Thursday, Jun 23rd, 2011

Can Never Get Enough

Canifff: A Visual Biography will be on sale in about a month. To hold you over, here are a few more goodies we uncovered. The Dragon Lady color piece is an online extra that didn't make it in the printed book. This is one of the specialty drawings that Caniff had printed one hundred or so at a time. He would then watercolor them for fans who requested drawings.

Here's a party we all wish we could time-travel to: a 1948 comic strip costume ball.

Here's a Sunday page that's not only a classic, but shows how Caniff created the half-page format. He drew the Sundays in tabloid format, then had the panels photostatted and pasted on a horizontal board. Then, either he or one of his assistants would fill in the art to the left and right. The paste-up lines on this original artwork have darkened over the years, giving us a clearer view of the process.

posted by Dean Mullaney

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Saturday, Jun 18th, 2011

Utilitarian? Maybe. Hooded? No Longer!” (part three of three)

The Hooded Utilitarian website is gathering votes to name the top ten favorite comics of all time. I've narrowed the focus of their request for ten-best lists to this concept:

Which works would I select as the top representatives of the artform, works that resonate with seasoned readers within the medium yet can also serve "hook" a comics neophyte?

Feel free to use our archives to see the first seven selections on my list, which I'm rolling out alphabetically by creator—or, if you're the devil-may-care type, simply dive in to see my final three choices…

8) Hadashi no Gen, by Keiji Nakazawa

Better known here in America as Barefoot Gen, this "cartoon story of Hiroshima" portrays Japanese life before, during, and after the atomic bombing of that city, which helped end the Second World War. Nakazawa lived through that event as a seven-year-old boy, and his anti-war message still rings true today, while Japan's contemporary nuclear trouble in the wake of earthquake and tsunami destruction, remind us that though circumstances differ, history's mistakes Are endlessly repeated by those who fail to learn from them.

9) Maus, by Art Spiegelman

What can I say about Spiegelman's masterwork that has not been better said before? Like Gen, Maus is an account of the harrowing nature of war (this time, the Nazi pogroms of WW II); it is also the story of the often-strained relationship between a father and his son. It's a powerful work, one that has subsequently been taught in high school and university curricula and won numerous awards, most prestigious among them the Pulitzer Prize.

It seems impossible to fathom a "Best Comics" list of any sort that does not include Maus on it.

10) Calvin & Hobbes, 1985 - 1995, by Bill Watterston  

Newspapers had shrunk the comic strips to postage-stamp size, and the common complaint was that there was no room left for sufficient lettering to tell a nuanced story, or to provide artwork that was much more advanced than stick figures.

Then Bill Watterson gave us Calvin and Hobbes and showed us all that the daily comic strip was still breathing, though it took an uncommon talent like his to sustain it.

The storytelling in Calvin is so deftly assured, the characters so believable and endearing, the situations so inspired, it is impossible for me to conceive of the person who does not love Calvin and Hobbes. What I'm now hoping is that enough voters will remember this outstanding strip when they make their selections ...

If you haven't already visited The Hooded Utilitarian, you'll find full details about their Top Ten project here.

It'll be interesting to see the contents of the final list, won't it? As the old saying goes: time will tell…

posted by Bruce Canwell

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Wednesday, Jun 15th, 2011

R.I.P., Rip

We're both thrilled and saddened that Rip Kirby Volume 4 will be on sale soon. Thrilled because…well, who isn't thrilled to see more than two-and-a-half years of Alex Raymond art! Saddened because it's the final volume collecting Raymond's post-war modernist classic. In the course of producing the series, we borrowed photos from the daughter of Ray Burns, Raymond's assistant. We didn't have room for them all in the printed series so offer a couple here as an online bonus—two staged publicity shots of Raymond and Burns listening to the baseball game on the radio.

Raymond's tragic death in 1956 left his final story unfinished. It was completed by John Prentice, who continued the strip for decades to come. Here's a sample of Prentice's work from October 1956.

And because we're especially proud of our sequential cover designs, here they are—all four together, starting with the titular character all by his lonesome—then joined by one new character per cover.

posted by Dean Mullaney

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Saturday, Jun 11th, 2011

Utilitarian? Maybe. Hooded? No Longer! (part two of three)

The Hooded Utilitarian website is gathering votes to name the top ten favorite comics of all time. I've narrowed the focus of their request for ten-best lists to this concept:

Which works would I select as the top representatives of the artform, works that resonate with seasoned readers within the medium yet can also serve "hook" a comics neophyte?

Feel free to plunge headlong into the middle four choices on my "alphabetical-by-creator list…"

4) The Dreamer, by Will Eisner

If Eisner gets his deserved spot on the H.U. list, it will likely be for his most popular creation, The Spirit, or his ground-breaking first graphic novel, A Contract with God. I yield to no one in my admiration for both, and I admit The Dreamer is a dark horse (as opposed to a Dark Horse) candidate for inclusion. Still, I view it as an underappreciated part of Eisner's body of work, one deserving of more attention. Fiction tinged with autobiography, The Dreamer is, as Eisner said in his foreword, "an examination of hope and ambition. The events take place during a time when cartoonists found themselves on fallow ground, the dawn of the modern comic book industry during the mid-1930s." By extension, this story is our story, and who better to tell it than Eisner?

5) Tintin in Tibet, by Hergé

Of all the various comics-based movies, the one that genuinely interests me is the upcoming Tintin motion picture. Though more popular in Europe than Stateside, Hergé and his intrepid boy reporter have a broad-based appeal that puts them on my Top list.

Of the many delightful Tintin exploits, I selected In Tibet because it features Tintin propelling himself, Snowy, and Captain Haddock to the most remote place on earth on the most noble of quests: to aid a friend in trouble. Along the way there are hardships imposed by the environment, a touch of Eastern mysticism, and even a Yeti. Like Barks, Hergé's work has kept its appeal across the generations; may the movie point a new audience to his work!

6) The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller with Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley

Superheroes got me reading comics (The Fantastic Four still hold a special place in my heart), Dean and I used to letterhack in the pages of the same 1970s Marvel Comics, and I've even written some superhero comics; some of 'em, like The Gauntlet, (with artist Lee Weeks) were even published.

 The Dark Knight Returns is hardly a perfect superhero comic, but it is perhaps Frank Miller's most fully-realized work. The extensive coverage it received during its initial publication is pointed to as a key milestone in changing the media's portrayal of the art form from "biff-pow-bam" to "comics have grown up." Its sensibilities have touched every major Batman project to follow, in every medium—comics, animation, film.

All of that is well and good, but I'll offer up Dark Knight Returns for another reason, one I've yet to see bandied about in all the discussion it has generated - endings are the toughest thing to get right, and Miller has misfired in the denouement of more than one of his stories. Yet in Dark Knight Returns, Miller gets the ending Exactly Right, both within the confines of his story and under the umbrella of the overarching, decades-spanning Batman mythos. It's practically impossible to envision a better ending for Bruce Wayne than Miller provides here. No small achievement, that.

7) From Hell, by Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell

Everyone has a favorite Alan Moore-penned tale, and it would have been easy to select Swamp Thing or Watchmen or V for Vendetta or any of another half-dozen works for my contributions to the H.U. balloting. I selected From Hell in part because it asks its audience to be smart in their reading, in part because it's been so assiduously researched and developed, in part because Eddie Campbell's work is one of comics' special treasures. Once one has read From Hell, does one need to read any other tale of Jack the Ripper?

If you haven't already visited The Hooded Utilitarian, you'll find full details about their Top Ten project here.

Next installment: my final three picks.

posted by Bruce Canwell

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Wednesday, Jun 8th, 2011

Hmmm, these guys look familiar

Al Williamson enjoyed using friends and fellow artists as models for specific characters in X-9: Secret Agent Corrigan. But nowhere in the strip does the in-joke get better than in this sequence from September 1974. Corrigan is, of course, Al. Enrique is writer Archie Goodwin, Al's co-conspirator on the strip. The guys were having fun with this one!

This story, as well as many others, will be in X-9: Secret Agent Corrigan volume 3, to be released later this year.

posted by Dean Mullaney

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Saturday, Jun 4th, 2011

Utilitarian? Maybe. Hooded? No Longer!

Rob Martin refers to The Hooded Utilitarian as, "…a website devoted to cultural criticism with an emphasis on comics." Right now, H.U. is in the process of gathering lists which will turn into votes which will turn into an early-August countdown of the top vote-getters in H.U.'s effort to name the top ten favorite comics of all time. The invitation to vote puts it this way (emphasis mine):

The specific question of the poll is this: What are the ten comics works you consider your favorites, the best, or the most significant? …Your list may include any newspaper strips, comic-book series, graphic novels, manga features, web comics, editorial cartoons, and single-panel magazine cartoons. These works can be from any country of origin. Please do not include an entry that has yet to be published.

Now, those are a pretty wide-open set of criteria; that is perhaps a good thing for this type of effort, which wants to be as inclusive as possible. In compiling my list, I narrowed the focus a bit, arriving at this concept:

Which works would I select as the top representatives of the artform, works that resonate with seasoned readers within the medium yet can also serve "hook" a comics neophyte?

I'll take the rest of this message and my next two to show you my list and the thinking behind each selection. Since Rob isn't asking for the list to be ranked, I'm rolling out my selections alphabetically by creator. May I have the envelopes, please…?

1) The single-panel magazine cartoons of Charles Addams (The New Yorker)

He's creepy, he's spooky, he's positively ooky—but Chas. Addams gave us far more than The Addams Family, though of course they are, of themselves, quite a deliciously wicked creative accomplishment. His spot cartoons were sometimes bittersweet (two unicorns, stranded on a rock, the ocean waves lapping ever higher as Noah's Ark sails away), sometimes wistful (the lonely lighthouse keeper who finds a valentine washed up on shore), yet consistently entertaining. Here's a typically nefarious Addams cartoon…

2) "Back to the Klondike," featuring Uncle $crooge, by Carl Barks (from Four Color # 456)

Will the Thelma & Louise effect strike again? Barks told so many fine stories, it will be interesting to see if his votes become so diluted across his oeuvre that he ends up omitted from the final H.U. list. I hope that turns out to be not the case, because certainly The Duck Man has charmed generations of readers with his well-wrought, thoroughly-researched tales.

I selected "Back to the Klondike" because its Alaska gold rush setting shows Barks's attention to historical detail and also offers real character growth, plus an ill-fated love gone wrong, hinting that $crooge is a deeper, more complex personality than we're used to seeing within Disney stable.

3) Terry and the Pirates, 1934 - 1946, by Milton Caniff (distributed by the Chicago Tribune New York Daily News Syndicate)

Accuse me of tooting the LOAC horn if you must, but who can dispute that Caniff's sprawling saga meets the criteria I used to compile my list? Many a seasoned comics reader agrees that Terry represents the pinnacle of daily adventure strips; Dean and I both know persons with no ties to the medium who've started reading the exploits of Terry Lee and his many cohorts, look up long enough to remark, "Saa-a-ay…his is pretty good!", then eagerly dive back in for more. Terry is a glorious achievement, and it will be a grave disappointment—not necessarily a surprise, but a disappointment—if it fails to make the H.U. list.

If you haven't already visited The Hooded Utilitarian, you'll find full details about their Top Ten project here.

Next installment: my next four picks.

posted by Bruce Canwell

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Wednesday, Jun 1st, 2011

Out of the Box

After thirty-four years in the publishing business, there's still no greater thrill than opening that first box from the printer containing advance copies of new books. Here's what our friendly FedEx delivery guy brought us today: Miss Fury and Li'l Abner 3. Both will be in stores by the end of the month.

Excuse me for now—I've got some fun reading to do!

posted by Dean Mullaney

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