It’s with mixed feelings that we have to say goodbye to Comics Comics for now.

We’ve been offered a great opportunity to be co-editors of The Comics Journal online, and after five very rewarding years of editing Comics Comics, we feel it’s time to try something new. With the infrastructure and resources of TCJ, we’re confident we can explore the medium with even greater depth and verve.

Comics Comics will remain online, exactly as it is, but there will be no further posts, and we will be closing comments in a week or so as well. We want to thank our co-founder, Frank Santoro, our founding publisher, Laris Kreslins, and our contributors, Jeet Heer, Joe “Jog” McCulloch, Nicole Rudick, Dash Shaw, and Jason T. Miles, our amazing design team, Mike Reddy and Ray Sohn, and all the many artists and guests. Most of all, we want to thank you the readers, for your attention, your comments, and your support.

Please join us, and all of the Comics Comics contributors, over at The Comics Journal.

Thanks so much again.

Dan and Tim

A very Whitney top panel - but look at the figure on the right at he top. That's a total Kirby pose.

It was fun for me to discover this comic in the quarter bin. I’d never seen it. Dan was like, “Oh, yeah, I have some of those. I think that’s some of Whitney’s last professional work.” I was startled at how “3-D” looking the pages are in comparison to Whitney’s “flat” space in most of his ACG work. Whitney is famous for his flat, stage-like compositions in Herbie and in his romance comics work. So, it’s really odd and somehow thrilling to see Whitney’s compositions go “in” to the panel. He seems to be imitating Kirby’s layered approach. Y’know what I mean – when Kirby has a strong foreground, middle ground and background all in one panel. Kirby most famously does this of course in his double-page splash pages but I think you can see this compositional strategy in every one of his pages. Look at the panel below in the gallery with the big laughing heads at the top of the page. That was the panel that really struck me. That panel is so unusual looking for Ogden Whitney. So, then I started looking at the rest of the book more clearly. There are some choice “Whitney moments” (check the guys using a log for a battering ram – that’s ALL Whitney except for the figure on the right of the panel) but it’s mostly a Kirby riff. Check out the hand of our hero when he falls off his horse. That’s a Kirby hand. And more than that, it’s coming towards the reader like most Kirby. But Whitney was so “flat” – for lack of a better term – that it’s weird to see him composing panels that come at, come towards the reader. Whitney, of course, does have depth-of-field type panels in his other work but it’s generally simple and rather elegant. He plays with color and depth like an animated cartoon. Usually his “space” is very clean. Here in this western it’s all layered and messy. I like it. Add the layered compositions to the bulkiness of the figures AND the inking style and it all sort of works. I gotta say – it boggles the mind of a Whitney fan like me.

Anyways, just something to chew on. Just riffing. Please enjoy.

Mid-Life by Joe Ollmann

Over at the National Post, I have a review of Joe Ollmann’s new graphic novel  Mid-Life (click here to read).

A few ancillary thoughts:

The Mid-Life Theme. As can be guessed from the title, Ollmann’s book is about a mid-life crisis. Has anyone noticed how pervasive that theme has been in recent graphic novels? I’m thinking here of Clowes’ Wilson, Collier’s Chimo, Jaime Hernandez’s The Education of Hopey Glass (and the triptych of stories in Love and Rockets 3), Ware’s Acme 19 (and arguably “Jason Lint” or Acme 20, which covers the characters whole life year by year but where the central life-defining actions take place in mid-life). Perhaps related is Brown’s Paying For It, which I haven’t read yet, also hinges I’m told on a pivotal  life-decision the cartoonist made in mid-life. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the mid-life theme is so pervasive. The generation of alternative cartoonists that now dominate comics were all born in the late 1950s or 1960s and are now facing mid-life themselves. Seth’s an interesting anomaly since it could be said that he cartooned like a middle-age man even when he was young. But Seth is relevant here because he once said that he hoped his audience would grow old with him. That’s what seems to be happening with alternative comics and their audience.

The tradition of low mimetic comedy. Ollmann’s book quite properly carries a blurb from Peter Bagge. This got me thinking about the tradition that Ollmann belongs to, which might be defined as the low mimetic comedy. In comics, it’s a tradition that (as I tried to indicate in my review) goes back to Hogarth. This type of cartooning really flourished in the 1920s with lowlife scoundrels and picaros like Barney Google and Moon Mullins. The tradition was revived in the underground days in Crumb’s Fritz the Cat stories and Gilbert Shelton’s Freak Brothers. Peter Bagge carried the flame in the 1980s and afterwards in his stories about Buddy Bradley, as well as the Bradley clan and friends.  

This is a tradition that is currently undervalued in comics right now (although Barney Google has been picking up fans), in large part because the dominant graphic novel mode tends to shy away from broad comedy and guffaws. It’s hard to remember this but back in the 1990s, it was common to talk about Bagge in the same conversation as the Hernandez Brothers and Clowes. I don’t think that goes on anymore. And certainly the Crumb that is celebrated these days – the Crumb of Weirdo and the sketchbooks – is very different than the Crumb of Fritz the Cat. Shelton’s work is largely the preserve of aging boomers who want comics that will remind them of their salad days and perhaps spark a flashback.

There are all sorts of reasons for the current eclipse of the tradition of the low mimetic comedy. One of the features of this tradition, at least in the Shelton-Bagge-Ollmann line, is that it tends to value plotting and dialogue more than image-making. The art in this tradition tends to be blunter and less subtle than that of more “literary” (for want of a better word) graphic novels. I’ve often thought that Bagge might actually have benefited from collaborating with an artist who could tone-down the art a little. (One of my favorite Bagge stories is a collaboration he did which was drawn by Clowes). This is one case where the auteurism of alternative comics might be a drawback.

I’m hoping that Ollmann’s book will a) be a success and 2) lead people to reappraise the tradition of low mimetic comedy in comics. It’s a lively tradition and some of this work – I’m thinking here especially of Bagge’s Bradley stories – deserves more attention than they’ve gotten in recent years.  Among other things, those stories are (like Ollmann’s work) deeper and darker than they might first seem.

Check it out here.

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is a bit of a shadowy figure in contemporary cultural memory. There is, to be a sure, a Chesterton cult which cherishes him as a sage but most people have only a small glimmer of his various achievements as a novelist (The Man Who Was Thursday), detective story writer (creator of the Father Brown stories), intellectual sparring partner of G.B. Shaw and H.G. Wells, religious apologist (The Everlasting Man), and literary critic (The Victorian Age in Literature and other books).  

Chesterton was also a cartoonist, as I was recently reminded while reading an essay by Wilfrid Sheed. Chesterton had studied art as a young man and worked as an illustrator before becoming a full-time writer. His cartoons are a bit hard to come by. I’ve seen some here and there in The Chesterton Review and a few of the books, but could only find one online. (The image pasted above.)

Sheed, a fine essayist who died recently, was Chesterton’s godson (Sheed’s parents were publishers who specialized in Catholic books and Chesterton was one of their prize authors.) In an essay in the collection The Morning After, Sheed takes up the nettlesome problem of Chesterton’s anti-Semitism, which the critic interestingly relates to Chesteron’s background as a cartoonist.

Here’s a key paragraph:

Chesterton was a cartoonist both in words and pictures, and race was one of his occasional comic properties. I have seen an unpublished drawing of his that might, in these tenser times, seem to be jeering at the blacks. Cartooning is the most extreme form of cruelty allowed in civilized countries. But his basic gag, as for any cartoonist, was humanity itself; and to look for consistent prejudice in his work is like looking for it in David Levine’s.

Obviously Sheed’s generalization here is a bit too large to hold water, but it’s an interesting thought and not unrelated to recent discussions about race and comics sparked by this Matt Seneca article (see also here and here).

Jane Russell, who died last Monday at age 89, will be remembered fondly for many reasons: her full-bodied sexiness, her saucy performance as Marilyn Monroe’s co-star in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, her various turns as a comic foil for Bob Hope. But comics fans will also remember that she was one of the many Hollywood stars that Will Eisner recruited in his work (Lauren Bacall was an especial favourite). Russell’s erotically charged performance in the 1943 movie The Outlaw, a film in which her cleavage was much on display, was hugely controversial in the 1940s. In the Spirit section of Sept. 1, 1946, Eisner transformed Russell into Olga Bustle, “the girl with those big, big eyes.” Farewell, Jane Russell: your movies will continue to entertain the world, as will Eisner’s affectionate parody of your early persona.

Herriman's Major Ozone, Sept. 29, 1906

As an addendum to my McManus notebook, I’ve been collecting examples of reverse-order word ballooning, that’s to say the tendency of early cartoonists to occasionally have word balloons read from right to left rather than the reading protocol that’s easier in English (from left to right).

A few examples of what I’m talking about:

George Herriman, Major Ozone, Sept. 29, 1906:

Major Ozone: “What! And shut out that fine fresh air? Never, Captain, Never!!”

Captain: “Major,  you’d better close your door – it may storm tonight.”

Foster Morse Follett, The Kid, Jan. 15, 1905

Foster Morse Follett, The Kid, Jan. 15, 1905:

Mom: “Sure, the kid, he just turned the water off, that’s all!”

Dad: “What happened?”

Jimmy Swinnerton, Jimmy, July 07, 1907.

Jimmy Swinnerton, Jimmy, July 7, 1907:

Mom: “No Jimmy, dear. I think not.”

Jimmy: “Mamma, can I have another dollar? My eye is all well?”

What exactly is going on here? The simplest explanation is that these strips are all done in the early days of newspaper comics, so these are all primitive works done by artists who have yet to master their craft. Yet the explanation of primitivism or incompetence is belied, I think, by the extreme beauty of the art, and also by the fact that that in these comics word balloons are usually properly placed in most panels. These examples occur from time to time but most word balloons are sequenced to read from left to right (the protocol we’re used to in English).

A few theories:

1. The primacy of images over words. The first generation of newspaper comics were very visually splendid. McCay’s work was the peak achievement but he was merely the headman in a large parade of artists whose main talent was visual. Spectacular display was the main selling point of the early comics. So it seems likely that the images came before the words and had priority over the words. That is to say, the artists drew first and the words were added on as an after-thought, often used to clarify what was going on in the picture.

2. Stagecraft. The early comic strips were heavily influenced by stagecraft; often showing two figures standing in the same relation to each other panel after panel, in the mode of a vaudeville routine. If we see the panels as being modeled after a stage, it could be that the artists thought that the clarity they gained form keeping the characters in a fixed relation to each other outweighed the loss of clarity by having the occasional word balloon reversal. Below I’ve given the first panel of the Swinnerton strip excerpted above. As will be seen, in the first panel, Jimmy is posed halfway between his mom (on the left) and his dad (on the right). This positioning of the characters is repeated in the last panel. Perhaps Swinnerton felt that the visual coherence gained from repeating this positioning of characters was more important than having the word balloons read from left to right in the last panel.

3. A different reading protocol. This is the most difficult concept to explain but after spending time with cartoons from the early 20^th century (and also previous centuries) it’s hard to avoid the fact that they have a different type of reading than what we are used to. The early comics aren’t meant to be skimmed or read quickly. They have a density of visual and verbal information that takes time to process. So the occasionally reversed word balloon could be tolerated because the reader was supposed to be spending time on the comics, deciphering them slowly.

First panel of Little Jimmy, July 07, 1907.

Lewis & Clark: Your deluxe YA-type of bookshelf comic for the week – an 8 1/2″ x 10 7/8″, b&w First Second presentation of a 144-page Nick Bertozzi story of the explorers in the title. Preview; $16.99.

The Smurfs Vol. 5: The Smurfs and the Egg: Your trim vintage Eurocomic-type of bookshelf comic for the week – more Papercutz stuff from Peyo & Yvan Delporte, culled from the early ’60s; $5.99 (softcover), $10.99 (hardback).

Buz Sawyer Vol. 1: The War in the Pacific: Beginning another vintage reprint project for Fantagraphics, this time focused on Roy Crane’s post-Wash Tubbs/Captain Easy series, an initially Naval-themed strip he was given the opportunity to own for himself. I believe this 9.25″ x 9.25″ package is primarily dailies-based, with a selection of the strip’s more comedy-focused Sundays presented as fold-out images. Samples; $35.00.

Popeye Vol. 5 (of 6): Wha’s a Jeep?: Also in reprints, the latest in Fantagraphics’ line of huge E.C. Segar hardcovers. Samples; $29.99.

Popeye: The Great Comic Book Tales of Bud Sagendorf: Also in Popeye, the latest in Craig Yoe’s line of IDW hardcovers, a 176-page collection of comic book-format pieces by the former Segar assistant and eventual successor to the newspaper strip, presumably selected along some ‘best of’ lines; $29.99.

Chi’s Sweet Home Vol. 5: CAT MANGA. From Vertical, now pumped up with Japanese printer/publisher investments; $13.95.

Bokurano: Ours Vol. 3: ROBOT MANGA, IT’S SAD. From SigIkki, which means some content is online; $12.99.

Batman: Time and the Batman: I really don’t know why this collection of (mostly) loose Grant Morrison issues wasn’t redistributed into earlier, more accommodating packages focused on the writer’s run, although it might have something to do with keeping the publisher’s ducks in a row branding-wise. And making extra money. Included is the multi-artist time-travel story from Batman #700, as well as the recap/continuity clean-up issues #701-702, devoted to sorting out/setting up plot points between various storylines – they are quite possibly the most indelicate comics Morrison has scripted in 20 years, and emblematic of the zigs and zags of in-continuity superhero storytelling in the long form. Plus: a Fabian Nicieza lead-in story to the current Batman status quo; $19.99.

Joe the Barbarian #8 (of 8): Also from Morrison — and almost certainly more narratively satisfying — is the delayed conclusion to his fantasy adventure series with Sean Murphy; $3.99.

Wulf #1: While I haven’t been paying close attention, this appears to be the first product of Ardden Entertainment’s revival of the old Atlas Comics brand of the mid-’70s, with Steve Niles & Nat Jones inheriting a barbarian property initially written and drawn by Larry Hama. I’m not sure how much of a reputation (or even recognition) these post-Marvel Martin Goodman-published comics have today; my impression is that many people remember the company for attracting good talent with good pay rates and artwork returns, though the actual comics never managed to run for more than four issues, often getting retooled in the middle.

Generally the first-two Howard Chaykin-fronted issues of The Scorpion are cited as the high point, although in my recent Steve Ditko binge I also plowed through his various assignments with the publisher, including a full, four-issue run on The Destructor (Born of Fury! Sworn to Vengeance!), which actually had a pretty damn amusing first issue, reuniting Ditko with two old cohorts — writer Archie Goodwin of the Warren magazines and inker Wally Wood of assorted Tower Comics projects — for a superhero launch that can succinctly be dubbed ‘violent Spider-Man.’ Seriously, it’s an irresponsible kid whose criminal connections get his beloved elderly relative killed, prompting him to use his science-based sensory powers (a touch of Daredevil’s in there too) to track down and murder everyone responsible. There’s a huge, Batman-like prop factory, a startlingly overt reference to recreational drug use on Our Hero’s pre-reform part, and a very Ditko supervillain in the form of a dude in a ski mask decked out in a moss green suit and hat combo. Mind you, Ditko’s pencils were generally pretty light, even when inking himself, so the super-slick Wood kind of chases a lot of the weirdness out of his style. I mean:

That’s not a very Steve Ditko woman. Anyway, by issue #4 Gerry Conway was writing, Woody was gone, and the Destructor was shooting lasers from his hands in an underground world, because it’s Atlas; $2.99.

Wildcats Version 3.0: Year Two: Getting into some more recent ‘vintage’ superheroes, interested parties will want to know that the collapse of WildStorm has not prevented the release of this extra-fat collection of the remainder of writer Joe Casey’s potential state-of-the-genre work (issues #13-24) heading into the mid-’00s; $24.99.

Herculian: A nice-looking odds ‘n ends collection from Image co-founder Erik Larsen, still one of the most prolific artists of his peer group. Contains various anthology pieces, a 24-hour comic and a few new short stories. Preview; $4.99.

Uncle Scrooge #401: More anniversary stuff from Disney and (ka)[b]oom!, in the form of a one-off collection of a 1995 Don Rosa story, The Universal Solvent. Preview; $3.99.

Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth #1 (of 3): Being the first-ever comic book format outing for the popular webcomic from artist Ethan Nicolle, laying down plotlines devised by his six-year old brother Malachai. From Dark Horse, which is also releasing print editions of the web stuff. Preview; $3.50.

5 Ronin #1 (of 5): This is one of those things where Marvel superhero characters are re-imagined in some other kind of story or historical context (17th century Japan this time), here notable for a modular one-character/artist-per-issue setup (Tomm Coker is penciller for issue #1) and the participation of writer Peter Milligan, who might wring some interest from the concept. Note that this is not actually on Diamond’s list, although some sources do list it for release on Wednesday. Preview; $2.99.

Usagi Yojimbo #135: Speaking of Japan, a new issue for Stan Sakai’s funny animal swordsman is always worth a mention. Preview; $3.50.

House of Mystery #35: Aka ‘the one with the guest artist segments,’ here sporting an appearance by Darwyn Cooke; $2.99.

Vampirella Masters Series Vol. 3: Mark Millar: First off, despite the title, this is actually (if perhaps involuntarily) an artist-focused collection, spotlighting posey realist Mike Mayhew’s initial six issues on the 2001 ongoing series iteration of the overdressed heroine. Moreover, the second of two included three-issue storylines represent a rare North American comics appearance for Indigo Prime creator John Smith, one of the most interesting writers of British sci-fi/action genre comics to come of age in the late ’80s. What I’ve read of his Vampirella stuff isn’t the most outstanding of his catalog, mind you, but there’s generally a little sparkle of interest – and some of these comics are oddly difficult to track down. Preview; $19.99.

Hellblazer Vol. 1: Original Sins: And finally, another British writer’s lesser-known work – not Hellblazer itself, no, but the Rick Veitch-era Swamp Thing material that Jamie Delano wrote some of, concerning the conception of Swamp Thing’s child. It crossed over with John Constantine’s then-new series, and so it’s now collected (that’s issues #76 and 77, also written in part by Veitch) in a revised softcover also sporting issues #1-9 of Hellblazer proper. Apparently this is going to start a big new organized collection of chronological Hellblazer trades, which gives me the sinking feeling it’s gonna be a while before the smattering of still-uncollected original run Delano issues (#34-40) are seen in bookshelf-ready format; $19.99.

National Cartoonists Society dinner, April. 21 1969.

 Another example of swanky cartoonists: a photograph of the dinner of the National Cartoonists Society from 1969 (available on the cover of The National Cartoonists Society Album, 1980 edition). Wouldn’t be great if everyone at Comic Con dressed like this?

My list is as follows:

1. Guang Yap – Dragonring, New Mutants

2. The guy who drew a comic from the mid-’90s called Colville. I think that was the title. I sold my copy at a show and I regret it. It was a self contained story. Had a guard tower on the cover. Weird comic.

3. Joel Orff – one of the John Porcellino generation of mail order mini comics guys who makes appearances every few years. Hope he’s making comics. Strum und Drang was one of my favorite zines.

4. The “anonymous” guy who drew the DOG BOOK – better known as the Utility Sketchbook.

5. Alex Nino – ’70s sci-fi guy. Kinda Moebius. Does he still do comics?

Disclaimer: This is not a Five For Friday ripoff. More like an homage. Apologies to T.S.