Category: Miscellaneous

By Gloria Steinem (Introduction) and various (Abbeville Press Inc. 1995)
ISBN: 0-7892-0012-0

Produced in the same format as the Action and Detective Comics cover collections (a clutch-bag compatible 11.4 x 9.9 x 2.3 cm, 320 pages) this nostalgic book cover fifty years of eye-catching wonderment from a variety of DC titles that featured US comics’ greatest female icon. Obviously that means that an awful lot of covers have been excluded but there’s still a captivating collation of art on view, taken from Wonder Woman (first and second series), The Legend of Wonder Woman, Sensation Comics and All-Star Comics, spanning January 1942 to October 1994.

As well as a lengthy and erudite introduction from life-long fan Gloria Steinem, there are the spectacularly stylish artworks of Harry G. Peter, Ross Andru, Eduardo Barreto, Howard Bender, Brian Bolland, Joe Brozowski, Rich Buckler, Jack Burnley, Nick Cardy, Ernie Chua/Chan, Frank Chiaramonte, Dave Cockrum, Gene Colan, Vince Colletta, Ernie Colón, Paris Cullins, Jose Delbo, Mike Esposito, Ric Estrada, Joe Gallagher, José Luis García-López, Jay Geldhof, Frank Giacoia, Dick Giordano, Mike Grell, Ed Hannigan, Frank Harry, Irwin Hasen, Don Heck, Jeff Jones, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, Chris Marrinan, Frank Miller, Sheldon Moldoff, Gray Morrow, Michael Nasser, Irv Novick, Bob Oksner, Jerry Ordway, Authur Peddy, George Pérez, Trina Robbins, Bernard Sachs, Mike Sekowsky, Joe Staton, Jill Thompson and Alex Toth.

Although never quite as iconic as her two DC compatriots, Wonder Woman is nonetheless an icon of huge historical and social importance, and this commemorative digest is a superb example of her appeal and longevity.

©1995 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Edited by Robin K. Snyder (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 0-930193-07-5

After Steve Ditko left Marvel he continued working for Charlton Comics before creating such cult classics as The Hawk and the Dove and the superbly captivating Beware… The Creeper at DC in 1968. It was during this period that the first strips derived from his interpretation of the Objectivist philosophy of novelist Ayn Rand began appearing in fanzines and independent press publications like Witzend and The Collector.

This softcover book from that champion of all that is good at the Fringes, the Experimental and the just plain Different, Fantagraphics Books, edited by fan and bibliographer Robin K. Snyder, represents lost treasures of a driven and dedicated artistic trailblazer whose beliefs never faltered, whose passion never waned and whose art never stagnated. Amongst beautiful tone and wash gag pieces, are the sometimes strident, occasionally didactic, but always bold, impassioned and above all – for Ditko never forgets that this is a medium of Narrative and Art – gripping stories and parables of some of his most honest – and infamous characters.

The challenging experience begins with the steel-masked Mr. A whose nine short dramas and various concept pages/pin-ups/spot illustrations make up the bulk of this book. In many respects A is an extension of that faceless Agent of Justice, The Question, looking at society, ruthlessly seeking Truth and utterly incapable of moral compromise.

Whilst working on Mr. A Ditko also examined the very concept of Heroism with the two-part ‘H Series’. “D. Skys” is a successful actor whose career stalls because he won’t accept the increasing tide of nihilistic, anti-heroic and morally bankrupt roles society seems to be demanding. Instead of taking the soft option of compliance, the disaffected player finds a more worthwhile use for his talents as a righter of wrongs using his talents to benefit society rather than collude with its downfall.

The volume concludes with the truly intense ‘J Series’; a harsh examination of the concept of justice and even some notions on how to attain and abide by it.

The most common complaint about this area of Ditko’s work – and there have been many – is the sometime hectoring nature of the dialectic. Nobody likes to be lectured to – but that’s how things are learned. Our schools and Universities depend on the lecture as their primary tool of communication, just as Ditko’s is the comic strip artform.

He’s showing you a truth he believes – but at no time is he holding a gun to your head. If you disagree that’s up to you. He acknowledges that you are equals and that you are ultimately responsible for yourself. It’s a viewpoint and tactic an awful lot of religions could benefit from.

I love comics. Steve Ditko has produced a disproportionate amount of my favourite pages over the decades. He is a unique voice and an honest genius with pencil and brush. The tales here have been collected elsewhere; never often enough, always with little fanfare. But if you can find this volume and its sequel you’ll see a lot of his best work, undiluted by colour, and on lovely large (274x212mm) white pages.

But even if you can’t find these, find something. Because Steve Ditko is pure comics.

© 1985 Steve Ditko. All Rights Reserved

By various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-847-3

Mome is more magazine than book. The latest edition features strips and graphic artworks from a variety of earnest and dedicated comics creators from the capital “A” end of our artform. It is intense and often hard to read and produced to the highest production standards. It is considered by many to be a successor to Art Spiegelman’s seminal Raw.

This volume features work by Ray Fenwick, Sophie Crumb, Tom Kaczynski, Émile Bravo, Al Columbia, Jonathan Bennett, Joe Kimball and Paul Hornschemeier. There is also the concluding episode of European legend Lewis Trondheim’s philosophically autobiographical trilogy ‘At Loose Ends’, plus an interview with Eleanor Davis and as her haunting, memorable tale ‘Stick and String’.

Mome is more book than magazine. It is published quarterly and features cutting edge cartooning and graphic narrative from a variety of creators. It is challenging, diverting, pretentious, absorbing, compelling, annoying and wonderful. Do not ignore it. It is compulsive reading for anyone who doesn’t just read comics to relax.

Mome © 2007 Fantagraphics Books. Individual stories are © the respective creator. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Neil Gaiman and ‘A Remarkable Ensemble of Artists’ (Vertigo/DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-556389-747-4

This odd little artifact is a pocket sized primer of pithy sayings extracted from the pages of the hallowed Sandman series, with stylish typography enhancing the words of Neil Gaiman and accompanied by a wonderful plethora of illustrations from the truly stellar cast of artists who worked on the series.

So, while I’m unsure why it actually exists, you can luxuriate and revel in the sheer talent of Dave McKean, Matt Wagner, Rebecca Guay, George Pratt, Kent Williams, Mike Dringenberg & Malcolm Jones III, Glenn Fabry, Jill Thompson, Alec Stephens, Vince Locke, John Watkiss, Charles Vess, Sherilyn Van Valkenburgh, Rick Berry, Paul Lee, Mark Chiarello, Brian Bolland, Marc Hempel, D’Israeli, Greg Spalenka, Richard Case, Michael Zulli, Jon J Muth, Shawn McManus, Michael Hempel, Denys Cowan and even Gaiman himself.

Perhaps a book of illustrated epigrams might not be the first choice of anybody in search of a good read, but if we want our particular waste of time to acquire all the trappings of an accepted art form we need to make room amongst the collector cards, posters and tee shirts for the trappings of costly pretension that mark Fine Art, Music, Literature and Cinema. It’s your choice.

© 2000 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Classic Screwball Strips: THE EARLY YEARS OF MUTT & JEFF

By Bud Fisher – edited by Jeffrey Lindenblatt (NBM)
ISBN 13: 978-1-56163-502-3

This is a welcome addition to a growing pool of classic strips that are finally being collected into accessible forms for posterity and enjoyment. Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff is arguably the world’s first comic strip to employ day to day continuity rather than individual escapades on a per diem basis.

Harry Conway “Bud” Fisher began the strip A. Mutt in 1907 as a topper to the racing pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. His cartoon wastrel’s gimmick was to bet on the runners and riders of that day’s paper, with the results – good or bad – making the bones of the next day’s strip. When his career took off – first at the more cosmopolitan San Francisco Examiner and then into national syndication, such a limited, local mcguffin was impossible for a strip running across a continent.

Thus a vaudeville style comedy partner and more general topics became the norm. The premise of two ordinary, average – if dumb – Joes remained the strip’s basis until it eventually closed in 1983.

Although of undoubted historical value, the slapstick roots of these everyman characters meant that gags were the currency, and the sensibilities employed – and appealed to – were often harsh, sexist, and very often quite racist by today’s standards. Or were they?

Undoubtedly the physical depiction of Negro, Mexican British, French, Turkish and the other non-W.A.S.P. Americans never deviated from the graphically stereotypical. Certainly young women were always sexy and older women were grim battleaxes whilst rich people were always fat. But I suspect that that was as much comic shorthand as wilful malice aforethought.

Certainly for every gag that portrayed stupid, slow or cowardly black people there was another when the stereotype outwitted the protagonist. For every dim blonde or dumb Hausfrau there was a female sharpie who made the boys into the goats. Could it be Fisher was just a child of his time, knew his audience and was just going for the laugh wherever it was with no thought of political or social relevance?

Perhaps Fisher or his innumerable and often anonymous ‘ghosts’ (among whom Ed Mack and latterly Al Smith were the most prominent) weren’t as evolved as us.

Fisher was a notoriously “absentee” creator who regularly missed deadlines and had a string of substitutes to produce the strip for him once he became comics’ first millionaire. Occasionally he would even suspend the strip entirely. Yet the feature was never discarded by client newspapers. It was that popular.

This volume collecting strips from 1909-1913 is not without flaws. Often the heroes are pretty unlikable when they aren’t being winningly daft or actually funny. There are moments of genuine racism and sexism but also uncharacteristic challenges to that historical status quo of broad stereotypes. On a technical note there is bad editing as some strips are repeated. Was the designer asleep? Weren’t there enough good ones to fill the pages?

I know that last charge isn’t true. Despite the implications of the somewhat apologist introduction from historian Allen Holtz, Mutt and Jeff was a huge multimedia hit for nearly eighty years and they are still household names today. Moreover, read in context and on their own terms, they are still brilliantly hilarious slapstick gag strips. If you’re prepared to read with an open mind you might be pleasantly surprised.

No © invoked. Any helpful suggestions?

By Robert C Harvey (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-782-7

It’s nice to see a biography that has something nice rather than something scurrilous or scandalous to say about its subject, and this wonderful, colossal tome (just shy of a thousand pages – if you’re planning to give this as a Christmas gift best use a festive steel woollen stocking and bolt it to the fireplace) is both erudite and recondite in covering the life, times and career of arguably the most influential cartoonist in the history of the medium.

Combining education with sheer charm, the text describes the history and philosophy of making comics. With a broad, deep understanding of the comic business, Harvey traces Caniff’s life and career and uses it to tell the story of the medium in the 20th century, and in many ways of the ‘American Century’ itself.

By way of his childhood fascinations, developing work ethic and early struggles, we see Caniff become the man who produced a daily and Sunday comic strip for fifty-five years. From early successes such as Dickie Dare, through the Depression and War years of Terry and the Pirates, (never neglecting his patriotic pick-me-up Male Call and its immortal star ‘Miss Lace’) through to the post-war icon Steve Canyon who was in many ways his most successful creation – though not without some regret as the character’s abiding integrity grew increasingly out of step with the America of Viet Nam and Watergate. The strip ran from 1947 to Caniff’s death in 1988. Steve Canyon died with him.

As an accomplished cartoonist himself, Harvey is able to clearly explain technique and creative rationale as he critiques the many illustrations throughout the book, both in terms of artistic virtuosity and narrative brilliance, and the chance of seeing, even vicariously, through the eyes of the artform’s greatest journeyman is a great blessing for any serious fan or historian. Harvey worked for twenty-five years on this book, and had unlimited access to not just records but to Milton Caniff himself. The result is a complete feeling of having known the “Rembrandt of the Comics” personally.

If you love comics and can stand the thought of missing someone you’ve never met, you’ll want this wonderful book.

© 2007 Robert C Harvey. All Rights Reserved.

By David Collier (Drawn & Quarterly Publications)
ISBN: 1-896597-25-4

Just The Facts is a compilation of strips produced over a number of years by David Collier, compellingly crafted in the manners of Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar. The subjects range from autobiography through cultural and popular history to just, plain “cool stuff you should know”.

With deceptive wit and subtle skill Collier acts as teacher and philosopher on a hugely diverse range of topics divided into the categories The Military, Music, Comics, Sports, Newspapers, Travel and Nostalgia. Particularly memorable are such epics as ‘Harry Smith and the Precursory Seattle Scene’, ‘Amazing Heroes’, ‘The Critic’, ‘The United Colors of the Impending Apocalypse!’ and ‘The Great Paperback Book Glut!’.

Collier is that type of wonderful creator who would still work, still produce to the best of his ability even if he were the only person left alive. His dedication, ability to engross and willingness to attempt new styles for every tale mark this lost gem as a book well worth pursuing for every grown-up who’s fed-up with mainstream packages.

© 1986, 1989-1991, 1993-1997, 1998 David Collier. All Rights Reserved.

By Yasushi Suzuki (DrMaster Publications)
ISBN 13: 978-1-59796-069-4

Powerfully impressive picture making from one of the design world’s most respected young illustrators. This collection is launched on the eve of the release of the artist’s first foray into the field of graphic narrative. If you don’t play computer games (I’m sure I can’t be the only one) he might not be that familiar a name, but fans of ‘Ikaruga’, ‘Sin & Punishment’ and ‘Radiant Silver Gun’, not to mention his many book jackets, can attest to his sublime skill with colour and line. And now so can I.

With the impending release of Purgatory Kabuki, one of the most eagerly anticipated debuts in manga history, publisher DrMaster have produced this glorious commemorative artbook, utilising the most modern of print techniques and processes to highlight Suzuki’s personal favourite works from the last decade, as well as ten new pieces and a lot of informational extras such as sketches, a checklist, and interviews.

This is lovely work from a major artistic talent, and a good omen for his entry into the world of graphic narrative.

© 2007 Yasushi Suzuki. © 2007 DGN Production Inc.

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge & Hunt Emerson (Knockabout)
ISBN 0-86166-065-X

Hunt Emerson’s tactic of using Literature’s (please note the Big ‘L’) most despised form – the comic strip – to popularise some of literature’s greatest works once again scores a palpable hit in his manic and surreal adaptation of the 18th century poem penned by that imaginative old lotus-eater and opium addict Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Like Gilbert Shelton recounts in his informative introduction, I too had to study the poem in school, and although some of the thing seemed pretty cool a lot of it slid past the nascent proto-punk rocker that was I, but the verve and glee, the mind-bending terror, and of course, the side-splitting visual gags that Emerson customises the text with make his adaptation an absolute joy to read and reread.

Now in its fifth edition this joyous delight which informs without undermining the text is an absolute necessity for fans and desperate English teachers alike. I hope that there are some brave and wise enough to use it.

© 1989, 2007 Knockabout Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Complete Covers of the Second 25 Years

by Mark Waid (Author) and various (Abbeville Press Inc.1994)
ISBN: 1-5585-9609-7

This second quarter century of alluring covers from Action Comics (featuring #301, June 1963 to #600, May 1988) is a microcosmic representation of the comic industry itself, as the changing mores of society and the rise of fan culture take hold. From a cheap mass-market entertainment medium for kids, comic-books gradually became a relatively high-cost niche industry pandering to and dictated by the ever more vocal desires of a core fan-base.

The charm, humour and whimsy that sat side by side with wonderment, adventure, mystery and conflict slowly disappeared from the stories as well as the covers in favour of threat and even covert sexuality, and innocent thrills became a minor consideration. This was not necessarily a bad thing, just a sad thing and a practical thing. Adults read comics too and even kids weren’t as innocent as they apparently used to be.

So it’s no small relief to see that at least the quality of art and design of those shiny attention grabbers never diminished or altered. For that we can thank Editors like Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz and of course the artists.

Curt Swan, Jack Abel, Neal Adams, Murphy Anderson, Ross Andru, Eduardo Barreto, Howard Bender, Brian Bolland, Wayne Boring, Pat Broderick, Rich Buckler, John Byrne, Nick Cardy, Ernie Chua, Denys Cowan, Mike DeCarlo, Mike Esposito, John Forte, José Luis García-López, Frank Giacoia, Keith Giffen, Dick Giordano, Mike Grell, Ed Hannigan, Carmine Infantino, Klaus Janson, Gil Kane, Karl Kesel, George Klein, Mike Mignola, Sheldon Moldoff, Jim Mooney, Bob Oksner, Jerry Ordway, George Pérez, Marshall Rogers, Alex Saviuk and Kurt Schaffenberger were – and are – indelibly imprinted on my life and probably yours too.

This little book is true childhood dream and a gloriously guilty pleasure.

© 1994 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.