Category: Miscellaneous

By Aslan (Editions Carrere)
ISBN: 2-86804-000-4

This is just unashamed abuse of power on my part – and call me sexist if you want – but the pin-up and the fabulous female have been a part of comics and narrative art since the earliest of days, and the incredible paintings of Alain Gourdon, (also widely known for his sculptures in his native France) who uses the nom-de-plume ‘Aslan’ are both incredibly vivid and effective, but also often have a fantastic or secretive element of mystery to them that make them a joy to behold no matter what your sexual orientation might be.

This volume (sadly only available in French as far as I know) reproduces 110 of his best works – plus an illustrated playing card set he designed – from his sixty-year career, many of them from the magazine Lui where he was a regular contributor from 1964 to the early 1980s.

Stunning, eye-catching and magical (as long as you’re old enough) any aspiring artist could learn volumes from this book.

© Copyright Févier 1984 – Claude Carrére, Michel Lafon. All Rights Reserved.

By Simon Bond (Methuen)
ISBN: 0-413-52870-7

Cartoonist Simon Bond has been messing with people’s heads for decades, most notably with his suggestions of how to most usefully utilise deceased felines, but his truly skewed sensibilities also stretch into the realms of delusion and pure surreality. This nifty little book captures some of his weirdest – and of course, funniest – hallucinations and puts them where you can easily get at them when the humdrum world once more drags you down to its level.

Dry, gentle, incisive and peculiar in the Grand British Manner, this is one of Bond’s best collections and a guaranteed pick-me-up for those in need of a laugh with a question mark in it.

© 1983 Polycarp Ltd.

By George Wunder (Stackpole Books)
ISBN: 0-8117-0096-8

George Wunder (1912-1987) is another unsung hero of the comics industry. He began as a gag cartoonist, assisted Noel Sickles on Scorchy Smith (who shared a studio with Milton Caniff), reputedly worked in Military Intelligence during World War II and then took over Terry and the Pirates when Caniff left to create Steve Canyon. He wrote and drew the adventures of Terry until the strip ended (1946-1973). He was also a brilliant painter and he loved military history.

This book, relating events of the American Revolutionary War of 1775-1883, is a beautiful – if perhaps a tad jingoistic – series of folksy and engaging vignettes, forty-two in all, accompanied by an equal number of absolutely glorious narrative paintings, combining historical accuracy with superbly observed humanism and a huge helping of broad humour. The War was full of everyday heroes that the Movies have left behind, and this volume brings some of them to vibrant life with magical effect both in words and pictures.

Although not strictly comics, I’ve used this book to highlight this wonderful creator (many ‘ghosts’ and follow-up artists suffer unjustly in that their efforts are seldom reprinted). With his charming grasp of history and his lush art (very reminiscent of our own Ron Embleton) George Wunder made history as gripping as any strip. This is a wonderful book any art-loving fan-boy would be proud to own.

© 1975 George Wunder. All Rights Reserved.

By Berkeley Breathed (Little, Brown & Co.)
ISBN: 0-316-10881-2

After a desperately brief and glittering career as a syndicated strip cartoonist and socio-political commentator (so often the very same function) Berkeley Breathed retired Bloom County and Outland and became a writer and illustrator of children’s books. He lost none of his perception or imagination, and actually got better as a narrative artist. He didn’t completely abandon his entrancing cast of characters.

This is a story about the magic of storytelling and features that universal innocent Opus the Penguin. One night, as she has done two hundred and nine times before, Granny starts to read that svelte waterfowl his favourite bedtime book but this night is different. Tonight, Opus’ mind wanders and he “departs the text”…

And so begins a riotous flight of Technicolor fantasy as sedate monochromatic images give way to a powerful, vibrant and surreal romp all the way to the Milky Way and back, by way of animated monuments, the burned out Fairy of Sleep, and stopovers at some of the most exotic corners of the planet.

Less a story than an exuberant travelogue of Imagination, delivered in sharp and lyrical rhyme, this is a book to trigger dreams and promote creativity. A perfect primer to explain how to wonder and wander… So every kid, at any age should own it.

© 1994 Berkeley Breathed. All Rights Reserved.

By Jack Markow (Pitman Publishing Corporation)
No ISBN

I’m just showing off now but I found this slim little lovely in a local charity shop. I know nothing about the author save what it says on the back, but as a ‘How-To’ guide from an obviously highly talented journeyman-cartoonist this is probably one of the most useful examples I’ve ever seen.

Jack Markow is (was?) an artist and printmaker whose work appeared in the New Yorker, the Saturday Evening Post, This Week, Ladies Home Journal, Argosy, Cosmopolitan and a host of others, as well as for a host of high profile advertising clients.

Published in 1956 this edition, part of the ‘Pitman Arts Series’ clearly and methodically lays out the prime fundamentals every new and aspiring pencil-pusher absolutely must know, ranging from Creating a Cartoon Style, shape construction, the head, hands, Cartoon Types, Proportion, Emotion, Action, Backgrounds, Techniques, How To Get Ideas, and The Process from Roughs to Finished Sale.

In an arena that is ever-changing because of new technology, this is a superb, concise and entrancing primer in the art of being graphically amusing. The publisher who picks up and reissues this is going to reap a whole heap of benefits, and they will certainly have my blessing.

© 1956 Pitman Publishing Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

By Bel Mooney & Gerald Scarfe (Hamish Hamilton Ltd.)
ISBN13: 978-0241116951

If you’re a grown-up, Christmas is traditionally a time for tales of monsters and horrors so I’ve dredged up this wonderful graphic chiller from a time when ghastly beasts stalked through Britain, sowing discomfort and dread where e’er they trod.

In this cold, dark country the brittle, demonic and so very cruel Mother Claws broods and frets. It’s time once again to put something in the stockings of the Nation’s inhabitants, but she doesn’t want to. She would rather cut things from their stockings – and so she does, with her corpulent, greedy Father Kissmass egging her on.

So carried away are they that her herd of Tamedeer, even Tebbie and Hestle, rebel. On Christmas Eve they ignore her whips and pull her sleigh to a hovel with a star above it. A homeless couple, with a special newborn baby reach out to her needing just a little help…

Father Kissmass And Mother Claws was produced at the height of the Thatcher regime and uses dark, strident imagery from the brilliant Gerald Scarfe to concoct a savage sidebar to the nativity story for devastating satirical effect. This biting allegory of Thatcher’s Britain is infested with her cabinet’s “Big Beasts” tellingly depicted as cowed pack animals by Scarfe’s flick-knife art, whilst Bel Mooney’s prose is as comforting as a velveteen cosh. This is the best of what graphic satire can do. It’s just a pity today’s leaders don’t warrant the same loving attentions…

Text © 1985 Bel Mooney. Illustrations © 1985 Gerald Scarfe. All Rights Reserved.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from me, the team and the Comics Creators Guild. Keep reading and come back soon.

W!n

By various (Atlas Publishing & Distribution)
No ISBN

This is a volume of great personal significance to me. My parents were both immigrants to Britain in the aftermath of World War II and I was born at the end of the 1950s. My father was artistic himself and somehow came up with the idea of using comics as a means of teaching me – and I suspect, himself – to read English.

On Christmas Day 1962, this was among the pile of hardback volumes that emerged from the blizzard of wrapping paper my pudgy fingers scattered through our living room. I’ve deduced since what other books I got that day, but this is one I can actually recall reading, both on Dad’s lap and later, over and again in front of the fireplace.

I don’t know what captured my interest. There was no colour, unlike Eagle, Swift, Dandy or Beano. There were no text pages like Lion, no photo features. There were just lots of sleekly drawn, fantastic characters, and they “spoke” like the people on the telly.

I know now that this book featured adventures of Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen (‘The Lady-Killer From Metropolis’, ‘The Most Amazing Camera in the World’, ‘Olsen’s Super-Supper’ and ‘Jimmy Olsen’s Wedding’ all drawn by Curt Swan), as well as the amazing ‘Secret of the Sunken Satellite!’ and ‘The Super-Gorilla’s Secret Identity’ starring the Flash and captivatingly illustrated by Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella.

There were five Aquaman thrillers all drawn by Ramona Fradon (‘Aquaman and his Sea Police!’, ‘The Animal Master’, ‘The Adventures of Aquaboy!’, ‘The Menace of Aqualad!’ and ‘Aquaman Joins the Navy!’), two Tommy Tomorrow sci-fi yarns (‘The Menace of the Metal Monster’ and ‘The Gambling Asteroid’ both illustrated by Jim Mooney) and ‘How Krypto Made History,’ a Superboy story drawn by George Papp. The book also had a number of gag pages by Henry Boltinoff.

What a tribute to the abilities of those early creators that these tales were so well-constructed that even a tubby toddler could be beguiled and bemused and become the grizzled, raddled addict of today. This is a book that will always say “Merry Christmas” to me.

© 1962, 1963 National Periodical Publications, Inc., New York.