Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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| Image by Tumisu from Pixabay |
Splish splash splish splash splish splash splosh!
Sploom.
Is that the sound of a hideous fiend approaching us from the neighbouring swamp?
I suspect it's not.
I suspect it's the sound of the internet's most talked about feature approaching, because it seems that that's the sound it makes.
I am, indubitably, referring to the feature in which only You the Reader may choose the night's topic for debate.
But what will it be?
I cannot say.
Therefore, feel free to post it in the comments section below and let us hope the gators don't get us.
Posts
29 comments:
Charlie just read a new, most-excellent graphic novel: “Dr Wethless”. It is about Dr. Wertham who worked tirelessly to reduce the comic book industry in the US to purely funny books (and maybe even eliminate them) in the 1950s.
Opinions on Wortham’s activities?
As an aside, the guy was a humanitarian as well, being instrumental in overturning “separate but equal “ laws in the US school system in the 1950s.
And of course if anyone elae has subjects please post!
I’ll look that up, Charlie - thanks!
I have a vanilla comics question…
What comic artists were you once blazingly enthusiastic about but aren’t any more? Why - and when did the change take place?
Conversely, anyone you weren’t keen on but have come to appreciate? And why / when?
Charlie - Regarding comics, funny or serious is a false alternative ( regarding some titles), suggesting the geezer's comics knowledge is superficial. Peanuts is both funny & serious. Spidey makes jokes about "losing face", whilst tearing off a samurai warrior's mask. There's also Howard the Duck...
Phillip
Matthew - I think my art prejudices have remained the same, but I'll have to mull over it!
Phillip
MM - good one. I am too old and not current to answer this in the present tense.
I can say that I am more tolerant of Fr@nk R@bbins art though after reading copies od Shadow and Invaders to keep up with SDC.
Also I appreciate Gil Kane’s little run on Spidey in the early 1970s now. Prior to that, his work on Atom, Green Lantern was nice but boring. After that, he became ubiquitous and predictable.
But his Spidey’s around ASM 100 are a delight! Again I owe this to SDC, digging books out of the long boxes covered in 40 -50 years of dust.
And I still have a slavish devotion to Kirby, Steranko, Colan, Everett, John Buscema. And Aparo and Kubert.
Wertham was after elimanating violence and racism and misogyny in all forms in comics, whether Road Runner and Wiley Coyote or Vault of Horror or Charlie Brown os Spidey variants. Hope that helps. CH
I used to love Mike Grells art in the 1970s ( especially Legion of Superheroes) and although I still like some of his early work, I really found his style tedious from Green Lantern, Jon Sable etc onwards .
I hated Frank Robbins art especially his Cap America and Morbius strips at Marvel, but from around the late1970s I started to appreciate his stuff ( even Cap America). The guys was a genius just check those Shadow issues at DC....ok, I'll get my coat! .
I don't think Dr Wretham was wrong to raise the issue of violence in comics, perhaps the way he went around it was a bit blunt. Although I have to say I have only read anti Wretham articles, if he was trying to eliminate racism etc then I can't see that was wrong
Charlie and Matthew, thanks for the topics.
I know little of Dr Wertham but have always felt he was a strange man.
I really didn't like Jack Kirby's 1960s super-hero work, when I was a youth but am fully appreciative of it, as an adult.
I didn't know Dr Wertham was opposed to racism and misogyny. I'd always assumed he was a typical meddling narrow-minded social-conservative, telling other people how to live while bleating about "freedom".
On the subject of art, as a kid I thought Jack Kirby could do no wrong but nowadays I'm a bit more critical. By contrast I didn't like Pablo Marcos but I've come to appreciate him, especially all his Marvel UK covers from 1974-78.
I was a huge Neal Adams’ fan in the mid 80’s (probably when a lot of his 70’s work was being reprinted on glorious baxter paper). Nowadays, I find his stuff pretty meh. I think this may be partially due to having been burned several times with his Continuity Studio titles. Conversely, my appreciation for Steranko has gotten, if anything, greater, over the years.
DW
Dr. Fredric Wertham was born in Germany and eventually immigrated to the USA. His personal papers and documents may be seen in the US Library of Congress. This includes a letter from Thurgood Marshall personally thanking him for his work studying discrimination.
Below, Charlie lifts from google.
"In order to prepare for discrimination cases in Delaware, attorneys Louis Redding, Jack Greenberg, and Thurgood Marshall needed medical testimony on the harm segregation caused children. Wertham's studies showed that the practice of racial separation "creates a mental health problem in many Negro children with a resulting impediment in their educational progress." Wertham's testimony was significant because his research was the first to examine both black and white children attending segregated schools. The evidence revealed the possibly that white children, too, may be harmed by school segregation. The Delaware cases became part of the legal argument used in the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)."
Wertham gathered this data while operating a free mental health clinic in Harlem for poor people. Named in memory of Karl Marx's son-in-law, Dr. Paul Lefargue, the Lafargue Clinic became one of the most noteworthy institutions to serve poor Americans and to promote the cause of civil rights.
I do recommend the graphic novel Dr. Werthless but be warrned: Wertham did extensive work providing therapy and studying sociopaths in the prison system of NY. The details and supporting footnotes are gruesome to the extreme. Perhaps this serves as the foundation for his pursuit of comics.
Jim Starlin was great up to the end of the Warlock series - but The Death Of Captain Marvel and all that Metamorphosis/Dreadstar biz since was awful. The review in The Comics Journal nailed it - something along the lines of "It's as if Starlin decided to finally look at an anatomy book and adjust his style accordingly"...to his detriment, in my opinion.
And I'm in accord with DW - Neal Adams could do no wrong until he started doing his own thing with his Continuity Comics...most of his innovative layouts disappeared in favour of over-rendering - and I challenge anyone who says Jack Kirby was a terrible writer to try ploughing their way through that Batman:Odyssey mishmash!
While I'm at it, Dave Cockrum was never the same after he came back to the X-Men after Byrne - in fact, Byrne's work seemed to get lazier (if that's the word) once he took the Fantastic Four on.
What the heck, in for a penny - George Perez was a talent for sure, when he began; you could see his work improving issue by issue in the Avengers, and his own FF art was exemplary. By time he started on the Teen Titans, he was topsa, but by time he finished...hmm.
And for what it's worth, I liked Barry's work best when he was plain old Mr Smith, and yet to pick up the Windsor.
As a Neal Adams fan(atic) sadly I would have to agree that his writing was just terrible . His Continuity output and later art was a real disappointment , the stuff of bargain bins. But at his peak his art was the stuff of comic book legend.
I would agree with B Smith...Starlin's stuff after those two Marvel annuals didn't really grab me very much,
I've been rereading Kirby's Kamandi, of all things, and I love it. I dunno why. I know some people don't like his dialogue, it may seem dated but I find it charming.
Back when I was little M.P. when I was five or so, my Ma (who used to buy me comics) bought me a copy of Kamandi where he and a couple other characters end up in a Soviet satelite and have to deal with a mutated cosmonaut.
Spooked me good! Then she bought me a copy of Amazing Spider-Man 150. They were in grocery stores back then. I was hooked for good!
Still am! A comics fan for fifty years plus,
M.P.
B's artists - spot on! An Avengers (mid 2000s?) my brother bought, with Perez brought back, piqued my interest. However, Thor's cutesy ski-slope nose totally put me off! Nothing like Perez's brilliance during Jim Shooter's Avengers. Nor in possibly Perez's peak month, cover dated June 1980
( Taskmaster Avengers, & MTIO Thing & Stingray.) Nevertheless, our art preferences haven't changed - it's the artwork that's deteriorated ( to be pedantic! )
Fast production's vital for artists, on monthly titles. Cockrum's covers (with Austin) were brilliant - e.g. Iron Man # 106 ( incidentally, Cockrum's Iron Man in the Vietnam Avengers was fab, too.) Likewise, that George Tuska counterpart's tale (Tuska's Captain Marvel vs Nitro) showcased a Cockrum & Austin end page is brilliant, too! In both cases, Cockrum wasn't rushing for a deadline ( I imagine), so delivered brilliant results. Again, however, our views of his art haven't changed over time - it's just some art's better than others.
What can I say about Starlin? B's nailed it again!
Phillip
showcasing - not showcased! Typo City, Arizona.
Phillip
counterpart - not counterpart's! Gibberish!
Phillip
I get the feeling Perez got burned out by Teen Titans splitting into two comics for a year - one for newsstands and another for direct distribution. I kind of killed the title, didn't it? I remember I stopped buying at that point.
Charlie - I had a look at a Kindle sample of that Wertham book and it looks really good. It reminded me of Will Eisner’s later stuff. Added to wish list now.
As regards my own question…
Artists I was really obsessed with but who I cooled on considerably. Well, most of them really.
Early Alan Davis - MM, CB, even Harry Twenty - great. Felt like he was experimenting and stretching out month by month. After that he kind of homogenised. Did he ever work with an interesting writer again, after Alan Moore? Can’t think one off the top of my head. I think that’s what he needed.
Bill Sienkiewicz - pretty much everything through the 80s until Stray Toasters and the first two issues of Big Numbers. Then after he burned himself out on those, he seemed to stop bothering. With his pen & ink work he used to balance scratchiness with careful draughtsmanship so there was a constant friction between the two. Around Big Numbers issue three [available online with a bit of searching] and The Shadow he seemed to give up and went full scratchy. And stopped doing any serious comics work in the 90s, as well.
Frank Miller, though he tanked as a writer before he declined as an artist. I kept buying his stuff through the 90s, but after a decade of Sin City and the unpromising 300 I threw in the towel. Nothing of his I’ve read since has made me regret that. He’s a spent force.
There’s an argument to be made that all these guys’ work just evolved and changed over time, and that’s fair enough. But other favourites of mine have evolved drastically over time as well [eg Mazzucchelli, O’Neill, McCarthy, McMahon], and while I might like their earlier work more they still keep me interested.
So people I’ve grown to like… Kirby is a very recent conversion. I’m not all the way there yet, it has to be said. I’m a bigger fan of his more eccentric 70s stuff than his 60s Marvel classics. And I’m more into the splash pages and double-page spreads than the slightly workmanlike 6-panel grids.
Richard Corben was someone I used to catch the odd few pages of in 2nd-hand copies of Heavy Metal and quite like, but when he did that Hellblazer story about 15 years ago, and the subsequent regular work on Marvel and Dark Horse titles I really came to love him. I’ll buy anything he’s done - the Dark Horse reissues are phenomenal.
I’ve also developed a taste for all the Spanish artists who worked on UK romance comics and US Warren magazines - that stuff used to seem dusty and a bit boring but now look gorgeous.
That’s me, I think.
Anyone remember 'The Sun Always Shines On TV' by A-ha? Today is 40 years since it reached #1 in the UK.
Yes - it's one of my favourite songs. I listened to it at the gym on Monday.
Charlie, I didn't realise Dr Wertham was such a caring person and now I feel rather ashamed of myself for lazily assuming he was a right-wing conservative. He clearly must have thought he was doing the best thing for young people by opposing horror comics even though it made him seem like a killjoy.
matthew-
Richard Corben was great! I first saw his stuff in Epic Magazine, I think. He did some nice work on Swamp Thing and Hellboy.
M.P.
Neal Adams : I was a much bigger fan of his stuff when I was younger. Even the work from his ‘classic’ period — Batman, Green Lantern, Deadman etc. — doesn’t really ‘wow’ me like it used to. There are exceptions. I still think CONAN THE BARBARIAN #36 is brilliant, and the SUPERMAN VS MUHAMMAD ALI tabloid is pretty damn great. Some of his NATIONAL LAMPOON stuff (Son O’ God, etc) and his painted covers too.
Jim Starlin : I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks he peaked with the Warlock series. I think his Darklon The Mystic serial (1976) in EERIE is pretty nifty too but by 1977 — the AVENGERS and TWO-IN-ONE annuals — his style started getting kinda stiff. From DREADSTAR and onward, I completely lost interest.
Jack Kirby : when I first started buying comics in 1973, I thought his ‘new’ stuff (KAMANDI, MISTER MIRACLE, THE DEMON, etc) looked too sloppy and weird compared to his Silver Age Marvel stuff, then being reprinted in MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS, MARVEL SPECTACULAR, MARVEL DOUBLE FEATURE, etc. Nowadays I love it all about equally. I dig his later Marvel stuff ( ETERNALS, 2001, CAP, DEVIL DINOSAUR, and even BLACK PANTHER) too.
Alex Nino: it took me a long time to ‘get’ him. In fact, I LOATHED his work when I was a kid! At some point, something just clicked and I realized he was a freaking genius.
Frank Robbins: surprisingly, I liked his stuff a lot right out of the gate, and my appreciation has only grown stronger over the years.
Don Heck : I’ve come to appreciate his work more and more as time goes by. Recently, I’ve been collecting his Batgirl back-up stories in DETECTIVE (when I can find affordable copies).
b.t.
TACO
"Strange" as in a differing world viewpoint or "strange" as he kept small birds, field mice, and grouses in his overcoat pocket and preferred dry toast for breakfast?
Prowler is pushing PUBLISH... now!
Prowler, "strange" as in seeing rude body parts in panels where there were no such rude body parts.
Matthew, I think I read your question a bit differently to everyone else, in that I thought about how I now see the work I liked as a youngster, rather than what the same artists did later. I mean, comics are labour intensive and a young man's game really, and most artists disappoint past a certain age.
So for instance, despite a perverse fascination with Batman Odyssey, like most here I'm not much into Neal Adams after the 70s. But his original stuff still looks pretty good to me.
Whereas I go the other way to DW, and I'm not as into Jaunty Jim Steranko's 'classic' work. I absolutely loved his stuff as a kid, which I first saw in the old Captain Brexit weekly which reprinted his SHIELD stories. It looked so distinctive and ahead of anything else, even 10 years on from its original appearance. Now I think yeah, it was the future of comics - it anticipated 90s Image! Lots of flash, no substance, and poor drawing chops.
Kill yr Idols, lol!
On the other hand, I still love a bit of the oul' BWS. These days I don't think Barry Smith really got any good til 'Hawks of the Sea', and even after that some of his inking could seem a bit odd. But all the same, it's great following his restless evolution, continually pushing himself past his limitations.
Who else from that late 60s/early 70s era could have come out with a book like Monsters at this stage of the game, in the 2020s?
The first comic artist who's name I knew was Jack Kirby. Loved his work then, and appreciate it even more now (M.P., you probably liked Kamandi because it was a #@&*ing brilliant comic!)
-sean
PS Good shout on the Spaniards, Matthew. I managed to pick up a remaindered copy of Dynamite's The Art of Jose Gonzalez a while back. Fantastic.
Btw, thanks for the heads up on the Kevin O'Neill book (for anyone in London theres still copies at Gosh).
-sean
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