Galactus has always been one of my favorite Marvel characters and it’s a shame that his only film appearance was botched in 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Now that the Fantastic Four are once again free to be a part of the MCU, my sincere hope is that we’ll get a worthy Galactus film. If Marvel Studios could bring Thanos to life, why not the Planet-Eater?
Below is Galactus (and the Silver Surfer) as imagined by Alex Ross. All four of these images are from Marvels #3 (March 1994) and they really capture Galactus in all of his glory.
Hopefully, the next time Galactus appeared in a film, he’ll be as impressive as he was here.
I wonder, if Dan Clowes knew that he’d be starting a decades-long “cottage industry” in comics with his “Art School Confidential” strip, if he’d take it all back?
Not that it was a bad strip, mind you — quite the opposite. It still makes me laugh to this day. But the art school memoir has grown and metastasized from that point into a beast that literally will not die, even if the critical and box office failure of Clowes and Terry Zwigoff’s film adaptation of the aforementioned story probably should have, by all rights, put it to rest. Okay, sure, it hasn’t been all bad : Matthew Thurber’s Artcomic, Joseph Remnant’s Cartoon Clouds, and Walter Scott’s Wendy series stand out as high-water marks, but on the shallow end we’ve got, well — everything else.
Welcome to everything else — or, at the least (and the most), a fairly standard representative example of everything else. Clio Isadora’s Sour Pickles (Avery Hill, 2021) is certainly okay enough for what it is, sure, but the problem I have with it is that it’s not appreciably different or distinctive as far as art school memoirs go apart from the fact that her authorial stand-in protagonist, Pickles (hence the title) and her friend/fellow classmate, Radish (noticing a pattern here?) temporarily become speed freaks in order to power their way through finals. Which is one of the older tricks in the book for students cramming their way to the finish line, admittedly, but hasn’t been explored, to my knowledge, on the comics page before — and, to be honest, Isadora’s frenetic art style, which might best be described as a kind of “Peow Studio aesthetic on crank plus an intentionally garish color scheme,” works well for the instances when Pickles and Radish are wired as fuck, and really brings a reader inside their racing minds. Unfortunately, however, that’s only part of the book.
It honestly doesn’t take long for Isadora’s admittedly interesting art to begin to grate, especially when her adherence to it negates the emotional impact of certain scenes like a “friend of a friend” funeral and a decidedly anticlimactic graduation, but I do have to admit I admire her determination to present everything in a uniform visual language, as well as the confidence it takes to stick to those guns, even if I’m not convinced doing so was necessarily the greatest idea. Art is all about bold choices — or should be — but Isadora’s cartooning style for this book is one of those double-edged swords in that works really well in terms of communicating certain things, but falls flat when it comes to communicating others. I could see warming up to it more upon a second reading as being a distinct possibility, but my next task here, as fate would have it, is to let you know precisely why said hypothetical second reading probably isn’t in the offing.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before : Pickles is the only hard-working student in an arts program overflowing with spoiled trust-fund kids. Her instructors are hopelessly out of touch with their students. Her parents can’t relate to her, nor she to them. Life after graduation looks to be fraught with uncertainty. Her love life’s DOA. Why, it’s like she’s always stuck in second gear. It just hasn’t been her day, her week, her month, or even her year. And while I’m not saying this book is anywhere near as vapid as any given episode of Friends, that’s partly down to the simple fact that, let’s face it, nothing can be. I don’t think Isadora’s a cartoonist without ambition, or without the ability to see that ambition through to a reasonably compelling finished product (I haven’t seen her Is It Vague In Other Dimensions? ‘zine, but it comes highly recommended by people whose opinions I generally trust), but thematically she’s playing it really safe here : “write and draw what you know” is solid advice and all, but should come with the caveat “if you have something new to add to the conversation.” Isadora herself may, but unfortunately this comic does not.
On the plus side of the ledger, Isadora’s dialogue is sharp, clear, and natural, even if no one’s really saying anything we haven’t read before, and her sense of comic timing is spot-on : this story is frequently quite funny. But one can’t help but feel she’s going for a crowd-pleaser with this project rather than pushing her talents to their utmost. There’s enough here to ensure that I’ll be keeping an eye out for her next book in the hopes that she’ll do just that, but not quite enough that I can recommend this one.
Also, this review is “brought to you” by my Patreon site, where I serve up exclusive thrice-weekly rants and ramblings on the worlds of comics, films, television, literature, and politics for as little as a dollar a month. Subscribing is the best way to support my continuing work, so I’d be very appreciative if you’d take a moment to give it a look by directing your kind attention to https://www.patreon.com/fourcolorapocalypse
The holidays are over and I know A LOT about Electricity, Magnetism, and Titans. The episode opens with a brutal scene of a woman killing two cops. I almost had to look away. It is NOT for the faint of heart. What got to me was the cold psychopathy of it. The reason for this little Kill-spree is poorly developed. It quickly cuts to Wayne Manor and Blackfire is now a quasi-Titan and she still prevents me from totally concentrating. She and Superboy have REAL chemistry. So… pretty sure that’s happening very soon. Kyptonians get all the luck!
Lady Vic really more of a B-Storyline. We see how Barbara Gordon and Dick became an item. Boy knows girl, boy and girl both dress flamboyantly, and boy and girl knock over a museum for an old trinket, which of course leads to Knocking Boots. There’s a lid for every pot, but museum heist leading to intercourse doesn’t seem like a direct route to me, but what do I know- I study hours of Math …. for fun. Through flashbacks, we learn that Babs and Dick went on heists for fun, but ended up killing Lady Vic’s husband, brother… or something.
I guess that I have to note that there is a plotline of when will Blackfire and Superboy hook up? However, this plot-line is just so predictable that it’s not great. The show needs Hawk back. He added a terrific wisecracking element and Gar and Superboy just don’t quite make up for his loss.
Jason Todd is still Red Hooding with Dr Crane. Lady Vic works for him too, but just as a side-hustle.
This episode was more disjointed than a knee replacement, but I guess you have to watch it to prepare for the next episodes.
You know, it’s funny — I was just remarking to a couple of friends/fellow critics on Twitter earlier today that “understated and contemplative” just aren’t where my reading interests are at these days. It’s not only that they’ve been done done to death in contemporary “alternative” comics (although that surely plays a large part), either : it’s also that they’re a pretty cheap and easy pose for people without a whole hell of a lot to say if they want to try and come off as more profound than they actually are. Disappointed about where you are in life? Confused about the future? Feeling isolated, alone, and disconnected from humanity? Hey, that’s too bad and all, but how about you tell us something about yourself that actually sets you apart from the overwhelming majority of people in late-stage capitalist society?
Speaking of which, a lot of books that indulge in the kind of navel-gazing I’m bored to death with reek of privilege — after all, folks who are clocking 60 hours a week (or more) at back-breaking, dehumanizing menial jobs, or struggling to figure out how they’re going to feed their kids, simply don’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for themselves even though they surely have every right to do so. After all, reflecting on the admitted bummers of unrealized dreams, unfulfilled potential, and unrequited love is only something you can do if you’ve got the free time to do it with.
The simple fact that Vancouver-based artist Karen Shangguan’s Quiet Thoughts (Avery Hill, 2021) was able to impress me, then, given my current negative disposition toward all things blatantly introspective, is something of an achievement in and of itself. I mean, the title gives away what sort of work this is from word go, and it doesn’t lie : collected in this slender volume are visually lyrical musings, ruminations, and illustrations that, fair enough, present one person’s interpretation of various aspects of the human condition from the inside out, but Shangguan goes about her business with a deft enough touch that nothing on offer here will remind you of your annoyingly “angsty” friends — assuming you’re foolhardy enough to still keep any around.
Crucially, while her art and sparse prose are uniformly delicate — sometimes to the point of being downright ethereal — they’re imbued with enough earnestness to give them a conceptual weight that both accentuates, and creates a kind of aesthetic tension by default with, their formal presentation. Shangguan’s use of space and intuitive understanding of sequential rhythm are keys in this regard, communicating at all times the fleeting and transitory nature of, well, pretty much everything, but doing so in a way that manages to be instantly memorable while grasping for ideas and feelings that come and go like a summer cloud. Change is the only constant, as the old cliche goes, but hidden within that is something both inherently more haunting and more wondrous that Shaungguan’s work captures with disarming alacrity : impermanence is the only thing a person can actually count on.
Okay, yeah, there’s still something a bit plastic-bag-in-the-wind about all this, but unlike that infamously vapid scene from an infamously vapid film (American Beauty, in case you’d mercifully forgotten), Shangguan doesn’t hold your hand through the process of interpreting and understanding how she feels about what she’s poetically expounding upon. She establishes a flow from the outset and trusts in your ability as a reader to go with it. This takes more confidence than the tone of many of these pieces would at least imply this artist to be in possession of, but have it she does, and the end result is something of a gently bumpy glide through the semi-turbulent air of life itself — by turns almost too painful to contemplate and too beautiful to ever want to let go of.
And I guess that’s my cue to hop off before I get more pretentious than I’m comfortable with here, but kudos to Shangguan for making me look at things in a way that would normally work my nerves and not only get me to see the value in doing so, but even to enjoy it. There are some raw wounds to be found in this book, no doubt, but even they’re presented as exactly what they are : part of the rich overall tapestry of an existence that will be over with all too soon however one measures it. And I’ve got a sneaky feeling that when it’s all said and done, those contemplative moments of introspection that I claim to be so over and done with will turn out to be what life’s really been about all along — so hey, as Dave Gahan said, “enjoy the silence.”
Also, this review is “brought to you” by my Patreon site, where I serve up exclusive thrice-weekly rants and ramblings on the worlds of comics, films, television, literature, and politics for as little as a dollar a month. Subscribing is the best way to support my continuing work, so I’d be very appreciative if you’d take a moment to give it a look by directing your kind attention to https://www.patreon.com/fourcolorapocalypse
The holidays may be mercifully over, but considering that I got my review copy of Ryan Alves and Ron Beek III’s new “split release” comic (co-published under the auspices of Alves’ AWE Comics and Beek’s Wtfawta), The Christmas Before/Santer, after the purportedly most wonderful time of the year had run its course, I was left with two options : review it now to keep the unseasonability of doing so to a minimum, or sit on it until next Christmas. I chose the former since the comic was still fresh in my mind and since it’s still available for purchase, which may not be the case in 11 months.
Before we delve too deeply into the particulars of the book itself, I should state that it seems the image of Santa Claus has fallen on rather hard times, which I suppose is to be expected in this cynical age, but we’re four decades on from films like Christmas Evil and Silent Night, Deadly Night, and the simple fact remains that there isn’t much of a “middle ground” for the character between jolly bringer of gifts and joy and psychotic serial killer apart from Bad Santa, which has become something of a latter-day holiday classic. You’d think somebody else would mine the fertile territory that is a debased but not altogether evil iteration of St. Nick, but for whatever reason, no one’s picked that ball up and run with it to any appreciable degree.
Not that I’m paying particularly close attention, mind you : Christmas and popular culture have merged into one inseparable commercialized entity at this point, and it’s one that I couldn’t frankly care less about — but that certainly didn’t preclude me from quite enjoying this comic, which is a testament in and of itself to the talents of the cartoonists who made it. I mean, if you can hold my interest with a Christmas-themed comic in the first place you’re doing something right, and if you can manage to do so in the days immediately following the end of a holiday season that I’m nothing but happy to see firmly in the rear view mirror, you’re doing something doubly right.
Not that I would expect anything less from these guys, both of whom have impressed me with their solo and collaborative efforts in the past, but I think turning their creative juices loose on a single connecting theme really draws attention to the different sensibilities each brings to the table, as well as the tonal similarities that make this pairing such a natural one. They’ve both, for instance, chosen to place their versions of St. Nick somewhere beneath Bad Santa but above the various “Santa slashers” on our makeshift “creepy Santa” scale, and both are masters at utilization of blacks, whites, and gray tones in their art (Alves’ cartooning leaning more toward abstraction and Beek’s more toward formal realism), but whereas Alves sets his wordless interpretive yarn in the dim reaches of prehistory, Beek’s story is very much contemporary, urban, and depressingly believable. Contrasts and convergences are the name of the game here, two sides of the same coin, so it’s entirely fitting that this is formatted as a true “flip book,” with each story given its own cover and both, quite literally, meeting in the middle.
The natural enough question following along from all this would be, of course, “so which story did you like better?,” but as much as this will no doubt sound like a cop-out, I found both to be successful for entirely different reasons. Alves’ The Christmas Before leaves one with more to think about, certainly, given its more mystical nature, but Beek’s Santer is open enough to interpretation as well and perhaps packs a bit more of a wallop in purely visceral terms, so — yeah, don’t force me to choose one or the other since I technically don’t have to anyway.
Besides, of utmost import here is the fact that they work really well together, something not every co-operative creative venture can claim — themed anthologies, in particular, having a rather spotty track record when it comes to maintaining an overall flow to them given that “all these comics are about a similar subject” is often an easy way to avoid the more challenging task of selecting material that either possesses an overall artistic cohesion or establishes a frisson of conceptual and aesthetic tension throughout, both of which of course offer their own rewards. Alves and Beek give us the best of both worlds here, presenting two discrete but linked comics stories that manage to play off each other and stand in stark contrast to one another. Don’t ask me how that works, just be glad that it does.
Also, this review is “brought to you” by my Patreon site, where I serve up exclusive thrice-weekly rants and ramblings on the worlds of comics, films, television, literature, and politics for as little as a dollar a month. Subscribing is the best way to support my continuing work, so I’d be very appreciative if you’d take a moment to give it a look by directing your kind attention to https://www.patreon.com/fourcolorapocalypse
One of the things that made Spider-man unique amongst the heroes of the Silver Age was that he often didn’t want to be a hero. When he first got his powers, he wanted to make money. It was the death of Uncle Ben that left him feeling obligated to fight crime. But even then, he would have much rather have been Peter Parker. Often times, when Spider-Man swinging across New York and fighting folks like Electro and the Sandman, he would have much rather have been at home, taking care of Aunt May or studying for a midterm or out on a date with Gwen Stacy or Mary Jane Watson. Unlike the similarly angsty Hulk and The Thing, Spider-Man actually could had the option of abandoning his secret identity and trying to live a normal life if he wanted. That Peter Parker not only felt obligated but often resentful made him a hero to which readers could relate.
He finally did try to walk away in 1967’s Amazing Spider-Man #50 and it led to a classic cover from John Romita. This cover, with both Peter and Spider-Man turning their backs on each other, perfectly captures the inner conflict that Peter dealt with every issue. When he was Peter, he didn’t want to be Spider-Man and when he was Spider-Man, he didn’t always want to be Peter Parker. In Amazing Spider-Man #50, exhausted from being continually condemned by J. Jonah Jameson and worried about Aunt May’s health (as always), Peter tried to walk away.
It didn’t last, of course. At first, Peter enjoyed not being Spider-Man but, as crime increased, Peter realized that he still owed it to the people of New York City and the spirit of Uncle Ben to fulfil his “great responsiblity.” At the end of the issue, Peter retrieved his costume and once again took to the streets. It wasn’t a minute too soon because this issue featured not only a classic cover. It also featured the first appearance of the crime lord known as the Kingpin. New York needed Spider-Man more than ever.
To wrap things up on my Patreon preview week here, I present a recent review of a VERY unique project —
One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Domino — and I’m sure this is true for all the readers of this site who also buy books from them either “on the regular” or occasionally — is that once in awhile proprietor Austin English somehow gets ahold of something that utterly defies not only categorization, but even description. And while on the surface, at least, Ina Parsons’ A SUPERHERO COMIC BOOK would seem to do neither, given that its title clearly states both what it is AND what sort of genre category it fits into, let’s face it : appearances can be deceiving.
Ironically, however, it’s the APPEARANCE of the three (to date) purported “comic books” in this series that’s the first thing to clue you in to the fact that there’s something very different going on here : roughly the size of maybe a kid’s hand, each “issue” consists of four heavy cardstock “pages” glued (I think, at any rate) inside even HEAVIER cardboard “covers” — we’re clearly talking, then, about genuinely HAND-MADE items here, with each “cover” and “back cover” consisting of reverse-image collage art and each interior image being a double-“page” spread that juxtaposes a provocative sentence fragment with, again, frankly mysterious collages, each of which uniformly evokes the look and feel of photographic negatives, albeit negatives shot through with intentionally garish color schemes.
Hey, I TOLD YOU this shit was hard to describe — I really am doing my best, promise.
As for what’s “happening” in the “story,” it would appear that some human test subject or other is strapped down to a table and being “gifted” with super-powers of some sort by a shadowy group of doctors, and that said subject is both excited and terrified at the prospect, as one probably would be under the circumstances — whatever those circumstances, ya know, are. That’s all we know so far, and even THAT is up for debate. What ISN’T, however, is that this project has already redefined the parameters and possibilities of both genre fiction AND “chapbook”-formatted art.
In fairness, though, it had damn well BETTER break some new ground given the price tag attached to it : after all, each “issue” costs ten bucks. And while there’s no doubt the minute you look at one of these “comic books” that MORE than ten dollars’ worth of labor went into putting the whole thing together, that’s still a lot of money to spend on what is, at the end of the day, a small art object moreso than it is a “book” per se. All that being said, though, the real question here is : leaving aside what went into it, can you possibly get your money’s worth OUT of it?
That all depends, I suppose, on something we’ll call, for lack of a more readily-available term, the “appreciation factor.” If you derive personal satisfaction from immersing yourself within a highly personal and distinctive artistic vision the likes of which you’ll quite literally find NOWHERE else, then the answer is a very enthusiastic “yes.” But if you don’t have the time, inclination, or desire to grapple with this work on anything more than a liminal “surface” level (and absolutely no judgments here if this describes you — we all have our own individual tastes), then I can’t in good conscience recommend you buy these “comics.” They demand that you meet them on their own terms, and the very first of those terms is decoding precisely what the REST of the terms are. Certainties are few and far between here, it’s true, but while A SUPERHERO COMIC BOOK doesn’t fit any preconceived notions of WHAT superhero comic books are, there’s still no real question that it is EXACTLY what it bills itself as being.
I also think it’s reasonable to assume, even at this apparently-early stage, that this work roughly fits into the category of “superhero deconstruction” — something that’s been so done to death that I can easily understand why even reading those words would put somebody off. But it’s not deconstructing the superhero via narrative means alone. Visually, formally, even conceptually, Parsons is splitting the idea apart like Oppenheimer did with the atom. There’s no telling what will emerge from it — perhaps, at least in part, because there’s no telling where we are within the overall framework of the project right now — but it’s sure to be fascinating, regardless of whether or not it’s entirely decipherable.
Next up on our Patreon preview week is a representative example of an occasional series I have going on there called “Retro Comics Corner” where I take a break from reviewing contemporary comics to cast a critical eye on older stuff. If you fid it to your liking, please consider signing up for said Patreon, a link to which will follow this review.
What a long, strange trip it’s been for Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s MARSHAL LAW. Originally “green-lit” by Archie Goodwin, then-head honcho of Marvel’s creator-owned Epic Comics line, back in 1987 as a kind of “last word” on super-hero deconstruction, the creators followed Goodwin out the door when he left for DC, but opted not to join him there, instead throwing in their lot with short-lived British comics publishing venture Apocalypse (where Mills was put in charge of the equally-shot-lived TOXIC! anthology title) before returning the project back to these shores via Dark Horse. The eventual end of the comic (and the character) as a going concern didn’t mean Mills and O’Neill were done with their vagabond ways, though —
In 2010, Top Shelf announced that they had entered into an agreement with the pair to publish an omnibus collection of all of Marshal’s appearances, even his late-period crossovers with Erik Larsen’s SAVAGE DRAGON, Clive Barker’s PINHEAD, and Doug Mahnke’s THE MASK, but somehow that fell by the wayside, and when we finally DID get a “definitive” MARSHAL LAW book, it came in the form of DC’s 2013 MARSHAL LAW : THE DELUXE EDITION, a snazzy hardcover that was notably WITHOUT the “team-up” comics which had originally been slated for inclusion. Methinks copyright issues are the primary reason that this supposedly “complete” collection isn’t, in fact, complete, but still — at nearly 500 pages, it’s at the very least a COMPREHENSIVE volume by anyone’s definition of the word.
It’s also a DAMNED uneven one, truth be told. but the responsibility for that should be laid squarely on the shoulders of Mills and O’Neill themselves, who kept this concept going well beyond it’s “sell-by” date, with each outing delivering diminishing returns until all that was left was hollow self-parody. Make no mistake, though : the first MARSHAL LAW series, latterly sub-titled “Fear And Loathing,” is great fun and succeeds wildly in chiseling an epitaph on the entire concept of the super-hero in general. Sure, there’s a somewhat predictable mystery story shoehorned into the proceedings that revolves around one of the more painfully obvious “MacGuffins” you’re ever likely to come across, but that’s not REALLY what the comic was about, per se : rather, it was about Mills and O’Neill venting their spleen on super-heroes on a conceptual level, and on the hyper-violent “realistic” iterations of them that were polluting the comics landscape at the time in particular. Sure, it was self-indulgent to the point of being borderline-masturbatory, but that was the whole POINT. These two hated super-heroes, and even more than that hated what had BECOME of super-heroes, and they wanted to hammer that hatred home in a manner that mocked and ridiculed the genre’s excesses by dialing them up to 11. This is a narrow creative remit, to be sure, but they hit it out of the park.
Lost in all the hubbub, though, is the obvious debt the whole premise owed to JUDGE DREDD, with Marshal himself essentially being a stand-in for his more famous predecessor and the ruined post-apocalyptic hellscape of San Futuro functioning as Mills and O’Neill’s very own Mega-City One. Both protagonist and city were exceptionally well thought-out, however, it must be said, and very few exercises in “borrowed” world-building have anywhere near the effort put into them that this one did. No points for originality, then, but points APLENTY for execution.
Cracks in the firmament began to show pretty quickly after “Fear And Loathing,” though : when next we encountered Marshal, it was in a series of oversized one-offs that would pop up sporadically, with dead giveaways about the plots of each being baked right into the titles : “Marshal Law Takes Manhattan,” “Kingdom Of The Blind,” “The Hateful Dead,” and “Super Babylon” won’t leave anyone wondering what the hell is happening in the books themselves, and it’s no exaggeration to say that each is more concerned with upping the ante in terms of overall OTT-ness than they are about anything else. Kudos to O’Neill for clearly having a blast delineating all the carnage Mills could throw his way, but by the time of Marshal’s final solo adventure, the two-part “Secret Tribunal,” the comic was little more than a “greatest hits” pastiche forever seeking to re-capture some frisson of its faded glory. There was still a fair amount of stupid fun to be had for readers, sure, but even then most of that stupid fun came tinged with hollow reminders of just how fucking COOL this comic USED to be.
By the time this book ends, then, it’s honestly no stretch to say that you’ll be rather glad it’s over, but there are a smattering of extras on hand to make you feel good about the purchase, including a highly-detailed full color map of San Futuro, some “virgin” cover art, and a couple of early-version character sketches. None of this is earth-shaking stuff by any stretch, and my understanding is that much of it is “ported over” from an earlier Graphitti Designs collection of “Fear And Loathing” and “Marshal Law Takes Manhattan” that boasts much more in terms of backmatter (good luck finding that!), but again : this is all more than exhaustive enough for anyone other than the hardest of hard-core fans. Unless you happen to number yourself among that lot, then, the MAIN value to be had from this collection is twofold : it reminds you of just how apropos for its time the first MARSHAL LAW series was — and of how quickly the times passed poor old Marshal by. “Fear And Loathing” is certainly good enough to DESERVE to stand as a capstone on the entire concept of ultra-violent, “mature” super-hero revisionism, but the fact that it DOESN’T is at least partially down to Mills and O’Neill’s decision to keep the concept going beyond that point.
Continuing with our “preview week” of content originally posted on my Patreon, here’s a recent-ish review I wrote of Diego Arandojo and Facundo Percio’s BEATNIK BUENOS AIRES, published in English in 2021 by Fantagraphics —
There are three kinds of historical narratives — those that relate the nuts and bolts of the particular epoch they’re analyzing, those that capture and evoke the MOOD and ATMOSPHERE of the time, and those that manage to do both.
The comics medium is uniquely suited to the second option, of course, being a visual means of communication, but that doesn’t preclude the first and third options from being on the table, as it were, as well — when you’ve only got 96 pages to work with, though, you’d better figure out precisely what it is you’re looking to do if you want to do it WELL. There’s not much room for false steps when you’re operating within the strictures of a concise page count, after all, and there’s even LESS time to recover from them.
To that end, the Argentinian creative team of writer Diego Arandojo and artist Facudo Percio get right to work on delivering the goods in BEATNIK BUENOS AIRES (originally published on their native soil in 2019 and released in an English-language edition earlier this year by Fantagraphics, with translation by Andrea Rosenberg), a sweeping overview of the dimly-lit cafes and eccentric creative personages that made up the largely-forgotten 1960s (to be specific, 1963) Bohemian scene in their country’s capitol city. To their credit, the narrative doesn’t FEEL rushed in any way — and Percio’s exquisitely moody charcoal illustrations certainly LOOK anything but — yet there’s an urgency to the pacing here that belies its breezy tone. All of which is to say, there’s a LOT going on, but we are only given crucial glimpses of a LITTLE of it.
This, however, is not a criticism — in fact, the ingenious structure herein really works, the book’s 13 short chapters, each focused on a different artist, coalescing into an eminently readable (and again, because it bears repeating, visually GORGEOUS) tapestry that avails itself of the second of three storytelling options I mentioned at the outset, with mood and atmosphere taking precedence over the grim and gritty details.
Which isn’t to say that you’re not afforded one tantalizing peek after another into the places, people, and events that made this largely sub rosa cultural renaissance so special, only that these collaborators are far more concerned with imparting the essential CHARACTER of the period than they are its minutiae. You’ll be left wanting more, absolutely, but that’s as much a testament to the POWER of the craft on display here than it is to any of its shortcomings — and there are endnotes at the back for those looking to branch off into some independent researches of their own.
Still, this scattershot approach is not without its shortcomings — without some sort of fuller meat and bones context, the actions of an art forger and a photographer who damn near kills his girlfriend come off as too matter-of-fact in their presentation/recounting for their own good, and while we get a taste of the unfortunate sexism that was rife in this counter-cultural milieu, Arandojo never takes it upon himself to take the dudes perpetrating it to task for it in any way. In fact, sometimes his overall tone can be a bit too hagiographic to be considered either honest OR effective.
These are no mere minor quibbles, I’ll grant you, but in the overall scheme of things they certainly don’t rise to the level of being “deal-breakers,” either. This is an IMPRESSIONTIC overview first and foremost, remember, and erring on the side of the overly-comprehensive would likely get in the way of the primary task at hand, that being to capture the essence of the overall local zeitgeist. With another hundred pages (at least), Arandojo and Percio would certainly have been able to pull off something more exhaustive, but then some of that urgency I spoke so highly of would necessarily have been, if not lost, at the very least hopelessly bogged down.
Whether or not you view this comic as a modest little masterwork or an intriguing but ultimately pointless exercise in self-indulgence, then, rests largely on whether or not you’re willing to meet it on its own terms — it achieves almost all of what it sets out to do, some notable exceptions aside, but if that’s ENOUGH for you or not is something only you can decide for yourself. All I know for certain is that Arandojo and Percio made me smell the cigarette smoke, hear the jazz, and feel the heat of the creative energy that were all hanging so heavily in that rarefied 1963 Buenos Aires air.
Interested in more? Then please take a look at my Patreon, the blatant promotion of which is, after all, what this week is all about. Here’s the link : https://www.patreon.com/fourcolorapocalypse
I do this once a year, and figured the first week of the year might be a better time for it than some random week in July or August or whatever — essentially the point here being, and I’m not too proud to admit it, to gin up a little interest in my Patreon site by offering everyone a sampling of the wares they’ll find if they decide to join up. I update it three times weekly, and seriously, it does help make all this writing (somewhat) financially viable. Plus, we’ve got a great group of folks on there, the conversation in the comments section is usually pretty lively, and everyone whose a member is, at the risk of sounding corny, more than just a member, they’re a friend. And couldn’t we all do with more of those in life? Anyway, first up is a review I did a couple months back of editor Greg Sadowski’s 2021 Fantagraphics collection SCOOP SCUTTLE AND HIS PALS : THE CRACKPOT COMICS OF BASIL WOVERTON, with a link to my Patreon at the end if you’re interested in reading more stuff of this nature..
Most people are well aware that visionary cartoonist Basil Wolverton’s legendary contributions to MAD were hardly his first go-’round with humor strips, but leave it to Wolverton scholar par excellence Greg Sadowski to curate a long-overdue collection of some of his most obscure and overlooked comedic creations of the 1940s and 1950s : goofball reporter Scoop Scuttle, magic-nosed swami Mystic Moot, idiot savant cowboy Bingbang Buster and his horse Hedy, and slapstick spacefarer Jumpin’ Jupiter. To say that none of these characters made much by way of a lasting impression on the readership of the time is undoubtedly true, sure — but each in their own way presaged much of the madcap shenanigans to come from Wolverton’s mind and pen, and their misadventures are sure to delight even the most jaded of modern readers.
Which, admittedly, is a camp that I all-too-frequently find myself numbered amongst, given my frankly robust reading schedule, yet even for those of us who’ve literally seen it all before, there’s something about seeing how it was done earlier that feels like, if you’ll forgive the cliche, a breath of fresh air. And talking of cliches —
OF COURSE they’re a dime a dozen in these pages, but Wolverton’s ability to poke good-natured fun at them remains an unbridled joy, even if the occasional ethnic stereotype rightly gives today’s readers some pause. That being said, such offensive caricatures are in far shorter supply in Wolverton’s work than they are in that of many of his contemporaries, and the persons, places, and things he draws are so uniformly outlandish that they don’t especially stand out from what’s more or less ALWAYS a crowded field of visual eccentricities. Simply stated, then, it’s safe to say that these stories (and it should be stated for the record that Sadowski presents the printed exploits of all four characters in their entirety) were all constructed as FUN strips fist and foremost, and that they remain precisely that to this day.
Admittedly, there’s no escaping the fact that these are “toned down” a notch compared to Wolverton’s MAD work, but it’s intriguing to see him feeling his way forward, so to speak, and it’s also important to remember that he was working under undoubtedly tighter editorial standards. Even for all that, though, there’s a tremendous amount of innovation on display in many of these strips, and not just in terms of the far-out sound effects that Sadowski draws particular attention to in his thoroughly absorbing introductory essay — indeed, the page layouts, intuitive flow of the action, outrageous character designs, and even some of the plot twists are all several levels above and beyond the standard humor comics fare of the era.
None of which means this isn’t ultimately formulaic stuff, mind you — but a big part of Wolverton’s genius always rested in his ability to thoroughly subvert expectation WITHIN a given formula; to give readers a combination of MORE than what they bargained for and EXACTLY what they bargained for simultaneously. In that respect, then, this necessarily “hemmed in” work could potentially be said to represent a MORE INGENIOUS distillation of the “Wolverton ethos,” if you will, than later material where he was more free to let it all hang out.
Sure, ultimately I don’t think there’s any argument that SCOOP SCUTTLE AND HIS PALS will primarily be of interest to hard-core Wolverton aficionados above all (certainly the admirable amount of care that went into the flat-out amazing restoration process makes this an essential purchase even for collectors who might own a fair number of time-yellowed originals), but it’s also this critic’s considered opinion that Sadowski has managed to put together a collection that damn near ANYONE can take a tremendous amount of enjoyment from, be they crusty veteran or member of comics laity. Given what we’ve all been through over the past year and change, some extra laughter in our lives is likely to be welcomed by anyone and everyone, and if the source of that laughter is 70-80 years old, then hell, that’s reason to be IMPRESSED as well as amused.
Okay, I hope you’ve enjoyed this first little sample offering. If you’re interested in more, my Patreon costs as little as a dollar a month to join and can be found by heading over to https://www.patreon.com/fourcolorapocalypse
Through the Shattered Lens 