Lust, beavers, and Stiggs.
Chris V sez
“My only contribution to this discussion would be that Alan Moore did eventually write American Flagg for a limited number of issues. While I agree that the quality of the series did seriously drop after those first twelve issues, I’m sure that Moore’s name gave the book another bump in popularity for those few issues.”
I think Moore’s involvement may very well have given the series a little push, I’m not sure. But I do remember that those stories (illustrated by Don Lomax) which ran as a back-up in six issues of the series before culminating in the full-length #27, may not have had the most positive critical response. Now, I may be remembering just one specific contemporary review from, say, Amazing Heroes or Comics Journal, but that person’s opinion has colored my perception of this particular story for decades.
American Flagg! had always had a sexually-charged element to the stories…I mean, it is a Howard Chaykin creation, after all. And it was always within the, let’s say, PG-13-esque levels most of the First Comics kept around, sans naughty words. This Moore/Lomax story is more centered around the erotic shenanigans of the series’ setting (including a frisky Krazy Kat parody involving Flagg!‘s Raul the Cat. It kinda pushed the limits of what First allowed in their books, but I’m still surprised the story wasn’t collected into a single volume to sell with a big “BY ALAN MOORE” above the title on the cover.
So some of you folks had some bemused responses to the tip sheet’s comparison of a book’s potential to that of Time Beavers, the 1985 First Comics original graphic novel written and drawn by Tim Truman. Now, I have an unfortunate confession, that, despite being a Truman fan, despite absorbing all those Grimjacks he worked on despite having plenty of opportunity to pick a copy up for myself…I never read it.
YES YES I KNOW, don’t yell at me, I just bought a cheap one off eBay and I’ll read that when it comes in. Not that I needed yet another item to throw onto the enormous “hurry up and read this already” pile. But I’ll skip this one to the front of the line and try to give you some kind of review in the near future.
“And, having read the Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of OC & Stiggs they’re clearly an inspiration for DR & Quinch but largely dissimilar; there’s a shared argot and sense of unrestrained mayhem, but not much else is copied across. Certainly little of the 1970s misogyny…”
That’s good to hear that it was more a case of “inspiring” and not “outright plagiarism.” I wasn’t sure myself, having heard about the connection multiple times over the years. The similarity between the features’ names didn’t help. My exposure to O.C. and Stiggs is almost solely from the 1987 film adaptation directed by Robert Altman, which I bought from a closeout video tape bin in a movie rental shop. Not the greatest movie I’ve ever seen, but I’m pretty sure I got my three bucks worth.
I mean, Martin Mull and Jane Curtin? Dennis Hopper? Gotta be worth at least a look, right? I may want to rewatch it myself, with all that free time I obviously have.
And, apparently, O.C. and Stiggs says Trans Rights? It’s the only way I have to explain the flag, but I haven’t seen the movie….
The movie is… very odd. I like it a lot, but it’s… well, it’s Robert Altman doing his take on a teen sex movie.
I also have to note that the original “The Utterly Monstrous Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs” issue of National Lampoon is among the funniest things I’ve ever read. It’s rampant with early-80s fratto misogyny and racism and classism and ableism and ALL of the isms, but it does so in a way that lets you know that every single person who is any of these -ists is, in fact, a massive asshole.
I haven’t seen O.C. and Stiggs, but Altman’s filmography is unusually erratic for an auteur: for every M.A.S.H. and The Player there’s a Dr T and the Women.
I have yet to watch “O.C. and Stiggs,” but I just stumbled on Philip Kaufman’s 1979 film “The Wanderers” on YouTube the other day and it has got to be some sort of an auteurist masterpiece on youth sub-culture gangs in New York in the early ’60s. I highly recommend it to those who have never seen it–at times it actually felt like I wasn’t watching a movie but a documentary instead; until the surreal
scenes kicked in.
I always thought of American Flagg as an R-rated comic book back in the ’80s.
If there had been a gonzo crossover event between O.G. and Stiggs, American Flagg! no. 27, And Time Beavers would it have been titled :”Stigg-ing it to Lusty American Beavers?”
Also, back to “Fantastic Four: First Steps” speculation, since it is set elsewhere in the Multiverse, it would be great if we could get cameo appearances by other Marvel Comics characters from the early ’60s…Spider-Man, and possibly the original X-Men, original Ant-Man & the Wasp, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, and maybe Daredevil, all re-cast and presented in a retro-’60s aesthetic. At the very least it would be cool to get a re-cast, comics-accurate Namor McKenzie cameo and get a Sue Storm-Richards/Namor attraction going.
“First Comics original graphic novel”.
They also published a Grimjack GN, which I highly recommend!