As usual when we’re too busy to post, we’ll just try to distract you with pretty pictures. Courtesy of ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive — gaze upon the newspaper comic strip sections of yore and weep, weep, weep.

Images via Cover Browser

The D&Q blog runs this picture of cartoon master John Stanley when he was a teenager. It’s always refreshing to see a great artist captured in the full bloom of youth; our ideas of Stanley are mostly of the older, curmudgeonly but still insightful playwright of the heart.

Jeet Heer takes the oppotunity of D&W’s thrilling announcement of more John Stanley reprints to take on the great debate:Stanley vs. Barks:

There are not many cartoonists who have claims to greatness; perhaps a dozen or a score. Of this elite group, the least known to the general public and most underrated even by the cartooning cognoscenti is John Stanley (1914-1993). To the extent that he’s remembered at all, Stanley is known as the writer for the Little Lulu comic book series published Dell Comics. Stanley worked on the series from 1945 till around 1961 but during his long tenure at Dell worked on many other titles, ranging from characters created by others (Tubby, Nancy, Andy Panda) as well as characters he himself invented (the horror-spoof Melvin Monster, as well as teen comics like Dunc and Loo, Thirteen, and Kookie).

Heer judges Stanley to be the better writer, an assessment we agree with but only by a whisper. And that whisper could change when the wind does. Such comparisons are not really necessary — in the shorter stories of Walt Disney Comics & Stories, even those starring bit players like Gyro Gearloose and Gladstone Gander, Barks showed a mastery of relentless destiny and stinging irony that few could surpass. Let’s just say they are BOTH great and reprint everything they ever did in living color!

Beat readers were divided over the $600k sale of recognized Pop Art master Mel Ramos’s painting based on a Gil Kane cover. So here’s a little cosmic balance: The art for the cover of WEIRD SCIENCE #16 has sold for $200,000:

A major, sophisticated collector of comic book art has paid $200,000 for the original cover art of a 1952 horror/science fiction comic in a transaction brokered by Heritage Auction Galleries, the Dallas-based firm announced. Wally Wood’s cover art for Weird Science #16 (EC Comics, 1952) had been the property of another private collector.

“This the highest price we’re aware of for a single comic art page,” said Jared Green, Vice-President of Business Development for Heritage, who negotiated the terms of the sale on the owner’s behalf. “Then again, this cover had everything the collector looks for: a highly collectible artist in the talented Wally Wood, rendering what is considered by many collectors to be the most striking cover scene of his entire career. EC’s publisher Bill Gaines reportedly said that their bestselling issues were the ones that showed boys in trouble, so this comic with its menacing aliens must have flown off the stands.”

When you put it that way, it’s quite the bargain. (Via Tom.)

Drawn and Quarterly continues to do God’s Work be announcing even more John Stanley reprints:

We’ll be starting off with a three volume set of Stanley’s Melvin Monster. During the “monster” craze of the Sixties, Dell Comics launched this short-lived but hilarious and weird series about a good little monster boy and his disappointed family. While primarily know as a writer, Stanley actually wrote and drew all nine issues of this series. This series will be designed by longtime Stanley champion Seth.

Next up, a three-volume set of the Stanley “Teen” comics–Thirteen going on Eighteen, Around the Block with Dunc and Loo, and Kookie. These frantic comics about teenagers and beatniks remain compelling 40 years later largely because of the skill that Stanley brought to his pacing, joke-writing, and character development. Thirteen is again almost all Stanley written and drawn and is one of the great “lost” treasures of silver age comics. Dunc and Loo and Kookie feature other artists (notably Bill Williams) finishing Stanley’s layouts but still maintaining that manic quality that was a Stanley trademark. Again, Seth will lend his design talents to this set.

This is fantastic news. With Dark Horse’s Little Lulu project rounding up nearly 20 volumes of Stanley’s best known work, this should supplement it nicely and show future generations just what a genius Stanley was.

This old Donald Duck one-pager has been making the rounds lately. Or should we say, this Donald Goddamn Duck one pager. He shows them how it’s done.

To our untrained eye it appears to have been drawn by Jack Hannah. Can anyone correct our woeful ignorance?

Shaenon K. Garrity cuts straight to the quick of John Stanley’s Little Lulu in this piece:

The thing about the Little Lulu reprint project is that, brilliant as Little Lulu is, no one really needs 19 volumes of it. It’s a very repetitive comic. The adventures of Lulu Moppet, Tubby Tompkins, and their many small neighbors were published in a time when kids read their comics and threw them away; a month later, they were ready for more of the same. John Stanley and his nameless assistants worked out a series of reliable formulas which play out, often with only slight variations, in issue after issue after issue:

If you want a succinct disquisition on the strengths and weaknesses of Lulu, this is it.

The kids in Little Lulu have the kind of freedom modern middle-class American kids can hardly imagine: they have the run of the town, they play in the woods unsupervised, they pick up stray dogs and skate on thin ice and run errands for local shopkeeps that take them into the homes of friendly strangers. In one story, Lulu and Tubby play mountain climber and scale the outside of a brownstone with ropes tied around their waists. In another, Tubby teaches the West Side Gang “riding the pookle,” which involves swimming for miles through an underground drainage pipe. (It’s a ruse, of course; you know Tubby.) Kids today could never do anything remotely this dangerous. And if they did, you couldn’t draw a comic about it. The Scholastic Book Club would have your ass on a platter.

Technorati Tags: Little Lulu

Our experiment in parsing the superhero trends of today ended in disarray as the discussion devolved into the kind of sock puppetry and name calling we find so odious. However, it did spawn a rather interesting post from Michael Climek in which he talks about how he got into reading comics. We find these origin stories of comics readers in their 20s (Climek is 26) very interesting because we were one of the many observers who thought that the superhero market abandoning comics for younger readers in the 90s would sound the death knell for their readers down the road. While the feeder stream was definitely cut off a bit, the appeal of comics to youngsters still managed to shine through. And there is no shame in acknowledging that superheroes and superhero comics can have an honest appeal to children:

Regrettably I cannot remember the first time I was exposed to comics. I know that many other historians and bloggers can cite a specific issues, and moments, and stores, but I cannot. I’m barely old enough to remember the last death throes of the newsstand concept as the Direct Market took over, so comics were ‘around’ so to speak. Actually, now that I think about it, the first ‘sequential art’ I was ever exposed to may very well have been the little comics that used to come with every He-Man toy. This has just occurred to me as I write this but it makes sense. I was a HUGE He-man fan as a child. I had most of the figures, and many of their accessories, and I watched the cartoon as if my life depended on it. He-Man really clicked with me as a young lad, so one of those many tiny 8 pages comics is probably the first taste I had of sequential art.

Another issue of a comic is one that really haunted young Climek, and appalling as it sounds, there is perhaps a lesson to be learned in knowing that a comic by Peter David and Todd McFarlane had the power to scare a child so much that he threw it behind the couch.

Still, the comic in question did come out in 1987, when there were (arguably) more “regular” comics that were aimed at youngish readers. As many have pointed out, what will be even more interesting is the demographics down the road when today’s manga-reading tots seek more mature fare. When you’re trained from birth in one style, the expectations are far different.

The “Brave and the Bold” discussion did show us one thing: “decompression” is a term a lot of readers throw around without having any idea what the hell it means. For us to figure it out ourselves would necessitate reading a LOT of comics from Marvel and DC…something we may not have time for any time in this epoch, alas.

Golden Age Comic Book Stories has been spotlighting Poe with all kinds of incredible artwork and a few comics stories.

The Black Cat (1843)
by Berni Wrightson fromCreepy #62 ~ May/1974

Berenice (by Archie Goodwin and Jerry Grandenetti from Eerie #11 ~ Sept/1967

The Cask of Amontillado! by Archie Goodwin and Reed Crandall from Creepy #6 ~ June/1966

BONUS: Harry Clarke, because we can’t resist Harry Clarke!

This YouTube video has a weighty theme:

The American civil rights movement opened possibilities of empowerment to a new generation. Feminism simply extended that to include equity for the 51% majority of the human race, namely women. 1970’s pop culture reflected society’s struggle to grasp a new, modern, full-range woman. Comic books were in a renaissance through young counterculture creators with more sophisticated stories, art, and outlooks. What better place for higher concepts of new female power than the turbo-amped fantasyscape of superheroes?

But we suspect you will just enjoy its nostalgic, kick-assness. Commentary by blogger Kali here. Via When Fangirls Attack.

After all the deep thots around here of late, cleanse your palette with this hilarious page.

You may just spend a few hours clicking around Steven Stwalley’s Crumbling Paper site, an archive of old comics strips by Herriman, Gruelle, Opper, Gluyas Williams and many, many more. Above, a panel from The Love of Lulu and Leander by F.M. Howarth from August 19, 1906. (Note, we lightened the scan just a tad– the “crumbling” in the title is sadly apt. Much of this stuff is disappearing from our fingertips.

Golden Age Comic Book Stories presents a story by Al Williamson and Roy Krenkel from Astonishing #57 (1957)

As an alternative to parades or football, may we suggest, these 39 never-reprinted Kirby Monsters comics at Philip Parodayco’s Monster Blog. Hours of browsing fun.

Most of Jack Kirby’s 188 pre-superhero stories have been reprinted; here’s the 39 that have NEVER been, in chronological order. As collectors provide me with scans from their original issues, I’ll be posting these stories on Monster Blog for your eternal enjoyment and edification!

Tom Brevoort points out what we’ve been discovering as we’ve cleaned up both home and office: a lot of these reprint books can quietly be…ignored.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I love the fact that so much of this material is readily available, and every reader makes their own evaluation of the work. By the same token, for every real classic run, stories of undeniable merit, there also seems to be a compilation of journeyman quality, or even just out-and out hackwork. This is especially true on the ESSENTIAL collections (and their differently-named counterparts uptown) where entire runs are being reprinted sequentially.

I’m a sentimental for the books of a certain period as anyone you’ll find (in my case, the books of the ’70s, when i started reading this stuff), but most of that sentiment is fueled by nostalgia rather than the quality of the material. I realize that a lot of these books really aren’t all that objectively good. For example, with rare exception, most of the run of MARVEL TEAM-UP is unspectacular. It’s fun, but not especially meaningful. And don’t get me started on the misnomer of ESSENTIAL WEREWOLF BY NIGHT.

[Via Graeme.]

Ben Samuels’ Classic Golden Age Comic Book Cover Gallery is an excellent resource for old comic book covers, with informative commentary. Browsing the horror gallery sounds like a fine way to kill time until the trick or treaters show up tonight.

BTW the moral of the story shown above? “Don’t eat radium!” A point to ponder…

I went to see BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT at the last night of its Ziegfield run here in NYC. Yes, we lucky bastards in NYC and LA got to see the final restored version on the big screen and the rest of you didn’t. I’m sorry.

I purposely didn’t read about what had been tinkered with for this actual Ridley Scott endorsed version (the previous Director’s Cut was mostly put together by Warners). So I came to it fresh. I could tell a few scenes and dialog had been changed — notably they finally explain that TWO replicants were killed already, accounting for all six — but it was mostly the sound editing that stood out. There just seemed to be a lot more ambient noise and background electro-noodling. It seemed distracting in places.

But otherwise, it was perfect. While the in-depth comparisons will await the home dvd release in December, two other notable fixes were that Zhora’s death scene has been reshot — God bless Joanna Cassidy — and the actual take of the unicorn scene was used. (There’s also much more blood when Roy kills Tyrell.) The final shot of the dove has also been improved. In this version, it’s much clearer that Deckard is a replicant, but I couldn’t say exactly how or why I got that impression. It was very subtle, but it worked.
(more…)

Steven Grant’s Permanent Damage column is always good reading, for but the last two weeks he’s been running SPARKY WATTS comics by
Boody Rogers. Old timey goodness, just like Pepperidge Farm.

Fred Hembeck reveals that a gargantuan collection of his work is on its way from Image which is great news for fans of knee squiggles.

Come February, 2008, Image Publishing will be gearing up to release THE NEARLY COMPLETE ESSENTIAL HEMBECK ARCHIVES OMNIBUS, featuring over 900 (!) pages of material written and drawn by cartoonist Fred Hembeck (who, in this particular instance of shameless self-promotion, is the actual individual typing in these very words), culled from the past three decades.

[snip] That’s how this whole thing started out, y’see–my old buddy (and veteran comics embellisher) Al Gordon’s suggested I put together a collection of each and every one of those old cartoons, including all the ones that had never been reprinted in a more permanent format previously. Al then proceeded to get his pal–and Image Publisher–Erik Larsen interested in the notion, and once things got rolling along, Erik encouraged me to expand the scope of the book to include a wide variety of additional material as well, some of which had never been seen before and some of which had turned up only in the most obscure of places.

The recent story about an unearthed copy of DETECTIVE #27 has begun to draw scrutiny as it appears the copy may have been doctored to remove flaws:

“He (the seller) called on Sept. 22 before stopping in around 1:30 p.m., and I spoke with him until around 4:30 p.m.,” Kropf said. “He brought in 70 books, all of which he claimed were found in an attic and had belonged to his grandfather.”
According to Eide and Kropf, as they were sorting through the books, they noticed that several Detective Comics, including the #27 appeared to vary in size. They both said this led them to think that some of the books may have been trimmed, meaning the edges have been cut to make the book appear less worn thus increasing the value.

“Of the 70 books, I would say about half of the books had been trimmed,” Eide said.

Kropf added that he believed more had been done than just trimming of the books.

However, there were some inconsistencies with the books that led Eide and Kropf to believe the books were “not from an attic collection” but were from a pieced together collection.

So much for the magic attic theory.

Paging Wimbledon Green!Newsarama reports on the thrilling tale of some people cleaning out a hosue who found a copy of DETECTIVE #27, the first appearance of the Batman, which is valued at over $500,000 in mint condition. This copy has a bit of wear, but Todd McDevitt of New Dimension Comics, in PA still should have no problem finding a buyer:

How does a retailer find a buy for a book like this? As surprising as it may be to some, there are buyers looking for these types of book who literally have the money standing by – although there’s an element of matchmaking involved with the business transaction.

“Word about a find like this gets out very quickly,” McDevitt said. “As I mentioned, I made one phone call and had a buyer the next day, but decided to hold onto it for now. Every dealer has the ‘I know a guy who wants that book’ story. The early enthusiasm for it makes me more confident that I made the right decision, and I suspect after the word spreads that ‘right guy’ will surface. It took a while for me to sell the All-American #16, but once I found the customer who it made a fit with, it sold right away to him.”

Kind of like adopting a kitten. Except it’s a super-rare comic book.

Following tons of international controversy, PW reports that Little, Brown has canceled the US version of Tintin in the Congo:

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, which had been planning to publish Tintin in the Congo, a book criticized for its racist, Colonial-era depictions of Africans, has quietly pulled the title from its fall list, PW has learned. The publisher also said it will not include the book in a forthcoming box set of all 24 books in the Tintin series.

Publicist Melanie Chang did not give a reason for the standalone book’s cancellation, but of its omission from the box set she said, “Given the controversy surrounding the Congo title, we felt including it in the box set would eclipse the true intention of the collection, which is to showcase Hergé’s extraordinary art and his remarkable contribution to the graphic arts.”

Although Belgian-born Herge later repudiated the views of this early work, it has long been criticized for its racist and colonialist views — repugnant today but common for the time.

Similar problems have long scotched even the concept of an English version of Tezuka’s KIMBA, THE WHITE LION, as PWCW recently reported:

PWCW: Any interest from Vertical in licensing Kimba the Lion [a classic manga and anime work by Tezuka ]?

IM: We’re interested, but the depiction of black people in Kimba is problematic. If everyone can for a moment put their sensitivity aside then we can do it. Otherwise people may be offended by the stereotypical drawing of Africans. A disclaimer might not be enough. And the author no longer being alive, it can’t be redrawn. If people promise to be understanding, we will publish it.

Of course, we would first have to talk to Tezuka Productions, too. They might have their reservations. I know for a fact that they are very careful about Kimba. They got into trouble in Japan in the early 1990s when certain groups said that it should be taken off the shelves—and it was. So they added a disclaimer and now you can buy it, but you don’t see it that much in bookstores.

Our thoughts? While all of these contemporary treatments are promlematic — like Eisner’s Ebony in THE SPIRIT — pretending they never existed doesn’t seem to be very useful, either.