Category: Miscellaneous

 

HEATH ROBINSON: ABSURDITIES (Duckworth)
ISBN: 0-71561-583-1 (1990 edition) ISBN: 0-71560-920-3 (1975 edition)

HEATH ROBINSON: RAILWAY RIBALDRY (Duckworth)
ISBN: 0-71560-823-1 (1997 edition) ISBN: 0-71561-489-4 (1980 edition)

Not many people enter the language due to their own works. Fewer still last the course and stay there. Can you recall what “doing an Archer” means?

William Heath Robinson was born on 31st May 1872 into something of an artistic dynasty. His father Thomas was chief staff artist for Penny Illustrated Paper. His older brothers Thomas and Charles were also illustrators of note. After schooling he tried unsuccessfully to become a watercolour landscape artist before returning to the family trade. In 1902 he produced the fairy story “Uncle Lubin” before working for The Tatler, Bystander, Sketch, Strand and London Opinion, during which time he developed the humorous whimsy and penchant for eccentric mechanical devices that made him a household name.

During the Great War he uniquely avoided the Jingoistic stance and fervor of his fellow artists, preferring to satirise the absurdity of conflict itself with volumes of cartoons such as “The Saintly Hun”. After a career of phenomenal success and creativity, in cartooning, illustration and particularly advertising, he found himself doing it again in World War Two. He died on 13th September 1944.

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

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

Other publications of his work include Some Frightful War Pictures (1915), Hunlikely! (1916), The Saintly Hun: A Book of German Virtues (1917), Flypapers (1919), Get On With It (1920), The Home Made Car (1921), Quaint and Selected Pictures (1922), Humours of Golf (1923), Let’s Laugh (1939), Heath Robinson At War (1941) and The Penguin Heath Robinson (1946), as well as such collaborations as The Incredible Inventions Of Professor Branestawm by N Hunter (1933), or Mein Rant with R. F. Patterson (1940).

In the 1970s and 1980s Duckworth produced and or reprinted a selection of albums which included Inventions, Devices, The Gentle Art of Advertising, Heath Robinson at War, Humours of Golf, How To Be A Motorist, How To Be A Perfect Husband, How To Live in a Flat, How To Make your Garden Grow, How To Run a Communal Home, How To Build a New World, and How To Make the Best of Things, and many of these can still be found at or ordered through your local Library Service. Both Ribaldry and Absurdities were reissued in the 1990s and were readily available on Amazon last week. (I’ve included the ISBN’s in case you’re tempted…)

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

© 2007 The estate of William Heath Robinson.

A Guide to Comic books Published in Canada

Edited by John Bell (Matrix Books 1986)
ISBN: 0-921101-00-7

Although not strictly a graphic novel, this slim volume engagingly details the history of the comic book in the various provinces of Canada, and even provides a dual English/French essay on the European style Bande Dessinée produced in Quebec to rival the French language publications exported from Europe since the Second World War ended.

Lavishly peppered with black and white cover reproductions, and a complete listing of every comic ever produced in the country’s history (at least up until this book’s publication), the knowledgeable enthusiasms of Harlan Ellison, John Bell, Robert MacMillan and Luc Pomerleau generate an actual hunger to see more of these beautifully executed “lost ” gems.

Most comic fans are always eager for more, and new, and rare, so this window onto another world gave me a couple of hours of sheer anticipatory delight. Good books about comics are even rarer than good comics themselves, and this one should be welcomed to any fan’s bookshelf.

© 1986 John Bell.

 

By Tom DeFalco (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84576-173-1

This concoction of pop-cultural history from ex-Marvel Editor-In-Chief Tom DeFalco gathers together the reminiscences of a broad band of those creative types that turned the X-Men from a quirky cult-comic into the multi-media branding juggernaut of today. From Lee and Kirby, via Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, through the Cockrum, Claremont and Byrne years, and beyond to the dramatic re-thinkings of Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, the articles are peppered with personal anecdotes, and a frank bewilderment at what the franchise now means.

This is a thoroughly readable, heavily illustrated companion tome that doesn’t really add anything to the collecting of X-Men comics, but does give some salutary insights into working on a major comic book title. Released to coincide with the release of the third X-Movie, it nonetheless still has interesting meat for the dedicated fan.

© 2006 Tom DeFalco. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Tom DeFalco (Titan Books)
ISBN: 1-84576-053-0

There’s something of a misunderstanding inherent in this line of products that give the inside skinny on the process of creating some of most popular comic characters. Many people I’ve spoken to will eventually admit that a big factor in these books’ appeal is the slim possibility that the reader might stumble onto The Secret.

I think it’s fair to suggest that most people reading comics harbour strong desires to actually work in comics, and after twenty-five years teaching comics skills to a variety of ages, I can reveal the answer to those hungry urges is work hard to improve, persist — and be very, very lucky.

So why buy this book? If it can’t teach you how to write like Warren Ellis or Mark Waid, or draw like Jack Kirby or Jim Lee what use is it? If it doesn’t teach you a secret hand shake or how to get a submissions editor to answer your letter, what’s the point?

The point is certainly knowledge. But that answered question is not “how”, it’s “why”.

Why has a certainly unoriginal concept lasted so long and generated so much good work from so varied a band of creators as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joe Sinnott, Roy Thomas, Keith Pollard, John Byrne, Doug Moench, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Walter Simonson, Ralph Macchio, Mike Wieringo, Warren Ellis, Jim Lee, Paul Ryan and Mark Waid among so many others?

Why devote so much time and energy and zeal to something so ultimately transient? That is a question all would-be creators should be asking themselves.

As a jolly, nostalgic cultural coffee-morning reminiscence this book is a welcome slice of approachable documentary. We comic fans will read, and nod or demur at someone’s opinion, and ponder sagely at the minutiae revealed by this stellar list of comic makers.

I know I did.

© 2005 Tom DeFaco. All Rights Reserved.

 

Edited by John Jensen (Methuen 1983)
ISBN: 0-41332-360-9

Henry Mayo Bateman was born in New South Wales in 1887 but was raised in England, attending Forest Hill House School and Goldsmith’s College (Institute, as was). He also studied with John Hassall and at the Charles Van Havenmaet Studio from 1904-07. He was a great fan of Comic Cuts and Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday, and his first cartoons were published in 1903 in Scraps. He was skilled at both illustrative and comedic drawing and agonised over his career path before choosing humour. Mercifully he was too frail for military service in 1914 and so his gifts were preserved for us all to share. He died in 1970.

Bateman’s most memorable series of cartoons was ‘The Man Who…’ These were lavish set pieces, published as full colour double-page spreads in The Tatler, that lampooned the English Manner by way of frenzied character reactions to a gaffe or inappropriate action by a blithely oblivious central participant. His unique strength came from extending his training as a caricaturist into all his humorous work, a working philosophy that the artist equated with drawing people as they felt rather than how they looked. He was also a British pioneer of cartoons without text, depending on beautifully rendered yet powerfully energetic and vivacious interpretations of people and environment to make his always funny point. He was a master of presenting a complete narrative in a single image.

In reviewing the 14 collections published during his lifetime and such collections as the volume at hand, or the excellent The Best Of H M Bateman 1922-1926: The Tatler Cartoons (1987), I was particularly struck by the topicality of the work as well as the sheer wonder of the draughtsmanship. Find if you can ‘The Man Who asked for a second helping at a City Company Dinner’ wherein 107 fully realised Diners and waiters, all in full view, have 107 different and recognizable reactions to that gauche request. It is an absolute masterpiece of comic art. In a world where the next fad is always the most important, it is vital that creators such as Bateman remain unforgettable and unforgotten.

Text ©.1983 John Jensen/Methuen.
Illustrations © 1982, 2007 Estate of H M Bateman.

 

By Austin Grossman, with illustrations by Bryan Hitch (Michael Joseph/Penguin)
ISBN: 0-718-15291-8

WARNING! THIS IS A NOVEL. IT HAS VERY FEW PICTURES.

It seems that the signature genre of comics – the super-hero – has finally gained some literary legitimacy. If you ignore the pulp exploits of Doc Savage and the Shadow, the novelisations and prose experiments of the bigger comic publishers with their key brands and the success of such series as the ‘Wild Cards’, costumed do-gooders and crazed masterminds have finally broken into mainstream publishing with this novel.

Told from the alternating viewpoints of arch-nemesis Doctor Impossible and neophyte super-heroine Fatale, in our terms it’s a fairly standard battle of goodies and baddies in the ‘realistic’ vein best used by the likes of Alan Moore, Warren Ellis and Kurt Busiek (Astro City, not Marvels). As such it will be pretty familiar territory to comic fans, should they choose to read all that text – and a word to the wise for the paperback edition; Bryan Hitch’s illustrations are lovely, so why not intersperse them through the text as they did with George Lowther’s 1942 Superman novel, rather than shove them at the back of the book as if you’re ashamed of them? – but I wonder if it will advance the interests of the comic aficionados and publishers as much as a blockbuster movie or TV series.

Still any literary notice and approval would be nice and the book reads well enough. How many of you are going to wait for the comic adaptation though?

© Austin Grossman, 2007. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Brian White (B&H Publications/White Crescent Press Ltd.)
ISBN: 0-900804-31-9

Return with me again to the dark days of World War II and experience the charm and creativity of the English in the face of Hunnish disaster. Or perhaps I should say try and find this wonderful reproduction of one of the war years’ most popular strips, now all but forgotten.

Brian White first created this roguish charmer of a toddler in the 1930s and he outlasted the Nazis by a good couple of decades, but his pantomimic antics – most strips were slapstick gags without dialogue – were loved by children and adults in equal measure. The feature ran in the Daily Mail and even with wartime restrictions an annual was a foregone conclusion. The public demanded it.

Wartime utility still played its part in this edition, though. As well as the superb bold line artwork, there were plenty of fascinating advertisements for the grown-ups, pages for the kids to draw their own strips (ready-ruled with panels and borders – always the worst job as any cartoonist will tell you!), a calendar for 1940 – remember, Annuals were released around Christmas time and dated for the following year – and to top it off the entire package also doubles as a colouring book! What Larks!

Kidding aside, this is a wonderful insight into our comic strip past, by a master craftsman. That it has such entertainment and socio-historical value is a blessed bonus, but the real treasure is the work itself. All credit to those responsible for re-releasing it, and I fervently wish more companies would make similar efforts to keep our cultural history accessible.

© 1995 B&H Publications/White Crescent Press Ltd. – I presume.

For continuing to provide me with review copies, my heartfelt thanks go to:

Titan Books

Tokyopop

Turnaround Distribution

Marvel Characters, Inc

Panini Publishing

Penguin

And individual members of the Comics Creators Guild

 

By various (the Amalgamated Press)
No ISBN

I’m going to try a little experiment here. Normally I’d review graphic novels and trade paperback collections with a view to the reader and potential purchaser hopefully becoming a fan or even addict of the picture-strip medium. Here though, in conjunction with the entry for The Children’s Annual, I thought I’d apply my modern critical sensibilities to one of the landmark items featured in that wonderful book. If you’re lucky enough to stumble across a copy or indeed any other vintage volume, I hope my words convince you to acquire it. However, the real purpose is to create a ground swell.

So much magical material is out there in print limbo. Great writing and art is rotting in boxes and attics or the archives of publishing houses, when it needs to be back in the hands of readers once again. On one level the tastes of the public have never been more catholic than today and a sampling of our popular heritage will always appeal to some part of the mass consumer base.

Let’s make copyright owners aware that there’s money to be made – not too much, I’ll admit, but some – from these slices of our childhood. You start the petition… I’ll certainly sign it.

The Rainbow Annual for 1940 was released by The Amalgamated Press just as the Second World War began to bite in Home Front Britain (the dating was year-forward on these bumper, hard-backed premium editions so the 1940 book would have been released in the Autumn of 1939).

The undisputed star was the phenomenally popular Tiger Tim and his gang of chums The Bruin Boys. Tim had first appeared in the Daily Mirror in 1904, and graduated to the weekly Playbox supplement of ‘The World and His Wife’ (from 1909). The Rainbow weekly colour comic began in February 1914 and Tim was the cover feature until its demise in 1956. In 1919 Tiger Tim’s Weekly (née Tales) also launched and he had been the star of his own annual since 1921 (first annual dated 1922 – got it now?). The characters were so popular that Britains (the toy soldier makers) launched a line of lead figures to sell alongside their more militaristic fare.

The line-up includes not only the anthropomorphic Tim and Co. (with four strip adventures and two prose stories) but also the Two Pickles (a mischievous brother and sister who eventually spawned their own movie franchise represented here with three strips), as well as such cartoon fare as the Dolliwogs, Mrs Bruin’s Boarding School, magical Mr. Marzipan and the Woolly Boys, alongside individual children’s staples such as detectives, school stories and nautical tales, past and present.

Most notable for its difference to the poor modern substitutes that still issue forth every year is the preponderance of text stories and puzzles on offer. Fully 61 of the 104 pages are made up of one, two and three page prose stories of fairy-tales, historical and sea-faring adventures, westerns and all the other kinds of trauma-free yarns meant to thrill while creating a love of reading.

The page counts were reduced during the war years and immediately after, although paper rationing often meant differing types of paper-stock produced books that were often physically thicker, not thinner, than normal – a big psychological boost come Christmas morning I’m sure.

Content might raise a few eyebrows these days. Popular fiction from a populist publisher will always embody some underlying assumptions unpalatable to some modern readers, but good taste was always a watchword when producing work for younger children and some interactions between white children and other races is a little utopian, perhaps. A more insidious problem might arise from the accepted class-structures in some of the stories and the woefully un-PC sexism through-out. All we can hope for is that the reader uses judgement and perspective when viewing or revisiting material this old. Just remember Thomas Jefferson kept slaves and it’s only been unacceptable to beat your wife since the 1980’s.

Before I go off on one let’s return to the subject at hand and say that despite all the restrictions and codicils this is a beautiful piece of children’s entertainment in the time-honoured fashion of Enid Blyton, Dodie Smith and Arthur Ransome with lovely illustrations that would make any artist weep with envy.

You and your kids deserve the chance to see it for yourself.

© 1940 The Amalgamated Press.
Which I’m assuming is now part of IPC Ltd., so © 2007 IPC Ltd.