Category: Satire/Politics

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The Desert Peach Collection book 1: Beginnings


By Donna Barr (Mu-Aeon/Atlantic Books)
Aeon no ISBN, Atlantic ISBN: 978-1-88384-713-5

In Acknowledgement of the upcoming Comics in Conflict event at the Imperial War Museum this weekend – see our Noticeboard for details – I’m going to be reviewing a few intriguing and hopefully pertinent classics beginning with this criminally neglected comics gem…

Donna Barr is one of the comic world’s most unique talents. She has constructed a fully realised fantasyscape to house her stories and tells them with a style and voice that are definitely one-of-a-kind.

Her most well known creations are Stinz Löwhard, the Half-Horse and the star of this particular volume, Pfirsich Rommel the outrageously out, homosexual brother of the legendary perfect German soldier dubbed “The Desert Fox”.

The stories are set in World War II Africa and effortlessly combine hilarity, surreality profound sensitivity and glittering spontaneity.

Oberst Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel, like his Field Marshal brother Erwin, was part of the German invasion force in from 1940-1943. However, although as capable as his elder sibling, the gracious and convivial Desert Peach was a man who loathed harming anybody physically or emotionally and thus spent his days with the ever-so-motley crew of the 469th Halftrack, Gravedigging & Support Unit of the Afrika Korps. trying to remain stylish, elegant and non-threatening to the men under his command, the natives and the rather trying British – not all of whom were party to the clandestine non-aggression pact he had made with his opposite numbers in the amassed Allied Forces…

Pfirsich was also wildly in love with Rosen Kavalier: manly Luftwaffe ace and the Peach’s fiancé…

The Desert Peach ran for 32 intermittent issues from a number of publishers and was subsequently collected as eight graphic novel collections between 1988-2005, with a prose novel – Bread and Swans, a musical and an invitational collection by other artists entitled Ersatz Peach. A larger compendium, Seven Peaches, collects issues #1-7 and Pfirsich’s further exploits continue as part of the Modern Tales webcomics collective…

However, this hard-to-find first softcover collection reprints issues #1-3, opening with ‘Who is This Man?‘ as Pfirsich inspects his tiresomely peculiar band of maverick military men (the 469th is where the real army transfers its problem cases) prior to losing a map crucial to the German army’s advance. Not that the Peach is particularly upset over the military ramifications… he just doesn’t want to get his beloved brother into trouble…

And of course that’s the very moment Erwin pops over for a visit…

The real star of these fabulous comedy epics is the Peach’s long-suffering, unkempt, crafty, ill-mannered, bilious and lazily scrofulous orderly Udo Schmidt, whose one redeeming virtue is his uncompromising loyalty and devotion to the only decent officer in the army. As the broad and cunning farce unfolds the lost map leads inevitably to a confrontation with a bunch of British soldiers unaware of the unofficial truce, who then make the inexcusable gaffe of opening fire on Pfirsich and his desperately distressed subordinates.

Big mistake…

This first captivating excursion is capped off with a magical extra: cut-out paper-dolls of Pfirsich’s personal pilot von Drachenberg (whose plane is not, Not, NOT painted Pink, but actually a delightful shade of Peach) and his assorted uniform clothes…

In #2 after a gloriously experimental fourth-wall busting scratchboard sequence the military merriment continues unabated in ‘The Bar Fight’ as the urbane and generally peaceable Peach is provoked beyond all human endurance by a homosexual-hating Russian at the enlisted men’s unsanctioned watering hole…

Barr herself is ex-military and a devoted researcher in love with the often paradoxical minutiae of the martial life, so her scripts are rife with daft but true facts and circumstances, all utilised to enhance her brilliant tales, such as the knowledge that anti-communist Don Cossacks were allies of the Wehrmacht. One such, ultra-macho Semyon Bryonovich Givsonov, learns here to his temporary regret and eternal gratitude that some “fancy-boys” have a temper when pushed too far…

This spectacular boozy, bottle-busting battle yarn is followed by an utterly off-the-wall and indescribable exploit which nevertheless hangs together perfectly as Pfirsich commandeers Brother Erwin’s search for Allied submarines off the African coast to teach the Desert Fox the finer points of surfing in ‘A Day at the Beach’.

It doesn’t start too well but things quickly shape up once the work-shy Udo accidentally captures an American soldier from Hawaii who is convinced to give the gathered troops a few tips…

One note of warning for the usually squeamish hetero male readership: bathing suits were not standard issue for German soldiers during WWII so if exposed – but historically accurate – military buttockry is apt to unsettle, you might want to turn these pages carefully – although bluff old straight me personally found the Peach’s non-regulation swimsuit of svelte diaphanous pink (sorry, peach) ruffles a far more distracting notion…

Barr’s work is distinctive and honest but not to everybody’s taste, which is a shame as she has lots to say and a truly wondrous way of saying it.

Referencing the same vast story potential as Sgt. Bilko, Hogan’s Heroes, Oh, What a Lovely War! and even a little bit of Catch 22, the Desert Peach is bawdy, raucous, clever, authentically madcap and immensely engaging. These first tentative tastes of the fruits of combat were some of the very best comic tales of the 1980s and 1990s and still pack the comedic punch of a chartreuse howitzer, liberally leavened with situational jocularity, accent humour and lots of footnoted Deutsche cuss-words for the kids to learn.

Illustrated in Barr’s fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style this book is a must-have for any history-loving, war-hating fun seeker and comes with an added attraction.

‘Ratzen’, scripted and drawn by Chuck Melville, is a clever vignette in which the assorted vermin of the 469th fall out over the definition of what is and isn’t a pet…

Beginnings and the 1998 reissue are pretty scarce these days but if you have a Kindle Robot Comics have just begun to release the individual comicbook issues for anybody who can get the hang of all this verfluchte new technology…
© 1988-1989, 1995 Donna Barr. Introduction © 1995 D. Aviva Rothschild. “Ratzen” © 1995 Chuck Melville. All rights reserved.

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The Beast is Dead: World War II Among the Animals


By Edmond-François Calvo, Victor Dancette & Jacques Zimmerman (Abi Melzer Productions)
No ISBN:

In Acknowledgement of the upcoming Comics in Conflict event at the Imperial War Museum this weekend – see our Noticeboard for details – I’m going to be reviewing a few intriguing and hopefully pertinent classics beginning with this tragically neglected cartoon masterpiece…

As the European phase of World War II staggered to its bloody and inevitable conclusion, the enslaved nations began to reclaim their homelands and various national prides in a glorious wave of liberation. All over the Old World long suppressed stories and accounts, true or otherwise, began to be shared. During France’s occupation publishing was strictly controlled – even comics – but the Nazis couldn’t suppress creative spirit and many conquered citizens resisted in the only ways they safely could.

For sculptor, artist, caricaturist and social satirist Edmond-François Calvo (26/8/1892-11/10/1958) that was by drawing. Watched by his adoring apprentice-artist Albert (Asterix) Uderzo and inspired by the Gallic graphic giant Daumier, the venerable creator of such joyous anthropomorphic classics as ‘Patamousse’, ‘Anatomies Atomiques’, ‘Les Aventures de Rosalie’, ‘Monsieur Royal Présente’, ‘Grandeur et Décadente du Royaume des Bêtes’ and ‘Cricri, Souris d’Appartement’ worked quietly and determinedly on his own devastating war-effort secret weapon.

He latterly specialised in sparkling, socially aware and beautiful family-friendly strips such as ‘Moustache et Trottinette’, ‘Femmes d’Aujourd’hui’, ‘Coquin le Petit Cocker’ and a host of fairytale adaptations for Tintin, Baby Journal, Cricri Journal, Coq Hardi, Bravo!, Pierrot Âmes Vaillantes and Coeurs Vaillants.

Beginning as a caricaturist for Le Canard Enchaîné in 1938 Calvo eventually moved into strip stories, but also had to moonlight with “real” jobs such as woodcarver and innkeeper. By the time France fell to the Germans in June 1940 he was working for Offenstadt/S.P.E. press group, contributing ‘Le Chevalier Chantecler’, ‘D’Artagnan’, ‘Les Grandes Aventures’, ‘Robin des Bois’, ‘Les Voyages de Gulliver’ and the initial three chapters of ‘Patamouche’ to Fillette, L’Épatant, L’As and Junior plus ‘La Croisière Fantastique’, ‘Croquemulot’ and ‘Un Chasseur Sachant Chasser’ to Éditions Sépia.

Most of this material was produced under the stern scrutiny of the all-conquering censors Рmuch like his comics contemporary Herg̩ in Belgium Рbut Calvo also found time to produce something far less anodyne or safe.

With both Editor Victor Dancette and writer Jacques Zimmermann providing scripts, and beginning as early as 1941, Calvo began translating the history of the conflict into a staggeringly beautiful and passionately vehement dark fable, outlining the betrayal of the European nations by literal Wolves in the Fold.

After years of patient creation – and presumably limited dissemination amongst trusted confreres – the first part of La Bete est Mort! – ‘When the beast is raging’ was published in 1944, followed a year later with the concluding ‘When the animal is struck down’. Both were colossal hits even before the war ended and the volumes were continually reprinted until 1948 when the public clearly decided to move on with their lives…

The story is related in epic full-page painted spreads and captivating, luscious strip instalments and the smooth, slick glamour of Disney’s production style was co-opted to deliver the list of outrages to be addressed and a warning to the future, with each nation being categorised by a national totem.

The French were rabbits, the Italians hyenas and the Japanese monkeys. Britain was populated by bulldogs, Belgium by lions, Russia by polar bears and America by vast herds of buffalo…

Hitler’s inner circle of monsters got special attention: such as Goering the Pig and Himmler the Skunk, but so did the good guys: General de Gaulle was depicted as a magnificent Stork…

A fiercely unrepentant but compellingly lovely polemic by a bloody but unbowed winning side, The Beast is Dead was forgotten until republished in 1977 by Futuropolis. This particular English-language, oversized (225 x 300mm or 9 inches x 12) hardback edition was released in 1985 and includes the introduction from a Dutch edition; a dedication from Uderzo and a monochrome selection of Calvo’s wartime and post-war cartoons.

Magnificent, compelling radiant, hugely influential (without this there would never have been Maus), astoundingly affecting and just plain gorgeous, this modern horror tale of organised inhumanity is out of print but still available if you look hard and since an animated film adaptation was begun in 2005, hopefully there’s a new edition in the works too.
© 1944-1945 Éditions G.P. © 1977 Éditions Futuropolis. © 1984 Abi Melzer Productions.

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Signal From Space


By Will Eisner with Andre LeBlanc (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 0-87816-014-0

Here’s another classy contemporary cartooning classic which although readily available in a number of formats is still seen best in first release. Ambitious and deliberately targeting an adult book-reading rather than comics audience, this initial collection of Will Eisner’s trenchant political thriller-cum-social commentary proves once more that sometimes the medium really is the message…

It is pretty much accepted today that Eisner was one of the pivotal creators who shaped the American comicbook industry, with most of his works more or less permanently in print – as they should be.

From 1936 to 1938 William Erwin Eisner worked as a jobbing cartoonist in the comics production hothouse known as the Eisner-Eiger Shop, creating strips for both domestic US and foreign markets. Using the pen-name Willis B. Rensie he created and drew opening instalments for a huge variety of characters ranging from funny animal to historical sagas,

Westerns, Detectives, aviation action thrillers… and superheroes – lots of superheroes …

In 1940 Everett “Busy” Arnold, head honcho of the superbly impressive Quality Comics outfit, invited Eisner to take on a new challenge. The Register-Tribune newspaper syndicate wanted a 16-page weekly comicbook insert for the Sunday editions and Eisner jumped at the opportunity, creating three series which would initially be handled by him before two of them were delegated to supremely talented assistants. Bob Powell inherited Mr. Mystic and distaff detective Lady Luck fell into the capable hands of Nick Cardy (then still Nicholas Viscardi) and later the inimitable Klaus Nordling.

Eisner kept the lead feature for his own and over the next twelve years The Spirit became the most impressive, innovative, imitated and talked-about strip in the business. However, by 1952 he had more or less abandoned it for more challenging and certainly more profitable commercial, instructional and educational strips, working extensively for the US military in manuals and magazines like P*S, the Preventative Maintenance Monthly and generally leaving comics books behind.

After too long away from his natural story-telling arena Eisner creatively returned to the ghettos of Brooklyn where he was born on March 6th 1906. After years spent inventing much of the visual semantics, semiotics and syllabary of the medium he dubbed “Sequential Art” in strips, comicbooks, newspaper premiums and instructional comics he capped that glittering career by inventing the mainstream graphic novel, bringing maturity, acceptability and public recognition to English language comics.

In 1978 a collection of four original short stories in strip form were released as a single book, A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories. All the tales centred around 55 Dropsie Avenue, a 1930’s Bronx tenement, housing poor Jewish and immigrant families. It changed the American perception of cartoon strips forever. Eisner wrote and drew a further 20 further masterpieces opening the door for all other comics creators to escape the funnybook and anodyne strip ghettos of superheroes, funny animals, juvenilia and “family-friendly” entertainment. At one stroke comics grew up.

Eisner was constantly pushing the boundaries of his craft, honing his skills not just on the Spirit but with years of educational and promotional material. In A Contract With God he moved into unexplored territory with truly sophisticated, mature themes worthy of Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald, using pictorial fiction as documentary exploration of social experience.

One of the few genres where Eisner never really excelled was science fiction – and arguably he doesn’t in this tale either as, in Signal From Space, the big discovery is just a plot maguffin to explore politics, social interactions and greed – all premium Eisner meat…

The material in this collection was originally serialised in as eight 16 page episodes in Will Eisner’s Spirit Magazine as ‘Life On Another Planet’ from October 1978 to December 1980, rendered in toned black and white (a format adhered to and title revived in subsequent Kitchen Sink, DC and W.W. Norton collections). However for this luscious hardback the artist and long-time confederate Andre LeBlanc fully-painted the entire saga using evocative tones and hues to subtly enhanced the sinister, cynical proceedings.

One night lonely radio astronomer Mark Argano, based at a New Mexico observatory, picks up ‘The Signal’ a mathematical formula which originated from Barnard’s Star – proof positive of extraterrestrial intelligence…

One of his colleagues wants to inform the public immediately but Argano is adamant that they go slowly as he harbours schemes to somehow “cash in”. Unfortunately the other scientist he shares the secret with is a Soviet sleeper agent…

Almost immediately the first murder in a long and bloody succession is committed as various parties seek to use the incredible revelation to their own advantage. World-weary science advisor and maverick astrophysicist James Bludd is dispatched by the CIA to verify and control the situation, but he walks straight into a KGB ambush and narrowly escapes with his life…

There’s now a deadly Cold War race to control contact with the mysterious signallers and ‘The 1st Empire’ follows recovering addict Marco as he turns his life around and uses the now public sensation to create a personality cult dedicated to leaving Earth and joining the aliens. Whilst Marco’s Star People grab all the headlines ruthless plutocrat Mr. MacRedy uses his monolithic Multinational Corporation to manipulate Russia and America, intending to be the only one to ultimately capitalise on any mission to Barnard’s Star.

Since travel to far space is still impossible for humans MacRedy sanctions the unethical and illegal creation of a human/plant hybrid and starts looking for volunteers to experiment on in ‘A New Form of Life’ whilst Bludd accepts another undercover assignment – now more reluctant spy than dedicated scientist. Casualties moral, ethical and corporeal mount in ‘Pre-Launch’ whilst in distressed African nation Sidiami, a desperate despot declares his nation a colony of Barnard’s Star to avoid UN sanctions and having to pay back his national debt to Earthly banks…

Soon he’s offering a base to Multinational for their own launch site and sanctuary to those Star People anxious to emigrate…

In ‘Bludd’ the scientist and his sultry KGB counterpart find themselves odd-bedfellows and the Mafia get involved in the crisis – for both personal and pecuniary reasons – whilst in America MacRedy prepares to install his own President…

Now determined to take matters into his own hands and screw all governments and interests, Bludd is caught up in an unstoppable, uncontrollable maelstrom of events in ‘Abort’ and after the American President has a fatal accident in ‘The Big Hit’ MacRedy thinks he’s finally won, but is utterly unprepared for Bludd’s unpredictable masterstroke in ‘The Last Chapter’…

A Signal From Space is a dark and nasty espionage drama as well as a powerfully intriguing ethical parable: a Petrie dish for ethical dilemmas where Eisner masterfully manipulates his vast cast to display human foible and eventually a glimmer of aspirational virtue. This is a hugely underrated tale from a master of mature comics guaranteed to become an instant favourite. And it’s even better in this sumptuous oversized edition which is well worth every effort to hunt it down.

After all, Per Ardua ad Astra…
© 1978, 1979, 1980, 1983 Will Eisner.All rights reserved.

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Commies From Mars the Red Planet: the Collected Works


By Tim Boxell, Hunt Emerson, Peter Kuper & various (Last Gasp)
ISBN: 978-0-86719-343-5

When political debate in America was less strident and a little more reasoned (let’s call it 1972) a bunch of filthy anarchist pinko hippy satirists recruited by the traitorously seditionist Tim Boxell began contributing raw, rude and utterly hilarious skits, sketches and spoofs on the social and cultural scene to a sporadically published underground comics anthology called Commies From Mars.

Taking their lead from the turbulent but well-informed political climate and deeply influenced by both EC horror and science fiction publications of the 1950s and the classic 1962 Wally Wood Mars Attacks trading cards, contributing artists took cartoon pot-shots at God, Mother and Country in brilliant pastiches ranging from graphic ultra-violence and outrageous interplanetary, inter-species sex-shockers to surreal adventure and outright polemical diatribes. The overriding premise if you’re still not following me was: Communism is Evil; Martians want to conquer us and steal our women. Ergo Martians must be Commies…

Or maybe the cartoonists were just being “clever”…

Six issues were published between 1972 and 1987 and at the end of 1986 Last Gasp publisher Ron Turner released a black and white compilation of (most of) the first four to commemorate the imminent release of #5. That supremely subversive tome is still available if you look hard and surely the time is long overdue for an updated, revised and complete edition…

Following a Foreword from Jerry (Grateful Dead) Garcia, ‘A Warning From the Editor’, ‘Excerpts From the Journal of Billy “Rage” Riley’ and the cover to issue #1, the graphic assault begins with ‘In our midst… Commies From Mars!’ which sets the scene and the scenario with a gritty story of rural resistance from Boxell, after which John Pound’s cover for #2 and more ‘Excerpts From the Journal of Billy “Rage” Riley’ precede a stunning Boxell fantasy-fest ‘Snak?’, a wry and grimly grotesque conversation with Martian Comrade Colonel Bemovitch in ‘The Treaty!’ courtesy of (Comrade) Rich Larson, and Hunt Emerson relates the astounding extra-terrestrial ‘Adventures of Alan Rabbit’.

Greg Irons revealed ‘Gregor’s 115th Wet Dream’ and Capitalism, Interplanetary Communism and nasty fast food collided at Boxell’s ‘Commies From Mars Café’ before #2 closed with the charmingly dark ‘Man on the Moon’ by Shawn Kerri.

Pound’s arresting cover for #3 and another “Rage” Riley page are followed by an untitled Checkered Demon/Commies From Mars team-up by S. Clay Wilson and a superb Kerri anthropomorphic exploit ‘Life on the New Martian Earth’, before Boxell waxes cataclysmically philosophical in ‘Washed Up’.

Ripp (Larry Rippee) plugged ‘Tourism on the Red Planet’ and a young Peter Kuper revealed a recurring nightmare in ‘Shiver and Twitch’ whilst Irons contributed a socially inclusive argument for welcoming the invaders in an impressive double-page spread. Boxell’s ‘Stoned Wolf’ went on a ‘Crash Diet’ after which Ian (Jim Schumeister) James & Jon Rich got shockingly dramatic with ‘Prayers from a Closet’ and Revilo drew up a fabulous integration questionnaire in ‘A Comic’.

Following the usual cover and “Rage” piece for #4 Shawn Kerri explains ‘The Communist Way’, Tom Cheney describes ‘Life on the Planet Floyd’ and Larson explicitly defines ‘Making Loveski’.

Chad Draper outlines ‘Mixed Marriage’ and Revilo expands the romantic theme in harrowing detail with another ‘A Comic’, after which Kuper also gets in on the unnatural act with ‘True Martian Romance’. Larson & Boxell contribute a brace of ‘False Views’ after which ‘Bye Bye Baby’ explains a few new facts of life.

Melinda Gebbie & Adam Cornford promote the social graces in ‘Hall Monitors from Mars’ and Kenneth Huey explores the political effects of the military industrial complex in ‘Dictation: Tales from the Apocalypse’, after which Mr. Rippee returns with ‘A Marriage Made in Heaven’ and Boxell punches the action button in the X-rated ‘Under His Hat?’

Hunt Emerson details romance in a Martian Socialist State with ‘The Date’ and Spain Rodrigues provides a graphic tribute to Godfather of the series Wally Wood, after which Boxell & Grisly went all-out weird and nasty with ‘The Swap’ to close the story portion of this outrageous entertainment.

Absolutely packed with pin-ups, supplementary art and prose pages, a selection of astoundingly intriguing house ads and with an extensive biographies dossier on the Underground greats and cartooning luminaries who contributed to this Big Red Scare, this delicious tome is still a marvellous example of un-Realpolitik as only cartoonists could conceive it.

Next time you feel the need to stretch your boundaries in a mature manner, why not try this never-more-contemporary tome. Just think “Fundie” or “Repug” and you’ll see what I mean…
©1985 Tim Boxell and contributing artists. All rights reserved.

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The Complete Crumb Comics volume 13: the Season of the Snoid


By Robert Crumb and others (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-296-9

Like crisps, chocolate and bad puns; once you get the taste of Robert Crumb on your palate, it’s almost impossible to shift the craving for more. Here’s another re-released edition from the superb and multi-award winning Complete Crumb Comics series that will tickle the bad-taste-buds of discerning comics cognoscenti and is bound to make a whole new generation of fans among the cool kids who will take my usual disclaimer in the full spirit which it is intended.

This book contains really clever and outrageously dirty pictures, rude words, non-condemnatory drug references and allusions, godless questioning of authority and brilliantly illustrated. highly moving personal accounts and opinions. If you – or those legally responsible for you – have a problem with that, please skip this review and don’t buy the book. That will certainly teach us…

Robert Crumb is a unique creative force in the world of comics and cartooning with as many detractors as devotees. His uncompromising, excoriating, neurotic introspections, his pictorial rants and invectives, unceasingly picked away at societal scabs and peeked behind forbidden curtains for his own benefit, but he has always happily shared his unwholesome discoveries with anybody who takes the time to look… In 1987 Fantagraphics Books began the nigh-impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s vast output and those mesmeric volumes are now being reissued.

The son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943, into a functionally broken family. He was one of five kids who all found different ways to escape their parents’ highly volatile problems and comic strips were paramount among them.

As had his older brother Charles, Robert immersed himself in the comics and cartoons of the day; not just reading but creating his own. Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks and John Stanley were particularly influential, but also strip artists such as E.C. Segar, Gene Ahern, Rube Goldberg, Bud (Mutt and Jeff) Fisher, Billy (Barney Google), De Beck, George (Sad Sack) Baker and Sidney (The Gumps) Smith as well as illustrators like C.E. Brock and the wildly imaginative and surreal 1930’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts.

Defensive and introspective, young Robert pursued art and self-control through religion with equal desperation. His early spiritual repression and flagrant, hubristic celibacy warred with his body’s growing needs…

Escaping his stormy early life, he married young and began working in-house at the American Greeting Cards Company. He discovered like minds in the growing counterculture movement and discovered LSD. In 1967 Crumb relocated to California and became an early star of Underground Commix. As such he found plenty of willing hippie chicks to assuage his fevered mind and hormonal body whilst reinventing the very nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and a host of others.

He worked on in what was essentially a creative utopia throughout the early 1970’s but the alternative lifestyle of the Underground was already dying. Soon it would disappear: dissipated, disillusioned, dropped back “in” or demised. A few truly dedicated publishers and artists stayed the course, publishing on a far more businesslike footing as Crumb carried on creating, splitting his time between personal material and commercial art projects whilst incessantly probing deeper into his turbulent inner world.

After an introduction from his brother Maxon Crumb, this re-issued 13th tome opens with ‘Treasure Island Days’ an autobiographical junket of the young Crumb boys from Lemme Outa Here in 1978, produced in collaboration with brother Charles, after which come the nigh-legendary pieces produced for CoEvolution Quarterly #23-26 in 1979-1980, still powerfully impressive after all these years.

The gently biting ‘A Short History of America’, the subversively salacious ‘Bearzie Wearzies’ as well as the stunning black, white and yellow covers to #24, the wildly manic ‘Bop It Out’ (with a canny cameo from the amazing “No-Shit Sherlock”) and the gloriously dry and acerbic fable ‘Adventures of Onionhead’, is followed by the first of a clutch of fabulous American Splendor collaborations with uniquely Ordinary Hero Harvey Pekar in ‘Excerpt’ (from Cleveland Magazine 1980). ‘Me and My Sweetie’ (Portfolio of Underground Art) and the superbly expressionistic cover to Tele Times (vol. 2 #21) end the initial black and white section of the book.

The middle section is full colour and comprises covers and album art; beginning with Bizarre Sex, #8, American Splendor #24 and Snoid Comics, before presenting the rarer (for comics readers at least) material: Blind Boy Fuller: Truckin’ My Blues Away, Banana in Your Fruit Basket, Cheap Suit Serenaders (Crumb’s own Swing nostalgia band), Cheap Suit Party Record, Memphis Jug Band, Yazoo’s History of Jazz, Wild Family Orchestra, a selection of record labels designed by Crumb and Eddie Lange: Jazz Guitar Virtuoso. In addition to these magical concoctions there are also four superb pages of Heroes of the Blues Trading Cards and an Early Jazz Greats poster ad.

The comics section resumes with Crumb’s crudest, most abrasive, confrontational and possibly most cathartic creation: an arrogant, abusive, sex-crazed little homunculus called Mr. Snoid.

Unpleasant and usually unwelcome, Snoid was utterly self-obsessed; a rampaging animate artistic impulse which nevertheless managed to sway or bully those around him into complying with whatever gratuitous flight of the Id he might contemplate or require instant gratification for…

Always his own harshest critic and ever-searching for artistic perfection, it was still hard for even his biggest fans to look at Crumb-the-creator in the same way after the Snoid hit town.

The character debuted in 1980 in – what else – Snoid Comics , grabbing the spotlight from panel one of ‘This Cartooning is Tricky Business’ before declaring his unpleasant manifesto and attitude on everything from art to women in ‘The Snoid Goes Bohemian.’ The most unsavoury origin in comics followed in ‘How Snoids are Born’ after which ‘One Foot to Heaven’ finds the little stinker looking for a little action and ‘Mr. Snoid Among His Fellow Humans’ gives a final insight into his obscenely unique philosophy of life.

As liberating, challenging and guiltily, wrongly funny as Snoid was, his creation – or perhaps escape – certainly reinvigorated Crumb creative juices, both as auteur and artistic collaborator.

‘Freddy Visits for the Weekend’ and the two strips that comprise ‘Vox Populi’ (drawn for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor #5) resonate with new vehemence and understated tension, whilst the illustrations for Michael Bloomfield’s ‘Me and Big Joe’ from High Times #64 sparkle with affection and warmth.

‘Hospital Fun’ #1-2, scripted by Pekar, first appeared in Village Voice #25, after which Crumb’s next breakthrough series began in Zap #10, 1982, as the introspective, retrospective autobiographical ‘My Troubles With Women’ shockingly and hilariously opened more doors into Crumb’s troubled soul for us all to peer uncomfortably at…

This incautiously appealing edition ends with a selection of covers, ads and illustrations by Crumb from the ecologically proactive (we would now call it “Green”) Californian magazine Winds of Change (volume 2, #1-9 from 1980-1981) and includes articles by wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb and five of their collaborative strips ‘Everyday Funnies’ before this 13th chronicle closes with a typically effective (unpublished) book cover for ‘King of the Freaks’.

None of these collections is free of potentially offensive material and Crumb’s work is riddled with his often hard-to-embrace obsessive self-exploratory concerns. As always his work gouges out the creator’s most intimate and disturbing idiosyncrasies about women, sex, racial stereotypes, unchecked social change and a million other daily beefs and niggles. But there’s no disparagement intended or harm meant – except perhaps to himself – and his staggering honesty, incisive inquisitiveness and neurotic, intimate over-sharing is always leavened with a devastatingly ironic wit and rendered in imagery too powerful to ignore. Be warned but please don’t misunderstand what you’re looking at…

Crumb’s sublime cartooning has brought cachet and serious critical thought to our once ghettoised art form and, love or loathe him, no one can diminish his contribution to the broad world of graphic narrative. These superb books are the perfect introduction to any (definitively over 18) newcomers unaware of grown up comics… so if you are intrigued snatch up this book and all the others as soon as conceivably possible…

All material from American Splendor © 1980, 1998 Harvey Pekar & R.Crumb. All other material © 1976, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1998, 2011 R. Crumb. All rights reserved.

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The Complete Crumb Comics volume 15: Featuring Mode O’Day and Her Pals


By Robert Crumb and others (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-413-0

Robert Crumb is a unique creative force in the world of comics and cartooning with as many foes as fans, but his idiosyncratic, unflinching, uncompromising, controversial and always bewitching work is impossible to ignore.

Therefore if intemperate language, putative blasphemy, artfully grotesque cartoon nudity, fetishism and comedic fornication are liable to upset you, stop reading this review and don’t buy the book. Stop reading now, check out an old, archived review instead or just come back tomorrow…

In 1987 Fantagraphics began the almost impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s output.

Son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943 to a large and troubled family. After a tempestuous early life, he began working as an in-house art-drone at the American Greeting Cards Company and trading card giant Topps Publishing, married early and briefly before “dropping out” and joining the Counterculture movement, where he changed the nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Devil Girl and a host of others.

Within a decade the explosively reactive underground movement was gone; dissipated, disillusioned, dropped back “in” or dead, with only a few notable independent and truly dedicated publishers staying the course. Always his own harshest critic and ever-searching for artistic perfection, in 1981 Crumb convinced Ron Turner of Last Gasp to publish a new anthology of underground/alternative/cutting edge commix in a new anthology.

Weirdo – with Crumb as editor and major contributor until 1983 when he handed over the editor’s role to his “discovery” Peter Bagge (who provides a fascinating introduction and overview for the tome under review here) – was, for many of us, the last bastion of a real gone world.

With the onus of deadlines and responsibility of magazine production removed Crumb resumed his quixotic search for artistic satisfaction…

Recently re-released, this 15th softcover volume (originally published in 2001) collects Crumb’s comic strips from Weirdo #9-15, assorted gags, private commissions, freelance illustration work, album covers and other pictorial ephemera plus strips from American Splendor and Zap Comix, covering the hedonistic, greed-soaked early 1980s which were such a painful anathema to someone of the Artist’s socialist/liberal leanings.

After Bagge’s aforementioned text recollections the graphic magic begins with the Crumb contributions in Weirdo #9 (Winter 1983-1984), a stunning and meticulous frontispiece, ‘Arline ‘n’ Bob and that Thing in the Back Bedroom’ – an autobiographical account of the “joys” of parenthood crafted in collaboration with second wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb plus the first snide and sardonic appearance of Reagan-era, appalling and avaricious anti-icon ‘Mode O’Day and Her Pals’ in a barbed observation of fame-hungry wannabes and the pathetic, empty gullibility of the nouveau-riche.

More of Mode (dabbling with the chic of being a benefactor and coffee-magnate of the so-troubled Nicaraguans) and nothing else appeared in Weirdo #10 in Summer 1984 whilst #11 featured a stark and salutary updating of an old favourite in ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and a magical selection of single panel cartoons declaring ‘Love’s Like That!’

Mode stalked and blagged her way into the good graces of an ugly plutocrat with her usual lack of success or happiness in #12, but Weirdo #13 (Summer 1985) was given over to Crumb’s stunning ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’ wherein the case histories of a number of “deviants” were brought to incredible grimy, sordid, evocative life as Crumb sampled the truly bizarre nature of humanity described by giant of psychology Richard Freiherr von Krafft–Ebing.

Issue #14 featured the far lighter and whimsically bombastic anti-pop (or is it simply anti-maximum decibels?) inquiry ‘Where Has It Gone, All the Beautiful Music of Our Grandparents?’ and the marvellously introspective yet light ‘Life Certainly Is Existential!’, whilst #15 opened with the surreal domesticity of ‘Comics from Other Planets Dept’, slipped comfortably into two pages of splendid ‘Gags’ and closed with a captivating ad parody.

The covers of Weirdo #9-15 (including a heartfelt ‘Parting Shot‘ at Ayn Rand), lead off the expansive central, full-colour section, which continues with record and book covers for The Klezmorim’s Streets of Gold, The Otis Brothers, Charles Bukowski’s Bring Me Your Love and There’s No Business Like Show Business, novel covers Texas Crude and The Monkey Wrench Gang; a Louis Bluie poster plus incidental illustrations and sticker art.

Back in black and white there’s a page of miscellaneous ads and illustrations from 1983, after which ‘Hypothetical Quandry’ (written by Harvey Pekar for his magnificent American Splendor on-going graphic autobiography: issue #9, if you’re keeping count) appears, showcasing Crumb’s far bolder and more liberated big-black-brush art style.

Crumb’s long creative association with author Charles Bukowski produced phenomenal results, and here, after a portrait of the writer and promotional art, follows a sequence of illustrations from Bring Me Your Love and There’s No Business Like Show Business, as well as Ken Weaver’s Texas Crude. More miscellaneous illustration art for Pepper & Stern Rare Books, The Magazine, Co-Education Quarterly and seven pages of vignettes and cameos from The Monkey Wrench Gang round out this section.

‘Constipated Chaos Consortium’ is a mind-bending jam-collaboration with fellow underground luminaries Spain Rodriguez, Bosirus Eerie, Victor Moscoso, S. Clay Wilson and Robert Williams and the first of three contributions to Zap #11 from 1985: the other two being ‘Jesus People USA’ (a hypothetical interview between a fundamentalist Christian reporter and ‘R. Crumb, Underground Pornographer and All-Around Lost Soul’) and the powerful and engaging biography of lost Blues legend (Charley) ‘Patton’.

This sublime – and key – transitional tome in the development of one of the art form’s greatest living proponents concludes with another section of miscellaneous illustrations including collaborations with wife and daughter Aline and Sophie and a poster with Dan O’Neill, Victor Moscoso and Bob Crabb.

As always this varied and impressive selection of Crumb’s craft is riddled with his often hard-to-embrace themes and emblematic declamatory and potentially offensive visual vocabulary: as always the work touches on the creator’s most intimate and disturbing idiosyncrasies regarding sex and women, both in the unsettling Abstract and the painful, side-splitting, lustful, painful and loving Concrete and, as always, the reader’s response can only be Love or Loathe…

Crumb’s subtle mastery of his art-form and obsessive need to reveal his most hidden depths and every perceived defect – in himself and the world around him – has always been a unquenchable wellspring of challenging comedy and riotous rumination. This superb series charting the perplexing pen-and-ink pilgrim’s progress is the perfect vehicle to introduce any (definitively over 18) newcomers of your acquaintance to the world of grown up comics. And if you need a way in yourself, snatch up this book and the other sixteen as soon as conceivably possible…

All material © 2011 R. Crumb and its respective owners or co-owners. All other material © 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 2001, 2011 R. Crumb. All rights reserved.

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Willie and Joe: Back Home


By Bill Mauldin (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-351-4

Throughout World War II William Henry “Bill” Mauldin fought “Over There” with the United States Infantry whilst producing cartoons about the fighting men and for the fighting men. He told as much of the real nature of the war as his censors and common sense would allow and became an unwilling international celebrity as much because of his unshakable honesty as his incredible artistic talent.

He was in controvertibly one of the guys and American soldiers and civilians loved him for it. During his time in the service he produced cartoons for the folks back home and intimately effective, authentic and quirkily morale-boosting material for military publications 45th Division News, Yank and Stars and Stripes.

They mostly featured two slovenly “dogfaces” – a term he made his own and introduced to the world at large – giving a trenchant and acerbically enduring view of the war from the point of view of the poor sods ducking bullets in muddy foxholes and surviving shelling in the ruins of Europe.

Willie and Joe, to the dismay of much of the Army Establishment, gave an honest overview of America’s ground war. In 1945 a collection of his drawings, accompanied by a powerfully understated and heartfelt documentary essay, was published by Henry Holt and Co. Up Front was a sensation, telling the American public about the experiences of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands in a way no historian would or did. A biography, Back Home, followed in 1947.

Willie even made the cover of Time magazine in 1945, when 23 year old Mauldin won his first Pulitzer Prize. Like so many other returning soldiers, however, Mauldin’s hard-won Better Tomorrow didn’t live up to its promise…

Mauldin’s anti-war, anti-Idiots-in-Charge, anti-bigot views never changed but found simply new targets at home. However, during the earliest days of the Cold War and despite being a bone fide War Hero, Mauldin’s politically strident cartoons fell ever more out of step with the New America: a place where political expediency allowed racists to resume repressing ethnic sections of the nation now that their blood and sweat were no longer needed to defeat the Axis; a nation where women were expected to surrender their war-time freedoms and independences and become again servants and baby machines, happy to cook suppers in return for the new labour-saving consumer goods America now needed to sell, sell, sell: a nation far too eager to forget the actual war and genuine soldiers in favour of massaged messages and conformist, inspirational paper or celluloid heroes.

The New America certainly didn’t want anybody rocking their shiny new boat…

When Sergeant Bill Mauldin mustered out in 1945 he was notionally on top of the world: celebrity hero, youngest Pulitzer Prize winner in history, with a lucrative 3-year syndicated newspaper contract and Hollywood clamouring for him.

Unfortunately, the artist was as dedicated to his ideals as to his art. As soon as he became aware of the iniquities of the post-war world he went after them, using his newspaper cartoon as a soapbox, Mauldin attacked in bitterly brilliant barrages the maltreatment and sidelining of actual soldiers (during the country’s entire involvement in WWII less than 10% of military men actually fought, or even left their home country) whilst rear-echelon brass seemed to increasingly reap the benefits and unearned glory of the peace.

The ordinary enlisted men and veterans were culture-shocked, traumatised, out of place and resented by the public who blamed them disproportionately for the shortages and “suffering” they had endured. Black and Japanese Americans were reduced to second class citizens and America’s erstwhile allies demonised, whilst everywhere politicians and demagogues were rewriting recent history for their own advantage… His fondest wish had been to kill the iconic dogfaces off on the final day of World War II, but Stars and Stripes vetoed it, and the demobbed survivors moved into a world that had changed incomprehensibly in their absence…

Always ready for a fight, Mauldin’s peacetime Willie and Joe became a noose around the syndicate’s neck as the cartoonist’s acerbic, polemical and decidedly non-anodyne observations perpetually highlighted the iniquities and stupidities inflicted on returning servicemen, attacked self-aggrandising politicians, advocated such socialist horrors as free speech, civil rights and unionisation, affordable public housing and universal medical care for everybody – no matter what their colour, gender or religion. He even declared war on the Ku Klux Klan, American Legion and red-baiting House UnAmerican Activities Commission: nobody was too big. When the Soviet Union and United Nations betrayed their own ideological principles Mauldin went after them too…

An honest broker he had tried to quit early, but the syndicate held him to his contract. Trapped in a situation that increasingly stifled his creative urges and muzzled his liberal/libertarian sensibilities, he refused to toe the line and his cartoons were incessantly altered and reworked. During six years of War service his cartoon had been censored three times; now the white paint and scissors were employed by rewrite boys almost daily…

The movie Up front – which Mauldin wanted to reflect the true experience of the war – languished unmade for six years until a sappy flimsy comedy bearing the name was released in 1951. The intended screenplay by Mauldin, John Lardner and Ring Lardner Jr., disappeared, deemed utterly unsuitable and unfilmable until much of its tone reappeared in Lardner Jr.’s 1970 screenplay M*A*S*H…

As the syndicate bled clients, mostly in segregationist states, and contemplated terminating his contract, Mauldin began simultaneously working for the New York Herald-Tribune and with a new liberal outlet changed his tactics in the Willie and Joe feature: becoming more subtle and less bombastic. He still picked up the best of enemies however, adding J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to the roster of declaimers and decriers…

When his contract finally ended in 1948, neither side wanted to renew. Mauldin left the business to become a journalist, freelance writer and illustrator. He was a film actor for awhile (appearing in Red Badge of Courage with Audie Murphy among other movies), a war correspondent during the Korean Conflict and an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1956.

He only finally returned to newspaper cartooning in 1958 in a far different world and worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before moving to the Chicago Sun-Times, winning another Pulitzer and a Reuben Award for his political cartoons

He retired in 1991 after a long, glittering and properly- appreciated career. He only drew Willie and Joe four times in that entire period (for an article on the “New Army” in Life magazine; for the funerals of “Soldier’s Generals” Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall and to eulogize Milton Caniff).

This magnificent hardback companion volume to Willie and Joe: the WWII Years covers the period of work from July 31st 1945 to 31st December 1948, supplemented by a brilliant biographical introduction from Todd DePastino: a superb black and white compendium collecting the bittersweet return of the forgotten heroes as they faced confusion, exclusion, contention and disillusion: but always with the edgy, stoic humour under fire that was Mauldin’s stock in trade.

Moreover it features some of the most powerful assaults on the appalling edifice of post-war America ever seen. The artist’s castigating observations on how a society treats returning soldiers are as pertinent now as they ever were; the pressures on families and children even more so; whilst his exposure of armchair strategists, politicians and businessmen seeking to exploit wars for gain and how quickly allies can become enemies are tragically more relevant than any rational person could wish.

Alternating trenchant cynicism, moral outrage, gallows humour, sanguine observation and uncomprehending betrayal, this cartoon chronicle is an astounding personal testament that shows the powers of cartoons to convey emotion if not sway opinion.

With Willie & Joe: the WWII Years, we have here a magnificent example of passion and creativity used as a weapon of social change and a work of art every citizen should be exposed to, because these are aspects of humanity that we seem unable to outgrow…

This edition © 2011 Fantagraphics Books. Cartoons © 2011 the Estate of William Mauldin. All right reserved.

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Willie and Joe: the WWII Years


By Bill Mauldin, edited by Todd DePastino (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-439-9

During World War II a talented, ambitious young man named William Henry “Bill” Mauldin (29/10/1921 – 22/01/2003) fought “Over There” with the 45th Division of the United States Infantry as well as many other fine units of the army. He learned to hate war and love his brother soldiers – and the American fighting man loved him back. During his time in the service he produced civilian cartoons for the Oklahoma City Times and The Oklahoman, and intimately effective and authentic material for his Company periodical, 45th Division News, as well as Yank and Stars and Stripes; the US Armed Forces newspapers. Soon after, his cartoons were being reproduced in newspapers across Europe and America.

They mostly featured two slovenly “dogfaces” – a term he popularised – giving a trenchant and laconic view of the war from the muddied tip of the sharpest of Sharp Ends. Willie and Joe, much to the dismay of the brassbound, spit-and-polish military martinets and diplomatic doctrinaires, became the unshakable, everlasting image of the American soldier: continually revealed in all ways and manners the upper echelons of the army would prefer remained top secret.

Willie and Joe even became the subject of two films (Up Front -1951 and Back at the Front – 1952) whilst Willie made the cover of Time magazine in 1945, when 23 year old Mauldin won his first Pulitzer Prize.

In 1945 a collection of his drawings, accompanied by a powerfully understated and heartfelt documentary essay, was published by Henry Holt and Co. Up Front was a sensation, telling the American public about the experiences of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands in a way no historian would or did. A biography, Back Home, followed in 1947.

Mauldin’s anti-war, anti-Idiots-in-Charge-of-War views became increasingly unpopular during the Cold War and despite being a War Hero Mauldin’s increasingly political cartoon work fell out of favour (those efforts are the subject of forthcoming companion volume Willie & Joe: Back Home).  Mauldin left the business to become a journalist and illustrator.

He was a film actor for awhile (appearing in Red Badge of Courage with Audie Murphy among other movies), a war correspondent during the Korean War and, after an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1956, finally returned to newspaper cartooning in 1958.

He retired in 1991 after a long, glittering and award-studded career. He only drew Willie and Joe four times in that entire period (for an article on the “New Army” in Life magazine; for the funerals of “Soldier’s Generals” Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall; and to eulogize Milton Caniff). His fondest wish had been to kill the iconic dogfaces off on the final day of World War II, but Stars and Stripes vetoed it.

The Willie and Joe cartoons and characters are some of the most enduring and honest symbols of all military history. Every Veterans Day in Peanuts from1969 to 1999, fellow veteran Charles Schulz had Snoopy turn up at Mauldin’s house to drink Root Beers and tell war stories with an old pal. When you read Sgt. Rock you’re looking at Mauldin’s legacy, and Archie Goodwin drafted the shabby professionals for a couple of classy guest-shots in Star-Spangled War Stories (see Showcase Presents the Unknown Soldier).

This immense mostly monochrome (with some some very rare colour and sepia items) softcover compendium – 704 pages, 229 x 178mm – collects all his known wartime cartoons originally released in two hardback editions in 2008, featuring not only the iconic dog-face duo, but also the drawings, illustrations, sketches and gags that led, over 8 years of army life, to their creation.

Mauldin produced most of his work for Regimental and Company newspapers whilst under fire: perfectly capturing the life and context of fellow soldiers – also under battlefield conditions – and gave a glimpse of that unique and bizarre existence to their families and civilians at large, despite constant military censorship and even face-to-face confrontations with Generals such as George Patton, who was perennially incensed at the image the cartoonist presented to the world. Fortunately Supreme Commander Eisenhower, if not a fan, knew the strategic and morale value of Mauldin’s Star Spangled Banter and Up Front feature with the indomitable everymen Willie and Joe…

This far removed in time, many of the pieces here might need historical context for modern readers and such is comprehensively provided by the notes section to the rear of the volume. Also included are unpublished pieces and pages, early cartoon works, and rare notes, drafts and sketches.

Most strips, composites and full-page gags, however are sublimely transparent in their message and meaning: lampooning entrenched stupidity and cupidity, administrative inefficiency and sheer military bloody-mindedness whilst highlighting the miraculous perseverance and unquenchable determination of the ordinary guys to get the job done while defending their only inalienable right – to gripe and goof off whenever the brass weren’t around… Moreover Mauldin never patronises the civilians or demonises the enemy: the German and Italians are usually in the same dismal boat are “Our Boys” and only the war and its brass-bound conductors are worthy of his inky ire…

Alternating trenchant cynicism, moral outrage, gallows humour, absurdist observation, shared miseries, staggering sentimentality and the total shock and awe of still being alive every morning, this cartoon catalogue of the Last Just War is a truly breathtaking collection that no fan, art-lover, historian or humanitarian can afford to miss.

…And it will make you cry and laugh out loud too.

With a fascinating biography of Mauldin that is as compelling as his art, the mordant wit and desperate camaraderie of his work is more important than ever in an age where increasingly cold and distant brass-hats and politicians send ever-more innocent lambs to further foreign fields for slaughter. With this volume and the aforementioned Willie & Joe: Back Home, we should finally be able to restore the man and his works to the forefront of graphic consciousness, because tragically, his message is never going to be out of date…

© 2011 the Estate of William Mauldin. All right reserved.

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The Fat Ninja (GMC Collections Volume 1 #3)


By Gary Amaro, Kris Silver & various (Greater Mercury Comics)
No ISBN

The late 1980s were an incredibly fertile time for American comics-creators. It was as if an entire new industry had been born with the sudden expansion of the Direct Sales market and dedicated specialist retail outlets; new companies were experimenting with format and content and punters even had a bit of spare cash to play with.

Moreover much of the “kid’s stuff” stigma had finally abated and the country was catching up to the rest of the world in acknowledging that sequential narrative might just be a for-real and truly, actual art-form…

Consequently many starry-eyed kids and young start-up companies began competing for the attention and cash of punters who had grown accustomed – or resigned – to getting their sequential narratives from DC, Marvel, Archie and/or Harvey Comics. European and Japanese material had been creeping in and by 1983 a host of young companies such as WaRP Graphics, Pacific, Eclipse, Vortex, Capital, Now, Slave Labor, Comico, Dark Horse, First and many others had established themselves and were making impressive inroads.

New talent, established stars and fresh ideas all found a thriving forum to try something a little different both in terms of content and format. Even smaller companies had a fair shot at the big time and a lot of great material came – and too often, quickly went – without getting the attention or success it warranted. Often utterly superb and innovative material came from the same shoestring outfits generating the worst dreck imaginable and the only way to get in on the next big thing – or better yet – something actually good was to get out and try it…

It really helped if you worked in a comic shop and got first pick before the customers arrived too…

One of the least well-known yet most fun was an unassuming spoof series entitled Fat Ninja which came out of a prolific little outfit calling itself Greater Mercury Comics from August to December 1986. The serial never completed its initial storyline, but that didn’t stop the creators Kristoffer Silver and Gary Amaro collecting the saga thus far into a daft and nifty little trade paperback that still makes me laugh decades later…

Delightfully lampooning the 1980s oriental assassin craze; the ubiquitously dark and ponderous Frank Miller Daredevil (and Wolverine) comics so successfully mined by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the groundbreaking economical graphic bravura of Dave Sim’s incredible Cerebus the Aardvark, this asinine adventure begins the unfinished epic of ‘The Galactic Refrigerator’ as a chunky, katana-wielding, preternaturally hungry silent warrior discovers to his mute horror that someone has unplugged the celestial artefact which provided the raw material for food across the universe.

Appalled and a bit peckish, the sturdy stalwart undertakes an unbelievably violent quest to restore balance and provisions to the world, encountering supernatural warriors Shadow and Flair in ‘Between Light and Darkness’ and follows them back to their immediate superior the Crimson Ninja in ‘Confrontations’. Fat Ninja then traces, via teleporting phone-booth, the reality bending culprit “Sir” to his extraordinary lair in ‘Master Evil’, from where the deadly dictator took the corpulent crusader on a quick tour of the cosmos and gave him a little philosophical testing before once more resorting to gratuitous violence in ‘Shadowplay’…

I fear we shall never learn ‘The Secret of the Hacksword’ since the series and this collection end there…

Raw, unrefined, even badly drawn in places Fat Ninja (with additional contributions from P.S. King, Emilio Soltero & Amy Amaro) is nevertheless carried along by its brash, and naively hilarious premise and decidedly likable portly protagonist, and the mere fact that I’m recommending it even though there’s no conclusion should give you some idea of just how amusing this lost oddment actually is.

A genuine original and well worth picking up if the fickle, ill-fed fates ever send a copy your way…
Fat Ninja © 19985-19986 Kristoffer A. Silver. This edition © 1990 Greater Mercury Comics. All rights reserved.

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Drought Chic – a Dry Analysis of the Water Shortage


By Shary Flenniken (Shary Flenniken)
No ISBN

I’m feeling nostalgic, thirsty and in need of a laugh all at once so here’s an intriguing self-published gem from the mid-1970s whose theme and subject matter seems to be coming back into vogue as the days seep by…

Do you remember that sweet pretty girl you admired and day-dreamed about from afar? All glowing soft focus summer afternoons and sherbet refreshers, scents of new-mown hay, tinkly bells and soaring strings? And after a lifetime you found the courage to talk to her and she swore like a trooper, cackled like a loon, pulled your hair and was all loud and boisterous and not at all serious and girly and your heart broke just a little?

Shary Flenniken’s sense of humour is like that. With her affable, underplayed, deceptively simple line drawing style (so devastating effective in the glorious Girl and her Talking Dog strip Trots and Bonnie) everything looks clean and sugary and chocolate-coated, but then you realise there’s a devastatingly sharp mind and a tungsten-tipped razor-edged scalpel sense of humour at play as you’re hit with a really spiky and heavy giant pink boxing glove…

Flenniken is a scripter/artist/editor/illustrator/screenwriter of enormous talent who contributed to and edited the funniest years of National Lampoon, has published her own books – such as the slim gem under review today – and has illustrated some of the funniest books even written by other people, with titles such as When a Man Loves a Walnut, Blood-Lust Chickens & Renegade Sheep and Nice Guys Sleep Alone.

She started out as an underground cartoonist in 1971 with the fabulously notorious Air Pirates Collective (the other bold cartoonists taking on Disney whilst preserving the classic heritage of past cartoon masters and waving the flag for free speech and the Right to Parody and Satirise were Dan O’Neill, Bobby London, Gary Hallgren and Ted Richards).

Her own drawing style is often likened to pioneering strip artists Clare Briggs (When a Feller Needs a Friend!!, Danny Dreamer, The Days of Real Sport, Mr. and Mrs, Real Folks at Home, Someone’s Always Taking the Joy Out of Life) and the laconically mordant master Harold Tucker Webster (Our Boyhood Ambitions, How to Torture Your Wife, Life’s Darkest Moment, How to Torture Your Husband and the legendary Caspar Milquetoast/The Timid Soul) – especially in the long-running(1971-1990) and aforementioned sardonic comedy masterpiece Trots and Bonnie which I simply must get around to…

In recent years Flenniken has edited Seattle Laughs: Comic Stories about Seattle and worked for DC’s Paradox Press and Mad, freelanced in Premiere, Details and The American Lawyer whilst winning critical acclaim for her adaptations of the works of Mark Twain, O. Henry and others.

Drought Chic was self-published in 1977, and this tiny tidal wave of crafty cartoons and satisfyingly salty asides resulted from close observation and experience of the global heat-wave (can you remember that Long Hot Summer of Punk in the UK?) and the perennial water paucity of America’s West Coast; extrapolating on the sage advice offered by those in power as the country all-too briefly saw the (fashionably faddy) sense in dabbling with water discipline.

Suggestions to the trend-setters of society riffed-on here include “share baths and showers”, “don’t flush toilets”, “import icebergs”, “replant your lawn with cactus” and “drink something else”… directives I’m fairly sure we’ll all be considering again in the months and years ahead.

Of course here in Britain we’ve already taken the most effective step to conserve water consumption by selling off the water utility, privatising a natural resource and pricing it out of the reach of ordinary folk…

Still, if you’re saving a little time and money as a new member of the Great Unwashed at least you can spend your grubby free hours seeking out this wry, dry and slyly sophisticated soupcon of delightful disinformation.
© 1977 Shary Flenniken. All rights reserved.