Category: Satire/Politics

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Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures


By Harvey Kurtzman, Art Spiegelman, Moebius, R. Crumb, Eric Palma, William Stout, Sergio Aragonés & Tom Luth, Tomas Bunk, Rick Geary, Dave Gibbons, Sarah Downs & various (Epic Comics/A Byron Preiss Book
ISBN: 978-0-87135-675-8 (Album HB)

This book contains Discriminatory Content included for satirical and dramatic effect.

Creative genius Harvey Kurtzman is probably the most important cartoonist of the latter half of the last century – even more so than Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert or Will Eisner. His early triumphs in the fledgling field of comicbooks (Frontline Combat, Two-Fisted Tales and especially the groundbreaking, game-changing Mad comic book) would be enough for most creators to lean back on, but Kurtzman was also a force in newspaper strips (Flash Gordon Complete 1951-1953) and a restless innovator, commentator and social critic who kept on looking at folk and their doings. He just couldn’t stop making art or sharing his conclusions…

Kurtzman invented a whole new format when he converted the highly successful colour comic book Mad into a monochrome magazine, safely distancing the brilliant satirical publication from the fallout caused by the 1950s comics witch-hunt which eventually killed EC’s other titles. He then pursued comedy and social satire further with newsstand magazines Trump (no relation to any orange tossers!), Humbug and Help! – all the while creating challenging and powerfully effective humour strips like Little Annie Fanny (for Playboy), Nutz, Goodman Beaver, Betsy and her Buddies and many more. He died far too soon, far too young today in 1993.

Utterly unavailable in digital editions, this intriguing oddment from 1990 saw the Great Observer return to his comic roots to spoof and lambaste strip characters, classic cinema and contemporary sentiments in a series of vignettes illustrated by some of the biggest names of the day. Following a captivating introduction from ex-student Art Spiegelman, a stunning pin-up from Moebius and an overview from project coordinator Byron Preiss, the fun begins with a typically upbeat cartoon appreciation from R. Crumb: ‘Ode to Harvey Kurtzman’ which was coloured by Eric Palma, after which the Harvey-fest begins in earnest…

‘Shmegeggi of the Cave Men’ visually revives the author’s legendary Goodman Beaver, dislocating him to that mythic antediluvian land of dim brutes, hot babes in fur bikinis and marauding dinosaurs, to take a look at how little sexual politics has progressed in a million years – all exquisitely painted by cartoonist, movie artist and paleontological illustrator William Stout, after which Sergio Aragonés adds his inimitable mania to the stirring piratical shenanigans of the dashing ‘Captain Bleed’ (with striking hues supplied by Groo accomplice Tom Luth).

Western parody ‘Drums Along the Shmohawk’ is an all-Kurtzman affair as the scribe picks up his pens and felt-tips to describe how the sheriff and his stooge paid a little visit to the local tribe…

Cartoonist, fine artist and illustrator Tomas Bunk contributes a classically underground and exuberant job depicting ‘A Vampire Named Mel’ whilst arch-stylist Rick Geary helps update the most famous canine star in history with ‘Sassy, Come Home’. Limey Living Legend Dave Gibbons utilises his too-seldom-seen gift for comedy by aiding and abetting in what we Brits term “a good kicking” to the superhero genre in the outrageous romp ‘The Silver Surfer’ before the cartoon buffoonery concludes with Kurtzman and long-time associate Sarah Downs smacking a good genre while it’s down and dirty in ‘Halloween, or the Legend of Creepy Hollow’.

But wait, there’s more…

This seductive oversized hardback also has an abundant section devoted to creator biographies supplemented with pages and pages of Kurtzman’s uniquely wonderful pencil rough script pages – almost like having the stories printed twice.

Fun, philosophical fantasy and fabulous famous, artist folk: what more do you need to know – other than that SOMEone should re-release tis ASAP?
© 1990 by Byron Preiss Visual Publications Inc. Each strip © 1990 Harvey Kurtzman and the respective artist. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1922 British comics artist (Bennie & Barley Bottom) and social redeemer Derek Chittock was born, with Belgian comics maven René Hausman (Laïyna), following in 1936 and fantasy illustrator Frank (Doctor Strange, Howard the Duck, Creepy) Brunner arriving in 1949. In 1963 manhua creator Khoo Fuk Lung (Saint) was born, with comics/screenwriter Christopher Yost coming in 1973 and Bryan Lee O’Malley (Scott Pilgrim, Seconds, Snotgirl) in 1979.

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A Cartoon History of the Monarchy


By Michael Wynn Jones and Many & Various (Macmillan)
ISBN: 978-0333198056 (PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

We’re far too reluctant in this country to celebrate the history and quality of our own cartooning tradition; preferring simply to remark on the attention-grabbers or impressive longevity of one or two classic and venerable veterans of the pen-&-ink game for TV soundbites and platform clickbait. The actual truth is that for an incredibly long time the political art movement of the Empire and Commonwealth – and its enemies – was vast, varied and fantastically influential.

The British wing of the form has been magnificently serviced over centuries by masters of form, line, wash and most importantly ideas, repeatedly tickling our funny bones or enraging our sleeping consciences and sensibilities, all whilst poking our communal pomposities and fascinations.

From earliest inception, satiric draughtsmanship has been used to attack and sell: initially ideas, values, opinions and prejudices or but eventually actual products too. In newspapers, magazines and especially comic books, the sheer power of graphic narrative, with its ability to create emotional affinities, has led to the creation of unforgettable images and characters – and the destruction of real people or social systems.

When those creations can affect the daily lives of millions of readers, the force they can apply in the commercial or political arena is well-nigh irresistible…

In Britain, the cartoonist has held a bizarrely precarious position of power for centuries: the deftly designed bombastic broadside or savagely surgical satirical slice instantly capable of ridiculing, exposing, uplifting or deflating the powerfully elevated, unapproachable and apparently untouchable with a simple shaped-charge of scandalous wit and crushingly clear, universally understandable visual metaphor.

For this method of concept transmission, lack of literacy or education is no barrier. As the Catholic Church proved centuries ago with the Stations of the Cross, stained glass windows and a superteam of idealised saints, a picture is worth far more than a thousand words…

For as long as we’ve had printing there have been scurrilous gadfly artists commentating on rulers, society and all iniquities: pictorially haranguing the powerful, pompous, privileged and just plain perfidious through swingeing satire and cunning caricature. Sometimes artists have been just plain mean. Those are usually the best and most memorable…

Britain had no monopoly on talent and indignation, and this canny compendium also frequently features European – and latterly American – takes on our always-scandalous Royals (wow, is THAT true today!) and oddball citizenry…

Released in 1978 and desperately in need of updating and re-issue, A Cartoon History of the Monarchy offers a potted, far from hagiographic history and deliciously skewed view of our Ruling Elite in all their unsavoury glory. Here reside an unbroken line of jibes, asides and broadsides culled from diverse sources by jobbing journalist and aficionado of japes, lampoons and sketches Michael Wynn Jones, who casts his discriminating eye from the reign of Elizabeth I up until just before the Silver Jubilee of the second Regina to bear the name…

Following a rota of the Kings and Queens of England, the pomposity-puncturing procession commences with The Age of Intolerance, reproducing cartoons and adding commentary dealing with the doings of the 10 monarchs from the initial Elizabeth I to George II.

Accompanying essays share the zeitgeist of those times; the religious questions as England, Wales, Ireland and eventually Scotland faced numerous crises regarding succession. That issue always revolved around whether the land should be Catholic or Protestant. ‘Popes, Plots and Puritans’ led to a final solution when ‘The Men from Hanover’ arrived to settle the matter and fully cement the nation under the Church of England.

A savage sampling of national and European opinions are represented by 26 visual bombards such as allegorical assault ‘Diana and Callisto’ by Dutch artist Miricenys (1585), anonymous ‘England’s Miraculous Preservation’ (1648) and ‘The Royal Oake of Brittayn’ (1649) amongst many others.

Cartoon grotesques like ‘Cromwell’s Car’ (1649) or ‘Babel and Bethel’ (1679) appear beside such scandalous foreign attacks as Dutch illustrator Dusart’s ‘Fr. James King’ or anonymous French pictorial polemic ‘Notice of Burial’ (both from 1690). We Brits riposted with jeering celebrations of martial triumphs such as ‘The Arrival of William and Mary’ (1689), ‘The Great Eclipse of the Sun’ (simultaneously a topical spin on a 1706 solar event and defeat of “Sun King” Louis XIV by the British armies of Queen Anne), and ‘A Bridle for the French King’ from the same year.

Domestic contretemps are highlighted through such draughtsman’s delights as anonymous 1743 shocker ‘The Hanover Bubble’, Ebersley’s ‘The Agreeable Contrast’ (1746 and attacking King George’s brother “Butcher” Cumberland’s treatment of Jacobites after the Young Pretender’s defeat), and exposure of Popish influence in the Highlands, described in ‘The Chevalier’s Market’ 1745…

Whereas much of this material – British and otherwise – was generally national commentary and pure religio-political assault, by the time period covered in The Wickedest Age: George III to George IV (1760-1830), the cartoon had also evolved into a weapon designed to wound with wit and crush through cruel caricature. After covering major crises and scandals of the generally sensible – if parsimonious – third George in ‘The Royal Malady’, ‘The Dregs of Their Dull Race’ and ‘Twilight Years’: a veritable Golden Age of popular disapproval and pictorial pummelling of the Prince Regent and much-delayed, frustrated monarch (plus his many indiscreet mistresses) is covered in ‘The Prince of Whales’, ‘The Secret Marriage’, ‘…Pray Get Me a Glass of Brandy’ and ‘Delicate Investigations’.

The public disdain of the times generated a fusillade of cartoon prints, represented here by 35 graphic thrusts and savage cartoon sallies by names now as famous as any ruler. However master character assassins Townsend (‘The Scotch hurdy-gurdy’), George Cruikshank (‘Royal Condescension’), Gillray (‘A New Way to Pay the National Debt’, ‘A Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion’), Rowlandson (‘The Prospect Before Us’) and Heath (‘A Triumph of innocence over perjury’) are brilliantly bolstered by lesser lights West (‘The Save-all and the Extinguisher!’), Williams (‘Low Life above stairs’), Vowles (‘The shelter for the destitute’) and Marshall (‘The kettle calling the pot ugly names’) and some anonymous pen-pricks who nevertheless hit hard with ‘Tempora Mutantor’, ‘The captive Prince’ and ‘Reading of the Imperial decree’ and more.

Eventually, periodical publication overtook print-shops as the great disseminators of cartoon imagery, and open savagery and targeted vulgarity of caricaturists gradually gave way to mannered, if barbed, genteel observation. Thus The Age of Discretion: William IV to Victoria (1830-1901) offers a different style of Royal Commentary: no less challenging, but certainly more overtly respectful even when critical. Sometimes, though, the new family-oriented cartooning – even in magazines like Punch and The Times – simply sunk to fawning veneration as the institution of monarchy became more and more removed from the lives of the citizenry.

William’s times are summed up in text via ‘The Sailor King’ and ‘Reform Billy’ whilst Victoria’s epochal reign and the Parliamentarians who increasingly wielded decisive power is described through ‘The Queen of the Whigs’, ‘Revolutions are bad for the Country’, ‘The Black and the Brown’ and ‘Years of Widowhood’. The 36 collected images recapture days of Empire, with Heath, Seymour & Doyle predominant in illustrating bluff sea-dog William’s socially contentious days of Reform (no, not our modern bunch of useless Gammons, but actually people seemingly seeking to make the country better very long ago…)

Victoria’s years – from engaging popular ingénue Queen, through happy bride to politically intrusive grand dame of European Court intrigue – highlights the craft of Doyle ‘The Queen in Danger’ (1837), Leech ‘There’s Always Something’ (1852), Tenniel ‘Queen Hermione’ (1865), ‘New Crowns for Old Ones!’ (1876), Morgan (Where is Britannia?’ and ‘A Brown Study’ (both 1867) and Sambourne ‘Kaiser-i-Hind’ (1876) amongst so many others. Her latter years saw a rise in social conscience cartooning as displayed by the crusading Merry with ‘The Scapegrace of the Family’ (1880), ‘The fall of the rebels’ in 1886 and more. The telling modernist take of Max Beerbohm cuttingly illustrated the rift between the Empress and her playboy heir in ‘The rare, the rather awful visits of Albert Edward to Windsor Castle’…

Despite her well-publicised disapproval of the good-time Prince, he became an effective king as did his son, both covered in The Edwardian Age: Edward VII to George V, spanning 1901-1936. Their dutiful achievements are depicted in ‘The Coming King’ and ‘The First Gentleman of Europe’ before war with Germany necessitated a family name change for George: ‘The First Windsor’…

With kings increasingly used as good-will ambassadors and cited in scandals frequently ending in court (sound familiar?), the 30 cartoons in this section include many German pieces from not only the war years but also the tense decade that preceded them. At that time of tinderbox politics, Imperial Superpowers jostled for position and used propaganda to appeal to the world’s “unwashed masses” for justification in their aims and ambitions. Beside veteran caricaturists like Leech, Morgan, May, Partridge, Staniforth and David Low are merciless lampoons from German cartoonists Brandt, Blir, Heine, Gulbransson and Johnson as well as French illustrator Veber and lone American Kirby.

Our pen-&-ink pictorial history lesson concludes with The Age of Respectability: Edward VIII, George VI, Elizabeth II, by generally skipping World War II, concentrating on the openly secret scandal of Edward & Mrs Simpson in ‘Abdication’. Thereafter the advent of ‘New Elizabethans’ brought a modern age of monarchs as sideshow attractions…

Although Fleet Street chose to whitewash and suppress the affair between a King-in-waiting and an American divorcee, the rest of the world made great play of the situation: as seen here with 11 telling cartoon shots from Americans McCutcheon and Orro, whilst French scribbler Effel posited typically insouciant Gallic pragmatism in ‘Une Solution’ and German-based Gulbransson played up the true romance angle…

In the meantime, British cartoonist Low had to be at his most obliquely hilarious, delineating the crisis by not mentioning it, whilst Punch stars such as Partridge steadfastly pursued a line of deferential, tragic sacrifice…

Although there is very little material featuring wartime monarch George VI – a propaganda casualty of the conflict – the last 20 cartoons herein celebrate the changing image of a very public Royal Family, pictured by names hopefully familiar to contemporary cartoon lovers.

The imagery is also contextually far more familiar – and presumably comfortable – to modern tastes as print media generally learned to save their vitriol for politicians and celebrities: reserving only minor chidings and silly teasing for “the Royals”, as seen in ‘Birthday Greetings’ and ‘Under the Splendid Empire Tree’ (Shepard fin 1947) or Illingworth’s 1951 panels ‘Family Ties’ and ‘Happy Returns’. Papers were, however, happy to utilise monarchy to score points against governments, as seen in an attack on Enoch Powell (Cummings’ ‘Ministry of Repatriation’) and the battle between Rhodesia’s Ian Smith and Harold Wilson, lampooned in ‘Your Move!’ by Jak (both 1968) or the legendary Giles’ ‘New Rent Assistance Bill’ (1971).

Also offering acerbic jollity of a far more blueblood-specific variety are cartoon giants Trog and Waite, joining the abovementioned in exploiting the Royal Family’s gift for headline-stealing gaffes in such daring gags as ‘I Suppose we did send them to the Right Schools?’, ‘I Suppose she’ll think these are of the Queen Mother’, ‘More Pay’ and ‘Andrew’s Exchange Student’: coming full circle with the best of Hanoverian excesses scrutinised by cost-conscious government and public – albeit this time for rather more gentle laughs…

Appended with a scholarly section of Acknowledgements, Illustration sources and Index of artists, this is an extremely effective introduction to the lasting relationship between Royalty, Church and Fourth Estate, offering a fantastic overview of Regal adaptability and cultural life through cunningly contrived images and pictorial iconography that shaped society and the world.

These are timeless examples of the political pictorialist’s uncanny power and, as signs of the times, form a surprising effecting gestalt of the never-happy nation’s feeling and character.

None of that actually matters now, since these cartoons have performed the task they were intended for: moulding attitudes of generations of voters who never voted for monarchy. That they have also stood the test of time and remain beloved relics of a lethal art form is true testament to their power and passion.

Stuffed with astounding images, fascinating lost ephemera and mouth-watering tastes of comic art no aficionado could resist, this colossal collection is a beautiful piece of cartoon history to delight and tantalise all who read it.

We haven’t had many monarchs since this book was first released, but there are plenty of new Royals and so many scandals to explore, so it’s long past time for a fresh edition, no?

NOW CAN WE HAVE A NEW REVISED EDITION PLEASE?
© Michael Wynn Jones 1978. All rights reserved.

Today in 1893 attorney and psychologist Elizabeth Holloway Marston was born, although you won’t find her name on any of the Wonder Woman stories she wrote with her husband. In 1929 Australian John Dangar Dixon (Air Hawk and the Flying Doctors – which ran from 1959 until 1986) was born, as was Torpedo creator Enrique Sánchez Abulí in 1945 and colourist Steve Oliff in 1954. Dwayne McDuffie arrived in 1962, as did Mike Allred, whilst Lady Killer, Batman & Catwoman scribe Joëlle Jones didn’t join the party until 1980.

We lost both Superman stalwart Wayne Boring and Blake & Mortimer creator Edgar Pierre Jacobs in 1987 and strips scribe Elliot Caplin (Dr. Bobbs, Peter Scratch, Big Ben Bolt, Abbie an’ Slats, Long Sam, Little Orphan Annie, The Heart of Juliet Jones) in 2000.

If you’re British and never grew up, today in 1971 TV based weekly Countdown launched…

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Nuts


By Gahan Wilson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-454-2 (HB/Digital edition

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Born on February 18th 1930 and dying November 21st 2019, Gahan Allen Wilson was an illustrator, cartoonist, essayist and author who always had his eyes and heart set on the future. According to Gary Groth, the artist/author grew up reading comic strips as much as fantasy fiction.

It always showed.

The mordantly macabre, acerbically wry and surreal draughtsman tickled funnybones and twanged nerves with his darkly dry graphic confections from the 1960s onwards; contributing superb spoofs, sparklingly horrific and satirically suspenseful drawings and strips and panels as a celebrated regular contributor in such major magazines as Playboy, Collier’s, The New Yorker and others. He also wrote cutting edge science fiction for Again Dangerous Visions, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Twilight Zone Magazine and Realms of Fantasy as well as contributing criticism, book and film reviews for them all.

In an extremely broad and long career he wore dozens of creative hats, even embracing the modern digital universe by creating – with Byron Preiss – his own supernatural computer game Gahan Wilson’s the Ultimate Haunted House.

When National Lampoon first began its devastatingly satirical (geez, do modern folk even recognize satire anymore?) all-out attack on the American Dream, Wilson was invited to contribute a regular strip to their comics section. His sublimely semi-autobiographical, darkly hilarious paean to lost childhood ran from 1972 and until 1981 and was collected as Nuts, another superb compilation from this publisher that you should own and share. Few people – me included – knew that during that period he also, apparently more for fun and relaxation than profit, produced his own syndicated Sunday strip feature. For two years – beginning on March 3rd 1974 – Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics appeared in a small cross-section of newspapers from Boston to Los Angeles and, as with all his work, it bucked a trend.

At a time when most cartoonists were seeking a daily continuity strip, building a readership and eking jokes out with sensible parsimony, Wilson let himself go hog-wild, generating a half-dozen or so single-shot gags every Sabbath, blending his signature weird, wild monsters, uncanny aliens and unsavoury scenes with straight family humour, animal crackers, topical themes and cynically socio-politically astute observations.

Looking at them here it’s clear to me that his intent was to have fun and make himself laugh as much or even more than his readership: capturing those moments when an idea or notion gave him pause to giggle whilst going about his day job…

I’m not going to waste time describing individual cartoons: there are just too many and despite being a fascinating snapshot of ancient life, they’re almost all still outrageously funny in the way and manner that Gary Larson’s Far Side was a scant six years later.

I will say that even whilst generating a storm of humorous, apparently unconnected one-offs, consummate professional Wilson couldn’t restrain himself and eventually the jokes achieved an underlying shape and tone with recurring motifs (clocks, beasts, wallpaper, etc), and features-within-the-feature such as The Creep and Future Funnies…

Here, generally a single-page complete graphic epigram “star” a grotty little chubby homunculus dubbed The Kid. This fabulous monochrome (and occasionally colour) collection gathers that complete serial for collectors and potential addicts in a perfect package that readers will dip into over and over again.

Taking his lead from popular sickly-sweet strips about or starring little children and the brilliant but definitely not jejune Peanuts (which was populated, to all intents and purposes, with teeny-weeny neurotic middle-aged midgets), Wilson sought to do the exact opposite and attempt to access the fear, frustration, confusion and unalloyed joy of being a young, impressionable, powerless, curious and demanding…

… and magnificently succeeded.

Dense, claustrophobic, intense and trenchantly funny, these self-contained strips range from satire to slapstick to agonising irony, linking up over the years to form a fascinating catalogue of growing older in the USA: a fearfully faithful alternate view of childhood and most importantly, of how we adults choose to recall and process those distant days…

Each strip begins with the question “Remember how…?” or “One of the…” or some equally folksy enquiry before unveiling bafflement, bewilderment, night-terrors or a deeply-scarring embarrassment which haunts us till doomsday, all wrapped in a comradely band-of-brothers, shared-coping-mechanism whimsy that is both moving and quintessentially nostalgic.

Topics include the unremitting horror of germs; sudden death; being ill; inappropriate movies; forced visits; grandparents; things adults do that they don’t want you to see; unexplained noises; the butcher’s shop; accidents and rusty nails; things in closets; doctors and needles; dying pets; Santa Claus; seasonal disappointments; summer camp; sleep; bodily functions; school and lessons (two completely different things); fungus; bikes and toys; haircuts; comic books; deaths of relatives; hot weather; candy; overhearing things you shouldn’t; stranger danger; hobby-kits and glue; daydreaming; babies and so many other incomprehensible daily pitfalls on the treacherous path to maturity…

Peppered also with full page, hilariously annotated diagrams of such places of enduring childhood fascination as ‘The Alley’, ‘The Kit for Camp Tall Lone Tree’, ‘Mr. Schultz’s Cigar Store’, ‘The Movie Theater Seat’, ‘Table Set Up For Making Models’, ‘The Doctor’s Waiting Room’, ‘The Closet’, ‘The Sick Bed’ and ‘The Private Drawer’, this glorious procession also covers occasions of heartbreaking poignancy and those stunning, blue moon moments of serendipity and triumph when everything is oh-so-briefly perfect…

Complete with a 3-D strip and ‘Nuts to You’ – a comprehensive appreciation and history by Gary Groth – this funny, sad, chilling and sublimely true picture-passport to growing up is unmissable cartoon gold.
© Fantagraphics Books. All Nuts strips © 2011 Gahan Wilson. All rights reserved.

Today in 1917, Golden Age writer/editor Ruth Roche was born, followed by forgotten genius Joe Maneely in 1926, Gahan Wilson in 1930, Johnny Hart in 1931 and both comic book artist Doug Mahnke and cartoonist Mark Bodé in 1963.

We lost Belgian megastar and Marcinelle School founder Willy Maltaite (“Will”) in 2000 and lifelong multi-style achiever Bob Oksner in 2007.

Comics wise, UK standby Radio Fun (published since 1938) folded today in 1961 and Power Comic Fantastic launched today in 1967.

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Growing Old with B.C. – A 50 Year Celebration


By Johnny Hart (Checker BPG)
ISBN: 978-1-905239-63-4 (HB) 978-1-933160-68-9 (PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

John Lewis Hart was born in Endicott, New York in 1931, and his first published cartoons appeared in military newspaper Stars and Stripes while he served with the US Air Force during the Korean War. On returning to Civvy Street in 1953, he sold a few gags to The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers Weekly and elsewhere, but had to earn a living as a general designer.

In 1958, for some inexplicable reason, caveman jokes were everywhere in magazines and comics (even latterly creeping onto TV and into movies). Despite all the dawn-age foofaraw, General Electric draughtsman and still-wannabe cartoonist Johnny Hart hadn’t sold a single one. He also desperately wanted to create a syndicated newspaper strip but couldn’t think of an idea.

And then one of his co-workers said why not do a strip feature one about Cavemen? Just like Alley Oop, but different…

Hart took a good look at the state of the world, and especially the people around him, and the wryly outrageous social commentarians supporting and harassing our hapless nebbish leading man B.C. quickly took shape…

The concept sold instantly to the New York Herald-Tribune Syndicate and the strip – starting today in 1958 – rapidly became a global hit, with the first of 41 collected editions (Hey! B.C.) released in 1959. In 1964 Hart started collaborating with fellow cartoonist Brant Parker on a new strip. The Wizard of Id also became a monster hit. The features won Hart an astounding hoard of awards over the years: making him one of only 4 American cartoonists to produce two strips appearing contiguously in more than 1000 newspapers.

Hart died of a stroke on April 7th 2007. He was working at his drawing board. Brant Parker passed away eight days later.

Hart became a devout Christian during the mid-1980s – something which increasingly and controversially manifested in later strips – but his urgent need to preach and share took a long time to impact the trenchant, whimsically surreal wit and primal byplay of his primordial playpen.

B.C. is a modern everyday kind of guy: a general purpose ordinary slob just getting by, but he has some odd and interesting friends breaking up the monotony of the pre-civilised world. These include self-proclaimed genius Peter, superstitious misogynist Wiley, proto-prime nerd Clumsy Carp, pre-human missing-link Grog, uber-sarcastic Curls and rakish lady-killer Thor.

Apparently, all of them are based on actual people – life-long friends of Hart’s – and their candid reminiscences provide a charming and poignant insight into the life of one of the most revered and successful cartoonists of modern times.

Other materialised regulars include a variety of talking beasts and inanimate objects: chatty, snappy dinosaurs; ants and ant-eaters; clams, snakes; turtles; birds and an apteryx – but I’m guessing they never had analogues with day-jobs in Eisenhower’s America…

This magnificent tome – available in hardcover, paperback and digital editions – offers a decade-by-decade selection of the best and most memorable B.C. strips, supplemented by a listing of its many awards, and comes stuffed with photographs and observations. It is a most delightful commemoration of a truly great and very funny strip.

Hart died during the finishing stages of this book’s creation, making this the best way to celebrate his achievements. His legacy of brain-tickling, absurdist lunacy will never date, and creative anachronism has never been better used to raise a smile or an eyebrow in this lush collection of timely and timeless fun.
B.C. © 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc. B.C. © 1958-2006 John L. Hart Family Limited Partnership.

Today in 1914 writer Leo Dorman was born, as was fellow Superman stalwart Curt Swan in 1920. In 1929 Alejandro Jodorowsky came along, with today also greeting modern myth makers Nelson De Castro/“Nelson” in 1969 and Leah Williams in 1988.

Big day for strip launches too. As well as BC, we all started loving Richard F. Outcault’s The Yellow Kid in 1985, Lee Falk’s The Phantom in 1936 and Jack Williamson & Lee Elias’ Beyond Mars in 1952.

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HM Bateman: The Man Who… and Other Drawings


By H.M. Bateman; edited by John Jensen (Methuen 1983)
ISBN: 978-0-41332-360-9 (Album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times but also emphasised for comedic effect.

On February 15th in 1887, Henry Mayo Bateman was born in New South Wales. He was however, raised in England, attending Forest Hill House School and Goldsmith’s College (Institute, as was). He also studied with John Hassall and later 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. Bateman was skilled and gifted in 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 Gozo, Malta on February 11th 1970, having spent his final years in steadfast (often hilarious) battle with the Inland Revenue…

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, perpetually lampooning the English Manner by way of frenzied character reactions to a gaffe or inappropriate action from a blithely oblivious central participant. Bateman’s 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 – as are all the rest. In a world where the next fad is always the most important, it is vital that creators such as Bateman remain unforgettable and unforgotten. I pray to the cartoon gods that somewhere soon some museum retrospective on British culture will rescue this genius from ill-deserved (temporary) obscurity and generate one last curated collection for us to revel in…
Text ©.1983 John Jensen/Methuen. Illustrations © 1982, 2007 Estate of H M Bateman.

For further explorations and illumination please check out HM Bateman – Official Cartoons & Artwork.

Also today, Golden Age comics artist Nina Albright (Miss Victory, Black Venus) was born, as was Belgian star Willy Vandersteen (Spike and Suzy) in 1913 and Disney Duck artist William Van Horn in 1939.

Art Spiegelman was born in 1948, and Marc Hansen (Ralph Snart, Weird Melvin, Doctor Gorpon) in 1963, whilst in 1965, Morrie Turner launched Wee Pals, America’s first strip with a racially diverse cast. In 1987, Walt Disney’s Treasury of Classic Tales ended a run begun in the early 1950s. We also lost today veteran Canadian artist Jack Sparling in 1997, and two Italian Bonelli/Tex Willer stalwarts: Vincenzo Monti in 2002 and Fabrizio Busticchi in 2017.

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Shorts


By Milo Manara, translated by Tom Leighton (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-087416-060-4 (HB)

For some folks the graphic novel under review here will be unacceptably lewd, even “dirty”. If that’s you, please stop here and come back tomorrow when there will something you’ll approve of but which will surely offend somebody else.

It’s another amatory Final Countdown moment and possibly a last chance to impress that significant one this year so let’s maturely and contemplatively review a rather quirky, philosophical – and typically unattainable – tome by one of the world’s greatest graphic eroticists. Originally translated into English from the French edition Courts Métrages by Catalan in 1989, it’s another inexplicably Out-of-Print graphic gem desperately in need of an English language release.

Maurilio “Milo” Manara (born September 12th 1945) has always been a puckish intellectual and whimsical craftsman with a dazzling array of artistic skills ranging from architecture, product design, filmmaking & animation, painting and of course an elegant, refined, clear-clean line style with pen and ink. He is best known for his wry, controversial and generally sexually explicit material – although that’s more an indicator of our comics market than any artistic obsession. He’s even drawn the X-Men – but mostly the women…

After studying painting and architecture he began crafting comics for money in 1969, beginning with Fumetti Neri series Genius, and thereafter working on the magazine Terror. His life’s goal came in 1971 as he began his “adult” career (see what I did there?) illustrating Francisco Rubino’s Jolanda de Almaviva which led, four years later, to his first major work and success. Originally released as Lo Scimmiotto, The Ape was a bold, bawdy reworking of the Chinese tales of the Monkey King.

By the end of the seventies he was working for the vast Franco-Belgian market where he is still regarded as an A-list creator. It was while creating material for Charlie Mensuel, Pilote and L’Écho des savanes that he created his signature series HP and Giuseppe Bergman for A Suivre.

As the 80’s staggered to a close he wrote and drew, in his characteristic blend of raunchy burlesque and saucy slapstick, the eccentric selection of satirical, baroque tales gathered here as a barbed and penetrating assault on modern media and bastardized popular cultural, which were increasingly being used to cloak capitalist intrusions and commercial seductions.

In these absurdist, voyeuristic, fourth-wall breaking, intellectually-challenging, exceedingly sexy monochrome vignettes, Manara highlights the diminishing divisions between Art and Selling, with tales intended to make your head throb as much as your nethers.

The sensorial incursion commences with ‘Commercial’, as a typical couch-potato is inexorably drawn into the Casanovan drama he’s watching. However, the drama’s TV-contained characters are impeded in their roles by the intrusive presence of the sponsor’s unsavoury product: adult diapers…

All of these yarns are visually influenced by iconography of the Great Arts, like Luciano Pavarotti and Fellini, and ‘Blue Period’ details the ruthless nature of commercialism as a photographic director goes to extraordinary lengths to reproduce a Picasso painting for an album cover. Sadly, under normal conditions, the human body just don’t bend that way…

‘X3’ offers to reveal your sex-portrait with a brief questionnaire survey carried out by aliens well-versed in the techniques of abduction and probing whilst ‘John Lennon’ delightfully describes what happened after the master musician got to Heaven before ‘Acherontia Atropos’ plays a very dark prank on a cameraman who signs up to film a genuine snuff-movie…

‘Untitled’ returns to the role of unsatisfied Casanova as the legendary lover suffers an unquantifiable loss and surreal challenge to his life-style, whilst ‘The Last Tragic Day of Gori Bau & the Callipygian Sister’ sinisterly shows the dark side of “underage” explorations and pubescent curiosity when a trio of kids invoke feelings and powers they are not equipped to cope with. This comes from a far less sensitive time and might well be the most emotionally triggering tale here, so please read with care and your eyes and conscience open…

Our allegorical ambuscade concludes with the calamitously comedic surreal science fiction yarn ‘And’ as an Earthman and an Arcturian escape from a dying planet thanks to the power of a book which writes itself and predicts the future. If only the incredible chronicle had a spell-checker too…

Delineated in Manara’s beautifully rendered, lavish linework this explicit, daringly deep and sexually charged selection makes intriguing points of social and creative commentary in an utterly seductive and fascinating manner, but even at its most raunchy, funny and challenging this tome is first and foremost a work of sublime pictorial entertainment desperately worthy of a new edition.
© 1989 Milo Manara/Staletti, agent, Paris. English Language edition © 1989 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

Today in 1877 strip cartoonist Sidney “The Gumps” Smith was born as was Bud Blake (Tiger) in 1918 and letterer Danny Crespi in 1926. We lost The New Yorker stalwart Gluyas Williams in 1982 and the astounding Ron Embleton (Wrath of the Gods, Stingray, Biggles, Look and Learn, World of Wonder, Oh Wicked Wanda, those images in the closing credits of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons).

The day also saw the beginning of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant in 1937, Leo Baxendale’s The Bash Street Kids in The Beano in 1954 and the last Peanuts strip by Charles M. Schulz in 2000.

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Bluecoats volume 19 Drummer Boy


By Willy Lambil & Raoul Cauvin, with Leonardo; translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-177-4 (Album PB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times but also emphasised for dramatic and comedic effect.

Devised by Louis “Salvé” Salvérius & Raoul Cauvin – who scripted the first 64 volumes until retirement in 2020 – Les Tuniques Bleues (or Dutch iteration De Blauwbloezen) began as the 1960s ended: created to soften the blow of losing Lucky Luke when that mild-mannered maverick megastar defected from Le Journal de Spirou to arch-rival periodical Pilote. From the start, the substitute strip was popular: swiftly becoming one of the most-consumed bande dessinée series in Europe. After stints by the Jose-Luis Munuera/BeKa writing partnership, it is now scribed by Kris and up to 68 volumes…

Salvé was a cartoonist in the Gallic big-foot/big-nose humour manner, and after his sudden death in 1972, successor Willy “Lambil” Lambillotte gradually moved towards a more realistic – but still overtly comedic – tone and look. Born in 1936, Lambil is Belgian and, after studying Fine Art in college, joined publishing giant Dupuis in 1952 as a letterer. Arriving on Earth two years later, scripter Cauvin was also Belgian and (prior to joining Dupuis’ animation department in 1960) studied Lithography. He soon discovered his true calling was comedy and began a glittering, prolific writing career at LJdS. In addition, he scripted dozens of long-running, award winning series including Cédric, Les Femmes en Blanc and Agent 212: clocking up more than 240 separate albums. Les Tuniques Bleues alone has sold over 15 million copies… and counting.

Cauvin died on August 19th 2021, but his vast legacy of barbed laughter remains and – as of ten minutes ago – Lambril, at 87, is still drawing the Boys in Blue…

The Bluecoats are long-suffering protagonists Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield and Corporal Blutch: worthy, honest fools in the manner of Laurel & Hardy; ill-starred US cavalrymen defending a vision of a unified America during the War Between the States – well, at least one of them is…

The original format offered single-page gags set around an Indian-plagued Wild West fort, but from second volume Du Nord au Sud, the sad-sack soldiers were situated back East, perpetually fighting in the American Civil War. Subsequent exploits are set within the scant timeframe of the Secession conflict, but – like today’s tale – occasionally range far beyond the traditional environs of the sundered USA, dipping into and embracing actual events (also like today’s tale), tackling genuine, thoroughly researched moments of history…

Blutch is an everyday, whinging little-man-in-the street: work-shy, mouthy, devious and ferociously critical of the army and its inept orchestrators and commanders. Ducking, diving, deserting at every opportunity, he’s you or me – except at his core he’s smart, principled, loyal and even heroic… if no easier option presents itself. Chesterfield is a big, burly professional fighting man: a proud career soldier of the 22nd Cavalry who devoutly believes in patriotism and esprit-de-corps of The Army. Brave, bold, never shirking his duty and hungry to be a medal-wearing hero, he’s quite naïve and also loves his cynical little pal. Naturally, they quarrel like a married couple, fight like brothers and simply cannot agree on the point and purpose of the horrendous war they are trapped in. That situation again stretches their friendship to breaking point in this cunningly conceived instalment, in which both find themselves pretty much fish out of water…

On offer this time is a rather more straightforward and trenchant outing with characters rather than settings providing most of the humour. Coloured as ever by Vittorio Leonardo, Les Tuniques Bleues – Drummer Boy was serialised continentally in Le Journal de Spirou #2720-2730, before becoming the 31st album in 1990, and now Cinebook’s 19th translated Bluecoats book.

As already hinted, it differs somewhat from the majority of tales, which tread a fine line between comedy and righteous anger, so if you share these books with younger kids, best read it first. However, biting wit and sardonic comedy are curbed for a mostly moving message here as a battlefield policy decision divides the old comrades and unleashes calamity and catastrophe. It begins in polemical mode as the aftermath of another battle leaves corpses and cripples underfoot (on both sides) and colonels and generals (ditto) unable to ascertain why their great plans and bold strategies just don’t work.

As always the casualty lists provoke a drive for new recruits, the one area where Union forces can outdo the Confederacy. As Chesterfield & Blutch indulge a rare quiet moment in a nearby town, they dispassionately watch the hundreds of poor folk, recent immigrants, unemployed men and thirsty ne’er-do-wells signing up, but only until Blutch spots a very young boy in the queue. Chesterfield cannot understand his pal’s towering outrage as Blutch tries everything to get the so-determined kid out of the line and away from the meatgrinder of imminent slaughter. What lands the little rebel in the guardhouse, however, is the patriotic Sergeant “taking care” of the problem by rushing the waif to the front of the line and personally signing him up.

At war with each other for the rest of the tale, Blutch – as chuck wagon commissary server – provides most of the laughs from this point on, as even the madmen running the 22nd Cavalry and Union top brass can find no suitably bellicose role for the plucky orphan in their ranks. Thus little Pucky Potts is made company drummer boy as both sides build up for the next – deciding – pitched battle.

Only that’s not quite how things work out, as the Rebs somehow anticipate every move and stratagem before delivering a stinging defeat. It keeps happening and eventually even the Generals work out what Blutch has already deduced. Pucky is a spy for the other side…

Refusing to let any child be killed for this stupidity, the corporal pulls out all the stops and even makes up with his old ally to ensure that the travesty of an underage execution will not happen. First, though, he has to stop being thrown in the guardhouse and get Chesterfield to talk to him…

Again highlighting not only divisions and disparities of officers and enlisted men but also of the American class structure – particularly the inherent racism driving rich and poor players on all sides – Drummer Boy is another disturbingly edgy epic that makes fun from the very worst of human endeavour. Shocking, powerful and hard-hitting as well as funny, thrilling, beautifully realised and eminently readable, this is one of finest Bluecoats yarns in the entire canon and best kind of war-story/Western. it appeals to the best, not worst, of the human spirit and hopefully that means you. © Dupuis 1990 by Lambil & Cauvin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2025 Cinebook Ltd.

Today in 1912 Mexican cartoonist German Butze (The Supersabios) was born, with Bringing up Father follow-up artist Zeke Zekley arriving three years later, and Danish multi-talented Peter Snejbjerg not joining us until 1963.

In 1977 Us cartoonist Ben Batsford (Billy’s Uncle; Doings of the Duffs; Little Annie Rooney; Frankie Doodle; Mortimer and Charlie) died, as did gekiga mangaka Jiro Taniguchi (Icaro; A Distant Neighorhood; The Summit of the Gods; A Journal of My Father) in 2017.

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Barnaby volume 1: 1942-1943


By Crockett Johnson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-522-8 (HB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Here is one of those books that’s worthy of two reviews, so if you’re in a hurry…

Buy Barnaby now – it’s one of the most wonderful strips of all time and this superb hardcover compilation and its digitised equivalent have lots of fascinating extras. If you harbour any yearnings for the lost joys of childish glee and simpler, more clear-cut world-ending crises, you would be crazy to miss this…

However, if you’re still here and need a little more time to decide…

As long ago as August 2007 I started whining that one of the greatest comic strips of all time was criminally out of print and in desperate need of a major deluxe re-issue. So – as if by the magic of a fine Panatela – Cushlamocree! – Fantagraphics came to my rescue.

Today’s newspapers – those that still cling on by ink-stained fingernails – have precious few continuity drama or adventure strips. Indeed, if a paper has any strips, as opposed to single panel editorial cartoons at all, chances are they will be of the episodic variety typified by Jim Davis’ Garfield or reruns of old favourites like Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts.

You can describe most of these as single-idea pieces with a set-up, delivery and punchline, rendered in sparse, pared-down-to-basics drawing style. In that at least, they’re nothing new. Narrative impetus comes from the unchanging characters themselves, and a building of gag-upon-gag in extended themes. The advantage to the newspaper was obvious. If readers liked a strip it encouraged them to buy the paper. If one missed a day or two, they could return fresh at any time having, in real terms, missed nothing.

Such was not always the case, especially in America. Once upon a time the Daily “funnies” -comedic or otherwise – were crucial circulation builders and sustainers, with lush, lavish and magnificently rendered fantasies or romances rubbing shoulders beside, above and across from thrilling, moody masterpieces of crime, war, sci-fi and mundane modern melodrama. Even the legion of humour strips actively strived to maintain an avid, devoted following.

…And eventually there was Barnaby which in so many ways bridged the gap between Then and Now…

On April 20th 1942, with America at war for the second time in 25 years, liberal New York tabloid PM (a later iteration of which – The New York Star – launched and hosted Walt Kelly’s wonderful Pogo) began running a new, sweet strip for kids which happened to be the most whimsically addicting, socially seditious and ferociously smart satire since the creation of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner… another utter innocent left to the mercy of scurrilous worldly influences…

Crockett Johnson’s outlandish regimented 4-panel daily was the brainchild of a man who didn’t particularly care for comics, but who – according to preeminent strip historian Ron Goulart – just wanted steady employment. David Johnson Leisk (October 20th 1906 – July 11th 1975) was an ardent socialist; passionate anti-fascist; gifted artisan and brilliant designer who had spent much of his working life as a commercial artist, Editor and Art Director.

Born in New York City, he was raised in the outer borough of Queens (when it was still semi-rural and apparently darn-near feral), very near the slag heaps which would eventually house two New York World’s Fairs in Flushing Meadows. Leisk studied art at Cooper Union (for the Advancement of Science and Art) and New York University before leaving early to support his widowed mother. This entailed embarking upon a hand-to-mouth career drawing and constructing department-store advertising. He supplemented that income with occasional cartoons to magazines such as Collier’s before becoming an Art Editor at magazine publisher McGraw-Hill. He also began producing a moderately successful, “silent” strip called The Little Man with the Eyes.

Johnson had divorced his first wife in 1939 and moved out of the city to Connecticut, sharing an oceanside home with student (and eventual bride) Ruth Krauss: always looking to create that steady something, when, almost by accident, he devised a masterpiece of comics narrative. However, if his friend Charles Martin hadn’t seen a prototype Barnaby half-page lying around the house, the series might never have existed. Happily, Martin hijacked the sample and parlayed it into a regular feature in prestigious highbrow left-leaning tabloid PM simply by showing the scrap to the paper’s Comics Editor, Hannah Baker.

Among her other finds was a strip by cartoonist Theodor Seuss Geisel (who called himself “Dr. Seuss”) which would run contiguously in the same publication. Despite Johnson’s initial reticence, within a year Barnaby had become the new darling of the intelligentsia…

Soon there were hardback book collections, talk of a radio show (in 1946 it was adapted as a stage play), accolades and rave reviews in Time, Newsweek and Life. The small yet rabid fanbase ranged from politicians and the smart set such as President and First Lady Roosevelt, Vice-President Henry Wallace, Rockwell Kent, William Rose Benet and Lois Untermeyer to cool celebrities like Duke Ellington, Dorothy Parker, W. C. Fields and legendary New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.

Of course, those last two might only have been checking the paper because the undisputed, unsavoury star of the cartoon show was a scurrilous if fanciful amalgam of them both…

Not since George Herriman’s Krazy Kat had a scrap of popular culture so infiltrated the halls of the mighty, whilst largely passing way over the heads of the masses or without troubling the Funnies sections of big circulation papers. Over its 10-year run – from April 1942 to February 1952 – Barnaby was only syndicated to 64 papers nationally, with a combined circulation of just over 5½ million, but it kept Crockett (his childhood nickname) & Ruth in relative comfort whilst America’s Great & Good constantly agitated on the kid’s behalf.

This splendid collection opens with a hearty appreciation from Chris Ware in the Foreword before cartoonist and historian Jeet Heer provides critical appraisal in ‘Barnaby and American Clear Line Cartooning’, after which the captivating yarn-spinning takes us from April 20th 1942 to December 31st 1943.

There’s even more elucidatory content after that, though, as education scholar and Professor of English Philip Nel provides a fact-filled, picture-packed ‘Afterword: Crockett Johnson and the Invention of Barnaby’. Dorothy Parker’s original ‘Mash Note to Crockett Johnson’ is reprinted in full, and Nel also supplies strip-by-strip commentary and background in ‘The Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder & Marching Society: a Handy Pocket Guide’…

The real meat (and no rationing here!) begins in the strip itself and starts when ‘Mr. O’Malley Arrives’. This saga ran from 20th to 29th April 1942, setting the ball rolling as a little boy wishes one night for a Fairy Godmother and something strange and disreputable falls in through his window…

Barnaby Baxter is a smart, ingenuous and scrupulously honest pre-schooler (4-year-old to you) whose ardent wish is to be an Air Raid Warden like his dad. Instead he is “adopted” by a short, portly, pompous, mildly unsavoury and wholly discreditable windbag with pink wings.

Jackeen J. O’Malley, card carrying-member of the “Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns and Little Men’s Chowder and Marching Society” (although he hasn’t paid his dues in years) installs himself as the lad’s Fairy Godfather. A lazier, more self-aggrandizing, mooching old glutton and probable soak (he certainly frequents taverns but only ever raids the Baxter’s icebox, pantry and humidor, never their drinks cabinet) could not be found anywhere.

Due more to intransigence than evidence – there’s always plenty of physical proof whenever O’Malley has been around – Barnaby’s father and mother adamantly refuse to believe in the ungainly, insalubrious sprite, whose continued presence hopelessly complicates the sweet boy’s life. The poor parents’ greatest abiding fear is that Barnaby is cursed with Too Much Imagination…

In fact, this entire glorious confection is about our relationship to imagination. This is not a strip about childhood fantasy. The theme here, beloved by both parents and children alike, is that grown-ups don’t listen to kids enough, and that they certainly don’t know everything.

Despite looking like a complete fraud – he never uses his magic and always wields one of Pop’s stolen cigars as a substitute wand – O’Malley is the real deal, he’s just incredibly lazy, greedy, arrogant and inept. He does (sort of) grant Barnaby’s wish though, as his midnight travels in the sky trigger a full air raid alert in ‘Mr. O’Malley Takes Flight’ (30th April-14th May)…

‘Mr. O’Malley’s Mishaps’ (15th – 28th May) offer further insights into the obese ovoid elf’s character – or lack of same – as Barnaby continually fails to convince his folks of his newfound companion’s existence, before the bestiary expands into a topical full-length adventure when the little guys stumble into a genuine Nazi plot with supernatural overtones in the hilariously outrageous ‘O’Malley vs. Ogre’ from 29th May through 31st August.

‘Mr. O’Malley’s Malady’ (1st – 11th September) dealt with the airborne oaf’s brief bout of amnesia, even as Mom & Pop, believing their boy to be acting up, take him to a child psychologist. However, ‘The Doctor’s Analysis’ (12th to 24th September) doesn’t help…

The war’s effect on the Home Front was an integral part of the strip and ‘Pop vs. Mr. O’Malley’ (25th September – 6th October) and ‘The Test Blackout’ (7th – 16th October) see Mr. Baxter become chief Civil Defense Coordinator despite – not because of – the winged interloper, but not without suffering the usual personal humiliation. There is plenty to go around and, when ‘The Invisible McSnoyd’ (17th – 31st October) turns up, O’Malley gets it all.

The Brooklyn Leprechaun, although unseen, is O’Malley’s personal gadfly: continually barracking, and offering harsh, ribald counterpoints and home truths to the Godfather’s self-laudatory pronouncements. In ‘The Pot of Gold’ (2nd – 20th November) perpetually taunting and tempting JJ to provide a treasure trove of laughs.

When Barnaby wins a scrap metal finding competition and is feted on radio, O’Malley co-opts ‘The Big Broadcast’ (21st – 28th November) and brings chaos to the airwaves, but once again Mr. Baxter won’t believe his senses. Pop’s situation only worsens after ‘The New Neighbors’ (30th November – 16th December) move in and little Jane Shultz also starts candidly reporting Mr. O’Malley’s deeds and misadventures…

Barnaby’s faith is only near-shaken when the Fairy Fool’s constant prevarications and procrastination mean Dad Baxter’s Christmas present arrives late. The Godfather did accidentally destroy an animal shelter in the process, so ‘Pop is Given a Dog’ (17th – 30th December) which brings a happy resolution of sorts. A perfect indication of the wry humour that peppered the feature is seen in ‘The Dog Can Talk’ – which ran from 31st December 1942 to 17th January 1943. New pooch Gorgon can indeed converse – but never when parents are around, and only then with such overwhelming dullness that everybody listening wishes him as mute as all other mutts…

Playing in an old abandoned house (don’t you miss those days when kids could wander off for hours, unsupervised by eagle-eyed, anxious parents; or were even able to walk further than the length of a garden?) serves to introduce Barnaby & Jane to ‘Gus, the Ghost’ (18th January – February 4th) which in turn involves the entire ensemble with ration-busting thieves after they uncover ‘The Hot Coffee Ring’ (5th – 27th February). Barnaby is again hailed a public hero and credit to his neighbourhood, even as poor Pop Baxter stands back and stares, nonplussed and incredulous…

As Johnson continually expanded his gently bizarre cast of Gremlins, Ogres, Policemen, Spies, Ghosts, Black Marketeers, Talking Dogs and even Little Girls (all of whom can see O’Malley), the unyieldingly faithful little lad’s parents were always too busy and too certain that the Fairy Godfather and all his ilk are unhealthy, unwanted, juvenile fabrications.

With such a simple yet flexible formula Johnson made pure cartoon magic. ‘The Ghostwriter Moves In’ (1st – 11th March) finds Gus reluctantly relocating to the Baxter abode, where he’s even less happy to be cajoled into typing out O’Malley’s odious memoirs and organising ‘The Testimonial Dinner’ (12th March – 2nd April) for the swell-headed sprite at the Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder & Marching Society clubhouse and pool hall…

With the nation urged to plant food crops, ‘Barnaby’s Garden’ (3rd – 16th April) debuts as a another fine example of the things O’Malley is (not) expert in, whilst ‘O’Malley and the Lion’ (17th April – 17th May) finds the innocent waif offering sanctuary to a hirsute circus star even as his conniving, cheroot-chewing cherub contemplates his own “return” to showbiz, after which ‘Atlas, the Giant’ (18th May – 3rd June) wanders into the serial. At only 2-feet-tall, the pint-sized colossus is not that impressive… until he gets out his slide rule to demonstrate that he is, in fact, a mental giant…

‘Gorgon’s Father’ (4th June – 10th July) turns up to cause contretemps and consternation before disappearing again, before Barnaby & Jane are packed off to ‘Mrs. Krump’s Kiddie Kamp’ (12th July – 13th September) for vacation rest and the company of “normal” children. Sadly, despite the wise matron and her assistant never glimpsing O’Malley and Gus, all the other tykes and inmates are more than happy to associate with them…

Once the kids arrive back in Queens – Johnson had set the series in the streets where he’d grown up – the Fairy Fathead shows off his “mechanical aptitude” on a parked car with its engine wastefully running… and breaks the idling getaway car just in time to foil a robbery…

Implausibly overnight he becomes an unseen and reclusive ‘Man of the Hour’ (14th – 18th September) before preposterously translating his new cachet into a political career by accidentally becoming patsy for a corrupt political machine in ‘O’Malley for Congress!’ (20th September – 8th October). This strand gave staunchly socialist cynic Johnson ample opportunity to ferociously lampoon the electoral system, pundits and even the public. Without spending money, campaigning – or even being seen – the pompous pixie wins ‘The Election’ (9th October – 12th November) and actually becomes ‘Congressman O’Malley’ (13th – 23rd November), with Barnaby’s parents perpetually assuring their boy that this guy was not “his” Fairy Godfather”…

The outrageous satire only intensified once ‘The O’Malley Committee’ (24th November – 27th December 1943) began its work – by investigating Santa Claus – despite the newest, shortest Congressman in the House never actually turning up to do a day’s work. Of course that can’t happen these days…

Raucous, riotous sublimely surreal and adorably absurd, the untrammelled, razor-sharp whimsy of the strip is instantly captivating, and the laconic charm of the writing well-nigh irresistible, but the lasting legacy of this groundbreaking feature is the clean, sparse line-work that reduces images to almost technical drawings: unwavering line-weights and solid swathes of black that define space and depth by practically eliminating it, without ever obscuring the fluid warmth and humanity of the characters. Almost every modern strip cartoon follows the principles laid down here by a man who purportedly disliked the medium…

The major difference between then and now should also be noted, however. Johnson despised doing shoddy work, or short-changing his audience. On average each of his daily, always self-contained encounters built on the previous episode without needing to re-reference it, and offered three to four times as much text as its contemporaries. It’s a sign of the author’s ability that the extra wordage is never unnecessary, and often uniquely readable, blending storybook clarity, the snappy pace of Screwball comedy films and the contemporary rhythms and idiom of authors like Damon Runyan.

Johnson managed this miracle by typesetting narration and dialogue and pasting up the strips himself – primarily in Futura Medium Italic, but with effective forays into other fonts for dramatic and comedic effect. No sticky-beaked educational vigilante could claim Barnaby harmed children’s reading abilities by confusing the tykes with non-standard letter-forms (a charge levelled at comics as late as the turn of this century), and the device also allowed him to maintain an easy, elegant, effective balance of black & white which makes the deliciously diagrammatic art light, airy and implausibly fresh and accessible.

During 1946-1947, Johnson surrendered the strip to friends as he pursued a career illustrating children’s book such as Constance J. Foster’s This Rich World: The Story of Money, but eventually he returned, crafting more magic until he retired Barnaby in 1952 to concentrate on books. When Ruth graduated she became a successful children’s writer and they collaborated on four tomes – The Carrot Seed (1945), How to Make an Earthquake, Is This You? and The Happy Egg – but these days Crockett Johnson is best known for his seven Harold books, which began in 1955 with the captivating Harold and the Purple Crayon.

During a global war with heroes and villains aplenty, where no comic page could top the daily headlines for thrills, drama and heartbreak, Barnaby was an absolute panacea to the horrors without ever ignoring or escaping them.

For far too long, Barnaby was a lost masterpiece. It is influential, groundbreaking and a shining classic of the form. It is also warm, comforting and outrageously hilarious. You are diminished for not knowing it, and should move mountains to change that situation.

I’m not kidding.

Liberally illustrated throughout with sketches, roughs, photos and advertising materials as well as Credits, Thank You and a brief biography of Johnson, this big book of joy will be a welcome addition to 21st century bookshelves – especially yours.
Barnaby and all its images © 2013 the Estate of Ruth Kraus. Supplemental material © 2013 its respective creators and owners.

Today in 1940 science fiction author and Buck Rogers scripter Philip Francis Nowlan died as did fellow pulp star and DC comics writer Edmond Hamilton in 1977. Birthdays include Editor/writer Dian Schutz (1955), Love and Rockets superstar Gilbert Hernandez (1957) and superhero artist Ron Frenz (1960).

In 2003 Ryan North launched his Dinosaur Comics webcomic dodging so much tribulation print stuff endures. For example legendary French magazine Charlie Mensuel launched today in 1969, closed today in 1986 and merged with Pilote to form Pilote et Charlie which ran for only 27 issues before dying in 1988 – but in July.

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Iznogoud volume 1: The Wicked Wiles of Iznogoud


By René Goscinny & Jean Tabary, translated by Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-46-5 (Album TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

It’s anniversary time again! Today in 1962 something smart and wildly wicked first appeared, and just hung around. Please read on…

For the greater part of his too-short lifetime (1926-1977) René Goscinny was one of (if not The) most prolific, most-read writers of comic strips the world had ever seen. He still is.

Among his most popular comic collaborations are Lucky Luke, Le Petit Nicolas and, of course, Asterix the Gaul, but there were so many others, such as the dazzling, dark deeds of a dastardly usurper whose dreams of diabolical skulduggery perpetually proved to be ultimately no more than castles in the sand…

Scant years after the Suez crisis, the French returned to those hotly-contested deserts when Goscinny teamed with sublimely gifted Swedish émigré Jean Tabary (1930-2011). He numbered Richard et Charlie, Grabadu et Gabaliouchtou, Totoche, Corinne et Jeannot and Valentin le Vagabond amongst his other hit strips but found a moment to detail the innocuous history of imbecilic Arabian (im)potentate Haroun el-Poussah. However, it was the strip’s villainous foil, power-hungry vizier Iznogoud who stole the show – possibly the conniving little imp’s only successful coup…

The notion of the series apparently came from a throwaway moment in Les Vacances du Petit Nicolas, but – once it was fully formed and independent – Les Aventures du Calife Haroun el Poussah was created to join the roster in Record, with the first episode appearing in the January 15th 1962 issue. An assured if relatively minor hit, the strip jumped ship to Pilote – a picture-packed periodical created and edited by Goscinny – where it was artfully refashioned into a starring vehicle for the devious little ratbag who had increasingly been hogging all the laughs and limelight.

Like all great storytelling, Iznogoud works on multiple levels: for youngsters it’s a comedic romp with adorably wicked baddies invariably hoisted on their own petards and coming a-cropper, whilst older, wiser heads revel in pun-filled, witty satires and astoundingly wry yet accessible episodic comic capers. Just like our Parliament today. That latter aspect is investigated in this collection of short episodes…

This same magic formula (no, I’m being figurative, not literal) made its more famous cousin Asterix a monolithic global success and – just like the saga of the indomitable Gaul – our irresistibly addictive Arabian Nit was originally adapted into English by master translators Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge, who made those Franco-Roman Follies so very palatable to British tastes. Always, deliciously malicious whimsy is heavily dosed with manic absurdity, cleverly contemporary cultural critiques and brilliantly delivered creative anachronisms which serve to keep the assorted escapades bizarrely fresh and hilariously inventive. However, like so many comics inventions, the series grew beyond its boundaries…

The retooled series launched in Pilote in 1968, quickly growing into a massive European hit, with 31 albums to date (carried on by Tabary’s children Stéphane, Muriel & Nicolas after his passing in 2011); his own solo comic; a computer game; animated film, TV cartoon show and a live-action movie.

When Goscinny died in 1977, Tabary started scripting his own sublimely stylish tales (from the 13th album onwards), gradually switching to book-length complete adventures, rather than the compilations of short, punchy vignettes which typified the collaborations.

In October 1974, whilst the shifty shenanigans were unfolding to the delight of kids, its sand-struck star began moonlighting. Pulling double duty as a commentator and critic of real-world politics and social issues in French newspapers the little wart scored a side hustle with a sidebar series that began as a statement and grew into a separate second career for the vindictive viper. Some oiks, like sand, just get everywhere…

So, what’s it all about?

Iznogoud is Grand Vizier to Haroun Al Plassid, Caliph of Ancient Baghdad, but the conniving little shyster has loftier ambitions – or as he is always shouting it – “I want to be Caliph instead of the Caliph!”…

The vile vizier is “aided” – and that’s me being uncharacteristically generous – in his endeavours and schemes by bumbling assistant Wa’at Alahf, and in this first album they begin their campaign with ‘Kissmet’, wherein pandemonium ensues after a talking frog is revealed as an ensorcelled Prince who can only regain human form if smooched by a human being.

Iznogoud sees an opportunity if he can only trick the simple-minded Caliph into puckering up; unfortunately but typically, the little rotter forgets that he’s not the only ambitious upstart in Baghdad…

‘Mesmer-Eyezed’ finds him employing a surly stage hypnotist to remove the Caliph whilst ‘The Occidental Philtre’ sees him employ a flying potion obtained from a lost, jet-lagged western sorcerer, each with hilarious but painfully counter-productive results.

Tabary drew himself into ‘The Time Machine’ wherein a comic artist desperate to meet his deadlines falls foul of a mystical time cabinet. However, when he meets the vizier, that diminutive dastard can clearly see its Caliph-removing potential… to his eternal regret…

Soon after in ‘The Picnic’ Iznogoud takes drastic action, luring Haroun Al Plassid into the desert, but as usual his best-laid plans really aren’t, before we conclude with ‘Chop and Change’ as our indefatigable villain obtains a magic goblet that can switch the minds of any who drink from it, forgetting that Caliphs are important people who employ food-tasters…

Snappy, fast-paced slapstick and painfully delightful word-play abound in these mirthfully infectious tales and the series is a household name in France; said term has even entered French political life as a description for a certain type of politician: over-ambitious, unscrupulous – and usually short in stature…

Eight albums were originally translated into English during the 1970s and 1980s without really making any little impact here, but once Cinebook’s revival the vile Vizier finally caught on in a superb sequence of gloriously readable and wonderfully affordable comedy epics that found an appreciative audience among British kids of all ages. That said, it’s been a while since the last one, but perhaps that’s the setting not the stories…
© 1967 Dargaud Editeur Paris by Goscinny & Tabary. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1905, the last episode of Gustave Verbeek’s The Upside Downs ran in the New York Herald and in 1924 writer Stan Kay (Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Sad Sack, Fraggle Rock, The Muppets) was born. Practically yesterday, writer Scott Snyder (American Vampire. Batman. Justice Leafue) was born in 1976 whilst ten years later we lost Alfred Bestall of Rupert Bear fame.

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Jonah Hex: Welcome to Paradise


By John Albano, Michael Fleischer, Tony DeZuñiga, Doug Wildey, Noly Panaligan, George Moliterni, José Luis García-López & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2757-9 (TPB/Digital edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Western stories are shaped by an odd duality. The genre can almost be sub-divided into two discrete halves: the sparkly, shiny version that dominated kids’ books, comics and television for decades, as typified by Zane Grey stories and heroes such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry… and the other stuff. That kind of cowboy tale – grimy, gritty, excessively dark – was done best for years by Europeans in such strips as Jean-Michel Charlier’s Lieutenant Blueberry or Bonelli & Galleppini’s Tex Willer which gradually made their way into US culture through the films of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. Jonah Hex is the USA’s greatest example of the latter sort…

DC (or National Periodicals as it then was) had generated a stable of clean-cut gunslingers since the collapse of the super-hero genre in 1949, with such dashing – and highly readable – luminaries as Johnny Thunder, The Trigger Twins, Nighthawk, Matt Savage and dozens of others in a marketplace that seemed insatiable in its voracious hunger for chaps in chaps. However, all things end, and by the early sixties, sagebrush stalwarts had dwindled to a few venerable properties. As the 1960s closed, thematic changes in the cinematic Cowboy filtered through to a comics industry suffering its second superhero sundown in twenty years. Although a critical success, the light-hearted Western series Bat Lash couldn’t garner a solid following, but DC, urgently pursuing a genre readers would warm to, retrenched and revived an old title, gambling once again on heroes who were no longer simply boy scouts with sixguns.

All-Star Western #1 was released with an August/September 1970 cover date, packed with Pow-Wow Smith reprints. It became an all-new anthology with the second bi-monthly issue. The magazine was allocated a large number of creative all-stars, including Robert Kanigher, Neal Adams, Gray Morrow, Al Williamson, Gil Kane, Angelo Torres and Dick Giordano, all working on such strips as Outlaw!, Billy the Kid and cult sleeper hit El Diablo, combining shoot-’em-up shenanigans with supernatural chills, in deference to the real hit genre that saved comics in those dark days: horror comics.

It wasn’t until the tenth issue and introduction of a grotesquely disfigured, irascible bounty hunter created by writer John Albano & Tony DeZuñiga that the company found its greatest and most enduring Western warrior.

This superb collection of the garish gunman’s early appearances has been around for a few years, with no apparent sign of a sequel yet, so consider this another heartfelt attempt to generate a few sales and more interest – especially as the company has recently released a collection of those aforementioned 70s western treats in its DC Finest range…

Our star is the very model of the modern anti-hero. Jonah Hex first appeared in All-Star Comics #10, a coarse and callous bounty hunter clad in shabbily battered Confederate Grey tunic and hat, half his face lost to some hideous past injury; a brutal thug little better than the scum he hunted – and certainly a man to avoid…

Collecting key stories from All-Star Western #10, Weird Western Tales #14, 17, 22, 26, 29, 30 and Jonah Hex #2 & 4 (ranging from March 1972 to September 1977), the grisly gunplay begins with Albano & DeZuñiga’s ‘Welcome to Paradise’ which introduced the character and his world in a powerful action thriller, with a subtle sting of sentimentality that anyone who has seen the classic western Shane cannot fail to appreciate.

From the first bullets blazing, blistering set-up Albano was constantly hinting at the tortured depths hidden behind Hex’s hellishly scarred visage and deadly proficiency. With the next issue the comic had been re-titled Weird Western Tales (aligning it with the company’s highly successful horror/mystery books) and adventures continually plumbed the depths of human malice and depravity…

Even at the very start the series sought to redress some of the most unpalatable motifs of old style cowboy literature and any fan of films like Soldier Blue or Little Big Man or familiar with Dee Brown’s iconoclastic book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee will feel a grim sense of vicarious satisfaction and redress at most of the stories here. There’s also a huge degree of world-weary cynicism that wasn’t to be found in other comics until well past the Watergate Scandal, when America as nation lost its social and political innocence…

From Weird Western #14, ‘Killers Die Alone!’ (Albano & DeZuñiga) is a vicious tear jerker of a tale where Hex’s only friend valiantly dies to save him from the vengeance of killers who blame the bounty hunter for their brother’s death. Then comes a reckoning that is the stuff of nightmares. ‘The Hangin’ Woman’ (WWT #17) is a classy, gripping thriller wherein Hex runs afoul of a sadistic harridan ruling her hometown with hemp and hot lead before meeting an ending both ironic and much-deserved…

It was left to incoming writer Michael Fleisher (assisted at first by Russell Carley) to reveal Hex’s secrets, beginning with Weird Western Tales #22’s ‘Showdown at Hard Times’. A chance meeting in a stagecoach put a cabal of ex-Confederate soldiers on the trail of their ex-comrade for some unspecified earlier betrayal and it inevitably ended in a sixgun bloodbath, whilst creating an ominous returning nemesis for the grizzled gunslinger.

Train-robbers were the bad guys in the superb traditionally-informed caper ‘Face-Off with the Gallagher Boys!’ – scripted by Fleischer and illustrated by the inimitable Doug Wildey – after which further details of Jonah’s chequered past are revealed in #29’s ‘Breakout at Fort Charlotte’, limned by Noly Panaligan. It was the first chapter of a 2-part extravaganza that gorily concluded in #30 with ‘The Trial’ (illustrated by George Moliterni) as a battalion of Confederate veterans and former comrades-in-arms pass judgement on the man they believed to be the worst traitor in the history of the South…

Inevitably, Hex graduated from Weird Western Tales into his own solo title and the final brace of tales in this primal primer are both drawn by the magnificent José Luis García-López. In ‘The Lair of the Parrot!’, Fleischer has the doom-drenched demon-faced desperado sucked into a scheme designed by US Secret Service agent Ned Landon to infiltrate the gang of flamboyant Mexican bandit and border raider El Papagayo. Hex is none too happy when he finally realises Landon is playing both sides for personal gain, leaving the bounty hunter to the brigand’s tender mercies after framing him for murder in Texas…

The tale continues and concludes in ‘The Day of the Chameleon!’ as a disguise artist steals Hex’s identity to perpetrate even more brazen crimes at the behest of a rich and powerful man determined to destroy the bounty hunter at all costs…

Happily, Jonah has unsuspected allies determined to save him from the villain and his own prideful, stubborn nature…

With a cover gallery by DeZuñiga, Luis Dominguez and García-López, this outrageous assemblage of uncanny exploits proves Jonah Hex is the most unique character in cowboy comics: darkly comedic, riotously rowdy, chilling and cathartically satisfying. His saga is a Western for those who despise the form whilst being the perfect modern interpretation of a great storytelling tradition. No matter what your reading preference, this is a collection you don’t want to miss.
© 1972-1975, 1977, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Today in 1886 Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff “ghost” Arthur “Bugs” Baer was born, as was Blondie’s originator Chic Young in 1901. In 1908 picture story pioneer Wilhelm Busch, creator of Max and Moritz died. In 1915 the inimitable Dick Breifer was born – and you should go look at Frankenstein: The Mad Science of Dick Briefer – for what you need to know there. Writer-Artist for The Heap, GI Joe and other Golden Age standards, Ernie Schroeder was born in 1916 and in 1938 Raggedy Ann & Raggedy Andy and Mr Twee Deedle creator Johnny Gruelle died.

In 1953, Hugo Pratt & Héctor Germán Oesterheld’s Sergeant Kirk debuted in Argentinian weekly comic Misterix #225.