Comics Journal 107

''THE 

PARTY"

\>3 F R E D

MEMBECK.

I

OH11C*

Journal

No. No . 107

April, 1986

INTERVIEW

CARTOON "The Party" By Fred Hembeck 

2

EDITORIAL 6

NEWS ,

9

CORRESPONDENCE "Blood and Thunder" Letters from Gene Phillips, Peter B . Gillis, an d others.

" M a k i n g the Dinosaur Evolve". . . 86 What's wrong with conventions an d ho w to fix them, by Mark Bernstein.

COLUMNS " A C o m i c o f  O n e ' s O w n " S c o t t Edelman on misogyny in the comics industry.

"Generally Speaking" 29 A ne w column o f brief  reviews by Ar t Cover, Heidi MacDonald, Steve Monaco.

LISTINGS Coming Comics: May Compiled by Gil Jordan

GRAPHIC STORY

COVER

REVIEWS:

91

" S u b v e r s io io n T h r o u g h S u b t l e t y " . . 9 5 WaRP publisher Richard Pini on how comics c a n gain acceptance.

"Funnybook Roulette" 41 R. Fiore o n Li'l Abner, Calvin and   Hobbes, 3- D C o m i c s , a nd some really, really stupid ideas.

" Q u e s t for F e a r " 45 Russell Freund o n Seduction of  the Innocent, Death  Rattle, an d Elvira's House of  Mystery.

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

"Neglected Masterpieces" 78 A look  at some forgotten works o f  high ar t in the comics medium, by Christian D. G r a b b e , III.

23

CRITIQUE

TH E COMICS JOURNAL #107 (ISSN 0194-7869), monthly (except (except February, April, 1986. Published monthly April, and June) by The Comics Journal, Inc. Editorial and business offices: 4359 Cornell Road, Agoura, CA 91301. Office of publication: 25 Juniper Road, PO Box 787, Bethel CT 06801. Th e Comics Journal is copyright copyright © 1986 The Comics Journal, Inc. Unauthorized reproduction of any any of its contents is prohibited by law. Second-class postage paid at Bethel CT and additional additional mailing offices. P O S T M A S T E R : Please for 3579 to TH E COMICS J O U R N A L , PO Box Box send for 787, Bethel, CT 06801.

58

FEATURES

" T h e D i r e c t S a l es es S h o p s " By Jan Strnad

"Newswatch" By Tom Heintjes

"Slow Dancing on the Cutting Edge" An interview with Bill Sienkiewicz, conducted a nd edited by Peter Sanderson.

I n d e x t o Advertisers

98 8

Painting o f Elektra by B i l l S i e n k i e w i c z , previewing t h e upcoming Epic comic,  Elektra: Assassin. Elektra is © 1986 t h e Marvel Comics Group.

"The Strange Parade" 47 Le e Wochner o n Flaming Carrot  Comics, , D C Challenge, Wordsmith, and  Miracleman. "M-rnm Good" Steve M o n a c o o n Yummy Fur.

53

" D e a t h a n d U n d e a t h in the Mid1980s" 55 Bill S h e r m a n o n Haunt  of Fear, Tales of  Terror, an d Death Rattle.

3

32

i l Original Carl Barks cover; Dwlght R. Decker on the dilemma of the adult fan; Barks in Boston; and " a Star Trek  con report. Tabloid format.

66

Two Interviews with Denny O'Nell; Dennis Fujitake cover cover painting; Dale Luciano reviews reviews Tintin;  and Carter Scholz reviews Epic illustrated.

84

Michael T. GHbert is interviewed, and provides a cover painting of Eiric and the Wraith; plus Harlan Ellison, Rick Marschall, and much more.

33

il Original Shade cover by Steve Ditto; how to make your comics tax deductible; the first underground [J comix column; fantasy films. Tabloid format.

67

Definitive Harvey Kurtzman interview, with Kurtzman cover; Harlan Ellison sues Jim Warren for plagiarism; and Jan Strnad reviews The Point Man.

85

First half of the definitive Robert Kanigher inter view; Joe Kubert cover; cover; Jan Strnad on rating the comics; Ellison; Ronln, Coyote, ana more. ana more.

37

i l Star Wars  cover by John Workman; interviews with Jenette Kahn and Martin Pasko; Dwlght R. '* Decker on communists and comic books.

68

Panel discussions involving Frank Miller, Roy Roy Thomas, Julius Schwartz, Jim Shooter, Denny O'Nell, more. X-Men cover by Kevin Nowlan.

86

Cover feature on Tintin's  Herge; more of the Kanigher interview interview;; Ke nneth Smit h on Love Love and  Rockets  and RAW;  and the new comics vigilantes.

38

|| Major Gil Kane interview; Dwlght R. Decker on Asterlx;  reviews of Spider-Man and the Hulk on LI television. Kane Star Hawks  cover.

70

Frank Miller interview and and cover; a personal memoir of Wally Wood by Bhob Stewart; Marvel announces its royalty plan; "Pott Shots"; more.

87

Anti-fight scenes article, with big, funny fight scene cover by Don Rosa; also, interviews with Phil Yeh and George Metzger

40

|| An intervie interview w with Jim Shooter, recently recently hired as Marvel's Editor-in-Chief; BIN BIN Mantlo on The  "  Micronauts;  John Benson on Art Spiegelman.

71

88

The ratings debate escalates with two panels (involving Jim Shooter, Mike Gold, Jan Strnad, more) and a ho hott editorial; editori al; plus Killraven  reviewed.

89

Will Wil l Eisner Eisn er spotlighted, with two two interviews (one including Frank Miller), an article, and a new Spirit cover; plus Carter Scholz on Stanislaw Lent.

90

Al Williamson is cover featured in an interview; plus Ellison on Ed Asner, Cerebus, RAW, Howski Studios, Eclipse, Japanese comics, and more.

I 1

I '

I

! | 1

|

|

Peter Poplaski Popeye-versus-the-Hulk cover; Mike Frledrich interviewed; and reviews of En-  quest, Weirdworld, and and The Wizard  King.

Neal Adams is interviewed and provides a new new cover; Plus Asterix, Dr. Seuss, Efquest, Stephen King's Danse Macabre, and more.

42

|| Cover by John Byrne of Stan Lee, the interview subject subject of the issue. Decker on Elquest, Cat Yronil wode on Gerber's Captain America.

43

1| Neal Adams interviewed; Jim Korkis on Bakshi's Lord  of the  of the  Flings;  Scott Edelman with some '» "Bullpen Bull"; and a Dennis Fujltake cover.

73

— 1 | The Will Eisner Interview, Part 1; Spirit  cover pain46 ting by Eisner; Denny O'Nell on A Contract With  il God; and an article on "Changes in the X-Men."

74

Chris Claremont and Louise Jones talk about The New Mutants; plus a debute with Art Spieg elman and Francoise Mouly. X-Men cover.

91

Special Convention Panels Issue, featuring Gil Gil BUI Sienkiewicz, Howard Chaykln, Kane, BUI Chaykln, Harvey Kurtzman, Joe Kubert, and many more.

1| Part 2 of the Eisner interview; Steve Skeates's 47 controversial "Death of the Super-Heroes," —ail gruesomely illustrated by Dennis Fujltake.

75

Jan Stmad relates his "Brilliant Career at Marvel." Plus John Byrne, Jack Jackson, Gil Kane chat on various panels. Cover by Kevin Nowlan.

92

Undergrounds issue; Interviews with Leonard Rlfaa and Gilbert Shelton, and an article by Denis Kitchen; Marvel's original art controversy.

— 1 | Eight pages of full color! Includes in-depth Weird-  world  article, with original Buscema art, plus inter48 U views with Len Weln and Samuel R. Delany

77

The debate over Frank Miller continues; an inter view with Max Allan Collins; Ted White talks about Daredevil  and drugs; and a review of the Journal] 

93

Swamp Thing is spotlighted: interviews with Alan Moore, St eve Bissette, and John Totleben. Also, the story behind Pacific's demise, and Ellison.

|| A compreh comprehensive ensive analysis analysis of of the X-Men by Carol 49 Kallsh and Richard Howell, with hilarious car  —— 'I toons; plusa review of Heavy  Metal.

78

Gil Kane cover and feature article; an interview with Epic's  Archie Goodwin; Chris Claremont and Frank Miller discuss Wolverine.

94

Special Foreign Comics issue, including creators from Argentina, Argentina, Belgium, France, Italy, Japan, and Malaysia! Invaluable reference!

79

Marv Wolfman and George Perez spsak; a Teen Titans cover by Scott Hampton; Harlan Ellison. Dreadstar, and What's Wrong With Marvel.

95

A candid interview with Captain Marvel's C.C. Beck; a Women in Comics panel; Howard Nostrand's autobiography; and Prince Valiant.

96

Date Luciano's "Newaves" survey begins, with a great newave cover; an interview with Howard Noatrand; Gary Groth on European comics.

1

| !

i

|| Frank Brunner's angry farewell to Marvel Com51 ics; a pre-Flaggl  interview interview with Howard Chayk ln; = ~ J the critics vs. Paul Levltz; and a cover by Brunner.

|

Carl Barks is cover featured, with a long retros pective. Curt Swan is interviewed, and Jim Starlin's The  Death  of Captain Marvel  reviewed.

|| The Rick Marschall interview; Plastic Man battles the Elongated Man and Mr. Fantastic on a painted '*  Fujltake cover that's worth the price of admission.

80

= f l The HARLAN ELLISON interv interview iew issue. issue. A full full 34 53 pages of Harlan rapping about comics, movies, lite' I rature, and the way we live. Not to be missed!

81

Bill Gaines Gai nes interview, interview, with spectacular spectacular EC pastiche pastiche cover by Bll Stout. Plus Jan Strnad on creator's rights, and Bhob Stewart on Shock SuspenStories.

97

Harvey Pekar Is interviewed, written about, index ed, with an R. Crumb cover. Phis the Miss Buxley controversy, Shooter's "little fucks" memo.

— 1 | Marshall Rogers talks about The Batman and 54 more; Al Capp's final interview; and a Moon   — S J Knight/Batman Knight/Batman front front cover cover by Bill Sienkie wicz.

82

Dave and Deni Sim interviewed; the the review of Ronin;  Barry Malzberg's career reviewed by Carter Scholz; and half a Sim Cerebus cover.

98

A rare interview with Alex Toth, with much rare art; Carter Scholz on Void Indigo;  and the Alter native Comics Cadaver Derby.

83

The other half of the Sim cover, and of the inter view; Ted White points out out Rich Buckler's plagiarisms at Red Circle; and Ellison.

99

What's wrong with The X-Men anyway? Also, an interview with Am Saba, Archie Comics, and the premiere of Scott Edelman s "Ethics" column.

52 I

|

commodities; Little Orphan Annie;  and Ellison.

55

|| Green Lantern cover by Gil Kane; an illustrated look at the British work of John Bolton; Mighty  'I Mouse;  and, oh yes, a Jack C. Harris interview.

56

|| Michael Flelsher is granted a long interview; Neal Adams replies to BUI Sienkiewicz with a full-color il cartoon; and a Luis Dominguez Jonah Hex cover.

101

Frank Miller is interviewed, and provides a cover of Robin. Plus Mike Gold and Jan Stmad on Shat  ter, and "Summer Reading of the Pros."

58

1| Martin Pasko, Jim Shooter, Len Weln, Marv Wolfman, and Mark Evanier discuss comics " writing; plus a DD/Elektra cover by Frank Miller.

10 2

Harold Fost er's final intervie interview, w, by Am Saba, w«h Prince Valiant  cover; interview interview with Ray Zone ; and the world of Basil Wolverton.

59

1| Heavy Metal  editor Ted White interviewed; Greg Potter on Jack Kirby; a review of Detectives, Inc.;  'I and covers covers by Ken Macklin and and Dennis Fujltake.

10 3

Michael Wm. Kaluta is interviewed, and provides a Starstruck/Shadow  cover. Plus a debate between Harlan Ellison and Stan Lee, more.

60

|| Jim Shooter is interviewed, and featured on a Fred Hembeck cover; an essay on the legacy of jl EC comics; and a review of RAW magazine. RAW magazine.

10 4

Chats with Skip Williamson and Justin Green; R.C. Harvey psychoanalyzes comics; Carter Scholz on Savage Tales;  death In the Industry.

62

|| Dick Giordano is interviewed, and contributes a Batman cover; the Detectives, Inc. debate; Gay  jl Comics  reviewed; and a look at Stewart  the Rat.

10 5

Special issue devoted to Jack Klroy's battle with his original art: Frank MWer, Gil Kane, Marvel over his Wendy Plnl, Ken Smith speak out!

64

|| Gil Kane cover; debate between Kane and Denny O'Nell; RAW, slasher horror movies, and C.C. 'I Beck and Some Opinionated Bastards.

10 6

A Weird-0 issue, featuring an interview with (and jam cover by) R. Crumb and Peter Bagge. Plus: Fredric Wertham, John Byrne off the FF, more.

65

|| Jack Klrby Captain Victory cover; Art Spiegelman and and Francoise Mouly interviewed; Scrooge's LI money bin. Spiegelman back cover.

10 7

Bill Sienkiewicz Sienki ewicz is interview interviewed; ed; Elektra  cover. Plus Scott Edelman on sexual discrimination, Dwlght Decker on Superman vs. the Nazis, and more.

| !

| ' I

| '

| '

| ' | 1

The conclusion of the Wolfman and Perez inter views; Carter Scholz on 1994 and 1994 and life and art as

EVERY M O N T H , TH E WOR LD OF COMIC S IS YOURS INTHE COMICS JOURNAL!

I •1 1

''«• M i i B i . / i i K - o l

\V„-

S

v. ,

.

A TRUE-LIFE w i i U I A l l ^W VIyT/ H   R O B e K " ?

B

i !

,

i  _  T

C

R

U M B

^

K

^  »

JO HN BYRN E LEAVES T H E R

FANTAS TIC

W

jgj^

SEE

N

E

FOUR!

NEWSWATCH

Once every four weeks, thousands of readers around the world turn to The Com ics Journal to keep up with the the world of comics. They realize that only in the Jour nal can they find the mixture the stimulating mixture of fact and opinion, news and reviews, ar ticles and columns, interviews and editorials, that have kept the Journal on the the cutting edge of comics for the better part of a decade. Every issue, the Journal 's battery of critics, columnists, and and journalists take you on a round-the-world trip of the exciting comics medium —through no-holds-barred critiques, informative historical pieces, in-depth news reporting, idiosyncratic columns, and, of course, the Journal 's legendary interviews—exhaustive raps with the men men who make the comics. From The Yellow  Kid  to RAW, from Superman to Fritz the Cat, from Jack Kirby to Moebius, The Comics Journal is there.. .and you will be, too, if you subscribe today. Isn't it time you you knew what was going on in the world of comics? If you think so, so, just fill out the coupon at the bottom of this page and mail it to us (with a check or money order for the correct amount) and we'U we'U send you every every issue of The Comics Journal straight from the the printer. They just don't make deals like that any more. Send to: THE COMICS JOURNAL, 4359 Cornell Road, Agoura, CA 9130 91301 1 Dear

I

Joumal-ists,

I want the information and exchange of opinion I can get only in The Comics Journal. Enclosed is my check or money order for the number of issues checked below. If, at any time, I'm not satisfied, you will refund my money for all unmailed issues.

I I me the next 9 issues for only $17.95. (Outside • :Send $21.00 in U.S. funds) I U.S I • Send me the next 6 issues for only $12.95. (Outside I U.S : $15.00 in U.S. funds) • Send me the next 18 issues for only $32.50. (Outsid e I U.S.: $38.50 in U.S. funds) ! I

• Send me the next 6 issue s of the Journal  via first class mail for $24.00. (Outside U.S.: $30.00 in U.S. funds)

I

•

I |

• I'm already a subscriber. Please note my cha nge of address. My former zip code is:

This is a renewal subscription.

THE COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1 9 8 6

NAME.

ADDRESS. STATE.

CITY.

.ZIP.

Please send me the following back issues. Prices include postage. (Foreign orders; include extra 25« per back issue for postage.)

• • • Q • Q • • • • • • G

32 33 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 O 48

($2.00) ($2.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($4.00)

• • • • D • D • • • • • • •

49 51 52 53 54 55 56 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($6.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($8.00) ($3.00)

Q • • • • • • • • • • • • •

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

($3.00) ($4.00) ($4.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($4.00) ($3.00) ($4.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($3.00) ($5.00) ($4.00) ($3.00)

• • • • • • • • • • •

79 ($4.00) 80 ($4.00) 81 ($3.00) 82 ($3.00) 83 ($3.00) 84 ($3.00) 85 ($3.00) 86 ($3.00) 87 ($3.00) 88 ($3.00) 89 ($3.00) C3 90 ($4 00) • 91 ($4.00) • 92 ($4,001

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

93 ($4.00) 94 ($4.00) 95 ($4 00) 96 ($4.00) 97 ($4.00) 98 ($4.00) 99 ($4.00) 101 ($4.00) 102 ($4.00) 103 ($4 ($4 00) 104 ($4.00) 105 ($4.00) 106 ($4.00) 107 ($4.00)

EDITORIAL

The Direct Scries Shops  Have They Purposely Sold  Independent  Publishers  Down The River  Or Are They Simply Three Thousand   More Victims Of  Insidious Creeping Marvelism? It began auspiciously enough for the inde pendent publishers—the "direct market," that is. T h e idea was awesome when the late Phil proposed it to D C Co mic s in 1973: Seuling proposed he would sell their books "directly" to comic-book  shops, purchasing the books on a non-returnable basis in return for a higher discount. D C liked the soun d of it. Marvel Comics liked th e sound o f it, too, and began negotiations with Seuli ng a mon th later. later. A n d the ind epen den t press (such as it was before the adv ent o f the direct market ) also thought the idea was pretty keen. Much more was involved t h a n merely another way to sell comics. As heady as the concept of a comic-book shop was, the creative oportunities were just as exciting. Publishers, creators, and fans have eter nally longed for a more significant role among the forces that shape comics, an d they've always been thwarted by the vast minio ns of "snot-no sed kids" who formed the core of the comic-book buying public. the Snobs T h e Snot s outnum bered hundreds-to-one and t h u s dominated the market financially and creatively. If only that lowest lowest com mo n denom inat or reader reader ship could be elimin ated or suppressed, suppressed, the millenium would be u p o n us! Freed of this loathesome ballast and counselled by the wisdom of fans, creators would at last begin to produce the kind of innovative, sensesboggling work they've longed privately to create since they first put pen to paper. Projects like Bud Plant's publication of  Jack  Katz's The First  Kingdom (begun in 1976) and the Pinis' self-publication of  Elfquest  in 1 979 seemed to bo de well for for t he direct market. These books had no other outlet and the comic -book shops provided an informed market that greeted them enthusiastically. By 1980 Marvel's X-Men was selling over 100,000 copies on the direct market and in December of that year they debuted a brand new title, Dazzler, to a zealous readership of  over 4 0 0 , 0 0 0 . Even DC, whose embrace of  the direct market had to date been vegeJ A N S T R N A D is the editor  of  Fantagraphics line of  color   Books'  new Upshot  Graphics comics.

 By Jan Strnad  tatively slow compared to Marvel's, offered Xanadu to the direct market in  Madame 1981 and brought in more t h a n 100,000 readers. J j f  The independent publishers were racking up fewer sales, with Elfquest  selling in the 30,000-copy range by the end of  1980, FantaC o ' s Bah, Hembeck  selling* 10,000, an d Eclipse's Eclipse Monthly selling out 15,000 copies in 1981, but the signs were encourag ing: sales were on th e upswing, an d ano th er distributor, Pacific Comics Distributors, an nounced a new color comic-book line for May of 1981. Pacific Comics' offer to let writers and artists retain ownership of their material would soon have both Marvel and D C lookin g again again at their creators' creators' contracts and considering (and later instituting) royal ty payments for creators. Bu t look at things now. Pacific and other independent publishers have gone out of business. Independen t color com ic sales sales are on th e skids with many titles barely paying the printer with circula tions less t h a n 20,000—in some cases, sig nificantly less. And the overwhelming opi nion of many co mic-b ook dealers dealers them selves is that the best way to go b a n k r u p t fast is to put out a goo d bo ok . If it isn't a super-hero book tailored to the same sensi bility (or lack thereof) that sold more t h a n 9 0 0 , 0 0 0 copies of Marvel's Secret  Wars, th e book is suspect.

Where did the direct shops go wrong? Why have they failed to deliver on the pro mises they made a decade ago? Where was the potential for improvement of the medium squandered? Russ Ernst of Glenwood Distributors, in his February 1986 catalog sent to comic book dealers, opened his editorial by ask ing, "Are "Are the Publishers and Distributo rs writing off the Direct Sales Market?" He went on to share impressions he gleaned from from th e Star* Reach show show in Chi cag o last last July: most publishers are wooing chain stores to carry their products, hobby and gaming shops are now talking to publishers and distributors about carrying comic books, and most publishers are attending

trade shows such as those sponsored by the American Booksellers Booksellers Association Association (AB A) to pick up new outlets. Ernst is absolutely correct in discerning that publishers and distributors are (let me phrase it kindly, here) "less than optimistic" about? the direct shops as a whole reaching anyone other than the diehard comic-book  fan and the usual slavering Marvel zombies. forefront While Marv el and D C are at the forefront of  the search for alternative distributors, it is the independents who need such distribu tion most vitally. Casual readers of alternative (i.e. "nonsuper-hero" and "non-Marvel") material are not wandering into the direct shops. Most conspicuously absent are the older casual readers—older" meaning, in this context, post-adoles cent and "casual" meaning "noncollectors." And the reasons are fairly obvious. Most comic-book shops are located in dying malls or other low-rent areas where casual foot traffic is minimal. It doesn't take the vision of a Howard Chaykin or a George Romero to notice that modern shopping malls have become the hub of  Amer ican consum erism. You want shop pers? You want teenag ers? You want people with time to kill and money to spend? Go to your town' s biggest mall . Yes, Yes, th e rent is higher, but it's higher because the space is worth more. T h i s past Christmas season I got to visit a lot of big malls. They were all packed to the bursting point with desperate con sumers. I've yet to see a comic-book shop in any of them. What I have seen is Waldenbooks , B. Dalt on, and some kind of hobbygaming s to re .. . in virtually every every mall. A comic-book publisher must court these retailers in other to reach most consumers. T h e terms are outrageous, the cost is heavy, but a viable alternative doesn't exist. Location in such malls is out of the league of  most comic-book retailers, most of whom are under-capitalized for a major business endeavor. And the shops that do exist in high-traffic areas aren't likely to catch the eye of anyo ne wh o isn't heavily into supersuperheroes. Marvel and the super-hero mentality so strongly define the appearance of  comic book shops that most thinking adults would

be embarrassed to pass through th e door without an eight-year-old in tow. tow. Th e general teenage an d adult population still associates comic books with childhood an d relegates them to that adolescent period along with th e other "childish things" on e puts away with th e onset of maturity. Most

comic-book shops embody adolescent values (and again, th e lack thereof) in everything from shoddy displays that look  like like somet hing O ur Gang cobbled together to the pin-ups of She-Hulk tha t decorate th e walls. walls. Onl y a handful of stores resemb le an y place an ordinary (again, "non-fan") teenager or adult would want to enter or drag a friend to. Still, th e comic-boo k shops represented, represented, in th e mi d 7 0s an d early '80s, a significant step in the evolution of the industry: they demonstrated for all the world to see that there's money in them there funnybooks. They have, at least, appended a monetary value to what was once considered a dis posable commodity. :

No w th e established bookstores, book store chains, an d hobby shops are prepar in g to take th e industry to another evolu tionary rung. With luck, comic books will make th e leap from from "collectible oddity " to "occasionally readable literature." T h e owners of today's com ic- boo k shops resent the competition an d will level th e same charges at the chain stores that are levelled at comic-book dealers by the disgruntled fans of yesterda yesterday: y: they 've ta ken the fun out of  collecting an d made it a business, they only care abo ut money, etc. Bu t most would be hard put to defend themselves against similar charges, and the protest is ultimate ly futile: there's no turning back  an d there's no point in railing against inevitable change. From th e viewpoint of the independent publishers, th e bookstores, et al., offer th e best hope (albeit, a slight one) that comics have o f shedding their "kids' stuff" image and penetrating th e teen-age an d adult marketplace. Older readers—people wh o actually care about th e content  o£the books they buy, no t just their anticipated collec tor value—visit these shops. They are, at ^ least, in the damned store where an inde pendent publisher might theoretically reach on e or two of them with his or her product. It's a slender hope, but it's more t h a n th e Marvel-do minated com ic-b ook shops seem to offer these days. Just as comic-book  trading still goes o n in basements an d garages in spite of the specialty shops, so will t h e specialty shop continue to exist n o matter ho w many bookstores an d gameshops also carry com today's com ic shop owners will ics. Som e of today's survive an d some won't. Some will expand their merchandise to attract ne w buyers, and some won't. Some will invest in attrac tive displays an d decor to appeal to a wider audience, an d some won't. Those who do survive (in old diggings or new ones, with lots o f Japanese robot toys crowding t he shelves or without them) will surely have one trait in common: they will serve t he comic-book  fan better t h a n an y other

comic-book outlet in the area. What could help th e existing direct shops? Well, c o m m i t m e n t to selling as many copies o f every book  as possible wouldn't hurt. I'm continually amazed at retailers who sell out a book  an d never reorder it, even though it remains available from distributors an d publishers at normal wholesale prices. It seems to be too m u c h trouble to keep indepen dent titles in stock  long enough for t h e m to build their audi ences. T h e y are expected to perform as well, an d in the same manner, as this week's Marvels—they should leap off the shelf  in two weeks an d t h e n be relegated to the back-issue racks to appreciate. Wher e would would regular regular booksto res be if they followed this practice? A person wh o wants the latest paperback bestseller can get it almost anywhere, including th e grocery store where he goes virtually every day. T h e only advantage a bookstore ha s over a grocery store is its range o f material: current bestsellers, bestsellers, last mo nth 's bestsellers, classics, special editions, a good assortment of genre genre

books, and the ability t o special-order an y b o o k   in print. Comic-book shops Comic-book  shops need to offer th e same advantage over chain bookstores that bookstores offer over grocery stores. Anyone can sell this week's comics. Comic-book  shops need t o offer in addition a wide selec tion o f material from th e independent an d small press, ready access to back issues, an d a heartfelt commitment t o diversity. They need to make an extraordinary effort to ex pand th e comic-book readership beyond th e adolescent an d collector market. O r . . . maybe not. Maybe comic books in America really shouldn't  serve any purpose o t h e r t h a n th e codification an d vicarious release o f  adolescent male aggression an d the financial expl oitat ion of juveni le sexual perplexity. Hmm. Hang on to that hypothesis. I feel another editorial coming on. • [Thanks to Kim Thompson of  the direct market.]

for his chronology

FULL-TIME POSITION AVAILABLE: News Editor, Reporter, and an d Assistant to the Publisher

Journal C O M I C S J O U R N A L is l o o k i n g fo r someone passionately interested in jour nalism, comic art, and the publishing profession. T h e following skills ar e essential:

THE

* T h e Ability to organize your thoughts an d write well * Good spelling an d g r a m m e r , an d copy-editing * Good typing * A n ability to work  u n d e r pressure and in chaos * A n acute perception as the responsibility o f  j o u r n a l i s m * T h e willingness to w o r k   u n d e r a tyrannical, elitist monster and not go insane A la w degree with emphasis o n libel a n d defamation litigation would be helpful, bu t no t mandatory. I f you're interested in this position, address a letter to J O U R  N A L editor Gary Groth explaining why you w a n t th e job, describing your qualifica tions, a n d outlining your personal view as to th e journalist ic responsibili responsibilities ties of T H E C O M I C S J O U R N A L . S e n d to : THE

C O M I C S J O U R N A L , attn. Gary Groth, 4 3 5 9 Cornell Road, Agoura CA 9 1 3 0 1

COPYRIGHTS: p. 456 © 1986 Murphy  Anderson;  p. 38, © 1986 Sergio  Aragones;  p. 16b © 1986 Roger  Brand;  pp. 53b, 54, 55a © T986 Chester  Brown;  pp. 21c. 47b, 48  © 7986 Bob Burden;  pp. 46b, 56a  © 1986 Charles  Burns;  p. 21a © 1988  Milton  Canitf;  p. 42a © 1986 Capp  Enterprises;  p. 5 © 7986 Robert Crumb  «  Peter Bagge;  p. 28 © 1986 Clifford  Cobb, Jr.; 

p. 52, © T986 Dave Darrigo & R.G. Taylor; p. 15a  © 7985 DC Comics DC Comics Inc.; pp. 20, 29b, 30a, 30b, 47a, 49, 73, 74a  © 7986 DC Comics  Inc.; p. 55b © 7986 Buzz Dixon  & Attilo  Micheluzzi; p. 35b  © 7986 Will  Eisner; pp. 14, 34, 43b  © 7986 First  Com  ics, Inc.;  p. 33c © 7986 First  Comics, Inc & Howard  Chaykin, Inc.;  p. 15b  © 7986 Phil Fogllo  4 Robert  Asprin;  p. 95  © 7986 Dave Garcia  4 Monica  Sharp;  pp. 86-88 © Chas. Gillen;  p. 19a © 7965 Terry  Gilliam;  p. 33b  © 7986 Gilbert  Hernandez;  p. 30c  © 7986 Pedro Henry  4 Steve  Dillon;  p. 48c ©  1986  Rand  Holmes;  p. 21b©  1986  IPC Magazines  Ltd.; p. 4 ©  1985  Michael  Wm. Kaluta  4 Elaine  Lee; p. 46a  © 7986 Jack  Katz;  p. 35a  © 7986 Kitchen Sink  Press;  p. 22 © 1986 Los  1986 Los  Angeles Times 

Syndicate; p. 32c © 7986 Larry Marder; Marder; pp. 13, 19b, 24a, 27, 36, 37, 58b, 59-62, 63a, 64, 65b, 65c, 67a-c, 69a, 70-73a,76a. 80a, 92, 93 Marvel Comics  Group;  p. 38b  © 7986 McNaught Syndicate;  p. 33  © 7986 William  Messner-Loebs;  pp. 31b, 53a  © 7986 Alan Moore  & Garry  Leach;  p. 21e © 7986 NOW Comics;  p. 21d ©  7986 Harvey Pekar  4 Robert  Crumb;  p. 56c ©  7986 Peter  Poplaski;  p. 31, © 7986 Joshua Quagmire;  p. 32a © 7986 P. Craig  Russell;  p. 66b  © 7985 Ronald Searle;  pp.

3, 58a, 63b, 65a, 66c, 68, 69b, 74b, 75, 76b, 77  ©  7986 Bill Sienkiewicz; p. 29a © 7986 Dave Sim;  p. 22a © 7986 Steeldragon  Press;  p. 66a  Ralph  Steadman;  p. 44  © 7985 Dave Stevens;  pp. 32b. 45a  © 7986 Alex  Toth; p. Toth;  p. 22b  © 7986 TRU  Studios;  p. 11 © 7986 Timothy  Truman;  p. 42-43  ©  7986 Universal Press Syndicate;  p. 17, 67d  © 7985 Washington Post Writers  Group;  p. 97 © 7986 Western Publishing  Company;  p 56b © 7986 Mark  Wheatley.

ADVERTISING Original advertisements  may be submitted  be submitted  in any size  any size  propor  tional  to the printed the printed size. All sizes  All sizes  are image are image area: don't leave  any margins. Reduction  is free. is free. No four-way No four-way bleeds except  on  covers, please; our printer can't accommodate  it.

(Journal

Th e Magazine of  News & Criticis m

P U B L I S H E R : The Comics Journal, Inc.

Full page: $120.00 (Printed size:  7" x 10") 

E D I T O R : Gary G. Groth M A N A G I N G E D I T O R : Tom Heintjes

Two thirds page: $85.00 (Printed size:  4 314"  4 314"  x 10"  vertical)  (Printed size:  7" x 6 3/4"  square) 

A R T D I R E C T O R : Tom Mason PRODUCTION

A S S I S T A N T S : Pattie Mullins-Randall, Dave Nelson

C O R R E S P O N D E N T : Bhob Stewart ASSOCIATE

Payment  for advertisements for  advertisements must accompany  all ads. Make  or money orders payable  to The Comics The Comics Journal. checks  or money

E D I T O R : Dale Luciano

C O L U M N I S T S : Scott Edelma n, R. R. Fiore, R.C. Harvey, Richard Marschall, Peter Sanderson, Carter Scholz, Bill Sherman C O N T R I B U T I N G W R I T E R S : Russell Freund, Heidi D. MacDonald, Bill Mason, Steve Monaco, Adam Philips, Gene Phillips, Kenneth Smith, Bhob Stewart, Jan Strnad, Ted White, Lee Wochner

Half page: $65.00 (Printed size:  4 3/4" x 71/4"  island)  (Printed size:  7" x 5"  horizontal)  Third page: $45.00 (Printed size:  2 1/4"  2  1/4"  x 10" vertical)  10" vertical)  (Printed size:  4 3/4" x 5"  island)  (Printed size:  7" x 3 3/8"  horizontal) 

' 

C O N T R I B U T I N G A R T I S T S : Chas. Gillen, Jaime Hernande z, Kevin Kevin Nowlan, Brian Pearce

All ads should  be camera be camera ready. There is a  is  a $5.00 $5.00 charge tor any  continuous tones that are not prepscreened. If you If you are unable to  produce your own  ad, we can p% it together  it  together  for you  for you  at cost. .

T Y P E S E T T I N G : Linda M. Gorell and Arlene Easter C I R C U L A T I O N : Julie Strnad and K-Tron A D V E R T I S I N G : Kim Thompson

For regular advertisers, reduced rates  (up to 20% off) are  available. Please inquire  for rate  for rate  card.

P R O M O T I O N : Andrew Christie P R O D U C T I O N M A N A G E R : Kim Thompson

If you nave to  get in get in touch touch with us fqs any reason, call us at  us  at (818)  (818)  706-7606  at any time any time between noon  and midnight and midnight (West Coast  time)  and ask for Kim for Kim Thompson. We will  We will  be happy  be happy  to help to help you  in answering  any  questions.

M A S C O T : Gretchen Meyer P R I N T E D A T : Port Publications, Port Washington

T h e C o m i c s Journal is distributed by:

AD DEADLINES

ANDROMEDA PUBLICATIONS LTD.. 367 Queen Street West, Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 24A, Canada (416) 593-9894 BUD PLANT, INC., P O Box Box 1886, 1886, Grass Valley, Valley, CA 95945, U.S.A. (916) (916) 273-9588 273-9588 CAPITAL CITY DISTRIBUTORS, 2827 Perry Street, Madison, Madison , Wl 53713, U.S.A. (608) 274-8987

Bldg. , 1401 Fairfax Trafficway, Kansas City, KS 66115, U.S.A. CAVCO, INC.. 114 'A " Bldg., (913) 281-5240

:.

We need your  ad by  ad by  the first  the first  of the of the month previous  to the to the month  in ships. (If you want  you want  to advertise  to advertise  in the  the issue your  ad is in ships. June issue, we need we need your  ad by May  1st, etc.) We etc.) We can  usually  if you reserve an ad ahead  stretch the deadlines by several days  if you of time, though. ,

DIAMOND DISTRIBUTORS, 1720 Belmont Belmont Ave , Baltimore, MD 21207. 21207. U S A (301) 298-1184

SUBSCRIPTIONS

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS, 4359 Cornell Road, Agoura, CA 91301, U.S.A. (818) 706-7606

Subscriptions begin with  the issue the issue published after  the  current  issue. If you want you want your subscription  to start to start with  the  current  issue, please enclose  an  additional  $1.00 and specify and specify which  issue  you want  you want  it to start to start with.

Vandalia, Collinsville Collinsville,, GLENWOOD DISTRIBUTORS, 124 Vandalia, (618) 345-1027

SECOND GENESIS, (503) 281-1821

1314 1314 S.E

Harrison, Harriso n,

Portland, Port land,

IL 62234, 62234, US A .

OR O R 97232, U.S.A.

STYX COMICS SERVICE, 1858 Arlington Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 1W6, Canada. (204) 586-8547

St. , Morristown. NJ 07960, 07960, U.S.A. SUPERHERO ENTERPRISES, 70 Morris St., (201) 455-1211 TITAN DISTRIBUTORS. Ltd.. P.O. Box 250, London E34RT. England. (01) 836-6167

INDEX T O ADVERTISERS

Aircel

83,90

Captain Jack

89

Russ Cochran

44

Comico

28,57

The Comics Journal The Complete Dickie Dare Critters DC Comics

8

inside back

cover 

back

cover  50-51

N a m e It Renegade

4,5

39

Press

40

.

12 issues: $35.00 (foreign: $39.00)  6 issues: $18.50 (foreign: 21.50)  6 issues first class: $30.00  6 issues foreign  air mail:  $45.00  When  you change you change your address, be sure  be sure  to notify  to notify  us at  least  four weeks  in advance  in advance  by giving  by giving  us both us both your old address  and  zip code (preferably your mailing label)  and your  and your  new  address  and  zip  code. We also We  also recommend that  you leave  you  leave  an  order  guaranteeing forwarding postage  for second for  second class mail with  your local postmaster. When we  do not receive  not receive  a change  a change  of ad  of  ad  dress  in time, in time, we do not  do  not take take responsibility for lost or destroyed  copies  that, were mailed  to the old  address.

CONTRIBUTIONS

:.

THE COMICS JOURNAL is always is always interested  in receiving in receiving con  tributions—articles, essays, reviews, cartoons, and  art—from  our readers. We can't We can't print everything  we receive, we receive, but we give  we give  all contributions careful consideration. We try to reply  to  reply  to all  submissions within  six weeks. six weeks. Please enclose a self-addressed  stamped envelope for the return of your contribution  itself. Please  address  all  contributions  to:  T h e Editors, T H E C O M I C S JOURNAL, 4359 Cornell Road, Agoura, CA 91301,

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1 9 8 6

#I
NEWSWATCH Marvel's art return on hold Marvel cites collapse of warehouse shelving as reason for halting art return Marvel Comics has ceased to return original art from the '60s and early '70s that it has been storing in its warehouse since the early '60s. The reason, according to Marvel's promotional director for the direct-sales market, Carol Kalish, is an accident in the warehouse that resulted in massive disarray, and the resultant inability to send pages out o f the warehouse. Several artists who did work for for Marvel in the '60s and '70s have reported that original art, which had been sent to them every few weeks, has not arrived arriv ed in at least two months.   Bizarre memo: Kalish told the  Journal that she had received a

"very bizarre memo" from the original art warehouse about two months ago, informing informing her that the shelving on which artwork was stored had rusted through and collapsed. "The pages pages are more mixed up than they were before," Kalish said. "The memo said we couldn't ship anything down to the warehouse because of the condition it was in, so now we've got files all through the hallways with stuff that would have other wise been in the warehouse." Marvel's original art normally is shipped to the warehouse, to be sent out with the older art that Marvel is returning. Cliff Biggers, co-owner of Dr. No's, an Atlanta retail shop, said he and two other retailers spoke to Kalish at the Glenwood Glenwood Distri Distri  butors retailers' meeting, held in Las Vegas in late January. Biggers said the retailers spoke to Kalish specifically to address Marvel's Marvel 's withholding of  Jack Kirby's original art, but Kalish told them that no artists are receiving their originals back, due to the newly disorganized state of the ware house. "She said the the braces on

the shelves had collapsed and fallen down, and that other shelves had fallen over," Biggers said. "Art's supposed to be scattered all over the place, and it's a further delay in getting the art back to the artists." Stemmed  flow: Artists who had been receiving originals from Marvel said that what had been a somewhat erratic trickle of pages has now stopped completely. "They had been coming in a few getting used at a time, and I was getting to it," said Dick Ayers, a Marvel veteran from the '60s. "I was walking around the other day, wondering what happened to them." Ayers added that he hasn't received pages in nearly two months. (Kalish told the Journal  the memo indicated indicated tha t the warehouse accident occurred in late 1985.) Ayers also said he didn't contact Marvel as to the reason behind thje thje disruption. "I was wondering i" they stopped sending them out because of the problems with Jack," he added. Joe Sinnott, who had worked for for Marvel from the late '50s through the present, said last December he noticed a halt in return of his originals. "I called Marvel and said that by the time they get around to giving us oldtimers all of our pages, we won't be around anymore," he said. Another Marvel veteran, Don Heck, said he hasn't gotten any originals in nearly six months. "I don't know what's taking them so figure they'll long to do it, but I figure get around to it when they get around to it." Steve Ditko, who worked prolifically lifically for Marvel in in the '50s and '60s also said he hasn't been sent any of his art for several months, adding that he never received it on any "really regular" basis.

TH E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

Unlikely mess: One former Marvel staffer who catalogued all of  Marvel's original art in 1976 (and again in 1980 ) said the reason Marvel is giving for not returning the art is "ridiculous." "ridiculous ." Irene Vartanoff, who catalogued over 35,000 pages of original art at the behest of Marvel's Finance Director Barry Kaplan, said she didn't believe the shelves could

have collapsed or fallen over. "Some of the shelves had rust on them, but that was because Marvel would only buy used shelving," she said. "The rustiest shelves didn't have art on them, and the rusty ones that did  have art art on them didn't have rust on the braces that supported them." The dimensions of the shelves were another factor that caused

 In 1980, the shelves supporting Marvel's original art were in excellent shape, claims  a former Marvel  employee. 1

\ 

9

Vartanoff  to scoff at Marvel's claim that the shelves have fallen over. She said the shelves were 15 inches from front to back. "For something like that to fall over, it would take a lot of force—like someone pushing real hard," she said. "Personally, I don't know know a lot about rust, but I don't think rust can knock over a wide shelf  with 100 pounds of art on it. "If  the braces rusted, I'd think that they would, simply be that much harder to take apart, Varta noff added. "I find it implausible that the shelves would simply collapse, much less fall forward—but the way Marvel runs things, I guess it's conceivable that they would allow the roof  to fall in." Finally, the alphabetized system by which Vartanof  had organized the artwork would have prevented pages being seriously mixed up, she said. "Even if one shelf had fallen, and knocked over another shelf, which knocked over another shelf, and so on, the pages would still be arranged roughly aphabetically," Vartanoff  said "They would just be on the floor.

"And if it's on the floor, they should still be able to send the art out," she added. "It's a pretty laughable story—if a company is too disorganized to do it, they should just say, 'We're too disorganized to do it.'"   Art in the future: Kalish declined to say when the art return would proceed again, as did Steve Saffel, Marvel's assistant assistant promotional director for the direct-sales market. In fact, Saffel Saffel said he knew nothing about the situation in the warehouse, and had not seen the memo Kalish received. receiv ed. "I'm not not sure anything anything has happened," he said. Editor-inchief  Jim Shooter could not be reached for comment. But whatever the reason, Marvel has ceas|ftl returning the art that it had had pf&iously pf&io usly been sending out. No one knows when Marvel will begin returning original art but as Don Heck put it, "It won't be too soon. We've waited long enough for this." - T H  Have these shelves rusted clear rusted  clear through in six years? That's the reason Marvel's  giving for the art return stoppage.

Eclipse Offices Flooded Northern California disaster swamp independent publisher's home and offices Eclipse Comics' offices have have been flooded by the incessant storms that pounded California in midFebruary. Eclipse publisher Dean Mullaney Mull aney and Editor-in-Chief Cat Yronwode also lost their home in the flooding, which has killed 15 people.   Recovery efforts: Yronwode said their home in Guerneville was submerged by the cresting Russian River before the flood waters reached the offices, which are in the same town of 900. Eclipse's offices offices are located located on the second-story of a building. Yronwode said that although the water engulfed the first floor, the weather predictions said the water shouldn't reach the second floor. However, the predictions proved wrong, as the water continued to rise until the second floor became endangered. At that point," Mullaney began transporting material from the second floor to the third floor, in an effort effort to salvage as much of the Eclipse offices as he could. Mullaney's time was limited,

however, according to Mark Evanier, who, besides writing  DNAgents and Crossfire for Eclipse, is also acting as temporary liaison between creators and Eclipse. Evanier said Army helicopters were evacuating everyone from Guerneville, and as a result, Mullaney had only one hour to transport everything he could fron one floor to the next. In this manner, Mullaney was able to salvage such irre placeable items as original art, but office equipment remained there, soon engulfed. Yronwode said Mullaney dove from the office into the rising waters to get a rowboat, which he then rowed back to the offices to get Yron wode and editorial assistant Sean Deming. Once in the the rowboat, rowboat , they went to higher ground where they were taken to a Red Cross shelter. Yronwode said evacuees were allowed to carry with them items that would fit inside a purse or equally small piece of baggage.  Losses: Yronwode didn't have an estimate of the losses Eclipse

suffered, adding adding that she and Mullaney didn't have home owner's insurance on their house because they were renting it. Yronwode said she lost her collection of 78 rpm and LP records, her collection of 19th century agriculture books, her and Mullaney's personal comic book collection, as well as Eclipse's entire backstock of  publications, which was stored at the house. "We lost just about all of  our personal possessions," she said. "And when the water recedes, we expect to find one or two feet of mud in the house." As for the business, Yronwode said Eclipse didn't have flood insurance because the offices are not in a flood zone. zo ne.  Repartitions: Yronwode, who along with Mullaney and other evacuees had been put up at a Super 8 Motel near the floodstricken Sonoma County, said none of the affected residents are certain of what they will recover financially from either the insurance companies or from the

government. (California Gov. George Deukmejian Deukmejian has declared Sonoma, Humboldt, and Napa Counties disaster areas.) "It's just too soon to know," Yronwode said. "Nobody here knows what they're going have yet."  Delays: While the flood did affect Eclipse's schedule, the setbacks were not as bad as they could have been, Yronwode Yronwode said. "When we saw that the water was going to reach the the offices, we sent all the art we could to the printer by Federal Express," she said. (Federal Express halted services in the flood-stricken areas on Feb. 13, Yronwode Yronwode said. ) However, even though Yronwode and Mullaney got as many books as they could to the printer and Evanier, several books did suffer scheduling scheduling setbacks: the one-shot Crisis On Infinite Earths Index has been delayed indefinitely ("We have no idea how late it will be," Yronwode said);  Miracleman #7 and DNAgents HI  will be delayed by two or three weeks; and Scout HI might be as

NEWSWATC much at two weeks late. (The case of Scour #7 is a case of an unfortunate coincidence. Normally, Pennsylvania artist Tim Truman both writes and draws the book, but issue #7 was the first one drawn by a fill-in artist—Tom Yeates, who lives in Jenner, California, which is located in Sonoma County.) Yronwode said the delays are not because the original art was destroyed in the flood, but because becau se the original art is in the the third-floor office office where Mullaney stored them, and the government is not allowing any one back in in Guerneville. Guerneville. Thus, the artwork languishes, and Yronwode is unable to retrieve it to send it to the printer. For the present, Yronwode and Mullaney have instructed Eclipse freelancers to send their work to Evanier, who lives in Los Angeles. Evanier said he is basically working in a trafficking function, receiving art and scripts, and sending them out to the appropriate freelancers. Additionally, he is doing limited production work on the pages, such as putting on page numbers, which he received from Yronwode and Mullaney. Mullaney. "I'm kind kind of a designated pinch-hitter, he said. "Cat and Dean need two or three office back in weeks to put their office shape, and I'm going to try to take the running of the business off their backs." Evanier added that shortly after Yronwode was airlifted from the offices, "the first thing she did was to call me, to make sure that something something had gotten to the printer in time."  Benefit book: Evanier also said he has begun going about putting together a book whose proceeds would go to Yronwode and

Scout #7: #7: One of the titles delayed by the  flood. Mullaney. So far, he has gotte n' commitments from Sergio Aragones, Steve Gerber, Jerry Ordway, Dan Spiegle, Marv Wolfman, and Len Wein. He added, however, that he had collected these names in less than one day, and said in all likelihood there would be more creators involved in the book. Neither a publisher nor a publishing date has been confirmed, Evanier said.  From dry ground up: Yronwode said she and Mullaney will set about rebuilding rebuilding their th eir home and their business after the flood waters recede. She said they are not yet sure what will be salvageable in either their home or their office, since the'flood waters had not yet receded. "But nobody's stopped working, includ ing us," she said. "All "All it's going to take is some time and hard work—but what else is new?" -TH-

T Jack Kirby's art ar t struggle receives media attention J^ck Kirby's struggle with Marvel Comics over possession of his original art is receiving media attention outside the comics press. Angeles-based radio A Los Angeles-based station devoted the January 24 segment of its popular culture talk-show to Kirby's situation, and Los Angeles' Channel 5 evening spotlighted Kirby's plight in news spotlighted its February 17 broadcast.

On television: Channel 5's Sam Chu Lin went to the Kirby home to talk to Kirby and his wife, Roz, about his dispute with Marvel. The segment, about three

minutes long, opened with the anchorman saying, "Comic-book artist Jack Kirby is known known for his creations such as Captain America and other super-star characters who battle against evil—but Kirby is now fighting a battle of his own." Then, Kirby was shown at his drawing board while Lin's voice-over said, "Almost every youngster who's read a comic book has enjoyed the work of  Jack Kirby. Whenever you mention Spider-Man, Captain America, the Hulk, or the Fantastic Four, just to name a few, fens say you're talking about

Jack Kirby, the artist who all but made Marvel Comics the success it is today." Lin also held up to the cameras the inside front cover of  Journal #105, which reprinted the agreement Marvel is demanding Kirby to sign as a condition to receiving his original art. "But Kirby refuses to sign it, with good reason," Lin said. "If Kirby Kirby signs the release form, he could never sell any of his work, and Marvel could delete his name as creator of any of the comic-book characters." According to the agreement".. .the Artist.. .will not commercially exploit the Artwork," and "The Artist shall further never object.. .to any revision, modification or new material based upon. . .the Artwork." The television broadcast included Roz Kirby, who was on camera long enough to say, "Marvel is a billionaire outfit, and they've never given Jack one cent outside of [his original page rate]."

"Hour 25": Every Friday evening at 10 p.m., KPFK (91.1 FM) broadcasts a program devoted to discussions of popular culture. Bill Liebowitz, owner of Los Angeles' Golden Apple retail shop, is a member of the organization COBRA (ComicBook Retailers Association of Los Angeles), and he approached "Hour 25" host Mike Hodel with the idea of broadcasting a series of  segments devoted to comic books. According to Liebowitz, Hodel had just recently beco me aware of the controversy sur rounding Kirby's artwork, and wanted the first broadcast dedicated to "Creative Control in Comics," with Kirby's plight as the focal point. The show's guests were co-host Arthur Byron Cover, Mark Evanier, Steve Gerber, Frank Miller, and Kirby. Although the men were invited to talk about ownership and creative control of material, the show became a forum in which partici pants and callers alike deplored Marvel's withholding of Kirby's artwork. The show began with Kirby summarizing the controversy. "They sent the artwork release to me, but my release was quite different from the others. It was a release I couldn't sign," he said. "They created a situation where I was just strapped—it became a legal thing, and I'm sorry about the circumstances. But it was they who sent the release to me, and it was I who couldn't sign it."

Miller spoke next, emphasizing emphasizing the importance of the issue to the comics industry. "It's very important to keep in mind we're talking about an extraordinary situation here," he said. "Jack's art is the basic stuff  that has turned Marvel into the most powerful comic-book publisher in the country. Full-time, all the time now, they're using ideas he turned into words and pictures. Anyone in the industry, anyone near it, knows what his contribu tion was, and Marvel is refusing refusing to acknowledge this, and they are now refusing to return to him him his artwork. "I've read the document they want him to sign," Miller added. "It's the most offensive legal creation I've ever seen." Evanier noted that Kirby created the bulwark of the current Marvel Universe. "Marvel Universe has one page apiece for each of Marvel's characters—if  you go through the book and 'X' out the characters Jack had nothing to do with, you wouldn't wouldn't 'X ' out many characters. "It is not uncommon for an artist applying for work at Marvel to be handed old Jack Kirby comi cs and told, 'This is what we want,'" Evanier said. "That was done to me," Miller said. Evanier continued to talk about Kirby's influence influence on the field. "To this day, there are artists who make their living tracing old Jack Kirby panels, rearranging them slightly—amending slightly—amending them for their own purposes—and they call it their work." Miller went so far as to call Kirby's work in resuscitating Marvel the salvation of industry. "The conditions of the industry have been very bad off and on, and the turnabout in the '60s really comes from Jack's work," he said. "It followed a period of  pretty dismal, downward sales, and I believe Jack has repeatedly bailed the industry industry out, singlehandedly." Hodel asked Kirby how the situation arose whereby Marvel can lay claim to Kirby art, and Kirby said, "I don't know—maybe I didn't know enough or think enough about it. All I can do is guess." Hodel was quick to reply. "Jack, I don't think it's a case of  you not knowing enough or not thinking enough about it—it's a case of a lack of respect for a recognized artist, a major  recognized artist, recognized by the firm that is is screwing you, if 1 may use the term, and I may," he

NEWSWATC said. "It's my show." The shame factor: Evanier brought up the case of  Jerry Siegel and Joe Sinister, the creators of Superman, who won a stipend from DC Comics after national media attention was brought upon the corporation.

ashamed. "I think Marvel Comics should be aware of the ill will that this spectacle is causing," he said. "It's going to make people less inclined, and even a little ashamed, ashame d, to get deeply involved with Marvel."  Enter the lawyers: Hodel asked

material, and he's given years of    joy, given us our livelihoods," livelihoods," he added. "I thin think k we can co me to his side on this—I don't think we should ask him how he's going to pursue it." Hodel then asked what comics reaaders could do. Gerber emphasized emphasized the importance of a

 Jack Kirby, Mark Evanier, and  Frank Miller.

Gerber said the men won the money because executives at Warner Communications (DCs parent company) had "an attack of  conscience," and added that Marvel's management is going to have a similar attack before Kirby gets his artwork back. "I think if  Jim. Shooter or Michael Hobson or Jim Galton thought of them selves as the people who are—I'll use a very strong term here, knowing it wouldn't wouldn't hold up in in court—holding Jack Kirby's work hostage, as people who should be ashamed of what they are doing, as people who are going to have to go home and look at their kids at night. . . sometimes those deci sions have to be reached on that basis," he said. Hodel then asked whether Marvel could be shamed into returning Kirby's artwork. "I think they can be shamed," Gerber said. "The question is, would would it work?" Miller added that Marvel need not only worry about being

Kirby how he was communicating with Marvel, and Kirby told him that his lawyers write to Marvel, but that Marvel's lawyers don't reciprocate. "I'll do it legally, but I can only work according to my own resources," he said. "It's a hard battle—I do it slowly, I do it piecemeal. I'll probably do it until I. .. it's a thing that lasts a long, long time. "Probably when I'm 93, my lawyer may send another letter, and wait maybe two years for a reply," Kirby said. Miller's contention was that Kirby shouldn't shouldn't have to hire a lawyer to contend with Marvelthat fighting fighting for Kirby's artwork is the moral obligation of comic book and and professional. profession al. "My personal feeling is, it's not Jack's  job." he said. "The comic-book professionals, professionals, and and especially the readers, should exercise whatever voice they have in support of  him. "He has already given Marvel billions of dollars' worth of 

letter-writing campaign to Marvel. "Address them to Jim Shooter [Marvel editor-in-chief], Jim Galton [president], and Michael Hobson [vice-president/publish ing]," he said. "And only send them Xeroxes—don't send them your originals." Miller concurred with Gerber—send letters to Marvel, but to one other place as well. "Since God did invent paper shredders, send a copy of your letter to The Comics Journal, who's generally spearheading this protest," he said. He added, though, one other way in which he thought fans could bring pressure to bear on Marvel: by signing the petitions the Journal  has distributed to comics shops across the country. "I think comic-book fans should roll this issue around in their minds and think about what they want out of  their comics, and what they're willing to put up with, because this is an assault on human dignity." Miller said. Hodel asked

Miller about his article in Journal  #105, in which Miller said the mention of Kirby's name has been causing silence and uneasiness on the part of many comics profes sionals. "It happened many times when the subject came up," he said. "I hdpe it's a temporary effect; I hope it's a simple stroke of  fear running through the industry, and I hope mat, at the very least, the rest of the , professionals join in signing the  Journal's petition. "This is one of the very few  huge issues to strike the industry," Miller added. "It's really up to each artist's conscience whether he partici pates in supporting Jack—we owe him, very simply, our livelihoods."  Boycott?: Toward the end of the " show, Hodel allowed listeners to phone in questions. One caller asked about the feasibility feasibility of an economic boycott against Marvel. Gerber addressed the proposition. "Forgive the comparison, but I don't think it'll work with work Kaddafi and I don't think it'll work with Marvel—for the same reason," he said. "The European allies are a little too addicted to whatever product is coming out of  Libya that they feel they have to continue to buy, and most of the readers of Marvel comics are in the same position." A few minutes later, Marvel artist Paul Smith called in to the show. "I don't think that an an economic boycott should be put out of thought," he said. "Certainly the rnan deserves his artwork back, and I think it's ah awful situation." Ge rber asked Smith if he had written a letter to Marvel to express his opinion, and Smith said he hadn't. "But I've talked to Jim [Shooter] about it from time to time, and I got the same thing he said in San Diego, where he feels it should be Jack's, yet at the same time he has this other story about the way Marvel policy is not anything he disagrees with." (See Journal  #104, "Newswatch.") Evanier closed out the radio broadcast by urging listeners to consider that comics professional professionalss everywhere, like comics fens, owe Kirby a debt of gratitude for his contributions to the field. "This is not just Jack asking for help," he said. "This is all of us in the field—Marv Wolfman's in the other room nodding his head. I speak for a lot of people in this business. We are all aware of  Jack's contribution to this field. Very simply, if he had not not done

NEWSWATC what he did for, at the time, very low wages and incredible work, there would not be a comic-book industry as we know it today. today. "I feel that getting back Jack's originals is the least of it," he continued. "The industry owes him a lot more than just those pages. . .whatever hasn't been stolen out of the warehouse over the years. If you care about comic books, and if you care about about the people who have given you all that pleasure over the

years, then you have to care about Jack Kirby and the contribution

he made to this field. "Too often we see only the up side of comics, and we all would like to live there and dwell in that," Evanier concluded. "There's "Ther e's a_ down-side and there's a lot of sweat that goes into creating these books, and I think think it's about time Jack got a little more respect, and a little more recognition from the sweat he put into this industry." -TH-

MarvePs secret new universe The press release was unequivocal: "This is going to be the most spectacular comics event in the last 25 years," Editor-inChief Jim Shooter said. "We're making comics history again, and everyone has the chance to get in on the ground floor." With this announcement, Marvel revealed how it will celebrate its 25th birthday: this summer, eight new series will debut, comprising Marvel's "New Universe." While the release, written by press liaison Steve Saffel, didn't name any titles or creators who will work on on the books, it did did list the architects behind the New Universe: Eliot Brown, Tom DeFalco, Archie Goodwin, Mark Gruenwald, and Shooter created whatever characters and concepts the New Universe will contain. Saffel refused to tell the Journal whether any of them would write

1986—THENEWUMVERSE! IT ALL BEGINS THIS SUMMER.

or edit the books. Also, as per Marvel's long-standing royalty plan, each of the men will receive a percentage of the cover price for creating the new charac ters. The actual percentage of  royalties will be dictated by each creator's involvement in the specific books, which has not been made public yet. Shrouded  Universe: Aside from the press release (dated Jan. 1, 1986), Marvel has released no further information on the New Universe. Univer se. "It's all very, very classified, and there's nothing we're telling anyone," said one Marvel staffer, who spoke on the condition that he not be identi fied. He added, though, that since four of the eight books are debuting debuting in July (the rest will appear in August), Maud's April solicitation forms to retailers will contain specific information about the books. "The se crecy crec y won't won't be going on much longer," the staffer said. One thing Marvel has made clear is that that the New Universe Univer se will be "completely selfcontained," according to the press release, and that all of the new je. characters will interact with one^ another, "just as in the Marvel Universe." At the the Glenwood Glenwood Distributors retailer meeting, held last January in Las Vegas,. Marvel's manager for the direct-sales market, Carol Kalish, revealed some of the details behind the New Universe. According to Cliff Biggers, coowner of Dr. No's, a retail shop in Atlanta, Kalish said the books' imprint would indeed be "New Universe," with the Marvel name elsewhere on the cover, less prominently, similar to the Star Comics line. Also, according to Biggers, she said the books will be standard-format 75-cent books that will receive both newsstand and direct-sales distribution. The

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

books will also be ongoing series, not limited ones. Biggers added that Kalish told him the books would feature individual heroes, her oes, at least one team book, and non-costumed heroes. The heroes will be mutants, although since the New Universe is self-contained, there won't be any X-Men cross-overs, she said. "But that'll that'll probably probably last until the sales drop," Biggers said. Kalish did confirm to the  Journal  what she told Biggers, adding that there would be at least one male lead character in one of the books, and at least one female lead. Kalish also said the use of mutants in the New Uni verse vers e was a natural one. "Mutants are not something that Marvel is all of a sudden preoccupied with," she said. "Saying a char acter is a mutant is a way of  saying that that character's powers are ingrained, and not generated by a costume." As for the tone of the books, Biggers said Kalish told him the books will be "grittier." "She said it would be more violent, people will bleed and get hurt," he said, adding that she men tioned in particular the first two or three issues of  77K? Punisher limited series as being similar to

the tone of the books in the New Universe. Kalish's comment to the  Journal  about the tone of the New Universe books being more gritty and violent was, "Some will, some won't." So names named: Biggers said he tried to get Kalish to specify some of the creators who would be working on the books. (The press release only said "the leading writers w riters and artists in comics today" would be working on the titles.) "I told Carol that I would name artists, and if I hit the right name, she s he could blink twice twic e or something," Biggers siad. "But she wouldn't wouldn't drop any hints at all." The only piece of  art that has surfaced regarding the New Universe is the one that's been used as Marvel's advertise ment for the line (see the illustration accompanying this story). "Carol told me that most of  them [the New Universe writers and artists] have worked for Marvel before, or are working for them now, but that includes

everyone in comic s, Biggers said. Kalish said the reason behind the secrecy was that Marvel was presenting the line to Toyfair for merchandising purposes, and that Marvel didn't

Second guessing the second universe Between Marvel Comic s' "New Universe" and John Byrne's forthcoming work on the Superman books for DC Comics, this summer promises to tie up a substantial amount of retailer capital, as shop owners try to divine what the biggest seller s wilt be, and try to order accordingly. Russ Ernst, president of  Glenwood Distr ibutors, said the flood of product that historically falls during the summer months will be even heavier this summer, due to the high powered products coming from both Marvel and DC. "It's going to be hard on the consumer, as well as the retailers. This summer's got all the makings of a Black Summer," Ernst said, referring to 1983's Black September, which occurred when there was more product on the market than could be bought by consumers. Cliff Biggers, co-owner of  Atlanta's Dr. No's, said he was optimistic about the summer projects, although he questioned DCs commercial tactics of first releasing releasing Byrne's Superman a s a

bi-weekly six-part mini-series, and then introducing Byrne's regular Superman Superman series. "D Cs screwing up by giving us two Superman #ls," he said. "I can't afford to promote a mini-series with another regular series coming up that will have another first issue. "DC has been telling us, 'Oh, you won't mind when you see it,' but it doesn't look like we have any choice but not to mind it." Biggers said his orders on the mini-series will probably be onethird of what they otherwise would have been.  Bank it, don't bag it: Ernst said as a remedy to the looming possibility of a "Black Summer," he is using an old motto of his: "Bank it, don't bag it," which Ernst translates as meaning that retailers should should order conserva tively enough that a product does not sit unsold, tying up otherwise "With a summer liquid assets. "With like this one coming up, I don't want any of my accounts to have their money sitting in a storage room," he said. -TH-

13

NEWSWATCH want anyone to see character sketches before a potential licensee had its chance. While she did confirm that character sketches exist, she declined to name the artists who rendered them. However, industry insiders said Marvel has not yet lined up either creative teams nor characters to star in the books. Saffel Saffel declined comment. Saffel said he didn't know know whether the New Universe books

would carry the traditional traditional Marvel blurb, "Stan Lee Presents," since publisher Lee had nothing to do with the creation of the New Universe. Why the big secret?: Biggers said Kalish told him that Marvel wanted wanted to give the New Universe a promotional push that advance information could deflate. But, as the anonymous staffer said, April will tell. -TH-

First Comics to experiment with newsstand distribution this spring For the first time, a direct-sales

publisher is putting its books on newsstands. First Comics is placing four of its monthly comics in 250 retail outlets in a four-month experiment that, if  successful, will continue and expand. First Comics publisher Rick Obadiah said plans for the initial four-month plan extend to only 250 outlets in Chicago and its environs—known to the locals as Chicagoland. During those four months, beginning in April, the experiment will be monitored closely, and if sales allow for it,

Obadiah will slowly expand and evolve the program over more areas. The vanguard: The four books that will be the entrants in the program are Nexus (beginning with issue #22), Badger (with issue #13), American Flagg! (with issue #31), and Grimjack (with issue #24). Obadiah said the books were chosen for a number or reasons, one of them being the

price spread. TwrsST the books are $1.25 (American Flagg! and Grimjack), and two of them are $1.75 (Nexus and Badger). Obadiah said he hoped the slick art and science-fiction themes of   Nexus would translate into newsstand sales, while Badger was included because it's a consistently good seller for First in the direct-sales market, and Obadiah said he expects the same to be true in the specially selected newsstand market. Flagg! was chosen to be in the program because, he said, the book is a Grimjack was included because of  its status as a "solid seller," as well as the fact that First wanted another $1.25 book in the program. Obadiah said he didn't include Shatter in the program, even though it has already had extensive distribution outside the direct-sales market, because of  the book's bi-monthly status. "The success of the program depends on monthly books," Obadiah said, he added that Jon Sable, Freelance was among the contender s for inclusion in strong contenders the program, but when the book went from $1.25 to $1.75, it was dropped from consideration. Starting at home: Obadiah said there were a number of reasons First (which is based in Chicago) decided to send out its four-color feelers in Chicagoland. According to Obadiah's sales account for First about 10 per cent of the direct-sales market's business. (John Davis, co-owner of Capital City Distribution, said his figures give First a 7 per cent market share, but added that the figure fluctuates.) However, Obadiah also said First's sales in the Chicagoland area (with a popula tion of about 8-10 million) near 15 per cent, almost half again the

national average. Obadiah attributed this to a greater local awareness of  First in the area, as well as national media attention that was focused on First's computer-drawn comic, Shatter. "Interest in First was really piqued in Chicagoland by all the attention the book got," Obadiah said. Anticipating success begetting success, the Chas. Levy Circu lating company got in touch with First and approached the pub lisher with newly hatched plan to get to get four First books a month into newsstand outlets. The perils of newsstand: The inefficiency of national newsstand newsstand distribution has killed many publishing ventures, since the capital required for entry into newsstand is so large, and the per-unit profit on comic books is low, requiring a level of sales that is never guaranteed the publisher. CharltrJh Comics' most recent attempt at a comeback, for example, was thwarted by news stand sales of about 20 per cent. (Charlton required a minimum of  24 per cent sales to keep going.) Also, a magazine will have been printed for six months before the publisher will see any money, making the venture a long-term financial investment that the direct-sales market circumnavigated. Obadiah said he was at first wary of Levy's plan to market First books in the newsstand market. "Newsstand could ruin us," he said, adding that he was well aware of the legendary wastefulness of the system, such as boxes of comic books having been returned to the publisher for credit—unopened, and never having been placed on the racks for sale. Eric Olson, a magazine buyer for Levy, also said Obadiah was leery of the plan; however, Olson said Levy devised a special plan whereby First would know their sales at the end of only four months, with progress reports along the way. Also, since only 25 0 retail outlets are involved with the plan, the cost of printing books for national newsstand distribution is reduced from the enormous costs involved in printing for national distribution. Olson said the approximately approximately 25 0 outlets were hand-picked by Levy. "We had to get the demo graphics right going in," he said. Thus, the shops that were targeted already sell a higher-than-usual amount of comics, as well as having healthy sales of comicsrelated magazines such as Mad,

  National Lampoon, and Heavy  Metal. Once these outlets (which include convenience stores such as 7-11, Crown Books, B. Dalton, as well as a supermarket chain called Dominic's) were found, Olson employed Levy's field force of  25 representatives to present the marketing plan to each shop owner on an individual basis. It was at this time that the individual shops were introduced to the specially constructed raqks that would contain the comics.

According to Obadiah, the rack is built to fasten onto existing magazine racks, with four pockets to hold the books. Olson said virtually all of the targeted store owners wanted to participate in the program.  More than First can chew?:

Obadiah said the program doesn't come without a large financial investment from First, but added that the investment is worth the possible long-term gains. Obadiah declined to specify specify the costs of  the distribution, but said that each display would hold from 120-150 comics each. Since about 25 0 outlets will be ca rrying the the books, this tallies Up to 31,250 comics each month that otherwise wouldn't exist. First's royalty plan, which works according to the number of copies sold (as opposed to the number of copies printed) will be included in the newsstand plan, although the figures will be a bit slower in coming due to the lag-time involved in determining the sales of  the newsstand books. Levy will perform on-hand checks of the newsstand displays, as well as requiring a UPC symbol on the books. (The symbol will be on the back covers of the books, due to what

NEWSWATCH Obadiah called a commitment to keeping them off the front covers for for aesthetic reasons.) The UPC scanning at the checkout counters allows a seller to know the number of any given commodity he has sold, and Olson said such scanning will be mandatory, as this will allow First to chart sales as the four-month experiment progresses. Obadiah said First's break-even point is 30-35 per cent sales, and if the books achieve this, the next issues of the same books will be put out on the racks to start the whole process over again. Olson added that any returns First gets will be in the form of whole comic books with covers on intact. In newsstand sales, most publishers receive only the covers as proof of  non-sale. If  sales remain consistently high for the newsstand books, Obadiah hopes to expand the market for First's books using the same distribution network elsewhere. While he said he has no actual designs on anywhere yet, he did say the Fort WorthDallas metro area looked appeal ing.

 Don't worry, retailers: In February, Obadiah met with Chicagoland Comics retailers to explain the plan to them. Would the new market for First Comics, whose books were previously only available in their shops, now be in direct competition with them? According to Obadiah, no. The first four books to be available for newsstand distribution ship February 2 8 (Nexus and Badger), March 7 (Grimjack), and March 14 (Flagg!). Due to the prepackaging and man-hours involved involved in getting the displays to the newsstand out lets, the books won't be available anywhere other than direct-sales shops until April. "This plan doesn't weaken our commitment to the direct-sales market," market," Obadiah said, indicating the placement of the UPC boxes on the back cover as an example. Obadiah said it will be a long time before a reader can find the latest issue of  American Flagg! as easily as he can Superman or Spider-Man—but for readers in Chicagoland, that time is nearer.

Swamp Thing art still at large DC Comics suffered a spate of  original art theft last fall, and while many of the victimized pages have been recovered and returned to the artists, Swamp Thing artists Steve Bissette and John Totleben are filing for reimbursement of  five interior pages of art and four covers, one of  which was the painted cover to issue #34, "Rite of Spring." Bissette said there has been some confusion among original art collectors as to exactly which pages could legitimately be bought and sold, and which were still stolen property. According to Bissette, the pages that remain stolen are pages 21-33 from issue #33 (all of which are full-page pin-ups), page 23 from issue #34 and page 1 from DC Sampler #3 (the first page of a three-page spread). Also, the covers to issue #s 30, 32, 33, and 34 are still gone.  DCs policy: In accordance with a longstanding longstanding DC D C procedure, procedu re, artists who have had original art missing missing for more than a year from publication can file for reimbursement int he amount of  their page rates. However,' according to publicity manager Peggy May, if the art surfaces

after the artists have been recompensed, they are asked to return the reimbursement. Bissette declined to specify the size of the reimbursement ("That's between John, myself,

and DC," he said), but he added that the amount they will receive won't won't be as much as they would have gotten for the work on the original art market. He also said he was satisfied satisfied DC had done everything it could to try to

recover the art, and to safeguard future pieces, which required a revamping of the system whereby DC returns original art (see  Journal  #105, "Newswatch"). "I don't wish DC any will will because the art was stolen," he said. "But I do wish the worst

for the low-life sons of bitches who stole it." Bissette called the theft of the cover to issue #34 "a real sore spot" because that cover was a painting that he and Totleben had done. "That was the one piece I was going to hang on -TOmy own wall," he said.

Phil Foglio off  Mythadventures Phil Foglio, formerly the artist on WaRP Graphics' Mythadventures, found found an efficient efficient correc tive to to the press releases' claim. He sent postcards to the fan press with the message: "Phil Foglio would like to make it clear that it was due to multiple contract violations on the part of  WaRP Graphics which resulted in his quitting Mythadventures, and not 'deadline 'deadline difficulties' as quoted." Foglio said the problem stemmed from WaRP moving the book from quarterly frequency to bi-monthly frequency without his consent. Mike Catron, WaRP's director of publications, said there was nothing in Foglio's contract that dictated the books' frequency and although Foglio said Catron's assertion was correct, he added that the contract stipulated that any changes in frequency would have to be approved by both parties. Foglio added that he never acquiesced to the change from quarterly to bi-monthly. "We were a quarterly book, and Mike Catron joind the happy WaRP family," he said. "All of a sudden, they were going bi monthly right away." Catron said he did indeed initiate WaRP's move to bi-monthly books.   New schedule: Catron told the  Journal  that Foglio led him to believe that all he needed was two weeks feeomplete an issue of   Mythadventures, but Foglio said two weeks was not enough time. He said at the beginning beginning of last October, he asked what his dead line was on issue #8, and he was given an August 26 deadline. "I assumed it was a joke, so I asked them what the next deadline was," Foglio said. "They told me October 15, and I said, 'No way.'" Then, Foglio said, he received a new schedule. "They asked asked me what I thought about it, and I said, 'It blows.' They said, 'Try it,' so I said, All right, I'll try it.'" As he worked on the eighth issue, Foglio said he realized he couldn't accommodate the bi monthly schedule, so he then told WaRP that that issue, which was

the conclusion of his adaptation of  Robert Aspirin's novel Another  Fine Myth, would be his last issue. "I realized there was no way of salvaging this working

 Phil Foglio  Phil  Foglio has quit WaRP Graphics' Mythadventures.

relationship," he said. "I can certainly understand their point—a book's got to be out on a sched ule, but I just couldn't work on that schedule." Catron said after Foglio de cided to leave Mythadventures WaRP set out to find a replace ment, eventually settling on Valentino. "Myth Adventures is a demanding book, and apparently Phil had run his course on it," he said. "There would would have been no sense in trying to force him to stay on it." Valentino's first issue wiil be issue #9, scheduled for March, and according to Catron, issue #9 is the first bi-monthly issue, with two months between issue Hs 8 and 9.   Multiple violations?: Foglio said the unapproved change in frequency was in fact the only contractual violation, even though

NEWSWATC his postcards said there were several. "The other things things I thought were contract violations were just bad bookkeeping bookkeeping on my part," he said, adding that he always got paid on time from WaRP. Up to date: Since leaving Myth  adventures, Foglio has kept busy with writing and drawing a graphic novel series for Donning Books (who, coincidentally, are publishing WaRP's Elfquest in graphic novel form) called Buck

Godot—Zapgun For Hire, as well as doing book covers for Donning. Foglio said he has done an inventory "Munden's Bar B ar " for First Comics' Grimjack, and is currently working on a Star  Blazers mini-series for Comico. Both Foglio and Catron said they would be interested in working together on another WaRP project in the future, should the opportunity present itself. "But only if we agree on the schedule beforehand," Foglio said. _TH-

John Allen Saunders dead at 88 John Allen Saunders, creator of  the comic strips Steve Roper,   Mary Worth,and Kerry Drake, died of a stroke on January 28, in a Maumee, Ohio hospital. He was 88. Maumee is located in northwest Ohio, just south of Toledo, where Saunders worked and lived since 1927, when he moved there to   join the Toledo News-Bee as a reporter. He later served as the paper's drama and critic writer, as well as a feature writer, as

 John Allen Saunders at work.

well as a feature writer and columnist. Saunders was born on a farm near Lebanon, Indiana on March 24, 1899, and earned a degree from Wabash Wabash College, where he later returned returned as an instructor. instructor. After seven years, he resigned and eventually becam be camee a news news paper reporter.  And  so it began: Saunders's first attempt at comic-strip work in the

16

mid-30s, on a comedy feature that was test-marketed for a year as The Great Gusto, but which eventually became named Big Chief  Wahoo, with Elmer Woggon as the artist. Later, another new character entered the storyline, and Steve Roper was the result. The change in emphasis from comedy strip to an adventure one proved to be successful. successful . Saunders was later asked by Publishers Newspaper Syndicate (today known as Field Newspaper Syndicate) to take over a fledgling strip titled Apple Mary, after the strip's creator, Martha Orr, decided to pursue other interests. Saunders revised and reworked the material, and after a transi tional title of  Mary Worth's 1 942 the strip obtained obtained  Family, in 1942 its current title, Mary Worth. Saunders continued writing Mary Worth until his retirement in 1979.   Mentor to a generation: Saunders also created the Kerry Drake strip 1943, which originally began in the late '30s as Norman Marsh's   Dan Dunn. Marsh left the strip after a dispute. Saunders and artist Alfred Andriola came on to the strip.a nd nd in 1943, it became   Kerry Drake. (Although Saunders wrote the strip, Andrioa's contact with the syndicate required that Andriola be billed as the sole creator.) Saunders retired from   Kerry Drake in 1971. Saunders also helped sha pe many of the then-up and comers of  the comic-strip writers. His charges included Pete Hoffman (Jeff  Cobb), Dr. Nick Dallis (Rex  Morgan, M.D., Judge Parker, and   Apartment 3-G, as well as his son, John Allen (Dateline:  Danger, which ran for five years in the "70s). Allen's son John continues as the writer of Afary Worth and Steve Roper, having inherited the tasks s'fter his father's retirement.

The elder Saunders continued to advise and assist his son as needed until failing eyesight and hearing, which began in recent years, led him to turn over the duties completely. Saunders  Diligence: For decades, Saunders produced 21 strips a week, all the while creating rough panel layouts, writing the scripts and dialogue, and then shipping the material out to the artists he ws working working with. Except for occ a sional visits and brainstorming sessions a few times a year, most

of  his contact with his collabo rators was over the telephone and through the mail. In the late '40s and early '50s, Saunders served as a continuity consultant at Publishers News paper Syndicate (it was here that Saunders broke in Dr. Nick Dallis as a strip writer), and in 1958 he also served as president of  the Newspaper Comics Council. He was a member of the National Cartoonists Society. Saunders is survived survived by his • wife, two sons, and two daughters. -TH-

Comix artist Roger Brand dead Roger Brand, an underground comix artist whose work appeared in Young Lust, Yellow Dog, and Witzend, among others, died November 23, 1985 at at the the age of  42 . He died of kidney failure in San Francisco, where he lived for years. • Brand had a grandmother who lived in Tucson, Arizona, and it was there that Brand met a boyhood friend who would become a friend for life—Tom Conroy lived in Tucson, and they met in a local bookstore, admiring paintings by the same artists. When Conroy learned of  Brand's desire to make a living as a comics artist, yearning similar to Conroy's, he convinced Brand to move to New York City with him.  In the big city: In 1967, Brand got his first break, finding work at Wally Wood's studio pencilling some of the Jungle Jim stories that were scripted by Bhob Stewart and inked by Wood and others. It was Wood's studio, Conroy told the Journal, that Brand was able to sharpen his skills as a draftsman. It was also his opportunity to pay homage to the artists he had admired in his youth, such as Alex Raymond, Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, and Frank Frazetta. Also during the late '70s, Brand worked as Gil Kane's assistant. Kane said Brand assisted him on such groundbreaking projects as  Blockmark and His Name Is Savage, but Kane added that although Brand was a valuable asset for his artistic abilities, he was even more coveted as a friend. "He was my closest friend for the two years he worked with me," Kane said. "He was an intelligent, per ceptive guy, with an adventurous spirit. He had an ability to see value in an extra

ordinary range of things."

Warning signs: Both Kane and Conroy told the Journal  that Brand was heavily into drugs. Kane said when he held Brand's wedding reception at his studio, he saw "just "just about every

"The Last Dinosaur," a Roger Brand   story from Slow Death.

chemical substance known to man at that time." In 1970, Brand moved to live in San Francis co, where he was to live for the rest Kane visited of  his life. In 1976, Kane his former assistant, and noticed was a a drastic change. "There was change in him that was enor mous," he said. "He was was still very perceptive, but there was a  rage in him that had not been previously." Kane also said there previously." that Brand's drug use had caused a severe physical erosion. Conroy said he and Brand would "get stoned for days on end, just drawing comic strips." According to Conroy, though, Brand eventually swore off drugs, opting opting for liquor liquor instead. "He

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

NEWSWATC said liquor was his medium, and he didn't want to mix drugs with booze," Conroy said. Sizable oeuvre: By the mid 70s, Brand had amassed credits in Star  Forces K\ (1978), Witzend, AllStar Wl  (1970), Banzai! « (1978), as well as stories in issues of the   East Village Other, and various Warren publications. Also, Brand was published published in Young Lust, Yellow Dog, and the San  Francisco Comic Book. :

 Deeper into the bottle: After Brand became a heavy drinker, his comix output dwindled, dwindled, and by the end of his life he was not drawing comix. "He ended up

doing whatever he could to get by, and he was sleeping behind stairways and stuff by the end," Controy said. Brand's drinking habit was what ultimately killed him, Conroy said, said , citing the kidney kidney failure that had afflicted afflicted him for years, finally causing a fatal fatal failure. However, although Brand died young, Conroy said his friend could have lived many more years without having expressed himself  fully. "He really had an artist in him, from the day I me thim," he said. "I don't think he would have ever gotten it out of his system, no matter how how long he lived." --re

The Shadow's Margo Lane dies Gertrude Warner, who portrayed Margo Lane in the Mutual Broadcasting system's The Shadow radio series, died of cancer on January 26. She was 68. Warner began radio acting during the '30s on her hometown station, WTIC (Hartford, Connecticut), moving to NBC in New York in 1939. In In addition to her continuing roles as Delia Street in radio's Perry  Mason and Margo Lane, Warner was in such demand by radio soap opeas that in 1945 she was heard daily on four different radio serials. Other actresses appearing as Margo Lane during the '30s and Forties were Agnes Moorehead, Marjorie Anderson, Grace Matthews, and Harry Chariot, the 1930-31 scriptwriter, in 1935 Chariot died mysteriously of  poisoning in a Bowery flophouse. Originally, the radio/character

name was spelled with a "t": . Margot Lane. The show's opening each week included this line: "Cranston's friend and compa nion, the lovely Margot Lane, is the only person who knows to whom the voice of the invisible Shadow belongs." Margo Lane, however, was not a character in Walter Gibson's Shadow novels for The Shadow pulp magazine during the '30s. When Gibson began scripting Shadow Comics in 19 40, he included Margo in the stories (and dropped the "t" from "Margot"), since the comic book was directed at young radio listeners. The following ^ar, the radio program's influence was felt on the pulp, with the result that Margo was introduced in The Shadow magazine (June 15, 1941), despite a wave of reader protests. -Bhob-

Berke Breathed injured in crash Guy "Berke" Breathed, creator of    Bloom County, suffered a fractured spine in the January 22 crash of an ultralight plane near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The injury he suffered suffered required a fiv eand-a-half hour operation at Albuquerque's St. Joseph's hospital, where Breathed remains in satisfactory condition, according to Janet Tucker, St. Joseph's secretary for public relations.  Improvement: Tucker said the hospital was unsure as to when Breathed would be able to leave, but she added that Breathed's improvement has been marked.

SUCH ft  HORRIBLE-  HORRIBLE-  ft  VK/0VS... exp&ueMce/  o  o  • •. \: . o 

[ft^rr-ii—

April 19 86 T H E COMICS JO UR NA L #107, April

Although he now wears a back brace, the writer/artist has been walking, and he walks about his hospital hospital room several times a day, day, she said.  Recycled  strips: Leslie Roberts of  the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates Bloom County, said the syndicate has been supplying supplying the more than than 80 0 subscriber papers with 1982 episodes. Breathed works works about about two weeks ahead on Bloom County, as opposed to the six

weeks headstart that most cartoo nists use. However, due to the topical nature of Breathed's strip, a shorter lead time is required, and after the two-week reserve was depleted on February 10, the older strips were sent. Roberts said the subscriber papers have been cooperative during Breathed's convalescence, and although there is no progno sis on the arrival of new strips, the prognosis on Breathed's recovery is positive. —Bhob+TH—

150 cartoonists jam for children Sixty cartoonists have contributed to a single three-by-four foot fullcolor cartoon, titled "Voice for Children." With an estimated value of  $150,000 to $250,000, the painting painting is scheduled for a March 20 unveiling at the 65th anniver sary Child Welfare League national convention in Washing ton, DC. Auction of the work, signed by all the artists, will benefit benefit the Child Welfare Leag ue. Another Rainbow's Bruce Hamilton is the auctioneer. A presentation is planned for the National Cartoonists Society Rueben Awards in Washington during the following month at the National Press Club. Configuration of stars: The panoramic scene in the cartoon depicts musical celebration with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Little Orphan Annie, Blondie and Dag wood, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and other cartoon characters holding song sheets, while Nancy and Sluggo dance to music performed by a B. Kliban cat, Mell Lazarus's Momma, a Jack Davis hillbilly guitarist, and others. The cartoonists followed an initial layout prepa red by by the   National Lampoon's B.K. Taylor. Artists donating their time and talent include Kelly Freas, Will Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, Mort Drucker, Milton Caniff, Leonard Starr, Johnny Hart, Al Jaffee, Irwin Hasen, Bill Mauldin, Jerry Dumas, Stan Drake, Russell Myers, Arnold Roth, Cathy Guisewite, Mort Walker, Walker, Jerry Scott, Dik Browne, Dean Young, and Jack Hannah. Behind the project is publisher and cartoonists' agent Paul Burke of  Stabur Graphics in Detroit, with the sponsorship of Group W Communica tions, Taft Broadc ast ing Group Inc., the Bank of  Boston, Lakeland Litho-Plate Inc. (Detroit), Coca Cola Bottlers of 

Boston and the American Pedia tric Association. By late January, the artwork, which took a year to complete, had traveled 163,867 miles by Federal Express to reach the participating artists. Federal Express has donated its services to the project. It was scheduled to be completed by mid-February, and as of early February, the work is still evolving. Readers who saw the print in the February 21 issue of the comics Buyer's Guide saw the work devoid of  Jack Kirby's rendition of Captain America. However, Kirby drew in the character in January, and the version the Journal  obtained did contain the star-spangled Avenger. Get them while they're hot: "Voice For Children" is a mixed media work. Some portions are painted in oils, while other characters are rendered in ink and markers. Lithograph prints, in a limited limited edition of 100 and signed in pencil by each artist, will be available for $3,000 each. Posters of  the cartoon, measuring 20" by 24", will be sold for $3.95 each, with an additional charge of  $2.50 for shipping and handling. More than $45,000 worth of  prints and posters have been reserved in advance. To reserve a print or poster, call Paul Burke (313-535-0572) or write him at 23301 Meadow Park, Detroit, MI 48239. Extended term payments are available for lithograph purchases. All proceeds to go the private, non-profit Child Welfare League, the nation's oldest and largest child advocacy agency, "aimed at increasing the public's awareness of  issues concerning children." It acts as a voice for children in key areas such as day care, foster care, adoption, physical and sexual abuse, runaways, and teenage pregnancy. The picture began as an off-

17

NEWSWATCH

shoot of the Child Welfare League's "Art for Kids' Sake" program, co-chaired by Caniff  and Hasen. "Art for Kids' Sake" created posters (Spider-Man, Broom Hilda, Garfield, Dennis the Menace) and notecards (Mort Walker's "Stop Child Abuse," Mell Lazarus' "Kids' Bill of  Rights") for the Child Welfare League, and Burke was approached as a marketing consultant. When Burke began talking up the "Voice of  Children" painting, some cartoonists cartooni sts thought thought the notion was "crazy" because of the logistics involved, but Johnny Hart later told Burke, "It worked." Hart

then proposed another cartoonists'  jam to benefit other charities through the National Cartoonists Society. This project begins in April.   More to come?: After "Voice for Children" and the new cartoon project proposed by Johnny Hart, Stabur Graphics could possibly escalate the concept on a global scale, following a suggestion by  Heavy Metal's Jean Giraud (Moebius). Giraud has proposed a compostie, single picture, involving the work of 350 cartoonists around the world, to benefit international charity organizations. -Bhob-

 Brazil  offers homage to Kurtzman Film director Terry Gilliam, in his $14 million-budgeted Orwellian satire Brazil  (1985),

18

uses several character names in a nostalgic homage to Harvey Kurtzman. A key supporting role,

portrayed by Ian Holm, is "M. Kurtzmann," head of the Ministry of  Information, and "Mr. Eugene Helpmann" (Peter (P eter Vaughan) is the Deputy Minister of Information. Informati on. Gilliam, who directed and coscripted Brazil, was an associate editor of Kurtzman's Help! magazine during the mid 60s. :

Semi-pseudonyms: Help! was published by James Warren, and in Brazil, "Mr. Warrenn" (Ian Richardson) is the energetic chief  of  Information Retrieval, who strides through corridprs barking clipped requests to his underlings. The cartoonist Al Jaffee was associated with Harvey Kurtzman as early as 1955 (on Mad  #26), and yet another character in  Brazil  is named "Dr. Jaffe" (Jim Broadbent). This is not the first Gilliam has publicly acknowl edged his link with Kurtzman. After Mad, Trump and  Humbug, Harvey Kurtzman began

editing Help! magazine for Jim Warren with the August 1960 premiere issue. Editorial assistant Gloria Steinem was replaced by by Chuck Alverson by issue #11 (June 1961). When Alverson left for newspaper work, Gilliam, who had studied studied political scienc e and edited Fang magazine at Occidental College (Los Angeles), joined the staff of   Help! with the February 1963 issue, introduced in Kurtzman's editorial with an accompanying photo (captioned "Barf"), while contributing an eight-panel strip, "Quick, Henry, the Flit" to that that issue. Gilliam remained witht he magazine for several years, and Kurtzman, Gilliam, and Alverson also assembled the 1965 19 65 paper back Harvey Kurtzman's Fun and  Games (Gold Medal dl506).  Laying foundations: Fumetti photo-stories, with typeset balloons, balloons , were a key key feature in

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

NEWSWATC  Help!, and the May 1965 issue featured model Cindy Young and British actor-writer John Cleese in the 14-page 14-page "Christopher's Punc tured Romance" by Dave Crossley. Cleese, a law graduate and BBC writer, had traveled to New York with the Cambridge Circus, a small satirical revue which had appeared on The Jack   Paar Show. After Help! collapsed,

Gilliam went to England in 1967,   joining Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman in the Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy group. Gilliam fashioned the animated inserts on on the Python television show. Interviewed in The Comics  Journal  #67, Kurtzman commented! "It was through  Help! that Gilliam came together with Cleese and ultimately Twenty years ago: A Terry Gilliam car became the animator of Monty Python."  toon from Help! A nostalgic yearning for the past is suggested by Gilliam's   juxtaposition of the lyrics from the title song (Now, when twilight beams the sky above/recalling thrills of our love./There's one thing I'm certain of,/Return, I will,/To old Brazil") with the   /fe/p.'-conncected names from Gilliam's own past. Written by Ary Barroso and S.K. Russell (English lyrics), "Brazil" was a popular 1943 wartime wartime hit, recorded by Xavier Cugat, Eddy Duchin, Helen O'Connell, Bob Eberly, Jimmy Dorsey, the Dinning Sisters and the Morton Gould Orchestra, and it was immediately identified with animation that year through its inclusion in Walt Disney's Saludos Amigos as a scene where the parrot Joe Carioca teaches Donald Duck to samba. -Bhob-

Duffy and Kerry Gammill, will debut June 10. Guest-stars include Sunspot, Warloc k, and other familiar faces... Classic X-Men has been rescheduled to ship on September 2... Alan Davis, artist on Marvel UK's Captain  Britain (as well as Eclipse's

debut, from Hulk its 180-181, will be reprinted in a deluxe format this June. The story is by writer Len Wein and artist Herb Trimpe. Also, there will be a six-page story in which Wolverine teams with Hercules, which is written by Jo Duffy, Duffy, and drawn by Ken

Larson's cartoons optioned for film Writer-director Alan Rudolph (Choose Me, Return Engagement,  Remember My Name, Welcome to  L.A.) has finished an outline for . a film adaptation of Gary Larson's syndicated gag panel The  Far Side. Providing continuity to the miscellaneous gags will be a storyline charting the progress of  animals and men from an ante diluvian age to the present. Rudolph and producer David Blocker are both fans of Larson's cartoons, and while they were filming Trouble in Mind  in Seattle, they met with Larson.

After a favorable response from Larson and Rudolph's outline, they negotiated for an option through Donna Martin, vicepresident of Universal Press Syndicate. All of Larson's book collections, published by Andrews, McMeel & Parker, have been bestsellers. In February, The  Far Side Gallery has remained on  Publisher's Weekly's paperback bestseller list for 17 weeks, while Valley of the Far Side had continued as a top-seller for 22 weeks. -Bhob—

Marvel news: Kaluta on Shadow novel, Daredevil rejected by Code  He's back (again): Marvel's Shadow graphic novel is scheduled scheduled for a Christmas 1986 release, and will feature 60 fullcolor pages by writer Denny O'Neil, penciller Michael Wm. Wm. Kaluta, and inker Berni Wrightson. The story takes place

in April 1941, and the plot concerns the Shadow convincing Hitler to invade Russia—by using Hitler's personal astrologist as his medium.   Mutant news: The Misfits, a sixissue limited series by writer Jo

 Miraclemah) will pencil and ink the New Mutants Annual ttl, due out in late June. That Annual will tie in with the X-Men Annual  #10, shipping ship ping September 2. Art Adams will pencil that book, which Terry Austin will ink... New  Mutants #42 is by writer Chris Claremont, penciller Jackson Guice, and inker Kyle Baker, with issue #44, the series' regular inker. New Mutants #43 features the the art of Steve Steve Pu rc el l.. . Louise Simonson becomes the regular writer of  X-Factor while the artists remain Jackson Guice and Joe Rubinstein. Wolverine reprinted: Wolverine's

Landgraf  and George Perez. The short story was originally published in Marvel Treasury  Edition #26. Peter Sanderson will write a text piece for the book that will include discussions with Wein, Chris Claremont, John Byrne, and others. The 48-page Wolverine will cost $2.00, and, will have a wraparound cover by Byrne and Jack Abel. Cancellations: Star Wxrs is being cancelled with issue #107, out in early June. That finale will be by writer Jo Duffy and artist Cindy Martin... Doctor Who is can celled with its 23rd issue... The final issue of  Power Man/Iron

19

NEWSWATCH  Fist, #125, will be by writer Jim, Owsley and artist Mark Bright, The book will be on sale in June.   Marvel miscellania: Eternals #10 #10 will be written by Walter Simonson, pencilled by Keith Pollard, and inked by Danny Bulanadi, and it will be out in late March. Sal Buscema will return as penciller for the last two issues of the series. The final issue will be double-sized for $1.25. .. Geoff Isherwood, who has worked on Conan the King, will ink Sal Buscema's pencils in Thor #369, shipping Marc March h 25... The next four Marvel Press posters will be out in May, and they are: Thor, painted by Joe Jusko, the Silver Surfer, by Keith Pollard (who is also the artist on the forthcoming Surfer graphic novel), Pheonix, by Rick Leonardi and Terry Austin, and X-Factor, by Walter Simonson, Joe Rubinstein, and colorist George Roussos. The X-Factor poster will re-depict the cover to  X-Factor #1. .. Marvel Tales #191 will re-present in one package Spider-Man 0s 96-98. The stories deal with drug abuse, and originally went on sale without the Comics Code seal of  approval.   Daredevil news: Daredevil  #231 has been rejected by the Comics Code Authority due to its depiction of a hypodermic hypodermic needle. The issue will be published without the Code's seal of  approval, writer Frank Miller said. . . Steve Ditko will pencil  Daredevil  #234, which will be written by Mark Gruenwald and

inked by Klaus Janson...  Daredevil  #s 235-236 will be drawn by by Walter Simonson and written written by Mi lle r. .. After After that, writer Steve Englehart will take over the series, with an as yet undetermined artist.

 In the limelight: Teen Titans Spotlight is a new monthly serie s that will feature individual members of the group, with the length of the stories varying from single-issue to multi-issue. There will be no regular art team, but a rotating one. The debut issue has Starfire coping with apartheid in South Africa, with art by Denys

DCs Heroes against Hunger benefit.

Graphic novel news: The Doctor Strange graphic novel, by J. M. DeMatteis and Dan Green, will ship May 27, and will cost $ 5 . 9 5 . . . Berni Wrightson's Spider-Man graphic novel, Hooky, has been rescheduled to ship April 22.  Epic Comics news: Steelgrip Starkey and His Incredible Incredible Power Tool, the newest addition to the Epic Comics line, debuts May 20. The book, by Alan Weiss and Jim Sherman, will chronicle the adventures of a construction worker with a special power tool.   Marvel Age #42 spotlights the series. John Ridgway will fill in on The Bozz Chronicles #4. Regular series artist Bret Blevins returns with issue #5, just in time to kick off a two-part story.

 Annual  update: W>b of Spider Man Annual  #2, shipping May 20, will be by the Longshot team of  writer Ann Nocenti and artist Art Adams.. . Captain America  Annual  #8, also snipping May 20, features the creative team of  writer Mark Gruenwald, Gruenwald, penciller Mike Zeck, and inker John Beatty... Alpha Flight Annual  #1 will be by writer Bill Mantlo, penciller Larry Stroman, and inker Gerry Talaoc. The book will be on sale in early June.-ra-

DC miscellania: Byrne, Baikie, Cowan, Dillon, O'Neill on Titans Titans Annual: John Byrne will draw the Teen Titans in that group's second Annual, on sale in May. Marv Wolfman will write the story. The book will cost $2.50, and there will also be a story drawn by Jim (Electric Warrior) Baikie that will concern the origin of Brother Blood.

  An Adams-Giordanoillustration for

Cowan. Issue #2 will feature Cyborg, and artists on future issues will be Kevin O'Neill and Steve Dillon, among others. George Perez will do covers for the series. Swamp news: Rick Veitch will be the regular penciller on Swamp Thing with issue #51, and Alfredo Alcala will be the inker. Former regular penciller Steve Bissette will continue to produce the covers for the book. Former Swamp Thing inker John Totleben will do both the pencils and inks for the Swamp Thing Annual  #3, which is scheduled to come out between issue Its 52 and 53. Bissette also

said thaw he and Totleben will return to the book to draw the last issue that Alan Moore writes, whenever that is. Finally, the contracts have been signed for a Mr. Monster/Swamp Thing team-up, according to Bissette. He added that the book published by DC. will be published   Hoping against hunger: DC is pitching in against the Ethiopian famine relief effort with Heroes   Against Hunger. The book will be a 48-page special featuring various artists and writers, including Frank Miller, Jim Starlin, and Berni Wrightson, with the cover by Neal Neal Adams and Dick Giordano. Out in late May, and the book will cost

$1.50.  DC  miscellania: Angel Love is a new eight-issue limited series by by writer/artist Barbara Slate. The series, which DC is calling "an '8 0s," is about a  Archie for the '80s," young woman struggling to make it in the city. . . Barry WindsorSmith will do the cover to Tales  of  the Teen Titans #68... In Secret Origins #5, Roy Thomas and Gene Colan tackle the origin of  the Crimson Avenger... In late May, Hawkman #1 debutsexcept this time, it's not a limited series, but a regular ongoing series by writer Tony Isabella, penciller pencille r Richard Richar d Howell, and inker Don Heck. -TH-

News from the independents: First, Eclipse, Renegade, Kitchen Sink Chaykin on Flagg!: American  Flagg! creator Howard Chaykin will produce the American Flagg! #1, shipping in July. The Special  #1, book, which will run 28 Baxter pages for $1.75, will serve as an introduction to Chaykin's forth coming Time graphic novel series.

 Frequent Eclipse: Airboy is a new new bi-weekly comic book. This series will cost 50 cents for 16 pages. The book, by Tim Truman and Chuck Dixon, will debut this

 First miscellania: Rich Bryant is the new inker on The Badger, beginning with issue #14. The title of the story is "Snake Bile "Gravity Well" Well" is the the Cognac". . . "Gravity title to Nexus #25, which introduces a new new development in the Nexus universe—a project to extract energy from an artificial

 Eclipse miscellania: (Note: Some of  this news is subject to change due to the recent flooding of  Eclipse's offices.) Alien Terror in  3-D features stories in the vein of  those from Alien Encounters and and Tales of  Terror. The book will ship in May at a cost of  $2.25.

 2

black hole. . . Nexus penciller Steve Rude has done full-color paintings for Nexus Its 24-25.

NEWSWATCH  Monster H6 will feature two stories: one is scripted by Michael T. Gilbert and drawn by Keith Giffen; Giffen; the othe r is scripted by Gilbert (from a blind submission), pencilled by Brian (Thunderbunny) Buniak, and inked by Don (Megaton Man) Simpson.

Steve Canyon goes 3 -D. -D.

Creators include Bruce Jones, Mark Evanier, and John Pound, among others... Eclipse has scheduled several 3-D books for the summer months. March will see Seduction of the Innocent 3-D #2, April will see Mr. Monster's Three-Dimensional  Hi-Octane  Horror #1 and Laser Eraser and    Pressbutton in 3-D #1. The art in   Hamsters in 3-D is by Ty Tem plet on.. . In May, the threeissue World of Wood  debuts. The book will cost $1.75, and and will be devoted to the legendary art of  Wally Wally Wo od .. . With With its its 10th 10th issue, Tom Stazer's Spaced  will be distributed by Eclipse. With that same issue, the price drops from $1.60 to $1.50. .. Cham  pions is a six-part limited series by Dennis Mallonee and Carol Lay, featuring the characters from the role-playing role-playing game of the same name. Champions, which has a monthly frequency, is printed on Mando paper at a cost of $1.25 Tom Yeates, Yeates, of  Time Spirits . . . Tom fame, fills in on Scout HI. .. Mr.

  Kitchen Sink news: Ground   Pound, a collection of some of  John Pound's work over the past 10 years, has been cancelled due to editorial editorial difficulties. difficulties. According to Kitchen, another publisher may be picking up this title. . . Death  Rattle #3 and Megaton Man #8 will ship two weeks later than expected, in the last week of  February rather than the second one. This is the first time Kitchen's color titles have shipped late. . . The 3-D Steve Canyon, originally announced for February and later delayed until April, has now been delayed until June. Problems arose in getting material from Milton Canif fs archives and and finding the time in Ray Zone's

 Eagle news: Judge Dredd—The Graphic Novel  is a 48-page fullcolor collection of stories written

by John Wagner and Alan Grant. The stories, never before seen in the United States, include include "Zoo Story," the only full-color strip work that Brian Bolland has done on Dredd. Carlos Ezquerra draws the other three stories. The cover is by Bolland, and the book shipped in late February. _TH-

Doubleday's Pekar book hits stores   American Splendor—The Life and  Times of Harvey Pekar, collecting some of the best stories from Pekar's annual comic, has an official publication date of April as a 4. Published by Doubleday as $6.95 trade paperback, the book displays displays a new new R. Crumb cover, along with a two-page handlettered Crumb introduction. "If  Harvey wasn't so driven," comments Crumb, "there would never've been any American Splendor comics. It's not as if  he's made a lousy dime off of  them. I'm fairly certain that the sales of his comic books have never covered the printing costs. It's a sad fact that you can't sell 'adult' comic books to American adults. Comic books are for kids. Adolescent male power fantasies, that's what most comic books contain; escape fantasies for pimply-faced young boys. . . Yep. Most comic book specialty shops won't even carry books like   American Splendor. Why should

they? Adults' never go in such places, and so the 'adult' comics   just sit there taking up space on the shelf. Maybe a 'real' book of  Pekar's comics, like this, will sell better than the cheap Pekar stories newsprint comic books."

News from hither and yon: small press, Mad reprints, et al.

 A Judge Dredd annual in full color.

DCS

 Revolver Hs 10-12 will feature the talents of Ditko, David Day, Steve Bissette, Carmine Infantino, Ernie Colon, and Rich Larsen, among others.

Cut wires: Comics & Comix'  First Rambo, now this: (fee Flaming Car fanzine The Telegraph Wire has ceased publication with issue #24.  rot antagonizes the Russians in this Tom Walton, co-owner of Comix upcoming issue. & Comix, said the cancellation was due to a short-term cash crunch, adding that if the heavy schedule to complete the situation situation improves improves sufficiently, book. . . Robert Crumb 3-D has The Telegraph Wire will resume not yet yet been scheduled, schedul ed, but it is publication. Walton also said next in line behind the Steve subscribers' refunds are on the Canyon 3-D book. way.   Aardvark hike: With Cerebus #86, the price will rise to $2.00 Color them Mad: Russ Cochran's Complete EC Library will feature ($2.50 in its native Canada). The page count will remain at 20, and the reprint of  Mad  in two the newsprint paper stock remains versions: black and white, as well the same. as color. However, the retail price of  either set will be $125 post paid. Cochran will be printing  Renegade news: Revolver HI  10,000 sets of the color Mad  and kicks off a three-part all-Steve much fewer of the black-andDitko series within a series. Also, white version, anticipating that   Revolver #s 7-9 preview the color volumes will go over Renegade's newest title, Ditko's better with consumers. World, which debuts in July. 5

TH E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

21

NEWSWATC  From the Dragon Lady: Best of    the Tribune Co. #4 will feature Harold Gray's "Little Orphan Annie," with vintage strips from the '30s and '40s. The magazine, out this spring, will cost $2.95. . . Dragon Lady Press #4 cover-features Al Williamson's Secret Agent X-9. This collection, which is extra-large, will retail for $5.95.  More gay comics: Bob Ross, publisher of the gay newspaper   Bay Area Reporter, has purchased the Gay Comix series. Ross, who   just published the sixth issue, plans to have the magazine adopt a quarterly schedule. San Francisco artist Robert Triptow Triptow edited the first five issues, which were published by Kitchen Sink Press. Ross is offer offering ing subscrip tions for $10 a year, and and single issues are available for $2.50. Send check or money order to Gay Comix, 1528 15th 15th St., San Francisco, CA 94103. Artists appearing in the sixth issue are Trina Robbins (the "token heterosexual," according to the publisher), Joe Sinardi. Howard Cruse, and others. Speaking Speaking o f Howard Crus e, Wendel, a collection of his comic strip that appeared in The  Advocate, has been published. Two new episodes have been added added to the the complete collection especially for this volume, volume, which deals with the gay lifestyle. Published in paperback, Wendel  is available for $9.95 plus $1.50 postage and handling from Gay Presses of New York, P.O. Box 294, New York, NY 10014.

SteelDragon news: Captain Confederacy #1 debuts in March at a cost of  $1.50. Black-andwhite with 28 pages, the book is available from SteelDragon Press, Box 7253, Powderhorn Station, Minneapolis, MN 55407. Also, the publishers promise a second issue of Reed Waller's Omaha,   the Cat Dancer this spring.   NOW news: Vector is NOW Comics' first attempt at producing a comic book with computergenerated graphics. (The book will contain some hand-drawn work). The artists on tha book are Jim McGreal and Rich Mrozek, and Vector contains 26 full-color pages of art for $1.50. The book will ship in late June.  Eb'nn joins the NOW line with its third issue, and with issue #4. goes bi-monthly. The book will switch to white paper stock, and will remain priced at $1.50 for 40 pages.

22

•

oc  -rpC  _  U*reuT oc -rpC ACKtt.I'MdHAP-f&SOaC IJ0ZGMV. IT*  «vcc*Jr toe** ** rr  a o K c j M M r r r . JTtt *Jr*wyANfM«aSA | SttffWcv toe UVIN<* COir** r** v*** r r pice, ukCTMfS 0Lrr>©uWS vevttTYCN  -wmc  -wmc  -  5 AMC H O 9LTT r
.

 FAR LEFT: Cap  tain Confederacy,  new from Steeldragon  Press.  LEFT: Trollords,  a new bi-monthly  from Tru Studios.  BELOW: Dragon Lady Press #4  reprints Al  Williamson's Secret Agent

X-9.

 Ralph Snarf  Adventures, created, written, and drawn by Marc Hansen, is a three-issue mini-series. With the first issue due to ship in late May, the book will cost $1.00 Syphons is NOW's second color book, written and drawn by Allen Curtis. Shipping June 29, the book will sell for $1.50. For further information, write to NOW Comics, P.O. Box 8042, Chicago, IL 606-8042 Onward, ho!; Klutz Enterprises, formerly a fanzine publisher, has changed its name to Onward Comics. Onward's first title will be Ultra Klutz, and although that title will be composed solely of  material by publisher Jeff  Nicholson, he has announced a search for humorous humorous submissions. For details, write to Nicholson at P.O. Box 3684, Chic, CA 95927 Tnt trollords: Tru Studios is releasing TYollords, a bi-monthly book written and drawn by Scott Beaderstadt and Paul Fricke. The book runs 28 black-and-white pages for $1.50. For further information, write the book's editor, Brian Augustyn, 2835 S. Cuyler, Berwyn, IL 60402. -TH-

vary angles and lay things out. Be real—don't bullshit. There's no reason why every in terested fan shouldn't pub their own mini yesterday. I've heard th e story of James Thur ber' s response to the woman who informed him her eight-year-old could draw as well as he: "Yes, but he hasn' t my experi ence. " An d I'd agree agree with Fredric Wertham that a steady diet of  comic books inhibits creativity, growth, and experience, and some of these kids reads too many o f them funny bo oks . . .

A L A N P. M A S Y G A Winona, MN Once again I take up pen and write to you guys and gals to say that issue #99 confirms my greatest fear; that you are the people we love to hate because you make us think about the comics we buy and read. In doing this you disturb some who want comics to remain the same stupid thing. One can only hope that in time things will change, but the way things look, it's getting worse, not better, in comic land.

STEREO GENE PHILLIPS Houston, TX

FLASHBACK JOE ROBERTSON Garland, T X In reply to Patrick Daniel O'Neill's reaction (journal #100) to Ted W hite' s forum forum on "recreational" drugs, I would like to say that I think the point White was trying to get across in his criticism of  Rex Morgan is that the effects effects or drugs are often melodramatized to create another form of ignorance. In pieces pieces such as Rex Morgan, you are not alerted to the fact that the characters' rections are those in extreme and excessive cases. Suc h a warning would destroy the paranoia (and sales) created by a book that would otherwise pass unnoticed. Th e reason The Comics Journal not only prints articles like White's, but the reason it exists, is to offer offer differing yet intell igent views to critical areas in the medium. O'Neill's de fense seems seems as unsubstantial as he claims White's to be, a majority of his letter reprin ting White's column withou t a criticism of the quoted material. It is not a question of  whether the drug can cause the effects de scribed in Rex Morgan, but when these effects may occur; that is, in extreme and excessive cases. It is a question of getting the whole

THE COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

RE-MY TH

picture. I am not and never have been a drug user. I don't drink, I don't smoke (tobacco or mari  juana), and I use no "recreational" drugs of  any kind. But 1 realize tha t thi s does not put me above those who practice otherwise; it merely increases my ability to view the entire picture objectively.

DO IT YOURSELF TOM CHRISTOPHER Vahson, W A .

I've gott en several letters, prompted by by en try in Dale Luciano's "Newave Survey" in  journal #96, asking, "how to" advice, and in this people are missing the point. Do it. Just make it honest from your point of view, and make it new. Don't worry about how Crumb or Miller or Panter would do it, don't make it a rehash of some cliche shit you saw 1,000 times somewhere else. Che ck out They'll Do It Every Time or Gasoline Alley to see how to

C . C . B e c k ' s total lack of workable methodology in his "Opening Shot" in jour nal #99 is truly laugh able. It's not worth much analysis, since there's almost no thought there, although he touches on some relevant points, almost by accident. I was amused at his con ten tio n (which I must paraphrase at this time) regarding the idea that the ancients might not really have taken their fantastic deities so seriously—hmmm, where have I heard of such an approach before? Why, holy moley, that sounds a lot like the approach Beck  used on Captain Marvel! Golly, that means that Beck's approach is legitimized by ancient mythology, doesn' t it? Sure sounded like it it to m e. . . I heave a great sigh when encountering his  jibe about fans making religion out of comics heroes. It might have helped had Beck  been able to see religion objectively as a structure using two primary modes of thought—(1) the moral, ethical mode, dealing with all the dos and don'ts that every culture agrees upon as a means of maintaining themselves, and (2) the supernatural, whi ch is is the e xtra-hu man means by which such moralities are justified. Whether the notion sits well with Beck  or not, the archetypes that every religion depends on are fundamentally born from the same

23

LETTERS poorly drawn, and it is unrealistic to expect them to change. These criteria nonetheless re main legitimate grounds for critical comment. An illogical and inane plot is still bad cartoon ing no matter now frequently th e defect is is en countered, and Ted White is certainly on the mark in calling it out. 1. Blume, S. 1981 . Nationa l Patterns of  Alcohol Use and Abuse. Annals of the New York  Academy of  Sciences 362: 4-5. 2. Zinsberg, N.E. 1979. Nonaddictive Opiate Use. In Handbook on Drug Abuse, Washington, D.C., National Institute on Drug Abuse; pp. 303-313. 3. Dogologg, Dogologg, L.I., and Devine, C M . Interna tional Patterns of Drug Abuse and Control. Annals of the New New York  Academy of Sciences 362: 16-17. 4. Greden, J.F. 1981. Caffeinism and Caffeine Withdrawal. In Substance Abuse. Baltimore, MD, Williams Wilkins, p. 274. creative processes as the heroes of genre fic tion. Nobody sane could actually make a religion of comics heroes, but his chauvinism about the ancient deities deities underestimate s the complexity of those those archetypes, and degrades degrades them to the level of the comics heroes.

WE'RE ALL ADDICTS CAREY SUBLETTE Riverside, C A I realize that this is drifting from the raison d'etre of  The Comics Journal (namely comics), but in the interest of factual accuracy I would like to respond to the remarks of Martin Williams in the letters pages of  Journal #99. Williams begins his discussion of  drugs and drug use with a demonstratio n of his moral fervor by stating "First of all, it is foolish to argue with any kind of  drug user. . .". Any kind of  drug user? This takes in quite a lot of  territory since 70 per cent of Americans over the age of 14 use alcohol. Indeed, when one takes into account the Americans who use mood-altering stimulants like nicotine and caffeine, Williams is left with very few people with whom to argue. He doesn't include a temperance lecture in his diatribe so we are left to wonder if, possibly, William s himse lf  is one of the very drug users he despises so. Th e rest of the letter continues in a similar vein, mixing moral outrage with generaliza tions the size of  Texas, and dropping occa sional hints of anecdotal evidence. But Williams's argument s stem from fundame ntal misconceptions about the nature of addictions and addicts. There are only two kinds of physical addic tion known: opiate addiction and depressant addiction. Repeated administration of these drugs at sufficiently high doses cause changes in the nervous system that make continued administration necessary to avoid unpleasant and clearly defined physical reactions ("ab stinence syndrome"). Withdrawal from opiates is quite painful, but not dangerous. With drawal from alcohol or barbituates can cause fatal seizures. Stimulant withdrawal can cause

mild, transient discomfort, but this is quite different from an abstinence syndrome. But the term "addicti on" is understood in a broader sense, which refers not to a physical reaction, but to a type of behavior. In this sense, an addiction is a compulsive behavior that has harmful effects on the individual. Compulsive behavior develops because the individual exhibiting the behavior receives from it some sort of reinforcement (either physical or psychic) whic h he or she regards as positive. It need have nothing to do with drugs, both compulsive overeating and selfstarvation are common addictive behaviors. T h e addict, the n, is someone susceptible to developing compulsive behaviors. There are 3 to 4 million heroin users in the U.S.; only 10 per cent of these users become addicted. This is about the same percentage of alcohol users who develop alcohol problems. As for Williams's assertion that heroin addiction is surely and swiftly fatal there are only about five heroin related deaths per 1,000 addicts each year. For comparison, there are 10 alcohol related deaths per 1000 alcoholics each year, according to the National Coun cil on Alcoholism. Addiction can easily arise from drugs that are not physically addictive. Stimulants are strongly reinforcing drugs that often cause addiction. Amphetamines, cocaine, and nico tine are notorious examples, but caffeine addic tion is just as real. It is commonly observed that an individual addicted to one drug readily becomes addicted to others, often simultaneously. A large ma  jority of alcoholics are also tobacco users, Williams himself observes that people who use marijuana compulsively often develop alcohol problems as well. We can thus see that addictiveness is a pro perty of the addiction-prone individual, individual, rather than a unique characteristic of a particular drug. In his closing paragr aphs, Williams returns to the subject of comics and here I find myself  in qualified agreement. It is true that comics, in general, have never been an accurate reflec tion o f reality, reality, and it is unrealistic to expect them to change. However, it is also true that comics, in general, are poorly written and

AN OPTIMIST STEPHEN BECK Angeles, C A Lo s Angeles, A though t struck me recently, and because of  it, I felt compelled to set a few words down on paper. Specifically, the thought was this: comics—the graphic arts medium—is bettet y than ever. I say this from some sort of historical per spective, having been weaned on the old Silver Ag e D C s (who can forg forget et Superman Red/  Superman Blue or the Carmine Infantino Flash), nurtured on the early Marvels (lettered with a pen by Artie Simek), energized by the undergrounds, and given a sense of perspec tive by the Golden Age rarities. It seems to me that now, more than ever,

LETTERS

there is a breadth of possible experiences of of fered the comics fan than ever before, and by God, it is an exciting time. Cases in poi nt: One: the Graphic Novel. Certainly, this is a case where content has not yet reached the potential of form, subject matter too often sub   jugated to commercialit y, and what's found within the page's too often a glorified "First Issue Collector's Item." Still, the Graphic Novel does offer unique opportunities to the comics creator; an extended page count, the highest of printing st andards, a certain inde pendence afforded the writer/artist/creator from from the restrictions of a continuing character and series format all of which can and should be truly truly liberating. Even with the thus-far frustrating paucity of  true gems among the baubles, still still the opportun ity is there and exists. Two: Tne exposure to foreign comics. For example, 15 years ago, who but the most knowledgeable would have heard of, let along have had access to , Asterix, Tintin, or Moebius, as well as the other pack of French artists? Also, there is the cross-pollination (transplan ting?) of creators creators from, from, especially, especially, En gl an dAla n Moore, Brian Bolla nd, et al.—and al.—and some of  their creations—Marvelman (newly named Miracleman), the marvelously tacky Judge Dredd, and even exposure to reprints of Dan Dare. Three: Th e rebirth rebirth of Oth er Com ics Com panies. Now, besides the Big Tw o (not coun ting Archie, Western, in whatever form it undergrounds,) nds,) there takes, Charl ton, and the undergrou are the numerous other s, some big league league (like Eclipse, First, Aardvark -Vanahe im, and Fantagraphics Books, some in The Minors (notable and not-so-notable, but all in one way or another trying). Included in the notable are some of the best comics available, like the Spirit  and Nexus, and some of the best talents whose creative process is either too slow to accommodate a regular schedule—like Dave Stevens—or too evolutionary to be subjugated - l i k e Keith Giffen. Four: The Deluxe Mark et. Freed from from t he aegis aegis of the Comics Code A uthorit y, a hybrid of  Independents have been spawned from their,efforts to find a niche—and as a sideeffect, the Big Two discover that there is a market in that niche. (I mean, let's face it, Coyote as an integral part of the Marvel Universe—side-by-side with Spider-Man—star-

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

ring in "When Non-Humans Collide?") There is, from this quarter, a real excitement generated, where Starstruck  can reside next to Crossfire, Thriller, Zot'. In black-and-white, but still related, are Love and  Rockets and Elfquest. Aside from the magazines, there is the real revolution in printing quality now available. Five: Th e Mini-Series . It's nice to be able to read (and have told) a story that doesn't have to conform to an anthology format or the boundaries of a continuing series. Six: the Direct-Sales Market . Th e nesting ground and fertile garden for all of the above. Now, I can walk into my favorite comics shop and be exposed to Steve Canyon, Prince Popeye, Star Comi cs (you Valiant, (joy of  joys) Popeye, Metal, gotta start somewhere), Epic/Heavy repackaged Cerebus the Aardvark," Ms. Tree,  RAW, magazines about  comics (your ofteninfuriating publication, among others), and I could go on, bu t you catch my drift. There's more, I'm sure, and there will be more. That's nice. It's good to have a breadth of  experience available, and although all too often the content hasn't caught up with the myriad of forms forms available, still, still, the opportuni ty is there. I, for one, am glad to be reading comics now, and more importantly, I am look ing forward to reading them i n the future.

arrest, you son of a bitch," etc. It appears as if this nov el wasn't really writ ten with any particular market in mind. I pity poor David Michelinie, who scripted the book  from a plot by Jim Shooter. I can imagine how it happened: happened: Shoot er called Michelin ie into his office and told him about a graphic novel he would like to do, but didn't have the time to script. Michelinie agreed readily, even before Shooter started to talk about the plot. After all, Michelinie had never worked on a graphic novel before and this would be his chance. Then Shooter explained exactly what the plot would berMich elini e was shocked at how absurd it sounded, but. . . what could he say. . . he'd already agreed that he'd love to work on it. It was too late to decline! This letter is pretty harsh on Shooter; however, I truly believe that Shooter is the most ill-qualified person to write such a graphic novel or particularly the Secret Wars 11 series. Secret Wars 11 is poorly plotted, poorly paced, lacks proper characterization, and has

FROM ONE PENNSYLVAN IAN

TO ANOTHER

LARRY PAULHAUS Nanty Glo, PA I just finished reading Marvel Graphic Novel #16 (The Aladdin Effect), and I had to write somewhere to express my feelings. I really don't feel that writing to Marvel would do any good, so perhaps it will help if this sees print in the Journal. If  you haven't read the "novel," it's about a little girl v/tio can wish that something hap pens and then it happens. It turns out that her town has been trapped within a force field of  unk nown origin for two weeks. Sh e wishes her favorite super-heroines were there to help out and so it happens. They manage to save the town with the aid of the townspeople. O f  course, during the two weeks that the town has been completely cut off from the out side world, no state or federal agencies get involved or even seem to notice. And so the Avengers or Fantastic Four don't find out about it either. (I guess there's no need for realism in comics.) Throughout the entire book there are all sorts of silly, unrealistic things that happen; so much so, that it makes me question if perhaps I have been the fool in thinking this book was meant to be read by adults. But. . . if this book was aimed at a young au dience (as the cover illustration would suggest), why are there sexual overtones and bad lan guage? guage? Examples: (1) there is an attempt ed rape of the Wasp by some roughnecks, (2) there is a scene in which t he Sh e-Hulk is first knocked out where her nipples are bulging through her shirt, (3) there are several inci dents where rough language is used: "fight those bloody bastards" and "you're under

no care for realism (especially Secret Wars II  ill-qualified ed person writing #3). Why is such an ill-qualifi such an importan t series series?? Everything that he's ever written has been criticized to no end by fans and critics except for his Legion of  Super Heroes stories. Just look at his record: Team  America, Dazzler, Secret  Wars. They are all considered trash by all but novice fans who havenJt attained a grasp of conti nuit y and realism in comics. I don't bu y Secret  Wars any more, on prin ciple. I hope other people will stop buying it as well. But many fans who don't like it will keep on buying it. They are Marvel completists or else they're interested in many of the characters that appear in Secret  Wars 11 and want to know what's going on. I can empa thize with them, but I've decided that I can no longer buy this book, and in doing so, cast a vote for more of this trash. Come to think of it, though, perhaps Shooter is the most qualified person to write about the Beyonder. After all, one should write about what one knows best. Just as the Beyonder blunders around the Marvel Uni verse screwing things up, so does Shooter blunder around messing with continuity and plausibility in the Marvel Universe.

25

IS T H E J U R Y S T I L L O U T ? PAUL L U K A C S Fairview Park, OH

I read Adrian Mazar's letter about how Marvel Editor Jim Owsley Owsley changed the entire opinion of  a letter Adrian sent to the letters column of  Spider-Man, and was thoroughly shocked that even Marvel would sink to such a low. Fo r that reason, I penned the following letter to Mr. Owsley. I would like the Journal to publish it int he hope that Owsley would have to make some sort of response. My letter to him is as follows: "In The Comics Journal #100, page 56, a letter written by an Adrian A. Mazar of Bushne ll, Illinois, was published. In this letter, he claims that you deliberately changed the opinion of  a letter he sent to "The Spider's Web" from an anti-Ron Frenz editorial to a pro-Ron Frenz one. I do not think that I have to point out what a major moral infr action it would would be if  you did indeed do this. T o prove this accusa tion false, all you need to do would be to publish Adrian's letter in its entirety, so we, the readers, can compare and contrast the two. If you do not even m enti on thi s weighty accusation, I will have no choice but to find you guilty."

Editor's note: Don't hold  your  breath.

EVEN STAR TR EK ISN'T ALWAYS WH AT IT SEEMS LAWRANCE M. BERNARD Champaign, IL

In his interview in The Comics Journal #100, Chris Claremont mentioned his admiration for "The City on the Edge of Forever," the Star Trek  episode written by Harlan Ellison. Claremont said, "When Shatner says at the end, ' Let's get get the hell out o f here,' tears were in my eyes. Harlan's script was really right on." Claremont echoed sentiments I myself  had for years about what I know many consider to be their favorite Star Trek episode. How ever, as I learned later, Ellison never wrote that dramatic climax that touched us both the first dozen times or so we saw that particular episode. Th e script that was "really right right on" wasn't really Ellison's. Th e differences between the original script and televised versions of  "City" are somewhat provocative, given the reputation the episode enjoys among even those who have watched Star Trek  to distraction. Also, given the events of  the last two Star Trek films there is an addi tional level of insight and irony involved worth noting as well. Harlan Ellison won a Writers Guild of  America Award for Most Outstanding Teleplay not  for the screenplay of "The City on the Edge of Forever," but for the original script. That original script, along with an introduc tion by Ellison detailing how what he wrote became what we saw, ca n be found in what

SO MU CH FOR HIGHER EDUCATION CLIFFORD COBB JR. Forrest C i t y , A K My name is Clifford Theophilus Cobb Jr . My pen name is Sketch. I am twenty-one years of  age. I am a junio r in college and I have cur rently accomplished the copywrighting of my own comic strip entitled "Hanky Panky." It has been sold to three collegiant newspapers in three seperate states in the mid south region of  the United States. My new and current pro  ject entitled the "Heretic" has recently been completed. U n l i k e my current cartoon Hanky, "Heretic" is ameli melodramat ic story of a ma n and his struggle to come to terms with truth and God. He fights a war of principalities in a society of various religions and denom ina tions. His views views of Go d a nd his music of  praise is rejected by church communities and com munities of  high moral views, but is accep ted

is now probably an out-of-print paperback, Six Science Fiction Plays, edited by Roger Elwood for Washington Square Press in 1976. "The City on the Edge of Forever," if  anyone needs their memory jogged, is the episode in which Kirk and Spock follow McCoy through a time portal. They end up in New York  City during the Great Depres sion and Kirk has to let Edith Keeler, the woman he has fallen in love with, be hit by a truck so that Hitler won t conquer the world. Well, it's slightly more complicated than that, but that's the gist of the episode. You ca n always tell when it runs again in syndica-. tion because the blurb in the papers invariably notes that Edith is played by Joan Collins. Th e reason / liked the episode is because I have always been distressed by scientists who are always risking the safety of the free world in order to rescue their wives and/or daugh ters. Scient ists who have secrets that can destroy the world should either not be allowed to have children, or have so many they won't it mandatory that they miss one or two. Make it contri bute to sperm banks . (Just once I would would

by the outcasts and renegades of weary rule riddled society. The crux of the rejection stems from the soul, pop, and almost hard rock type of  gospel songs played the band entitled "Amen." ,, •• •• ... T h e story contains a philosophically biblical standpoint of view on music, religion religion hypocracy, etc. etc. If  you are interested in further observa tion of  my artistical illustrated story, please con tact m e . • - , T h e Editors reply: Hi, Sketch. We're sorry, but the Journal doesn't   publish original comic strips. We castigate,  denigrate, and bumrap strips published  by others.  It's easier that way.  However, to be truthful, even if we were to strips, we couldn't quite bring publish original strips,  ourselves to print a strip from a philosophical   biblical  biblical standpoint about music and hypocracy,  no matter how artistical it was done. We hope   you get Hanky Panky into more collegiant,  newspapers and  more seperate states-

like to see the scientist tell the maniac threatening his daughter, "Hey, plenty more where she came from, bub.") "The City on the Edge of Forever" presented the argument that the ultimate sacrifice might mean more than sacrificing your own life. For Kirk the ultimate sacrifice sacrifice specifically th e is sacrificing someone else's life, specifically woman he loves. 1 think that would be the ultimate sacrifice sacrifice for anyone. Th ere might be a cross in every every church but the line does begin, "For God so loved the world. . ." This idea is also expressed in the phrase, " T h e needs of the many outweigh the needs of  the few, or the one." It's the reason why Spock  entered the reactor room in Star Trek  11: The Wrath of  Khan, the motive for selfless acts of heroism on countless battlefields since day eight, and a guiding principle our govern ment has been known to invoke from time to time. T en years ago, when I finally finally readEllis on's original script, I found out that the episode I saw, and the message I received, were not  what Ellison intended. On television, Kirk  stops McCoy from saving Edith. In Ellison's

script, Kirk refuses to act, and it is the everrational Spock who has to ensure Edith's death. Ellison still provided a conclus ion t hat demands our tears as Spock calls Kirk by his first first name for the first first time , telling him: "No woman was ever loved as much, Jim. Because no woman was ever offered the universe for love." Th e point Ellison wanted to make was tha t love is such a strong and noble emotion that willing to sacrifice his ship, his crew, Kirk  was willing his life, Spock, and the future of civilization for Edith. In other words, the intended lesson was not that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," but rather that, dam mit, there are times, when "the needs of t he one outweight the needs of the many." Th e reason that the episode Ellison wrote and the episode in syndication are not the same is because Ellison was told by th e Powers That Were, "Our character wouldn't act like that." If this were a joke, that would be the punchline. What it means is that the message that struck Claremont and myself  so forcefully— tha t I found so profound a nd meaningful tha t it threatens to harm my marriage every time I inform my wife that if it ever comes down to her or the world, I'm going to let that truck  roll on down the street—is the result of a pro ducer's fluke. fluke. Gene Ro ddenberry didn't intend for me to learn a valuable lesson; it was all an accident, a decision designed to give the audience what they supposedly want", whether it's Kirk always doing the "heroic" thing, or, as Claremont points out, confronting Kirk  with a new epic love affair every other week. It is iron ic that 18 years after Elli son wrote ' his script, the message Ellison inten ded is em bodied in Star Trek  111: The Search For Spock. James Tiberius Kirk finally made the big sacrifice that Ellison insisted he was capable of  in 19 66, losing his son , his ship, an d his career. Only the last of that trio is salvageable . in any meaningful sense; the first pair are irre trievable, and must remain such in order for Kirk's sacrifices to retain any meaning or significance. This letter runs a bit long, but I wanted to write something more than "Chris, you igno rant slut." If I If I were to offer a moral out of all this it might be simply to treat television pro grams, films, and yes, even comic books, the same way you would politicians and people trying to sell you kitchen appliances.

SHATTERING MYTHS

P E T E R B. GILLIS Chicago, IL Thanks for the review of  Shatter  in Journal #100. Although I think Carter Scholz unjustly maligns maligns the Macinto sh Mac , and makes some some incomprehensible aesthetic judgments (Why atrociously named than is "MacP aint" more atrociously "dBase III" or "Lotus 1-2-3," for goodness sakes?), it was a well thou ght- out and pret ty balanced piece. I'm not writing the book any more (an inte resting story; maybe some day I'll tell it), and the boo k's going off in a different dire ction

t h a n the one I envisioned, but I did put a lot of  though t in to our little future, an d some of  the judgments Carter made are worth commenting on. About rat-brains being as cheap as micro chips and as interchangeable: Carter is right, of  course, in that neural activity and IC logic activity are nowhere near the same. However, it's possible to reduce a biological brain's acti vity until it's no better  than an IC, much in the same way that, instead of having an elec tron ic eye eye open the door at the supermar ket, you can have a little boy do it. Naturally a rat's brain is vastly (one might speculate in finitely) more complex than a Ce ntral Process-

ing Unit, but you can make it do the same moronic tasks. In the context of the book, the bug-bombs were manufactured by the terror ists—and don't forget that, in most urban areas, rat-brains are not only free but plentiful. Carter makes the assumption that the 15 executives had injected themselves with the R N A , and that Cyan killed them and took  their brains. An understandable assumption assumption due to my elliptical presentation (I hear most of  my editors chanting "make it clear, god damn it!" in the background—one of my worst faults, although here I'll plead limited space), but mistaken. They're businessmen, and were mark eting i t; it was still still being stored for future use. But Carter 's speculation on "why the cor porate swi ne .. . wanted the musician's musician's RN A , . . when they might more easily have signed him to a long-term long-term cont rac t" gets gets to the core of  what I was aiming at, ultimately, in the series: that corporate America, now as well as in the future, really would rather  have talent and skill as a simple commodity than having to deal with talented and skilled people. It's

become a hobby-horse of mine, but still, I think, valid: that management not only out strips talent (and not just artistic types: techni cians and researchers are in there as well) in the money they make and the prestige they acquire in society to an outrageous degree, but they turn around and actively despise despise people in that c ategory. RN A transfer is a further further step along the way to creating a world in which talent is cheap and interchangeable. That was going to be the major thrust of the series. An d of course most of that was not in Shat ter Special #1. Had it been, the readers would have been treated to page after page of massive captions. Which brings up something else:

Carter was completely wrong in his surmise as to how Michael drew the book. No pencil work was involved and no tracing. Mike drew with the mouse directly into the machine. It takes a good amount of eye-hand co-ordi nation and a fair amount of adaptability. But frankly, outside of the blue-line color, everything that was in Shatter  went from our hands directly into the machine via a peri pheral. An d the re's s omething else fairly fairly rele rele vant to the review: due to the limita tions of  the Mac, all the art was done same size, not shot down from 11 " by 17." Because the Mac was incapable of doing or printing a page of  that size (and doing fragments and pasting them up to full size, then shooting them down would have missed the whole point of the pro cess), we sacrificed sacrificed type size and the smoothin g out that comes with a shooting-down. An d as Carter points out, we deliberately chose our storyline so that the grainliness and grittiness S . M "LETTERS," p«s« 94

GENERALLY "Generally Speaking" is a new regular  Jour na l feature, designed  to give a critical look  at  the North American comics scene. In coming months, the column will evolve to include still more comics companies, providing readers with capsule reviews of the industry's output. Due Speak to the brevity of the reviews, "Generally ing" is not  intended  to give in-depth criticism, but  should instead serve to alert  the reader  as to what's worth a look, and  what's not. The Journal would  like to thank  the parti in cipating publishers for  their  assistance "Generally Speaking."

average issue after all. What isn't average is the length of time between this issue and the last. Once the very model of punctuali ty, Cerebus has of late been appearing in fits and starts, just like any other alternative comic. * S o b * Can it be that his Holiness Dave is " h u m a n * just like those other com ics scriveners? scriveners? A h w ell .. . added bonus this ish: letters page debate between Sim and Neal Adams on contracts and releases.  —HEIDI 

MacDONALD

DC COMICS AARDVARK-VANAHEIM C E R E B U S #80 is a seemingly average outing for the Earth pig—the unnamed little guy in the hat with the ear-flaps tries to ex plain the end of the world to Cer ebus , Red Sophia characterizes her conjugal duties with the Pope as perverse, and a humon gous orange creature appears claiming to be Tarim, and proceeds to throw Cerebus out o f  the city, literally— but it does contain one ghastly shocking event—the scene of  Bran Mak Muffin kill ing himself. No, not Bran! Not Muffin, with his calm, wise smile! The scene of  Bran's death is yet another one of Dave Sim's fautlessly-paced sequences, with the horror on Cerebus's face standing in for our own. On second thought, every issue of Cerebus contains some sort of  ghastly event or shocking revelation. S o 1 guess this is a n

Just your average issue—   —some domestic humor, • allocking revelation, an d a papal earth-pig.

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

In this issue, they had an adventure against the Mafia in Italy. A dull adventure at that. The one in space isn't any better. Might appeal to your kid if he's int o G.J . Joe.

H E X #9: After meandering around th e wild west for more t h a n 100 stories, Jon ah suddenly found himself kicked into He x has suddenly the future, and Michael Fleisher's imagina tion has kicked in for the first time in years. O f  course, the first scene contains a shoot out in the singles bar o f the future, bu t H ex is still pretty handy with a shooting iron. T h e body count is as high in the new Hex as in the old one. Fleisher's view of the future do esn' t strike

B A T M A N # 3 9 5 : Right now this stripappearing in both Batman and Detectiveis in its Hill Street Blues mode, with its formula of action, soap opera, and recur ring bits of business. In this issue, Jason Todd, the new Robin (who replaced the old without anybody no ticing), gets bent out of  shape because Bat man is more interes ted in cavorting over the rooftops with Catwoman t h a n with him. The kid just isn't old enough, you see, and he's still annoyed Ma d Hex: Beyond T h u n d e r d o m e . by the resolution of  the Nocturna sub plot, and he's itching

for action besides. So who can blame him for trying to solve the case with Bullock, th e strip's resident comic relief, a reformed "baddie" who's like Ga bb y Hayes wit hout the beard? It doesn't bother Bruc e (Bat man) Wayne that the kid's unhealthily compe titive. Maybe Batman's just pariently waiting for the day when the kid gets run over by a truck, but I don't know how much longer I can wait for Jason's hormones to kick in.

guess the '80s have have G . I . C O M B A T #2 83 :1 guess finally arrived, because G.I. Combat  isn't about World War II anymore. The new heroes of this this mag, Th e Mercenar ies, are are just as apt to have adventures in outer space as they are in the perilous European countries. Naturally our heroes will never be terrorists, and they'll always fight for the good guys.

me as being particularly coherent. It con tains elements from popular movies instead of  genuine extrapolation. And as I've im plied, the action per se is like the old Hex script despite the different visuals. But Fleisher's writing is more alive than it's been since his first significant effort, those wonderfully black-humored, EC-esque Spectre stories. S o maybe if he starts writing a little more for himself and a little less for his audience, this character can stand out again. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA # 2 5 0 : This rather perfunctory issue by Gerry Conway and Luke McD onne ll reunit ed what's left of the old me mber ship with what's left of the new membership. I haven't been following these developments

29

too closely lately, so I don't remember if  Wonder Woman has simply ceased to exist or if she's alive somewhere, ou t o f the reach of  pencils and word processors, but nobody seems to remember, or think of her, and she isn't included in the panel illustrating those characters currently too busy in their books to take time out for adventute. Anyway, in this issue Batman takes over the leadership of the Justice League for the coming year, for his own hidden reasons. Obviously at the time of this writing, Con way had something planned, something he probably won't be able to use with the forth coming new versions of Batman and Super man. As I u n d e r s t a n d it (I'm feeling nebulou s at the m om ent , as if what I'm talk-

strongly reminiscent of those fun, feminist fantasies of yore, which the vast majority o f  today's readership has never read and probably couldn't care less about. Still, this is one valid direction in principle for modern super-hero comics, an effort to do something coherent in plot and art style that does more t h a n cater to what people think the market, at its most routine, is looking for. T h e trouble is, neither writer Kurt Busiek  nor artist Trina Robbins are quite bad enough to really capture the spirit of the thing. They aren't good enough either. The dialogue pings when it should zing. zing. An d the art lays flaccid when it should stiffen and stand up straight. Still, Robbins has entered

On e last look at th e original Wonder Woman—but why?

ing about is so incredibly unreal as to be inherently vague), othe r characters won't even be able to remember having met Superman and Batman when the new ver sions roll along, t h u s flushing Conway's subplot. Is it any wonder this issue is perfunctory? L E G E N D O F W O N D E R W O M A N #1: Here's an idea whose time hasn't come: an homage to Wonder Woman (Circa 1940), 'Mazing Man eschews th e heroics in favor of light humor—to Its credit.

the world of mainstr eam super-hero c om ics without compromising her art style, whic h is unfort unatel y too simplistic to recall Golden Age artist H.G. Peters' art deco approach. Well, all right, I didn't like it. That's because I've always felt the Golden Age Wonder Woman title has sucked equally with all the other versions. Maybe if I was a little girl . . . ' M A Z I N G M A N #5 : I used to think Bob Rozakis was just anoth er super-hero ha ck, pissing away what talent he may possess rehashing bored, tiresome concepts. Then he and artist Stephen DeStefano created 'Mazing Man, and once again Cover chews hi s hush puppies. Mighty tasty. Issue #5 revolves around the writer's block  that Denton, who looks just like a dog but whom everybody loves anyway, experiences while attempting to get in the latest Spudman script by Thursday. Denton explains it this way: "Writer's block is an imaginative dry spell. . .when you take turns staring a blank  sheet of  paper  and an empty wallet, and the words just icon'r come." What  was that? I thought, while reading that panel. A problem that I can identify with, ex plained so even rubes who can't put th ree coherent words together can understand it? Does that mean this book might actually be trying to say something about *gasp* the condition! human

Sure enough. This book accomplishes, in terms of characterizations, dialogue, et al., what everybody else has only been talking about. Denton's friends, including 'Mazing Man, all try to talk Denton out of his block,

telling him stories of their own making (each illustrated by guest artists, including Gar cia Lopez and S chaffenbe rger) which they hope will inspire him to meet his deadline. T h i s issue doesn't carry the Comics Code Seal, presumably because a couple of char acters are very interested in getting laid right after the story's over, but this book really is for evervbody. It's. . . swell! —ART COVER

ECLIPSE COMICS A L I E N E N C O U N T E R S #4 is the usual sort of  pseudo sci-fi stuff  that attists who can't find writers to work with always turn out. One story this issue is about an alien nam ed Zeks who sees the lig ht of civilized behavior when he gets laid by a female love andro id name d Luv . (Luv and Zeks—get Zeks—get it?) Conrad provides very pretty art. Next Ti m up is Ch uck Wag ner /Bi l Wray shagg shaggy y dog story about a mischievous little space alien who manages to blow up earth. Tired. Gar dne r F. Fox, old pro of old pros, weighs in with a morality t ale ab out a guy guy on- a planet where anything you wish comes true. Needless to say, it backfires (but not before he's conjured a naked girl.) Finally there's a really silly Ti mo th y Trum an two-pager, which is just like any num ber of stories stories that you've seen in Epic where aliens turn ou t to be not quite what they seem. I s'pose I shouldn 't be too harsh. After all, at least these are stories. Today's scripters have a hell of a hard time sandwiching beginning, middle, and end into mere eightAr e

pseudo-decadent zap^em-ups riding th e

coattalls of American Flagg's popularity? I DON'T G&t  T H I S , AAVfiTA . . . T W e V R g exrmcTfNG US'*

young woman whom he cares about. Scary stuff". I can't remember ever reading another teen-aged muta nt c om ic which dealt with sex in such an honest and forthright man ner. I didn't mu ch care for the super-doings in this issue (although Rainbow's prying in to Tank's mind was handled very well) but Evanier and Patton deserve praise for deal ing with this subject in a mature way. I suppose that I shouldn't bot her to nitpick, but I can't help but be totally baffled by Patton's insistence on drawing Kathy .wearing a barrette on the exact spot where she parts her hair! Egads, and we wonder why people laugh at comics! How can any one not notice that this is impossiblel S h a m e shame shame.

Soma b o o k * come with 3- D glasses. ' Bunny  should come with aspirin. .

Cutey 

page installments (see First  Adventures below). Go od God , when I thin k of what Stanley, Barks, Eisner and Feldstein did with eight pages... Well, I don't mean to sound too much like a cranky old-timer. Alien Encounters #4 is a tolerable return. But new stories, please. D o not read A R M Y S U R P L U S K O M I C Z S T A R R I N G C U T E Y B U N N Y #5 while you have a headache. One has to real ly concent rate to get all of Josh ua Quagmire's jokes, so bursting is each panel with them. In fact, there's probably no more than two square inches of solid white space in the whole damn book! (Josh should watch out for this). Thi s is the l ong awaited X-Men spoof, and if you like Cute y, you'll probably love this, as Kelly makes the cutest Dark Phoenix ever. The book also includes (in no particular order): The Nice Guy League of America (a confusing blend of  satire satiress on the J LA , the Invaders, Invaders, and—o f  all things—Baby Huey); the ever-menacing Gran'ma Phooby; the lascivious Silver Fox; many, many bunny bun shots; someone named Pandora; and by far the most sym pathetic portrayal o f  Chris Claremont that I can ever remember reading in a comic book. D N A G E N T S #5, by Mark Evanier and Chuck Patton, presents a shocking turning point in the life of Tank. No, he does n't decide to renounce his powers, or leave the team, or join the bad guys, or anything like that. He just decides to go to bed with a

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

L A S E R E R A S E R &. P R E S S B U T T O N #2 is a pseud o-dec adent zap-'em-up in th e vein made so popular by American Flagg! (Well, as a genre, I personally find it lot more fun tha n som e I could nam e). No t a bad bu y for your six bits, certainly on a par, or perhaps slightly superior, to your average Marvel or D C product. T he coloring is awful, and the printing is muddy, the story is kind of a gross-out about flesh as a con struction material. "Pedro Henry"'s writing writing is serviceable but flat, and David L loyd doesn't draw as well as Brian Bolland or A l a n Davis. B . C . B o y e r ' s w o rk rk i n T H E M A S K E D M A N # 7 is full of non-sequiturs, some of  which work and some of which are waaay out in right field. There are so many storylines tangling through this story that it's awfully hard to keep any of them straight. Both the writing and art have a great deal of sincereity and even charm, but when Boyer tries to get tough-as-nails, the effect is jarring, and disastrously silly. His storytelling»similarly veers between the highly effective and the nonsensical. I've never understood why that guy goes around with his tongue stuck out. And whenever I hear the word " Reg giot oni " all I can thi nk  of  is some new kind o f pasta. N ot too suc cessful, this one. T h e first thi ng I th in k after r eading M I R A C L E M A N #4 is Why why why does Eclipse insist on t hat ghastly proce ss color on newsprint? It is, to put it mildly, the pits. It looks awful. Atrocious. Bad. No good. It sucks. Please stop. T h e more com ics I read the firmer becomes my conviction that artwork in tended for black and white should be col ored as simply as possibly, if it abso lutel y has to be colored. I know that most com ics buyers thin k of black-and-w hite as retarded—that's their tough luck. This would look so much better in black-andwhite—as it origi nally appeared—or at least flat, pleasant tones. Or even gaudy ones. Anything would be better than this muddy (there's that word again) mess.

Otherwise, Alan's Moore's story is superb, and Ala n Davis' art is is pretty damn

fine. W O W I E K A Z O W I E ! G o d Bless Ray Zone! Or so I thought when I donned my 3-D specs and opened up M I R A C L E M A N 3-D. Jeezis, never before had 3-D worked for me like this, never before had objects leapt out of the page. Never before had I seen the layers of  depth in such clarity. And then it be gan to ki nd a. . . fade out. Being nearsighted, I guess I have those usual problems with 3-D comics. T h e effect works, but not so good, not all the time. It's a gimmick, and for about five minutes it's really neat-o and fun, but in the sixth-minute, all I have is a head ache. Good stories, though, lovably cor ny Captain Marvelesque reprints, and spooky, scary new stuff  by Alan Moore and Alan Davis.  x '4 •

Great witting and art with atrocious pro duction. But bad production you can ge t anywhere.

•*»

I 132 ' 3

. 3

Speaking of design for design's sake (which we aren't) Jeff  Bonivert lets out all the stops i n M R . M O N S T E R # 4 . Not that I can make heads or tails tails out o f anything that's going on in this issue. Something about Mr. Monster going to Dimension X. (Well mebbe it's not supposed to make much sense.) My complaint is, as usual, muddy coloring , bu t boy tha t lettering and futurodeco stuff  sure looks great. P. Craig Russell's two-part P E L L E A S & M E L I S A N D E is a labor of love obsession all the way through, so earnestly and ur gently portrayed that one (meaning this one) hesitates to say anything bad about it. Yes, it's a pretty and sensitve adaptation of  Maeterlinck's translucent play, and after Debussy did the ultimate translation (that highly artificial artificial blending o f word an d music) Russell has a tough row to hoe, but he makes out okay. His art is as placid and mannered as it should be, and the beautiful Meli sand e lives out h er sad, mysteri ous life in a dark castle in the middle of nowhere. But. But, but, but. There are two major problems here: First is the coloring, w hich, while suitably pale and twilit in most spots,

31

beyon d this sort of thing , but gim me a break. At least comics writers of the precode days knew how to pack a lot  of story int o a mere 8 pages. pages. Big laugh l ine of the ish: Mother taking her little boy to the doc tor: "Oh doctor! It-it isn't serious, is it? He's never been sick  before—but-but he's just wasting away! What's wrong?" Doctor: "Do n't worry Mrs. Walters! Walters! Ther e's noth ing the matter with Bobbie! He's a healthy lit tle lad! You just take him home and give him plenty of milk!" By far the dumbest of  the tales here is the two-page "The Phan tom Horseman" in which Ivar Kiraly goes of f  to World War I, comes back  wounded, and then becomes a phan tom horseman searching after a dream. The story is told in a more abbreviated form that I've used here.

Far removed from th e rest of Eclipse's line—an adaptation of an o p e r a , which is not as absurd a s It sounds when P. Craig Russell does it .

has a graininess—especially in the flesh tones—that is most unattractive. The re's also a muddiness that's probably • t he printer's fault. fault. Seco nd, and more important ly, Russell—who makes extensive but highly imagin ative use of ph ot o references—has horribly miscast half  of his love-doomed duo. While Melisande has haunted, fawnish eyes, Pellea Pelleass is is just kind of .. .dopey-looking, and the re's not hin g in the rest of Russell's version to support this interpretation. (His rather petty little Golaud does make a point, on the other hand). Since these are draw ings, you can make the leading man as moody or mysterious as you like—so why stick  with a characterization as obviously unsuitable as this one?

By far the best story is by Toth, "The Crushed Gardenia," is a beautifully stylized character study of  J o h n n y Faber, a criminal ly insane youth. The narrator, psychiatrist Paul Crane, recalls no one so much as Dr. Wertham himself, as he strives to make the authorities see that Faber is a psychopath in need of treatment, not a criminal w ho can be rehabilitated. Toth's art is outstan ding, a reminder o f why he's the artist's art ist in comics, elevating the story far beyond the sort o f '50s smugness t hat it could so easily be. , Part 3 of 3

Unlike the pretentious awfulness of  today's comics, the writing in these '50s comics is just plain awful—corny and wooden, but a lot more fun t h a n today's flotsam and jetsam. I mean, " Th e Quest of  the Ch loroph yll Monst ers," fer fer chrissake? chrissake? I guess we haven't really progressed that far

32

How much ca n occur in a two-dimensional world peopled (7) by beans?

I must confess to coming in late on Roger M c K e n z i e ' s S U N R U N N E R S , and the issue at hand, #7 , is the last from Eclipse, as the book will reappear under the Sirius C o m i c s banner. Thus, I'm at a bit of a loss for what to say. Glen Johnson's art is your average over-muscled Kirbadams stuff, and the story doesn't seem to be much of a story,  jumping around one from over-familiar character to another. I can't get any of it straight. In fact, about the only thing in this issue that made an impression on me is how dumb it looks when elephant-head ed people kiss. With T A L E S O F T H E B E A N W O R L D #3 , we enter into uncharted bean territory (t o this reader, anyway, as I had read issues #s 1 and 2 in thei r earlier, limited edition s). In it we learn how Mr. Spook got his fork  and how it changed bathing in the chow from "a smelly, highl y unpleas ant private chore",to a very pleasurable communal ex perience. Larry Marder continues to create a comic with an almost indescribable ambi ance of existence in a truly two-dimen sional world, a deceptively primitive world replete with mysteries. It seems like nothing can ever happen in Beanworld, and yet it does. -HEIDI  MacDONALD

Still, this is a h a u n t i n g story, and Russell has not sold Maeterlinck short. (Or Debussy, whose staging has obviously ex erted a major influence here.) I criticized Eclipse recently for going commercial on us—well this is the good Eclipse and it deserves the support of discriminating comics buyers. Well, talk about your average trip back in time, there's S E D U C T I O N O F T H E I N  N O C E N T , newly re-colored reprints of preCode crime and horror stories from Stan dard Co mi cs . Th e appeal here is is the art— art— Jack  Katz, Murphy Anderson , Mes kin &. Roussos, and last but not least Alex Toth. There isn't even a clue given as to the identi ties of the writers of these tales, and perhaps it's just as well.

Th-dt conducted Wis explanation.

FANTAGRAPHICS

Do-it-yourself cover: flip a negative from an inside panel an d enlarge it . Presto!

Bu t tha t still leaves leaves me wondering what the point of this whole deal is. It sure ain't nice coloring on good paper: Aside from loth, who colors his own work in beauti fully muted tones, the rest of the book's coloring is ghastly, all oranges and purples and acid greens. I dunno, interesting, vaguely amusing, but worth $1.75 for eight pages of loth? You be the judge.

BOOKS

J O U R N E Y #24 : William'Messner-Loebs William'Messner-Loebs keeps carrying on his refreshing, eccentric style. In this issue, Wolverine MacAlistaire takes somewhat of a back seat to the whole slew of well-conceived (and very eccentric) characters who are woven together in a fasdnating, multi-faceted mystery story. Messn er-Loeb s uses the epistolary narrative form as well as it's ever been used in comics (his diarist-narrator, Elme r Aly n Craft, is som ethi ng o f a masterstroke) , and his plot ting, while not always completely clear at first reading, contains more genuine surpris ing turns than probably an entire year's worth of super-hero bo oks . His artwork is deeply atmospheric rather than line-perfect, with a great use of heavy blacks and blank  white space. Every character looks like a

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

r total individual even in long-shots, and they always wear expressions that match their words, journey is a fine book, and this is a very good issue. Best line of the month: "My poor sister thinks that white dugs will com pensate a plain and aging face!" One thing, though—does any comic really need a five-page letters column?

Spinning a yarn of journeys an d people, Bill Loebs continues In fine form.

M E C H A N I C S #3: Maybe this series was   just a noble experiment that didn't work. T h e idea of repackaging Jaime Hernandez's early Mec han ics story, "Lo ve and the Rocket," as a regular-size, deluxe-production color comic (with brand new stories, also by Jaime), would seem to be a likely way to finally get the Marvel and DC Comics crowd to notice the Hernandez Brothers' work, as well as serving as a perfect in troduction to many of the regular chracters that populate Love and  Rockets. Unfortunately, the work doesn't translate too well into the more commercial format. Paul Paul Rivo che' s color ing work is very good , but I can't really say that the addition of  color to Jaime's original black-and-white work is a significant improvement; while the covers and (new) opening splash pages are all lovely, the color often worsens the in terior work, which is already on the dark  side (mainly caused, no doubt, by the artwork's further reduction in size from its original magazine format). The small page reading th e text o f the story size also makes reading a little more work—this is a very wordy comics story (although at no time is it ever

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

Gilbert Hernandez pro vides th e substance of Love and  Rockets  #15.

overly so), and with pages already cram print, med with reducing the art makes some pages look  a bit top-heavy with text. Besides concluding the three-part serial ization of the story, this issue also con tains two oth er stories, "Tbyo's Re quest," and Rocky and Fumble's story; the latter may look  the nicest, only be cause it features the least cluttered art (it is the only reprint mate rial that takes well to the book's smaller for mat). Jaime's art is still better t h a n hi s writing (but then , what art!), and nei the r of  the o the r two stories are on the level of  "Love and t he Rock et," whic h also has its structural flaws. All around, I have to say "Nice try," but perhaps Race, Maggie &. Co . are better suited to the black-and-white magazine format after all.

Bu t still, no matter how good an artist J oe Staton is, he's still Joe Staton, not Howard C hay kin . An d Flag Flagg. g.'' is Chay kin' s creation, its electric advertising backgrounds are his, its myt hos is his, its attit udes are his. I mean, there's hardly a high heel in sight in issue issue #28 , and t hat do esn' t mak e

self-L O V E A N D R O C K E T S #1 5: Thre e self contained stories, this issue. The title of  Beto's "Holidays in the Sun" is, in context, a cruel joke; Gilbert skillfully uses a series of  flashbacks to move the narrative between Jesus' "real" life o f hard labor and homosex uality on the prison island, and his mental "holidays'—his erotic memories, fact and fic tio n, of his earier "free exist ence." As with most of  Beto's solo work, the writing is strong and the art is plain but effective. T h e story's content will surely put off many readers who prefer prefer Jaime' s prettier, funni er stories. Both of his stories in this issue are slight; "Queen Rena: Life at 34 " is another action-oriented vignette from the simulta neous past-present-and-fu past-present-and-future ture biography of  Jaime's lady wrestling champ, and his Locas story "At the Beach," while enjoyable, is somewhat meandering and has no ultimate impact. Jaime is is still still second- to-none when it comes to drawing women, but Gilbert provides this issue's substance. —STEVE M O N A C O

FIRST COMICS ever wanted more proof that Howard If  you ever C h a y k i n is A M E R I C A N F L A G G ! , t he first Joe Staton drawn issue, #28, should bang the gavel down for good. Not that Staton does a bad job—under the circum stances he does his best. The major char acters come through with their personalities intact—only the new bad guy, Paco Giminez, seems too broadly portrayed.

American  Flagg!  #2 8 shows what It looks like to play in Howard Chaykin's playground. .

me happy! Chaykin's writing doesn't exert a strong enough influence to pull us past Staton's flat and too often featureless scenery and into Flagg's noisy world. T h i s « also one of Chaykin's murkier storylines as well. I never compl ained (as so many have) that Flagg! Flagg! was too hard t o

33

KNOW WHY ME icm> we

•

YOLf 

Of  m .

illlf 111 flftfft

~\.it*f 

t

'V

i'

W

you you

M/   M/LLSP

Hi /w.you

AN P L'ii.

IK AU6X AMP

type stuff, very much Japanese influenced, but nothing really special apart from the art, either. Meanwhile, R i c h Larsen's art on Whisper  compels me to use a term that I very, very rarely rarely apply t o comi cs art as original as this, but I cannot refrain any longer. Larsen's art here is ugly. In this issue he seems to have taken up a technica l pen instead of his usual brush , and t he plethora o f fine lines that cluster at the margins of his squared off  shapes are much more attractive t h a n in previous installments. But I still don't like it . If you're wonde ring wh y all the char acter that Mike Grell draws have such roman noses, it's probably because they had transplants from R i c h Larsen's characters, who all have these funny little pushed-in noses.

friends blow ing his enemies to scenes of his friends smit hereen s. Finally Bo b the Lizard finds Grimjack, and he realizes realizes tha t he has something to live for anyway. Not really something to write home about, but better t h a n a poke in the eye with a rolled up copy of  Secret  Wars II . baffled by J O N S A B L E ' s switch I remain baffled to Baxter paper. Was it to ensure a better reproductio n of Mike Grell's pencils? pencils? Mayb e so, bu t they don't really loo k all that muc h

I don't like saying these things, because Larsen is working in a very individualized mod e, and you kno w I always always give brownie points for that. But in this case, it just gets on my nerves. He needs an inker who can ink—and please, God, don't let him design any more costumes. Steven Gra nt' s story involves involves the gradual gradual corruption, through powers and organized crime, of a young woman who form erly possessed great moral fibre. It's not too bad. It just needs to be told in m»ch longer in stallments. Whi ch is why I'm looking ahead to the up comi ng Whisper mini-series. I f  Joe Sta ton

m . m m First Adventures  appears to be a showcase fo r features that don't warrant their o w n books.

understand, but this issue, in particular, left me rather apathetic about the whole affair. O f  course, I'd rather see an artist work in his or her own style, rather t h a n do cheap Chaykin imitations. In this case, however, S t a t o n is clearly unco mfo rtab le with the material. T h e next two issues may show an improvement, but then three issues is only a breaking-in period anyway, and then we'll have Mark Badger. Unsettled times in Chicago Plexmall. F I R S T A D V E N T U R E S was a problema ti c book from the start. As I mentioned above, today's com ics writer can barely maste r stories tha t last 10 or 11 issues. W h e n the y try to tell a story i n 10 or 11 pages . . . forget it ! First Adventures #5 is the final issue, and o ne of the serials, the lo ud and thoroughly unpleasant "Blaze Barlow," has already ended, leaving Dynamo Joe and Whisper to finish up their runs.

is not Howard C hayki n, likewise Tom Sutton is not Timothy Truman, but Sutton's arrival on G R I M  J A C K is nothi ng if not a happy occ urre nce While Truman's work suffered from stiff  over-rendering, Sutton's is much sketchier and more emotive—his monsters are a lot scarier, and his Grimjack is a much more h u m a n and effective character. In fact, while a potboiler by any standard, Grimjack  no w is a bit more fun to read—at least for this commentator. John Ostrander continues his earnestly cliched ways. The moral of the story is "Trust those you trust." A h e m . N o t a whole lot of elusive meaning there, boy. T h e current issue #21, shows John having one of those soul-searching flashbacks that comics chara cer are so fond o f having after after multi-ish plotlines have wrapped up, and feeling mighty low, at that. Scenes o f J o h n lying in bed feeling ill are intercut with

Arrows through t h e throat a nd every Noble Savage cliche that comes to m i n d . An d some t h a t don't.

better on this paper. The story in issue #35— th e second half  o f  Sable's outing against a neo-Nazi survivalist group—is group—is on e of  the book's dumber episodes, including lots of arrows through people's throats, a Noble Indian character and every Noble Indian cliche ever written. Native Amer icans have got to be the world's most mis understood ethnic group—probably because they're the only ones who live with American media stereotypes day in and day

Tom Sutton's artwork o n Grimjack  la moodier a n d more evocative than that of his predecessor, T im Truman.

Dynamo Joe is created an d drawn by Doug R i c e , whose art really is top-notch. The story, By Jo hn Ostrander, is abeut these odd-look ing people who fly fly aroun d the universe in a giant robot. Solid space-opera-

34

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

Grell's artwork has fallen into a pattern o f  late. Th e boo k starts out pretty good, with some nicely staged action scenes in the snow, but by the second half  of the book  it's little more t h a n rushed scribbles, and the story-telling is pretty murky too. Baron and Rude's N E X U S is one of the few alternative books to really maintain a superior level level of quality in rece nt m ont hs . In issue #19, Nexus and Sundra have their showdown with the Mer, and we learn all about why Nexus has been getting those headaches and why he was was chosen to be t he intergalactic avenger. If the explanation is a trifle pat, the staging of the scenes—the huge inert Merk, his flooded cavern, the floating ectop lasm ic spirits, and the Alice-in-Wonderland tone of the enti re enterprise—make it work anyway. The book  has a kind of seat-of-the-pants feel to it, as if  Baron and Rude put down the first things they think of, knowing that even if it's weird, it will work, because this is a weird, alien world. Baro n is on e of the few writers with a warped enough (I mean th at in the sue!) imaginatio n best sense, Mike, so don't sue!) to pull it off, off, and if he stu mble s onc e in a while, he makes up for it a few pages later. Steve Rude has quite a following, but he's still underrated as an artist. Page for page, there are very few artists working who can match him for sheer imagination. But this tour-de-force skill is tempered with a sen sitivity that make his characterizations some of  the most subtly rounded in comics. If  only he'd stop putting Sundra in that un flattering wet suit. T h e back-up strip is another tale of  Clonezone the Hilariator, and this is where Baron sometimes gets a bit carried away— probably an acquired taste. In this outing Clonezone's vacation is disturbed by kids on a spring break, and the story includes numerous nude scenes of Clonezone, ex plicit juggling scenes, and a hotel room blow-out bash to make strong men's hearts shake. Plus a surprise cameo appearance by Godzilla.

S o I liked it. Nick  Cuti and Joe Staton's E-Man was far more stylish t h a n the average super-hero of  its rime. And it's still stylish, energetic stuff, even if it's a little heavy o n th e superheroics. Liked the guys with big brains in the final issue, though. It's very nice that First has put thi s fave all toget her in T H E ORIGINAL E-MAN AND MICH AEL M A U S E R — a nice, upscale package. —HEIDI M a c D O N A L D

KITCHEN SINK PRESS D E A T H R A T T L E tlx I like the concept of  this book a lot—a deluxe-production hor ror book with longer stories deliberate meant not  to evoke memories of EC. So far, however, this book desetves praise more for its good intention s that what it's actually actually delivered. Issue #1 had a good (but perhaps

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

first worthwhile horror comic we've had in years, but to fulful! that promise will require better stories stories than the ones in these first two issues.

Good intentions, coupled with an editorial focus that's not  meant to recall EC , make for a fine read.

over-long) story by Charles Burns, and a nice, but definitely EC-st yle cover by Richard Corben. This latest issue has a gruesome historical tale by J a c k   Jackson that's pretty good, and a Spirit-narrated text Piece written and illustrated by Eisner that is only fair, and an ugly "humor" piece by Rand Holmes that's just plain awful, although his art, in places, is quite attrac tive. Nothing exceptional in either issue, though, and for a new title, that's a serious drawback. I think  Death Rattle has the editorial priorities it needs to become the Typical Eisner, which is to say, well worth reading.

W I L L E I S N E R ' S Q U A R T E R L Y #6 : This is the last deluxe 64-page editio n o f Eisner 's magazine; beginning with issue #7 it becomes a black-and-white 32-page book  featuring Eisner's new work exclusively with the " Sh op Talk " interview feature disappear ing temporarily temporarily and the col or Spirit sections moving to other outlets. This is probably a wise move, since it's Eisner's new material that makes the book, and with the current format it accounts for only about half  of ech issue. Besides a Spi rit story from 1940 and a "Sh op Talk" with Harvey Kurtzman and J a c k   Davis, the main course this time is a new 28-page story titled "A Sunset in Sun shine City." It's another of Eisner's "old neighborhood" stories, with moments of  genuine drama and emotion jumbled to gether with scenes of typical Eisnerian bathos and pulp fiction, though the story's strengths outnumber its flaws. W I L L E I S N E R ' S 3-D C L A S S I C S F E A  T U R I N G T H E S P I R I T #1: This could be the perfect way to read The Spirit. Eisner's work has always had a strong 3-D aspect all by itself, and, for the most part, the four stories here are naturals for extra-dimen sional enhancement. Only one story, "Blood of the Earth," has little to .recom mend it, 3-D quality or otherwise; the other three all look great, and one story, "The Vortex," espeically stands out (sorry, I couldn't resist). Th e processing by Ray Zone (and Tony Alderson, who did "The Vortex"') is clean and inventive throughout the book.

T h i s is 3-D—and possibly, The Spirit —at — at its MONACO most entertaining. — S T E V E

MARVEL COMICS GROUP A L P H A F L I G H T #33: When Joh n Byrne started Alpha Flight  he implemented the cliches that went into the typical super-team and then deliberately walked away from the m. T h e result was no t always a satisfy satisfy ing book, but it could be depended upon for showing unusual, independent thinking on the creator's part. Now that Bill Mantlo has taken over the writing, the title is projectile vomiting all the supet-team cliches kno wn t o man, even to th ose people living in Taiwan, where the comic books are pretty inscrutable. All the characters talk in melodramatic exposition. T h e X-Men, guest-starring, naturally zap the new, female Guardian, just because they don't like the way she flies straight at them in broad daylight. Only the dialogue says it's getting dark, so it's hard to tell for sure.

Rubinstein, it studiously rehashes various themes and subplots that have been run ning through this boo k since Gerry Co n way's tenure, abou t 10 years ago. Altho ugh the origin story is in many ways more primitive t h a n the new one, at least it charges straight ahead with an engaging sincerity. I get no su ch feeling from th e n ew one. T h e centerpiece situation, during w h i c h Spidey must rescue Sha Shan from a fate similar to the one which Gwen Stacy m et years ago, is actually a rehash of a rehash, and t he writer misses out on the impo rtant point—which Peter Parker himself  natural ly has trouble accepting—that Spidey actu ally broke Gwen's neck  during the rescue. I don't know. Maybe DeFalco thought that was too deep for the current Marvel True Believer. In any case, the entire point of this issue is to build up a cliffhanging situation which will get us to buy the next. By the way, have you noticed that since she b eca me a matu re, less irrepressibly irrepressibly irres irres ponsible person, Mary Jane Watson's tits have gott en smaller? Th is is on e girl who's never going to have gravity on her mind. T H E A V E N G E R S # 2 6 6 : John Buscema and T om Palmer illustrate illustrate,, and R oger Stern writes, a follow-up to Secret  \$irs II, the series that proved Mighty Marvel can't tell a story by c o m m i t t e e . Will the Avengers find the Molecule Man in time to help them save the Earth? Will the Molecule Man consent? A n d will he still be alive afterwar afterward? d? Natura l ly he is, and although he's managed to fool the Avengers and the FF—and with th e help of  t h e Silver Surfer, restore all the damage to everybody's homes during the end of  Secret  Wan II, making the whole series even more of a shaggy shaggy dog story—he manages to do it without significant cost to himself. T h e characterization by Stern is decent but uninspired, which is understandable, given the nature o f the assig nment. Not to mention the very nature of comics dialogue. T h e artists succeed in conveying the grandeur of the characters, and the color ing by Christ ie Scheele is effective. A profes sional effort.

T o n i n g forth, vomit-like, every super-hero cliche in t h e b s g . Then comes t h e b a g .

Anyway, an irrestible melo-expo for in stance, on the part of Storm: "You were a member of James Mac Do nal d Hudson's department "H" long before you were an X-Man, Wolv erine . If past lo yalties remai remain n to be resolved, then resolve them. . .with our blessing! Come, X-Men. I believe the opera is being simulcast." Did you get all that? A M A Z I N G S P I D E R - M A N #275: This special, oversized oversized issue issue cont ains a com plete reprinting of Spidey's origin. Tha t's t he best thing about this issue. Written by Tom DeFalco an d drawn by Ron Frenz and Joe

36

dillo finds out that his wife is getting drilled by this other guy—the revelation takes place off-stage, by the way, thus robbing the story o f  approximately seven-eighths of its dramatic impact—he goes on a rampage down the streets of New York. Cap lends a hand, or tries to, when the armadillo falls off  the Empire Stat e Building, crashing deep int o the street but o nly breaking a few few bones somewhere undernea th his shell. shell. Th e story story

C A P T A I N A M E R I C A #3 16 : A p athetic excuse for an issue in what has become a path etic excus e for a com ic-b ook series. Hawkeye makes a guest appearance, but essentially he's a total lame duck in a story tha t seems to rip off the p lot essentials of  several old Stan Lee Captain America stories, stories, but whic h cont ains zero-drama, zero-drama, zerozerozing, and zero-impact. Talk  about your basic idiot plot. In this story we have a guy who's been t u r n e d in  to a giant orange armadillo, and he's not even bright enough to figure out that his mai n hussy is bein g unfaithful to him . If I was a woman, I wouldn't want to have a giant armadillo lying on top of me—unless he knew wha t he was doing o f course, a nd I doubt the villain in this book had ever read the Kama Sutra. S o naturally, when the giant orange arma

Up fo r cancellation. Thanks fo r small mercies.

has no point and no meaning, unless it was writer Mark Gruenwald's urge to reach the bot tom of the page and go on to the next. Maybe the word I've been searching for is fuckingpathetic. C O N A N T H E B A R B A R I A N #181: Marvel has to have done about 350 Conan stories by now, scattered thro ugho ut various books. And although John Buscema and Ernie Chan continue drawing Conan the way they always have, they manage to ex ecute a few few flawle flawless ss pages throug hou t the proceedings. Occasionally their technique is breathtaking. W h i c h is a lot more t h a n I can say for t his issue's story, which has about as much to do with the spirit of Robert E. Howard's writing as the tip of my weenie does. Roy Thomas 's version of Co nan , which started started all this formula rehashing, was a little too academic, but at least its heart was in the right place. Here, writer Jim Owsley strives for a fairy-tale plus Howardesque feeling, but succeeds in recreating a stream of  cliches. One thing about comics: at least -all those word balloons prevent the writers from us ing saidbookisms in order to insert artificial dramatics. And that's about the best thing I can say about writer Jim Owsley's efforts on this issue, which work best on the page where he says noth ing, and lets Buscema

and Chan say it all. Since Conan is perhaps the most sexual ly promiscuous of comic-book heroes, I think Owsley should plot a story where Conan gets A I D S . Then at least we can have the end of this series to look forward to. D O C T O R S T R A N G E #76: Time was when Doctor Strange was the most cosmic character of them all. And more than most of  the older cha racters of Marvel , he has sur vived the passing years with his integrity in tact. Issue #76 neither detracts nor adds to this character's noted history in comics. T h e art, by the team of Mark Badger, Chris Warner, and Randy Emberlin, is actually quite effective; it's just that the story by Peter Gillis is so ordinary. A few valuable pages are wasted on a continuing subplot when they could have been used to help us get to know Strangers current foil an d villainess better, but even that's not much constru ctive criticism, becaus e there's not much there in the first place. T H E E T E R N A L S #7: 1 recall recall Jack  Kirby's version of The Eternals as being gloriously, unabashedly bad—though as usual there were interesting ideas, with implications that verged on ground-breaking, all masked by the gloriously bad, unabashedly Kirbyesque dialogue. The original Eternals series was done by someone with a unique, personal point of view. Alt hou gh Sal Buscem a's pencils survive the inking with more detail t h a n usual, there's still nothing really distinctive about

this issue. I suppose you could say there are character developments, but they are so indifferently dramatized that they're almost lost. Try the original instead, or Roy T h o m a s ' s version in back-issues of  Thor. T h e characters had more pizzazz then. T H E OFFICIAL M A R V E L I N D E X T O T H E F A N T A S T I C F O U R #5: This

historic title from issue #65 to 84 , a two-year chunk from the 1967^69 run. Since th e editors have evidently decided that there may be some dim ones in the younger, more retarded section of their audience, sentence structure is usually simplistic in the extreme, conveying none of the thrills, chills, an d spills of the actual books in question. Th e writers appear to have approached their

Doctor Strange  #7 6 neither adds no r detracts to that character's history.

index, pumped up by extremely verbose synopses—some probably longer in actual word-count t h a n the originals, covers this

Neutral value on the Art Cover scale. Ordinary story, ordinary art. Not bad , considering its publisher.

craft with all the interest of George Romero's living dead creatures, methodically chewing a stick of  h u m a n bone clean. Ta da—ta da! The information is correct. Ta da—ta da! The covers are reproduced. Ta dum—ta dum! Reed does this. Johnny does that. Sue gets ptegnant. Ben gets angry because he has to remain the Thing forever, and as soon as he accepts the ramifications o f  the situation he vows never to become upset again, he gets angry. Ta hee—ta hee! Babble, babble.

F I R E S T A R #2: What' s a good way way to intro duce to readers a character previously seen but different on television? Well, you throw in a few guest stars, and stitch her story into the continuity that Chris Claremont used to have all to himself, back in the days before t he X - M e n mythos became the Superman mythos of the '80s. S o what's a good way to induce readers to buy the second issue? Put Wolverine on the cover, that's how. how. That' ll induce th e kid dies to shell out their six bits. O n l y problem is, when the Wolverine does show up, it's really only for one panel, unless you count the one where he gets blown up and the one where he's smolder ing ashes. And then it turns out he's not Wolverine at all, but a simula crum. Well, it's not a simulacrum, but a cheap ploy on Marvel 's part to jack  up sales. I guess the editorial department figured that sure, some people might be disappointed, but they'd probably become interested in the story and might buy the next issue.

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

37

I hope not. The Firestar story is totally unbelievable, and I've no respect for the kids being tutored by Madame Frost, who's always dressed like she's overdue at the porn movie set. If thos e Hell ion brats can 't figure figure out that someone as bitchy as Emma Frost is a villainess, well then, they deserve whatever they get. Let them eat Twinkies.

up, caught it, and t h r o w n it with all his might back to the Earth, and then for good measure landed smack on top of it. What the hell can you do with a character likes telling a story tha t's like that? Nob ody likes been told a h u n d r e d times before. Well, most nobodies, though looking through this

G . I . J O E #4 6: Atho ugh this issue, issue, by Larry Hama and the art team of Rod Whi gham and Andy Mushynsky, has more "realistic" violence t h a n the cartoon show, it contains none of the show's zest and style. The G.I. flawed it may  Joe television series, however flawed be in terms of plot and dialogue, is the visual hight-p oint o f curr ent kidvi d fare. fare. T h e com ic is lackluster. Here th e arrows wound and the characters actually try to hit each other when they shoot, but the char acters go out of their way to act like total stereotypes, whereas the characters on the show mostly act like they're loony-tunes. loony-tunes. The characters in t he  Likeable loony-tunes. comic just ain't the same. Visually, the book  doesn't beat the show either. Too bad. G R O O T H E W A N D E R E R #14: Sergio Aragones and his "unequivocator" Mark  Evanier contribute yet another well-crafted slapstick  adventure of the brainless bar barian. T his issue, issue, concern ing Groo' s efforts efforts to keep a job at huge quarries employing slave-labor, isn't as inspire d or as funny as some of the others in this series, but it's by no mean s a slip-up. slip-up. In fact, o ne issue of Groo contains as much genuine creative think ing as an entire year's run of  Conan, which actually isn't being nice enough to Ara gones and Evanier. H E A T H C L I F F #7: Maybe this book  would b e funny if you were six . I'm 3 6, so it just makes me wonder why I'm reviewing this crap in the first place. M o s t of the h umo r is forced, and most plot devel opmen ts, if I can call them that, are arbitrary. The cover story, concerning the adventures of Elasticat, has Heathcliff  rolling hims elf up int o a baske tball and beating up on the dreaded hound of the basketballs. To call this stuff  trivial is to trivialize the word trivial. Perhaps the real problem is that, not being a fan of a comic strip from which all this is theoretically derived, I wasn't sure what world I was in, and th e creators appare ntly had no interest in telling me. Al l right, maybe if your five. T H E I N C R E D I B L E H U L K #31 8: After After more t h a n 20 years, years, most of the stories t hat ca n be told about the Hulk—and most of  the gimmicks that can possibly be twisted around his character—have been used at least twice. The Hulk has, during his career, found and lo st dozens o f friends, he' s fallen in love, he's become intelligent, he's become even stupider, he's beaten the rest of the Marvel Universe into the ground and then stomped on it and then pulled it out of the dirt and drop-kicked it into the sun, jumped

38

M A R V E L T A L E S #186: A reprint of a 1967 Amazing Spider-Man which was neither Stan Lee's nor John Romita Sr.'s peak  period on the title. Lee seems like he was trying too hard to load the book with the kind o f snappy patter he was was becoming famous for at the time, but at least he's try ing. Th e storyline, which has Pete and Aun t Ma y leaving the house where they've lived for years, through good times and bad, was in its day yet another Marvel effort at show ing the h u m a n side of . their super-heroes. T h e art is professional, which is the most I can say about it. I'm not a real fan of  Romita's pencils, per se. He's always at his best when he inks himself—or the pencils of  Gil Kane, an art team which did the issues o f  Amazing Spider-Man that r'ank  visually with Ditko's. (All right, so I just double-checked the credits and discovered that Romi ta inked inked himself in this reprint. It's still not his best, and I still don't know everything, unfortunately.) 1

M A R V E L U N I V E R S E D E L U X E EDIT I O N #5: More t h a n you've ever wanted to know. ..

rand om stack of Marv els is giving me doubts. Anyway, this issue is is by Jo hn B yrne , who remains one of the mos t dependable super super hero story-tellers in the biz. This issue (in which a robot but not the Hulk himself  appears) is dependable stuff, pretty good considering that the characters (it seems) have been around since the Stone Age. Byrne, unlike most of the people who work for Marvel, understands what makes the old characters tick, and isn't afraid to play around with them in order to keep them viable. What? That's right. Byrne's left Marvel! Tough luck, Mr. Shooter.

T H E M I C R O N A U T S # 1 9 : T h is is b o o k is subtitled " Th e New Voyages" but the y still still seem just as arbitrary and incomprehensible as the old. They also regurgitate the same themes. T his issue, issue, I think the penultimate, thank God, is about a cosmic birth-rebirth recycling that in the end will not only be cosmic, but cosmetic. T h e world of the Micronauts doesn't make sense. The characters don't make sense. Even the dead villains don't make sense. Fortunately for those o f us concerned with cons istency, or with the symmetry of  the universe, this book seems determined to end as vaguely as it began. Not with a ping, but with a ding.

M A R V E L S A G A #5: Remem ber that hor ror story—I thi nk it was by St eph en King— about the doctor who was marooned on a desert island, with no Immediate hope of  rescue and no hope of finding food to sus tain h ims elf with? So when he gets weak  enough, he realizes he does, indeed, have one thing to eat: himself! He starts at his foot and gradually works his way up. . .up .. .until... Well, that's what Marvel Saga reminds me of. T h i s paste-up version of old Marvel C o m i c s , for which I bet the original artists and writers are getting paid zilch, indiscrim inately places rehashes o f ordinary work  beside excellent work. I suppose that's part of  th e nature of the proje ct, but wh at are the folks doing this bo ok gonna do when they realize they ain't double-jointed?

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 198 6

seen a hero battle zanier, crazier versions of  himself, madly perverting everything he think s he s tands for? A lot, 1 bet . And how many times have you seen a policeman whose partner has just been brutally murdered get upset because the Punisher, who has just saved his ass, didn't keep his word and turn himself back in. "He promised! He promised!" says the policeman who's just lost his partner. Yeah, all right, so you haven't seen it too often. It's pretty unbelievable . You kno w it, I know it, a nd ' so do Steven Grant, Mike Zeck, Jo hn Beatty and the others responsible for this c o n c o c  tion. At least the cop didn't piddle in frustration, thou gh I bet that was comi ng.

P O W E R P A C K #2 1: It's unfortunate , from one perspective, that this book has fairly consistently done a great job presenting super-heroics from from th e kiddie poin t o f view, and at presenting the true flavor of child hood in a big family, because most of the firm's efforts at dealing with what it means to be an adolescent or an adult pale some what in comparison. (Actually, the efforts bleach). This issue, which unless I'm mistaken is the first written by Terry Austin, features a properly advertised cameo apperance by Spider-Man, a socially constructive lecture on what writers do when one aspect of their talent hits the big time and ano the r does not, a dangerous situa tion that—given t he powers of our heroes—is realistically pre sented, and a super-heroine who has to go to the bathroom. Cute, Terry. Cute. . .but good too. T h e art, by Brett Anderson and Austin, isn't going to make comic-book history, but it does hit a standard that should be the norm. It's humor ous w hen it's supposed to be, it heightens the suspense, the characters have more t h a n one or two expressionshell, I liked it.

T h e y should have called this book "Nega tive Impact."

#204: U N C A N N Y X- ME N Visually uninspired art by June Brigman, accompanied by the flat dialogue of Chris Claremont. Basically this issue lacks style, though of course the next is by Barry Windsor-Smith. I used to be able to suspend my disbelief for th e X - M e n , but for the last few years, the characters' incessant breastbeating has been getting on my nerves. Rather t h a n expanding on the personalities of  his characters, Claremont seems intent upon hitting the exact same notes, with minor variations, in order to keep the book 

THE

nn ie ie ss,, T H E P U N I S H E R # 4 : C r i m e f u nn meet what's left of the Mighty Marvel story telling technique. How many times have you

 

ARTISTS!

ON

L IF E

TEE

P L U S

$ 1 . 5 0

( C H E C K

*

ALL

C A M E R A - R E A D Y

$ 8 . 9 9

ARTISTS!

PERMAN ENTL Y PRINTE D

SH IR T

 AND

S EN D

OR

FOR

F O R MONE Y

TO

WEAR 

SEE!!!

TO

B L A C K

YOU

&

A R T W O R K ,

W H I T E "

P O S T A G E O R D E R)

&

H A N D L I N G

T O :

ARTWOR K CAN BE PRINTED IN IN ONE OR TWO COLORS

SENDT0:

Specify

^KA^£ Ii...

Ink Color(s):

Red

Green

Blue

15 2 Ellison Street

Paterson, NJ. 075 05 Black

Name: j Address: Phone:

!

T h e art, by Richard Howell and Frank  Springer, is is com pete nt, thoug h no t up to the level of Englehart's characterization. —ART COVER

YOUR 

TO A

T H E VISION AND TH E SCARLET W I T C H #7: In the opening pages, the sud den appearance o f the Vis ion in in the Avengers training simulation room causes Prince Namor to stumble while in mockcombat with Captain America. Captain America notes that he'll have to be careful in his criticism, that he can't lecture Prince Namor like a raw recruit, and then proceeds to do exactly that: "The kill switch, Namor. That's our objective when we're in this room! Not destruction, but the demonstra tion of skill!" Otherwise, writer Steve Englehart pro vides us with a solid issue, complete with the n orma l super-hero stuff, stuff, of course. But with the exception of that one stumble, Englehart continues building on the previ ously established histories o f his characte rs, and they usually talk like they should. It looks like a major Marve l supporting char acter is forsaking her husba nd and embark ing on a n affair at the en d of the issue, and if  you've read a lot of boo ks featuring her thick-headed husband, it's not hard to figure out why.

CARTOON CHARACTER

SEE COME

ARTISTS!

on track.

Navy Blue

"PRINTERS OF  THE  | i  IMAGINATION" j

|

Please send | 8 . 9 9 plus $1.50

shirt(s), size(s) S M  _ L I am enclosing j for posta ge and and han dlin g per item ordered. |

(Please allow two — three weeks for delivery)

i

The Invasion Begins in April. Coming from RENEGADE PRESS.

FUNNYBOOK ROULETTE THE OLD LADY SCALE "If  a writer  has to rob his mother, he will not  said  Nobel hesitate," Laureate William Faulkner, "the 'Ode on a Grecian Um' is worth any number  of old  ladies." What  this has to say to us is not  exactly clear, but it  does  provide the symbology for the Funnybook    Roulette rating system. Comics will be rated  on how many old  ladies they're worth. While Faulkner implies that  his favorite poem is worth a potentially infinite number  of old  ladies, the value of the more modest  comic strip will be limited  to four, graded  as follows:

The Top, the Coliseum, the ' '  Louvre Museum. Ranks with  Eisner, Kurtzman, Krigstein. Don't  hold  your  breath. '

' 

M  Mt M  \i Peak  jorm of  a superior  crcan n n tor. The Berni Wrightson Swamp Thin g, Howard the Du ck #5-7, or Frank  Miller's Marvel Team-Up Annual of  1981 ("Fauns of the Purple Man") would  be 1

1

examples.

A good, solid, entertaining comic book, for  instance, the better  collaborations when they were hot   Lee/Kirby or  the better  issues of  Tomb of Dracula.

"

< # »•? m M

' 

art/bad  <™

1 /2 A little more than mediocre but a little less than good. Also good  story or bad  art/good  story. Your  basic, competent, dopey, spired, average comic book.

HE V2 Not completely ' 

features.

4y Toilet 

ty^j^t 

devoid  of  though. Close,

unin-

redeeming

paper.

To hell with the old  ladies, ' ^ " i * over  the artist  and  writer! served  for  crimes against decency.

run Re

[Note: We at The Comics Journal are well aware of  the hypnotic power  the media have over  every liv ing human being in the world. We realize that  some unbalanced  reader, inspired  by the Old Lady Scale, might  buy a .44 Magnum and rob a Golden Age Club in order  to prove his love for  Aileen Quinn. Be advised  that  The Comics Journal is very much opposed  to this kind  of behavior. Also, the advice of  household  pets on matters involving homicide is to lie taken with a grain of  salt.]

by R. Fiore

On e of the more uncanny ph enome na I've noticed since starting this column has been . the mysterious appearance in my mailbox o f  comic boo ks addressed addressed to "Funn ybo ok  Roulette," presumably for review. It would make sense if they cam e from from person al enemies of the creators, but they're appar entl y all all from the creators and publi shers themselves, often with personal notes. Sometimes I get the feeling like the bishop at the Blessing of the An imal s. I mean, it's not that I think my very name strikes fear into the hearts o f cartoonist s (superstitious lo t that they are), it just seems like wishing for bad l uck ("De ar J. Edgar, I'm getting cabin fever. Think I'll pop over to the Biograph next Sunday an d see the new C l a r k   Ga bl e picture. Truce, okay? Your Pal, J o h n Dillinger.").

whether I like them or not, I only review comics if  1 think I have something interes ting to say about them. The third principle is randomness. When I first started this col umn I put the names of all the current com ics on index cards and picked out six at ran dom . On e of my ground rules is th at whe n a particular creator has been ripped two or three times I stop reviewing his work. Two o f  the first people on this list were Dan Mishkin and Bill Mantlo, who were doing so much work for D C and Marv el that I had to give up index cards. The burgeon ing direct-sales publis hers made the approach even less feasible. These days I just go down to the comics store and grab a halfdozen of whatever looks interesting, interesting, thou gh this does at times require a liberal defini-

Now, please understand, it's not that (TURING G ON ONE* f W N Z I t P PtRfORH1N WI5, (TURIN I object. I like getting stuff  in the mail. ANCE. PUBIN CRirATrp THIS RrrfiARKABltr What I particularly like are glossy, ex PICTURE-, ANTICIPATING PISNE-YS P O P  pensive albums, but nobody sends me ULAR CULTURE" CREATION BY NEARLY \ 2 Q YEARS. those except for Catalan Communica tions. (Maybe I should start calling everyone a crook.) I'm somewhat less enthusiastic about Xeroxed advance copies with notes telling me to keep in mind that the final product will look  a zillionty times better, though I understand the reason for them. I bring this up only because I fear some o f  those who sent me personal notes might be feeling snubbed. Consider ing what demon correspondents many comics enthusiasts are, they might be thinking something along the lines of, " I f  I took the trouble to write him the Fox  Comics, sent all the way from Down Under—re least he could do is acknowledge it." jection of professionalism? This would be an Error. You see, before he is a vicious creature, before he is a misquoting creature, the Fiore is first, tion of the word. What I've discovered over foremost, and above all a lazy creature. My the years is that this is a particularly lousy editors will tell you it's like pulling te eth to way of keeping up with what's going on in get this column a week after deadline. [It's th e main stream . I like to t hin k i t is a good true! It's true! —Eds.] Any question of my way of presenting the wide varieties of the obligations to correspondents is therefore art of cartoon ing, particularly when so irrelevant. many readers pay attention to one variety T h e good news is th at a n over-thetransom comic will probably only be re viewed if my react ion is favorable. M os t not abl e in this categor y are Will iam F. Messner-Loebs and Phil Foglio, whom I con sider the two best new talents in comic books today; the lone exception was Grim  jack, which I haven't read since the first issue. The bad news is, it probably won't be reviewed in any case. Th er e ate th ree guiding principles behind this column. The first is, because I play rough here I only take on Big Boys who ought to be able to take it . I don't mess around with semi-pro labors o f  love and or wishful thinking. Second,

or another exclusively. T h e r e are some varieties that are beyond my ken. For example, those one-off  h o m e  made pamphlets that go by the name of  "newave," presumably for want of a better. You could almost call it a capitalist saxnizdat, and though it certainly doesn't have the life-and-death consequence of the Russian version, it's no less quixotic. I can readily sympathize. Over the last 20 years main stream popular art has developed into an all-encom passing and all-devouring machin e. Everythin g is is linked with mecha nical precision—the video promotes the record that ties in with the movie that plugs plugs

the soft drink and together they introduce the brand of clothing and the line of eye makeup ad infinitum. It can strip the con tent from a new style or movement so quick ly it's terrifying. (Hew long did it take the record industry to isolate the exploitable elements o f  punk  rock? A year? Three months? All 1 reme mber is, it sure was fast.) fast.) And yet, I'm not really sure who these little comics are for. I have in front of me Musclehead Comics an d Demolition Dentist, both the work of  Bill Widener Jr. and Starlen Baxter, and Far Comics sent all the way from Australia. Musclehead  an d Dentist  are impassioned and po litical, with the sexual politics being more advanced than the other kind, which is a switch. But what these comics reject as much as the marketing system is the tyranny of professionalism, and I'm a believer in professionalism myself. They arc 12 pages each, t hree or fou r of  which in either issue are kind of interesting, and I can't quite see recommen ding that. T h e politics are the hopeless moder n kind, and politics that deny the efficacy of action are politics that absolve i nacti on. Fox is a 26-page anthology title (and since it's the ten th issue issue it can't be called a one-off) one-off) which I rather enjoyed. It's better drawn and more consistent, but it's less less com mit ted to o. I don't know that it's good enough to send overseas for. In both cases I don't see what they connect with, or what they're leading to. Ultimately popular art has to pay its own way and to do that it has to have a reliable, paying audience. The old underground comics were supported by a real communi ty. A hardy few made enough to pay prin ting costs if not court costs, and R. Crumb made enough to go go int o partne rship with the IRS for a while. Even RAW Books an d Graphics, with its limited institutional sup port, would not have been able to do as much if RAW hadn't been more successful than anticipated. I'm sure there's plenty of  worthwhile work being done in the pamph lets, but it's so inaccessibl e and so b uried in dross that it would be a fulltime job fin ding it. Dave Luciano' s gargantuan survey in these pages shows just how daunting th e task is. T he o nly way to make sense of the newave would be for some enterprising pub lisher to do what the Pushcart  Press anthol ogies do for small-press magazines. Which might well violate the principles of the movement. The only other"evident audi ence for the pamph lets is oth er pamph leteers. Since they aim to break  down th e barrier between artist and audience, that might have been the idea in the first place. W h e n Peter Sellers died a few years ago it didn't really have much of an effect on me until someone mentioned that he played the character Bluebottle on the old Goon Show. I then felt an immediate wave of loss. It's quite reasonable; for all that Sellers was a flesh-and-blood person, I didn't know the man personally. With Bluebottle 1 felt quite intimate. W h e n Bill Scott died last November he took  a whole legion of friends with him . Unless you're an animation enthusiast you don't know the name, but you probably

42

know the voice as well as your own. Bill Scott was Bullwinkle, Boris Badenov (the only great great commu nist villain), Dudley Do Right, Gidney and Cloyd, Mr. Peabody, George of the Jungle, and many more others t h a n you could ever expect to remember, more often t h a n not in rapid succession without benefit of redubbing. Of course he was much more than a voice: After starting at Warner Brothers as a gag writer, he wrote for UPA when it was the most influential and acclaimed animation studio in the country (his credits credits include Gerald  McBoing Boing, Rooty Toot Toot, and Th e Tell-Tale  Heart), and later was head writer and coproducer of the B ullwin kle shows. But voice actors form a special bond with their characters and with their audience. Partly it's because they're the only living represen tation of the characters, but I think it's mostly because they don't age like oth er act ors. Jimmy Stewart could never be Destry again, but Mel Blanc can do a creditable job on most of his chatacters even at age 80. Bill Scott was part of the very highest echelon of voice actors, along with Blanc, June Foray, Daws Butler, and not many others. So long as they're around their characters come back as fresh as new. They don't fade away, and you just wish they'd never die. Li'l A b n e r # 1 (Blackthorne Publishing) Right idea, wrong year. O f  all the co mic strips strips and comic books that have ever appeared, the one most sorely in need of compre hensive reprinting is Al Capp's Li'l Abner. It might have been the greatest humor strip of all time; it would certainly make the short list. It has been the victim of bot h t he neglect o f  the publishing world and its its auth or's atte mpts to rewrite his own history, denying that his attitude has changed while trying to bury the evidence that

f

it had. The only substantial collection has been the Capp-edited Best of Li'l Abner, whi ch ign ores the first first 10 years of th e s trip completely, reprints only one episode from the '40s and a few short ones from the '50s. T h e first first Bl ackth orne Abner continues this emphasis, consisting almost entirely of strips from the mid^Os. I just don't understand it. How could any comp etent editor, assem blin g the first first antholo gy in 10 years, not start with the most famous episode of the strip, the first appearance of the Shmoo? We're not talking about an aesthetic.choice here, we're talking about the painfully obvi ous. (You have to wonder if  there's some sort of  legal obstacle.) To be fair, it could be argued with some justice that Capp' s car car tooning had not yet manifested itself, though you can see traces of it. When you consider that Capp had been at it for 30 years, the strips are remarkably good. But wha t C ap p ha d freed hims elf of as as a car toonist was earthiness; everything in Dogpatch seems to have a sterile sheen to it, in cluding the dirt. Dogpa tch had always always been an ironic refuge from the modern world, but now the irony was beginning to disappear. It was becoming a rather pathetic dreamland of  perfect marriages and immutable values. Capp's politics were always ambivalent and highly skeptical. If he was "liberal," it was only in the br oadest possible sense. sense. For most of  its run, Li'l Abner  was suffused with a love of  life. There was no h u m a n foible that Capp couldn't take delight in, and he couldn't bring himself to have a speck of  malice for any character. Th e youth culture of  the '60s just turned him sour. It was almost as if all the self-pity he'd never allow ed him sel f over his own affli ction was sud denly felt full force on behalf  of his genera tion; they'd otdered up a plate of reverence and admiration and gotten back a handful of  serpent's teeth. It's a sad case, but there's more t h a n enough good to offset it if it's only brought to light. I can't presume to say why the editor made his particular choices, but his is one case where following an

UQB8&S;


CRASHING AROUND!

H08 BES JUMPED JUMPED ML MOM! " XfrS F\<3HT\NG TOR W< VERS S O W N M . . ' . ' _ 

Calvin and  Hobbes Is long o n a commodity that most news paper strips are short o n genuine c h a r m .

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

author's wishes and doing what's best by him are two different things. Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew in the Oz-Wonderland Wa r (D C Comics) As a connoisseur of stupid ideas I can say without a moment's hesitation that this is, is—words fail me—a really stupid idea. Still, 1 can't work up mu ch o utrage over this strictly minor league bit of desecration. I just wonder at the level of self-deception evident here. There is no shame in being incapable of  adding anything to the works of Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum. It's true t h a t Ruth Plumly Tho mp son was able to put the Oz characters through their paces, but that was because she put them through t he War  is a perfect proper paces. Oz-Wonderland  War is everything-is-a-comic-book  example of the everything-is-a-comic-book  mentality. A perceptive writer would know that the Oz books and the Alice books are completely different in tone and intent, and are therefore incompatible. A perceptive art ist would know that if classic book illustra tions had been intended to move like sequential art does they would have been drawn differently. And anybody ought to know that Captain Carrot is incompatible with anything decent. E. Nelson Bridwell, Roy Thomas, and company just assume that if  it's a neat idea for Superman to meet Spidet-Man, then it's a neat idea for the Oz characters to meet the Alice characters, and like comic-bo ok characters they do n othi ng but go through familiar motions. Captain Carrot and his so on and so forth carry most of the plot burden in any case. Carol Lay does an adequate job of mimicking J o h n Tenniel and Joh n R. Neill, Neill, but the only character that really looks like he belongs in a comic book is the Jabberwork. Still, this literary crossover does suggest exci ting prospects for the future: G.I. Joe in War  and  Peace! Luke Cage, Power Man in Manchild  in the Promised Land] Enemy Ace in All Quiet on the western Frontl One can only

SuRE.OU-VIN. LOOt, 1 DON'T WANT TO SEW HOBBES UP A C 3 A M , 5 0 Wi. DONT *XJ TWO GO DO

SOMETHING QUlEt?

th in k what a mercy it is tha t aut hors now have to be dead before their works go into the public domain.

*i*t*t 

Vz Calvin and Hobbes Press Syndicate ) (Universal Press Real charm is a rare commodity in news paper strips these days, particularly as op posed to attempted charm, but this new strip by Bill Watterson has charmed the pants off me. Faced with the universal prob le m o f drawing postage stamp-sized panels, Watterson has taken the logical expedient •of  drawing postage stamp-sized people. When the panels open up on Sunday they become acro bati c. A well-drawn strip like this reminds you how much of the feeling is carried by the pictures in a good strip. Calvin, the little boy, is neither a midget Groucho Marx or a font of wee-folk wis dom, bu t is just naturally funny. H ob be s is is either an imaginary playmate or a stuffed tiger tiger that comes al ive , when no one's around. I tend to thin k he's a gimm ick to help sell the strip, but I don't think it'll have too much trouble staying bought.

Vz T h e Beast is Dead (Fantagraphics Books) Ah, yes, that symbiotic blend of words and pictures that lays at the heart of the comics medium. Here you have a blend of  Calvo's art, which is too gorgeous to be believed, and Victor Dancette's text, which is just godawful. The premise is to have animals represent the various national groups in World War II. T h e Germ an s are wolves (well, naturally), the French are rabbits and frogs (well, naturally), the British are Bulldogs (well—oh, (well—oh, forget it), the Du tch are cows, the Americans are buffaloes in sharp suits, and so on. It's a strained analogy to begin with, and by trying to describe the events of  th e war too closely in animal terms Dancette extends it until it snaps back in hi s face with occluded passages like this: "O ur friends, the Bull-Dog s, who had not viewed this conquest with a smile, decided it was time to put each one back  in his place and it was not the 3 0 0 , 0 0 0 Hyenas charged to defend the sun ny empire who were going to stop them. The Dogs ar rived there with their little Allies the Kangaroos and had very little trouble sweeping the country [Libya] clean. A few of our Storks, moreover, took ad vantage of this occasion to distinguish themselves and remind the world at the same time that we were still SHE 1WATS BECNKfc SHE WNffED MjCTMEft. alive." Som e of the trouble TKEB, NOTNCW.' . here can be traced to the translator, but a lot of it has to be a writer who just doesn't know when to quit. But what makes non sense in the text makes beautiful sense in the pic tures, and you probably know the story already

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

anyway. It ends with grandpa R a b b i t admon ishin g the little bunni es that "A highly -trained army in a unit ed nati on working with one heart and one faith is not only a guarantee of greatness but also the assurance that we shall at last live happy, surrounded with the respect of others in the peace and prosperity of a brave new world." Whereupon they got their little furry tails kicked in Indochina and Algeria. Will Eisner's 3-D Vz Classics (Kitchen Sink  Press) ^ Three- Dime nsio nal Seductio n Vz o f  t h e I n n o c e n t (Eclipse C o m i c s ) I'm beginnin g to wonder if 3-D might be comi ng of age. By whi ch I mean tha t ther e might be enough of an audience for it to keep going on a semi-regular basis. Where

--MEMjwrtit -e.i've

Captain Carrot  and His Amazing  His Amazing  Zoo  Crew  In the  Oz-Wonderland War   —a stupid Idea whose time should never have come.

o n c e a 3-D freak like myself  would grab whatever few tid-bits came out, they've pro liferated so that now one can and must be choosy. Without ever having been intended for it, Eisner's Spirit  is one of the best ap always tried plications of the techn ique (he always to work in th ree dimensions). Th e jailbreak  scenes in "A River of Cr im e" are particularly particularly impressive. Nevertheless, one is brought face t o face with the ultimate limitation of the technique: It's just hard to read, and the effect detracts from the stories. There's not much to detract from in Seduction off the In nocent, which is the first printing of the "suppressed" 1954 Adventures into Darkness #15 (the company quit publishing before it went to press). press). Inno cuou s "hor ror" stories that are either plotless, hackneyed, or cribbed from well-known pulp stories, backed with mediocre art. It just goes to show that what you can't have isn't always what you want. Rating upped half  an old

43

T

lady for the Dave Stevens cover, which was too much sucker bait for a mortal such as I to resist. T h e Adventures of  Mark  Twain (Will Vintqn Productions) W h a t e v e r you think the last great animated feature film was, this is the best one since then. It's the culmination of the clay animation techniques developed by B o b Gardiner and Will Vinton in the Oscar-winning Closed  Mondays. If you were

impressed by the work Vinton did in Return to Oz, believe me, it's it's noth ing compared to this. The animation of the Jumping Frogs of  Calaveras County has got to be seen to be believed. It's being marketed as part o f  a series of safe-as-milk anim ate d features mostly based on T V cartoon characters (Yogi Bear, Heathcliff, the G o - B o t s ) , but if  it's anything like the version I saw, the mom mies and daddies are going to find out this one has a sting in its tail. Though the fram ing device is from Tom Sawyer  Abroad, most o f  the picture is derived from Twain's more

skeptical works, including "The Mysterious Stranger," "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," and "Extract from Eve's Autobio graphy." The "Mysterious Stranger" section is particularly chilling. James Whitmore does the best voice of Mark Twain that I ca n remem ber. I only hope th at it hasn't been hacked to pieces for the sake of the kiddies. It ought to be in theatres by the time you read this, and on cassette soon after that. The marketing may keep it from getting the audience it deserves, but there's no reason why you should let that stop you. We all sure jumped on Shatter, didn't we? Consi der it an application of Brother Dave Gardner's dictum that when you see that your neighbor is down you ought to kick  him, so that he then has the opportunity to rise abov e you. •

This book would have rated only o ne old-lady heard, but the Dave Stevens cover rated another half. Be forewarned. Most items reviewed in "Funnybook Roulette" are  available from major comic-book stores, or from comics  mail-order services. If you are having trouble finding  them at either source, they are also available from  the publisher: Th e Beast Is Dead is available for $12.95 plus  $1.50 postage and  handling from Fantagraphks Books,  4359 Cornell  Road, Agoura, CA 91301.

©Wm. M. Gaines TH E TH E TH E TH E TH E

COMPLETE COMPLETE COMPLETE COMPLETE COMPLETE

PANIC, 2 vols in slipcase, $55. WEIRD SCIENCE, 4 vols in slipcase, $85. WEIRD FANTASY, 4 vols in slipcase, $85. FRONTLINE COMBAT, COMBAT, 3 vols in slipcase, $70. CRIME, 5 vols in slipcase, $100.

Li'l Abner is available for $5.95 plus $1.00 postage  and  handling from Blackthorne Publishing, 786 Black Thome Avenue, El  Cajon, CA 92020.

Send check o r phone f o r M a s t e r C a r d o r Visa orders. Satisfaction Guaranteed! Send f o r free samples a n d information. Missouri reside nts mu st add 5% % sales tax .

Russ Cochran Cochran,, Publisher P.O. P.O. Box 469 469 West Plains, MO 65775 44

Zoo Crew Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo in the Oz-Wonderland War is available for $2.00  at most specialty sums and  newsstands. The publisher  does not fulfill  single-issue back-orders.

(417)256-2224

Three-Dimensional Seduction of the Inno cent is available at most specialty shops, and can  also be obtained  In sending $2.75 postpaid  to Eclipse Comics, P.O. Box 199, Guerneville, CA 95446. Will Eisner's 3-D Classics is available at most  specialty shops, and can also be obtained by sending  $2.75 to Kitchen Sink Press, 2 Swamp Rd., Prince  ton, Wl 54968. T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1 9 8 6

Comics L i b r a r y G r a p h i c Story Reviews

QUEST FOR

FEAR of the Elvira's

Seduction Death Rattle, a n d  Innocent,  House of  Mystery R u s s el l F r e u n d

on

If  somebody had a bun ch of money that

they wanted me to lose for them, this is probably how I'd do it: I'd publish a series of  comic books, reprinting old neat crap I loved from the pre-Code days, and watch the boxes pile pile up up in my warehouse. Wh at a fun way to flush all those sheckels my patron was so keen to be rid of! That would have seemed to have been the idea idea behind Eclipse Eclipse Com ics' Sedu cti on of  the Innocent, originally planned for five see issues (two of the m in 3-D), but now I see there are plans to expand the regular series from from th ree issues issues to six. Som ebo dy must be . buying. It mystifies me, but then again, this is neat old crap. stories, it must be said, are strictly Th e nowhere. "Seduction of the Innocent" reprints pre-Code horror material from the Standard Line, and Standard wasn't exact ly into elevating the graphic story to a state o'f  literature. They were selling lurid scare books to kids for sticky dimes. Here we've got trite twist endings, ideas for bad episodes

Suspense, and space opera scored for single-fingered piano. But while it was okay the stories to be simple-minded, the for demands o f the marketplace dictated t hat the pictures had to look as cool as they success. possibly could. The y met with some success. star of the series, at least up to issue Th e #3, is Alex Toth. An y pimply X-Mentaliti es out there who may be wondering why we old geezers revere Toth might do well to pick  up Seduction #3 and take a look at "The Crush ed Gardenia." Here is is Toth, the master of  graphic ellipsis, with his uniq ue genius for knowing just what to put into a panel and what to leave out. Look at the shot (let's call it a shot, anyway; the movie word feels right) of the back of the young gun man o n pag* two. We see almos t not hin g,  just his back, shoulders hunched, and a single line describing the arc of his gun hand. Not only does this simple, hard image sizzle with energy, but the unusual angle is made integral to the story (not that it for sheer wouldn't be worth doin g if onl y for flash) as it introduces the point of view of a constable who has the drop on the thug. whole story is full of this Th e sharp, cutting stuff. Look at the vio lence. Th e fist, fist, or hand and truncheon, the victim's head recoi ling, a little burst in the air, and three or four big letters letters making noise, and these few, simple elements arranged as knowingly, as cunningly, as Mondrian arranged his boxes and lines. Wait a minute, am I going too far here? I fear I'm on the brink of tumbli ng i nto the vortex of critical overstate ment, so let me pull back, cool and say this: if onl y the off, story were on the level of  Alex of 

The

Toth.

essence of simplicity, a la

Murphy Anderson's cover sets a proper tone fo r Golden Ag e work In Seduction  at the  Inno  cent. the

Toth's storytelling, "The Crushed Gardenia" would be the greatest thing in the world. Better? Better. There's more good Toth in issue #2. "Murder Mansion," another version of the tale of the demon/genie who gets out of  hand, lets you see where Don Heck came from (I mean tha t nicely), and Toth has colored it himself in strong, broad, brushlike swatches of two or three colors per page. It suits his bold linework (inked here by Mike Peppe) ideally. Seduction also has some pleasantly oldfashioned stufff: issue #2 has a smooth Murphy Anderson story and cover, with finned rockets, anten naed space helmets , and a mutinous spaceship crew dressed like pirates, and issue #1 offers "Doom in the Depths" by Jon L. Blummer, who drew in style that a just-post-Victorian Dick  Calkin s style must have seemed quaint in 1952., It looks positively antique now. There are atomic screw-nosed underground mole ships, a "super-sensitive universe radio," and a race of  subterranean midgets with Roman hel mets and swords. Yeah, that was some future they had in those days. Reed Crandall is in issue #1, and as so often was the case, this talented man's

G O O D HEAVENS.' SME'S HAD ANOTHER HEART ATTACK .' SUB.. SHE'S D E A D .

acknowledge the points at which that men tality touches our own. In gratitude for favorite pleasures, we forgive what we would no t forgive elsewhere, as I forgive the trite tales in Seduction of the Innocent, so pleased am I for th e chan ce to savor th e charm and brio of the graphics that come along with them.

they invariably turned into a nightmare." At first the illustration seems to contradict the caption, as we see the protagonist kiss a pretty blonde. Where's the nightmare in that? But wait, look at their eyes. They're open. Eyes like slits, staring at each other as they kiss with, what , apprehens ion? Loathing? Zonked-out Zonked-out boredom? Wh atever it is, there's something lurking in those nothing little eyes that takes the kiss into the realm of nightmare.

De at h Rat tle is the name of Kitche n Sink  Press' new book of horro r and full-blooded adventure, and while the first two issues range widely ON THE RISE in tone—the unifying theme for this book's tales might be "no two alike—each con tains some first-rate work. Could you ever mistake Charles Burns for anyone else? What a bleak, weirdly compelling stylist he is. He contributes "111 Bred" to issue #1, a horror story that expands on some images that have appeared in his non-narrative pieces, partic ularly ". . .And I Pressed my Hand Against his Face. . ." in RA W 3. In that pageful pageful of  panels from a cool night mare, we saw a man and a woman, bland and serene, face a bed in which lay a monstrous insect. Th at same insect lives within the pro tagonist's bed in "111 Bred." Rand Holmes's tale In Death Rattle #2 explores th e paranoia of I don't want to give the an artist's mind, bu t llghtheattedly enough that tt doesn't doesn't becom e premise away, because much a treatise. o f  the story's fascination is in its horrid, almost vomitous premise, but T h e chilling drabness drabness of Burns' art is the it's a story of sexual dread dread th at intertwines polar opposite of the finely wrought lineh u m a n sex with the copulating of insects work of horror masters like Berni Wrightson (bug lust figured figured i n the R AW piece, too) . or Gr ah am Ingels, but it hits its its mark just Burns is onto something crawly. He is an as surely. "Ill Bred" is a mode rn horro r artis t in the grip of grim fascinat ions , and classic, and superbly loathsome. he has the ability to transmit those fascina Jaxon has an impressive piece in Death tions to the reader.  Rattle #2 titled "God's Bosom." It's a grim

H4F\-/VM /..GOT'IM

Vintage Jack Katz, evolving t he woodcut style he uses to this day.

supple lines and dynamic compositions must compensate for his terminally cornball taste in facial expression. His characters here look  like ham actors playing dope fiends. O f  course, giving him a demonically demented magician to draw is like asking Little Lotta to man th e candy counter. Nice sense of noir in the shado ws an d ang les, though. An d there are more pleasures pleasures throug hout. There's lots of good, gritty, J a c k   Katz, his people all looking haunted and dark-eyed and unlovely. The 3-D book has a fun Dave Stevens cover and fine separations by Ray Zone and Tony Ald erso n (who opens up great, deep spaces in Meskin and Roussos' "Harvest of Death"). An d I very much en  joyed Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr.'s informative and enthusiastic notes. It's one thing to sneer at what we call th e "fan mentality," but it is is imp ort ant to

At first his drawing lo oks as bla nd and affectless as the art in a hack romance book. Bu t there is great dread at the edges. Take the panel where the caption reads, "I didn't go out on dates very often, and when I did,

Charles Burns's "III B r e d " takes t h e romance comic Into th e realm of horror, with results as classic aa they ar e gruesome.

tale of Spaniards in the New World, pur sued, tormented, and killed by savage natives. Not pleasant reading, but it's very well done, and Jaxon's drawing style, which has always suggested to me Robert Crumb working in woodcuts, has a great air of  authenticity. Something by Will Eisner, evidently d one a decade ago, is printed in Death Rattle #2. Called "A Quagmire of Occult Stories," it's not really a comic story, but a short text piece with lots of illustrations. It's very minor Eisner; there isn't much suspense, or even interest, in these three musty ghost stories, and telling the stories in text suppl ement ed by pictures robs us of the pleasure of seeing Mr. Eisner do wha t he does so brilliantly, that is to tell stories with pictures, supplemented by words. Still, Eisner is Eisner, and h e favors favors us with no fewer than seven drawings of the Spirit, who narrates. Rand Holmes is in both issues. "Killer Planet" in issue #1 lands some spacemen on a planet teeming with exotic menaces, and Holmes gives us one B . E . M . after another. Holmes doesn't quite have the control

6

needed to duplicate the chilled-out poise of  Wally Wood, whom he so clearly adores, but he's close enough for the purposes of  this somewhat silly material, and gives it a good ride. I preferred his work  in issue #2, a day-inthe-life-of-t h e - a r t i s t thing that veers into violent paranoid fan tasy. Holmes has a considerable gift for making violence both funny and intense at the same time. When he allows his imagina tion to take the high speed hairpin turns it does here, he is an ex hilarating creator.

House are okay timewasters. The art is compe tent, if a little dull, and the old, cold -ha nded pro K a n i g h e r , who writes about half  of them, r u n s the changes on these things about as well as anybody. But this is not a horror book. S o what's Elvira doing here? That's the second problem. You see, when the video Elvira comments on a movie made a dozen years ago, she's in no way implicated in its creation. T h e flick  is grist, and she ca n say what she will. T h a t ' s part of her ch arm. Bu t her framing sequences in the comic book are part the whole parcel, and of  Elvira, th e Valley Girl from t he cemetery, she isn't there to knock the doesn't fare to o well In a comic book about fistfights. product. So her comments Despite the fact that on the stories are kept in its grab-bag assemb the vein of Co un t Floyd's lage of stories deprives "Pretty scary stuff, eh kids?" which vitiates  Death Rattle of a cohesive editorial thrust, the character entirely. Giving the poor gal it makes damn fine reading. If the stories something to do—a plot line involving her are just a random assortment, they are at occupancy of the old House of Mystery—is least an excellent random assor tment . I slowly developing, but by the end of issue hope the book can hang on long enough #3 I can't tell you what the hell is happen to find its audience. Two issues and I'm con ing. She looks good, though, especially as vinced. Death Rattle has won a place on my drawn by Stan Woch and Dick  G i o r d a n o minuscule must-buy list. in issue #3. (She's had at least a dozen guys take a crack at drawing her in three issues. I like Elvira on television. Her crack-timed It would seem that the chance to delineate valleygirlisms trounce the crappy movies, her curvilineage is considered a treat at the and include the viewer in a sense of shared D C bullpen.) sangfroid  in facing up to the really scary ones. I suppose it seemed a good idea to sign up this popular trademarked personality to act as hostess of a revived version o f D C Comics' House of Mystery but a couple of  things went wrong. First, this isn't really a horror book. Near half  of the stories in the first three issues ly half of revolve around fights. They may be fights between wizards or fights between samurai or fights between other gaily garbed power houses, but the effect is like reading ano the r  joe-average super-hero series. The exception is issue #3, which has a pretty straight western story (narrated by what looks like the skeleton of one of the lesser singing cowboys), and an exercise in four-cota r moralism in which we're shown how a halfdozen nasty people are punished in Hell. This last item is written by Robert Kanigher, and is the closest the book comes to a hor ror story, although pains are taken to establish that those being tormented really deserve it. Se e, we're not revelling in gratuitous cruelty as long as we induce a sentence to establish that the guy con demned to spend eternity under a swarm of  rats was a greedy slumlord (this is what's known as that ol' patented Kanigher irony —would that the patent office had misfiled it somewhere). The only real horror here comes when you realize that, in some people's minds, this has some bearing on the relationship between God and man. Actually, some of the stories in Elvira's

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, is a witty creation, and for all I know the lady herself  may be tickled pink to see a comic book 

bearing her name and image. But the lady deserves better. G a t h e r e d u n d e r the nominal rubric "hor ro r comics," I have here three titles that real ly don't have much to say to each other. B o t h Death Rattle and Seduction boast some fine work, but they're separated by the dif ferences in editorial philosophies that have developed over a couple of decades. The creators of the Seduction stories set out to startle us by introducing a murderer or a monster into the natural order of things, and by story's end (in marked contrast to their contemp oraries at E C) things were were usually usually set back to right. The re' s little little blood and nothing one could call gore. The Kit chen Sink  book entertains a wider range of  subjects (issue #3 is planned to feature a sea story and a Jaxon serial about an ancient Indian god), and revels in the grisly. Elvira's  House of Mystery is closer in spirit to the '50s stuff, in that I think the overriding creative motive at work is a desire to separate kids from their change, but it's as rangy as Death  Rattle, albeit nowhere near as interesting. I could close with som e words words about how all this diversity gives testimony to the con tinuing vita lity of the genre, but I'm n ot even sure what genre I'm talking about. Ultimately, horror is a somewhat specious term when applied to comics, which for some reason peculiar to their nature can't produce the same tensions in us that films can. The word "horror" when applied to comics refers more to their concerns, their subject mattet, t h a n to any effect they may have on their readers. But, masterworks of  horror or not, the best of these books give us occasion to celebrate superior creators like Alex Toth, Jaxon, and Charles Burns, and I guess that's what we're here for after all. •

T H E STRANGE PARADE Flaming Wordsmith,

Lee Woc hn er on

 DC  Challenge,  Miracleman

It has not always been th e case that the comic-book  industry in the United States has had a "strange parade" marching alongside its mainstream. For years, a "strange" comic was something only as dif ferent as Silver Surfer, a comic which, after all, featured a character much like a tradi tional super-hero who qualified as offbeat only by espousing some of the glibbest philosophical yearnings of this or any othe r century. Recently, the situation has begun to change. With no fewer than two dozen com ics publishers—corporate and individual— now turning out eno ugh c omics to sate even the most insatiable of readers, diversity has begun to rear its heretofore rarely welcome head. As comi cs publishers have begun to seek  ways ways to broad en the medium and,

Carrot  and

Comics,

resultantly, th e audience, th e picking s of  non-sup er-hero com ics has gone from rare to merely slim. These, then, are some of  today's comics which for one reason or ano the r do not fit into the mold o f the stan dard comic book. However, readers are hereby warned: though these comics present alternatives to standard super-hero fare, this

Flaming Carrot— the t he

only com ic to feature aliens in the coalbin.

does not mean they are necessarily any better. T H E ABSURD SUPER-HERO: Standing behind Rod Serling, I think, is a madly cackling Bob Burden, creator, writer, artist, and zen zen poet behind Fl am in g Car rot C o m i c s , a comic that is renegade in more t h a n one sense. T h e origin of the Flaming Carrot is that o f  many deranged Marv el and D C Com ic s fans coast-to-coast: he once read 5,000 com ics in a single sitting an d suffered suffered perma  nent brain damage. As a result, the Carrot sets about fighting "crime" and "injustice" in the only way he can—uncritically, that is , without thinking about it. The Carrot is always always at the heart o f th e matter becau se he never suspects the existence of the fringe.

A t first, first, thi s woul d see m like easy cari ca ture. Super-heroes have often been parodied as addle-pated galumphs notably lacking meat on the bo nes of their intellects. Add to this the camp style of satire favored by Marvel and D C (Not Brand Ecch an d Inferior  Five) and now Renegade's own normalrnan and you have what adds up to some very ho-hum humor, due in part to the resistance to challenging the very structure of super hero comics. Afraid to go out on a limb, comics creators have chosen to simply lam poon the most obviously outrageous facets of  super-heroes rather t h a n the very tenets of  their existence. Burden, though, is after bigger game. Burden recognizes recognizes that th e conc ept of superheroes in itself  and, exponentially, the sub culture that tends to treat these super-heroes as though they actually exist, are both by their very nature highly irrational. So Burden ups the ante, escalating the insani ty. If a super-hero super-hero needs a costume, the n the

48

Flaming Carrot gets one; adorned in his "super-hero cost ume" of red pants, white button-down shirt, green flippers, and fivefoot-long carrot mask with flaming top, is he really any less ridiculous t h a n Red Tor n a d o or Superman? Is his carrot mask, the tip of which appears to jab him in the crotch from time to time, any less realistic t h a n a

shield the size of a trashcan lid that Cap tain America supposedly hides under hi s shirt in his civilian identity? The Carrot's costume, actually, seems much more likely t h a n that of Spider-Man, who, we are asked to believe, created his red-and-blue red-and-blue webbed outfit from scratch with a needle and threa d in the course of one night. Throughout the book, Burden continues his. theme of parading the shortcomings of  super-hero comics as literature not only because of their content but also their struc ture. Super-heroes tend to have secret iden tities. Wh at is the Ca rrot 's? Readers, are in vited to send in their own nominations; the list so far includes Boris Badenov, Little Richard, Ernie Bilko, Barney Fife, and Bruce Lee. Burden also responds this way to a reader i n issue #7 who wo nders if th e Ca r rot will team up with other comics charac ters of his ilk, as most Ma rvel and D C characters do: "Team up. Team up. I think 

that's something Marvel started, let's see, we have the Carrot, Herbie (Popnecker), J.R. B o b Dobbs, the Badger, Zippy Elwood D o w d . . . I can see it now, now, a new super-hero group called The Strange Parade battling Dog Bo y an d Benb." Burden further taunts his readers by agreeing the Carrot needs a sidekick and the n consid ering the noti on of a dog in a carrot mask: "The idea of a dog barking in muffled tones with his head inside a Car rot mask and performing super feats of bold daring struck me pretty hard. I have a small selection o f  comics in my archives that have humanist ic animals in action, such as a copy copy of  Rex The Wonder  Dog with Rex swinging on a vine held in his mouth and knocking th e villains off a tree limb with his paws, .j,." Bur den also dynam ites ot her founda foundation tionss of  the medium. Just as Batman has the Batmobile and Green Arrow his Arrow Car, and so on, the Carrot uses his custom-built nuclear-powered super-pogo, which he stores in his mask. Burden also peppers his covers with parodies of the useless blurbs comics compani es use, such as " Th e comic for peo ple who skate and bowl at the same time." In the h a n d s of a lesser lesser wit, wit, this sor t o f  dada nonsense could grow tiresome. Burden, though, has a sublime command of  the ridiculous and, to match, the eyes and ears of a keen observer of our culture. C on  sider the Mr. Death's rumination in issue #6 on his inability to get drunk: "Only ever got blasted four or five times in the hun dreds of years that I've been on his lousy beat!! Poison's the only thing that hits the spot! It all all gets gets to ya .. .y'know! Being death is a nutty racket! I got six months to retire ment and a pension.. .then I'm gonna get a sailboat and kick back!" While in every day Marvel-life Death is portrayed as a mysterious figure in a hooded cloak who ac cuses with a bo ny hand, the Death in Flam ing Carrot  dresses like a sleazy pimp in a career slump. Not only Death as a humanoid character but also the notion of superheroes interacting with it on a one-to-one basis is patently ridiculous, as Burden shows. Burden set the tone for what was to follow immediately with the cover to issue #1, on which "Road Hogs From Outer Space" driving what looks like a late model Chrysler attempt to run down the Carrot. As the story unfolds, Dr. Heller, a scientist who has spent his entire career in search of  ex  traterrestrials, finally comes face to face with one—in his coal bin. The alien, who is on the front l ine of an inva sion of Martians upset over their portrayal in movies,

First there was the Batmoblle. Then th e Fantastlcsr. Now, Bob Burden brings us the nuclearpowered pogo stick.

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

says, "We've seen just one too many of your invasion from Mars movies! We just don't dig it too much, Jack! You give us a bad rep! And we never win! This time we're look ing forward to a fight!" After threats to arrest him for trespassing drive the alien

BUT NOW SCYHETHING IS  WRONG/ VOU 6HOUIP NOT  I H6R6/ 0(6 & A fl/WTBR  t W

Einstein becomes th e deus  ex machine  of the D C Challenge.

underground, Heller observes, "I just knew it! All these years I've said 'alien invasion! M e n from outer space!' All my colleagues scoffed! Y e s . . . I knew it all along. But I never expected such a goofy alien! Such a silly creature creature!! No . . . I never expected expected that!" Burden's artwork is thinly realized, but its two-dimensionality and Burden's minimal use of backg round tends to strengthen the main concern of the comic: the theme of  absurdity in super-hero comics and life in general. Thi s is is an admirable piec e of work  by Bob Burden, and Dent Loubert should be commended for undertaking such a risky publishing venture. Flaming Carrot  Comics is a chancy work, taking the road rarely traveled (genuine, heartfelt, and incisive parody) rather t h a n the easy avenue of com Readers ics cutup bombast {normalman). should be grateful to Burden for sharing his ringside seat in irrationality. T H E W R I T E R A S HERO: D C C h a l l e n g e is unique in that it has brought to American comics a form of play hardly n ew t o literature: the round-robin. In a roundrobin, a group of writers agree to write in stallments in a series that goes wherever each successive writer takes it. T h e problem with most round-robins is that fiction was never meant to be written by blind committe e; in a round-robin there is little structure, because a writer never fully knows what the intent of the writer before him was, and will never guess the directions

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1 9 8 6

th e work will take whe n it leaves his h a n d . He may mean for a character to be run over by an Amtrak train, only to later find him in bed with a goat. W i t h this in mind, it is understandable why D C Challenge Challenge itself  is anything but  understandable. What was begun by early writers Mark Evanier and Len Wein in issue #1 and 2 was already a hodgepodge of seem ingly random and disconnected events: a copy boy for the Daily Planet  discovers stilll G r o u c h o Ma rx and Humphrey Bogart stil alive in 1985 and occupyin g a floor of the Planet building that supposedly does not • exist. From there, we find the Batman thwarting an alien who has threatened Gotham with nuclear annihilation, as well as two clues: a stone tablet and a cryptic sequence of numbers. Meanwhile, an earth quake at the San Die go Zoo unear ths the mythological Manticore and, at the same time, Aquaman is dying in the Sahara desert, Superman is in pitched battle on the moon , and Jonah Hex, suddenly suddenly trans ported to 1985, is trapped in an automobile heading directly toward 142 n u n s a nd children. And those are only the first two issues. T h e ' challenge is issued on cover after cover: "Can you solve it before we do?" The answer, apparently, is no, and neither can any of the series' contributors. By issue #6 writer Elliot S. Maggin has resorted to plucking Albert Einstein from out of his own time stream to correct matters. It seems that, while in his hospital bed in the 1940s, Einstein finally solved the "great mystery": the concept of the unified field. As a result, he is now u n b o u n d by the restraints of time and regularly patrols it for signs of  distur bance that, guess what, there are suddenly lots of. So, he has de cided to len d a help in g h a n d . Deus ex tnachina, indeed! One suspects that by issue #12 the writers will resort to God parting the heavens and set tling th e* whole matter.

time; the dialogue between Carter and Shiera Hall in issue #3 seems to be between mannequins. On the other h a n d , when Infantino was imprecise, so too was Smith; some of the scenes, such as that of Hawkman and Adam Strange on Rann, almost seem like doodles. Gi l Kane and Klaus Janson fare better together; both are actionoriented artists and writer Paul Levitz wisely chooses to conce ntr ate on the active ex ploits of the more h u m a n characters in the issue. Bu t perhaps teaming up these favorites with other artists would have been a wiser move; as it is, how many readers awaited with bated breath issue #6's team-up of pen ciller Dan Jurgens and inker Larry Mahlstedt? ha s A t its midway point, D C Challenge emerged as a genuinely unreadable maxiseries in which every character is a bit player supporting a de vic e— the round-rob round-robin— in— rather t h a n a story. Renegade's Wordsmith, were it not for the characterization of its writer-hero, would fit in nicly with the work of this country's more angst-ridden writers of the last 50 years. Wordsmith writer writer Dave Darrigo thi nks being a writer is the most soul-wrenching occupation in the world. God, the cheap ways in which writers must prostitute their craft! Ah, the dim-witted lowbrows to whom they grovel for meager paychecks! An d the con sta nt agony of self-conscious ness: am I being honest in liking this woman, or am I just going to use her for dialogue in chapter three? J o h n Ste inb ec k refuted refuted all this years years ago, noting that he had never met a writer who would ra the r work all day in th e mud with a stick. To grant him his due, Clay Washburn, the "wordsmith" of the title, realizes he's bet ter off banging out his penny-a-word pulp putrescence t h a n standing in the soup line. B u t he also knows he would be making a

T h e use of a ran domly selected team of  artists each issue also produces diso rientation. Bob S m i t h , an inker who is regularly paired with Gene C o l a n , seems un sure how to treat Carmine Infantino's pencils, so he does it with the utmost re spect, a p p a r e n t l y going over every Infantino line and contributing few of  his own. As a result, the usually fluid work of Infantino s e e m s frozen in

Klaus Janson's Inks on Gi l Kane's pencils  —one of the few s u c  cessful collaborations In D C Challenge.

49

T h e U ltimate Ba t i

UP eur H6- 'C CO MET -THROUGH i-r is i

osjr P i e c e , -rwe U P AA- T" T" (,OOKCP H I M W K H A TewptR VEARNiuq vSwer WAITero A M * I O U S C. y F O R H I M T O "I'M

M O T Qe-rriMa

youw<,6R.. AM-/ MI SS CY MT H IA •  x u s e C O U L D A

W O

 fue.se: 0 C D W H A T

MAM

- T I R E D . S O M E S

£

•• •

M6TASJ

?

"

I I you were young and pretty like Miss Cynthia , would you want to look after s omeon e else's "tired, ol d bones," as In this scene from Wordsmith? 

lo t more if he could just bang out those stories faster—which means, he decides, "losing his literary pretensions." A s it turns out, though, Washburn needn't worry about literary pretensions. Here's how he mar ries off a gunslinger and a schoolmarm stand-in: "Tunney stepped up to Cynthia. It had been a close shave with the barb er of fate, but he'd co me t h r o u g h it in one piece. The girl looked up at him with a tender yearning. She waited anxious ly for him to speak. 'I'm not getting any younger, Miss Cynthia. I could use a good woman to look after these tired, old bones . . . you know what I me an ?' "

Real-life interlude: can you hear the girl slam the door in his face? I thou ght you could. Fo r a supposed professional, Washburn is a poor writer. "Congo Carson," the latest o f  his literary pretensions, is dropped ou t of  a cage suspended over a man-eating tiger. How does he survive? survive? Was hbur n doesn't know either—he has written h imsel f into a c o m e t . One can imagine Fitzergerald kill ing off off Gat sby only t o realize realize four chapte rs later that he still needs him. But, here is where the initial gimmick of  Wordsmith come s into play. play. As with D C Challenge readers are given the opportun i ty to solve the writer's problem. Wash burn falls asleep at the typewriter, then takes a shower—two whole pages of diversion ( do the readers have their th inki ng caps on?). Finally, Washburn concocts a way out: Car son fends off the tiger with a torch, the n throws the torch into the air, where it ignites the rope holding the cage over him. The cage falls over him and he is safe. E x c e p t . . .the rope would have to be soaked liberally with gasoline to catch that quickly. Also, though it was was initially held at bay, did the tiger just hang back and watch the rest of this? And, once the cage was "protecting" Carson, why didn't th e tiger just leap at it as cats are wont to and knock  it over? T h e answer to all this is simple. What is at play here is pulp logic. Comic-book  logic. T h e sort of logic that has torches instantly

52

incinerating thick hemp and that holds tigers at bay. The sort of logic that makes me stop reading and start throwing. Issue #2 was, in a way, worse. Suddenly Wash burn finds himse lf faced with an ethical question: are his stories too violent and is he, therefore, a violent person by natur e? To find out, he visits • wealt hy writer friend of his, a murder-mystery author who assures Washburn that writing murder mysteries is only slightly more prestigious t h a n pulp fiction. Wh en Wash b u r n poses his question, Fergus, the presti gious friend friend,, tells him to lose his literary pretensions (of course! what else?). "Ethical doub ts?" Fergus asks, "I don't understand." T h i s character then goes into a monologue that surely sums up writer Dave Darrigo's frame of  mind: "Your  answer won't be found in logic, my boy. There is nothing logical about popular fiction. People read—and write—these stories on primitive instinct." Voila. Man-e ating tigers sitting sitting calmly on the sideliens. Hemp incinerated. T h e mon olo gue goes on: "You must learn to wear blinkers to your mind. And just like a horse, you have to look straight ahead and follow th e path that your story reveals. I've told you my 'recipe for news-stand soup,' haven't I? You' need a quart of violence; a glass of sentiment."

T h i s great literary figure wraps up the meeting with these thoughts about Wash b u r n : "The boy has a good head on his shoulders. But he thinks too much." Now, one could interpret this as Darrigo winking at us; he knows that this is hooey, and he's going to expose how wrong the old man's thinking is. However, how does Wash b u r n rationalize his lead character's violence? '"Sorry abou t t he mess,' Ben dix told his old friend on the force. Detective Detective Chuc k  Webster shrugged and said, 'I f  these hoods didn't shoot at you, then they'd just shoot at somebody else.'" Actually, they would not have shooting at anyone had not Washburn created them. And so, whether or not he and Darrigo like to think so, his ethical problem remains'. Issue #2 becomes in a way, then, even worse than issue #1; whereas issue #l's problem was sloppy writing, issue #2 suffers from extreme wrongheadedness and a weak-kneed refusal to face a moral issue head-on. Rather t h a n confronting his own nature and dealing with its central issue— issue—is is Washb urn a violent character at heart?—Darrigo chooses the easy way out. Well, he seems to say, even if  Washburn is a violent character, so what?; everyone else is too Not everyone makes his living from from the pre sentation of violence, however, as Washburn does. Such dilemmas seem to be beyond the grasp of Darrigo's reason, though, and so Wordsmith is doomed from the start. For such a shallow writer to com man d th e helm of a comic dealing dealing with a shallow writer is asking for trouble. One ca n imagine a nine-year-old giving his own life's story: a nine-year-old may very well know what it is like to be nine years old, but he is incapable of expressing himself  movingly. It takes a good writer to create shallow characters who are nonetheless believable* Darrigo is not a good writer and Wordsmith is no t bel ievable . In the final final analysis, the comic reads less like a tribute to the '3 0s and t he pulp era than a tribute to someon e else's else's conc epti on of that time and era (Don McGregor's warped view, per haps). In real life, the tiger earns his title of  "man-eating." T H E SUPER-HERO AS M I R A C U L O U S : Leave it to Alan Moore's Miracleman to show us where most writers of super-hero

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

HE HOLDS HEK,nND HIS TOUCH IS AS FHICTIONLE5S AS MERCURY Alan Moore knows that besides th e respon THE RESTRAINED POWER IN I N HIS ARMS MAKES HER FEEi LIKE GLASS sibility that comes with great power, a great fear on the part of others Is part an d parcel.

and out of college for 20 years now without a degree and whose Aunt M a y has been hovering near her death bed since Calvin Coolidge was in office.) He, the ultimate expression of  h u m a n achievement, suffers from feelings of inadequacy because his super-self  is so much preferable to his human-se lf, even t o his wife. Telling ly, it is thi s super-s elf th at is finally able to impregnate his wife, some thing the human-self has not been able to do in 20 years of marriage.

AND YET

comics have been going wrong since 1939. Though many approaches have been tried with super-heroes—Superman alone has gone through various incarnations ranging from myth (Julius Schwartz ) to mirth (Mo rt Weisinger)—the most obvious has been overlooked: the reality-approach, i.e., what would actually happen if a superhuman being existed on Earth? T h e answer, for Moore, is chilling. Governments would fear the creature more t h a n any mere nuclear device; a nuclear device, after all, is somewhat controllable by virtue of its inanimate nature. A sentient being, however, can reason on its own and , whe n it is as power powerful ful as Mir acle man him self  is, it could logically assume that since it is is incalculably superior to norma l hum ans it should rule them. Not content to hit us with just this one .premise—that of  super-humans awed by their own greatness and governments cow ering in fear—Moore also slaps on a neat irony: the British government is responsible for the creation of the ultimate weapon that it now holds in such terror. It seems that in the 1950s, with the. U.S. and the U.S.S.R. developing nuclear warheads, Her Majesty's gove rnm ent was afraid afraid of bein g left left out in the cold, and so began studying the feasibili ty" o f  nurturing the ultra-humanite t hat Hitler had only dreamt of. With the crea tions of three such ultra-beings (the three correspond roughly to Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., and Mary Marvel) com pleted, the conditioning was begun. The gover nment felt it necessary to paint the world as a place of black-and-white stark ness, where evil was foreign and and ho me was idyllic; grey as viewpoi ng does no t exist. It is in this way that Moore explains away all the horrible camp Miracleman (ne Marvelman) stories of the '50s—such clownishness could not have endured as having "actually" happened without serv ing to sterilize his work. All thos e adve n-

Wit h Miracleman, Miracleman, Moo re has open ed the door to possibilities rarely glimpsed in the past. His prose is ILL MAKE SOME COFFEE " THE WORDS ARE SO MUNDANE sharp, electric, bristling; his dialogue SO REASSURINGLY NORMAL. YET HE LOOKS LIKE A GOD is gritty, blunt, humanistic. Mostly, though, Miracleman is a comic about tures, then, were actually conditioning a tortured soul who one day awakens to the episodes being fed into the super-beings' fact that he has no past and that his life ha s brains. bee n forever forever twisted by a cruel and uncar ing government. It is about a man who one A nd so, finally, finally, we have the super-hero day finds that he is, in a way, the ultimate portrayed as truer-to-life t h a n ever before. man, but that he is also somewhat lesser by He is a real and believable person (even comparison to this alter-ego. Simply put, granted his near omnipo tence ). He has real Miracleman is the best super-hero comic problems. (As opposed to the contrived being publis hed today. • problems of Spider-Man, who has been,in

M-MM

GOOD

Steve Monaco on Yummy It's a strange world, all right. The owner of  the Arc tic Cuisine shop is on the phon e with his Eskimo conn ecti on, who's inform ing him that, because of a serious walrus shortage, his blubber shipment will be delayed indefinitely. indefinitely. Meanwhil e, a UF O on a cattle mutilation mission snags a walrus by "mistake," thus leading to the disclosure

Fur 

that one of the UFO's personnel is actual ly an F B I plant. In another time and place, the last man o n Ea rth is finally destroyed by rolls of toilet paper uprising because they're tired tired of huma ns degrading them; after they kill him, however, they can't think  of  what to do with the rest of their lives. Yes, it's definitely a strange world, and

Yummy  Fur  isn't a book that lends itself to summarization, mainly because its strengths reside In Its irrationality.

HOW AM ( TO

S &Vg. &Vg.

ny

VJ*Lr\U$

uohlq

,

tf'THOMT.

that's just the beginning of the weird universe created by Canadian cartoonist C h e s t e r Brown in his outstanding selfpublished published comic Yum my F ur. Beginning as as an eight-page digest featuring two stories (briefly summarized above), Yummy Fur's

si x issues of Yummy Yummy Fur are tanta lizi ng but , sometimes, frustrating in their quick bursts o f  comix craziness, and the eight-page mini format (not an entirely correct use of the term, since Brown's books have always been in the 5" x 8" digest form) is just too brief 

The janitor's hand will appear later, but as a gift to the clown from a tooth fairy.

latest issue—#7—is a handsome book that defies objectiv e description, even mote so t h a n its origin issue did. Brown's dark car tooning style coupled with his fine, fresh humorous approach to horror and paranoia makes the book one of the most accomp lished titles in the burgeoning small-press movement. Like most self-published affairs, Yummy Fur's history is an erratic one, with small print runs for the early issues and a schedul ing that hints at both the joys and difficul ties of this wonderful wonderful format. A t the begin ning, Brown's output was prolific (as it often is with artists publishing their own work for their own satisfaction): issue #s 1 an d 2 were both published in July 198 3, with issue #3 appearing the following month and issue #4 the month after that. Issue #s 5 and 6 both followed fairly soon after (January and M a r c h 1984, respectively), but t hen ther e was nothing more until issue #7 finally appeared in Septe mbe r of last year. Th e nearly year-and-a-half gap in Brown's out put of new material indicates how hard it c an be for today's co mix artists to find the time to continue to do their own personal work (a near-universal problem), but in Brown's case, judging from his most recent published work, this silent period has brought forth work even better t h a n hi s previous previous collect ions. Knowing well how ephemeral much small-press work becomes in a short time (once the tiny print runs sell out, books often just disappear), in February 1985 Brown published the definitive Yummy Fur collection, gathering the first half-dozen issues together in one thick digest-sized b o o k . His work benefits from the new expanded format. Brown is one of those artists whose style is so quirk y an d personal ized that some initial exposure to his unor thodo x humo r is necessary before the reader ca n feel acclimated enough to really dig in and enjoy it. Taken by themselves, the first

fo r the necessary reader orientation to occur. Strung together in one book, how ever, one's taste for Brown's bleak comedy increases (helped as the issues progress), and his unique vision of the h u m a n cosmos begins to make hilarious sense. O f  course, even for veteran o f co mix strangeness, the world of Yummy Fur takes some getting used to. It's a world where  janitors lose a hand for no good reason, and the detached appendage later shows up u n d e r a clown' s pillow as a gift gift from th e tooth fairy. In the kingdom of Yummy Fur, Frankenstein's monster pops by un announced and throws decent citizens out their apartment windows. (Although fortu nately, there's a beanstalk growing out of  a nearby sewer, so said citizen has something to land on; unfortunately, the beanstalk is u n d e r siege by aliens on o ne end and sewage-addled pygmies on the other). Another Yummy citizen, Bob Crosby, has television that explicitly tells him ways to make th e world a better place , i-e i-e., ., club som e baby seals to death to show conservationists

how meaningless it all is. While all of this is going on, the leading scientists of the world answer import ant c osmologic al ques tions such as, "Is it possible for a likeness of  Ch ris t to appear divinely on a piece of  scotch tape? " and, " Wh at are the masturbatory habits of squid?" Brown himself  seems to be one of the smartest minds in comix today. (On the back  page of this re-issue collection, he lists among his main creative influences both C a r l Barks and Nikolai Gogol; he's one of  the few comix artists who can make a state ment like that and have me believe he really means it.) Th e blend of his writing and art work is nicely complementary, with his sometimes murky drawings lending an added sinister quality to his deliberately light an d silly silly dialogue. To his credit, Brown does not weight his satire with the kind of  injoke fan humor that mars too many of the funny small-press titles, and when he does lean toward pop-media mockery, he focuses his parody on the more universal bad influ ences that permeate everybody's lives, not  just the insular comics community. Th e digest format doesn't allow a great deal of  roo m for e xpansi ve artis tic flights of fancy, • but Brown uses his limited space to great advantage, and his panel layout, especially as the years went on, is very inventive. If  there is a star in the first issues of  Yummy Fu r (besides Brown himself), it is is his one and

(apparently) only recurrent character, Ed the Clown. Poor Ed—in his first appearance, he's just walking along when his leg sud denly breaks and hemorrhages in three places, and he's nearly devoured by a pack  of  blood-crazed rats. By the collection's end, Ed puts a tooth under his pillow and the next morning finds a severed hand instead of  money; when he returns the unidentified hand to the police, he is immediately thrown in prison. Bro wn deliberately deliberately keeps keeps a tight leash on Ed, and he seems to take an almost perverse joy in putting the tragic little blighter through his nightmarish paces. Grim as it might sound (especially without Brown's accompanying artwork, which heightens Ed's absurdity), it all works, and after a couple of stories the reader just can't wait to see what depressing situation Ed gets thrown into next.

Would yo u have guessed that Yummy  Fur's  creator Is Influenced by Carl Barks? YO U SEE -- I  H A V E H E R E A C O M M O N E A R T H W O R M ANP A C O N C E R T G R A N D PIANO  B U T I ' M N O T S U R E W H I C H IS W H I C H , SO I T A K E M y P O N D E R O U S L Y HUGE HAMMER A N D . .

AH!  T H I S M U S T B E T H E EARTHWORM BECAUSE IT'S MAKING A DISGUSTING

SQUISHY  SOUND.

beginning with the two-page story "The Man Who Couldn't Stop!" It's giving some of  the punchline away (but not, I think, too m u c h ) by saying that the story has to do with a man's bowel movement. But what makes the piece so funny, and helps it trans cend common toitey-humor, is Brown's masterful, near-cinematic depiction of his subject. I've shown the piece to most everyone I know, including many people who don't care for comix or toitey-humor, and they still cracked up over it. What

sets

issue

#7

apart

from

its

, predecessors, however, is the second half  of 

Ed th e Happy Clown, ( r a m Yummy Fur.

Enjoyable as the new reissue collection is, the latest issue of  Yummy Fur (#7) shows that Brown's writing and art have both become mote accomplished since the earlier issues, and that he is making more of an effort to expand and take chances with his work. T h e improveme nt is obvious a nd gives his work a depth of substance that was occa sionally lacking in the other issues. (Brown doesn't always click, and when he doesn't— like issue #4's long story "The Eyelid Burial—the results are mere confusion.) The extra pages also help to make this issue the most cohesive single book he's done yet.

Oddly, the book begins with the weakest material in the issue—three one-page pieces similar to much of Brown's earlier, jokey stuff. But then the book starts to take a wellsustained dizzy spin into comical lunacy

the book, where suddenly all the seeming ly disjointd pieces and characters in the first 10 pages are pulled together in an unex pect ed unified stor y that is as funny as it is bizarre. (The reappearance of "The M a n . . . " is, by itself, a surprisingly effective and funny gag that should stay with the reader for some time to follow.) The issue even ends with the strangest Ed-the-Clown cliffhanger yet. It's a masterful issue, as good as many of the top undergrounds o f  yesteryear. After too long, many of us are finally discovering the unbridled pleasures to be found in muc h o f today's small-press small-press scene. Fo r those of you who have still not discovered it, or have not been impressed by what you've seen to date, I recommend Yummy Fur wholeheartedly as an example of  what the form is capable of. The selfpublishing bo on is where muc h of the truly exciting com ics work is found thes e days, and Chester Brown has already proven himself  as one of its masters. But be warned—it really is a strange, strange world out there . •

DEATH AND UNDEATH IN T HE

MID-1980S

Haunt  of  Fear, Rattle a n d Death

B il il l S h e r m a n o n

Terror,

•

Horror comics are are an anomaly. In a market place where super-heroics and rigid moral strictures are the money-making norm, hor ror comi cs are a subversiv e assault on audi ence convention. That they have managed to survive, however shakily, in a variety of  comic-book  packages since their resurrec tion (a decade after the demise of EC Com ics' trendsetting horro r titles) at the h a n d s of  Russ Jones and Jim Warren is bot h a com ment on the limited emotional kick offered by more mainstream comics fare fare and o n the impor tance o f pop perversity. Horror c omics are nothing if  not perverse: you certainly couldn't call them scary. Too visually literal for the terrors of audience imagination (as one might experience with Buzz Dixon an d AttHo Mlcheluzzi'a cautionary tale of cannibalistic gluttony from Taw* of Tenor.

Tales

of 

a piece of gothic prose or a well-wrought radio play), too flat for the type of horrific manipulation found in film, horror comics

"THESE AiASOJty, Hi& CHlLC*6N TO <£&> Hi& RMPifcfi OiX  ME WA& PJSAP AMPCiiTTi*6 MS Off/ 

have generally sought their own peculiar mi x of black humor and discomfort. At their best, they offer readers both a sardonic chuckle and a frisson of unease , an emo  tional doubletake at being witness to a vision of everyday life that is unsettling and (possibly) too accurate to acknowledge. If  horror comics are (by nature of their subject matter) somewhat sociopathic in intent, the recent publication of Russ Cochran's Haunt of  Fear  reprints—as well as the more current modern direct-market offered d by Eclipse Com ics and Kitch en titles offere Sink  Press—testify Press—testify to the ir enduring appeal, especially for adolescents. Tho ugh both Tales o f  T e r r o r (Eclipse) an d D e a t h Rat tl e (Kitchen Sink) carry a "mature readers" warning label, it's clear that the initial audi ence for graphic art horror is adolescent, a line John Benson and his collaborators have pursued in their excellent notes to EC's hor ror reprints. No matter how disorienting an individual horror story may be, no matter how much it may set about trying to tilt our perception of conventional morality, there's a comforting level in which they deliver exactly what the adolescent reader has requested: an answer to "his curiosity abo ut his vulnerability, his fear of death and the fact that he'd like to see a little more about it so he can feel more comfortable with it" (Feldstein again). T h i s answering o f a precise precise need explains, in part, the somewhat ritualistic format that horror comics have taken. The only signifi cant addition to the form, which basically remains unchanged from Feldstein's day, came from the u n d e r g r o u n d (a movement characterized by its elongation of emotional adolescence), with its newfound sexual openness. Whe re Feldstein and Bill Gaines, plotting their tales, could only hint at the sexual tensions within their stories, artists like Richard Corben and Greg Irons were plunk ing it right in front o f the reader. Today, what was considered outlandish in th e u n d e r g r o u n d has become less startling in the alternatives. Consider the material some what routinel y hand led in Eclipse's Tales of  Terror; sexual abuse of children, bestiality, rape—and this from the publisher o f  Tales of the Beanuwld! Eclipse's title is, o f  course, an attempted follow-up to Twisted  Tales, former Warren scripter Bruce Jones' short-lived showcase of amorality. Without Jones' consistent editorial personality (one

part Feldstein, one part Larry Flynt), Terror  has shown mixe d success to date in its handli ng of horro r themes : when its writers writers and artists are on the mark, the book can stan d up to any of its forebears; when not , it's like reading a mainstream comic-book  company's "mystery" book, bowdlerized twist-ending twist-ending spoo k  stuff  about as challeng ing as something from the Arrow B o o k   Club. M o s t of the contributors to Terror, with the exception of half-known pros like Bill Pearson (present in the first issue of War ren's Creepy), are members of the Kubert S c h o o l generation: promising and not-sopromising newcomers on the edge of mak ing comic-bo ok work thei r career. career. Consider

rebellion. In both cases, scripter Feldstein took  familiar pulp elements and trans formed them into something darker, with out feeling the need of reassuring the reader that, yes, they are reading about something Really Relevant. T h i s should not be construed as a putdown of Terror's contemporary serious offer ings, for thre e of the m are indeed vario usly successful in theit intentions; it's just a com ment on some hidden assumptions. For my part, I found Mark Wheatley's "Suzy Dreams " ( TO T #1) #1) the most successf successful ul piece to date, primarily for its grueling sequences depicting spouse abuse and its (not entire ly successful) daring balance of visual sen timentality and brutality. Both Dixon and

Charles Burns's art takes a more sombre, dreadful approach as Sheila becomes possessed.

ing the amount of relatively unfamiliar talent involved in the book, it's surprising how smooth much of Terror's of Terror's first four issues have been: full of'dark chortles (most specifically: Yarber and Wray's parody of  Lovecraftiana, Dixon and Micheluzzi's cau tionary tale of cannibalistic gluttony, Wagner and Hoffman's "Bag of Limit"), an d the occasionally unsettling mo men t. Each issue of  Terror  has contained at least one contemporary theme tale (Phil Donahue meets the Old Witch) with pieces on school prayer, battered women, sudden infant death syndrome, and sexual abuse—and it's probably no accident that these are among the grimmest offerings in the title. It's almost as if th e young writers , in order to try for the edgier realm of horror-tale tell ing, felt they had to have an issue to justify their disturbing the reader. T h i s isn't precisely true, of course. Feld stei n an d friend friends, s, w hil e no t averse to inser ting the occasional "preachie" piece, were able to produce resonance out of the gothic tale's most basic elements: death and inhu manity. In the W. W. Jacobs variation, "Wish You Were" (HO F #22), for inst ance, Feldstein and artist Graham Ingels induced lingering reader distress just by wreaking ap palling physical retribution on a basically blameless protagonist (I can still recall my disquiet upon encountering this story in paperback as a teenager); in the earlier "Horror In Th e Freak Tent " (H OF #5) most of  the impact stems from its narrator's—as well as his mixed response to the victims'

56

J o h n s o n ' s "Eyes In Th e Darness" (T OT #3) and Sabatini and Sherman Tereno's " B e a r B e a r " (TOT #4) tackle their respective sub  jects with a bit more visual convention (bo th tales, interestingly, featuring stuffed stuffed teddy bears and children in peril) and lose someth ing for it. Where W heatley's style is is so cartoony and idiosyncratic, you wonder how it can work in a horror comic, artists Johnson and Tereno come across as too straightforward to be able to show us anything really threatening. In horror com ics, some visual pathology helps. Mark Wheatley's "Suzy D r e a m s " Is the most successful offering from Tales  of  Terror  because It deals realistically with an actual horror—wifebeating.

Perhaps the most intriguing offering from the first four Tales of  Terror, though, has been Bissette and Gus otvich's "Quee n for A Day" (TOT #1), the premiere offering of  the series. "Queen" is the book's most amoral entry, unapologetically somber and nearly successful successful for for it. Th e tale's problems are twofold: wordiness and a visual reluc tance to gaze upon the more sordid aspects of  its storyline. That first is a common enough failing of young scriptwriters, of  course, and I suspect most direct-market readers are tolerant enough to get past that failing; the seco nd, however, is especially problematic in the face of Death Rattle #1.  Rattle is the continuation of a title published by Denis Kitchen during the hey day of undergound horror titles (Skull, Tales of  Sex and  Death, Real Pulp, Insect  Fear, et  al); its premiere, in fact, carries a volume 2 over its issue number. As such, while packaged and aimed at the same directmarket au dienc e that Eclipse pursues, its contributors come from a different area althogether (though it's worth noting that b o t h Eric Vincent and Steve Bissette, th e duo behind "Queen," both have appeared in the modern underground title Dr. Wirtham's). Rattle's, premiere showcase is an 18-page "horror romance," by the decided ly bent Charles Burns, "111 Bred," which is genuinel y crawly crawly piece of insent phobi a t hat covers the same area as Terror's "Queen" (an ordinary innocent becomes the sexual pris oner of Nature), but with such clinical simplicity and unwaveting eye that it's the Eclipse offering's superiority in every way. • Without offering any explicit nods to rele vance—as with much of Burns' work it appears t o take place in some '50s B-movi e set—Til Bre d" carries carries that lingering sense of  unseen malevol ence that is the sign of great great got hic ar t. I f th e rest of Rattle's first volley seems to fit too snugly into more predictable territory (one danger of horror comics' ritualistic aspect being excessive familiarity, well as as editor of  course), Bu rns ' presence as well Kitchen's decision to play with the estab (allowing his lished format of horror comics (allowing I M "DEATH," page 84

And now for something 

On sale in  m a r c h

Slow danci

  / remember the day Bill Sienkiewicz brought  the original art for his his Ne w M u t a n t s poster  into the Marvel offices. It summed up the con trasts within Sienkiewicz's Sienkiewicz' s work, and  fore experimentation to come. shadowed  much of his experimentation The Ne w Mutants in the painting looked  very realistic, indeed, but the painting was dominated by a semi-abstract semi-abstract representation representation of  the series' "techno-organic" "techno-organic" alien villain, the   Magus, whose hugemouth gaped  in a primal scream. The painting was covered  with meti culously detailed renditions of circuitry, such as the Magus and his son Warlock are partly com  posed  of. When one took a closer  look, one would realize that these weren't paintings of circuitry: it  was real circuitry Sienkiewicz had  attached to the painting! (He later  explained that he once used  to repair television sets, and  somehow that old job had in spired  him in doing this painting.) Sienkiewicz has in the last few  years gotten a reputation as a who will indeed, indeed, try comics artist who anything, and to my mind, usual ly makes it work. Within main stream comic books he is as radical an innovator as there is, i s, with a style, or more precisely, styles, like no one else's.   He did not always have this image. When he was doing his first series, Marvel's M o o n Knight, written by Doug Moench, the unkind  members of the readership thought of Sienkie wicz as no more than a Neal Adams clone. But  even in the series' early issues there are hints of  the Sienkiewicz to come. Toward the end of  his run on the series, series, his startling new visual directions were dominating entire issues, issues, such and 23, the as the Morpheus storyline in #22 and "Hit   Black  Spectre tale in #25, and especially   It," a story in which Sienkiewicz attempted to translate the rage rage felt by one of Moench's characters into a visual rhythm evoking jazz music.  After  leaving M o o n K n i g h t , Sienkiewicz's work  for Marvel consisted principally of painted  covers which reflected his work in magazine illustration. illustrat ion. Over the t he years his comics and i llus tration work has appeared  in National Lam p o o n , Connecticut Magazine, Forum, and  G o l f   Digest. What really changed people's opinions of  Sienkiewicz' s work was his run on The New M u t a n t s in 1984-85. Again, the New Mutants themselves were portrayed basically ba sically in Sienkie Si enkie wicz's realistic style, although although as time went  on

B Y

P E T E R

onthi his portrayals of Cannonball and Professor    Xavier became quite stylized. But the rapid  growth and changes that Sienkiewicz Sienkiewicz was going through artistically can be seen in his first three M u t a n t s issues (#s 18-20) as the monstrous demonic less bear  becomes naturalistic and more abstract  effective) (and  more disturbingly proceeds. Sien as the storyline proceeds. kiewicz's first  Mutants issue also introduced writer Chris Claremont's alien character Warlock. Unbound by rules of  human anatomy with Warlock, Sienkiewicz was inspired by the portraying him in character, expressively radical ways for  comedic, touching, or disturbing effect. Warlock dominated issue "cartoon21, and became even ier" in later issues Sienkiewicz drew. With issue #22 Sienkiewicz startled everyone with his depiction of the "fairy tale" sequence, sequence, complete with a talking talking car, at the end, capped  by the cover, an amazing evocation of  Walt  Disney's Sleeping Beauty, a film that at this writing Sienkiewicz has yet to see (although (althoug h he has seen stilb). Ne w M u t a n t s Writer Chris Claremont  had  held  off on debuting his multiple personality character  Legion until he had the right artist, was it. Their Legion stories and  Sienkiewicz in M u t a n t s #26-28 plunge the New Mutants into a surrealistic fantasy world blending Paris with war-torn Beirut. Sienkiewicz also did  the unusual art for    Marvel's adaptation of the film version of Frank   Herbert's D u n e around this time. Since leaving The New M u t a n t s Sienkiewicz has been engaged engaged in a creatively produc tive collaboration with Frank Miller Mill er on a Dare,devil graphic novel featuring his nemesis the Kingpin, and an eight-issue limited series for    Marvel's Epic line,Elektra: Assassin. Sienkiewicz is painting the interior art for both, and  the work for these projects represents as great  an artistic leap from his New Mutants work as the Ne w M u t a n t s work did from   Moon Knight.   As for how Sienkiewicz's Sienkiewic z's work will advance

n ot say, and  change in two more years, I could not but I recommend you all go along for the ride.   It promises to be interesting. This interview int erview was conducted in two sessions, in September, 1985 and January, 1986. It was conducted, transcribed, and edited by myself, Sienkiewicz; our thanks go and  copy edited by Sienkiewicz; to our mysterious typist without  whose work the Journal typesetters would be driven to distrac tion trying to read  the manuscript after the inter viewee and 1 got through working on it.  —Peter 

Sanderson

Postscript: Readers will surely want to how to pronounce the t he name "Sienkiewicz." answer is you can't.

know The

AN INTERVIEW WITH

C u t t i n g Edge PETER SANDERSON: How did  your  col laboration with Frank  Miller  start? The first   project  you started  doing together  was the Daredevil graphic novel, which was originally intended  to be a two-part fill-in story in the regular  Daredevil comic.

BILL SIENKIEWICZ: It started as a gleam in Ralph Macchio's eye. Frank  an d I ha d known each othet an d liked each other's work. I think  we both thought in the backs of ou t minds that it'd be interes ting to work with each other on a project. Bu t things never seemed to be headed in that direction. Bu t then Frank  was going to write a couple of issues of  Daredevil deal ing with t he Kingpin and his wife wife Vaness a, and Ralph (who edits Daredevil) asked me to draw them. I jumped at the chance t o work with Frank. It's now the Daredevil graphic novel. I feel it's a true, true col

laboration. It's so much fun. SANDERSON: You work  from full scripts with him, not  just  from plots. His scripts could  be illustrated  very realistically, but you take quite a different  approach to them. SIENKIEWICZ: W h e n I see Frank's scripts, I get a point-counterpoint thing go in g o n. Frank  and I know what's going o n here, but I don't want to show that. I want to show something that's th e opposite t o that. Hi s words are so powerful, why be redundant? SANDERSON: So the picture acts as a counterpoint  to the words? SIENKIEWICZ: Yes, an d there's been a lot of  that going on . SANDERSON: Could  you give any ex amples? SIENKIEWICZ: In the first issue o f   Elektra, when things become realistic in the script, I give them a storybook treatment; where things get more like a storybook, I point up the more realistic realistic elements. T h e scenes with th e most brutal stuff  are shown in very childlike drawings. During one scene Elektra is being hosed down with other, starved women by this sadistic bastard. I do the scene in muted grays, and it's a pretty horrendous scene. And she remembers Alice in Wonderland  an d tells herself  t h e story the way her father used to . She's try in g to remember something pleasant from her childhood.

SANDERSON: You even put the Cheshire of  that first  issue. SIENKIEWICZ: Some o f these pictures counterpoint what's going on. In the scene in th e asylum in the first issue, th e Cheshire C a t ' s saying, "We're all mad here," in Alice in Wonderland  kept running through my head. It emphasized what's going on .

Cat  into one panel

Often when Frank  and I get together now, it's like a tenni s game. We're volleying ideas back  an d forth. We're always consid ered so dark  an d serious, bu t when we get together, we end up laughing like crazy. SANDERSON: So do you mean Elektra is a kind  of  black  comedy? SIENKIEWICZ: Yes. In the second issue of  Elektra, Elektra, Garrett, wh o's Elektra's main an

tagonist, doesn't quite look real because she's comedic. Fo r fans Elektra became a sex symbol. I t h i n k   at one point Frank wanted to show he r as a death symbol, with nothing sex ual about her. Now I think she's both. It's like what Frank's doing with Batman: she's become mythic. You can't really know her. Yo u can't ever know what she's thinking, although you may think that you do. H er motivations are elusive. T h e more we show about Elektra, ultimately t h e less you'll really know about her. I've handled he r very coldly, very cartoonly, very super-heroey, very realis tically— all different ways and, after th e first issue, I've started to put a lot o f  that sexual element back into her. A lot of what I did with th e first issue came from a process o f assimilating my artistic influences. It was a reflection of what I was as an artist that bounced into t he story.

SANDERSON: You portrayed the

flashback 

of  the murder  of her father  in a self-consciously style. childlike SIENKIEWICZ: It was pretty brutal. I didn't want t o make it a pretty picture. I couldn't reconcile myself  to doing it literally. T h e equivalent to what I wanted to do was t o get a shotgun full o f buckshot, hold it up to that panel, an d pull th e trigger. That would have been t h e effect I wanted. I tried

that you start wanting to make things look  like what they're supposed to look like. That's usually the point where most people give up drawing, the point where they feel frustrated frustrated because they can't make some thing look like it's supposed to. But if they stick  with it, they usua lly give up drawing realistically by the time the y're 15. Like Picasso, they move through exact representationalism for its own sake to experi menti ng with shape and pattern. S A N D E R S O N : You once said  you don't  draw what  things look  like; you draw what  they feel like:

S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah, I get bored draw draw ing representational stuff. I've gone to art exhibits and seen pictures done with very exacting and belabored rendering tech nique, and in a lot of ways they're very pret ty, but my initial reaction is "So what?" this person isn't telling me anything; isn't adding anything. It's pointless. There are artists who show me pictures they've done and they're worse than bad. They're half  good. N o joie de vivre, no sense of playing arou nd at all. It's as if they 're tr ying so hard no t to have their own point of view. It's like reportage, with them removed, uninvolved.' S A N D E R S O N : You think  cartooning is a for  showing how the  particularly good  medium for showing artist  feels. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Cartooning cuts through all the shit, if it's done well. S A N D E R S O N : 7b show a personal point  of  view. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Oh yeah. Look at [Ralph] Steadma n's stuff. stuff. Lo ok at [Ronald ] Searle's work. S A N D E R S O N : But when you started  out  doing comics, you wanted  to be very representationalist. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yes, I was. S A N D E R S O N : So your more recent work  has surprised 

people.

S I E N K I E W I C Z : The question I keep get ting is "Why did your style change?" It frustrates me. Th ey 'v e got a right to ask it,

A page from t he upcoming Elektra  limited series, written by Frank Miller.

to describe it with paints as viscerally and immediately as I felt it. S A N D E R S O N : The depiction of her  father's corpse spattered  with blood  certainly makes it  visceral, but the childlike scrawb in the scene suggest that  the memory of the murder  forces  Elektra to regress mentally into a helpless child  who needs her  father. S I E N K I E W I C Z : In that first issue as her memory becomes more lucid and the flash backs get closer to her present, there is less o f  a difference in Style bet wee n t he flash backs and her present time. I did the sequences in which S t i c k   is teaching her in cold colors. It's like Elektra's blue period, a combination of Picasso and

60

Keane. She's got large doe eyes. You want to pick her up and cuddle her. But it's like taking in a viper. S A N D E R S O N : Why do those flashbacks in blues? S I E N K I E W I C Z : It was a very cold period for her. For one thing, the temperature: it took place in the snow. It was also a cold period for her emotionally. She felt alien ated. She wanted to be accepted. I also give the earlier flashbacks a childlike style because I want to tr^at her feelings when she was younger more viscerally (there's that word again). More like a child would draw the m. Be caus e fot a kid, draw ing is naturally a means of expression. After

but I thin k their questi on points up a com  plete ignorance of art as process, of art as a means of moving through life. What artists are called u p o n to do in this business is to immediately have an identi fiable style. An d then t hou shalt deviate not. Most artists don't hit their maturity, their stride until the ir 40s . In this business you're supposed to hit th e groun d runn ing. My stuff  doesn't look like anybody's else's now, at all, least of all Neal [ Adams]'s. T h a t may have been true at one time, but not

sudden it was "Yeah, fun!" S A N D E R S O N : Th e fun of  cartooning. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah, the real fun. All of  a sudden my goal beca me the truth through the lie, greater reality achieved through exaggeration. Giving someone with a fat face and a fat body tiny, tiny hands and tiny, tiny feet. I'd spent so much time studying anatomy, going to life drawing classes, priding myself  on knowing where every muscle is is on a huma n body. Th en , after having gotten into the business, I realized that in part it doesn't matter. I'd been strug gling so hard to learn it all so I could forget it . Zen comics. S o , before, I was con cer ned with supersuperheroes but now my con cer n is with pattern and shape. I feel like a kid havi ng fun with the stuff. It's like putting together pieces of 

The trademark tiny head an d hands of a-very obese person—Harkonen—from Sienkiewicz's adaptation of Dune.

S A N D E R S O N : Why have you evolved  so  fast, do you think? S I E N K I E W I C Z : At the point that I was mostly doing painted covers for Marvel, I was ready to move away from comics as my main source of expression, and try to do more illustration, more fine art work, pain tings for for galleries galleries.. Th en a numb er of things happened, and I had to put a hold on those plans. I couldn't make that leap as immedi ately as I wanted to. So when I came back  to doing comics, it was with a different sen sibility. I've been lucky enough to expe rience other methods o f expression, having my work at the Society of Illustrators, hav ing galleries intereste d in my stuff, stuff, doin g work for magazines other than comic books. S o when I came back into comics, it was with this sense of knowing that I can do other things. And it's a really liberating feel ing. So when I came back in, I felt "I'm going to have some fun." Part of my reason for feeling that was having to come back in to comics when I didn't really want to. Part of  it was having fun with what Chris [Clare mont] was writing. Part of it was getting in terested in animation. I found I'd been so entranced by the illustrators, by art as seriousness, art with a capital A, and I said, "I've got to make it more fun."

S o I started to do a lot of work in sketch books. I found I had a good time poking fun at stuff. I would do drawings of fat people and make them very fat. I was not going at all for literal translation. It's what I tried to do with Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in [Marv el's adap tatio n of the film ver ver sion of Frank Herbert's novel] Dune. I dis covered Ralph Steadman's work. All of a

"I feel a lot of of times when people are ar e so so preoccupied by how many rivets are ar e on Iron Man's helmet, they're really missing t h e point of what a r t is all al l about."

a puzzle, as opposed to this intense struggle to get thos e muscles down right. I don't give a fuck about how many rivets Dr. Doom's face mask has. The point is: does it get the effect, the emotion across? S A N D E R S O N : Hoiv would  you compare the three writers you've mainly worked  with: Doug   Moench, Chris Claremont, and  Frank  Miller? really talented. S I E N K I E W I C Z : They 're all really Doug did tight, moody stuff  on Moon Knight. Working with Doug on The Fantastic Four  is something we remember but sort of  dismiss. S A N D E R S O N : Because it  really wasn't  suited  to either  your style or  his? S I E N K I E W I C Z : No. When they asked me

to do it, I didn't think I was right for it. I didn't really want to do it. S A N D E R S O N : Some of the M o o n K n i g h t stories must  have helped  you develop as an art ist. Your  Moon Knight  and  Marlene were very idealized, glamorous figures, representative of  that  phase of  your  work  in comics. S I E N K I E W I C Z : They were very idealized. M o o n Knight was basically my character even though he'd already been done by [Keith] Pollard and [ Gene ] Col an. On e of  my favorite stories that Doug [Moench] did was the one with the nurse murderer. I thi nk at that poi nt I got comfortab le with putting a whole lot of my "stuff' in there. I felt I hit some great buttons there. Doug

On e of Sienkiewicz's earliest forays into expressionism—'Hit It!," from Moon Knight.

was supplying a lot and I was throwing a lo t of bits in. Up 'til that point I felt I was at the service of the writer, rather th an as a collaborator S A N D E R S O N : Moench did  some Moon Knight  stories that  allowed  you to experiment. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Doug did some extraor dinary work: Scarlet, Black  Spectre. He was really moving during our last l/4th of the run. I wanted co-plotting credit on "Hit It" [Moon Knight  #25] but it was was runnin g late so they didn't have a chance to put it on the credits. Not to take anything away from Doug, but that was more me than any story previously. I pretty mu ch went in to Den ny [O'Neil, Moon Knight's editor] and said this is what I want to do: turning being hit as a child, that primal scream, that rage, and show different ways of dealing with it—from it—from artistic creativity to violence. Turning a negative into a positive and into a negative again. S A N D E R S O N : Do you think  that  is what  super-hero comics are about? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Partly that. It's taking what is a means of survival as a child and turning it into a gift, into a living, into a means of expression. It's like Bruce Spring steen bei ng a lone r as he grew grew up and the n writing songs in which he's got his finger on the public's pulse. So you're taking some thing that might have been painful at the time, and turning it around and using it to your advantage. S A N D E R S O N : Hoiv was "Hit It" an expe riment  for you visually? S I E N K I E W I C Z : I think it was the first time I was really aware of the visceral quali ty of drawing, the musical quality of com ics in the sense of rhyt hm: visual r hyt hm and emotional rhythm. The stoty is about a guy whose fathet hit him when he was growing up, so he goes arou nd hitti ng people now: "The sins of the father.. ."; or, more musically, Harry Chapin's "Cat's Cradle." I put a lot of child-like drawings in the story like I did in Elektra #1.1 feel they're the shortest distance between the eyes. S A N D E R S O N : How do you create visual rhythm?

 //fT 

rrf  62

S I E N K I E W I C Z : It has to do with juxta posing images, ebb and flow, the space be tween, unity through dominance, repetition of  images, it has to do with how frequently you see an image, and then having a big pic ture as a payoff. payoff. It also has t o do with pat-

tern within the picture itself. \bu'H have an, area in it with a lot of intense goings-on. Yo u start with shape, and out o f shape you move to a second level, which is pattern, which is more interesting. Then you move away from it to an area that's less defined, less crisp, has less contrast. And that gives way to an area that's like background noise, the calm that counterpoints the intense area. You don't want to have the same focus over everything in the entire picture. It's not showing every brick. If it is showing every brick, it's showing every brick as part o f a pattern. It becom es subordinate, n ot domi nant . You're doing so meth ing as wallpaper because you want it to be wallpaper, not because you can't do anything else but  wallpaper. wallpaper. I want to be able to focus , it's get get ting people people to look where you want the m to look. If there's too mu ch, it's too distrac ting. There must be order, beauty, rhythm, chaos—unless m u s i c . . .a rt .. .essence from chaos—unless you want chaos. But it must be well de signed chaos in order to work. Something special about this medium is eliciting reaction from people. There's a dif ferent musical and emotional tone to the last page of Moon Knight  #23 with the closeup of Marlene's face tha n there is to th e double-page spread in "Slumber Party" (in New Mutants #21). One was done in black  and white, pencils and inks, then colored, .and the other was done in charcoal, a me dium anathema to contemporary main stream comics in a lot of ways, and left black  and white. It's like playing a different musical instrument. T he shot of Marl ene is a severe shot. It stays with you. It's a sus tained note. The "Slumber Party" shot has an eclectic, helter-skelter helter-skelter quality. quality. Th e focus is scattered so much you can't get into the

same way as you can the shot of Marlene. It moves fast and light, and the characters' smiles convey a lot of the e motio nal t one. I'm talking about the emotional colors. In music there are notes, there are scales, there are keys; these have equivalents in drawing, But most people who do comics don't know the first thing about what goes into making music. A lot of people who are doing comi cs don't wa nt to kno w art from nothin'. The word "art" has this negative connotation for them. For them it's just the fucking, one-two, punch-you-very punch-you-very much, spandex-man mentality. S A N D E R S O N : The "It's just  comics syn drome," in other  words. Since you believe comics can be art, do you feel isolated  among other  comics professionals?

"Before, I was concerned with super-heroes, but now my concern is with pattern and shape."

S I E N K I E W I C Z : Whatever gave you that impression? Yes, pretty frequently. But I love the me dium; I love juxt apos ing images. I don't paticularly feel like I want to draw pic tures of people who wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes forever. I think Frank  [MillerJ's gone a long way to showing showing the potential of this medium. Mor e than anyone. Jesus, what a force. European comics are a lot more persona l than Amer  ican comics. Sometimes I feel not so much like a man out of my time as a man out of  my own country. S A N D E R S O N : Do you think  there's enough of  an audience in the United  States to support  the kind  of  work  you want  to do? S I E N K I E W I C Z : I think so. It's a good deal smaller than the entire mainstream audi ence. There's part of me that wants to do the personal stuff, and there's part of me that wants to be the entertainer, to do "good 'Marvel' comics." If I try to cram one set of  sensibilities into a job that doesn't really call

Nice kitty. From Sienkiewicz's sketchbook.

The  New  Mutants'  "Slumber P a r t y " allowed Sienkiewicz to imbue th e manic atmosphere of the story with an eclectic, helter-skelter quality.

 \J 

() \r  V -

toony. Kingpin is. . .just plain big. S A N D E R S O N : What is it like working with Frank  Miller on the Elektra series and the Daredevil graphic novel? S I E N K I E W I C Z : I thin k what Frank a nd I are doing are books that are Frank's most mature stuff  to date, because I think he's taking everything he's experienced and is channeling it through comics. He is taking the way he sees the world, and is doing very personal, very political stories, that just happen to be super-hero stories. In some respects his work is getting more cartoony than ever. I think we're goading each o t h e r on how "unreal" we can get with the draw ing and still make it work for comics.

for it, naturally I'm going to meet with frus tration. I'm going to be inviting it. S A N D E R S O N : But I don't  see you going back  to doing a "regular" style of  drawing for  super-hero comics. S I E N K I E W I C Z : No. If I were to do that, I think it would be for some bizarre kind of  nostalgia. Right now the only response to regular stuff  is, "Why?" S A N D E R S O N : Would  you like to work  with Chris Claremont  again, perhaps on a graphic novel? S I E N K I E W I C Z : I would like to work with Chris again. He has a really large range as a storyteller: for example, we did things like Rahne's fairy tale and the Legion stories in were two Th e New Mutants together Tho se were diametrically opposed stories—we couldn't have gotte n more extr eme if we tried. S A N D E R S O N : Chris, Frank, and  Doug  Moench, the three writers you've principally principally worked  with, all put a lot of  themselves into their work.

I think Frank probably wants to do other things besides super-heroes. There are times when- 1 want to be seen as a serious artist even though I draw people with their under wear on the outside of their clothes. That was one of the things I found hard to take after awhile with The New Mutants. I think  that was part of the reason I think I started doing the Chuck Jones-influenced stuff  in later issues. S A N D E R S O N : What do you see as the   Jones-influenced aspect? S I E N K I E W I C Z : I'm talking about the feel ing I tried to convey, not exact imitation. Stuff  like "Fat Karma," [Lila Cheney's bodyguard]. Also that big robot in one of  the issues I drew. I was thinking of one of  those cartoon bulldogs, with that kind of  bulky mass. S A N D E R S O N : Why do you feel so influ enced  by the animated  films of Chuck  of Chuck  Jones and  Tex Avery? S I E N K I E W I C Z : There was an incredible sense of personality in all of Jones's work, the sense of it all being really personal: one vision, the little takes [on characters' faces],

S I E N K I E W I C Z : They do. And that's what I like to do as well, put more of  myself  into the work. And not so much only at the service of a writer. I'd like to have as much of me and the way I see things in it as there is of the writer's, so it definitely • becomes a real collaboration. S A N D E R S O N : How would  you describe  your  work  on the Daredevil graphic novel? graphic S I E N K I E W I C Z : T h e Daredevil novel is halfway between what I was doing on my first issues of  The New Mutants and what I was doing on my last ones. About three steps shy of heaven or hell, depending on how work's progressing. There are cer tain areas that are very "real," like in the first issues, and other areas that are very carTHE COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

trast, as I said earlier. Neal's a cartoonist. I think people get bowled over by his superb exag sense of rendering and don't notic e his exag gerations. Neal would double light Charlie Brown and pull it off. S A N D E R S O N : What  do you think  of the  Disney animated  films? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Disney's stuff  is like Jones's and Avery's with the balls cut off. S A N D E R S O N : The later  Disney films, you mean.

screwing around with anatomy so effective ly, trapezoidal shadows, backgrounds that looked flat with outlines that didn't really fit. It took the art school sensibility that everything has to be realistic and said "Screw it!" I'm not talking about the kind of  stylization he was doing by the '60s with Tom and  Jerry. I'm talking about the car toons like Bewitched  Bunny, Broomstick  Bunny, Lumberjack Rabbit. It's gorgeous, irreverent work and shows how much art cartoons can be. As a kid I used to draw Mickey Mouse as a super-hero: Super Mouse. Then I got into the business, being influenced by Neal [Adams], doing "super realism," at least by contrast. But then I began busting away, away, realizing realizing that cart oon ing is all about exaggeration. If I'm going to draw someone who's fat, I'm not going to sh oot a reference roll of film film o f somebod y who's fat, and copy it literally, no way. I'm going to exaggerate the fatness, draw some one with a huge body and very little hands. Pudgy little hands. S A N D E R S O N : Your caricatured  fat  figures, like the Kingpin in the Daredevil graphic novel and  "Fat  Karma" in New Mutants remind  me of the gigantic, incredibly fat  animals in  Avery's King-Size Canary. And  Warlock's exaggerated  reactions remind  me of the exaggerated "takes" that  Avery's characters do. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Avery pushes the stuff  so far. His takes are so much mor e real t h a n a realistic one, so much more right on. The truth through the lie. When someone slides around  \. a corner in one of his cartoons, the   /bod y might go 15 feet beyond the '} corner. Kirby's stuff  became more emotionally "realistic" because of the exaggeration he did. The anatomy was al! wrong in a lot of Neal's stuff, bu t damn it, it was comin' right at you. S A N D E R S O N : So Adams isn't as super-realistic as everyone thinks, either. S I E N K I E W I C Z : No! Only by con-

Th e Kingpin: " T h e size of Nebraska."

"There a r e times when I want to be seen a s a serious artist even though I draw people with their underwear on the th e outside of their clothes."

S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah. It's too reverent, with t he cute little animals. Token cuteness. What the later films do have is the big 'budget and the talent. But the real heart is replaced by committee. In the earlier films, I love the painterly quality, the evocation of  mood and drama and characterization. Classic archetypical work. Everything was Or the  just so incredible. Pinocchio. backgrounds in Sleeping Beauty. God. The  Black  Cauldron has a lot of that; what it doesn't have is the real guts—the heart and stuff, bu t soul, th e stoty. It's really nice stuff, vacuous and so cute it rings of Spielbergian manipulation of the heartstrings. I feel that Avery and Jo nes were poking fun at their own genre, at Disney, at their own work, in a lot of ways. S A N D E R S O N : That they were both point ing to the fact  that  their  films were cartoons. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah, they showed this self-awareness in their films. Also the films give you the sense of people who really en  joyed what they were doing. For sheer non sensical enjoyment, Avery is great. In a lot of  ways his cartoons aspire to be nothing more t h a n what they are, yet they achieve so much more. The work just doesn't seem dated. S A N D E R S O N : Is that a principle comics should  follow? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah. I think  Will Eisner's stuff  is like that. I feel he was just having fun and the work transcended the way people viewtd the medium. S A N D E R S O N : How did you become influ work? enced  by Ralph Steadman's S I E N K I E W I C Z : I saw som eon e on the train reading Hunter Thompson's The Curse of  the Lono, which Ste adm an illustrated, illustrated, and /

. / H Hard a i to believe, but the appearance of Fat Karma f r o m The New  Mutants  is influenced by a Tex cartoon. Avery fr o

 f'

laughing hysterically. hysterically. I bought the b ook, read it, saw the visuals, ar)d also read Thompson's descriptions of Steadman, who's a character in the book, and they're hilarious. I didn't feel feel consciously influenced by him at the time, particularly, but I seemed to fall into it when I started doing the bear (in Neiv Mutants #s 18-20). after tha t I starte d to work with it more and more. I noticed my work starting to get get more geometric. I started to use more circles and right angles and a'straight edge, for godsake. S A N D E R S O N : Such as he does. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah. His work's very loose, but it's also very rigid in some ways, which interested me. I never set out to do a Steadman, per se, but I enjoyed it so much it just manifested itself  in my work. S A N D E R S O N : Th e crazed  look  you gave the bear  evolved  into warlock's primal scream look. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Mmm, yeah. I feel like my work was heading in that direction and see ing Steadman's stuff  pushed it more, it was a whole new direction for me, totally dif ferent from any direction I'd taken before. Much more visceral. Simultaneously more spontaneous and more structured. S A N D E R S O N : Some readers thought  the way you draw Warlock  was inspired  by Bill the Cat  (in Berke Breathed's Bloom County). S I E N K I E W I C Z : I didn't know what (or who) Bill the Cat was back when I first drew Warlock. When I finally saw what Bill th e Ca t was, was, I though t, "T his Betke Breath ed guy! What a wit." Doing a character with one eye bigger t h a n the other—I'd hate to think it was generic, but it's been used before to denote lack of tou ch with t he real world. Two of Sienkiewicz's biggest influences: Ralph Steadman (above, from his Alice  In  Wonderland  adap tation), an d Ronald Searle (below).

66

S A N D E R S O N : Which is not to say that  Warlock  is insane. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Who knows? He looks (1) he's an a lien, (2) he's like tha t be caus e, (1) a kid, (3) he has extreme reactions to things,

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

" A lot of people who wh o a r e doing comics dont want t o know a r t from nothinl T h e ha s this word *art* has negative conno tation for them."

As far as The New  Mutant*'  Warlock Is con cerned, anatomy doesn't exist, says Sienkiewicz. However, even such an abstract character ca n be to o "cartoony" (art by Steve Lelaloha).

S A N D E R S O N : In your comic work  you don't  do anything that blatant.

and (4) Warl ock was was a cha rac ter w ho was counter to everything I'd ever thought about drawing comic book characters. Warlock  was pure fun. he was improbabil ity. He was created according to th e laws of  Jonesian physics. He was "fuck anatomy ." He was afraid at first [in The New Mutants]. He is the most childlike of the group, even more than Rahne. he was experiencing things for the first time. He'd open conver sations with refrigerators and not know why they didn't talk to him. Warlock's a character you can't draw in  correctly. Actually, I take that back. Some people do draw Warlock wrong. They make him too symmetrical, too humanoi d, too realistic. They give him knees. He doesn't have knees. If he does, they're no t in the same place on each leg; if he has legs—and the list goes on. Here I was, creating a character remembering just how damned frustr frustrati ating ng getti ng the bice p jus t so, or hav ing this abdominal muscle tilted right, or making the zygomatic arches even, that I  just said "uh huh—no anatomy." No deal ing with any of that horseshit. Shape. Shape and emotion. I didn't do Warlock according to Bridgeman, I did Warlock according to Rorschach. Warlock was a barometer. S A N D E R S O N : Why do you so admire the work  of  Ronald  Searlel S I E N K I E W I C Z : Searle, I feel, is a lot like Steadman, but even mote political and gut less representationa l tha n sy. His stuff  is a lot less Steadman's stuff. Steadman's figures are grotesque, but still recognizably huma n. Th e things Searle uses to do his caricatures may not even be huma n, like using bo mb s as Richard Nixon's cheeks. It's a statement about his politcial leanings as well as their physical shape.

S I E N K I E W I C Z : No. , S A N D E R S O N : So how does Searle's work  • affect  what  you do? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Well, it's frustrating, because I would like to know how much I would push it. It's almost like I'd like to be given the oppor tunit y to find find out, to really push it. A lot of the stuff  that I do in my sketchbooks is more personal stuff. It's dif ficult, regardless of the quality of the writer I'm working with, to find a particularly apropos place to throw that kind of  stuff  in. I'm doing it more now with Frank [Miller] than I've done with anyone else. I did it a lot with Chr is [Claremo nt]. Th e problem was that I could only push it so far because The New Mutants isn't that kind of book, although I regard my year with Chr is as some of the best work either of us has done. Just read his Bear trilogy or Legion. Just beautiful writing. Elektra is a different animal. Completely.

Is th e primal scream of the Demon Bear a forebear of Warlock's abstraction? An d t h e n w e have Bloom County's  Bill the Cat, with hi s c o n  stant death rattle.

S A N D E R S O N : She's not a role model or  hero. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah. Elektra is more of  an ongoing oychodrams. But much as I like doing psychologically-oriented stories, I don't want to be typecast as somebody who draws only psychotic people, or people with square heads. S A N D E R S O N : Considering the way you like animated cartoons, maybe you should  try doing a funny animal story sometime. S I E N K I E W I C Z : I proba bly would have trouble drawing a silly rabbit. You'd think  it would be easy to do. It might be interes ting to play around and do a kid's book. Actually, it might be more work tha n do ing othe r com ics. It's more work for St an Dra ke to do Blondie th an it is is for him to do Juliet Jones. He says, "You'd think it'd be easy to do these funny things." But every line in those drawings means something. If  a whole head is composed of six lines, and you move one of those lines a 16th of an inch, it means a hell of a lot more than if  you deal with a fact that's drawn realistically, with like 60, 70, or 80 lines and you leave one of them out completely. It's easy to screw up drawing Charlie Brown because ther e's so few lines to work with. S A N D E R S O N : Recently you decided  to try  your  hand  at  writing with two projects for  Epic comics: "Slow Dancer," which was in the final

67

squirrel). cute Disneyish S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah, that's great. That's one reason I like Tex Avery's and Chuck  Jones's stuff  so much. Then look at Sylvester and Bugs Bunny, and see the difference. They're cute things with a little bit of teeth. Look  at Cerebus. S A N D E R S O N : Th e "funny animal" who threw a baby off a roof. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Only in one of his lighter moments, I'm sure.There's Dave [Sim] being whimsical again. [laughter] Bu t I think there's a part of me that's real ly dying to do a comic for kids. Like " N o shit, really. Here's something cute, kids." Like the cover I did for New Mutants (#22) with all those cute bunnies and stuff. I feel a sigh coming on. S A N D E R S O N : Are you saying saying you have this love-hate syndrome for  cuteness here? S I E N K I E W I C Z : I'm talking about this mass of contradictions. O n really human mass one hand there's part of me that wants to do Francis Baco n-typ e paintings that hang on the walls of galleries, and wants to be in the Society of Illustrators. There's also part of that wants to do fine art out of  circuitry. There's another part of me who wants to draw funny little animals and do • Casper and Spooky and still likes reading that stuff—and then to sit back and watch  Rashomon or Citizen Kane or Eraserhead  or Repo Man.

 ferably

Illustrated, and a projected  longer  issue of Epic of  Epic Illustrated, story, "Stray Toasters." How do you feel about  writing? S I E N K I E W I C Z : In the past I knew where my brea d was butte red basically, and I was was afraid to write. Writing stuff  in my sketch books and working on "S low Dancer," I thought for sure I was going to get laughed out of the business. I think I was also afraid I didn't have anything to say or I wasn't sure how to say it. But what I realized was there are certain stories that I want to tell, cer tain images tha t I want t o get down. Wh en I did "Hit It" in Moon Knight, a story Doug [Moench] did that was a framework in which I could go in and play around, it scared the livi ng piss out of me. I foun d ou t I could get exactly the effects I wanted. It was like, "Wow! It cou ld feel like this? I could do this again?" I couldn't believe it, the feel ings that came over me.

S A N D E R S O N : What is "Stray Toasters" about? S I E N K I E W I C Z : It's still too fetal to discuss in depth. I'd like to do "Stray Toasters" as a graphic novel. I've got 11 pagesfcf  it drawn: the initial meltdown sequence. S A N D E R S O N : The anti-Spielberg sequence. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah. It's a good image. I have a partic ular anti pathy towards cute little things, which the toasters are. I don't trust 'em. I find people fall prey to that stuff  way too easily. S A N D E R S O N : You say you like Tex Avery 1 you cartoons. Then must  especially like the opening of  Screwball Squirrel (in which the title character beats the stuffing out of an insuf

S A N D E R S O N : "Slow Dancer" was about   people's difficulties in relating to one another. The title character  is engaging in a forbidden  form of  social contact  by "slow dancing" with women in secret dance clubs. His psychiatrist  is ordered  to stop him.

m k 

Mr

Now I'm trying writing because I've got ideas I want to do, and I feel there's only so much I can do with just doing visual images for other people's stories, as much as I love it, it's still not 100 perc ent mine . Below left: A sketch fo r Sienkiew icz's pet project, "Stray Toasters." Right: A rough for a promotional poster for the DC Cornice line of graphic novels.

ti* tosWmenLs  £  owe -rletstrudion. B

68

ecrna

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

S I E N K I E W I C Z : Since I got into the busi ness, I've been doing it on and off. A lot of  times I really treasure th e jobs that aren't comic book jobs per se. I want to do more painting. Ultimately, I want to do paintings for galleries. S A N D E R S O N : Which illustrators and   people in the fine arts have influenced  your  work?

S I E N K I E W I C Z : The therapist has been ordered by the Flock, a religious congrega tion, to stop the Slow Dancer at all costs. Turns out that the therapist has been a slow dancer himself. It's like his sentence, his penance, is to stop the Slow Dancer. But the Slow Dancer is also his only hope, proof  that people are being touched out there. So he's incredibly ambivalent; he wants it to stop but at the same time he wants to know more. Finally, the Flock  doesn't kill the Slow Dancer. They just cut off his hands and let him go about his business as before. Part of the fear I have about writing is that I'm afraid what I do has been done before. Bu t I figure, what the hell, I might as well work out my little demons as best I can by writing and drawing about them. It'll be playing into a lot of my obsessions. S A N D E R S O N : What's it  like working in a studio with Leonard  Starr  (writer/artist  of the comic strips On Stage and  Annie) and, start ing only recently, Blondie)? Drake influenced  the way you draw Marlene (in Moon Knight) and  lllyana (in New Mutants). S I E N K I E W I C Z : Oh, yeah, definitely. Stan and Len are great guys! First time I met Stan he said, "I like your stuff," pulled out some of  his own artwork and gave me p ointe rs like crazy. I'm working up at the same studio with Stan and Leonard now. Aside from their ability as artists, Stan and Leonard ex hibit more professional stick-to-it-iveness t h a n most people I see in this business. T h o s e guys work all th e time. And they seem to really love what they do, which is really nice to see. If they kvetch, it's usu ally with smiles on theit faces. S A N D E R S O N : What  about  your  work  out side comics, in illustration? How long have you been doing this?

S I E N K I E W I C Z : First and foremost among the illustrators is Bo b Peak. Th en there's B o b Heindel, Berni e Fuchs, Sandy Kossin, Barron Storey. Rober t Bax ter is a really big influence. Francis Bacon. I've really been getting into Gustav Klimt, because of his use of  pattern. Picasso to a certain degree. Lyonel Feininger. Curt Schwitters's work I absolutely adore. I think they've influenced me in my com ics work as well. I'm talki ng about inspiration, not copying. People don't seem to understand that. My work is so eclectic. In the first issue of  Elektra it's like I'm trying ma ny different ways to do it and ultimately the way to do it was to do it every way. This is where I start to feel like the odd man out in this business, and I guess partially I put myself  thete. I'd like not to be alone. One of the best times I had at the last San Diego Comic Co n was when Tom Yeates told me he'd read my interview in Amazing Heroes for inspira tion, and sat down and started to play around with some stuff. And it felt so good hearing someone talk about just letting go with it. I feel a lot of times when people are so preoccupied by how many rivets are on

"I regard my year with Chris [Clare mont] a s some of the best work either of us has ha s done."

Iron Man' s helmet, they're really really missing th e point of what art is all about. S A N D E R S O N : In comics your work is looked  upon as experimental and semi-abstract. S I E N K I E W I C Z : , Actually, one of the last pieces I had at the "Society of Illustrators was very realistic. It was a painting of a boy, alone, in a room with nothing but clocks; a watercolor, very realistic. It creates a feel ing of loneliness. of loneliness. Th e oth er one I had there was of a robot geisha, which was muc h more abstract and more like the Japanese Notan school, which is very pattern-orien ted. I'm not sure what I had in mind by having the robot geisha hold her hands over where her face should be, but the face not being on her head but on a stick she was holding. S A N D E R S O N : It seems to be another one  of  your works about the unnatural replacing the  human.

S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah, I seem to have a real affinity for dealing with the idea of  dehumanization.

70

S A N D E R S O N : Whose work in comics do   you now admire and why? S I E N K I E W I C Z : First and foremost is Frank  [Miller]. I almost want to say that goes without saying. Aside from his gifts for storytelling, for writing and drawing, he also has something I feel is extremely necessary to help th e medium : hi s sense of his place in the medium and the medium's place in the world. I think Frank has a gift for com muni catio n, and it's clear in the notoriet y he's getting, the Rolling Stone and Spin inter views. It's a good omen for this business. There's no one who can touch Frank in his evangelism on behalf of comics, his work  gets operatic, but it can also be quite subtle. His virtuosity is incredible: he can play up an d down the scales. When the bullshit gets to be too much out here, he's a real inspira tio n to me with t he fun fun he has with what he's doing. I value him as a peer and a friend. S A N D E R S O N : An d are there others?

S I E N K I E W I C Z : Walt [Simonson]. I always liked Walt's work. I like it more now than I ever have. O n e reason reason is th at he look s like he has so much damn fun doing it. It's infec tious , so much fun t o read. I really really love what he does with shape and form. What he can ge t down in a min imu m o f lines, and the energy he creates, are just incredible. Walt's stuff  grabs you by the throat, and I really admire that. I like a lot of European artists, like Hugo Pratt. Pratt's an influence on Frank; I can see it. There's also an artist named Sergio Toppi, who's incredibly gifted, can design like nobody's business, and has an incred ible pen line. His use of shape and space and value is incomparable. Lynn Varley is bar none the most gifted colorist in the field today. Th e lady is is a thinker, a real real d emon with a palette. S A N D E R S O N : Are there any American art ists you feel  are being underrated? - S I E N K I E W I C Z : Kevin Nowlan. He's very gifted. I hope he escapes his relative obscuri ty. Dav id Mazzucche lli, alth ough he, as Heidi MacDonald puts it, "simply draws."

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

For shame, Heidi, you gave it all away. David had us all fooled before that. You mean, he simply draws? Shit, ain't worth a damn now. I thought for sure he "simply blinked his eyes and spit fire fire into a cauldr on of  goat bile to produce those derivative (seventh generation, no less) pages." Well, hell no. David draws like a proverbial motherfucker. Watch out for him. Bret Blevins—a new guy who's classic in his approach. Just really strong, straight stuff. He needs to ink his own wotk more. June Brigman, whose work is an absolute trea sure. Mary Wilshire—she does really per sonal ethereal work. Just beautiful. I almost feel she should be doing story book illustra tions. Her work is just that exquisite. I love it. S A N D E R S O N : You've recently seen Terry Gilliam's film Brazil a number  of  times and  were very impressed  by it. Do you think  it  will have an influence on your  work? S I E N K I E W I C Z : On e of the things tha t's very strong in Brazil is this joie de mourir— this joy of death. The film's got a real tongue-in-cheek quality, and also a real cartoony quality. It already has influenced me, with its larger-than-life images and its fan tasy images. S A N D E R S O N : What do you mean by "joy of  death"? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Like the scene where they've confused Tuttle with Buttle , and the Ministry of Infor mation m en break fn and take Buttle away, and one of them h a n d s wife a receip t for her husb and . O r Buttle's wife when Lowry is is abou t to be torture d an d the guy tying him up says, "Answer quickly or you'll jeopardize your credit rating."

COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 198 6

you m ean comedic distan S A N D E R S O N : So you cing from death and  suffering? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah. In the middle of  this tragic horror, it tickles your rib and you go "what the hell?" 'Cause it's so right on target. in the S A N D E R S O N : Which happens Elektra series too, 1 assume, since you describe it  as a black  comedy. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah. Ebony. S A N D E R S O N : Are there filmmakers before Gilliam and  David  Lynch [Eraserhead, Ele p h a n t Man, Dune] ivho influence you? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Not in the way that they •do—maybe Don Siegel. A lot of the way Gilliam and Lynch and Ridley Scott [Alien, Blade Runner] influence me has to do with art design rather t h a n directorial technique. films always have th at sense of tex T h e i r films ture, of heavy space that takes reality and twists it in a way that I like so much. Science fiction movies are like cartoons. everyW h a t comic s and c arto ons do is take everything and make it more t h a n it is in reality. Heigh tening it. Even if somet hing's ordi nary, they make it super-ordinary. If  something's tragic, they play that up. Or in a lot of cases, they play it down. Having the readers expect the high note and then giv ing them t he opposite is somewh at what we're doing in Elektra, at least for the first couple of issues. Now Elektra's starting to kick into a really high action-oriented gear, after the first two issues. We've gone through Elektra and Gar rett being the Roadrunner and Coyote, and now they're becoming more of a team. S A N D E R S O N : I suppose you mean that   Elektra is like the Roadrunner  because they're

"It's easy t o screw up drawing Charlie Brown because there's so f e w lines to work with."

T he Elektra  series la entirely painted by Sienkiewicz, who is em ploying a variety of styles throughout the series.

uncatchable. both enigmatic and S I E N K I E W I C Z : And Garrett [her an tagonist from S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel's superspy agency] kept being made a buffoon by her, which is why he was like the Coyote. Bu t he goes from calling her a bitch to call ing her honey, and meaning it. S A N D E R S O N : Is he falling in love with her? S I E N K I E W I C Z : In a manner of speaking. He becomes obsessed with her. He doesn't trust her. I think he starts to undetstand her a lot more. S A N D E R S O N : I thought  you had  said  that  Elektra. nobody every completely understands S I E N K I E W I C Z : I was talking more about the readers. But no, Garrett doesn't com pletely understand her. Elektra is dealing with an evil that is mystical in the series, while most of the evil that Garrett is up against is is very technical , real, and bureau cratic. S A N D E R S O N : Will Garrett  look  less com ical, less caricatured, as the series progresses? S I E N K I E W I C Z : He looks less comical in issue #3. But I keep crossing betwe en want ing to go very, very cart oon y and playin g it more toward the illustrative quality. So it has a half-in, half-out feeling. S A N D E R S O N : Is the way you draw Elektra herself  changing over  the course of the series? S I E N K I E W I C Z : In the first issue she was this emaciated death figure, this cadaver. In the s econd issue she's stronger. In the-third issue she's very strong; she's almost a Rambo type; she's back in fighting form. O n the last page of the third issue she's very much a sex symbo l. O n t he last page of the fourth she's going to be a life symbol. As far as what she'll look like in the rest of the series, I don't know, but she's all of these things and yet none of them. I think t he mor e we're explaining who Elektra is, the less there is for people to hold o nto. S A N D E R S O N : The more sides she is shown to have, the harder  it is to figure her out. S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah. Like real flesh and blood people. Enigmatic, the more you see, the more facets are revealed. S A N D E R S O N : How long will the series last? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Eight issues. Because I' m working in color this way [painting the series], I don't really know sometimes what I'm going to do until I sit down to do it. Something will hit me. That's usually the way I work best, to just sit down and let what happens happen, to get a rough idea in my mind of what I want do do and go on from there.

S A N D E R S O N : Do you do any more evoca tions of  childhood  in your art  your  art  after  the first  issue? S I E N K I E W I C Z : No. It becomes very much a straight narrative, but with wilder effects. The fourth issue is a nonstop, straight action-adventure stoty. It's esca lating crescendo upon crescendo upon crescendo of Garrett in action, this villain cropping up, this thing exploding. It con tinually escalat es. We want t o show tha t as much as Elektra screwed around with him in the first issues, Garrett's a d a m n good agent, and we want to point up the corrup tion he's up against. S A N D E R S O N : A t this point  do you have any idea how the series is going to end?

S I E N K I E W I C Z : Not really. Frank has a general idea. What's happening with Frank  is like what's happe ning with th e ar twork. Frank  starts writing out an idea, and then it assumes a life of its own. It starts to write itself. Tha t's sort of what happens w hen I draw the issues. They take on a life of their own. Th e more comfortable I beco me with it, the more I'm going to rein in things I could do in it. After the first issue being as nutso as it was, and the second issue making Garrett into a buffoon—the third issue does a little of  that as well—now we're getting heavily int o the act ion . I thi nk if we were to do the series over, the first issue would be complete ly different. The first issue was very indica tive of what Fr ank and I were bo th doing then. Since then there's been a growth in the way Frank and I work together. The series might now be more action-oriented than psychological. We started out to do the psychological stuff. I think it got pretty heavy for us. Frank and I would talk about all these crazy things that were going on with her. I think that part o f our defense mechanisms was to turn it into comedy of  sorts. / 

" I n t h e past I knew where my bread w a s but tered basically, and an d I was afraid to write."

S A N D E R S O N : So the series is no longer  a black  comedy? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Oh , it is, but it's got muc h more of an acti on element now as well. It's got eveything including the kitchen sink, literally. S A N D E R S O N : Does this tie in with what   you like in Gilliam's work, black  comedy to deal with horrors? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah, but this, predates my seeing Brazil. T h e Elektra series may get the same kind of  reaction my artwork usually gets—polari zation. Elektra is mote realistic in cer tain key ways ways so that when the b oo k does go off the deep end, there's something to hold you to the ground, to tether you. I'm trying to walk  that line more. It's like Kirby's figures worked in his world, although in the real world, they coul dn't exist, but shit—

Symbolism featuring the Man of Steel.

wouldn't that be a kick? S A N D E R S O N : What  was teaching for a semester  at the Kubert  School like? S I E N K I E W I C Z : A real learning experi ence for me. I was originally taking over a course for Joe [Kubert]. Teaching pointed out to me again the conflic t in me that what I find compelling artistically artistically may not be the best solution to a commercial problem. T h e r e were a number of times when I gave an assignment and the results I would see were disorienting, compelling, interesting, visceral, very challenging, but I'd have to tell th e student that technically he blew the assignment and lost the j o b , bu t d a m n , it's a great piece of work. I would find it really tough to grade, because I was fighting tha t batt le within myself. myself. Also as an aside, every one, and I mean everyone associated with the school from from Jo e to the last student, were

absolutely terrific I have the utmost respect and admiration for Joe Kubert as an artist, as a gentlemen, and as someone who saw what he wanted and went after it. S A N D E R S O N : Why didn't you continue teaching there? S I E N K I E W I C Z : I was only slated to do a semester and besides, it was hard losing a day a week I could be doing my own work; but I'd like to go back. It also made me realize I wanted to take more classes myself. I was learning so much from the students the re as well, watch ing the different t hings they'd try. But, if J if J oe were to offer me my own choice of courses to teach, I'd very seriously consider it. I have some definite ideas, and one semester just scratches the surface. S A N D E R S O N : What  kind  of personal reac tions to your  work  do you get  from your  fellow  professionab? S I E N K I E W I C Z : It's generally been very positive, very flattering, very encouraging. T h e n thete are the ones who shake their head, who don't understand or see; and then there are the ones who think I'm a butcher. I'm really talking about art as per sonal expression, and although comics is a commercial medium, it's also art. I think it's definitely possible for them to be both. And I want my work to get as personal as I'll allow it. S A N D E R S O N : At comic conventions do you get more positive or  negative reactions to your  current  work? S I E N K I E W I C Z : I get praised with faint damns. People come up to me and say my stuff  reminds them of Picasso, or looks like what James Joyce would have done if he drew, but they mean them as negative reac tions! I get polarized reactions. The people who have stopped coming up to me at con ventio ns aren't thinki ng of my work in the terms that I am. They're thinking in terms of, "Boy, he made Moon Knight's cape look  real funny," or "Look what he did with Sam's head!" [Sam Guthrie, Ca nnonba ll of  the New Mutants] "They don't look real any

more!" Has anyone looked at Picasso's Guernica? S A N D E R S O N : Which is in a way a cartoon. S I E N K I E W I C Z : It's also more t h a n real. I think that's what writing and comics and art should be. I think it's the essence of art. S A N D E R S O N : Of  cartooning. S I E N K I E W I C Z : It's distilling it down, making it it dramatic. But I thin k what most people want is this bowdlerlized stuff, which is just sort of bland, right across the board. Ho hum, gag me with a winnebago. S A N D E R S O N : Do they want  to pay atten tion to the artist's style, do you think, as if  they  just  want  to see realistic photos of the characters, in effect?

S I E N K I E W I C Z : That's exactly what I'm saying. They don't want that subjectivity. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not for me. Certain characters definitely have a certain feel, according to the artist who does them, like Warlock. I thi nk that's what should be played up more. I felt that the New Mutants became more real to me— and I think to a lot of people—when I was doing them. I felt that before, they all looked so much the same that I couldn't tell them apart. So I had to stretch Sam out, give him that angularity, that gawkiness, and I wanted to make Illyana and Rahne small, and make Illyana more demonic-looking. I am a person of extremes. My work is going to exhibit that. That's why I'm hav ing so much fun with the Daredevil graphic novel. There's Victor, who's a thin, psy chotic reed, and then there's the Kingpin, who's the size of Nebraska. And Daredevil is an exaggerated-looking super-hero, and the women look fairly real, depending o n the situation. It's a full spin of the shape wheel. A smorgasbord of  extremes. It's nice playing with all these types. T h e comic s medium is really incredible! T h i n k   about the fact that you can use it to slow down or speed up an action visually, to develop a visual cad enc e or rhyth m, and to evoke emotions. But the subject matter that's usually tackled is some of the most'

Sienkiewicz Inks Rick Leonardl on New Mutants.

"There's another part of me that wants to draw funny little animals and do Casper and an d Spooky a nd still likes reading that stuff." To emphasize Sa m Guthrie's lankiness, Sien kiewicz "stretched him out."

emotionally retarded stuff! It's like the medium is a Stradivarius and they're play ing "Chopsticks" on it! And after you get accolades for playing "Chopsticks" on it, instead of playing somet hing different, you do variations on "Chopst icks! " Marvel and D C are trying to do other things. But it's not the companies that are going to generate new kinds of material; it's got to be the creators. And the audience has to change. I've been doing comics for a long time. I did super-hero stuff  from when I was eight years old to when I was 16 years old. Th e n I stopped doing them . I discovered pa inting and illustration and design. When I got in to comics I did it as a lark: well, I guess I'll give it a try. I firmly intended to go back  to college and get into advertising and illus tration. Ever since I was a kid, comics was my focus, my place to get away to. But now I'm doing stuff  for galleries; I'm coming to grips with the feeling that comics might not give me everything I want. I might never get everyone reading comics to understand my stuff, but is that my fault or theirs or anybody's fault at all? Or is comics the place

for this ki nd o f work I want to do? S A N D E R S O N : What  do you feel about  working for  Marvel and  D C nowadays? S I E N K I E W I C Z : I have been told by various sources that for me to do a regular book  with my style the way it is now would be inviting trouble. I think it's probably true. Not so much a t DC right now. Marvel has said they will find a format for me to do my work. I think it will be outside the regular comics line. I think the pressure is really on to be commer cial , whic h I think  means to draw like John Byrne or George Perez.

in S A N D E R S O N : You mean "commercial" terms of the size of the audience they're look ing for, not  commercial in the sense that, say, Cerebus is commercial. S I E N K I E W I C Z : No. I feel that to be really disheartening. Let's say that a book like Starstruck  or Moonshadoiv sells between 30,000 an d 50,000 copies. In Cerebus's terms that's a really good seller. It's sad to think  a work is considered a failure because the company promoting it has a standard of  sales it doesn't match. It's a real shame. It's like having a baby Mozart and having to kill him because he's one more mouth to feed. I know I came into the business with a

From "Professional Goiters on

style that was commercial, and that my style has become less commercial. Talking to cer tain people, I feel pushed o ut of the busi ness, but I realize that I've done that to myself. I've followed my own different drum mer. As far as I'm concerned, there's a part of  me that 's a definite elitist. If being an elitist is wanting t o see work oth er th an pop pap, then tha t's what I am. Th at' s the way work I want I want to go. Tha t's the kind of work to respond t o do and t hat I want to be re sponded to in kind. I'd rather have a really interesting "conversation" through my work  with 20,000 people than go (motorboat noise with mouth) with everybody. W h e n I was talking before about not lik ing "cute," I was talking about the Smurf  mentality, the "let's be commercial" men tality. That's why I'm starting to say "so what?" about a lot of what Spielberg does, even The Color Purple. It doesn't throw you any curve balls, it's so "hand-nailed-toforehead-in-a-sign manipulative." Every shot is just so pretty. And on the other end of  the spectrum is [David Lynch's] Eraserhead. Part of why I like Eraserhead  is because it is so antithetical to that. Black  noise. A nightmare. I kind of get the creeps and go, "Shit, should I laugh, or puke or what?" I see a lot of mediocre work  it* comics an d

Ludes," done for the National Larnpoon.

0 *

that's commercially succe successful ssful.. And I think  there's a lot of artists in comics who shoot for mediocrity and a lot of artists who hit that target consistently, ten fot ten. Ninetynine out of a hundred, one good panel slips by and either gets swallowed or worse, sticks out like a beacon to scream "missed oppor tunity! Missed opportunity!" T h e problem I have with the main com panies is the damned penc han t they have for accessibility at the lowest level of  understanding. I think they're trying to turn they'll be like like Satur comics,so "idio t-pr oof they'll day morning drivel. I'm not saying that's entirely wrong, aiming wide to hit a big target a nd sell lots of boo ks but ther e's so much more that can be done to add to the drama. The art can be more subjective, so th at it does more th an tell the story. story. It becomes an intrinsic part of the story. Subtext. Layer upon layer upon layer. S A N D E R S O N : So you feel there's less and  less room for you at the major companies? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Yeah. I'm changing my style, and it's always easier, instead of  fac ing the fact that I'm moving away from mainstream comics style, to start feeling pushed out, and blame it on the Other Guy. I think I'm moving away, but I also think  I am being pushed out. At least out of the mainstream. And part of me is sad and part of  me is excited by the new possibilities. Bu t I've made my decision to move in this

direction, to play around with it as much as I can, to explore comics as a means of  expression rather than a something you do by rote. The companies have every right, because it is a commercial art—those two words don't even really belong together, unless the remuneration's really fucking high, to warrant your wanting to give up part of your art by selling it—the companies

76

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

have every right to want the usual styles. for tha t. I don' t happe n to They're paying for like it. So I do different projects. I find myself  in a constant battle . I know the standard styles are what sells. I want to make a decent living. Now I could do x an d x would sell. But there's also part of me that wants to follow follow this other drum mer inside me and see how much I can push that enve lope And that doesn't sell as well. At least that's the crap they've tried to foist on me. S o on on e end o f the scale there's mone tary considerations. I'm starving by any means. Bu t I've become an adjective and an ex ample and an oddity. "Bill Sienkiewicz's art is weird." I feel my work requires a little bit of  work on the part of the reader and his involvement. I like to presume intellect and involvement on the part of the readers. A lot of what is being done presumes idiocy. S A N D E R S O N : So will you stick  it out at   Marvel and DC or do you foresee yorself  leaving?

in from outside the current comics audience? S I E N K I E W I C Z : Wh at Fra nk and I are try try ing to do in Elektra is latch onto new readers, both people who have given up comics and people who always looked down ont hem, as well as grab the regular readers. Hopefully, if such people become aware of  the kind of work we're doing, it'll usher in a whole new age of acceptability of work  done in the comics medium among the pub l i c Frank and I are busting our asses to do  just that. My fingers are crossed, and I'm giving it my best shot. Time will tell. [To waitress] I'll waitress] I'll have a cup of coffee, of coffee, black. I don' t know whet her or not I'll drink it. [laughter]. • I mig ht ink with it [laughter].

" I a m a person of extremes. My work is going t o exhibit that."

S I E N K I E W I C Z : I don't know. I think I'll be in them for awhile. I'd like to think if  I were to leave it was not because I was pushed ou t but beca use I decide d to try something else. S A N D E R S O N : Hotv would  you describe   your current  work  overall? S I E N K I E W I C Z : I think I'd describe most of  my stuff  right now now as emb ryo nic A ll my stuff  right now is a sapling. It's growing, coming up through the soil. I've got to be really careful that nothing steps on it. It's got to grow. It's the same with my writing, my painting, the illustration, the gallery work, and even my comics stuff. My com ics work is going through a change, becaus e it's being affected by all the se othe r t hings I'm doing. It's odd that when I first came into the business, artistically I was everybody else but me . Actuall y, it's not odd . It's pretty nor mal artistic development. Other people do well. I was was Neal [A dams] ; I cam e unde r it as well. the Bob Peak influence for awhle. Stead man. I was very much wearing my influ ences on my sleeve. Now I feel that all the influences are coalescing, if they haven't already coalesced. And I'm sure they'll con tinue to do so. I'll always be experimenting, trying to figure out who I am artistically. Every time I do a piece it surprises me, because invari ably along the way it assumed a life an d direction of its own and lead me in another direction. S o when I first got into the business, I was drawing like Neal and got slammed for it. T h e n I went through this whole change and growth period, and now people say, "Well, we like your old stuff  better." My reaction to that is basically, "Fuck that!" S A N D E R S O N : You You would  like to see far  more acceptance of  greater  artistic stylization, then. S I E N K I E W I C Z : My biggest dissatisfaction isn't with the companies, but with the majority of the people out there reading this stuff. S A N D E R S O N : So are you hoping that  the readers'  tastes in an will mature? Or  that  people who would  appreciate such styfoation will come T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1 9 8 6

77

Neglectec

YES, POCTOR. POSSIBLY SHE IS "THE M I S S I N G LINK IN OUR CHAIN OF EVO\_UTiON /  AND TO THINK OUR A N C E S T O R S USED TO EAT THESE FINE, SCIENTIFIC SPECIMENS!  —

A thinker must subtly c o n  trol t h e relations of his c o n  c e p t s to the m a t t e r fo r w h i c h t h e y s t a n d . In order t o acquire sufficient generality, t h e s e c o n c e p t s m u s t trans c e n d t h e particular aspects of t h e e x p e r i e n c e s f r o m w h i c h t h e y a r e t a k e n . But in spite o f their a b s t r a c t n e s s , they must continue t o reflect the relevant features of their referents.

—Rudolf  Arnheim Visual Thinking  T h i s is not a part of b e i n g an artist—to simply utilize technique to impress us with the artist's c l e v e r n e s s . T h e mature artist makes himself invisible.

—Gil Kane "It's pulling m e toward t h e h e a t — t o w a r d t h e fires of hell! I must break f r e e ! "

—Valgar Gunnar, The Flames  of  Gyro 

Fo r too many years now, the mercurial barometer of contempor ary but actually actually predicta ble critical opinio n has fluctuated wildly, in a seemingly arbitrary way, registering this dismal fad or that putrid fancy with an alarming and often shame less disregard for genuine artistic merit. Note, for example, the unremitting shower of  critical negativism which some time ago greeted the farsighted Don McGregor's pontifical work of secular semantics, Detec tives, Inc., in these very elitist pages. Selfproclaime d adjudicators o f art like Harlan ("Silver Fox") Ellison or Theodore (Heavy Metal) White blithely proclaim this or that erudite "judgment," basing their assiduous assessments on the superficial signposts of  meretricious merit affixed to any given art work, often dismissing or entirely over looking the intrinsic beauties and eternal mysteries of works that shall, without ques tion, withstand the true test of temporal magnanimity and one day be recognized and accepted as authentic watershed works in the flood control of critical histories yet to be written.

brief  examples will suffice to demon T w o brief examples strate the vagaries of much con tem pora ry critical "thought." Writing in The Harvard   Journal of  Pictorial Fiction several years ago, Michael C. Young and Richard Foltin designate such "talents" as Barry Smith and Berni Wrights on as membe rs of com ics' nouvelle vague, loftily proclaiming such works as Savage Talcs #2 and #3 and Wrightson's Swamp Thing issues as out standing examples of some of the finest work in the form. Well, well, well. . .here we are directly confronted with the oppres wisdom, sive anomalies of conventi onal wisdom, with Young and Foltin bearing prettily wrapped packages, coming to us in the guise of the benevolent Santa Claus of  graphic narrative criticism. Like the Easter B u n n y who manages to scatter his eggs about the yard on Easter morning with such remarkable ingenuity of forethought that one may reasonably ask, "Where are they?", so, too, must we inquire of this fat,  jolly, smiling Santa, "Oh, what's inside your prettily wrapped packages, Santa?" And, indeed, what do we find inside our packages on Xmas morning? The day has long since passed that we must grapple with , conscience and state the question as forthrightly as possible: "Is Savage Tales really art?" or at the very least, is it art with a capital A.' Put another way, is Savage Tales really, in colloquial term s, such a 'big deal'? Yo u be the judge, and the jury, and the bailiff, as well. You can even be the court house custodia n if you like. I don't care. W e must ask, and seek the answer with unwavering honesty in our hearts, how shall posterity judge us if we consign to

them such as Swamp Thing and ascribe to it the virtues and satisfactions of art? Can we do this and yet completely ignore the Sophoclean virtues of an auth entic masterwork like the Arnold Dra ke /Do n Heck /  Vince Colletta X-Men #54 (Marc h, 1969), in which "Wanted: Dead or AliveCyclops!" so translucently merges the purest of form with the grea test clar ity of  function that our shabby notions of aftistic merit wither into no more t h a n the crumbs at the bottom of an empty box of Ritz Crackers? Yes , I know. It is true, as Rudolf  Arnheim has noted, that Heck's helicopter on page 14 that pallidly emanate s a "WHLIH! WHUW!" sound may be Kurtzman-influenced in its use of sound, but can never hope to measure up to the " R R O W R R . . . O W R R . . . O W R R " o f  Kurtzman's own, eternal jet fighters. Still, the emulator need not surpass the emulatee, or the student his master. The beauty of Don Heck's work, which stands by itself  (and easily surpasses the minimal influence of the all-but-forgotten Jack  Kirby), is very much in evidence on page 6 of  this remarkable book. The distinctive panel layouts tilt the entire page in a southeaster ly direct ion, inviting the eye (as does also, for example , the bolt o f electr ic energy emanating ftom the Living Phara oh's hand) to venture from north west to southeast. This is no mean artist at work. The stark, tilted angle of the lowerleft panel wonderfully suggests the shock  and disorientati on of the Pharaoh 's being caught una wares by the large chunk of ice with which the Iceman scores a direct hit. T h e swooping grace of the Angel' s descent in the first panel pulls the reader into the panel by his lapels, while the dynamic leap of  th e Beast into the Pharaoh's stomach ("WOP!") in the lower righ t-ha nd panel thrusts the reader, almost against his will, on to the next touch. With the deft touch of  a deep-sea fisherman, Heck coerces the eye from the upper right panel to the lower left panel by subtly evoking the path of the Angel's trajectory as the Pharaoh flings him through the air, from right to left; the lower left panel almost "jumps out" at the reader, but the graceful arc of the Iceman's arm motion cues our attention to the last bravura movement in the final panel on the page. This is hot stuff; the artiness of  Eisner's technique pales by comparison. Apart from the assured bravado of this meticulous technique, what strikes one is the unpr ecedente d generosity of Heck's im im ages, the simple, uncluttered, open use of  space, most strikingly represented on page 4, for example. The real tour de force may be foun d o n pp. 7-8, howev er, in the zig-zag zig-zag layouts and the extraordinary vitality of  the many tilted and angled shots that

Masterpieces perfectly c o m m u n i c a t e t h e p u l s a t i n g, g, chaotic rhythm s of the life-and death struggle taking place before our very eyes. Heck  also creates creates an extrao rdinar y sense of  displacement  unrivalled in modern comics. X-Men #54 is a book brimming over with such prodigal but effortless comic book  imagery, and we can see at once that it is no longer valid or just that this kind of virtu os o work continue unheralded in graphic narrative criticism. ;

Similarly, it is time that the formidable Neoclassicism o f a Dick  Ayers, who can transform a traditi onal genre piece like Two Gun Kid, Ghost  Rider, or Rawhide Kid  into something transcendentally beautiful, earn its warranted measure of esteem. T o borrow from Gil Kane for a moment, is the truly "invisi ble" artist who so lovingly attended to the drawing chores on Whit man's The Black  Hole that the book com pels us to re-evaluate our limited vision of  the possibilities "on the other side of the abyss," never to see the dawn of enlight ened critical recognition? The purpose o f  this essay will be to focus attention on the hitherto neglected "masterworks" of the graphic narrative medium. My research at the University of Toled o in unearthing and lo cating many o f these uncat alogu ed • works, so thoughtlessly consigned to critical and historical oblivion as many of  them have been, has occupied my time and attention for, lo, these past seven years. T h e work has been painstaking and demanding, but it is advancing slowly and surely. I hope to publish soon what I hope will quickly be acclaimed as the definitive work in the field; the tentative title at this point is, well. . . Metaphysical Dimensions to the Depiction of  Reality in Graphic Narrative:  A Treatise on Comic Art as Subversive Onto logy. (A less ponderous, shorter work, The Funny Books, will be published sooner.) From time to time, I hope to publish such popular summaries of my preliminary critical finds as this one, so that comic book  aficionados everywhere may no longer live in ignorance of  these influential, import ant, timeless works. I wish to public ly thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, for the niggardly but welcome research research grant without which this immense ly valuable work could not have lurched forward'. I also wish to acknowledge the unsparing, tireless efforts of my assistant, Betty Jones, whose eyes have been opened to the beauty of graphic narrativ e and whose fingers, despite occasional flare-ups

Cowboy Love  #1 displays th e moral priorities of the Old West, and is a superior philosophical treatise on th e value of humanism.

of  arthritic pain, so ably typed up sum maries of our findings.

C o w b o y L o v e , V o l . 1 , N o . 1 (Fawcett: Ju  ly 1949). Vastly overlooked and under rated seminal work in the complex psychology of the cowpoke's relationship to the gentler values of womanfo lk amid the sprawling splendor of the American Western frontier. "She Loved A Coward!" is a particularly impressive account of one man's painful but heroic struggle to over come t he dark  side of violence in his nature. The story also foreshadows the eclipse of tHe American Dream in its unflinching portrait o f the exploi tation of  mine workers in this startling indictment of  unprincipled capitalism in its most tuthless form. "My Darling Clementine," which is ostensibly "a drama of lassoed hearts," is remarkable for its incisive perception of how the patho logy of  feminist supremacy almost ruined the American West. T he ' raw sensuality of  frontier passion is powerfully powerfully captu red in prose passages that linger in the mind: "Un der a cano py of glittering stars on the silver sage. . .he r senses reeled like the tumbling tumb lewood" (p. 1). 1). "T he Feud " is unusual in examining with surprising psychological insight the unexpected clari ty with which the mind s of men wor k in moments of extreme crisis. In one spec tacular scene of a stable fire (p. 5), saner heads prevail as the hero, Ben Carter, tries to rescue his stagecoach from the blazing inferno. In an aside that reveals the moral

By Christian P. Grabbe HI, PhD Professor  of  Paneiology University of  Toledo T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

priorities of the old West that clearly place h u m a n values above material objects, an anonymous figure in the crowd shouts to B e n , "Get back, you fool! You'll only be burned to death! We got your horses out!" " T h e Tall Stranger" is a diaphanous parable of identity that sensitively explotes the problem of existential authenticit y in cowboy love: what is "ttue" and what is "untrue" love, and can one ever really be certain? T h e s e are uncompromised tales which do not hesitate to gtaphically depict the horrifying specta cle of unleas hed tempers , petty jealousies, and woman's inhuma nity to man, often anticipated and rivalling the The pro E C stories in Saddle justice. totypical period-art perfectly mirrors both the uncomplicated, straightforward, nonon sen se values of its heroes and heroi nes and the profoundly basic relationship of  these characters to their envir oment; t his is is quintessential Good Cowboy Art. The photocover to #1 aptly reflects the obvious philosophical conviction of  the editors that these are real stories of  real people that cry out to be to ld. Co wboy Love Love is easily on an equal philosophical par with the superb genre work which appeared in Cowboy Romances. G o r g o # 1 8 ( C h a r l t o n : M a y , 1964). Perhaps the most memorable installment of  the much neglected series inspired by the King B r o t h e r s f i l m . " T h e D a y . . . T h e Earth Gave Up!" pits the reticent Gorgo against an invasionary force o f  giant robotaliens which, in a panel of marrowcracking wish-fulfillment, destroys Los Angeles, thus putting an end to h u m a n life in Hollywood as we know it. The story's opening scene demonstrates the immense sophi sticat ion of the alien weaponry, as an

79

C W - T C H ; I T ' S A/Or

USCE ,

V

TO

fo//vr

in PUBLIC— particularly

WITH

y

Is.

K 

A ATrV/ZSiy J',

Above: From X-Men #54, page 8 — a n extraordinary tour-de-force of storytelling. Note th e vitality of the life-and-death atruggle, underscored by the Insistent " B W O M P I " of the finsl panel. Below: Th e incomparable Gorgo plays out his part in a moral parable disguised aa children's literature. BUT THEV HISRE MOT MOT TO DI E ON E A R T H ' S S U R F A C E . . . TH I S
80

unidentified roc k planet is subjected to (1) the heat focus tubes (which in an unusual twist for science fiction, generate combus tion in the absenc e of oxygen or lithiu m), (2) the molecular destabilizing force of the "vibra -beam ," and (3) explosives. Th e aliens' hubris is no match for the fury of the aroused saurian, however. Th e dumbfoundingly apocalyptic script by 'Montes' parallels the ruthless authoritarianism of the alien hierarchy ("Don't be an idiot, Habod!") with the ferocious loyalty of  Gorgo's slumbering mother, who is affec tionately called "Mama Lizard" by a jet pilot on page 15 . The intoxicating drama of  the story reaches a zenith of rare tragic power as Gorgo, captured by the aliens, emits a Lear-like cry of unbea rabl e anger

and agony (page 15) . Gorg o's escape from the cruel shackles of alien bondage is an inspirational moment that communicates a vivid feeling of  triumphant free will (page 17) that rivals the best of Leni Riefenstahl. Where he might have emphasized the destructive avenging me nace of the allallpowerful dinosaurs, 'Montes' has monster and mater help the aliens achieve take-off  velocity by ki cking the ir space vessels off  the ground. ' B a c h e ' s ' Good Lizard Art at first appeats ptimitive and ill-suited to the unexpected, mature sensibility at work in the writing. Upon careful examination, it quickly grows apparent that ' B a c h e ' s ' bold spatial arrangements and the unvarying stress on two-dimensional figures and foregrounds are elements of a calculatedly painstaking style that is the exact stylistic equiv alent o f the visual magnific ence which typifies the King Brothers movies. Wha t is truly as tonishing abou t Gorgo Gorgo #18 is how astutely the remarkably sophisti cated elements that make up this unique fable have been made to resemble the ingredients of an ordinary kids' comic. This is truly literatur e as subversi on.

Y o u ' v e G o t T o H a v e G r i t ( G R I T Publish ing Co : 1977). Th is masterful, intensely felt celebra tion of the H orat io Alger lying dor dor man t in eac h of us has gone myst eriously unnotic ed by crit ics and coll ectors since G R I T bega n distri buting it in 1977 as a promotional device to encourage young people to distribute its upbeat, familyoriente d newspaper. Th is is the carefully carefully wrought , rags- to-tiches tale of  Billy Adams, average American boy, whose wise and knowing father has the wisdom to turn down his son's selfish request for enough money to go on the Boys Club Annual Camping Trip. An Eisenstein-like mon tage o£ images, possibly inspired by K ing Vidor's depression era film, Our Daily  Bread, expresses the unsettling experience of  millions of young American boys, as Billy goes from pharmacy t o supermarket to business office in search of honest labor, only to be turned callously away with each new effort. This grim account of  Billy as a helpless puppet o f  the capitalist-managerial class threatens to end with some of the bitter truth contained in Steinbeck's Grapes of  Wrath, bu t Billy's friend, Ted, outlines the fundamental assumptions underlying capitalist econo mics and per suades Billy to become a businessman businessman.. Th e story conc lude s with a stunn ing, full-page full-page vision of  Billy, pictured standing in the middle of the page as the self-made, selfdirected, existential master of the America n marketplace; this is is Go od Grit Art at its most compelling, and movie historians will perhaps recognize the pose as modelled from the image of Orson Welles on the original poster advertising Citizen Kane. The book is a wholly per suasive rejection of Soren Kierkegaard's postulati on o f the "blind leap into faith," and an affirmation of the e n d u r i n g American principles of Robert J. Ringer. T h e anonymous art successfully projects an aura of post-war Ameri can confidenc e

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

Good Qrlt  art, Instruction In moral fortitude.

that many social observers may have thought had long since been eclipsed by Vietnam and inflation. This book, which goes shamefully unmentioned in Crmv  ford's Encyclopedia of  Comic Books and even unlisted in Overstreet's Price Guide, ma y have to wait for posterity to recognize its considerable virtues and rewards. You've Got To Have Have Grit is the c omic boo k ana logue to Frank Capra's monumental films. Wacky D u c k #1 (I.W. Enterprises: 1958) 'Grenet's' art has often been dismissed as failed 'funny animal' realism, but it's long past the point at which this gifted impressionist's fine fine work should b e allowed to come out of the closet. There are three untitled Wacky Duck stories in this premiere issue. The first sets the tone of  manic violence that perhaps most distin guishes the best of this exceptional series, with with its submerged submerged th eme of th e duck's metaphysical search for validation of his existence. (The first line in the book will rivet your attention: "Guess I'll call on

Lulu.") Th e second story is is the most memora ble, however, and steadily takes on more meaning as the years progress. When Wacky initiates a career as an artist by attem pting an oil paint ing of an attr activ e house, two grips arrive and remove the house and surrounding foliage, which are actually scenery for a movie. Anticipating later themes in Marvel's Howard  the Duck, Wacky seeks beauty, and the images which attact him are false, illusory, treacherous; in an eerie eerie distortion of perception, Gren et momentarily lets us see the grips as Wacky does, as ominous, shadowy phantoms in bfack  (page 4) . (Here again is the influence o f  Citizen Kane.) As the story con tin ues , and Wacky seeks out suitable subjects for his canvas, God, nature, and man inter vene to threaten his every move; he is struck by an automobile in a horrible acci dent, doused by firefighters, and struck by lightning. Only when he retreats to the sanctity of his home does Wac ky find t he true inner peace of self-contemplation by painting his thumb. No one who is h u m a n can read this sto ry, which forefeels the exis tential angst of  Howard  the Duck  by two dozen years, and remain unm ove d. T h i s may not be the first comic book  ever to deal with the mid-life crisis where ducks make drastic changes in their lives, but it charges ahead with an exciting power. To its credit, Wacky Duck  doesn't rely upon needlessly drawn-out descriptive passages to fill its pages. Credit must be given to the publishers, I.W. Enterprises; they probably lost money on such a com mercially tricky blend of mirth and meta physics. If you recal l th e successful Br oa d way play, The Deputy, which claimed that Pope Pius Pius XII did no t do en ough against the Nazis, this book is unlikely to shed much light on t h a t confusing controversy. Wacky Duck  doesn't provide any easy answers. answers. Th e random chances which make life worth living form the basis for this funny, sad, moving experiment. It's always a pleasure to see a project with as large a scope as this is realized to its fullest. This b o o k   is a must for Good Duck  Art collectors everywhere.

U I T » B U T A " D i a n a D a w — T h e L a n d o f  J the Harpies" by Clayton Maxwell, in Spicy-Adventure Stories (Vol. 16, No. 4: Novem ber 1942). For years collecto rs have jeal ously guarded the secret of "Diana Daw—ignored by Maurice Horn's but given Women in the Comics, a begrudging due in the rigorously

.' M A Y B E

researched, thoughtful Crawford's Encyclo  pedia. The stylistic daring of Clayton Ma x well, who wrote and drew this series, no longer need be overshadowed by Calkins's estimable earlier work on Buck  Rogers or Alex Raymond's wildly overpraised doodl ing on the Flash Gordon series. "Diana Da w" gives the lie to th e widespread assumption t h a t "space opera" is child's play; it isn't. Refusing to compromise his proph etic vision of the individual panel as ultimate arbiter in the redemption of  physical reality , Maxw ell has produ ced

T W I S H T H E Y ' D H U R R Y AM1TH T H E I R V O T I N G — I DON'T WANT T O DI E /

In "Diana Daw," Clayton Maxwell subtly yet forcefully transcends th e space-opera genre.

nothing less t h a n a transformati on of con ventional modes of perception and under s t a n d i n g in this strip. As Siegfried Kracauer explained the uncanny timelessness of Maxwell's work, "Fictional reality in the American comic strip 'Diana Daw' has a pronounced factual character, sus tained by visuals which are artless records rather t h a n expressive 'images,' and since the latter predominate among American comic artis ts and defy all th e laws of  nature, only Clayton Maxwell has taken full advantage of the conti nuum o f  physical existence in creating a pure poetry of  deplacement in time and space." In ex amining Maxwell's subtle use of craft, one may, in passing, not e th e universal appeal of  the Neo-Jacobean stress on themes of  bondage, carnality, and the decadence of  scientific advancement. Mostly, this is a strip that elevates the concrete over the abstract, to glorious artistic advantage. W h y has no one collected these influen tial installments into a single, easily acces sible collection ? If noth ing else, Maxwell's is a victory of taste and inflectio n over vulgarity and blatancy. Maxwell deserves a hallowed place place in the panth eon of comics creators. .

Wacky Duck augured th e existential nature of Howard t h e Duck by 20 years.

WHAM-O #1 G I A N T COMICS ( W H A M - O Manufacturing Co. April 1967) T h i s unusual book, justly billed as the "World's Largest Comic Book," has been unjustly chided as the Edles of com ic

book s. It's time for the Lilliputians to cease assaulting Gulliver and re-designate this ambitious undertaking, courageously publi pub lishe shed d by W H AM -O of San Gabriel, California, as the IB M Selectric of th e '60s. True, the ar t and stories are not always ex emplary, but were The Robe or Bwana Devil any good? Ca n we c o m p a r e the flight of  th e Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk to Neil Armstrong's setting foot on the moon? T h e first first is full full of ecs tat ic possibilities, th e other is a drab fait  accompli. W H A M - O G I A N T C O M I C S opens up graphic narra tive to the possibilities of cinemascopic parameters and a hitherto unexplored scale of  visual experience. The anonymous artist who painstakingly toiled over the panels for t h e R o m a n e p i c , " T h e W o o d e n Sword," has given us panoramic images of  unparalleled size. The opening shot of the Circus Maximus in Rome measures 12 1/8" by 4 1/4" and another image of the gladiators Artos and Graccus saluting Tiberius prior to their savage com bat in the arena is only marginally smaller. (Unfor tunately, the images are static.) The most memorable use of the wide-panel vista occurs in the anonymous "The Young Eagles," a stirring adventure story of Yanks flying and fighting in the skies over France during W o r l d Wa r I. The 12 1 / 8 " by 4 1/8" panel on page 3 demonstrates the artist's skillful use of  space to capture the ritual for mality mality of the decor ating cer emon y. T h e present size of a four-color comic page-format is a scant 8 7/8" by 5 7/8" as compared to WHA M- O's whopping whopping 19 9 / 1 6 " by 12". (For purposes of scale, please keep in mind that a Marvel Mini-Book  measures, according to Robert M. Overstreet, 7/ 8" by 5/ 8" , very like likely ly making it t h e world's smallest comic book.) On page 3 of a rec ent issue issue of D C s Ne w Teen Teen Titans, George Perez and Pablo Marcos manage to squeeze a total of 12 panels o nt o the page, creating a dense texture of visual information that I found aesthetically un satisfying. satisfying. (Let me expr ess it this wa y: it's it's too crowded.) On page 3 of "The Young Eagles," there are 14, generously scaled images of violent air combat that use the space as a formal expression of the spec tacular, breathtakin g scale on wh ich the dogfight is being conducted. (One need pause only a mom en t and recall the "thrill "thrill ing," "dyn ami c," an d "life"life-lik like" e" images contained in Zoo Animals #8 (Star Publica tion, 1954), which first utilized the magic of  PictureScope to bring us the effect of 3-D without glasses. No one who has seen that memorable image of the gigantic hippopo tamus peering out at the viewer from the center of the page in three, "living" dimen sions can ever forget it. Imagine the widepanel panel vista vistass in in W HA M- O GI AN T C O M  IC S wed to th e miracle of Picture Scope, and you can, I am sure, easily surmise the limitless possibilities of such an extraor dinary union.) Those who fatalistically submit to the bureaucratic shackling of  th e finickiness U . S . Postal authoritie s and the finickiness of  magazine distributors in their traditional campaign against large comic books are consigning the industry to the inevitability

82

t h i s m u c h

G uy

c g? at e

w o n ' t

l o n g e r — o p p

m y

w o l d

g o t

t o

t o g e t h e r s h a k e

t h i s

t a i l :

" T h e M>ung E a g l e * " la a heroic tale of c a m  araderie and fighting for wh at la right—a right—a peerless wa r tale.

o f  ever more incredible shrinking comic books , as prices cont inue to rise; if we can not have quality, at minimum we can ask  for size. What comic art needs right now is a giant  comic book, and WH AM -O has already led the avant garde. Those who think this is a lost cause may draw inspira tion from from Franc is For d Copp ola' s resurrec tion of Abel Ganc e's 1927 Napoleon, which introduced three-screen Polyvision 3 0 years before Cinerama. Just as Carl Barks was known for years at "the good artist," the anonymous visionary who created W H A M - O G I A N T C O M I C * m a y h a ve ve t o remain the "big thinker" for years to come. This is Great Big Art.

Included in WHAM-O GIANT COM IC S #1 are two Wally Wood stories, "Radian" and "Goody Bumpkin," that are not entirely without aesthetic interest. "Ra dia n" merits further evaluati on as to its historical significance In the evolution of  superheroes created by accidents in atomic power plants. "Goody Bumpkin" is Wood 's offhanded par ody of The of  The Wizard  of  sue the wiz ar d. .. ") If it Oz. ("We're off to sue doesn't work at all, it's interesting as a work emanating from the creator of  The Wizard King. Among the other stories in WHAM-O are "Toor" (in which a stone ornament exposed to gamma rays turns into a caveman); "Ma rk of the Sun ," a science fiction epic about the 'Kelp People,' monsters who enshroud the Earth in fog; "Galaxo, The Cosmic Agent," about a benevolent superhero from space; "Cap tain Valo ren ," a troubleshoote r who faces faces danger in South American jungles; and more and more. Rarely have so many ideas for so many strips been so unmemorably assembled in an undistinguished collection (and in blurred color). It's an essential com pendium of "D on V' s that should be adopted by the Kubert Sch ool of Car too n and Gra phic Ar t. .«

seen through the eyes of Sue, the blonde, and Sally, the brune tte. T he undeniable eye-opener in #49 is "T he Man Nobod y Loved," a story of Sally's mission of mercy to allevia te the suffering suffering of the oppressed, starving, diseased people of a Sou th American dictatorship. The character of  the ruthless Major Perez is as complex a psychological profile of the military men tality as we hav e seen in com ics , and the characterization of Paolo Alvarijo, a pea sant farmer who leads a successful revolu tion against President Maras, recalls Steinbeck's estimat ion of Emili ano Zapata in Viva Zapata! Sally's heroic risk-taking in standing up to a man like the vicious Perez—"Now, get out," she tells him, "I'll have to spray the tent again because of  you!"—is unrelenting in its American spiritedness. It's a violent saga (there are four " B L A M ! " s and one " S P L A T ! " ) , but in the final ana lysis, it's the images of Sall y spoonfeeding a native child that will sus tain your faith in the h u m a n spirit. "The Man Nobody Loved" will soon be looked upon .as .as an importa nt historical docume nt testifying both to an earlier, more liberal

Sue and Sally Smith, Flying Nurses Vol. 2, N o . 4 9 (Charlton: January, 1963). Dick  Giordano's beautiful cover brilliantly cap tures the spirit of  adventure and compas sion that typifies typifies this absorbi ng, thought provoking series. Mist aken ly dismissed dismissed by hard-core fans as nonsensical girls' trash, the stories in Sue and Sally Smith are, in reality, tough-minded, politically aware ac coun ts of the world's ha rsher realities, as as T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

FOOD  /THS I S A WEAPON . . . A REWARD F OR T H O S E 'WHO F O L L O W WE '+II T H L O S A L D E W O T I O N . . ,*
phase of Ameri can foreign policy and more generous American attitudes toward the world's poor. The lead story in #49 is "Sahara Mission!," in which S ue is kidna pped by a North African sheik, Alal Farad, so that Su e will teach his wife, Lai Sal (somewhat strangely pronounced 'Ly-sol'), how to use lipstick and bobby-pins and wear nylon stockings. (The story is somewhat con trived, as Alal Farad could have simply asked  her to do it.) A feature in the same issue, "Do cto r's Lo ve ," is a persuasive affir affir matio n o f a woman's right to adhere t o tradit ional role models if tha t's what she d a m n well choo ses to do. O n a superficial superficial level, of course , it migh t appear that th e heroin e, Sandy, trains to be a nurse instead of  a doctor because nobody ever seriously mentions the option of med school as a viable alternative for a woman. This is em phatically not an anti-feminist tract, how ever. Sandy marries a doctor five years after she becomes a nurse, and as she says at the conclusion of the story, "In the end, all my dreams came tr ue .. ." She didn't need the aggravation of all those years in med school (which, don't forget, cost a lot of  ritoney). Her marks in school weren't that good to begin with, anyway, and men probably do make better doctors in the long run. (Wh o's to say?) say?) Th e story ad dresses dresses realistic, down-t o-earth issues in womens' lives, without complicati ng mat ters by the clumsy insertion of extremist manifestos from the so-called women's movement. One other story, "Unwilling Heart," also provides a useful useful role model in illustrati ng for young women how a wife has an obliga tion to cultivate other interests besides cooking, cleaning, and being a traditional housewife, by taking an active interest in her husband's hobbies and activities. Anthropologically, Sue and  Sally Smith is most interesting as an index of  prototypical comic book advertisement. Included are ads for 'Wate-On,' a homogenized liquid emul sion tha t fills out s kin ny figures; figures; dolls and doll houses; porcelain dishes; imported pearls; leatherette wallets; personalized silk 

The rutlessness of Major Perez from Flying  Nurses Is weaved Into s complex psy chological tapestry that's as Insightful aa It la colorful.

scarves ; red rose perfumed flower pens; a nine-piece kitchen utensil set; a miniature camera, with a pigskin leather carrying case; a recruiting ad, with t wo. identical. coupon s, from from the Post Post Gradu ate Scho ol of  Nursing in Chicago; Halsion acne-clearing capsules, sold by th e All an Drug C o . of  Hollywo od; color movie star p hotos " . . .just for you"; movie star Ijm clubs; "96 Smash Hits [o n 16 45 rpm records ] for onl y $ 3 . 4 9 " from from Hit Re cords of Derby , C on  necticut; "20 Dresses for $ 3 . 5 0 , " plus a free gift with every order, from the Ace Mail Order Co. of Brooklyn; 3" kissing dolls

that actually look alive which "change positions, move and turn their heads," for 5 0 ' ; 'hi-power' binoculars that let you see up to 18 miles ; 17 50 glossy pict ures o f  all the t op stars of t.v. and mov ies (when (when you  join Stars Fan Club); and 'Tummy-Slim,' a new abdo mina l b elt, designed especially especially for women who need extra flattening at the front. (This last ad has an uncommonly effective 'Before/After' slant.) Ttagically, Sue and  Sally Smith, Hying  Nurses ceased publication after a painfully short ru n o f seven issues, issues, postdating th e. end o f the C ame lot era by some two. years. A revival is long overdue. Fortunately, the Good Nurse Art cult, thanks to the efforts of  Carl Macek, has taken notice of Sue of  Sue and  Sally Smith at last. Grartd S l a m C o m i c s V o l . 5 N o . 5 3 (Anglo-American Publishing Co., Ltd.; June/July, 1964). Thi s heroic adventureadventureanthol ogy series, series, published in C ana da, regularly .featured the ex ploits of Co m mander Jack  Steel of  the IPS (International Police Service); Dr. Destine, ace crimi nologist who uses logical deduct ion and scientific means to solve crimes; Red Rover, hero of the South Seas; the Purple Rider, hero of the great wide west; and Terry Kane, a sort of playboy-adventurer. Grand  Slam #53 has two pinnacles o f  graphic narrative achievement, the Com mander Steel story, "The Stolen Navy!", about the search for 1,000 Japan ese enemy troops hidden on an island, and the drugrelated "Red Rover and the Dope Czar o f 

"Red Rover and the Dope Czar of the South S e a s " la an introspective look at the mind of an anti drug moralist.

the South Seas." T h e Steel story is vintage wartime drama. As soon as Steel asks his old frien friend d T om , "B y the way, I hear ther e are still Japs on this island?" there's a " Z I N G G G ! " followed by an "AHHHHH," and you know that poor Tom will no longer walk among us. Steel is baffled when the back-stabbing sniper disappears into a tree, but it is is onl y later in the story tha t Steel cleverly discovers a trap -door hidden in the fork of the tree. (The laconic dialogue dialogue is a brilliantly wrought distillation of  Steel's thought processes—"Hm, this is interesting!" during his descent into the tree and "What's cooking down here?" as he blunders his way into an u n d e r g r o u n d laby rinth where the 1,000 missing soldiers have taken up residence.) The story also respects the time-honored tradition of hav ing the villain explain to the hero the secret plot to destroy the American fleet, so that Steel can later toss a monkey wrench into it . "The Stolen Navy!" may be a high-water mark in Good Bad Jap Art. Th e first-panel image of  the cunning Jap Colonel hovering over the Americ an fleet fleet is omin ous an d ter rifying, indeed. I'm still shaking. T h e Red Rover drug story is tame by comparison, but it contains an unusual ex  change between a distinguished-looking older gentleman with a British accent, a is nice suit and a pipe in his mo ut h (he is called an 'Old Cokey' by one of the drug pushers in the story) who nervously buys dope from the aptly named Jim Sleazy, one of  the pushers. The sequence is an in teresting indication o f who the tale's author envisions as the victim of narcotics trafficking in the South Seas. The story ends with Rover, Inspector Powers, and Rover's sidekick, 'Knuckles,' watching head dope pusher Big Da n being led away and Powers articulating his knowledgeable thoughts on the psychological perils of  drug addiction. T his is a deeply deeply moral story that/everyone can benefit from reading, thpvjgh spine readers may find the panels of    jaw-smashing violence difficult to bear. (This book is mentioned several times in Seduction of the Innocent, by the way.) 1

In the same issue, issue, "D r. Desti ne and the Clue of .the Counterf eit S h o e " is an unusually labored effort, even by the nor mally dull standards of  this tiresome but in telligent telligent series. series. The re' s one mem ora bly frightening frightening panel of Dr. De stine and his assistant, 'Rugged,' falling t h r o u g h th e rotten wooden floor of the Ang ra Ho tel that will give you nightmares. T h e art in all the Grand  Slam issues is of  the early silent-film variety; there are usual ly no more than two or three characters in any one panel, with a pre domi nan t use of  medium-shots. Wide-shots and close-ups are selected very carefully for d ram ati c emphasis. Th is is the art that conc eals art. T a k e Cover! (Visual Medium Co.: 1955). This artifact was recently discovered by collector-dealer "Tom Struck, who has generously made it available to historians and scholars for careful study. Take Cover! is a promotional comic for a Massapequa, New York  company's comic book-creating

addressed to "M r. Executive " services. It is addressed and asks him to "picture your  product or message dramatized" and makes the in teresting teresting claim that " 8 0% o f today's adults read comics!" Th e medium is very a ppro priately the message, and so Take Cover! of fers the cautionary tale of Pete Davis, poor Pete Davis, who ignore s the warnings of his friends and persists in his adam ant ridicule of  civil defense precautions. Somewhat

Pete, his nameless wife, and the good stranger .) On e visual visual oddity is that 'Ho me Town, U . S . A . ' is the setting for the story, but the bomb appears to be dropped on Manhattan. The subtly veiled message of  the parabl e of Arma gedd on is that voters should pressure their congressional leaders to appropriate greater sums for early warn ing radar technology and anti-aircraft defense systems.

From "Dr. Destine and the Clue of the Counterfeit Shoe," tw o panels guaranteed to send shivers up and down your spine.

cavalierly considering the possible conse steadfastly y mai ntai ns, " If an quences, Pete steadfastl A-Bomb hits—duck! Th at 's all!" Duri ng a peaceful stroll home along the pleasant streets of 'Home Town, U . S . A . , ' guess what hap pens t o Pete Davis? Righ t. A benevolent stranger on the street hurriedly explains abbreviated civil defense measures that' can be used against the fireblast; a moment later, his head popping out from under his coat j a c k e t , the stranger warns, " D o n ' t move! After the flash there'll be the heat—the concussion—" (The story selfterminates at this point, as the Visual Medium salespitch commences; unchari tably of the creators of  Take Cover!, th e reader is left to speculate about the fate of 

Take Cover! may be the most succinct and straightfor ward expression of '50s bomb paranoia ever to appear in comics. T h e cover is vintage Good Mushroom Clo ud Ar t at its finest. (Readers who know more about the nature of Visual Medium C o . or whether Take Cover! ever saw the light of day as a full-length comic story are encouraged to forward any information, c / o Th e Comics Journal.)

C l e a n F u n , starring S h o o g a f o o t s JoTnes N o . # (Specialty B o o k   Company, Colum bus, Ohio: 1944.) Robert M. Overstreet describes this book in such r o u n d a b o u t , discrete term s, i.e., "Hum oro us situations Se e "MASTERPIECES" page 97

MAKING THE D I N O S A U R EVOLVE What can be done t o make conventions interesting again Article by Mark Bernstein In July 1 984 , I drove t o Chi cag o for for t he annual Chicago Comicon, my first major comics convention in several years. Little enough had changed in the intervening period that my experience there matched my expectations almost exactly. The con ran smoothly enough so that administra tive glitches, if ther e were an y, were invisi bl e to the attending public, the dealer's room filled a double ballroom and held a wide variety of merchandise, and the profes sionals in attendance were most cordial. Fo r the greater part of the weekend I was bored silly. Mi nd y ou, as I indicated before, I expected  to be bored. I went not as a "fan" but as an aspiring writer, to subm it writi ng samples, and I met that goal well enough to feel it was a worth-while trip. Later readings and observations, however, com bined with my dissatisfaction, led to a c o n v i c t i o n that the existing, accepted structure of comics convent ions should be examined and questioned. In Will Eisner's Quarterly #3, The "Shop T a l k " section contains the following stateme nts from Phil Seuling, surely surely an expert on the subject if ever there was one: now, despite what  the [C]onventions managers say, they usually draw about  1,000-2,000 people, as many as 3,000. convention  But  when you hear  some drew 15,000 ask  them to show you

86

illustrated  the people were...it's pretty has been like the revolution won. . .1 don't know what  need  con ventions fill right  now. 1 would  say "auld  long syne" is the best  thing. Given the current dropoff in back-issue sales, as reported in The Comics Journal an d other news sources, it it would seem that Mr . Seuling has a point. T o gather a further impression, I attend ed a small local convention recently. The atmosph ere the re was one of near despera tion. Dealers throughout the conv ention were selling off their excess stock at cover price or below, while the rat her sparse crowd generally came looking for a few specific favorites, ignoring the large "5 for $ 1 . 0 0 " displays. (Granted, my crowd estimates are thoroughly unscientific and may be inaccurate. I did, however, manage . to talk to several dealers, all of whom con firmed firmed t he lack of inter est in most b ack  issues.) where much

It would seem that the time for change has come. Extrapolating briefly, if com panies such as First, WaRP, Eclipse, an d Aardvar k-Vana heim are as as stable as they seem, and if Marvel 's current policies are profiting them as much as appearances would indi cate, the curr ent glut of titles is is unlikely to abate. Given this continued high quantity o f new materia l, combi ned

by  Chas. Gills 

with the slowdown the American economy is starting to experience, the back-issue market will continue to be depressed. In evitably, there will be a shake down among dealers, particularly among those dealers specializing in bac k issues, with s ome as yet unk nown percentage getting out of the business. Fewer dealers mean less tables sold, so the ultimate outcome of this scenario could be the end of the comics conv enti on as a profit-making profit-making venture. (Please refrain from reading a sneer into that—I do not object to someone making a legitimate profit, nor do I rejoice at anyone 's inability to do so.) Gra nte d, there are other reasons to run a conventionAccording to Mr. Seuling, "The way you make ou t is a) prestige; b) you push th e name o f your s tore; c) you might make money if you sell stuff." But all of these are also undercut by a drop in attendance. If  the comics convention as we know it is

indeed nearin g the end of its natural lifespan, perhaps a bit of forced evolution is in order. At this point I'd like to take a somewhat personal tack, examining u'hy I find I can consider what changes might be make to increase the possibility of their continued survival. T h e Chicago Comicon is one of the larger, older conventions in the country. What does it have to offer the average fan? T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

I'm afraid you have far different interests t h a n I. I found tha t after looki ng at the dealers' tables once, I was left directionless, faced with a program that alternated be tween hype and earnest attempts to answer questions about what's in store for certain favorite characters without giving away en tire plotlines. plotlines. Th e evenings were were no better, for while I enjoyed the Clam pett anima tion, I can' t summon much enthusiasm for the 20th incarnation of Ultrama n. Worse still, from my viewpoint, was my almost total inability to find someone I could talk  t o . Al l o f  the pros I met were most gracious, and a number o f them were fascinating to listen to, but there is a clear difference be tween being part of an audience and taking part in a conversation. The fans? I tried striking up a few conversations, but while there may have been people in attendance whose interests were compatible with mine, I nevet found them. (Before you start throwing epithets, let's get clear on terms. I am not a snob. I'm an elitist. There's a dif ference. Look  it up if  yo u don't believe me.)

By far the greatest amount of function space was allotted to the dealer's room, which was, of cour se, open all day throughout the convention. Additionally, there was one medium-sized room for pro gram events, one small room with a display, of  original art (most, if not all, of it being pages from previously published books), and two small rooms in which a rotating series series of pros were availa ble to talk to and buy sketches from. T h e daytime program items consisted of  interviews with the guest of honor and a series series of panels. Apparently, programming is not something which is thought to re quire a great deal of planning, since almost all the panels were either generic in nature (writer's panel, artis t's panel, etc .) or com  pany specific (no clarification clarification needed). Th e only exception was the Women in Comics panel, by far the most intellectually stimulating item item of the wee kend. Th e only offering in the evening was the film pro gram, consisting of a nicely done Bob Clam pett tribute followed by a series of  excerpts from Japanese live-action and animate d television shows. I found ou t on Sunday morning that there had been a party Saturday night by the hotel pool— for the pros. Does the above catalogue start you salivating with excited anticipation? Then

I get the impressio n that if you were to ask the hypothetical "average fan" why he goes to conventions, the answer you'll most likely get will be either "the dealer's roo m" or "to meet pros." If dealer's rooms lose their appeal, and more fans realize the impossibility of cornering their favorite pros for truly private conversations, the conventions will find themselves without a foundation on which to rest. A quick philosophical digression: I would contend that the current nature o f  conve ntions has had a profound impact on comics fandom, and only slightly less directly on the c omi cs industry itself, itself, by influencing both the kind of  buyers that in habit the marketplace and the kind of  would-be professionals that are moved to submit their work. One essential reason the stereotypical nerdish fanboy is so thoroughly ingrained in everyone's percep tion o f fandom is simply that this is precise ly the kind of  fan that conventions current ly attract, and that pros are therefore \  forced to endur e. In contrast, I have for several years been a regular attendee of science-fiction con ventions, and enjoy them tremendously. What's so different about them? Simply this: if you ask someo ne who a ttends a lot of  sf con s why he or she does it (Th e diffe rence in pronouns is intentional—sf fan dom is currently far less overwhelmingly male t h a n comics fandom) the answer you'd most likely receive is is "for the peopl e" or "because that's where all my friends are." In her Fan Guest of Hon or speech at the 1975 Worl d Science Fiction Conven tion in Australia, Susan Wood made what I consider to be the definitive statement about sf fandom . S he said: We come together  because we value sf. We stay together because we value each other. We celebrate fandom because it  is the bond  that  keeps us together. As a result of this difference in attitude (which can no d o u b t be traced to the differ differ ing origins of the respec tive fando ms, but that's a digression I'd rather not get into

here), science -fiction fans are, on the average, older, more sophisticated, and more varied in their interests t h a n comics fans. They also tend to be more mature, not only because of age, but because of the supportive atmosphere and because the older fans, having grown tired of being regarded as freaks, have learned how to set a good behavior example for the younger ones. Science-fiction fandom has helped a lot of teen-age nerds grow into happy adults, myself  included.

I'm not saying all this out of a desire to sound superior. I believe that there are sound reaso ns why comics conve ntion s, and therefore comics fandom, c an and should learn from their science-fiction cousins, and that such lessons constitute a valid and natural next step for the comics subculture in this country. A s stated earlier, the com icon appears to be a dying breed, and the reasons for its ill health are such as to make resuscitation unlikely. A basic change in philosophy is needed, and the most obvious path is a shift in the target audience of conventions from buyers to doers. A doer is someone who does, obviously. D o you write, whether it be scripts, plots, reviews, or cr itical articles? Do y ou draw? How about inking, coloring, or lettering? Do you publish a fanzine? Do you study the hist ory of the medi um? Do you run or work on a local convention? Do you, in fact, do anything concerning comics other than buy them, read them, chart their value in the latest Price Guide, and discuss the sex lives of your favorite characters? In that case, you're a doer. Actually, I'm being a bit too narrow. T h e r e are any num ber of people in sf fan dom who aren't active in science fiction itself, but who are doers in some other part of  their lives, whether it be career, family, another interest (there's a surprising amou nt o f overlap with the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medievalist group), or whatever. The attitude is the important thing, a willingness to take an active part in their surroundings. Associ ated with this attitude is a willingness to not only accept but to seek out new and diverse diverse experience s. I think tha t comic s fandom an d the com ics industry could benefit greatly from attra cting mo re of this sort of perso n, with the greater part of the benefit going to the smaller, smaller, independen t publishers. M y friends and co-workers are, for the most part, well-educated white-collar pro fessionals. Over the past few years, I've introd uced several of the m to such diverse titles as Cerebus, }oumey, Cartoon History of  the Universe, an d American Flagg!. T h e s e people would normally never look twice at a comic book, but they now read select titles regularly. Obviously, a wider market for comics aimed at the older reader exists, if  only it can be reached. In house advertis ing, promotions that only reach comic spe cialty shops, and displays at the current ru n of* conventions can't do the job, be cause they only reach people who are cur rently reading comics. Marketing aimed at

wider markets is being attemp ted, bu t pro gress is slow, and made slower by the ex isting American perception of comics as a children's medium. (In Chicago, I asked Marvel's Caro l Kalish, "I f Marvel doesn't think the current market will support romance comics, why don't they enter a new market by setting up a joint marketing agreement with Harlequin?" Her reply was a terse "We tried.") It would seem to me that one good way to expose more people to the greater diversity now available in the medium is by putting that exposure in the context of a weekend they can enjoy, and letting word of mou th, possibly the single most powerful marketing tool in existence, take over from there.

P r o g r a m m i n g : The format is the same, consisting of panels , interviews, and the occasional speech, but the content is more diverse. A recent con I attend ed had panels o n r u n n i n g art shows, writing sciencefiction songs, and the survivability of  nuclear war, among others. No major changes need be made here,, just the appli cati on of a little extra th ough t and creativi ty to come up with new topics of interest to a slightly more sophisticated audence. Writers could address specific topics such as creating believable characters, the prac-

magic words "cash bar" and watch their eyes light up. It has been pointed out to me that I've contradicted myself  here, as this sort of  gathering tends to attract a less serious and less mature audience than may be consid ered desirable. While it's true that a mas querade can attract a share of  drunks and, for lack of a better word, fools, I stand by my recommendation. In the first place, no matter how lofty lofty your object ives, a conven tion won't do any one any good if people don't atten d, and t he reality is is that they

tical problems inherent in creating a fan tasy world, or communicating effectively with the artist. Artists, correspondingly, could discuss the different different appro aches needed for for colo r and black-an d-white art, the impo rtance o f backgrou nd detail to a story's verisimilitude, or techniques for creating scenes with live models. Topics of  general interest might include: What Do Y o u Say When A Parent Complains?; The Effect A Go od (Or Bad) Editor Can Have; Ways Of Getting People Who "Don't Read Comics" To Try Them; and so forth. The preceding list of topics took me all of 15 minutes to write, which leads me to believe that the unmine d veins of subject matter are considerable.

won't attend unless they believe they're go ing to enjoy themselves. ( One of the surest surest death knells for a convention is to get a reputation for being Too Serious.) Holding the masq uerade is a goo d way to assure potential attendees of the prominence of  Fun on the committee's priority list. In the second place, those who dress up for the masquerade meet the rather loose criteria I've described described for desirability. After all, the effort involved in putting together a cos tume does count as doing something. In deed, for certain craft-oriented individuals, costuming is the best available outlet for their creative energies.

The tricky part comes in defining "en  joyable," in determining what to put into a convention to attract the older reader. Given that these readers are very much in evidence at science-fiction conventions, the obvious tack is to copy those aspects and activities which make sf  cons attractive to them in the hopes of luring them, not away from their present diversions, but to an addi tional set of pleasures. Th e follow follow ing is a catalogue of the components of the typical sf co n, noting what is particular ly suitable suitable to adaptation.

T h e H o s p i t a l i t y S u i t : a hotel suite stocked with soft drinks, beer, and, less often, liquor, along with some snack foods, the "con suite" provides convention at tendees with a place to relax, quench their thirst, and tal k to each othe r. It is is by far far t he most expensive part o f  putting on a con vention, and no convention committee would ever consider not having one. Keep in min d that t he philo sophy I am cham pioning treats a convention as a social event, a place where friends gather. Given that, it immediately immediately becomes apparent that th e true heart of the we ekend lies in t he place most conducive to socializing. The suite is of para mou nt imp ort ance becau se it is the best place to meet and re-meet people, and to exchang e information . An d yet it is the one part of the conventio n totally independent of science fiction, com ics, or any other particular subject matter. Just in case anyone out there is starting to take me seriously and is thinking of  planning a conven tion of this sort, a word of  warning is in order. Anytime you do anything involving liquor, you must plan some way, such as different colored name badges, to distinguish minors. Serving alcohol to underage individuals will land you in deep trouble with both the hotel management and the local authorities^

T h e D e a l e r ' s R o o m : Also known as the huckster room. It's there, albeit in a much smaller form. The reason for the size reduc tion is reasonably obvious. The market for used books is small, and the analogous market for back issues would be even smaller. What does sell? New publications, T-shirts, buttons, craftwork (such as  jewelry), even toys. Even the companysponsored tables would be well received if  they were staffed with people knowledge able enough about th e compa ny products to discuss them intelligently.

88

M a s q u e r a d e B a l l : While far from universal, a late-night costume party, with or without judging, has become a fixture at an increasing numb er o f con s, and would fit in perfectly with a comics crowd . Th er e is a large segment of fandom th at ap pr e; ciates every chance they get to dress up in outlandish outfits, listen tp some good music, dance, drink, and generally have a good time. (Translation: P A R T Y ! ) . As an additional attraction, a group of  judges can be appointed beforehand to circulate among the celebrants, later issuing prizes in such categories as Most Faithful, Most Humorous, Most Original, and Most Beautiful. If the hotel managem ent wants to charge mor e for the addition al function space than you can afford, just say the

Filksinging: Nobody knows the exact origins of that word, so just assume it's a corruption of "folksinging." "folksinging." All the con has to do is is set aside aside a'fu ncti on room at night in which people Can gather. By about midnight, people people with instruments and/ or voices congregate to perform, mostly songs they themselves have written. Granted, it would take time for such a feature to gain popularity, since most of the existing material relates to either science fiction or science-fiction fandom, but there are already some comics-related compositions in circulation. 1 know of at least one song about Cerebus, and several concerning the Elfquest Universe. (I'll' ask those of you raising an eyebrow at the concept to trust me for for now. I ment ion it out of some per sonal bias, as I've been writing and singing In

•CONVENTIONS," page 97

HEY.GAMG/  have: Vcu weAvsi? AsboT

t m £

Mew ^ 0 \ y e N T O 9 i £ s

TH6

s e e m c a md md m y c e e u j , a l > m AM0iaoit> VieJ2AAArJ f £ \ - c > y o N D

o f

(

AND eeGZUeBOBAS t0€ c3t-AST o f f I N O U R . tsieu) c o m i c B o o K O f Z A N Y M A O CAP U U M O U R / -So uWAT'Re

Ya

UJAVTlMG

scott  edelman

on the comics

industry

A Comic Of One's Own You've probably never heard of  Naomi Basner. You never had a chance to, because she committed two dread crimes. First, she had the insuf ferable gall to have chosen to be born a woman. On top of  that, she had the unmitigated nerve to think she could write comic books. Never mind why. Never mind that those women who c ame before before were were relegated to writing "cute" books marketed to women (supposedly) and children such as Night Nurse and Spidey Super  Stories, because "girls" could never write the "real" comics like "us men." Never mind that even if  she'd succeeded in the field she loved she'd never have got ten to tell you what she really felt about life, she'd be forced to warp her vision to suit male-only fantasies, she'd never have been given an opportunity to follow Tillie Olsen's dictum as set down in Silences, that masterwork of crushed hopes, to: "Be cri tical. Women have a right to say: this is surfacej this falsifies reality, this degrades." Never mind the fact that both in pursuit of  her dream and in order to maintain it, she'd have to spend most of her time hang ing out with men who think that the way to assemble a comic book that appeals to women is to fill it with the romance cliches of  a previous generation and pictures by John Buscema or John Romita of bigbreasted women gazing sadly into mirrors while standing around in their lingerie. Never mind all that. Just keep these facts in mind. Naomi Basner wanted to write comic books. And she was born a woman. She didn't have a chance in Hell. would ha ve recognized Virginia Woolf would and embraced Naomi Basner. Woolf Woolf wrote in A Room of  One's Own (1929) about the near-impossibility of a woman to be given th e leisure by the world to even attempt the writing of fiction, let alone to try to market or sell it. She lenew the dangers of trying to hold on to artistic vision in the midst of  a commercial storm.

"If  you do not tell the truth about your Woolf wrote, "you cannot tell it about self," Woolf wrote, other people." These words should be taken to heart by all comi c-bo ok writers, but especially especially those who are women, for it is they who are asked to bend whatever it is they have to say, even their own fantasies, into the molds of men. Nao mi Basner, having tried her best to gain entrance into the boys' club, in hopes of  eventually having some sort of positive impact on the field (as most of us hoped), was in a worse state. When it came time to sell her soul, she discovered that no one wanted it. Tillie Olsen would recognize Naomi Basner. In Silences (1979), Olsen wrote of the shattering creative dry spells which seem to so often smother women writers. Mocked into silence by ridicule, or starved into silence by poverty, or shamed into silence by those who think they'd be better off  tak ing care of children and ironing shirts, women continually turn their backs on their true callings, often internalizing and blaming themselves for what essentially is society's fault. Some stay away from their art form for decades, claiming, to retain

their sanity, that the grapes were sour anyway. Some have their crea tiv e spirits so stifled that they never get back in touch with it. "Literary history and the present are dark with silences," Olsen wrote. Some the si lences for years by our ack nowledged great; some silences hidden; some the never com ing to book form at all. These are not na tural silences, that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. T h e silences I speak of here are un natural; the unnatural thwart ing of what struggles to come into being, but cannot." Naomi Basner has been liv ing in such silence for close to a decade. Her first published comic-book work, a five-page story abo ut Cle a published in th e back of The Defenders #5 3 (Novemb er 1977) was most probably her last. She was beaten into silence by ridicule a nd fear, a nd will probably never come out of  it, it, at least least not bac k into the comics wor ld Joanna Russ would recognize Naomi Basner. Joanna Russ, whose novel The Female Man is for some the most-hated and for some t he most-lo ved science-fict ion . novel, wrote the important Hotv To Suppress Woman's Writing (1983), which was itself sup pressed by not being carried by either of  Ne w York City's major sf bookstores, nor by the New York temple to the literati, the G o t h a m B o o k Mart. She assembled in her book what could almost be called a man tr a of oppression, taking step by step the process process of shunning and ostracism a woman writer must face. Man will give into a woman's true talent, but for most of them it will only be begrudgingly. "She didn't write it," wrote Joanna Russ. "She wrote it, but she shouldn't have. "She wrote it, but look at what she wrote about. "She wrote it, but 'she' isn't really an art ist and 'it' isn't really serious, of the right genre—i.e., really art. "She wrote it, but she only wrote one of it. "She wrote it, but it's it's only interesting/in cluded in the canon for one, limited reason.

Naomi's hopes that she had finally made it, the plot was given to Paty Cockrum to draw, who at the time was probably the busiest, most pressured, and least celebrated worker Marvel had, and thus had little desire to go home and draw late into the evening. (How Paty got shunted from what should have been a career as a penciller into a career of pasteups deserves a column all its own. Comics history, especially that of  women, is littered with broken dreams.) The plot was eventually passed on to someone else, and never drawn.

"She wrote it, but she only wrote one of it. " S h e wrote it, but it's only interesting/in cluded in the canon for one, limited reason. " S h e wrote it, but there are very few of  her." Naomi Basner knows that formula o f belittlement all too well. Sh e had to face these excuses many times, sometimes one at a time, sometimes all at once. At times nothing could be found wrong with her stories plotwise, and the only real problems were editors made queasy by a feminist ap proach to super-heroing. Naomi's What  If  plot dealt with Daredevil's masculine inse curity after his sight is restored at the cost o f  his powers and he must stand by while th e Black  Widow keeps saving the day. Daredevil loses his life at the end of her tale, after stupidly insisting on super-heroing after he's a super-hero no more. This tale was not rej ected; at least, not straight out.

Naomi was sent away to do rewrite after rewrite, asked to cut the plot from 34 to 17 pages,"told to add some characters and delete others, simply because a kind of game is played by those in power to avoid saying forthrightly and honestly what the true message is: We don't like your kind. We dori't want you here. Wha t got me thinkin g of Naomi Basn er again (and I must admit sheepishly, that I had not thought of her in quite a while), was the new Eclipse trade paperback Women and  The Comics. Trina Robbins and Cat Yronwode, the co-authors, unlike Woolf  an d O l s e n and Russ, don't seem to recognize Naomi Basner at all. They show no sign of  ever having heard of her existence, and tha t is a shame, for Naomi's plight should have been an important part of this book. If  this were a better world we lived in, the way Naomi would have been in this book  is that her career, which in our real world is now largely nonexistent, would have been recorded. Whether that career would have been spent in writing good comic books or bad we do not know; whether she would have written trashy toy adaptations or at tempted something better has been lost to us. But there would have been a body of  work for us to ponder; what titles she wrote would have been chronicled , and whethe r she succeeded or failed creatively in the writing of the m would have been debate d. Making the world a better place is a dif ficult What  If  to pull off, so I woul d have settled for Naomi's presence in the book in a more possible way. Better worlds are near impossible, but if this had be en a better book, Naomi would still have appeared, albeit in a different way. You woul d have been told, by authors who had seen her single scripting crdit almost a decade back, o f  the sad tale of yet ano the r woma n who wasn't allowed an honest shot at entry into the clubhouse. They would have told you why she wasn't given given that chan ce, and what it means to comics as a whole. They would not have acted as if a woman did n ot exis t because she only had a single scripting credit. What Robbins and Yronwode don't seem to grasp (or if they d o grasp this the y

92

 A#   D

on/ THAT5"*'Sre.
A /crre...

From Naomi Basner's first published story.

don't allow themselves to express it in print) is that the history of women, in comics is as muc h th e saga saga of tho se who never made it as it is is of those wh o did. Naomi was one of a series of high-school students who worked at Marvel in an in tern program courtesy of the New York  City school system. Naomi, followed by Sharon Ing (currently married to DC Com ics colorist Carl Gafford) worked at Marvel help ing Sol Brodsky in the Production Depart ment for high-school credit. (Marvel could never resist the offer of free free help, and spon sored numerous other interns as well.) At this time Marvel was commissioning fivepage backup scripts to help alleviate their ridiculous latenesses, and Naomi began sending a barrage of plots to Jim Shooter, having very little success at a time when I'd had two plots accepted and did not write much better t h a n Nao mi , if at all. Naomi was eventually given a chance to script the Ji m Shooter-plotted Clea backup I men tioned above, with Jim Shooter's attitude being, acco rding to Nao mi, " If she screws it up, she can always rewrite it." Rewrite it .* she did, as all beginning writers do, and eventually it was up to Shooter's standards (though looking back on th e tale now, now, I can see th at mo st of th e flaw flawss tha t stand o ut are not within the scripting, but in the plot ting.) But now that Naomi had proven her scripting ability, she wanted to plot a story o f  her own. S h e was finally given an okay to write a Medusa backup feature. Unfortunately for

Next up was a Charlie-27 plot, which was pencilled by Carl Potts, and according to Naomi, "has never to my knowledge been printed or even lettered and inked." A Nighthawk plot was solicited, and went through rewrite after rewrite ("and a few min or argument s with Shoot er," says says Naomi), but which also never made it into print. T h e r e was a humorous Hulk story that you also never got to see. In fact, Naomi has an entire file of plots that were "rejected, ridiculed, and ignored." T h e r e were also the staff  jobs she was led to believe were within her grasp, but which when she looked up, she discovered had been given to the good old boys. "What happens to a dream deferred?" Langston Hughes once wrote. "Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore—and then run? Does it stink like rot ten meat? Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it  explode!" T h e r e is only so much an ego can take. T h e r e is only so much pettiness and fear and gameplaying one can stomach before, in order to survive, one has to turn away and to home. Virginia Woolf  wrote, "I thoug h how unpleas ant it is to be locked out; and I thou ght how it's worse perhaps t o be locked in." I hope Na omi can gain som e solace from from those words, considering how success for her would have unfortunately only meant a subversion of her spirit. Naomi is not alone. M y wife, Irene Vartanoff, is one of those who was almost a casualty of the war of the sexes. If D C editor Julie Schwartz had had his way, way, not onl y would bot h D C and Marvel have missed out on her valuable expertise, but what is worse (from my own admit tedl y selfish point of view), I'd never have found Irene at all. Ou r three-mo nthold, Trevor Skye Vartanoff, would never have been born. Whe n Irene, Irene, whom Julie had encouraged into blossoming into one of the most prolific and articulate letter columnists in comics (I am admittedly biased in her favor; judge my words as you will), came to New York  to break into the business as a writer, she did not get the warm welcome she expected. "Look, kid," she was essentially told by Julie, "Yew don't want to be in this dirty business. It's not a place for women. Go home, find a husband, get married, have kids. This isn't a place you want to be." And for awhile it

T H E COMICS J O U R N A L #107, April 1986

 / 

wasn't. Irene had to go home, revise her goals and regather her strength in order to come back even more determined, to take he r staff  job at Marvel Comics just a few months before I took mine. Such are the ripples of sexism. T h e y affect not just a few few individuals, but the industry as a whole, and each of us who loves com ics. Society as a whole is affected as well, for each act of sexism not only hurts t h a t particular aggrieved, aggrieved, but it also trains people to continue passing that h u r t on to others. I am not attempting to paint Julie Schwartz a black-hearted vi llain. For as far far as charges of crimes of sexism go, every man in comics, including myself, has done enough wrong that we should each stand up and shout a mea culpa, whether large or small. Most of those who have done t he sex ist damage are not villains who could be recognized as such out of the comic books to which we devote our lives. "Active bigotry," wrote Joanna Russ, "is probably fairly rare. It is also hardly ever necessary, since the social context is so far from neutral. To act in a way that is both sexist and racist, to maintain one's class privilege, it is only necess ary to act in the customary, ordinary, usually very polite manner." Sometimes these unwitting villains can be our friends. Som etim es they can be our selves. We at times walk  through life as if  in an unth ink ing dream, as if feeling our actions can make no difference, not realiz ing the hurt we do to others. Each of us has at least one moment in our life to which we look back and wince. These moments ca n be words we wish we could go back in time and unsay, such as curses to parents o r spouses in a moment of anger. These moments can be actions we wish we'd never taken. But whatever the nature of that regretted moment, it is always a thing we have done to someone else. It is is not when hurting ourselves that we feel this flash of  shame, but when we h u r t others. Joanna Russ reminds me here of a time when my behavior was quite in line with her quote, a time that makes me cringe when I look  back  at it. Back  when I was was f»ne f»ne of Marvel Co mi cs ' Assistant Editors, Irene Vartanoff was the so-called Reprint Editor. I say "so-called," for on most of the books she had little impact. Titles like Marvel Tales and Marvel Triple  Action were self-perpetuating, simply reprint ing consecutive issues of Spider-Man and The Avengers. Most of Irene's decision making in terms of actually affecting the makeup of a book came in choosing the sorry old stories that would appear in Marvel's usually wretched reprint books, such as Dead  of Night  an d Weird  Wonder  Tales. • S o it is unders tandab le that whe n it came time for the con tent s of the reprint annuals of  the sum mer of 1975 to be cho sen for 10 titles ranging from Captain America to The X-Men, she looked forward to the chance of  sifting through the old classics and finally exercize her authority by assembling some

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 19 86

good issues. | If  Naomi never had a chance, neither, in this instance, did Irene. Le n Wein passed passed over Irene and instead gave me the assignment to pick those re prints, me who had no responsibility for choosing reprints before, and pick them I did. I still have my memos to then Assis tant Production Manager Tony Mortellaro from Ma y 1975 . So overc ome was I by my good fortune, that I didn't once stop to think, "Gee, these are reprints. Why isn't • the Reprint Editor handling them?" W h a t Len's true moti ves were were I do not know. It could have been as simple and seemingly innocuous as what the surface was, that he liked me and respected my opi nions, bu t underneath that the undermin ing message was sent that when anyth ing important needs to be done, it takes a man to do it. I eventually began choosing the reprints for all the Spectaculars as well, those oversized reprint books that were so popular for a while. A t the time, Irene said nothing, made no protest. Beca use she liked me and wanted me to succeed, she instead kept th e frustra frustra tions inside and simmered, and did not tell me of her feelings of betrayal until years later. I insta ntly reco gnized the sli miness of  what had happened, and regretted that I had not the insight earlier to see it and to act, to at the time say, "No, I will not col lude in the demeaning of a friend." T h a t is one of the reasons why sexism continues. Becaus e hideou s mistakes are made by both sexes. Most men will never stop to quest ion their good fortu ne and always think it deserved and won by their talents alone. Most women will hesitate to make a stink, to question the good fortune of  someone they like or love, even if they are being wronged. T h e s e stcyies stcyies I've mentio ned, and there are hundreds an d hundreds like them, haave not been recorded in Robbins and Yronwode's W>men and The Comics. Where are these stories, I wonder? If the auth ors were really interested in doing a book about t he true struggle of women in comics (and that has always been what the history of  women in any field is, a struggle), why didn't they seek these stories out with more fer vor? An d if they indeed have sought them out and found them, why didn't they put them into print and share them with us? W h e r e is th e story of the high-rank ing comic-book  executive who was asked to resign over over charges of sexual sexual disc riminat ion and harassment? Where is the discussion of why a female writer of comics had to endure gossip of  having slept her way to the top, accompa nied by some insight into why this belittling tactic is so often used against women? Where is the st ory of the d isbelief amo ng comics professionals when Jenette Kahn became D C s publisher that a woman was going to be their boss? Women and The Comics is missing these stories. But most of all, it is missing anger. Anger is occasionally hidden between the

lines, but it is very rare, and hidden very deep. O n page 106, for insta nce, the auth ors wrote that, "The, frustration and anger felt by many women who wanted to work for Marvel but found themselves rejected or relegated to menial production, lettering, or coloring chores is is understandab le," and that is about as venomous and specific as they allow themselves to get. Th en , on page 108, without making any judgments, they write that "Paty Cockrum held an unusual posi tion at Marvel: in addition to her occasional regular comic book art (such as on The Cat), she specialized in doing 'fix-up' art and pro ducing model sheets for the use of staff  of staff  art ists and char acter licensees." Ca n' t t he authors put two and two together? Why do they have to beat around the bush? Paty's comic-book  work wasn't/just occasional, it has almost been nonexistent, and not by her own choice. Why can't they just tell us that Paty was one of those "relegated" to doing junk work? Why must we be left to inferences instead of to outright statements? Wh y can't they be angry? T h e authors are capable of taking to task  art critics of decades in the past (thou gh not by name, never by name), but they are inca pable of getting stern with tho se who have

Encapsulizlng women In the comics.

93

recently or are still actively preventing women from having their say in this artform called comics. I hope I am not putting more blame for this t h a n they deserve on the shoulders of Robbins and Yronwode, for the fault for this might lie no t with the aut hors but with a publisher with an overly intense fear of libel litigation. But whoever is responsible for Women and The Comics appearing to be a watered-down book, the authors should have fought to give us the b o o k   we deserved and neede d.

1

W h e n I contacted Nao mi B asner to verify verify my memory about her comi c-book experi ence and get additional information, she wrote back: "I haven't readTrina's book.. .though she had written me for my my 'experiences in com ics.' The problem was, every time I sat down to write it to her, I became so angry over what had been done to me that I had to stop. Thus I guess I'm not included in the book." T h a t ultimately is what makes a failure of  Women and The Comics, that it is missing

From -DEATH," page 54

writer-artist twice the space of your typical E C story, for example) make this b ook a title to watch. Uneasiness is its own strange reward. D

that anger, in fact, seems almost to be afraid of  anger. We always always seem to be a shamed o f  our own deserved anger, because we think  it is adult to turn the other cheek, or to be frightened by it because we don't want to destroy our possibilities of continuing to work in an industry we love. In this in stance, unfortunately, that missing anger becomes a huge hole cut in the center of  the bo ok. It was the jo b of the au thors to cut that anger from from the hea rt o f those, like Naom i Basner, whose anger anger made them too inarticulate with rage for them to want to share it without prodding. It was a crime that Naomi Basner did not have a better shot at her dream. That crime is compounded, however, by the fact that Nao mi Bas ner' s story was was not include d in this book. In the final analysis, Woman and The Com ics is only a few steps up from Maurice Horn's incredibly superficial women In The Comics, which the authors denigrate in their foreword. Not as much progress has been made with this book as Robbins and Yron-

wode believe. They have amassed a great deal of inform ation b ut seem not to know what conclusions to draw from it, and so end up with a project that is more index t h a n essay, more full of detailed chr onolog y t h a n insightful conclusions. Virginia Woolfe wrote, "Women and fic tion remain, so far as I am concerned, an unsolved problem." And the true history of  women in comics remains, so far as I am concerned, an unwritten story. •

Tivo changes were made in Journal #104's column that  altered  writer Scott  "Ethics"   Edelman's originalmeaning. In the second  column of  page 93, the word "hyperbole}'  in the sentence "DC  Comics is not  immume from lapsing into hyperbole at the death of a col league" should  read  "overenthusiasms." Also, hyperbole" readers should  substitute "common  for  "nonsense" in the sentence "I know that   I  will perhaps be thought  cold  for not  simply accepting this bit of  nonsense," which also appears in the second  column.

postage and  handling to Renegade Press, 4201 W.  Alameda #20, Burbank, CA 91505.

transcend the suspense genre, or just do it very very well? I always feel a bit chastened by a review that feels I've come short of something Yummy Fu r is available for $2.00 postpaid to Chester Brown, 22 Albany Avenue, *ioronto, Ontario, —but in this case all I can be chastened into doing is to keep trying. (And if you can tell Canada M5R 3C3. me what genre Repo Man is transcending, lemme know.) Happy 100th, guys.

Most items reviewed in The Comics Journal are  available from major comic-book stores, or from comicsFrom "LETTERS," page 27  mail-order services. If you are having trouble finding would be something of an advantage.  them at either source, they are also available from Shatter was an experiment, and I at least  the publisher: plead guilty to enjoying myself  with a new toy. DC Challenge is available at most specialty shops. By no means is it perfect, or even "the wave The publisher does not fulfill single-issue back-orders. of  the future": it's still very much a nas cent technique. But what Mike Saenz and I (and available at most specialty shops, Death Rattle is available the folks at First) were excited about was the obtained by'sending $2.00 plus 50   and can also be obtained by'sending fact that this was the first time this type of   cents postage to Kitchen Sink Press, 2 Swamp Rd., thing was even possible. Sure, computer  Princeton, Wl  54968. graphics have been around for a while, but in Elvira's House of Mystery is available at most big elaborate micros and mainframes that newsstands. The publisher does  specialty shops and newsstands. needed a programmer in attendance at best,  not fulfill single-issue back-orders. or more likely required the artist to be a hard Flaming Carrot Comics is available at most core programmer as well. I bought the Macin   specialty shops, and can also be obtained  by sending tosh off the shelf; the software was the non  $1.70 plus 50 cents postage and  handling to Renegade custom software that comes with the machine;  Press, 4201 W. Alameda #20, Burbank, CA 91505. and neither Mike Saenz nor I could ever be thought of a programmers. It's the first time Haunt of  Fear is available at some specialty shops,  and can also be obtained  by sending $100.00 postpaid  computer-graphics techn ology was put within  to Russ Cochran, P.O. Box 469, West Plains, MO reach of us comics-type comics-type weirdos, in short. And 65775. it's only the beginning: if I have anything to say about it, you'll be seeing computer stuff  available at most specialty shops 'Mazing M an is available that leaves Shatter far behind in terms of  fulfill singlenewsstands. The publisher does not not fulfill single and  newsstands. graphic resources. But Mike and I wanted to issue back-orders. take that first step. Miracleman is available at most specialty shops, Ahem.  and  can also be obtained by sending 95 cents plus But, uh, C art er: I almost hesitate to tell you ,  50 cents postage to Eclipse Comics, P.O. Box 199, that the F R E E B A S E ad was not a "clever but Guerneville, CA 95446. inaccessible pun" on dBasell, of all things, but Seduction of the Innocentis available at most was (Ted White preserve me) a reference to  specialty shops, and can also be obtained  by sending drugs. I keep forgetting that this is the '80s.  $1.75 plus 50 cents postage to Eclipse Comics, P.O. And as to the-main critical thrust of Carter's  Box 199, Guerneville, CA 95446. critique, I'll plead guilty to the predictability Tales of  Terror is available at most specialty shops, and working within the genre—but I'm not   and can also be obtained by sending $1.75 plus 50 sure I know how one goes about deliberately  cents postage and  handling to Eclipse Comics, P.O. transcending a genre: all one can do is con Box Box 199, GuernewUe, CA 95446. tinue to do the best one knows how within Wordsmith is available at most specialty shops, and  it, and bring as much to the execution as pos sible. Do Raymond Chandler and Hitchcock   can also be obtained  by sending $1.70 plus 50 cents f 

94

T H E COMICS JOURNAL #107, April 1986

EXECUTIVE'S FORUM richardpini

Subversion Through Subtlety This is the sixth installment  of  "Executive's Forum," a regular   feature in the Journal, wherein we give comics publishers or  their  representatives space to share their  ideas on comics and the industry as a whole. In this WaRP Graphics installment,   publisher Richard Pini theorizes as to the various ways of  advan cing standards in comics—two of  those ways being the subtler  ap  proach of  Pini's, and the noisier  approach of the Journal. The participants in the "Forum" are: Dick Giordano, executive editor  of DC  Comics;  Rick  Oliver, managing editor  of  First  Comics; Denis Kitchen,  publisher  of  Kitchen Sink  Press;  Dean Mullaney, publisher  of    Eclipse Comics; Richard  Pini,  publisher  of  WaRP Graphics; Steve Schanes, of  publisher  Press; Dave Sim,  Blackthorne  publisher  of  Aardvark-Vanaheim; and Art  Spiegelman,  publisher  of RAW  Books and  Graphics. We hope that through the "Forum" Journal readers will appreciate glimpsing the thoughts that  the leaders of the industry hold.

I do actually have some thoughts that I want to examine and develop in this piece, but in the process I find myself  sitting back, tak ing a long overview, and asking myself, "Why am I doing this?" One answer, of  course, is that Tom Heintjes called up one day and asked. But the question itself  im plies .a deeper query th at is mor e to t he point: "What effect do I expect my words to have on the readers of this magazine?" (Which is far different from, "What effect do I hope my words will have?" ) An d the answer comes back to me wrapped in cyni cism, "Not a whole hell of a lot." . T h e reason is that this forum, The Com ics journal, already preaches to the converted

who share its editor's belief, nobly stated in the editorial in journal #100, tha t " the jour nal will just keep butting its head against the wall." The wall Gary Groth refers to is the abandonmen t o f standards standards and the glorification of trash, with particular refe agree with rence to comics. To be ho nest, I agree

that assessment of the state of things. But I think that the "head butting," the babyBolshevik  rabble-rousing that goes on in the  journal is most ly (by design or destiny , the result is the same) a kind of masturbation. It serves self, it feeds on its own tail. By Gary's own admission, the Journal is published for a "dwindling minority of com ics readers." That in itself  I consider to be a self-indictment. A s stated earlier, I agree with Gary's eva luatio n of com ics and t heir readers today, and I am in total accord with his statements regarding the deep-rooted nature of the problem and its resistance to change. It's at this point that W aRP and Fantagraphics part ways, becau se I happen to believe in stealth—benevolent stealth—benevolent subversion, subversion, if you w il lrather than noisy protest to accomplish is offensive to me to read ab out change. It is dwindling minorities of readers who possess and apply at least some "standards," and I feel strongly that tha t is a situation that must change in this country for comics to survive (and, incidentally, begin to approach what I think it is that the journal is crying put for). But the way to make that chan ge

is not to publish better and better co mics for fewer fewer a nd fewer people. The way is to get more and more people inte rested in better and better comics. (Say it fast and it sounds easy!) T h e average comics reader today sucks very contentedly at (to borrow and hash Harlan Ellison's metaphor) a pulp teat. Yanking that reader's gummy little mouth away and swatting him upside the head while calling him stupid won't accomplish very much. Wean ing him, however, has a chance—if  (and only if) he can be fed a diet of substance and quality that he won't reject ou t of  hand. (Why didn't you read  David  Copperfield  or Treasure  Island  in seventh grade? Because you were told you-had to, because you were told that they were Great Literature, and you rebelled, that's why. Never mind that the books are great; it was the presentation to you that turned you off.) Teaching high school for four years taught me how much more effective stealth is than frontal assault. But it is not the Journal's way to be anything other than blunt and direct, to follow—and try to get others to follow— Harlan Ellison's dictum t hat it is is not tha t each of us is is entitle d to his opi nio n but tha t each of us is entitled to his informed  opinion. (But, hey, as the improper application of  statistics has long shown, one can base his informed opinion on whatever information suits his purpose of the moment, so what does "inform ed" really really acc omplish ?) so 1 will remain cynical, and stick to the answer I gave to my earlier question of "Why do this?" I can always hope I'm wrong, no? Where did it start?

Nobody knows what begat the cave pain tings at Lasc aux, but Lasc aux begat the nar rative hieroglyphics in the pyramids, and the pyramids begat the B ayeau x tapestry, and Bayeaux begat Hogarth and Goya, and they begat Outcault and the Yellow Kid, and they begat Max Gaines, and he begat Siegel and Schuster. And Whoever he/she/it is, the god of comic books and storytelling

looked down and saw that it was, if not good or great, then at least okay. And then a little while later, Action Com ics #1 begat $1,800 and some change, and that  is when it began to go to hell in a handbasket. The "it" I refer to is Comics and W h a t They Are. The road that takes us to realization that 90 perce nt (thank hell is the realization you, Ted Sturgeon, for your crystallization of  what the universe has always known as a natural law) of comics today are being done—created, published, distributed—for t he wrong reasons. Illustration #1: Unt il 1973 , and discount  ing the Wertham years, comics generally did not receive significant media exposure. To be sure, there was a certain amount of  coverage, usually in the more "hip" magazines magazines of t he day, of Sta n Lee's campus hopping, spreading the word to all the new True Believers; and few of us who saw it will ever forget Adam West dressed up as (NAna-na-na-NA-na-na-na) Batman prancing about the cover of  Life magazine while th e campy television show was running. But that coverage was trendy and cute; it was incidental. It wasn't until collector Mitchell Mehdy coughed up close to $2,000 for a copy of Action #1 that the news made it in to the national consciousness via television and newspaper. Suddenly, there was a serious (or close to it) con nec tio n betwee n comic books and good American invest ment dollars. Illustration #2: #2: In a previous installment of  this feature, Renegade Press publisher Deni Loubert made a case for using comics as an aid in the acquisition of reading skills, a weapon against creeping illiteracy. At a re cent comics trade gathering I listened to a retailer describe his own experience as a guest on a radio talk show about comics. T h e retailer spent the better part of the show outlining the ways comics could be used to help kids learn to read. But w h e n the phone lines were opened to callers, the only questions that came in were of the following type: "I've got this copy of  GrottyMa n #5, can you tell me how much it's worth? I heard comics are worth money these days." Illustration #3: For the last few years, I have not run across a single general media account (newspaper, radio, television—with th e possible exception of the infamous 700 Club comics crucifixion) that did not at some point go to lengths to demonstrate that now the comics you used to laugh at are big in the collectable market and you should start salting them away. Usually, there is minor (if any) lip service paid to the application of some elusive standard of  quality in in the acquistion of these investment properties, and rarely does an yone suggest that maybe you could even read  the things yo u 'r e buying. Damn ing illustration #4: #4: Write large across comic cover after comic cover: "Col lector's Item Special Double-Siz e Issue!" "Special Collector's Item Reprint Issue!" "Collector's Item Death Issue!" Storytelling? What the hell's that? I'm

"It is my conten tion that comics were meant to be, and first and foremost ought to be, a DISPOSABLE entertainment/' building my portfolio here; go away. #103 presented a The Comics Journal debate between Stan Lee and Harlan Ellison on the subject of comics. As you might expect, there was a generous dollop of banter and bullshit, but Ellison did make one point that is germane to my argument. Th e good an d enduring literature (of the past—Ellison was referring to various works o f  Cha rle s Dickens, but the tftiism tftiism applies at any time, in any medium) docs not necessarily start out with those labels; it does not deliberately set out to attract them. If  the work attains that status at all, it is because it has within itself  the seeds of its own endura nce and greatness, greatness, by virtue of  the inherent excellence of its execution. (I realize that to discuss such things is to ven ture onto thin ice, to risk using imprecise language to describe forever elusive con cep ts, bu t we all try.) In the final analysis packaging, paper stock, marketing, hype, 'gimmickry, all-new-whiter-and-brighter don't count. Form doesn't count. Content does. The gold lasts longer because it is gold; the dross disappears because it is dross. In theory. B ut not these days, it seems. Without   judging the quality or enduring worth, be sure to buy up all the issues of  Shazam  #1 you can. Hoard those issues of Thor #337. Pu t those issues of Spider-Man #252 into Mylar Snugs. Salt away a couple dozen sets of  Secret Wars—even if you don't like it. You might get lucky. It is my contention that comics were meant to be, and first and foremost ought to be a disposable entertainment. John Byrne said recently that the representative of his ideal audience was a 12-year-old-boy out in Kansas somewhere who would read an issue ' of  a comic about a 100 times and then throw it away becau se it had gotte n dog eared. But, oh, he would know and treasure that story; why else would he read it over and over? I would extend those demograph ics to include both sexes, a wide range of  ages, and the whole world, but the expres sion is the same. Given the choice between publishing comics that people collect, and comics that people read, I'll take the latter

without hesitation. O f  course people will collect those com ics they want to read over and over again; perhaps they will even save an extra copy for when the first one falls apart, or for a friend or child to read at some later time. That's not my point, that's not my gripe; these people aren't collecting for invest ment's sake (unless you consider emotional investment); they are appreciating some thing they want to share and pass along. It's been a source of pride to me that Elfquest  has had the success and the effect that it has, both in and out of the recognized arena of comics fandom. I'll even go so far as to say that I believe the series has had more positive effect on more people than any other comics series in the last decade, were every copy of the magazine in any form to disappear, that effect would not be diminished, for Elfquest's readers would remember the story, the exposition through ar t and words of those universals, those deep feelings common to most if not all of  us. There is so much energy being put into the scramble for market share, the mainte nance of trademarks, the development of  properties whose only raison d'etre is to grab a sale that the love of doing, the creative resources that used to be applied to good storytelling are being drained. To be sure, there are good storytellers yet out there, people who have the spark of something that wants expression, something that in another age would have been told around a campfire from generation to generation. There are goo d stories yet—but in my c yni cism I attribute that to th e fact that 90 per per cent crap still allows allows 10 percen t good to exist. Is ther e a solution , an d where does it lie? lie? If  I thought there was no solution, I'd be ou t of this business in a hurr y; but I love comics and I believe in my own assessment o f  things. I don't believe that the answer lies within the grasp of the bigger comics com panies; their economic structures don't allow the slow experimentation and often fitful growth that the smaller publishers can indulge in (at correspondingly greater risk). A n d I feel certain that any wakening of  comics readers to higher quality storytell ing in any general sense will be a painfully slow process. In that respect, Gary Groth an d WaRP Graph ics share space at that wall, beating our heads, trying to break through. There's a kind of frustration I feel, hav ing come this far in this piece. Spleen has been vented, but is that what this space is for? There's been a big windup; has there been a pitch? I don't know. Maybe not. I don't really feel comfortable applying mental energy to the elegant and pithy delineation of the problems with comics. I d o feel comfortable putting that energy directly into the solutions, such as I perceive them, of those problems. So you'll have to excuse me now—I've got a wall to butt up against. But WaRP is going to do it quietly, stealthily. It's already worked once; knock wood it'll work again. •

From -CONVENTIONS,' page 88

songs for years, and consider filksinging to be one of the most enjoyable aspects of a con.) Gaming Room: Role-playing games are a unique phenomenon, having risen to minor prom inence in both sf and comics fandom over the past decade. Again, this is an activity requiring very little effort on the part of the conventi on commit tee. Ad vance publicity stating that gamers are welcome, a room with tables and chairs, and so me sort of bulleti n boar d through which gamers can contact each other to organize games are the onl y things required to keep this growing sub-fandom happy. Ar t S h o w and Auction: Along with the hospitality suite, this is the one activity I would most like to see at a comics conven tion. tion. In fact, it it has been a con sis ten t so urce of  amazement to me that art, which is so central to the medium, has been so thoroughly slighted by so many comics conventions* The basic setup, while requir ing some work, is not overly complex, and the goodwill generated is tremendous. A large function roorn is needed, along with panels on which to hang the art. Art ists, both professional and amateur, are welcome to display their work. Each piece on display is either labeled "Not For S a l e , " or has a bid sheet attached to it, listing title, artist, and minimum bid. Over the course of  the convention, attendees browse through the display, writing bids on those pieces they wish to purchase. Late in the conv enti on (Saturday night is the most commo n) those pieces with bids on t hem are auctioned off to the highest voice bid der. The convention's monetary take for doing this is a small hangin g fee (25 to 5 0 cents, usually) on unsold and NFS pieces, and a 10 to 15 percent com miss ion on items sold. Th e non-monetary benefits should be obvious. Fans have the oppo rtun ity to ob tain original art through some method other than standing in line at the sketch table. Collectors such as myself, who can appreciate a well laid-out page but don't consider it appropriate for the living room wall, are given a wider selection of illustra tions to consider for purchase. Most impor tantly, up-and-coming artists have a chance to both make some money and get feedback on their word from someone other than overworked editors and art directors.

Naturally, there are logistical considera tions. tions. Gi ven the large num ber of aspiring artists in comics fandom, there is a danger of  being inundated with entties, so a limit on the number of pieces displayed by a single artist may be desirable. Policies must be established in advance covering what sort of payment will be accepted , when the artists will receive their money, and other considerations. Awards are often desitable, which results in the extra effort of  round ing up judges and preparing ribbons. All of  these issues and more, however, have been dealt with hundreds of times and on a

variety of scales. A little judicious seeking of  advice, coupled with careful advance plann ing, can head off any majo r difficul difficul ties. Even if the traditional , buyer-oriented convention does not perish in the coming years, even if it survives and t hrive s, I believe there is a place for the type of con vention I've described. The growing diver sity sity of the mediu m d emand s a greater diversity diversity of readership, and conv entio ns are on e of the best met hod s available for smaller, indep endent publishers to confact a wider audience. In the long run, it may even lead lead to an additional bro aden ing of  the medium, as people whose influences are based in areas other t h a n comics are induced to adapt their creative efforts to the comics form. form. Any creative endeavor can benefit from an influx of new blood, and doer-oriented conventions, properly, could provide a transfusion of unprece dented scale. •

From -MASTERPIECES," page 85

involving Negroes in the Deep South," that one would never guess that Clean Fun is uninhibited, knockabout ethnic h u m o u r and inspired American folk art. This is, as the book's own cover perceptively pro claims, "something entirely new and vastly different in a comic book; inspirational as well as entertaining." (Jim Shooter, please take note.) Th e remarkable soul who wrote an d drew th e Shoogafoots strip (he signs his work 'McDa nieP ) knew what he was about. From its hilariously violent cover worthy of  reproduction in Dr. Wertham's Seduc tion of the Innocent  to its bizarre, unforget table image of Shoogafoots's eye clicking as he laughs " H ' Y A K H ' Y A K H ' Y A K (with no exclamat ion points), this heroic fantasia of  life in the* Sou th t rots out every racial cliche and stereotype pertaining to lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing Negroes and plops each one squarely in front of us with a t h u n d e r o u s t h u d . It's such goodnaturedly, innocently "racist" nonsense that read ing the mater ial today is a liberating escape from the constraints of  cultural propriety. Among McDaniel's note-wo rthies t ach ievem ents is the fact that there is only one page during the en tirety of this book in which Shoo gafoots does not perspire profusely. This is Good Racist Art of  unusual merit and skill. Some have noted the apparent influence of  George McManus's art on McDaniel's work, but I fear this is simply more irres ponsible, fanciful, far-fetched speculation from critics who persistentl y read far too much into far too little. There is a passing, coincidental resemblance to McManus, I admit; however, an unmistakable key to the radical difference in styles (and telling point of contrast in racial pride) is the fashion in which the Pullman steward pic tured in several in several panels of Clean Fun Fun holds the cigar in his mou th poin ting down, whereas Jiggs's cigar in McManus's Bringing Up Father  is always pictu red poin ting up (a symbolic characteristic sympto

matic of McManus's perennial optimism). If  any "influences" in McD ani el's work are apparent, they can be traced to E.C. Segar and George Herriman. T h e complex themes in this complicated book are by no means simple. McDaniel skillfully examines the meaning o f  the work  ethic in the rural South, fantasy, heroism, death, Shoogafoots's extraordinary fear of  authority, and the relativity of  t r u t h , all within the simple framework of this 28-page book. Finally, there has probably never been another comic in which the commonplace violence of everyday life among Southern Negroes ("humorous situ ations," indeed!) has been so scrupulously or movingly catalogued. A masterwork of slapstick slapstick m etaphysics and an exampl e of pure caricatural form by an authentic American primitive, Clean Fun, starring Shoogafoots Jones is long over due serious critical recognition for its epistemological t r u t h . It warran ts a place in the histo ry of com ic art equal to that assigned to Scrub Me, Mama, With A in the annuals of filmed   Boogie-Woogie Beat  animation. T h e pages of this book also contain "short, pithy, inspirational epigrams" taken from the book  Stray Thoughts by Crump J. Stickland, once listed by Southern Baptists as "one of the five best books in print for young people." A sample: "Don't waste vour time trying to figure out why a black hen lays a white egg. Yo u better get the egg." Exactly.

Editor's Note: Despite his years of  research in the field, Professor Grabbe has been unable to locate answers to a number of  questions. Who wrote and drew Cowboy Love #1? Wh o is the mysteri ously gifted ' M c D a n i e l ' who wrote and drew Srtooga foots Jonesl Whatever became of Visual Medium and Take Cover!? Cover!? Wh y have the creators of WHAM-O GIANT C O M I C S remained anonymous all these years? Jour nal readers who can provide relevant historical, social, or critical data to supple ment any aspect of Professor Gra bb e's im portant work, or who feel they may have unearthed a "neglected masterpiece" of  possible interest to fandom at large, are en couraged to forward any such materials to Professor Grabbe, c/o The Comics JournalProfessor  Grabbe will acknowledge impor tant con tri but ion s in possible future ar ticles. To this Journal readers who wish to submit copies or Xeroxes of impossibly obscure or esoteric "neglected master pieces," Professor Grabbe cannot return your submissions, but will send a copy of  the 1951 Bo b Powell giveaway, Major  Ina pak  The Space Ace #1, to the ten most bizarre, outlandish, or interesting submis sions received. ' •

AARDVARK-VANAHEEVI •

Cerebus the Aardvark #85 (4120)

AIRCEL INDUSTRIES •

Elflord #2 (April)

•

Samurai #5 (April)

• • • • • • • • • •

Archie #342 (4/1) Archie's Double Digest #23 (4/8) Archie's Pals and Gals #182 (4/1) Betty and Me #152 (4/22) Everything's Archie #124 (4/15) Jughead with Archie Digest #75 (4/15) Laugh Comics Digest #65 (4/1) Life With Archie #255 (4/8) Little Archie Digest #21 (4/22) Pep #407 (4/8)

ARCHIE COMICS

BAM •

PRODUCTIONS

Adam and Eve A.D. #4 (April)

BLACKTHORNE • • • • • •

Dick Tracy Book Six (April) Jerry Iger's Golden Features #2 All Wonder Boy issue. (April) Kerry Drake Book One (April) Nervous Rex #5 (April) Salimba in 3 -D #2 (April) Tales of the Jackalope #2 By R.L . Crabb. (April)

CATALAN • •

Elemental #7 By Bill Willingham. (4/18) Mage #12 (4/18) Robotech, the New Generation #7 (4/18) Robotech Masters #7 (4/4)

COMICS INTERVIEW •

Southern Knights Graphic Novel With art by Butch Guice. (April)

COMICS JOURNAL •

Comics Journal #108 Interview with Milton Caniff. (April)

CONTINUITY •

Echo of Futurepast of Futurepast #9 (April)

•

Armor and Silverstreak #2 (April)

DC • • • • • • • • • •  a • • • • • •  a • • • • • • • • •

98

'Mazing Man #8 (4/15) New Teen Titans #23Cover by George Perez.

• • • • • • • •

The Outsiders #10 (4/8) Roots of the of the Swamp Thing #2 (4/8) Secret Origins #5 The Crimson Avenger. (4/15) Sgt. Rock #411 (4/22) The Shadow #4 By Howard Chaykin. Sgt. Rock #4U (4/22) The Shadow #4 By Howard Chaykin. (4/29) Son of Ambush of Ambush Bu g #2 (4/8) Star Trek #29 (4/15) Superman #422 Cover by Brian Bolland. (4/15) Superman Annual #12 Cover by Bolland. (4/29) Swamp Thing #51 Art by Veitch. (4122) Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes of Super-Heroes #338 (4/29) Tales of the of  the Teen Titans #68 Cover by Barry Windsor-Smith. (4/8) Teen Titans Annual #2 With art by Jim Baikie and John Byrne. (5/6) Teen Titans Spotlight #1 By Wolfman and Cowan. (5/6) Vigilante #32 (4/8) Warlord #108 (4122) Who's Who #18 (4/22)

(4/22)

O • • 0 • • • • • •  a

EAGLE COMICS • • •

Judge Dredd #34 (4/29) Judge Dredd: Th e Early Cases #6 (3/25) 2^000 A. D Monthly #5 Mostly written by Alan Moore. (4/29)

COMMUNICATIONS

The Paper Man Full-color graphic album by Milo Manara. (April) Zeppelin Full-color graphic novel by Pepe Moreno. (April)

COMICO • • • •

• •

COMICS

Action #582 Art by Schaffenberger. (4/29) Adventures of the Outsiders #36 (4122) Amethyst #16 (4/15) Ail-Star Squadron #60 (5/6) Angel Love #1 By Barbara Slate. (4/8) Batman #398 (4/15) Batman Annual #10 Art by Cowan and Gior dano. (4/29) Blue Beetle #3 (4/15) Blue Devil #27 (4/22) Booster Gold #7 (4122) Hunt The Dark Knight (#3) By Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, Lynn Varley. (4122) DC Challenge #10 By Mishkin. Swan, and Austin. (4/29) DC Comics Presents #96 Featuring the Blue Devil, with art by Joe Staton. (4/8) Detective Comics #565 (4129) Electric Warrior #4 (4/15) Elvira's House of Mystery of  Mystery #6 (4/15) of Firestorm #50 (4/8) Fury of Firestorm Green Lantern Corps #203 (4/22) Hawkman #1 (4/29) Heroes Against Hunger #1 Cover by Adams and Giordano, (4/29) Hex #12 (4/8) Infinity. Inc. #29 (4/22) Justice League of America of America #253(4/8) Legend of Wonder of Wonder Woman #4 (4/8) Legion of Super-Heroes of Super-Heroes #25 (4/15) Lois Lane #1 By Newell and Morrow. (5/6) Lords of the of the Ultra-Realm #3 (5/6)

ECLIPSE COMICS •

Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters #2

• • • • • • • • •

Alien Encounters #6 (4/1) Alien Terror in 3-D #1 (4/29) DNAgents #8 (4/29) . Fear Book #1 (4/22) Laser E r a s e r . . .and Pressbutton #6 (4/29) The Masked Man #9 (4/8) Miracleman #8 By Moore and Beckum. (4/29) Scout #6 (4/1) Seduction of the of  the Innocent #6 (4/8)

• • •

Amazing Heroes #94 (4/15) Amazing Heroes #95 (4/30) Critters #3 With work  by Gallacci, Milton, and Sakai. (4/1) Doomsday Squad #1 Reprinting the Gill-Byrne  Doomsday +1 series. Dalgoda back-up. (4/15) Focus on Jack Cole By Ron Goulart (4/30) Journey #27 (4/30) Lloyd Llewellyn #3 By Daniel Clowes (4/30) Love and Rockets #16 (4/20) Threat #3 Cover by Gary Fields. (4/5)

(4/1)

FANTAGRAPH3CS

• • • • • •

BOOKS

Lonely Nights #1 By Dori Seda. (April) Watch Out Comix #1 Solo comic by Vaughn Frick. (April)  a Weirdo #16 (2/14) • •

MARVEL COMICS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

(4/22) Power Pack #25(4/8) Savage Sword of Conan of  Conan #126 (4/8) Squadron Supreme #12 Final issue. (4/1) Thor #370 (4/22) O Transformers #19 (4122) #11 (4/8) • Vision and Scarlet Witch #11 of  Spider-Man #17 (4/1) • Web of Spider-Man  a West Coast Avengers #11 (4/1)  a Wonderman #1 (1119) • X-Factor #7 Written by Louise Simonson. (4/22) • X-Men #206 (4/15) • • • •

MARVEL EPIC COMICS • • • • •

M A R V E L STAR COMICS Droids #3 (4/22) HeathclifT #9 (4/8) Misty #5 Guest starring Millie the Model. (4/1) O Peter Porker #9 (4/1) • Thundercats #5 (4/1)

• Top Dog #9 (4/22)

MEGATON

Fantasy Book (June) With work  by Quagmire.

•

(April) •

American Flagg! #32 (4/11) Badger #14 (3/28) Grimjack #25 (4/4) Jon Sable, Freelance #39 (4/18) Nexus #23 (3/28)

•

The Official Justice League of America of America Index #1 George Perez cover. (4/8) The Official Official Ju stic e League of America of America Index

•

Gizmo #2 (4/30)

•

Prime Slime Tales #1 (4/1)

J.Q. E N T E R P R I S E S •

• •

Death Rattle #4 With work  by Holmes, Baron, Jaxon, Keith. (April) Megaton Man #9 (April) The Spirit #18 (April)

LAST GASP •

SIRIUS COMICS •

Cutey Bunny #6 (April)

KITCHEN SINK PRESS •

Black Zeppelin #7 (4/25) Cecil Kunkle Special #1 (4/25) Flaming Carrot #12 #12 (4/11) Maxwell Mouse Follies #2 (4/11) O Ms. Tree #29 (4/25) • Revolver #6 (4/11)

• • •  a

, •

#2 (4/22)

STUDIOS

RENEGADE PRESS

Whisper #2 (4/4)

INDEPENDENT COMICS GROUP •

New Triumph #5 (April)

MIRAGE

• Shatter #4 (Delayed) (4/18) •

Megaton #4 (April)

MATRIX GRAPHIC SERIES FIRST COMICS

• • • • •

Alien Legion #14 (4/22) Dreadstar #25 (4/15) Elfquest #D (4/22) Groo the Wanderer #18 (4/8) Moonshadow #8 (4/1)

• • •

FANTASY BOOK •

Alpha Flight #37 (4/8) The Avengers #270 (4/15) Amazing Spider-Man #279 Art by Rick Leonardi. (4/8) Captain America #320 (4/8) Conan the Barbarian #185 (4115) Dakota North #2 (4/1) Daredevil #233 Final issue by Miller and Mazzuchelli. (4/1) Dr. Strange #78 (4/8) Doctor Who #23 (4/22) #11 (4/15) The Eternals #11 Fantastic Four #293 (4/22) Fantastic Four Index #9 (4/8) G.I. Jo e #50 Double-sized issue. (4/15) Incredible Hulk #322 (4/15) Iron Man #209 (4/22) Marvel Age #41 (4/15) Marvel Saga #9 (4/15) Marvel Tales #190 (4115) New Mutants #42 Inked by Terry Austin. (4/1) The Official Handbook o f the Marvel Universe #9 (4/8) Peter Parker, Spectacular Spider-Man #117

Cannibal Romances #1 Work  by Seda, Mavrides, Lunch, Lay, and others. (April)

Greylore #5 (4/29)

VORTEX COMICS •

Stig's Inferno #6 (April)

•

Vortex #13 (April)

•

Fantasci #1 (April)

•

Unicorn Isle #1 By Marrs and Koenig. (April)

WaRP GRAPHICS

\efore  STEVE CANYON  there was  THE PIRATES. .. ERRY AND  THE 

Before TERRY there  was  was  the

III

bookshelf

CCMDLETE

I K I IFI I I

f

IKwOn Camiff7 INTRODUCTION BY RICK MARSCHALL FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

ickie Dare ilton Can iff's first great ^venture strip omplete in one volume /ailable in regular softcover or nited hardcover edition; / " x 11", 156 pages vital addition to the collection any fan of Caniff's work 2

• Please send  me copies of  Dickie Dare, softcover. I have en  closed  $12.95 per copy in U.S. funds, plus $1.50 per copy for postage & handling. (O ustside U.S., $20.00 ppd.) • Please send  me copies of Dickie Dare, limited hardcover edi  tion. I have enclosed  $30.00 per copy in U.S. Funds, plus $2.00 per copy   for postage & handling. (Outside U.S., $43.00 ppd.)  Name  Address

City

State

 Zip

Make payable/mail to:

Fantagraphics Books, 4359 Cornell Roa d, Agoura, CA 91301

PICK OF T H E L I T T E R .

FEATURING THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF USAGI YOJIMBO

GNUFF

BIRTHRIGHT

by Stan Sakai

by Freddy Milton

by Steven A. Gallacci

The exploits of a ronin rabbit, as he roams the countryside of medieval Japan in search of  adventure.. .as well as a meal and a place to sleep!

A trio of dragons makes the big move from the country to the city, only to be confronted with politics, anti-dragon bigotry, and household appliances!

Young Prince Alfon returns to the planet of his birth to reclaim the throne from the insurgent military govern ment that he believes slew his father and mother!

PLUS: Special features such as: a guest appearance from Cutey Bunny, by Joshua Quagmire and Dave Kazaleh 's new comic. The Adventures of Captain lack; a funny-animal detec Garcia; a preview of Mike Kazaleh's tive story by Tom (Spaced) Stazer; a special cover painting by Ken Macklin; and much more! AVAILABLE IN ALL GOOD COMICS SHOPS -Or send $9.00 for a six-issue subscription (or $2.25 for a sample issue) to CRITTERS, 4359 Cornell Road, Agoura, CA 91301. We promise you won't regret it!

ON SALE EVERY MONTH FROM FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS