Category Archives: history

EC Sci-Fi At Scale: Taschen’s XXL Weird Science

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The EC science fiction titles hold a special place in American pop culture. The books that ran from 1950 to 1955 (Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, Weird Science-Fantasy) were indispensable waystations for the still-niche genre of science-based speculative fiction. I would argue they were the crucible in which pop sci-fi as we have known it was forged. These comics not only popularized some of the foundational tropes of the genre. But EC’s stable of premiere artists then visualized many of these themes in ways that were far more sophisticated than the typically awful B- and C-level production values Hollywood applied to the sci-fi genre. Even though these comics were among the least popular of the EC titles, they likely were legitimating sci-fi in more young readers’ minds than any pulp mag or film c-lister could. And at the same time, artists like Wally Wood, Al Feldstein, Joe Orlando, Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Kamen were inventing a visual language for sci-fi themes: post-apocalyptic vistas, space travel, the romance of a starship launch, bug-eyed and fish-faced aliens. Their influence on the subsequent conceits of sci-fi fiction, art and film, as well as their look, is undeniable. From Forbidden Planet (1956) to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Star Trek (1966), Star Wars (1977) and beyond, these comics were the first rough sketches of what our fantasies of the future would become.

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The Maturing of Milton Caniff

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Milton Caniff’s landmark adventure Terry and the Pirates has been among the most reprinted newspaper strips of all time…and deservedly so. The artist’s fame for establishing the tone, cadence, composition and dramaturgy of the mid-century adventure genre in comics is well known. I won’t rehash it here. The latest and most ambitious reprint Terry project concluded this week when Clover Press and the Library of American Comics shipped the final three volumes in the 13 book Terry and the Pirates: The Master Collection. As I said in my initial review of the first volumes, the series is magnificent, if you don’t mind juggling oversized tomes. The sourcing of best available art, coloration and overall reproduction are the best I have seen among the many renderings of Terry over the years. This is LOAC’s second go at the strip. The imprint was launched two decades ago with a 6-volume oblong set. The first 12 volumes of the Master Collection reprint the full run from inception in 1934 through Caniff’s exit in 1946. A thirteenth volume carries new commentary, ancillary art and all of the front matter from the earlier series. Kudos to LOAC and Clover. Unlike many comic strip reprint projects that lumber for years, or peter out in mid-run, this one only took three years to complete. This final tranch of volumes also comes with a packed in bit of extra art (see above.

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Tijuana Bibles: The Alternative America of Lust 

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The underground sex comics of the Great Depression were not just an interesting sidebar to comics strip history. More than 700 of these 8-12 page titles were widely distributed in the 1930s through a clandestine, ramshackle shadow syndicate. The art was often at least as crude as the situations and banter. But their connection to mainstream comics were unmistakeable, mainly because they started by supplying Popeye, Moon Mullins, Blondie and Dagwood, Major Hoople, Betty Boop, and most major strip heroes with the raging libidos their real world creators left out. In their early years, the TBs depicted essentially the imagined sex lives of cartoon superstars. [FAIR WARNING: WHILE THE IMAGES TO FOLLOW HAVE BEEN CENSORED TO ABIDE BY WORDPRESS TERMS OF SERVICE, THE SITUATIONS AND LANGUAGE EVEN IN THESE CENSORED COMICS ARE VULGAR, MISOGYNIST, RACIST AND OFFENSIVE TO ALMOST EVERY CONTEMPORARY SENSIBILITY, AND MOST OF THOSE OF THAT TIME. IT WAS INTENTIONAL. TRANSGRESSION WAS THE POINT]

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Mickey Mouse Diplomacy: Disney’s Ambassador of American Exceptionalism

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By the summer of 1937, Disney’s Mickey Mouse cartoons and the syndicated strip had already become worldwide ambassadors of American mass media. Like Charlie Chaplin in the previous decade, Mickey’s simple visual signature and deft antics translated well from Europe to Asia. The Mouse had effectively displaced The Tramp as an international icon of slapstick. But in August 1937, with Floyd Gottfredson’s Medioka story line, the ambassadorship becomes self-conscious and reflexive..even politicized by both creators and at least one government. Mickey journeys off to the vaguely Slavic kingdom of Medioka to save its corrupt government and oppressed people from feudalism with American ingenuity, empiricism and democratic character. It is the most explicit exercise of the American exceptionalism mythology we are bound to see in comics history, even if it has all of the political subtlety of a Yellowstone episode.

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Peak Segar: Plunder Island (1934)

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The Plunder Island sequence of Thimble Theatre Sundays that ran from December 1933 to July 1934 was E.C. Segar’s signature epic. It concentrated most of this master’s diverse talents and blended the many genres Thimble Theatre traversed into the strips most impressive run. Fabulism, farce, adventure, sentiment, venality, romance, screwball — all and more are here. And along the way, Segar even fleshes out and distinguishes among his key characters.

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The Democratic Genius of Clare Briggs

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The great Clare Briggs (1875-1930) continues to impress me as perhaps the most under-appreciated figure in American comics history. He was by no means a distinctive stylist or draftsman of the sort that helps us better remember fellow greats like McCay, McManus, Herriman, Sterrett, King or Gould. But in the staggering range of cartoon series he conceived (When a Feller Needs a Friend, The Days of Real Sport, Mr. and Mrs., Real Folks at Home, Movie of a Man, Wonder What _____ Thinks About, among others) he demonstrated a range of human empathy, attention to emotional detail, and a social/class sensitivity that seems to me unmatched by any other American comic artist. Briggs was among the highest paid cartoonists of the 1920s, and widely known and beloved by audiences who were shocked at his premature death at aged 55 in 1930. His loss to the field was so deeply felt that his publisher issued a multi-volume memorial retrospective of his greatest work shortly after his death.

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Shelf Scan 2024: Can’t-Miss Comic Book Reprints

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We go a little off the reservation this time to embrace a few pre-code comic book reprints and underground favorites that have come back into print this year. Classics from Joe Sacco and Richard Corben resurfaced this year to garner new audiences, and Fantagraphics’ ambitious schedule of Atlas Comics reprints took off. And we get to watch the mayor of Duckburg discover his adventurous side.

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