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§ January 21st, 2010 § Filed under from the vast Mikester comic archives Comments Off on "GJDRKZLXCBWQ" Comics (Glenn Bray/Basil Wolverton, 1973).
This mini-comics digest features several full page gag illos of the sort Basil Wolverton was so famous for – portraits of nightmarish grotesqueries:
…as well as a handful of very short (two or three panel) gag sequences.
Don’t have a whole lot to say about this particular item, other than “drink in the beauty of that cover.” I’m pretty sure my initial exposure to Wolverton was via Mad Magazine, either from the concluding panel of “The Face upon the Floor” (reprinted in one of those Mad comic facsimiles inserted in the specials) or from one of his rare full articles in a ’70s Mad. However I first learned about him, I would generally pick up any comics that would reprint samples of his work, from the Eclipse Mr. Monster that would sometimes present a classic horror tale of his, or Fantagraphics’ several reprint books (such as Powerhouse Pepper or that Wolvertoons collection).
This item turned up in the same underground collection Das Kampf did, and as I said about that comic, mini-comics and comics digests always catch my eye. A mini-comic by Wolverton? Definitely a keeper.
Surprisingly, I found someone on Amazon selling this for $20, which I don’t think is entirely unreasonable. I wonder if anybody else is trying to sell it there, but misspelled the name? Wouldn’t be hard to do.
I still have a few more scarce-ish items from my collection in the hopper for display on my site. Hopefully you’re not sick of these yet!
When I was attending the University of California Santa Barbara, Scott Easley’s
Fresh-Man was a welcome part of every Friday’s
Daily Nexus, the school’s daily newspaper. Rocketed to UCSB from the doomed planet of Hometawn, young Chaz Kent lives among us as a mild-mannered college student. But, when danger looms, he cries out his magic word (“Werza-Pardee?”) and transforms to the cape-and-underwear clad champion of underclassmen everywhere, Fresh-Man!
The strip was a fun and amusingly drawn strip about college life (for which I, as a young college student, was the ideal audience), with problem roommates, classroom woes, some local UCSB references, and, of course, the occasional supervillain. Man, supervillains were the worst part about going to UCSB, I tell you what.
Speaking of supervillains, Fresh-Man’s arch-nemesis was the dreaded Professor F, seen here in a partial sequence taken from one of the strips:
(Before you say anything, yes, “surprise” is misspelled in that third panel. Hey, let’s see how good your spelling is when
you’re in the heat of battle!)
Professor F was based on an actual professor at the college (and who was given a nod, by name, at the beginning of said strip). A year or two later, I found myself taking an English course with this professor, and all I could think about was the fact that he was the inspiration for Professor F, and hoping that was just a humorous exaggeration of his particular grading preferences. As it turned out, I did reasonably well in his class. And yes, his hair did look like that.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this strip, and I’m glad I snapped up this collection from the college bookstore way back when. It’s a nice bit of collegiate nostalgia for me.
Looking at the Amazon listings, there only appears to be one copy for sale, at $49.95. Goodness…that’s a far cry from the $5.95 I dropped on it:
I should note that the book itself has no publication data…no publisher, no year of release, etc. The strip finished its run during (if I recall correctly) my freshman year at UCSB, and I believe the book was published sometime during my sophomore year in 1988. I’m not 100% of that 1988 publication date, but I know it’s certainly not the 1980 date I’ve seen given to it here and there on the internet.
By the way, that little green blob with the tongue at the lower left of the cover? That’s Glorp, some dorm food Fresh-Man’s roommate Oswald brought home and kept as a pet. Again, pretty much an accurate depiction of college life.
Here’s another one I’ve mentioned on the site before:
William Overgard’s
Rudy is one of the classic overlooked newspaper strips, running only for about a year or so in the mid 1980s. Rudy is a talking chimpanzee, a retired vaudeville star and stage performer, and the strip chronicles his semi-return to the outskirts of showbiz. I first encountered it during that brief period in the
Los Angeles Times…a paper we didn’t get in our household, but one I would look at on occasion at the local library. Even just the few strips I saw there, and a tantalizing review that appeared in a long-ago issue of
The Comics Journal, instilled in me the desire to track down its one and only paperback reprinting. Well, okay, that’s putting it a little dramatically, but I did keep an eye out for it at any used book stores or comic shops I happened to visit.
And of course, it takes the advent of eBay for me to finally track down the darned thing, where I managed to score a copy from there a couple of years back. I was pleased to discover that my anticipation for the item did not diminish the experience of actually having it in my hands and reading it…the linework was as finely detailed and elegant as I remembered from the strips I saw decades ago, the writing still witty and understated, preferring the subtle over the slapstick. The book is interspersed with text pieces allegedly written by Rudy himself, offering his opinions on various topics which generally would play into the next sequence of reprinted strips. It’s a wonderful presentation for these strips, giving it that touch of “Hollywood Tell-All Autobiography” that fits right in with Rudy‘s milieu. The only downside is that (I believe) there are still Rudy strips not reprinted, which will probably only happen on the extremely unlikely chance someone decides to do a Complete Rudy volume.
A quick look at Amazon has prices starting at about $35, and someone actually has a copy for $999. Why do people even do that? Are they
really hoping someone will buy a copy for that price?
Anyway, it appears I got
very lucky when I found my copy on eBay, as I didn’t pay anywhere close to that.
The Comics Journal enters this story again, after a fashion, as I need to thank former TCJ editor
Milo George for not getting into a bidding war with me over this very item. He opted not to bid on it when he saw that
I was the high bidder, for which I am very grateful.
I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about my Maxwell the Magic Cat books before on the site, but it’s been a while, and they seem to fit into my little tour of oddball books from my collection.
This was a series of four black and white staplebound books, measuring 8 1/4 by 11 inches, reprinting Alan Moore’s comic strip from
The Northant Post. The strip ran about seven years, written and drawn by Moore under the homophonic pseudonym “Jill de Ray” (after a
particularly nasty serial killer).
Here’s a sample strip from the series:
A lot of the strips were like this, metatextual examinations of the very idea of a comic strip and its format, but the strip ran the gamut from simple sight gags, to real groaners of puns, to political humor, to outright absurdity (such a favorite sequence of mine, where a snake carries on a torrid affair with Maxwell’s tail). Occasionally…well,
mostly…Moore’s artistic reach exceeded his grasp, but his gag-writing is solid and usually clever, and the general roughness of the art is just part of the charm. If the drawing were more polished, it just
wouldn’t be
Maxwell the Magic Cat.
Now, I’d originally bought volumes 1 through 3 (pictured above) as they were released, in the mid ’80s. I never saw volume 4 on the shelf, and at the time I just assumed it never came out.
Eventually, I discovered that volume 4 had been released, but for some reason it appeared to have limited distribution. I don’t know if it actually did, or if it was just hard to find in my neck of the woods, or what the deal was, but several years of casual eBay and Amazon investigations seems to bear out my belief that the fourth book is the rarest of the volumes.
Luckily, a few years back a collection came into the shop containing one of these:
That would be the folder which accompanied the Complete Maxwell the Magic Cat Set of Volumes One Through Four, and indeed, volumes one through four were to be found within. Look, it’s number four, and it’s real! It exists! And it’s totally mine now!
These four volumes comprise the entire series of strips, which ended in 1987. Rounding out the fourth volume were guest artist illustrations, including work by Gilbert Shelton, David Lloyd, Brian Bolland, and this crazily wonderful piece by Kevin O’Neill:
When the Maxwell the Magic Cat revival comes, that’s what I want to see.
I didn’t find The Complete Litter set on Amazon, but all four books are being offered individually, hence the Wall o’Banners here:
The first book’s pricing starts at about twelve bucks, the second ranges around $30, the third only has one for sale at $65, and good gravy, some hopeful seller has the fourth at $249.99. Plus, a quick eBay search reveals plenty of the first volume, one copy of the second, and none of 3 and 4. I suspect a reprint of these, perhaps collecting all the strips into one book, would be in order…but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
This hardcover book (with a leatherish-style cover) was assembled by Longmeadow Press, a publishing imprint for a U.S. bookstore chain that, among other projects, created “bargain books” for sale in those stores. To quote a former Longmeadow employee from
this interesting discussion I found, the goal was to make “high-end bargain books (i.e., they looked classy, not schlocky).” And this
Complete Frank Miller Batman book ain’t bad-looking. It has a leatherish-bound hardcover with silver lettering on the spine (along with a dark blue Batsymbol), the metallic blue and silver image on the front cover (as seen above), a bound-in blue fabric bookmark, and clean white pages with a shiny silver trim at the edges. It
should look garish, but it all seems to work together nicely, somehow. Or maybe I’m just used to it.
This book includes the entirety of The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, as well as the 1980 story “Wanted: Santa Claus – Dead or Alive” written by Denny O’Neil. Reproduction is strong, the coloring is good and faithful to the original (aside from the Santa Claus story, where the coloring is a bit slapdash, and too dark). Text pieces/forewords by Alan Moore, Richard Bruning and Miller himself are included. Of course, it’s no longer the “Complete” Frank Miller Batman, as we’ve had The Dark Knight Strikes Again and All Star Batman since then, but if anyone says this makes it the “Complete Good Frank Miller Batman,” I a’gonna punch you in the nose.
I remember the bookstore I bought this from had piles of these stacked by the entrance, and I always figured these were common as dirt. However, I hardly ever see these turn up in collections at the shop. My own copy has been a faithful companion, becoming my own definitive edition of these particular stories, which allowed me to sell off the originals. I even used it in college, during that one class where the Modern Narrative professor was cool enough to assign Dark Knight along with Don DeLillo’s White Noise. And given I was dragging it to class, the Batman book looks like it’s still brand new. That’s either a testament to the book’s durability or to my comic-fan obsessive-compulsive need to maintain that Near Mint condition.
Anyway, here’s another Amazon thing. There are plenty to be had of Complete Frank Miller Batman, apparently, starting at about eighteen bucks, and going all the way up to a dizzying $192:
(EDIT: SORRY, AMAZON LINK DEAD)Yeah, I threw in a banner for
White Noise, too. That was a pretty good book, as I recall.
ADDENDUM to the Superman Spectacular 1982 book I discussed a couple of days ago: the cowriter of the funnybook in question, Paul Kupperberg, popped up in the comments for that post (EDIT: link dead, sadly!) to briefly discuss his involvement in producing Superman stories for the overseas market. Bonus: Vinnie Colletta inking story! Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Kupperberg!
§ January 13th, 2010 § Filed under from the vast Mikester comic archives, undergrounds Comments Off on Das Kampf (Bagginer Productions/Vaughn Bodé Productions, 1977).
Das Kampf is a digest-sized collection of cartoonist Vaughn Bodé’s musings and commentary upon war, in the format of a caption beginning “WAR is…” accompanying a single panel illustration. Here are a couple of samples:
According to the printing information on the back cover, the original edition from 1963 had a print run of about 100 copies, run off a mimeograph machine.
This site has an image or two of the original version. (Also, the original 1963 publication would seem to contradict the assertion I’ve seen here and there that
Das Kampf‘s “War Is” gag format was a parody of the
Love Is… comic strip, which began in 1970.) The version I own, “the 1st comic publication” as it is described on the back cover, had a print run of 3,000. It was published in 1977, two years after Bodé’s death.
I acquired my copy as part of a largish underground comix collection bought by the store a number of years ago. Being something of a Bodé fan, and always on the lookout for odd-sized mini-comics/digests for reasons I can’t entirely explain, I decided to keep this particular item for myself. I’ve not seen another copy of this come through the shop, though a quick Googling seems to turn one up one or two for sale. Amazon has none available, but I’ll put on those product link thingies here anyway, just in case someone there decides to part with a copy of it someday:
This is kind of an oddball item that I bought off the rack from one of the eighteen 7-11s that existed in my immediate area in the early ’80s. It’s larger than standard comic book size, measuring about 8 by 11 1/2 inches, with no ads…basically a “graphic novel” at the very beginning of the 1980s wave of graphic novels from the Big Two.
Written by Bob Rozakis and Paul Kupperberg, illustrated by Adrian Gonzales and Vince Colletta, the story features a battle between Superman and his two arch-nemeses Lex Luthor and…er, Terra-Man. Terra-Man, for the uninitiated, is a space cowboy who rides a winged horse. Through space. Who fights Superman.
Yes, this was as goofy, and as incredibly awesome, as it sounds. Anyway, during the course of the story, exposure to Red Kryptonite splits Superman into Superman-Red and Superman-Blue (in a reprise of the
famous Silver Age imaginary story), and Terra-Man and Lex Luthor end up fighting Superman with magic energy channeled from another dimension, and…yeah, like that. The
Grand Comic Book Database entry has a more complete synopsis. Despite of, or more likely
because of, all the inherent goofiness in this here funnybook, it still remains a fondly nostalgic favorite of mine. Even just poking though it now for this post reminded me of just how much I enjoyed this book. I’m very pleased that 13-year-old Mike decided to pick this up.
This story was in fact originally prepared for the overseas market, and published there first before being reissued in a domestic version. Other Superman stories published about this time had their origins in DC’s foreign publishing program, including these two Gil Kane tours de force. Why this particular story was reprinted as an album rather than as a standard (albeit extra-long) comic I’m not sure, aside from testing the format in the marketplace.
Since dishing out my $1.95 for this item way back when, I’ve never seen another one, even in all the years and all the collections I’ve poked through at the shop. Even at the time, when it was brand new, I only saw it at the one convenience store I found it in, and not at any of the others I would check in my semi-regular comic-purchasing bicycle tour of Ventura County. Maybe there’s a store in, I don’t know, Idaho that has a two-foot stack of these and desperately wishing to unload ’em, but they’re sure scarce around here.
Amazon has a few for sale in the $15 to $20 range, which doesn’t seem too unreasonable to me, given its apparent scarcity:
Should also note: beautiful cover on this book, by the way. Certainly very eye-grabbing.
This little paperback book (with dustjacket) by Mark Beyer only measures about 5 by 5 inches, but packs in plenty of black humor and peculiar art. The premise is that a couple, Amy and Jordan, start their day by getting fired from their jobs, and things only get progressively worse from there. There are beheadings, prison stays, giant swelling heads, hospital horrors, and more, made even more terrifying by the off-kilter, almost childlike, illustrations of the characters and their miserable situations.
“I saved her, but her leg has dissolved!”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My head’s starting to swell up.”
“Amy, the doctor says I’m basically alright, but he says you’re going to need some internal organ transplants.”
a typical circumstance
Amy and Jordan face their endless string of misfortunes with a mix of optimism, depression, and occasional outright terror, all for our amusement. And it
is amusing, as things pile on and the two find themselves inextricably trapped by the workings of fate.
It’s a neat little book that grabbed my eye when I spotted it on a convention table over twenty years ago, and even now, as I was flipping through it to write this post, I ended up just reading the whole thing again. And I was reminded of my cousin, who was only about 11 or 12 at the time I bought the book, picking it up and reading it straight through during one of her family’s visits. “Poor Amy and Jordan!” I remember her saying once or thrice during her perusal.
The book’s out of print, but I put up an Amazon link where you can find some slightly pricey used copies at (right now) $18 a pop. There’s also (at the time I write this) a new copy for $180, which seems a tad much, but hey, if he can get it, more power to him.
So, many years ago, even before my entry into the high-finance world of comics retailing, I was trying to put together a run of the ’85 indie mini-series MacKenzie Queen by Bernie Mireault. I found the first four easily enough, but the fifth one took some searching. Like, a lot of searching. More searching than I should have expected, given that I began looking for these issues just a couple of years after they were originally released. But then again, this was in the midst of the black and white glut and bust, so it probably shouldn’t surprise me that an obscure b&w title from an even more obscure publisher would have slipped through the cracks.
But, eventually, after about five or six years of scouring quarter bins, and looking through collections (for by this time, I was in the funnybook-sellin’ business), I finally found a copy of MacKenzie Queen #5 in the quarter box at a (now defunct) store in Santa Barbara. And because I was a “fellow professional” (i.e. worked at another shop about 45 minutes south), the guy at the shop gave me a discount, so I got issue 5 for even less than twenty-five cents. Seems almost anticlimactic, now that I think about it. (And I should note, I was buying some other things at the same time, and I didn’t ask for the discount…he knew me from our intershop dealings, and just offered it to me. Honest. As cheap as I may be, even I wouldn’t ask for a break on a quarter comic! Really. Would I lie?)
Now here’s the thing that frustrates me.
I’m sure a lot of you comic buyers out there have had that one comic you’ve been seeking for ages, and once you find it, suddenly…you can’t stop finding more copies of it. It just seems like it’s everywhere. I mean, it’s not just me, is it?
There was an issue of Zot! that was like this for me…I couldn’t find #5 (again, a fifth issue…what’s up with that?), looked for a year or two, and finally found it. And then, of course, every time I turn around I find more copies of the damned thing. But for whatever reason, that wasn’t nearly as frustrating as the whole MacKenzie Queen thing. And yes…once I found MacKenzie Queen #5, I started seeing more of them. And every time I would see one, it would remind me about how long I’ve looked for that issue.
Even just this past Thursday afternoon, I was going through a long box of books we acquired from a closed comic shop a few months back…just one of those low priority jobs that I get around to whenever I’m tired of dealing with restocking or mail order or beating the employees. And, of course, here’s what I find in the box:
And here’s what I thought when I saw these books:
“Well, shit.”And let me note that no other issues from this series were in the box. Just #5. The comic collecting gods are mocking me.
Told you this is a point of frustration that has no real good reason. Any reasonable human would have been over this by now.
By the way, I’ve been looking for an issue of Yummy Fur (#9) for, like, twenty years now. I know as soon as I find that, I’ll suddenly be hip-deep in issue #9s, because the universe is laughing at me.
On a related note, because this post isn’t long enough yet, I was double-checking some dates over on the essential Grand Comics Database, and noticed that the entry for MacKenzie Queen #1 has a note that reads “may be reprinted in trade paperback.”
Well, I can verify, for the one or two fellas from the GCD who are kind enough to read my site, that the MacKenzie Queen trade paperback does exist. I bought back when I expected I’d never find the #5…even though I did have the story already, I still bought that #5 when I found it, because, well, you know how comic fans are.
Here’s a scan of the cover, direct from my bookshelf and onto your computer screen:
Published by Caliber Press in 1990. Still in black and white. Paper smells kind of funny, like most Caliber Press books. If you GCD guys need a larger pic, just let me know where to send it.
In other news…well, it’s not a lot of news, but these items have been brought to my attention, and they must be revealed to the public!
From the comments, commentator Michael points out [EDIT: Haloscan comment link dead] this collection of graffiti photos that has an image of interest to Swamp Thing fans about nine pics down. Of all the things (har) I never expected to see spray-painted on a wall….
And Johnny Bacardi was kind enough to direct me to a Presidential/Vice Presidential pairing that I can get behind. I’d of course would want the VP candidate in the President slot, and vice versa, but I could live with the ticket as it stands.
(post updated 8/2016)
So occasionally I dip into the vast Mikester Comic Archives and pull out a run of books to reread and, hopefully, re-enjoy…sometimes spurred on when I come across the same books while working at the shop and I think, “hey, these were pretty good, I should read them again.”
One of the recent titles I poured through recently, as the scan might hint, was Walt Simonson’s run on Orion. Coming on the heels of the previous Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, presumably the powers that be at DC Comics thought a title focusing on one character rather than an all-encompassing New Gods might catch on more than previous attempts with this particular batch of Jack Kirby’s characters. Simonson is one of the few cartoonists to really “get” the Fourth World, and this title was filled with his usual fast-paced action and wackiness, on top of the inherent nuttiness of Kirby’s creations.
Rereading Orion makes me wish Simonson was given full reign on another monthly title again…I know he’s working on the new Elric series, but that’s not quite the same. His work on Thor really was the peak for that the title, and everything that’s followed in that series has suffered by comparison. Simonson turned Thor into a frog for several issues, for God’s sake, and managed to make it work…that’s talent to reckon with! (That frog storyline is even referenced in Orion at one point.)
Next on the reread list is Power of Shazam, which was a gorgeous-looking book, with Peter Krause and Mike Manley on art chores at first, and Jerry Ordway (who painted the wonderful covers for the whole run) finishing up on the interiors at the end of the run. The late Curt Swan popped in for a guest-penciller appearance once or twice as well. Ordway also provided the scripts, which…well, seemed a little rough around the edges sometimes. The dialogue was a little wonky, and stories seemed to end when the book ran out of pages, rather than build to any kind of conclusion.
Despite my minor qualms, my memories of the book are that it was a fun and enjoyable title, walking that fine line between the whimsy of the original Captain Marvel stories of the ’40s and ’50s and the tastes of modern comic fans. Ordway even managed to work in Hoppy the Marvel Bunny and come up with a new origin for Mr. Tawky Tawny! Besides, any comic where you can send away for a decoder card can’t be all bad! One oddity from the series that I was reminded of last night, as I read the first couple of issues, was that the teacher from Calvin & Hobbes, Mrs. Wormwood, is also Billy Batson’s teacher…now there’s an odd in-joke.
In other (old) news:
Here’s an old article I came across about superhero movies (it mentions the possibility of the forthcoming Hellboy movie, for example). Of interest is a list of “best” and “worst” super-movies…Swamp Thing is on the “Worst” list, naturally, and apparently some kind of typo put Batman Returns on the “Best” list. Also of note is a sidebar regarding the troubled attempts at a Fantastic Four movie.
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