OF IRVING KLAW
Sluggo Saturday #41.
OF IRVING KLAW
OF IRVING KLAW
I cause beautiful things to happen.
Inspired by Employee Aaron’s quickie sketch in yesterday’s post, longtime customer Gary (creator of the infamous Frog by Day comic) generated a more fully-rendered version for the delight and amazement of all. I mean, damn, look at that. Who wouldn’t want to read that comic? And check out that elephant. That’s too cute for words, that is.
In other news:
• Another customer of mine, Jim Kingman, explores a bit of comics history regarding DC’s fantasy books of the 1970s and their distribution.
• Did you know that internet pal Andrew is doing 28 Days of Jack of Hearts for the month of February? It’s totally true.
And Bully the Little Stuffed Bull is doing 365 Days with Hank McCoy, the ever-lovin’ blue-furred Beast from the X-Men!
• A few days ago I was going to say a few words about all that hoohar regarding alleged follow-ups to Watchmen, but Tom kinda beat anything I could add.
Also, would still totally read that.
• And don’t forget, I’m still taking questions in the comments for this post. Feel free to ask away!
A giant mosquito on top of a tiny elephant.
It’s like a ready-made symbolic representation of something:
Like the mosquito could be labeled “DC/MARVEL” and the elephant can be, I don’t know, “THE DIRECT MARKET.” Whee, instant editorial cartoon of…dubious meaning, I guess. It came about when, at the end of the day, Employee Aaron got his hands on a piece of paper and asked if I wanted him to draw anything, and I told the very thing that’s in the subject line of this post. So there you go. And yes, maybe it’s a regular-sized elephant and a really freakin’ huge mosquito, or a regular-sized mosquito and a very tiny elephant. But whatever.
Anyway, I didn’t ask you here to show you that. I asked you all to meet me here today for you to ask me questions. Yes, it’s been about a year since the last time I did this (though that “question time” tag brings up a post from 2007, and I know I did it more recently than that), but I think it’s been long enough. So, you, my internet pals, know the routine…please drop a question in the comments section for this post, and, in a few days (let’s say, Monday) I’ll start answering them. As usual, try to keep ’em clean and friendly and not too terribly nosy, and at least kinda related to things on this site. And as before, I reserve the right to reject questions, but I haven’t so far. (Don’t take that as a challenge, by the way!)
If you have any questions, please drop ’em in the comment box down there. I always enjoy doing this and I hope you folks get something out of it, too. (And, since it happened the last couple of times I did this…please don’t answer my questions for me by responding to them in the comments. Thank you!)
This is only just barely a spoiler post for last week’s JSA episode of SMALLVILLE.
So young Clark Kent, who is now apparently a man in his 30s and an established reporter for the Daily Planet but still isn’t Superman yet, is in the dilapidated former headquarters for the long-disbanded Justice Society of America. Wandering about the main room, he pulls covers off of old display cases and the JSA meeting table, and from this painting:
Well, let’s consider this for a moment. One, this means someone in the Smallville universe actually dressed like Mr. Terrific, whom you can see on the end there, “FAIR PLAY” on his belt an’ all. But, you know, that’s okay, because all things considered, we probably shouldn’t be splitting hairs over who has the goofiest costume. And at least he had a proper superhero costume, Clark.
Second, the Spectre is on the team. The ghostly incarnation of the Wrath of God. All-powerful, entirely horrifying. Turns people into wood and cuts ’em up with chainsaws. Okay, that was more ’70s Spectre than JSA-era, but still, a superpowered ghost who acts as an agent of the Almighty exists in the Smallville universe. Though, as I noted on the Twitter last night, I really kinda hope the Smallville version of the Spectre is just a guy in white body paint and green Speedos who runs around shouting “WooOOoo! I’m a ghost!”
Third, Hawkman tells Clark that he and his team were active “before they were in diapers.” Er, before Clark and his friends were in diapers, that is. So assuming Clark’s age in the show is — maybe early 20s? — and given the apparent ages of the JSA members, that would put Smallville‘s Golden Age (as it is more or less described in dialogue) in the mid to late 1980s. So we had Reagan (and later, Bush Sr.) as President, Billy Idol, Members Only jackets, Charles in Charge, and the JSA. Sure, why not.
READ MORE ABOUT IT: Relive some of the highlights of Twitter’s “Drunkville” liveblogging at Chris Sims’ website, with special guest star Kevin Church.
CZAR CHASM #1 (C&T Graphics, 1987).
I picked up a copy of this black and white small press anthology magazine in those long-ago days prior to my entry into the funnybook selling business. In fact, if I recall correctly, this magazine was in a stack of books being offered “FREE with $10 Purchase” (or something like that). Anyway, I grabbed it partially because of my interest in sampling a lot of the black and white indies at the time (and the ’80s were a real heyday for that sort of thing), but mostly because I saw Cynicalman creator Matt Feazell‘s name on the cover.
As it turned out, this wasn’t Feazell’s usual stick-figure style…actually, it was a story that had been drawn back in ’81:
However, there was a stick-figure style story elsewhere in the anthology (The Stick Dick in “Vengeance Day” by Eric Mayer), as well as a Morty the Dog story by Steve Willis and a Mightyguy lead story by Tim Corrigan. The magazine contains mostly short humor strips like the above (though the Feazell strip is more “slice of life”), and there is one horror strip that seems somewhat out of place. But overall, this is an entertaining mix of cartooning styles, some more polished than others, but all demonstrating an honest, homemade expressiveness that your typical 30-part superhero crossover punch-em-up can’t match.
The black and white boom of the 1980s did result in a lot of junk, but it did occasionally come up with a bit of enjoyable oddball weirdness like Czar Chasm, and I kind of miss that.
In which I use the phrase “squared-off udder teats.”
Things I can never get enough of: Batman just tooling around the skies of Gotham in his Bat-jetpack:
This is from the fourth season animated series episode “Critters,” in which an evil farmer sends mutated animals to do his evil bidding. Like, for example, this giant Jack Kirby-esque cow:
Even down to the Kirby-style squared-off udder teats:
I felt a little weird for noticing this, but later, when I listened to the commentary track, the guys who actually did the show made sure to point out the Kirby udder as well, so I guess I’m…well, still a bit weird for noticing this.
An interesting thing about the commentary track…they just state outright that the reason they’re doing a commentary for this episode is because it’s one of the most hated of the series. And not just by the fans….even some of these folks in the commentary said they thought the story “sucked” when they got their hands on it…but as the episode progressed, the guys very clearly enjoyed it and its goofy humor. The elderly farmer who holds his own in hand-to-hand combat against Batman, the giant insect invasion of Gotham, Robin’s exclamation of “Holy Cow!” (with Batgirl’s response “You had to say it!”), mutant chickens versus a blimp…there’s plenty to enjoy if you don’t take everything too seriously.
The story is by Steve Gerber, who gets name checked during the commentary for his Howard the Duck and Man-Thing comics work, and the script is by Joe Lansdale, so you’ve got a very strange mix of Gerber’s worldview and Lansdale’s quirky dialogue, which, the creators of the show admit, was probably too peculiar for some viewers. But I’m fans of both these guys, and I thought the episode was a hoot.
In related news, I was recently processing a bunch of Batman comics from the ’70s and ’80s at the shop, and looking at the covers, it struck me that seeing a comic where it’s just a plain ol’ “Batman vs. the Penguin” story is almost kind of quaint. No crossovers, no extended special event storylines, no re/de/construction of decades-old characters, no stunt-casting of celebrity creators (or at least a lot fewer of those elements)…just the Penguin committing bird-themed crimes and shooting his umbrella gun at Batman and Robin, and he goes to jail at the end. Stirred a strange bit of nostalgia in me…probably the same nostalgia nerve that Batman: The Animated Series so successfully hits. Or “punches,” more appropriately.
Everyone loves Spunky!
So anyway, that fourth-season episode of Batman: The Animated Series, “Old Wounds,” which explains the rift between Batman and Dick Grayson, the original Robin…the one that leads to Dick becoming Nightwing?
Barbara (Batgirl) Gordon doesn’t know the Dynamic Duo’s secret identities at this point, but asks Bruce what’s bothering Dick. Bruce decides to reveal his and Dick’s double-life to Barbara, and, only saying “follow me,” pushes open the grandfather clock to reveal the secret cave entrance and walk down the stairs, with Barbara quite a ways behind:
And this is an awfully long set-up just to note that as I was watching this scene, I briefly thought “Barbara probably thinks this path leads to Bruce and Dick’s sex dungeon” and that all kinds of horrible possibilities of just what caused the rift were crossing her mind.
That’s a horrible thing to think about a Batman cartoon, anyway. I’m not proud. But c’mon, if a rich gentleman and his college graduate ward have had a falling out, and you ask the rich gentleman what’s up, and his only response is to open a secret door to a staircase into a cave and tells you to follow him, what’re you gonna think? You’re going to think “this guy’s gonna end up wearing my skin,” that’s what.
More redesign notes:
Got all my quotes from the old sidebar on the About Page, got all my links on the “Links” page, naturally enough, and my page of previous sidebar icon pics now looks like the rest of the site. Plus, I have my titlebar banner on that page in all its unobscured glory. Next step: pop-up and pop-under ads and loud autoplaying music. …It’s what the people want.
Speaking of the banner, I’ve had more than one person ask me who that was second from the left, there. Why, that’s Spunky the Monkey, of course! Here’s a story of his I posted a couple of years back. Please…enjoy some Spunky.
Sluggo Saturday #40.
AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
from The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy (1988) – thanks to pal Andres
If only life were like that.
from World’s Finest #183 (March 1969) by Leo Dorfman, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito
Hey, I didn’t even realize when I pulled this comic aside that its cover date is the very month and year of my birth! (Its actual release date was likely a month or two previous, I think.) Huh, neat. To think my birth coincided with the raising of the Superman and Batman flags at the United Nations…where they fly even today.
Anyway, you guys had some comments on the redesign from yesterday, so let me respond to a couple:
Just Some Guy sez:
“Oh god! Searing pain in my retinas! The glare… too bright!”
Yeah, it is very…white, isn’t it? I’d been dead set on duplicating the exact look of the old site, which is one of the reasons it’s taken me so long to upgrade…I kept fiddling around with WordPress templates and getting frustrated and giving up. But I think this layout is a lot more open, and a lot less, I don’t know, 2003. I think I can live with it.
Plus, I finally changed the banner. Having some old friends staring back at me from across the top of my site helps ease the transition.
Walaka wonders
“Um, isn’t the apostrophe in your title backwards/upside down? What’s up with that?”
What, indeed? That’s just how the apostrophe is in this particular font used by this theme (Hanami, if you were wondering and if you hadn’t yet peeked at the link at the very bottom of the page). To tell the truth, it kind of bothered me at first, but just a little, and I kind of like it now. Just a little bit of weirdness in an otherwise stately design.
Plus, when I looked at the site on my work computer, it just had the standard straight-line computer apostrophe, so I guess whatever font that is isn’t installed in the shop’s computer. I just used “computer” three times in that sentence.
Pal Andres asks, in regards to my old comments:
“If I read the Blogger update correctly your old site will still be accessible, right?”
Well, it could be, if I go through the trouble of setting it up, but then I’d have two copies of my site on the internet and that could be confusing and screw up Googlers and Bingers and such. I mean, I could adjust settings so that Google wouldn’t index the other site or whatever, but one of the reasons I made the transition over to WordPress in the first place is to kind of keep things simple and in one place. Google’s new set-up would have required fiddling with subdomains and redirects to where Google would be hosting my actual posts, while all the media would still be served up by my hoster, and feh on that.
Employee Aaron declares
“The whiteness of your site will burn my retinas every morning from now on! Soon we will have progressive ruin the social networking site so we can compare Swampthing embroidered doilies!”
You’re fired.
C. Elam gives me more gray hair by suggesting
“I am sure you will be working on fixing links on a prodigious number of your entries, because that is the sort of thing that bothers folks like us. Good luck getting things back to ‘normal.'”
I do plan on fixing some of the internal links to other posts, but it’ll be a slow process since I’m gettin’ near to 3000 entries on this site, and I’d like to be able to sleep sometime. I’ll probably focus on the most recent year’s worth of posts, and work backwards from there.
Former employee Ray (and, in fact, the guy I replaced here at the shop!) pleads
“But you have to get the 1969 thing going. I MUST KNOW what you have done since 1969.”
I think instead of the rotating banner I used to have, that would display a new “since 1969” phrase every time you reloaded the site, I may instead be changing the phrase manually in my banner up there. Not quite as dynamic, I realize, but not everything can make the transition, I’m afraid!
I don’t have the rotating “what people are saying about PROGRESSIVE RUIN” thingie anymore, either, but I do plan on throwing those quotes onto my mostly-empty “About” page. Yes, even the one Dirk wrote about me six years ago about being “one of the better new comic bloggers to emerge so far this year.” I’m hanging onto that quote for dear life.
Ed queries
“Any plans to expand the blogroll to something approaching its former glory?”
Oh, yes, absolutely. But it’ll be a separate page, accessible via a button next to “HOME” and “ABOUT” up there by the banner. Assuming I can do that, that is. In fact, I would have done that today, except I spent all my blogging time doing that swank new banner image. (Who’s not a Photoshop expert? THIS GUY.)
One of the things that bothered me most about the other site is the sheer number of links in the sidebar. It looks cluttered and cramped, but I didn’t want to drop a bunch of links, either. By putting the links on a separate page, that’ll likely encourage me to add lots more of them, so hopefully I can get started on that soon. The links I do have in the sidebar were just kind of put up there to have a blogroll, and are mostly my closest internet pals, the folks with whom I do Fake AP Stylebook, and the mighty Neilalien, the first and most powerful of all comic webloggers.
Anyway, I hope that answered some of your questions about the site. It’s still a work in progress, and again, thank you for your patience and your readership. (And a reminder: you’ll probably need to resubscribe to the syndication feed for your RSS readers…just flip that little chromium switch there at the top of the page.)
In other news:
- Employee Aaron’s girlfriend Mel had a drawing of hers printed in Tank Girl: Skidmarks #3, out this week in a funnybook store near you. Well, okay, we sold out already, but it’s available for reorder and I’ve got more coming! Here’s a little snippet of it:
Pick up the issue and check out the whole pic! Oh, and read the rest of the comic, too. After you pay for it. With money.You can also visit her Deviantart site and take a gander at her pictures…which, um, may include that same Tank Girl drawing, BUT GO TO SHOP AND PAY MONEY FOR COMIC. Thank you.
- This gentleman is putting together a list of the “100 Best Comic Book Covers” from 1980 to present, and I’m sure he’s going to get a lot of “um, you forgot” and “wow, really?” responses that these lists always get, but hey, a lot of those are nice images. So anyway, go check it out. Tell him he forgot this cover.