertaining work, splendidly executed and well worthy of the attentions of fans with a penchant for history or feeling for fashion.

With the huge merchandising empire built around the effervescent cartoon Gamin/Houri, (everything from apparel to wallpaper, clocks to drinking paraphernalia) surely there’s room today to address her small brief but potent contributions to the comics arts. If you think so, this book is for you…

Betty Boop © 2015 King Features Syndicate, Inc./Fleischer Studios, Inc. ™ & © Hearst Holdings, Inc./Fleischer Studios, Inc. All rights reserved. Foreword © 2015 Mark Fleischer & Ginny Mahoney. Introduction © 2015 Brian Walker.

Today in 1877, pioneering Swedish cartoonist/comics creator Oskar Emil “O.A.” Andersson was born, and in 1911 the amazing Jack Burney (Superman, Batman, Starman) also arrived. In 1957 Belgian star Bernard “Yslaire” Hislaire was born followed a year later by Ms. Tree co-creator Terry Beatty with writer/editor Bob Harras coming one year later. Sam (Zero Girl, The Maxx, Wolverine) Keith, arrived in 1963.

Sadly in 1998 we lost astoundingly adept Canadian import Win Mortimer (Superman, Batman, Legion of Super-Heroes).

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Bernet


By Jordi Bernet & various, edited by Manual Auad (Auad Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-96693-812-8 (HB)

In anticipation of the impending Legend Testers collection from Rebellion Studios expected next week, here’s a glance at a translated treat from a bygone era confirming why you should adore this graphic genius as much as I do. It’s well worth the search and I’ll be cribbing from it heavily when I get around to the turbulent time troubleshooters themselves…

When you’re a life-long thrill-starved kid enchanted by comics, the first stage of development is slavishly absorbing everything good, bad and indifferent. Then comes the moment that you see subtle nuances which inexplicably makes some features favourites whilst others become simply filler.

I first recognised Jordi Bernet’s work on UK thriller serial The Legend Testers… and by “recognised” I mean the very moment I first discerned that somebody actually drew the stuff I was mesmerised by, and that it was better than the stuff either side of it. This was 1966 when British comics were mostly monochrome and never had signatures or credits, so it was years before I knew who had sparked my interest.

Jordi Bernet Cussó was born in Barcelona in 1944, son of a prominent, successful humour cartoonist. When his father died suddenly Jordi, aged 15, took over his father’s strip Doña Urraca (Mrs. Magpie). A huge fan of Alex Raymond, Hal Foster and especially expressionist genius Milton Caniff, Jordi yearned for less restrictive horizons and left Spain in the early 1960s and moved into dramatic storytelling.

He worked for Belgium’s Le Journal de Spirou, and Germany’s Pip and Primo, before finding a home in British weeklies. Bernet worked for UK publishers between 1964 and 1967, and as well as the Odhams/Fleetway/IPC anthologies Smash, Tiger and War Picture Library, also produced superb material for DC Thomson’s Victor and Hornet. He even illustrated a Gardner Fox horror short for Marvel’s Vampire Tales #1 in 1973, but mainstream America was generally denied his mastery (other than a few translated Torpedo volumes and a Batman short story) until the 21st century reincarnation of Jonah Hex which he truly made his own…

His most famous strips include thrillers Dan Lacombe (written by his uncle Miguel Cussó), Paul Foran (scripted by José Larraz) the saucy Wat 69 and spectacular post-apocalyptic barbarian epic Andrax (both with uncle Cussó again). When fascist dictator Franco died, Bernet returned to Spain and began working for Cimoc, Creepy and Metropol, collaborating with Antonio Segura on the sexy adult fantasy Sarvan and the dystopian SF black comedy Kraken, and with Enrique Sánchez Abuli on the gangster and adult themes tales that have made him one of the world’s most honoured artists. These culminated on the incredibly successful crime saga Torpedo 1936.

This magnificent commemoration of his career thus far spans those years when he first echoed his father’s style through to the sleek minimalist, chiaroscuric, emphatic line economy that drills into readers hindbrains like hot lead from a smoking 45. Also on view, as well as the violence there’s ample example of his sly, witty (and just as hot!) sex comedy material. Bernet is an absolute master of the female form and his adult material – created with Carlos Trillo – such as Custer, Clara De Noche and Cicca is truly remarkable and unforgettable.

This glorious deluxe hardback gathers together a vast quantity of covers; book illustrations; sketches; drawings, pin-ups &studies; advertising work and that Batman stuff, with a separate chapter on Bernet’s Beauties, a biography (which could, I must admit, have done with one last proof-read before going to press) and full checklisting of his works and awards. There are heartfelt artistic contributions and tributes from some of his vast legion of fans: Will Eisner, Joe Kubert, Jordi Langaron, Carlos Nine, Josep M. Bea, Luca Biagnini, Al Dellinges, Josep Toutain, Eduardo Risso, Horacio Altuna, Carlos Gimenez, Sergio Aragonés, Carlos Trillo, Juan Gimenez and Hobie MacQuarrie, but the true delights here are the 16 complete stories – Torpedo 1936, Sarvan, Custer, Clara De Noche and Kraken – as well as westerns, war stories, comedies and crime thrillers.

This is an incredible tribute to an incredible creator, and one no artist with professional aspirations can afford to miss, but parents be warned – there’s lots of nudity and violence beautifully depicted here – so be sure to read it yourselves first. Just in case…
All art and characters © 2009 their respective copyright holders. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1955, sleek design master/airbrush aviation nut Ken Steacy was born, and we lost master craftsmen Victor (Redbeard, Buck Danny) Hubinon in 1979 and Bernard Krigstein in 1990. If you read nothing else by “Krig”, go find “Master Race” (Impact Comics #1, April 1955) and learn something important…

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Walt Disney’s Donald Duck volume 5: “Christmas on Bear Mountain” by Carl Barks


By Carl Barks (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-697-3 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: The Utter Acme of All-Ages Entertainment… 10/10

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon in 1901, growing up in the rural areas of the West during some of the leanest times in US history. He tried his hand at many jobs before settling into the profession that chose him. His early life is well-documented elsewhere if you need detail, but briefly, Barks worked as an animator at Disney’s studio before quitting in 1942 to work in the new-fangled field of comic books. With cartoon studio partner Jack Hannah (another occasional strip illustrator) Barks adapted a Bob Karp script for an animated cartoon short into the comic book Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. It was published as Dell Four Color Comics Series II #9 in October of that year and – although not his first published comics work – it was the story that shaped the rest of his career.

From then until his official retirement in the mid-1960s, Barks worked in self-imposed seclusion, writing and drawing and devising a vast array of adventure comedies, gags, yarns and covers that gelled into a Duck Universe of memorable and highly bankable characters. These included Gladstone Gander (1948), Gyro Gearloose (1952), Magica De Spell (1961) and the nefarious Beagle Boys (1951) to supplement Disney’s stable of cartoon actors. His greatest creation was undoubtedly the crusty, energetic, paternalistic, money-mad giga-gazillionaire Scrooge McDuck: the World’s wealthiest winged septuagenarian and the harassed, hard-pressed star of this show.

Whilst producing all that landmark material Barks was just a working guy, generating cover art, illustrating other people’s scripts when asked and contributing stories to the burgeoning canon of Duck Lore. After Gladstone Publishing began re-packaging Barks material – and a selection of other Disney strips – in the 1980s, he discovered the well-earned appreciation he never imagined existed…

So potent were his creations that they inevitably fed back into Disney’s animation output itself, even though his brilliant comic tales were done for licensing company Dell/Gold Key, and not directly for the studio. The greatest tribute was undoubtedly the animated series Duck Tales: heavily based on his comics output. Barks was a fan of wholesome action, unsolved mysteries and epics of exploration, and this led to him perfecting the art and technique of the blockbuster tale: blending wit, history, plucky bravado and sheer wide-eyed wonder into rollicking rollercoaster romps that utterly captivated readers of every age and vintage. Without the Barks expeditions there would never have been an Indiana Jones…

Throughout his working life Barks was blissfully unaware that his work – uncredited by official policy as was all Disney’s cartoon and comic book output – had been singled out by a rabid and discerning public as being by “the Good Duck Artist”. When his most dedicated fans finally tracked him down, a belated celebrity began.

In 2013 Fantagraphics Books began collecting Barks’ Duck stuff in wonderful, carefully curated archival volumes, tracing his output year-by-year in hardback tomes (and digital editions) that finally did justice to the quiet creator. These will eventually comprise a Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The physical copies are sturdy and luxurious albums – 193 x 261mm – that would grace and enhance any bookshelf, with volume 5 – Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: “Christmas on Bear Mountain” (for reasons irrelevant here) acting as debut release, and re-presenting works from 1947 – albeit not in strictly chronological release order.

It begins eponymously with the landmark introduction of Bark’s most enduring creation. Scrooge McDuck premiered in seasonal full-length Donald Duck yarn ‘Christmas on Bear Mountain’ (as seen in Four Color #178 December 1947): a disposable comedy foil to move along a simple tale of Seasonal woe and joy. Here a miserly relative seethes in opulent isolation, hating everybody and opting to share the gloom by tormenting his nephews Donald, Huey, Louie & Dewey by gifting them his mountain cabin for the Holidays.

Scrooge schemed, intent on terrorising them in a bear costume, but fate had other ideas…

The old coot was crusty, energetic, menacing, money-mad and yet oddly lovable – and thus far too potentially valuable to be misspent or thrown away. Undoubtedly, the greatest cartoon creation of legendary and magnificent story showman Barks, the Downy Dodecadillionaire returned often and eventually expanded to fill all available space in the tales from the scenic metropolis of Duckburg.

From the same issue a brace of one-page gags expose Donald’s views on car culture in ‘Fashion in Flight’ and annoying people looking for directions in ‘Turn for the Worse’ before ‘Donald’s Posy Patch’ (Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #80, May) turns into another painfully humiliating experience as the bellicose bird tries getting rich by growing blooms…

June’s WDC&S #81 finds him and the boys prospecting and running afoul of the post-war arms and rocket-race in ‘Donald Mines his Own Business’ before Four Color #147 (May) takes them on an epic voyage of fantastic discovery to ‘Volcano Valley’ after accidentally buying an army surplus bomber.

Always looking for a quick buck, Donald and the kids turn to commercial charters: flying innocuous-seeming Major Pablo Mañana back to Central American beauty-spot Volcanovia, but they all have a devilishly difficult time getting out again. This yarn sets a solid pattern for Bark’s adventure/travelogue yarns in years to come, blending comedy, thrills, whimsy and social commentary into an irresistible treat…

July’s WDC&S #82 finds adult and juvenile ducks enjoying an ever-escalating war over who’s the best conjuror in ‘Magical Misery’ and by the time Daisy Duck deals with them, Donald is ready for a day of peace and quiet. Sadly, ‘Ring Wrongs’ (AKA ‘Vacation Time’ from August’s WDC&S #83) reveals that thanks to Huey, Louie & Dewey, he’s the target of a relentless wave of door-to-door salesmen and sees him react with typical zest and vigour…

An inappropriate experiment in hypnosis transforms Donald (mentally) into a kangaroo and prompts an ‘Adventure Down Under’ (FC #159, August) with the eventually restored Drake and his nephews compelled to become ‘roo hunters to fund return passage to Duckburg. They are mightily outmatched by Mournful Mary – Queen of the Kangaroos – until they meet some local aborigines and experience a change of heart.

Please be aware that – despite Bark’s careful research and diligent, sensitive storytelling – some modern readers could be upset by his depictions from over seven decades ago…

‘If the Hat Fits’ is a gag-page of chapeau chuckles from FC #147 (May) preceding a mid-length tale describing Donald’s efforts to master dancing in ‘The Waltz Kings’ (WDC&S #84, September) counterbalanced a month later by #85’s ‘The Masters of Melody’, wherein the boys struggle to learn playing musical instruments…

‘Donald Duck and the Ghost of the Grotto’ is an early masterpiece originating in Four Color #159 (August 1947), with Donald and the lads in the West Indies, running a kelp boat and harvesting seaweed from the abundant oceans. After being temporarily stranded on an isolated reef, they discover monsters, a shipwrecked galleon, an ongoing abduction mystery dating back centuries and a particularly persistent phantom, all blending into a supremely thrilling and beguiling mystery that has never dated…

WDC&S #86 exposes the rise and fall of ‘Fireman Donald’, whose smug hubris deprives him of a job he’s actually good at, after which ‘The Terrible Turkey’ from #87 details the Duck’s frankly appalling efforts to secure a big bird for the Thanksgiving feast despite skyrocketing poultry prices…

Donald and Mickey Merry Christmas 1947 (cover-dated January 1948) sees the boys strive a little too late and much too hard to be ‘Three Good Little Ducks’ and ensure a wealth of swag on Christmas morning, before one final single-pager sees kitchen confusion for Donald in ‘Machine Mix-up’ (FC #178, December)…

With the visual verve done we move on to validation as ‘Story Notes’ offers erudite commentary for each Duck tale. Donald Ault relates ‘Carl Barks: Life Among the Ducks’ before ‘Biographies’ reveals why he and commentators Alberto Beccatini, Joseph Robert Cowles, Craig Fischer, Jared Gardner, Rich Kreiner, Ken Parille, Stefano Priarone, R. Fiore, and Mattias Wivel are saying all those nice and informative things. We close with provenance as ‘Where Did These Duck Stories First Appear?’ explains the somewhat byzantine publishing schedules of Dell Comics.

Carl Barks was one of the greatest exponents of comic art the world has ever seen, and almost all his work featured Disney’s characters: reaching and affecting untold millions of readers across the world and he all too belatedly won far-reaching recognition. You might be late to the party but it’s never too soon to climb aboard the Barks Express.
Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “Christmas on Bear Mountain” © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All contents © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

Today in 1913 master story-man screenwriter and occasional comics author Alfred Bester was born. His visual feasts included lots of DC comics such as Green Lantern, and newspaper strips The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician. You are incomplete if you haven’t read The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger, Tiger) and Who He?

In 1919 British cartoon genius Ken Reid was born so look him up here too if you need a quick giggle. 30 years later modern comics maestro everyman Paul Neary joined the party. You know him as an inker, but he was a writer, illustrator and editor without equal so google that name too when you have a moment…

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Krampus: The Devil of Christmas


By various, edited by Monte Beauchamp (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-747-1 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Horrid Holiday Cheers… 8/10

In the spirit of the times, I thought I’d get some Christmas fare in early – or even pre-emptively. Oddly, that’s also the way I like my retaliation…

When I lived in New York, the morning after Thanksgiving was when retailers committed Christmas. Staggering out into chilly morning air (I wonder if they still have that?) after a surfeit of absolutely everything, one’s eyes would boggle at a profusion of tinsel, glitter and lights with entire buildings done up like stockings or giant parcels. These utterly mindboggling tributes to understatement would make any stolid Englander quail with disquiet and I still get tremors occasionally around postmen bearing packages…

Another way to bring on Christmas chills is with a good book, and this delightfully engrossing celebration from artist, historian and designer Monte Beauchamp (a welcome expansion on his 2004 book The Devil in Design) is a lost classic, focusing on a long-sidelined aspect of the Season of Good Will that’s found renewed interest in modern times thanks to a film franchise and the general malaise affecting increasing glum and despondent humans…

For decades Monte Beauchamp’s iconic, innovative narrative and graphic arts magazine Blab! highlighted the best and most groundbreaking trends and trendsetters in cartooning and other popular creative fields. Initially published through the auspices of much-missed Kitchen Sink Press, it moved first to Fantagraphics and carried on courtesy of Last Gasp as snazzy hardback annual Blabworld. Here however Beauchamp looks not forward but back, revelling in the lost exuberance and dark creativity of a host of anonymous artists whose seasonal imaginings spiced up the Winter Solstice for generations of guilty-until-proven-innocent tots & tykes.

In Western Europe – especially the German-speaking countries but also as far afield as Northern Italy and the Balkans – St Nicholas used to travel out with gifts for good children, but was accompanied by a goat-headed, satanic servant. Fur-covered, foul, furtive, chain-bedecked, sinister and all-knowing, the beast-man with a foot-long tongue and one cloven hoof wielded a birch switch to thrash the unruly and a copious sack to carry off disobedient kinder.

The Krampus was a fixture of winter life in Austria, Switzerland and German Principalities, with his own special feast-day (December 5th,  just before St. Nikolaus’ Day so brace yourselves and batten down any wayward hatches!); parades; festivals and highly enjoyable – for parents, at least – ceremonial child-traumatising events. Back then, we really knew how to reward the naughty and the nice…

This compelling and enchanting tome – still readily available but still not as a digital delivery – celebrates the breathtaking dark edge of the Christmas experience as depicted through the medium of the full-colour postcards that were a crucial facet of life in Europe from 1869 to the outbreak of World War I.

However, even with fascinating histories of the character and art-form related in ‘Greetings From Krampus’, ‘Festival of the Krampus’ and ‘Postal Beginnings’, the true wide-eyed wonder and untrammelled joy of this compendium is its glorious cacophony of paintings, prints, drawings collages – and even a few primitive and experimental photographic forays – depicting the delicious debilitating dread of the legendary deterrent as he (it?) terrifies boys and girls, explores the new-fangled temptations of airplanes and automobiles and regularly monitors the more mature wicked transgressions of courting and cavorting couples..

A feast of imagination and tradition ranging from the wry, sardonic and archly-knowing to the outright disturbing and genuinely scary, this magical art book is a treasure not just for Christmas but for life – as long as you have it…

And it’s not nearly as environmentally harmful as coal…
© 2010 Monte Beauchamp. All rights reserved.

Today in 1924 superstar illustrator Jack Davis was born so go look for his stuff here and elsewhere. You won’t regret it, and the same applies to Sergio (Tex Willer, Zagor) Bonelli born in Italy in 1932. Author/Editor Andy (Gay Comics) Mangels was born in 1966 and in 1971, Frank Cho joined the party. You can see his non-superhero oeuvre in action by checking out Liberty Meadows: Sundays Book One . In 1994 we lost UK strip master Tony Weare. One day SOMEONE will collect his masterful western Matt Marriott… and I’ll be waiting…

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The Legend of Desperate Dan – 60 Years of Classic Cartoon Art


By Dudley D. Watkins, with Charles Grigg, Ken Harrison & various (DC Thomson & Co)
ISBN: 978-0-85116-657-5 (tabloid HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

It needs to be said. Scotland is an ancient and proud nation steeped in unique history, character and culture, and one that has enriched the entire world. That having been said, they all seem to have a rather odd and frequently disturbing fascination with the notion of cowboys…

A timeless case in point is an icon of action and hilarity who began life as a mere half-page feature in the very first issue of The Dandy. The rowdy roughneck (and chin, and chest and…) was first seen fleeing town on December 4th 1937, but has since mellowed, found a family and settled down, He’s still the Strongest Man on Earth and always in trouble because he doesn’t know his own strength…

As seen in the eponymous opening historical section of this colossal tome, ‘The Legend of Desperate Dan’ predates Superman’s debut and owes more to Elzie Segar’s maritime masterpiece Popeye (as seen back then in Thimble Theatre) by way of a countless stampede of Saturday morning movie two-reelers. However Desperate Dan didn’t roam too long on the range and swiftly garnered a family including formidable Aunt Aggie, super-tough nephew Danny, niece Katey, the hard-pressed Mayor, Sheriff and so forth… and lots of put-upon, shell-shocked neighbours usually caught in the catastrophic aftermath of Dan’s latest efforts to help…

Like so many of DC Thompson’s most memorable stars, the Big Guy was the brainchild of Dudley D. Watkins (1907-1969) at his most imaginative and culturally adroit. A tireless and prolific illustrator equally adept at comedy, adventure, educational and drama storytelling, Watkins’ style more than any other shaped the pre and especially postwar look and form of the Scottish publishing giant’s comics output. Yes, the company AND the cowboy…

Watkins started life in Manchester and Nottingham as an artistic prodigy prior to entering Glasgow College of Art in 1924. Before long he was advised to get a job at expanding, Dundee-based Thomson’s, where a 6-month trial period illustrating prose “Boys’ Papers” stories led to comic strip specials and some original cartoon creations. Percy Vere and His Trying Tricks and Wandering Willie, The Wily Explorer made him the only contender for both lead strips in a bold new project conceived by Robert Duncan Low (1895-1980). Managing Editor of Children’s Publication. Between 1921 – 1933, Low launched the company’s “Big Five” story papers for boys: Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur. In 1936, he created the “Fun Section”: a landmark 8-page comic strip supplement for national newspaper The Sunday Post. This illustrated accessory – prototype and blueprint for every comic the company subsequently released – was launched on 8th March. From the outset, The Broons and Oor Wullie were the uncontested headliners… and both illustrated by Watkins. The other features included Chic Gordon’s Auchentogle, Allan Morley’s Nero and Zero, Nosey Parker and others. These pioneering comics laid the groundwork for the company’s next great leap. In December 1937 Low launched DC Thomson’s first weekly all-picture strip comic, The Dandy. Amidst the serried rank of funsters was a half-page western gag strip. It related the riotous outrages of a mean desperado dubbed Dan…

Dan was extremely popular and in 1939 briefly enjoyed taking up 75% of a page before expanding onto the star status of a full one. Famously, Dandy editor Alber Barnes – who hired Watkins and was the comic’s boss until 1982 – was the model for that unmissable chin. Almost everything else was made up…

This collation offers a wealth of strips, beginning with those calamity-stuffed half-pagers, filled with mighty gaffes, massive consumption and appalling comedic animal cruelty, all preceding the inevitable war contributions as the officially neutral US citizen kept finding ways to bugger up Hitler and Goebbels’ plans for Britain. Another cautionary note: back then smoking tobacco was MANLY, so Dan did it in vast and generally competitive amounts. Be warned and wary…

Monochrome trips about eating, fighting, shaving, Dan’s Girlfriend Lizzie, eating, fighting some more and getting even pause for a colour featurette on ‘The Dandy Monster Comic’ as Dan hoved further westward into Books and Annuals before the strips concentrate on the ‘War years’ with Cactusville slowly morphing in all but name into a fair-sized Scottish town as Dan inflicted ever more outlandish punishments on the weary, wary Wehrmacht…

Feature on firsts follows with ‘Desperate Dan’ shouting out to his ever expanding cast, after which post-war tales encompass a momentous trip to the North Pole; jobs; cow pie; sweet rationing; clothing for the bigger man; bank robbers; cow pie; how feeble modern buildings are; toothache for tough guys and how meat rationing impacts on the mightiest appetite ever known. Once again it’s some pretty hard sledding for us wimpy modern animal-lovers…

Covers, strips and other treats from the Christmas tomes explore Dan’s unstoppable progress and includes a spread on ‘Back Covers on Annuals’ – the cowboy’s sole province from 1954 to 1965 – before segueing into a 1950s selection as Britain, Empire & Commonwealth and Dandy underwent dramatic revision and change…

The Watkins-limned prose yarn ‘Two Desperate Tiddley-Winkers’ leads to more fifties fun with Dan no longer in any way intentionally dangerous in strips covering the star’s invulnerable hair & bristles, coal mining in the High Street; cow pie; and Dan’s utterly unique pedal bike (take one steamroller and three parts tractor…) before closing on a momentous moment of history as Dan voyages to London to see the Queen’s coronation as originally published in Dandy dated June 6th 1953…

‘The Desperate Dan Song’ – sorry, just words & pictures so you’ll need to wrangle up your own tune – leads into more strips with enhanced roles for Danny & Katey, prior to the Sixties revivals opening with ‘Annual features’ including a glance at Dan’s primordial forebear Desprit Jake.

With contemporary strips coming thick & fast the fun is closely followed by two-colour Annual larks involving li’l Dan’s photo-day at ‘Cactusville School’ whilst – happily mining a fresh seam – ‘Desperate Dan’s Schooldays’ (as illustrated by Charles Grigg and first published in the Desperate Dan Annual 1979) gives readers another bucket of whimsical back-story from the big man boyhood as the end approaches.

In 1984, the Biggest Yin made it to the front – and back – of the weekly Dandy covers, displacing Grigg’s Korky the Cat after five straight decades. Here a full colour spread celebrates an anniversary year with a quartet (octet?) of images shouting out fifty years of Desperate astonishment wonder before we unsaddle for the moment with final modern colour feature ‘The Hobbies of Desperate Dan’ as seen in the 1994 Dandy Annual and showing what the term “extreme sports” really means…

Timeless, hilarious and not nearly as tame as you thought, Desperate Dan is a pure paradigm of our lengthy comics glory – and disregard for other people’s culture. Here is a book that – if you’re properly braced and forewarned – will delight and warm your secret, stifled cartoon coloniser’s heart.
© D.C. Thomson & Co Ltd 1997.

Today in 1913 Golden Age artist Charles (Spy Smasher, et al) Sultan was born. In 1943, Metabarons artist Juan Giménez was born. You might also want to peek at A Matter of Time, before celebrating that in 1962 Darwyn Cooke (DC: The New Frontier, Batman: Ego, Parker) joined us for far too short a time.

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The Legend of Lord Snooty and His Pals – 60 Years of Classic Cartoon Art


By Dudley D. Watkins, with Albert Holroyd, Roy Nixon, Ken Harrison & various (DC Thomson & Co)
ISBN: 978-0-85116-691-9 (tabloid HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

To commemorate Dudley D. Watkins death on August 20th 1969, I ordered some physical books rather than the digital editions I favour. In an ironic tribute to the great man and Grand British comedic traditions, said items failed to arrive on time for the scheduled tribute on that anniversary. So, here’s one of them that finally turned up and can now consequently be shared with you all. That’s egalitarianism, that is…

As an odd adjunct of being a nation perpetually embroiled in class struggle, Britain has found countless ways to apologize and humanise its blue-blooded oppressors. Here’s one of the most successful: a masterpiece of charming fraternity that undermines any anti-privilege message even as it delights and subverts. But which side is our star on, and does it even matter in the end?

Designed and mostly written by Watkins (1907-1969), and debuting in the very first issue of The Beano on 30th July 1938, the only decent posh boy this country ever produced is Marmaduke, Earl of Bunkerton: a bred-in-the-bone blue-blooded subversive and instinctive rebel anarchist… who could never decide which side of the class war and divide he and his ever-evolving pals were actually on.

Clad in Eton school uniform complete with top hat and umbrella, the little lord loathed the pointless tedium of his grand estate and constant pressure of his impending position and status. Thus, at every opportunity he bunked off, dodging pitiless and so-proper Aunt Matilda (who gradually mellowed into genteelly eccentric “Aunt Mat”) and the haughty, stiff-necked and smugly snobbish Bunkerton Castle staff to cavort and revel with the poor waifs from Ash Can Council School – thus dubbed “The Ash Can Alley kids”. Marmaduke even disguised himself as one of them to indulge in his wayward capers, and fully embraced and leaned into their barbed nickname for him – “Lord Snooty”.

Oh, what Larks!! It was like an Edwardian novel of swopped lives or The Prince and the Pauper played for laughs, with this lovable, amiable toff strongly on the side of the savvy proletariat. However, although he just wanted to have fun, there were always dangerous and unwelcome poor kids to fight in the insalubrious form of the bullies of the Gasworks Gang…

The early days saw the kids mostly dodging onerous duties, tutorial tribulations and posh expectations – although everybody from every societal stratum seemed to have problems with the police force, which was depicted as officious, interfering, venal and spiteful – and usually cast as true villains…

‘The Legend of Lord Snooty and His Pals…’ opens our itinerary introducing the players and offering early exploits.

In those heady days before September 1939 (plentifully sampled here, albeit in lightly edited visual terms to cater for modern sensibilities) beginning with the very first episode, Snooty’s chums consisted of Rosie, Skinny Lizzie, Hairpin Huggins, Happy Hutton, Scrapper Smith, and Gertie the Goat, latterly joined by eternal devil-toddlers in romper suits Snitch & Snatch who arrived in Beano #18. Their amalgamated exploits included: dodging school; pinching grub; taunting the police; rushing about in goat-karts (not a misspelling!); playing cricket and football; circuses & wild animals; foiling burglars & bandits; huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’; ruining banquets and wearing the wrong clothes and enjoying/surviving the inventions of castle inventor Professor Screwtop (introduced in Beano #40, April 29th 1939). However, just as everywhere else, once World War II began, Snooty & Co were drafted…

Followed by selection of strips crafted prior to the declaration of hostilities, ‘The War Years’ delivers a potent and wildly weird sampling of how kids adapted to the crisis – albeit filtered through their adult creators’ sensibilities. After war broke out, the call for morale boosting triggered a wave of delirious and passionate fantasy yarns. As well as cops & robbers, featuring an ever-more officious police force, the anarchistic kids had countless pompous asses and ninnies of the officer classes plus Home Guards & Air Raid Wardens trying to push them around. These were almost more trouble than the nigh-infinite cadre of spies and saboteurs and the entire Nazi Wehrmacht who episodically get what they deserved in an escalating war of nerves and nonsense with the kids. As the conflict proceeded, Snooty and his pint-sized allies even made it to Hitler & Goering’s personal hit list: frequently embarrassing when not actually slapping around the Nasty Nazi nincompoops with no appreciable repercussions. This was wish-fulfilment kid power at its most delightful…

A big bunch of these strips make up a majority of this book and show Watkins at his most imaginative. A tireless and prolific illustrator equally adept at comedy, adventure, educational and drama storytelling, his style more than any other’s shaped the postwar look and form of Scottish publishing giant DC Thompson’s comics output.

He started life in Manchester and Nottingham as an artistic prodigy prior to entering Glasgow College of Art in 1924. Before long he was advised to get a job at expanding, Dundee-based DCT, where his 6-month trial illustrating prose boys’ paper stories led to comic strip specials and some original cartoon creations. Percy Vere and His Trying Tricks and Wandering Willie, The Wily Explorer made him the only contender for both lead strips in a bold new project conceived by Robert Duncan Low (1895-1980). Managing Editor of Children’s Publication and between 1921 and 1933, Low launched the company’s “Big Five” story papers for boys: Adventure, The Rover, The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur. In 1936, he created the “Fun Section”: a landmark 8-page comic strip supplement for national newspaper The Sunday Post. This illustrated accessory – prototype and blueprint for every comic the company subsequently released – was launched on 8th March. From the outset The Broons and Oor Wullie were the uncontested headliners… and were both illustrated by Watkins. The other features included Chic Gordon’s Auchentogle, Allan Morley’s Nero and Zero, Nosey Parker and others. These pioneering comics laid the groundwork for the company’s next great leap. In December, 1937 Low launched DC Thomson’s first weekly all-picture strip comic, The Dandy; with The Beano Comic arriving in 1938…

Low’s irresistible secret weapon in all of these ventures was Watkins. The indefatigable cartoon stalwart drew the Fun Section signature strips The Broons and Oor Wullie from the outset and, without missing a beat, added Desperate Dan in The Dandy to his weekly workload. Seven months later, placidly outrageous social satire Lord Snooty became a big draw for freshly launched companion paper The Beano.

These war stories are interspersed with selections of colour “pic & text” stories taken from postwar annuals (‘1960s Beano Book Picture Book strip’ and ‘Beano Book 1956 Picture Book strip modified version’) somewhat chronologically undercutting the impact of Snooty’s next big adjustment. After the war, the feature was paused and retooled. Lord Snooty was dropped with #367 (30th October, 1948) and only returned in December 1950. However, #440 introduced a new supporting cast, partially comprised of past Beano stars in need of a fresh gig. This crowd included hulking Joe (initially star of Big Fat Joe who was cancelled in #35), Liz (ex-Swanky, Lanky Liz who ran from #336-368), Thomas (Doubting Thomas #90-174), Polly and her dog (originally Polly Wolly Doodle and Her Great Big Poodle, in #286-306) and Mary (Contrary Mary who graced Beano #1-97, and even had a side gig as Neddy the Cuddy in The People’s Journal), who all joined Marmaduke and inexplicably popular gremlins Snitch & Snatch. The scattering of strips from 1946 to the pause & revamp garnish informative feature ‘Out With the Old…’ which reviews strips of absorbed and failed solo stars Big Fat Joe, Doubting Thomas and Swanky Lanky Liz in their primes, and celebrates the debuts of later Snooty fill-in and replacement artists Albert Holroyd, Roy Nixon and Ken Harrison on the aristocratic anarchist trail. Then a section of ‘Fifties strips’ observe modernity and loss of empire in smart, witty strips about Christmas, prefab houses, public transport, April Fool’s stunts, homelessness, penury and death duties, rationing, recycling and animals, lots & lots of animals. Finally, ‘Sixties strips’ sees Watkins and his aides investigate increased prosperity, theft, fraud & mis-selling, shopping, the weather, Screwtop’s inventions, entertainment, proper food, etiquette and social mobility and the proper use of cannon fire…

This titanic tome terminates in a wash of colour as Watkins highlights the twins in a strip from an unspecified annual before modern juvenile paragon of protest and advocate of anarchy Dennis the Menace gets in on the act, with strip ‘Me Too, Lord Dennis’ as the ferocious little lout tries out the old ermines and privileged attitude…

This stunning and luxurious hardback commemorative celebration is exuberantly joyous in tracing one of comics most bizarre and seditious stars and is a strong – almost overwhelming – argument for a bigger and more comprehensive curated collection. Conversely it’s also a huge cartoon chronicle stuffed with strips that will make you collapse in mirth. Probably both. At least you don’t have to pick a side but just buy a book…
© D.C. Thomson & Co Ltd 1998.

On this day in 1960, Daredevil: Born Again illustrator David Mazzucchelli was born.

15 years after that Blankets author Craig Thompson also entered the world.

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Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Color Sundays “Robin Hood Rides Again” (volume 2)


By Floyd Gottfredson, Ted Osborne, Ted Thwaites, Manual Gonzales, Al Taliaferro, Julius Svensden, Merrill De Maris, Bill Walsh, Roy Williams, Del Connell, Tony Strobl, Bill Wright & Chuck Fuson, Bob Grant & various: edited by David Gerstein & Gary Groth (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-686-7 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes some Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times.

As collaboratively co-created by Walt Disney & Ub Iwerks, Mickey Mouse was first seen – if not heard – in silent cartoon Plane Crazy. The animated short fared poorly in a May 1928 test screening and was promptly shelved. That’s why most people who care cite Steamboat Willie – the fourth Mickey feature to be completed – as the debut of both the mascot mouse and co-star/paramour Minnie Mouse, since it was the first to be nationally distributed, as well as the first animated feature with synchronised sound. The astounding success of the short led to a subsequent and rapid release of fully completed predecessors Plane Crazy, The Gallopin’ Gaucho and The Barn Dance, once they too had been given soundtracks. From those timid beginnings grew an immense fantasy empire, but film was not the only way Disney conquered hearts and minds. With Mickey a certified solid gold sensation, the mighty mouse was considered a hot property and was soon inducted into America’s most powerful and pervasive entertainment medium – comic strips…

Floyd Gottfredson was a cartooning pathfinder who started out as just another warm body in the Disney Studio animation factory. Happily, he slipped sideways into graphic narrative and evolved into a pioneer of pictorial narratives as influential as George Herriman, Winsor McCay and Elzie Segar. Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse entertained millions – if not billions – of eagerly enthralled readers and helped shape the very way comics worked. Via some of the earliest adventure continuities in comics history he took a wildly anarchic animated rodent from slap-stick beginnings and transformed a feisty everyman underdog into a crimebuster, detective, explorer, lover, aviator and cowboy. Mickey was the quintessential two-fisted hero as necessity and locale demanded. In later years, as tastes – and syndicate policy – changed, Gottfredson steered that self-same wandering warrior towards a sedate, gently suburbanised lifestyle, employing crafty and clever sitcom gags suited to a newly middle-class and financially comfortable America: comprising a 50-year career generating some of the most engrossing continuities the comics industry has ever enjoyed.

Arthur Floyd Gottfredson was born in 1905 in Kaysville, Utah, one of eight siblings in a Mormon family of Danish extraction. Injured in a youthful hunting accident, Floyd whiled away a long recuperation drawing and studying cartoon correspondence courses. By the 1920s he had turned professional, selling cartoons and commercial art to local trade magazines and Big City newspaper the Salt Lake City Telegram. In 1928, he and wife Mattie moved to California where, after a shaky start, the compulsive doodler found work as an in-betweener with the burgeoning Walt Disney Studios. That was in April 1929, just before the Great Depression hit. Not long after that Gottfredson was personally asked by Walt to take over the newborn but already ailing Mickey Mouse newspaper strip. He would plot, draw and frequently script the strip across the next five decades: an incredible accomplishment by of one of comics’ most gifted exponents.

Veteran animator Ub Iwerks had initiated the print feature with Disney himself contributing, before artist Win Smith was brought in. The nascent strip was plagued with problems and young Gottfredson was only supposed to pitch in until a qualified regular creator could be found. His first effort saw print on May 5th 1930 (his 25th birthday) and Floyd just kept going for 50 years. On January 17th 1932, Gottfredson crafted the first colour Sunday page, which he also oversaw and often produced until retirement. At first he did everything, but in 1934 Gottfredson relinquished scripting, preferring plotting and illustrating the adventures to playing about with dialogue. Thereafter, collaborating wordsmiths included Ted Osborne, Merrill De Maris, Dick Shaw, Bill Walsh, Roy Williams & Del Connell. At the start and in the manner of a filmic studio system, Floyd briefly used inkers such as Ted Thwaites, Earl Duvall & Al Taliaferro, but by 1943 had taken on full art chores.

This superb archival compendium – part of a magnificently ambitious series collecting the creator’s entire canon – continues with his efforts from his thirties heyday to retirement in 1976. Initially – just like the daily feature – the Sunday strip was treated like an animated feature (and frequently promoted screen stories by adapting or continuing movies on the page) with diverse hands working under a “director” and each episode seen as a full gag with set-up, delivery and a punchline, usually all in service to an umbrella story or theme. Such was the format Gottfredson inherited from Walt Disney, and by the time of the material re-presented here it had evolved into a highly efficient system for delivering fun and adventure thanks to the tireless efforts of master storyteller, who knew how to spin out and embellish a yarn…

Following David Gerstein’s Introduction and a truly massive table of Contents, the show opens with preliminary features Setting the Stage. Unbridled fun and incisive revelations begin with J.B. Kaufman’s model-sheet stuffed Foreword ‘Mickey’s Sunday Best: Moving On’ introducing us to the pressures of this unique graphic world before Tom Neely’s equally image-packed Appreciation ‘Of Blots and Stressed-Out Bodies’ tells us more about Gottfredson himself, prior to the glories of the spoken picture as the comics delights begin with The Sundays: Mickey’s Rival and Helpless Helpers and Gag Strips: subdivided into ‘The Sundays, (Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse Stories)’ and each proudly preceded by Joe Torcivia’s Introductory Notes, starting with ‘Balancing Acts – And When Helpfulness Lacks’.

Then, spanning January 5th – 26th 1936, ‘Mickey’s Rival’ introduces our hero’s dark mirror antithesis in a sequence written by Ted Osborne, pencilled by Gottfredson and inked Ted Thwaites. Here a most manly, not to say thuggish and vulgar, fellow rodent named Mortimer makes major inroads courting Minnie and a month of escalating escapades – and even stern advice from Goofy – are ineffective. Ultimately, low cunning and unsportsmanlike tricks clear the path of true love and Mortimer is sent packing…

Done-in-one ‘Gag Strips’ run from February 2nd to 23rd with Al Taliaferro joining the creative trio mid-month: with Mickey and faithful hound Pluto dodging dog catchers, failing to open cans and bottles, falling foul of ice and snow and even street racing old cars with Donald Duck. Mickey then helps Goofy & Donald catastrophically “fix-up” Minnie’s house in themed sequence ‘Helpless Helpers’ (March 1st to 22nd) in advance of more ‘Gag Strips’ spanning March 29th to April 19th with the Mouse meeting burglars, bandits and floods whilst avoiding the dentist he really needs to see…

Stefano Priarone’s introductory text ‘Postmodern Times’ then ushers readers into compelling extended fantasy romp ‘The Robin Hood Adventure’ (April 19th to October 4th, with plot & pencils by Gottfredson, an Osborne script and Taliaferro inking): a story-within-a-story as ardent gardener Mickey is transported via beanstalk and magic book back to Sherwood Forest to for dashing derring-do, comical capers, swashbuckling swipes and satirical jibes.

Essay ‘Growing Up, Growing Down’ leads to a sequence demonstrating Mickey’s gifts as ‘The Ventriloquist’ (11th October – 8th November) with Gottfredson & Taliaferro limning another Osborne extended script with the rascally rodent exhibiting his voice throwing gifts – and puckish sense of prankery – to Pluto, Goofy, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow before inevitably suffering a major reversal of fortune…

Many, many more ‘Gag Strips’ follow (November 15th 1936 to May 9th 1937) as Osborne, Gottfredson, Thwaites & Taliaferro carry readers into a new year and beyond with slapstick hijinks about injury, infirmity, house, garden and motorcar maintenance, domestic spats, pets, circuses, playing practical jokes, and inescapable retaliation, pickpockets, panhandling, and snow. Bad weather, hunting and jail figure heavily too, as does love, with charmed simpleton Goofy’s unique point of view increasingly making Mickey the straight man in an enduring new relationship.

Halting momentarily to enjoy a Gottfredson private commission of the Mouse in cowboy mode from the 1980s, this compilation then heads west, only pausing to absorb more background and context via Francisco Stajano & Leonardo Gori’s essay ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Sunday’ Then Osborne scripts another gem for sagebrush devotee Gottfredson and inker Taliaferro in ‘Sheriff of Nugget Gulch’, running from May 16th to October27th. Here over-enthusiastic tenderfeet (tenderfoots?) Mickey & Goofy take a holiday of sorts after Minnie informs them of a gold strike near her uncle’s ranch. Sadly en route to Nugget Gulch, their rowdy excitement convinces everyone that they are deadly gunslingers: the toughest desperadoes since the Dalton Gang and both faster on the trigger than Bill Hickock…

The comedy of errors fully unfolds as the utterly unproven reputations of “Big Poison” & “Little Poison” continues to mount, with bandits pre-emptively heading for the hills and a terrified populace making them the new lawmen. Sadly that doesn’t count for much with genuine bad seed Pauncho Malarky, but eventually justice, goodness and blind luck carry the day and the railroad carries our heroes home…

Palate cleansing ‘Gag Strips’ from Osborne, Gottfredson, Thwaites & Taliaferro sustained readers between October 31st 1937 and 27th February 1938, with favoured themes like car trouble, house repairs, fancy dress, fashion, crop harvesting, bug infestation, family illness (Minnie’s nephew Manfred), construction crises and plain old surreal slapstick situations. Thanks to time of year, snow ice and inclement weather proved to timeless and reliable standbys, as were street crime, obnoxious cops and neighbours and household chores, with Minnie’s other rapscallion nephews (Mortimer and Ferdinand – AKA Morty & Ferdie – Fieldmouse) increasingly becoming the voice and faces of wayward youth in sneaky revolt…

Preceded by Gori & Stajano’s lecture ‘With Friends Like These’ continued sequence ‘Service with a Smile’ spans March 6th to April 10th with Merrill De Maris scripting for Gottfredson, Taliaferro, Manuel Gonzales & Thwaites. Her Mickey briefly manages his uncle’s gas service station, and between dealing with the public decides to go after delinquent clients and outstanding bills – with disastrous consequences. That chaos neatly transits to another tranche of stand-alone ‘Gag Strips’ (April 17th – August 21st 1938) by De Maris, Gottfredson, Taliaferro, Gonzales & Thwaites encompassing, bed-making, house cleaning, museum visits with Morty & Ferdie, fence-building with Goofy, hat-hunting with Minnie, more neighbour nonsense, car buying, chore-dodging, aviation antics, pet shenanigans and picnicking. As always many of these result in jail time – especially for Goofy and Mickey…

Another momentary diversion offers a Gottfredson inspired Goofy pinup/poem by Bob Grant from Mickey Mouse Magazine #59 (1940) comes in advance of movie inspired madness and mayhem again preceded by an essay. Thad Komorowski’s ‘Tailoring a Better Mouse’ explores Mickey’s declining film fanbase in lieu of rising stars Donald, Pluto & Goofy and how the Disney Studio remedied that with a new movie epic, suitably tied in and promoted to Gottfredson’s still hale and hearty newspaper strip. Albeit now a feature primarily supervised by Floyd and handled by Manual Gonzales, the strip actually saw print before the cinematic release of Brave Little Tailor.

Running from August 28th to November 27th 1938, ‘The Brave Little Tailor’ began and ended with original framing episodes written by De Maris, who also adapted the film’s script which was realised by Gottfredson & Gonzales & inked by Thwaites. Here actor Mickey Mouse joins an epic in production and the fairy tales immediately becomes utterly real, as out unassuming hero is swept along in a rush to kill a giant, marry a princess and save an embattled kingdom…

De Maris, Gottfredson, Gonzales & Thwaites stuck around to produce more ‘Gag Strips’ spanning December 4th to 25th 1938, involving the film’s premier and Goofy’s growing prominence after which Gottfredson’s involvement was curtailed by his promotion to manager of the prodigious Comic Strip Department, addressed here in Later Years: Gottfredson Fill-Ins (June 17th 1956- September 19th 1976), through essay ‘Mouse Soup’. From the end of 1938, Gottfredson oversaw Gonzales on the Sunday feature until the mid-1940s when he gifted Frank Reilly with his managerial duties and took on “Special Projects”.

The period lasted until his retirement in 1976 and is represented here with a selection of delightful oddments beginning with more ‘Gag Strips’ starring a far more sedate and suburban Mouse and traversing June 17th 1956 to September 19th 1976, with stories by Bill Walsh, Roy Williams, & Del Connell, and pencilled and/or inked by Floyd with Tony Strobl. The content is lovely but no longer in any way subversive: detailing swimming pool and gardening woes, ice cream parlor perils, entertaining bored kids, sports, decorating, fashion, camping, pets… and snow…

The remainder of the comics content concerns other Disney stalwarts graced by the master storyteller’s touch. ‘Gottfredson Guest Stars: Donald Duck and Treasury of Classic Tales’ shows stories of other Disney strip features and comes with its own briefing in context confirming ‘Calling All Characters!’ From there it’s a small hop to ‘Donald Duck Gag Strips’ by Osborne, Taliaferro & Gottfredson as seen in the Silly Symphonies feature for October 3rd & 10th 1937. Here the mad as heck mallard goes hunting with Pluto as his gun dog and deeply regrets pranking Goofy with a peashooter…

Walt Disney’s Treasury of Classic Tales extended and adapted other studio screen gems and Gottfredson lustrated many of them, beginning here with Frank Reilly’s interpretation of ‘Lambert the Sheepish Lion’ which ran from August 5th to September 30th 1956. It’s followed by ‘The Seven Dwarfs and the Witch Queen’ (March 2nd – April 27th, 1958) with Gottfredson writing and lettering a saga illustrated by Julius Svensden. The team reunited for the film adaptation of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ from August 3rd to December 28th 1958, and Gottfredson’s last hurrah here was laying out Reilly’s adaptation of ‘101 Dalmatians’ (January 1st to March 26th 1961) for pencillers Bill Wright & Chuck Fuson. The eclectic but buzzy result was inked by Wright & Gonzales.

The joyous cartoon fun is complimented by another mini-moment: this one discussing the rarely seen pre-US Mickey Mouse Sunday strips published in Britain’s Sunday Pictorial from July 13th 1930, and how they never should have been released at all…

Although the comics conclude here there’s still plenty to see and learn as The Gottfredson Archives: Essays and Special Features section follows with a plethora of picture packed articles. Kicking off is ‘Gallery Feature – Gottfredson’s World: Mickey’s Rival and Helpless Helpers’ with overseas edition depicting ratty rogue Mortimer as seen in Italy’s Topolino and Germany’s Mickey Maus Mini-Comic Klassiker, with ‘The Cast: Mortimer’ by Gerstein giving a full assessment of the love-rat before segueing into the expert’s review of Otto Englander’s film storyboards of a most influential unfinished epic in ‘Behind the Scenes: Interior Decorators (Again!)’.

A Gottfredson painting offers visual refreshment in ‘Mickey Mouse Adventures with Robin Hood Adventure’ prior to ‘Gallery Feature – Gottfredson’s World: The Robin Hood Adventure’ sharing international interpretations of the tale from Yugoslavia, Italy and Brazil. Then Gerstein appraises recycled Earl Hurd storyboards in ‘Behind the Scenes: Mickey’s Garden’, whilst ‘Gallery Feature – Gottfredson’s World: Gags of 1936-1938’ depicts international collections of the auteur’s single page strips published in the US and Italy, before Gerstein deconstructs ‘The Inventive Goof’ and Alberto Becattini & Gerstein share the story of a late arriving collaborator in ‘Sharing the Spotlight: Julius Svensden’.

Fully focused on cowboy fun ‘Gallery Feature – Gottfredson’s World: Sheriff of Nugget Gulch’ depicts some of the numerous compilations of the western classic from America and France, whilst six versions from Italy, the US and Yugoslavia illuminate a follow up ‘Gallery Feature – Gottfredson’s World: ‘The Brave Little Tailor’. Then Timo Ronkainen & Gerstein again highlight a Mickey mainstay in ‘The Heirs of Gottfredson: Manuel Gonzales’ before a last dose of strip silliness comes via Gag Strips (A Mickey Supplement): selections from August 25th 1940 to 18th February 1951 by De Maris, Walsh, Gonzales, and Wright.

The glee finally stops with a lovely sketch from Floyd entitled ‘Al [Taliaferro] came into the studio…’, a pertinent cover from California Magazine and biographies of the hard-working editors involved on this splendid tome…

Floyd Gottfredson’s influence on not just Disney’s canon but sequential graphic narrative itself is inestimable: he was among the very first to produce long continuities and “straight” adventures, pioneered team-ups and invented some of the art form’s first “super-villains”.

When Disney killed their continuities in 1955, dictating henceforth strips would only contain one-off gags, Floyd adapted seamlessly, working until retirement in 1975. His last daily appeared on November 15th with the final Sunday included here published on September 19th 1976.

Like all Disney’s creators, Gottfredson worked in utter anonymity, until, in the 1960s, his identity was revealed and the roaring appreciation of previously unsuspected hordes of devotees led to interviews, overviews and public appearances, leading to subsequent his reprinting in books, comics and albums which now all carried a credit for the quiet, reserved master. Floyd Gottfredson died in July 1986.

Thankfully we have these Archives to enjoy, inspiring us and hopefully a whole new generation of inveterate tale-tellers.…

Still, isn’t there more we could find for a third book?
Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Color Sundays volume 2 “Robin Hood Rides Again” © 2013 Disney Enterprises, Inc. Text of “Mickey’s Sunday Best: Moving On” by J.B. Kaufman is © 2013 by J.B. Kaufman. Text of “Of Blots and Stressed-Out Bodies” by Tom Neely is © 2013 by Tom Neely. All contents © 2013 Disney Enterprises unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

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Superman: The War Years – 1938-1945


By Roy Thomas, Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster with Don Cameron, Mort Weisinger, Fred Ray, Jack Burnley, Wayne Boring, Leo Nowak, Ed Dobrotka, John Sikela, Sam Citron, Ira Yarbrough, George Roussos, Stan Kaye & various (DC/Chartwell Books)
ISBN: 978-0-7858-3282-9 (Album HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The creation of Superman and his unprecedented adoption by a desperate, joy-starved generation quite literally gave birth to a genre if not an actual art form. Within three years of his debut in the summer of 1938, the intoxicating mix of eye-popping action and social wish-fulfilment which hallmarked the early exploits of the Man of Tomorrow had grown to encompass cops-and-robbers crime-busting, reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy and even whimsical comedy: all deep and abiding issues for the American public at that time.

However, once the war in Europe and the East snared America’s consciousness, combat themes and patriotic imagery dominated most comicbook covers if not interiors and the Man of Steel was again in the vanguard.

In comic book terms Superman was master of the world and had already utterly changed the shape of the fledgling industry. There was a popular newspaper strip, a thrice-weekly radio serial, games, toys, foreign and overseas syndication and the Fleischer studio’s astounding animated cartoons. Thankfully, the quality of the source material was increasing with every four-colour release and the energy and enthusiasm of Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster informed and infected the burgeoning studio that grew around them to cope with the relentless demand.

Superman was definitely every kid’s hero, and the raw, untutored yet captivating episodes reprinted here were also completely embraced by the wider public, as the new so very portable entertainment medium of comic books became a vital tonic for the troops and all the ones they had left behind…

I sometimes think – like many others of my era and inclinations – that superhero comics are never more apt or effective than when whole-heartedly combating global fascism with explosive, improbable excitement courtesy of a myriad of mysterious, masked marvel men. All the most evocatively visceral moments of the genre seem to come when gaudy gladiators soundly thrashed – and I hope you’ll please forgive the appropriated contemporary colloquialism – “Nips and Nazis”. Isn’t it great then that they’re political legacy remains and a whole new diverse, multinational bunch are back again for the latest costumed cavorters to knock around some more?

This superb hardcover archive – unavailable digitally but still readily accessible in paper formats – has been curated by comic book pioneer Roy Thomas, exclusively honing in on the euphoric output of the war years, even though in those long-ago dark days, publishers and creators were wise enough to offset their tales of espionage and imminent invasion with a barrage of home-grown threats and gentler or even more whimsical fare…

A past master of WWII era material, Thomas opens this tome with a scene-setting Introduction and prefaces each chapter division with an essay offering tone and context before the four-colour glories commence with Part 1: The Road to War, as following the cover to Action Comics #1, the first Superman story begins.

Most of early tales were untitled, but for everyone’s convenience have in later years been given descriptive appellations by editors. Thus, after describing the foundling’s escape from exploding Planet Krypton and explaining his astonishing powers in nine panels, with absolutely no preamble the wonderment begins in ‘Superman, Champion of the Oppressed’ and ‘War in San Monte’ from Action Comics #1 & 2 (June and July 1938 by Jerry Seigel & Joe Shuster) as a costumed crusader who masquerades by day as reporter Clark Kent began averting numerous tragedies.

As well as saving an innocent woman from the electric chair and delivering rough justice to a wife-beater, the tireless crusader works over racketeer Butch Matson – consequently saving suave and feisty colleague Lois Lane from abduction and worse, since she was attempting to vamp the thug at the time! The mysterious Man of Steel made a big impression on her by then outing a lobbyist for the armaments industry who was bribing Senators on behalf of greedy munitions interests fomenting war in Europe…

The next breathtaking instalment ‘Revolution in San Monte’ sees the mercurial mystery-man travelling to the war-zone and spectacularly shutting down hostilities already in progress…

Maintaining the combat theme, the cover of Action Comics #10 (March 1939) follows and the cover and first two pages of Superman #1 (Summer 1939): an expanded 2-page origin describing the alien foundling’s escape from Krypton, his childhood with unnamed Earthling foster parents and eventual journey to the big city. A back-cover ad for the Superman of American club and the October 1939 Action Comics #17 cover precedes Fall 1939’s Superman #2 cover and rousing yarn ‘Superman Champions Universal Peace!’, depicting the dynamic wonder man once more thwarting unscrupulous munitions manufacturers by crushing a gang who had stolen the world’s deadliest poison gas weapon…

After another concise history lesson Part 2: War Comes to Europe re-presents a stunning outreach article thanks to Look Magazine commissioning a legendary special feature by the original creators for their 27th February 1943 issue. ‘How Superman Would End the War’ is a glorious piece of wish-fulfilment which still delights, as the Man of Tomorrow arrests and hauls budding belligerents Hitler and Stalin to a League of Nations court in Geneva.

Accompanied by the March 1940 cover, Action Comics #22 & #23 then declares ‘Europe at War’: a tense, thinly disguised call to arms for the still neutral USA, and in a continued story – almost unheard of in those early days of funnybook publishing. Here Lois and Clark’s fact-finding mission (by Siegel, Shuster and inker Paul Cassidy) spectacularly escalates, and after astounding carnage reveals a scientist named Luthor to be behind the international conflict…

The anti-aircraft cover for Superman #7 (November/December 1940) and an ad for the Superman Radio Program precede Siegal, Wayne Boring & Don Komisarow’s ‘The Sinister Sagdorf’ (Superman #8 January/February 1941). This topical thriller spotlights enemy agents infiltrating American infrastructure whilst ‘The Dukalia Spy Ring’ (Superman #10 May/June 1941) references the 1936 Olympics and sees the Action Ace trounce thinly-veiled Nazis at an international sports festival and expose vicious foreign propaganda: themes regarded as fanciful suspense and paranoia as the US was still at this time still officially neutral in the “European War”.

Behind Fred Ray’s Armed services cover for Superman #12 (September/October 1941, ‘Peril on Pogo Island’ (Siegel, Shuster & Leo Nowak) finds Lois and Clark at the mercy of rampaging tribesmen, although spies from a certain foreign power are at the back of it all, after which a Fred Ray gallery of covers – Action Comics #43 (December 1941), Superman #13 (November/December 1941), Action Comics #44 (January 1942) and Superman #14 (January/February 1942) – concludes the chapter.

All of these were prepared long before December 7th changed the face and nature of the conflict…

After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor everything changed and Part 3: America Goes to War reflects the swift shift to a war footing, beginning with the notorious Siegel & Boring ‘Superman Daily Strips’ from January/February 1942, wherein an overeager Clark Kent tries too hard to enlist and only succeeds in getting himself declared 4F (unfit to fight)…

Timeless Fred Ray patriotic masterpieces from Superman #17 (July/August 1942) and #18 (September/October 1942) precede a stirring yarn from the latter. ‘The Conquest of a City’ (Siegel & John Sikela) sees Nazi agents using a civil defence drill to infiltrate the National Guard and conquer Metropolis in the Fuehrer’s name… until Superman spearheads a counter-attack…

The other great patriotic cover master was Hardin “Jack” Burnley and a quartet of his very best follow – Action Comics #54 (November 1942) & #55 (December 1942), World’s Finest Comics #8 (Winter 1942 with Batman & Robin thrown in for good measure) and Superman #20 (January/February 1943). That last also provides ‘Destroyers from the Depths’ wherein Hitler himself orders dastardly Herr Fange to unleash an armada of marine monstrosities on Allied shipping and coastal towns. Of course, they prove no match for the mighty magnificent Man of Steel…

After Burnley’s Action Comics #58 cover (March 1943), Siegel, Ed Dobrotka & Sikela detail the saga of ‘X-Alloy’ from Superman #21 (March/April 1943) as a secret army of Nazi infiltrators and fifth columnists steal US industrial secrets and would have conquered the nation from within if not for the ever-vigilant Man of Steel. Sikela’s cover Action Comics #59 (April 1943) concludes this section as Part 4: In for the Duration discusses the long, hard struggle to crush the Axis. By the time of these tales, the intense apprehension of the early war years had been replaced with eager anticipation as tyranny’s forces were being rolled back on every Front…

Following Burnley’s May 1943 Action Comics #60 cover, Superman #22 May/June 1943 provides Siegel & Sam Citron’s ‘Meet the Squiffles’: a light-hearted but barbed flight of whimsy wherein Adolf Hitler is approached by the king of a scurrilous band of pixies who offer to sabotage America’s mighty weapons. Neither nefarious rogue had factored Superman – or patriotic US gremlins – into their schemes though…

Action #62 (July 1943) and Superman #22 (July/August 1943) showcase two of Burnley’s very best covers, with the latter fronting an astounding masterpiece of graphic polemic. Don Cameron scripts and Citron illustrates ‘America’s Secret Weapon!’: a rousing paean to US military might wherein Clark and Lois report on cadet manoeuvres and the Man of Steel becomes an inspiration to demoralised troops in training. Covers by Burnley for Action #63 (August 1943) and Superman #24 (September/October 1943) – which latter provides ‘Suicide Voyage’ – follow. This exuberant yarn by Cameron, Dobrotka & George Roussos finds Clark (and pesky stowaway Lois) visiting the Arctic as part of a mission to rescue downed American aviators. Of course, no one is expecting a secret invasion by combined Nazi and Japanese forces, but Superman and a patriotic polar bear are grateful for the resultant bracing exercise…

‘The Man Superman Refused to Help’ comes from Superman #25 (November/December 1943) and follows Burnley and Stan Kaye’s November 1943 cover for Action Comics #66. In a far more considered and thoughtful tale from Siegel, Ira Yarbrough & Roussos expose the American Nazi Party – dubbed the “101% Americanism Society” – whilst offering a rousing tale of social injustice as an US war hero is wrongly implicated in the fascists’ scheme until the Man of Steel investigates…

Next up and from the same issue is a much reprinted and deservedly lauded patriotic classic.

‘I Sustain the Wings!’ by Mort Weisinger & Fred Ray was created in conjunction with the Army Air Forces Technical Training Command under Major General Walter R. Weaver, designed to boost enlistment in the maintenance services of the military. In this stirring tale Clark attends a Technical Training Command school as part of the Daily Planet’s attempt to address a shortfall in vital services recruitment (a genuine problem at this time in our real world) but the creators still find space for our hero to delightfully play cupid to a lovestruck kid who really wants to be a hot shot pilot and not a mere “grease monkey”…

Wayne Boring & Roussos’ cover for Superman #26 (January/February 1944) precedes Boring’s ‘Superman Sunday Strips #220-227’ for January -March 1944, with the Metropolis Marvel heading to multiple theatres of War to deliver letters from loved ones on the Home Front after which Roussos’ ‘Public Service Announcement’ (from Superman #28, May 1944) urges everyone to donate waste paper – like comic books!

July/August 1944’s Boring cover for Superman #29 finds Lois greeting the USA’s real Supermen – servicemen all – before Action #76 (September 1944 and Kaye over Boring) leads to anonymously-scripted ‘The Rubber Band’ from World’s Finest Comics #15 (Fall 1944). Illustrated by Sikela & Nowak and concentrating on domestic problems, it details the exploits of a gang of black market tyre thieves who are given a patriotic “heads-up” after Superman dumps their boss on the Pacific front line where US soldiers are fighting and dying for all Americans…

Drawn by Boring, ‘Superman Sunday Strips #280-282? (March 1945) then rubbish and belittle the last vestiges of the Third Reich as Hitler and his inner circle desperately try to convince the Action Ace to defect to the side comprised of Supermen like them…

In Superman #34 (May/June 1945) Cameron, Citron & Roussos attempt to repeat the magic formula of ‘I Sustain the Wings’ with ‘The United States Navy!’ as Clark is despatched to follow three college football heroes as they progress in different maritime specialisations through the hellish war in the Pacific.

The enthralling sally through Superman’s martial exploits conclude with one final Thomas-authored article as Part 5: Atoms for Peace? reveals how the fruits of the Manhattan Project changed everything…

As fresh and thrilling now as they ever were, these endlessly re-readable epics are perfectly situated in these gloriously luxurious editions; worthy, long-lasting vehicles for the greatest and most influential comics stories the art form has ever produced. Such Golden Age tales are priceless enjoyment at absurdly affordable prices and in a durable, comfortingly approachable format. What dedicated comics fan could possibly resist them?
™ & © 2015 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Willie and Joe: The WWII Years


By Bill Mauldin, edited by Todd DePastino (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-439-9 (PB/Digital edition) 978-1-56097-838-1 (HB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

During World War II a talented, ambitious young man named William Henry “Bill” Mauldin (29/10/1921 – 22/01/2003) fought “Over There” with the 45th Division of the United States Infantry, as well as many other fine units of the army. He learned to hate war and love his brothers in arms – and the American fighting man loved him back. During his time in the service he produced civilian cartoons for the Oklahoma City Times and The Oklahoman, and devastatingly, intimately effective and authentic material for his Company Periodical, 45th Division News. He also drew for Yank and Stars and Stripes: the US Armed Forces newspapers. Soon after starting, his cartoons were being reproduced in newspapers across Europe and America. They mostly featured two slovenly “dogfaces” – a term he popularised – offering their informed, trenchant and laconic view of the war from the muddied tip of the sharpest of Sharp Ends…

Willie and Joe, much to the dismay of the brassbound, spit-&-polish military martinets and diplomatic doctrinaires, became the unshakable, everlasting image of the American soldier: continually exposing in all ways and manners the stuff upper echelons of the army would prefer remained top secret. Not war secrets, but how the men at arms lived, felt and died. Willie and Joe even became the subject of two films (Up Front -1951 and Back at the Front – 1952) whilst Willie made the cover of Time magazine in 1945, when 23-year old Mauldin won his first Pulitzer Prize. If you’ve ever read a Bob Kanigher war story – especially any Sgt Rock and Easy Company – the cast are all wearing their war the Willie and Joe way…

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

Mauldin’s anti-war, anti-Idiots-in-Charge-of-War views became increasingly unpopular during the Cold War between East and West that followed “The Big One” and, despite being a certified War Hero, Mauldin’s increasingly political cartoon work fell out of favour (those efforts are the subject companion volume Willie & Joe: Back Home). Mauldin left the increasing hostile and oversight-ridden business to become a journalist and illustrator. He became a film actor for a while (appearing in, amongst other movies, Red Badge of Courage with veteran war hero Audie Murphy) then worked as a war correspondent during the Korean War and – after an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1956 – finally returned to newspaper cartooning in 1958.

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

The Willie and Joe characters and cartoons are some of the most enduring and honest symbols of all military history. Every Veterans Day in Peanuts from 1969 to 1999, fellow veteran Charles Schulz had Snoopy turn up at Mauldin’s house to drink root beers and tell war stories with an old pal. When you read any DC war comic you’re looking at Mauldin’s legacy. Archie Goodwin even cheekily drafted the shabby professionals for a couple of classy guest-shots in Star-Spangled War Stories (see Showcase Presents the Unknown Soldier please link to 3rd June 2020).

This immense, mostly monochrome paperback (which includes some very rare colour/sepia items) compendium comes in at 704 pages: 229 x 178mm for the physical copy or any size you want if you get the digital edition, assembling all his known wartime cartoons as originally released in two hardback editions in 2008. It features not only the iconic dogface duo, but also the drawings, illustrations, sketches and gags that led, over 8 years of army life, to their creation.

Mauldin produced most of his work for Regimental and Company newspapers whilst actually under fire, perfectly capturing the life and context of fellow soldiers – also under battlefield conditions – and shared a glimpse of that unique and bizarre existence to their families and civilians at large, despite constant military censorship and even face-to-face confrontations with Generals.

George Patton was perennially incensed at the image the cartoonist presented to the world, but fortunately Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower – if not a fan – knew the strategic and morale value of Mauldin’s Star Spangled Banter and Up Front features with those indomitable everymen Willie and Joe…

This far removed in time, many of the pieces here might need historical context for modern readers and such is comprehensively provided by the Notes section to the rear. Also included are unpublished pieces and pages, early cartoon works, and rare notes, drafts and sketches. Most strips, composites and full-page gags, however, are sublimely transparent in their message and meaning: lampooning entrenched stupidity and cupidity, administrative inefficiency and sheer military bloody-mindedness. They highlight equally the miraculous perseverance and unquenchable determination of ordinary guys to get the job done while defending their only inalienable right: to gripe and goof off whenever the brass weren’t around…

Most importantly, Mauldin never patronised civilians or demonised the enemy: the German and Italian combatants and civilians are usually in the same dismal boat as “Our Boys” and only the war and its brass-bound conductors are worthy of his ink-smeared ire…

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

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

With a fascinating biography of Mauldin that is as compelling as his art, the mordant wit and desperate camaraderie of his work is more important than ever in an age where increasingly cold and distant brass-hats and politicians send ever-more innocent lambs to further foreign fields for slaughter. With this volume and the aforementioned Willie & Joe: Back Home, we must finally be able to restore the man and his works to the apex of graphic consciousness, because tragically, it looks like his message is never going to be outdated, or learned from by the idiots in charge who most need to hear it…
© 2011 the Estate of William Mauldin. All right reserved.

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Setting the Standard: Comics by Alex Toth 1952-1954


By Alex Toth, Mike Peppe & various, edited by Greg Sadowski (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-408-5 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Alex Toth was a master of graphic communication who shaped two different art-forms and is largely unknown in both of them. He died on this day in 2006.

Born in New York in 1928, the son of Hungarian immigrants with a dynamic interest in the arts, Toth was something of a prodigy. After enrolling in the High School of Industrial Arts he doggedly went about improving his skills as a cartoonist. His earliest dreams were of a strip like Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, but his uncompromising devotion to the highest standards soon soured him on newspaper strip work when he discovered how hidebound and innovation-resistant the family-values based industry had become whilst he was growing up.

Aged 15 he sold his first funnybook works to Heroic Comics and, after graduating in 1947, worked for All American/National Periodical Publications who would amalgamate and evolve into DC Comics. He pursued his craft on Dr. Mid-Nite, All Star Comics, The Atom, Green Lantern, Johnny Thunder, Sierra Smith, Johnny Peril, Danger Trail and a host of other features and on the way dabbled with newspaper strips (see Casey Ruggles: the Hard Times of Pancho and Pecos)… and found that nothing had changed…

Ceaselessly seeking to improve his own work, he never had time for fools or formula-hungry editors who wouldn’t take artistic risks. In 1952 Toth quit DC to work for Thrilling Pulps publisher Ned Pines who was retooling his prolific Better/Nedor/Pines nested comics companies (Thrilling Comics, Fighting Yank, Doc Strange, Black Terror and dozens more) into Standard Comics: a comics house targeting older readers looking for sophisticated, genre-based titles.

Beside fellow graphic masters Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, Art Saaf, John Celardo, George Tuska, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito and particularly favourite inker Mike Peppe, Toth set the bar high for a new kind of story-telling: wry, restrained and thoroughly mature. This quiet revolution took place in a wave of short-lived titles dedicated to War, Crime, Horror, Science Fiction and especially Romance…

After Simon &Kirby invented love comics, Standard – through artists like Cardy and Toth and writers like the amazing and unsung Kim Aamodt – polished and honed the ubiquitous fare of the nascent comics category, delivering clever, witty, evocative and yet tasteful melodramas: heart-tuggers both men and women could enjoy.

Before going into the military, where he still found time to create a strip (Jon Fury for the US army’s Tokyo Quartermaster newspaper The Depot’s Diary), Toth illustrated 60 glorious tales for Standard; as well as a few rare pieces for EC and others. On his return – to a very different industry on the defensive against public antagonism, and one he didn’t much like – Toth split his time between Western/Dell/Gold Key (Zorro and many movie/TV adaptations) and National/DC (assorted short pieces, Hot Wheels and Eclipso): illustrating scripts he increasingly found uninspired, moribund and creatively cowardly. Soon, after drawing X-Men #12 (cover-dated May 1965) over Jack Kirby’s layouts, Toth moved primarily into TV animation. At Hanna-Barbera from 1964 on he designed and storyboarded for shows such as Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Herculoids, Birdman, Shazzan!, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Sealab 2020, Fantastic Four and Super Friends amongst many others.

He returned sporadically to comics, setting the style and tone for DC’s late 1960’s horror line in House of Mystery, House of Secrets and especially The Witching Hour, as well as illustrating more adult fare for Warren’s Creepy, Eerie and The Rook. In the early 1980s Toth redesigned The Fox for Red Circle/Archie, produced stunning one-offs for Archie Goodwin’s Batman and war comics (whenever they offered him a “good script”) and contributed to landmark or anniversary projects like Batman: Black and White.

His later, personal works included Torpedo (look for a fully updated review of the series here soon!) and the magnificently audacious Bravo for Adventure!

Alex Toth died of a heart attack at his drawing board on May 27th 2006.

After reprinting an extensive informative and almost exhaustive interview with the artist from Graphic Story Magazine – conducted by Vincent Davis, Richard Kyle and Bill Spicer in 1968 – this fabulous full colour chronicle then reprints every scrap of Toth’s superb Standard fare beginning with impressive melodrama in ‘My Stolen Kisses’ from Best Romance #5 (February 1952), after which light-hearted combat star Joe Yank nearly lost everything to ‘Black Market Mary’ in the debut issue of his own title (#5 March 1952).

Perhaps a word of explanation is warranted here: due to truly Byzantine commercial and promotional considerations, all Standard Comics premiered with issue #5, although the incredibly successful Romance comics were carried over from their earlier Better Comics incarnations such as New Romances #10 (March 1952) for which Toth illustrated the touching ‘Be Mine Alone’ and the parable of empty jealousy ‘My Empty Promise’ from #11.

The hilarious ‘Bacon and Bullets’ offered a different kind of love in Joe Yank #6 (May) – a very pretty pig named Clementine – after which witty 3-pager ‘Appointment with Love’ (Today’s Romance #6 May) provides a charming palate cleanser before the hard-bitten ‘Terror of the Tank Men’ from Battlefront #5 (June 1952) offers a more traditional view of the then-raging Korean War.

‘Shattered Dream!’ (My Real Love #5 June) is an ordinary romance well told whilst ‘The Blood Money of Galloping Chad Burgess’ (The Unseen #5 June 1952) reveals the sheer quality and maturity of Standard’s horror stories, with ‘The Shoremouth Horror’ (Out of the Shadows #5) from that same month proving Toth to be an absolute master of terror and genius at the pacing and staging needed to scare the pants off you in pictorial form…

‘Show Them How to Die’ (This is War #5 July) is a superbly gung-ho combat classic whilst the eerie ‘Murder Mansion’ and ‘The Phantom Hounds of Castle Eyne’ – both from the August cover-dated Adventures into Darkness #5 – again demonstrate the artist’s uncanny flair for building suspense. The single pager ‘Peg Powler’ (The Unseen #6 September) is reprinted beside the original artwork – which makes me wish the entire collection was available in black & white – after which the highly experimental ‘Five State Police Alarm’ (Crime Files #5) displays the artist’s amazing facility with duo-tone and craft-tint techniques before salutary saga ‘I Married in Haste’ (Intimate Love #19, September) offers a remarkably modern view of relationships.

Science Fiction was the metier of Fantastic Worlds #5 which provided both contemporary ‘Triumph over Terror’ and futuristic fable ‘The Invaders’ to finish off Toth’s September commissions after which ‘Routine Patrol’ and ‘Too Many Cooks’ offer two-fisted thrills from This is War #6 (October). ‘The Phantom Ship’ is a much reprinted classic chiller from Out of the Shadows #6, with October also releasing the extremely unsettling ‘Alice in Terrorland’ from Lost Worlds #5.

Toth only produced four covers for Standard, and the first two, Joe Yank #8 and Fantastic Worlds #6, precede ‘The Boy Who Saved the World’ from the latter (November 1952) after which service rivalry informed ‘The Egg-Beater’ from Jet Fighters #5. The cover of Lost Worlds #6 (December) perfectly introduces the featured ‘Outlaws of Space’, after which the single-page ‘Smart Talk’ (New Romance #14) perfectly closes the first year and sets up 1953 to open strongly with ‘Blinded by Love’ from Popular Romance #22 January) in which the classic love triangle has never looked better…

This was clearly Toth’s ideal year as ‘The Crushed Gardenia’ from Who is Next? #5 shows his incredible skills to their utmost in one of the best crime stories of all time. ‘Undecided Heart’ (Intimate Love #21 February) is a delightful comedy of errors whilst both ‘The House That Jackdaw Built’ and ‘The Twisted Hands’ from Adventures into Darkness #8 perfectly reveal the artist’s uncanny facility for building tension and anxiety. The cover to Joe Yank #10 is followed by splendid aviation yarn ‘Seeley’s Saucer’ from March’s Jet Fighters #7, whilst the clever and racy ‘Free My Heart’ (Popular Romance #23, April) adds new depth to the term “sophisticated” and ‘The Hands of Don José’ (Adventures into Darkness #9) is just plain nasty in the manner horror fans adore. ‘No Retreat’ (This is War #9 May) offers more patriotic combat, but ‘I Want Him Back’ (Intimate Love #22) depicts a far softer, more personal duel whilst ‘Geronimo Joe’ (Exciting War #8 May) proves that in combat there’s no room for rivalry…

Toth was rapidly reaching the acme of his design genius as ‘Man of My Heart’ (New Romances #16 June), ‘I Fooled My Heart’ (Popular Romance #24 July – and reprinted in full as original art in the notes section) and both ‘Stars in my Eyes’ and ‘Uncertain Heart’ from New Romances #17 (August) saw him develop a visual vocabulary to cleanly impart plot and characterisation simultaneously. He often stated he preferred these mature, well-written romance stories for the room they gave him to experiment and expand his craft, and these later efforts prove him right: especially in the moving ‘Heart Divided’ (Thrilling Romances #22) and compelling ‘I Need You’ (September’s Popular Romances #25).

‘The Corpse That Lived’ (Out of the Shadows #10) is a historically based tale of grave-robbing, whilst deeply moving ‘Chance for Happiness’ (Thrilling Romances #23 October) is as powerful today as it ever was. ‘My Dream is You!’ (New Romances #18) turned fresh eyes on the old dilemma of career vs husband and far darker love is depicted in ‘Grip on Life’ (The Unseen #12 November), before true love actually triumphs in ‘Guilty Heart’ (Popular Romance #26). Another ‘Smart Talk’ advice page ends 1953 (New Romances #19) and neatly precedes an edgy affair in ‘Ring on Her Finger’ (Thrilling Romances #24 January 1954), after which ‘Frankly Speaking’ from the same issue leads to terrifying period horror in ‘The Mask of Graffenwehr’ (Out of the Shadows #11).

February saw a fine crop of Toth tales, beginning with charming medical drama ‘Heartbreak Moon’ (Popular Romance #27), spooky mining mystery ‘The Hole of Hell’ (The Unseen #13), 1-page amorous advisory ‘Long on Love’ (Popular Romance #27), lesson in obsession ‘Lonesome for Kisses’ and two more advice pages – ‘If You’re New in Town’ and ‘Those Drug Store Romeos’ – from Intimate Love #26. These last stories were eked out in the months after Toth had left, having been drafted and posted to Japan. However, even though he had (presumably) rushed them out whilst preparing for the biggest change in his young life, there was no loss but a further jump in artistic quality.

One final relationship ‘Smart Talk’ page (New Romances #20 March 1954) precedes a brace of classic mystery masterpieces from Out of the Shadows #12: ‘The Man Who Was Always on Time’ (also reproduced in original art form in the copious ‘Notes’ section at the back of this monumental book) before the graphic wonderment regrettably concludes with the cynically spooky ‘Images of Sand’ – a sinister cautionary tale of tomb-robbing…

After all that, the last 28 pages of this compendium comprise a thorough and informative section of story annotations, illustrations and a wealth of original art reproductions to top off this sublime collection in ideal style.

Alex Toth was a tale-teller and a master of erudite refinement, his avowed mission to pare away every unnecessary line and element in life and in work. His dream was to make perfect graphic stories. He was eternally searching for how to best tell a story, to the exclusion of all else. This long-ignored but still utterly compelling collection shows how talent, imagination and dedication to that ideal can elevate even the most genre-bound vignette into a paragon of form and a mere comic into high art. Get this book, absorb it all and learn through wonder and delight.
All stories in this book are in the public domain but the specific restored images and design are © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. Notes are © 2011 Greg Sadowski and the Graphic Story Magazine interview is © 2011 Bill Spicer. All rights reserved.