When the massive 21-inch by 17 inch, 152 page slab of early newspaper comic reprints bruised our laps in 2013, Sunday Press’s Society is Nix was a milestone. First of all, we had never seen so many examples from the innovative birthing years of the medium curated so intelligently, restored so beautifully and scaled to the original experience of the first Sunday supplements. Here we got that familiar crumbling mushroom forest in Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, but now with the tonal nuance and size McCay intended. The Yellow Kid’s Hogan’s Alley was clear and detailed enough to appreciate all of that background business R.F. Outcault helped pioneer. We could best appreciate the sense of motion, and symmetry of Opper’s signature spinning figures in Happy Hooligan and Her Name Was Maude. And James Swinnerton’s often primitive-seeming linework revealed its expressiveness and intentionality when viewed closer up. Taking its title from a proclamation by the Inspector about the unruly Katzenjammers (“Mit dose kids, society iss nix!”), the book captured the creative freedom of a medium that hadn’t settled yet on a form, let alone a business model. Editor/Restorer Peter Maresca was unrivaled both in his eye for the right exemplary strip as well as his sheer skill in reviving the original color and detail from these yellowed, faded paper. For the last. Decade, Society is Nix remained indispensable for any fan or historian of the medium.
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The Daily Anachronism: Fifty Years of Hagar
Like all of the most endearing comic strips. Dik Browne’s Hagar the Horrible came from a personal place. As Dik’s son Chris Browne tells it in the barbarian-sized collection, Hagar the Horrible: The First 50 Years (Titan, $49.99), the Brownes often joked about dad’s beefy, bearded, playfully irascible demeaner as Hagar-like. And it turns out, most of the eventual strip was loosely based on the character types and dynamics of the Browne household.
Continue readingEC Sci-Fi At Scale: Taschen’s XXL Weird Science
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.
Continue readingThe Maturing of Milton Caniff
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.
Continue readingThe Fabulous Furry Revolution
The United States has never made a bold move forward without anchoring it in a reading of the past. Our “Founding Fathers” have been carted out regularly to sanctify everything from The Civil War to Progressive and New Deal reforms, the Civil Rights movement to Reaganism. Americans like to frame changes in our politics and culture not as radical breaks from the past so much as realizations of original principles. It is self-evident in our own time. Consider the distance between Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and the countless founders bios from Fox News hosts. Arguing about America’s future is always grounded in a a declaration about its past.
It should not surprise us, then, that one of the most ambitious projects in the underground comics movement of the 1970s was a cartoon retelling of the war that started it all. The 50th Anniversary reissue of Gilbert Shelton and Ted Richards’ Give Me Liberty: A Revised History of the American Revolution is a cause for appreciation and reflection on the rich legacy of the 60s/70s counter-culture. Across 1975-76 in the pages of their Rip-Off Press comic books and underground newspaper syndicate, the creator of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and collaborator on the Disney-defaming Air Pirates combined well-researched history with hippie irreverence.
Continue readingShelf Scan 2024: Can’t-Miss Comic Book Reprints
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.
Continue readingShelf Scan 2024: Reviving Calvin, Nancy, Flash, Mandrake and Popeye…Again.
There are now generations of young adults who have no memory of daily newspapers, let alone that back page and Sunday section of comics. Without that experience, I wonder how that legacy survives and continues to inspire everyday readers and young artists. If the volume of classic reprints this year is any indication, however, we graying lovers of newspapers past can’t be the only market for decades-old dailies. Many essential strips enjoyed fresh or continuing reprint projects this year that keeps the likes of Popeye, Nancy, Mandrake and more on current store shelves. Even the most reprinted strip of the last generation got revisited in 2024.
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Panels & Prose 