Category: Miscellaneous

Complete Covers of the First 25 Years

 

By Mark Waid (Author) and various (Abbeville Press Inc. 1993)
ISBN: 1-5585-9595-3

Another pocket art-gallery for fans of comics and exuberant graphics in general, this time showcasing the first 300 covers of the most important title in comics history. In the same format as the previously plugged Batman in Detective Comics digests (a fist-sized 11.4 x 9.9 x 2.3 cm, 320 pages) this edition reproduces every cover from June 1938 to May 1963, even those that didn’t feature the incredible Man of Tomorrow.

It’s accepted comicbook folklore that editor Vincent Sullivan ignored his boss, publisher Harry Donenfeld, not only by cover featuring Superman on Action #1, but by purchasing the strip at all, and wiser editorial heads prevailed to keep him off covers #2-6, 8-9, 11, 12, 14, 16 and 18, by which time everybody had to agree that the guy in the tights was what sold the comic. With issue #19 the front cover became Superman’s permanent home and the industry never looked back.

These powerful, evocative, charming, funny, thrilling and occasionally daft images are controversial these days. Many people consider them Art with a capital ‘A’ and close-minded, reactionary, unimaginative, bigoted die-hard poltroons don’t.

But the works of Joe Shuster, Wayne Boring, Jack and Ray Burnley, Ed Dobrotka, Fred Guardineer, Stan Kaye, George Klein, Sheldon Moldoff, Win Mortimer, Leo O’Mealia, Al Plastino, Fred Ray, Kurt Schaffenberger, John Sikela, Ira Yarbrough and Curt Swan shaped many worlds and provided captivating joy and excitement for millions.

In this book you can step back in time and see just how, and possibly, why.

© 1993 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By John Radford illustrated by Donald Rooum (Stepney Green Press)
ISBN: 978-0-9554431-0-7

I’m wandering a bit from my self-imposed brief here, but I can probably justify it with the fact that comic fans are factoid-freaks, that this book is wonderfully and liberally illustrated by cartooning legend Donald Rooum, and most importantly, that it’s my party and I’ll read what I want to.

And that would be a nifty little paperback by Emeritus Professor of Psychology John Radford who has compiled a list of fifty-six topics of common usage that aren’t what they seem. Sub-titled “some things everybody knows that actually ain’t so” this is a lovely tome to sample at odd moments, or when nobody’s watching at the pub.

Among the pillars of common wisdom given a good kicking are such monuments as Eskimos have many words for snow, King Alfred burnt the Cakes, Schizophrenia means Split-Personality, and You can’t prove a negative plus many, many others, all debunked in a witty memorable manner.

Do you know who said “There’s a sucker born every minute” or “Any man who hates dogs and children can’t be all bad”? No, you don’t, so you should get this book ’cause I’m not telling.

© 2007 John Radford & Donald Rooum.

A Classic Felix Celebration
By Otto Messmer, edited by David Gerstein (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 1-56097-308-0

Felix is a talking cat, created by Otto Messmer for the Pat Sullivan animation studio in 1915. An overnight global hit, the cartoons led to long career as a newspaper strip, as well as a plethora of product in many other media.

Messmer wrote and drew the Sunday strip which first premiered in London before being launched in the USA on August 19th, 1923. Sullivan, as Messmer’s boss, re-inked those initial strips, signed them, and then took total credit for both strips and even the cartoons, which Messmer directed until 1931.

He produced the Sunday pages and the daily strips until 1955, when his assistant Joe Oriolo took over. Oriolo also began the campaign to return the credit for Felix’s invention and exploits, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that shy, loyal, brilliant Otto Messmer finally admitted what most of the industry had known for years.

As the cat evolved through successive movie shorts, and eventually TV appearances, the additional paraphernalia of mad professors, clunky robots and a magic Bag of Tricks gradually became icons of Felix’s magical world, but most of that is the stuff of another volume. The early work collected here from the 1920’s is a different kind of whimsy.

Fast-paced slapstick, fantastic invention and yes, a few images and gags that might arch the eyebrow of the Political Correctness lobby; these are the strips that caught the world’s imagination nearly a century ago. This was when even the modern citizens of America and Great Britain were social primitives compared to us. The imagination and wonderment of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and Cliff Sterrett’s Polly and her Pals, both so similar to Felix in style, tone and execution, got the same laughs out of those same citizens with the same sole intent: To make the reader laugh.

The current trend to label as racist or sexist any such historical incidence in popular art-forms whilst ignoring the same “sins” in High Art is the worst kind of aesthetic bigotry, is usually prompted by an opportunistic basis and really ticks me off. Why not use those incensed sensibilities and attendant publicity machine to tackle the injustices and inequalities so many people are still enduring rather than take a cheap shot at a bygone and less enlightened world and creators who had no intent to offend with their content?

Sorry about that, but the point remains that the history of our artform is always going to be curtailed and covert if we are not allowed the same “conditional discharge” afforded to film, painting or novels: when was the last time anybody demanded that Oliver Twist was banned because of the depiction of Jews?

None of which alter the fact that Felix the Cat is a brilliant and important comic strip by an unsung genius. The wonderful work collected here retains a universal charm and the rapid-fire, surreal gags will still delight and enthral youngsters of all ages.

© 1996 O.G. Publishing Corp.

By Jim Burns (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84576-133-2

Yet another non graphic novel item here, but I’ll stretch a point for a fairly obvious reason. Jim Burns is a big name in science fiction circles, and if you buy a lot of books, chances are you’ll have a few of his covers on your bookshelf. Oddly enough, I’m not a great fan of his paintings, which are a little stiff and over-worked for my tastes. Still, that does seem to be the fashion for most book-covers these days.

Imago, however is a bit of a departure, as it features his working drawings and delves into his creative processes, which reveals something about the guy that I’d never noticed. Jim Burns can really draw.

It’s easy to forget in an age of such accessible drafting technology that all the things we love about our medium truly begin with a line on paper. There’s a world of seductive possibilities that stem from that initial creative kiss and they are all there to see in the pencil thoughts of a master draughtsman. Look at the sketches of Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Hergé, Adam Hughes, Brian Bolland, Moebius, or any of the other peak purveyors of our craft and you see pieces of pure creative excellence.

Burns has this mastery too, and in this book you’re treated not only to wonderful slices of that process, but also to that other shared mainstay of both SF and comic books, beautiful women in exotic, outlandish costumes and various stages of undress. Go get it, and then start agitating to get him drawing some comic books too!

© 2005 Jim Burns. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Melvyn Grant (Doubleday)
ISBN: 0-38560-937-X

Here’s a charming little thing. Not strictly a comic strip or a graphic novel, but rather a beautifully illustrated picture book. Originally a plot device from Thud!, one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld prose fantasy novels, until some bright spark wisely decided to manufacture the thing for real.

Since a few of the novels have been adapted as picture strips (and I’ll get to them in due course) and owing to the sheer quality of this little gem, I’m sure you won’t mind me bringing this book to your attention.

Watch Commander Sam Vimes is the best copper in Anhk Morpork, and his day job ranges from colourful to sheer hell. What makes worth living for him is to get home, kick off his boots and breastplate, and read his baby boy their favourite bedtime story – and do all the noises too.

And so can you if you get this wonderful book which manages to be both an engaging, clever side-bar to the novels of and also a superbly illustrated easy reader for the very young.

If you’re a fan of the Discworld you’ll want this, if you’re not, buy the novels and become one, and if you have small kids get them one of the prettiest picture books on the market. It’s the first sure step to getting them hooked on pictorial wonderment, and a darn fine thing besides.

Text © 2005 Terry Pratchett & Lyn Pratchett. All Rights Reserved.
Illustrations © 2005 Melvyn Grant. All Rights Reserved.

By various (DC Thomson & Co.)
ISBN: 0-85116-735-7

The Americans may have a lock on super-heroes, and the Japanese do details and speed-lines like nobody else can, but Britain too has an area of comic strip supremacy. Nobody does wicked little boys like us.

This book celebrates half a century of pranks, mischief and innocent skulduggery in the form of the legendary – and still going strong – “real” Dennis the Menace. True, Hank Ketchum may have a seemingly similar character – one which oddly debuted in America the very same week – but that tow-haired blonde kid is only pretend mean. He has a soft, cute core.

The Yank kid is a lovable moppet, really, but the character devised by David Law is a fun-loving, recalcitrant, practical-joke playing force of nature. He began buried within the pages of the Beano on March 17th 1951 but rapidly progressed to the colour back cover, then the front, then both covers of Britain’s most successful and long lived comic for children of all ages.

Under Law – and probably the only “law” he’d acknowledge – Dennis grew thematically and artistically wilder and more elemental, a true archetype and role model for naughty boys everywhere. Scripter Ian Gray co-created Gnasher, an Abyssinian Wire-Haired Tripe Hound in 1968 as the perfect pet and partner-in-crime for the lad, just as Law’s declining health compelled DC Thomson to line-up an understudy artist.

David Sutherland had been drawing The Bash Street Kids since 1962, and in 1970 when Law finally retired he took over Dennis as well, drawing him until 1998, when he semi-retired and went back to just drawing the Bash Streeters. David Parkins became the third Dave to handle Dennis.

The success of the character is unquestioned. TV, books, computers, toys, clothing, foods, and a fan club with more than a million members attests to that. But the real secret is within these pages. In selected strips from five decades, the antics and exploits that appeal to the wilful kid in us all, are gathered together as a hugely engaging textbook of mayhem.

This is a brilliant tribute to a British icon.

© 2000 DC Thomson & Co. All Rights Reserved.

Unofficial Companion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

By Jess Nevins (Titan Books)
ISBN 1-84576-316-5

Although not a great fan of ‘companions’, or even annotated copies, I will concede that not every comics reader has a brain the size of a planet nor so little social intercourse that they have nothing better to do than accumulate arcane facts and trivia, and further admit that the sheer hard work poured into Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s wonderful steampunk masterpiece deserves to be remarked upon, if only to show all those annoying media rat-scrotes just what “added value” can mean.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen concerns the heroic intervention of some of popular literature’s most outstanding characters in an adventure that threatens the British Empire (at the turn of the 20th century) and thus, the World, and is layered with references and motifs that extends throughout that literature and culture, and into our own. If a reader doesn’t pick up on a piece of shtick it makes no difference, but when we do it makes for many all-around “gosh-wow!” moments.

Why Jess Nevins appointed himself the task of sharing all this knowledge is unknown to me, but obviously many people share his desires and drives. The book is exhaustive and meticulous, and the text has been further annotated by Moore and O’Neill. If you need more depth or want to impress your partner, this is one way of doing it.

Just remember to read the original graphic novel. This isn’t like English Lit at school: Watching the film instead of reading the book is pointless and probably rather unpleasant.

© 2003 Jess Nevins. All Rights Reserved.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen â„¢ & © 2006 Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill.

 

By Chip Kidd & Geoff Spear (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84023-941-7

Re-issued to tie-in with the publication of Ross’s latest DC project, Justice, this superb coffee-table art-book reproduces in spectacular detail the works and working secrets of a genuine comics phenomenon.

To sweeten the pot there’s also an eight page painted strip featuring Superman and Batman, a brand new cover and thirty new pages of material. Of particular interest to budding superstars of tomorrow are the hundreds of working drawings and thumbnail sketches that illuminate the manner in which the artist approaches a story.

Designer/historian Chip Kidd and photographer Geoff Spear are responsible for yet another high-quality package that will appeal to the general public just as much as to the dedicated fan.

© 2003, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Katsuhiro Otomo (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84576-612-1

Originally published in Japan to commemorate the completion of the landmark graphic epic Akira, this spectacular art book collects every ancillary image that Katsuhiro Otomo created for the serial that didn’t make it into the trade paperback compilations.

There are sketches, colour roughs, promotional posters and tee shirts, opening pages for the original Japanese serial episodes, various designs for characters and the tech that played such a pervasive part in the story, and every other thing you could think of to satisfy the dreams of fanatics.

There are even recreations of some of the promotional gimmicks such as the Akira News Kiosk that have to be seen to be believed.

If you love the series, or are fascinated by the secrets of the creative process, or are a sucker for minutiae, you will adore this lavish coffee table tome.

English language translation © 2007 Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

(Nadder Books 1983)
ISBN 0-90654-038-0

Graham Laidler trained as an architect but became a cartoonist due to ill-health (a tubercular kidney). From 1932 until his death in 1940, aged 32, he travelled the world and drew funny pictures, mostly of The English both at home and abroad, under exclusive contract to Punch – a hitherto unique arrangement.

His humorous observations were simultaneously incisive and gentle, baroque and subtle. His work was collected into a number of books during his lifetime and since, and his influence as humorist and draughtsman can still be felt.

He mastered telling a complete story in a single drawing although he also worked in the strip cartoon format for The Women’s Pictorial. His cartoons exemplified the British to the world at large. The Nazis, with typical sinister efficiency, used his drawings as the basis of their anti-British propaganda when they invaded Holland, further confirming to the world the belief that Germans Have No Sense of Humour.

As “Pont”, and for eight too-brief years, Graham Laidler became an icon of English life, and you would be doing yourself an immense favour in tracking down his work. If you like Ealing comedies, Alistair Sim or Margaret Rutherford, St Trinians and the Molesworth books, or the works of Thelwell or Ronald Searle, you won’t regret the search.

If you love good drawing and sharp observational wit you’ll thank me. If you just want a damn good laugh, you’ll reward yourself with the assorted works of Pont.

Unbelievably, despite his woefully small output (around 400 cartoons) there doesn’t seem to be a definitive collection of the work of Pont. If there’s a publisher reading this I pray you take the hint. For the rest of us there’s the thrill of the hunt and the promised bounty in seeking out “The British Character”, “The British at Home”, “The British Carry On”, “Most of us are Absurd”, “Pont” and “The World of Pont”.

© 1983, 2007 the estate of Graham Laidler.