“Any Time Is Toad Time.”
Added another old comic to the personal collection this week, the relatively hard-to-find 1970 underground Tales of Toad by a pre-Zippy the Pinhead Bill Griffith:
It’s one of those comics I’ve kinda/sorta wanted to get, though all three issues of this series was reprinted in a good-sized anthology book of Griffith’s material some years back. But it’s nice to have The Original Thing…it’s like my semi-ongoing attempts to acquire the first 25 issues of Cerebus that I already have in the Swords of Cerebus reprint books.
Anyway, since I got a #1 in my hands, I went ahead and kept the 2nd issue that I’ve had floating around the shop for some time. Now I just need a #3 to show up eventually. I remember at the previous place of employment we had all three issues, and I probably should’ve picked ’em up then. But I also think that about the two copies of Cerebus #1 we had (original and counterfeit) and oh well.
I wanted to acknowledge the passing of comics artist Tim Sale, probably most famous for Batman: The Long Halloween, but I’m more a Superman: For All Seasons fan myself.
A unique talent whose contributions to the medium were always a special event. He’ll be missed.
I also saw that Everett Peck, probably best known in comics for Duckman, passed away this week.
I remember getting this in at the shop back in 1990, thinking “huh, what the heck is this” and taking a copy. Very weird and funny, and I was probably just as surprised as Peck was when it became an animated TV show. I honestly didn’t know much about him, so that article I linked was quite informative as to his actual breadth of work.
It’s a hard week for losing unique talents…my condolences to the friends, families, and fans of both Sale and Peck.
Pre-Zippy? It says right there in the corner “And Zippy!” Perhaps an origin story? (Wouldn’t the movie “Freaks” be the origin story, though?)
I had no idea the character ever appeared in comics before it was a comic strip. I used to love that strip, until the local rag (Washington Post) yanked it when they shrank their comics to two pages several years ago. Took out Mary Worth too, sadly. I don’t remember what else we lost. Maybe Wizard of Id, but I don’t miss that much.
Zippy the Pinhead first appeared in Real Pulp Comics #1 published in March 1971, so yes this Tales of the Toad #1 is pre-Zippy. So was the original Zippy comic strip syndicated by The Underground Press Syndicate or self-syndicated?
Thelonius_Nick – like Steven said, that Tales of Toad #1 was issued prior to Zippy’s first appearance. The second Tales of Toad came out after that issue of Real Pulp. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear!
How many issues of Cerebus from 1-25 do you have? I was heavy into Cerebus for a long time. I’ve kind of walked away from Sim a bit, although I do have the Alex Raymond book here to read at some point…
RE: Tim Sale, did you ever get a sense of what your customers thought of his work? His art was so wonky and esoteric that it always struck me odd that he became so popular with the mainstream. He was never a natural draftsman, but he had such an exceptional design sense that he was able to more than compensate for whatever he lacked as a traditional figurative artist. A real talent. He’ll be missed.
I guess that’s a broader question: When accounting for the era in which each was at his/her creative peak, are stylized, design-centric cartoonists (Sale, Simonson, Kirby, Mignola) more popular with mainstream customers than traditional, naturalistic draftsmen like Neal Adams, George Perez, John Byrne or any of their imitators? Or are consumers more conservative and literal in their tastes (not that that’s a good thing or a bad thing)?
[…] A couple of questions from last Friday’s posting: […]