I must confess (good for the soul!) I’ve never actually seen a Hugo doll in the rubbery flesh (not could I afford one at the prices they command nowadays) but I’ve always loved this ad, which appeared in plenty of comic books in the year of our lord 1975.
« Snerk! Snerk! » does sound like something Peter Lorre would say, bless his black soul. Writer and illustrator unknown, regrettably. Anyone?The whole kit and kaboodle. The rest is up to you.« He’s a puppet, too! »
Our boy, pardon, man Hugo was the brainchild of polyvalent filmmaker, author, illustrator and monster maker Alan Ormsby, man of a thousand hats. That explains (nearly) everything! To give you an inkling of the man’s astounding versatility, here are a pair of illustrations from Ormsby’s wonderful Movie Monsters (Scholastic Book Services, 1975), essential reading for the creepy kid lurking within.
Brown Bag Frankenstein: « When you’ve covered the headpiece with paper towels and it’s about half dry, glue the ‘L’ brackets in place on the forehead, as shown. »« How to turn from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde before their very eyes! ».
« Oh, it’s just one of those endless dark roads where ghoul men seem to lurk at night. »
Gee, thanks, Penny. At least it’s a shortcut. Jaime Hernandez makes sparing usage of the explicitly supernatural in his work, and he still likes to keep you guessing… but the goosebumps are real, all right.
In « Chiller! », Maggie lets her imagination run wild while driving home on the 696, « The Horror Highway », as Penny Century flippantly puts it.
This is Penny Century #2 (Fantagraphics Books Inc., March, 1998.) Cover and just about everything else by Jaime Hernandez; “Computer colorist: Chris Brownrigg.Maggie and the Ghoul Man go way back, thanks to those spine-tinglers Izzy told her when they were lil’ kids. And hey, there’s that lady from Black Sabbath again! A taste of our cover tale, the aptly-titled « Chiller! »
Here’s a fetchingly morbid cover Mr. Brian Bolland crafted for Eagle Comics’ reprints of the dystopian cream of Mega-City One’s hard-working Judges Dredd, Child, Anderson, Smiley, Volt, Stalker, Priest, Fish, De Gaulle… and so on, citizen. Filmic adaptations have largely missed the finer points of this oft-excellent series by focussing on the radical mayhem at the detriment of the protagonist’s unflagging fairness. But then again, such is usually the fate of « badass » characters who are nuanced in comics… think early Jonah Hex, for instance.
This is Judge Dreddno. 3 (January, 1984), featuring Judge Death Lives, by John Wagner and Bolland, from the pages of 2000 ADnos. 224-228 (1981). These are Judges Death and Anderson; I leave it to you to suss out which is which.
Oh, and if you and your three best bros are looking for a high-concept Halloween group costume, why not terrorize the neighbourhood as the Four Dark Judges?
« Deadworld! Long ago its judges realised all crime was committed by the living. Therefore, life itself was declared illegal. » From 2000 AD no. 225 (Aug. 15 1981, IPC) In the usual order: Judges Fire, Fear, Mortis and Death. Art, once more, by Brian Bolland.
Yes, I’m sure that jungle inhabitants had to fight off vicious, anatomically impossible pterodactyls all the freaking time. Man, has John Celardo, the artist of this cover, ever seen a pterodactyl? … Oh, right, I guess he hasn’t. That still doesn’t justify this monstrosity, though.
Mark Twain comes to mind:
« The less said about the pterodactyl the better. It was a spectacle, that beast! a mixture of buzzard and alligator, a sarcasm, an affront to all animated nature, a butt for the ribald jests of an unfeeling world. »
*This* pterodactyl certainly looks like a butt for jests, given that its spine is twisted like a strand of DNA, and that its head has been put on backwards.
Jungle Comics no. 17 (May 1941). Cover by John Celardo.
The premise of Valley of the Killer-Birds is exactly the same as the raison d’être of all the other ‘Jungle Lord’ comics: Kaänga (who, judging from the umlaut, is probably Danish, just like Häagen-Dazs) has to rescue his damsel-in-distress yet again. I’m sure you are dying to know what the plot is like, so here it is in more detail:
Ann, Kaänga’s mate, is “blown off her perch” (where she was roosting, presumably) by a strong wind, and is carried off by a pterodactyl that just happens to be passing by at the moment, probably on its way to the grocery store. Kaänga tries to follow, but falls off a cliff, is carried (unconscious) through a watery tunnel, and lands in “a weird prehistoric valley”. He then effortlessly kills a a dinosaur that looks like a slightly smaller-than-average T-Rex and climbs into its skin (that somehow fits him perfectly), plays dead, gets carried off by another pterodactyl and dropped off at some random cave, miraculously the same cave where Ann is captive, and even more preposterously just a few meters away from her standing coyly by in a typical “just look at my bikini!” pose. Then he waves at her with his paw (understandably, she doesn’t understand why a dinosaur is waving at her – it’s those super-short front paws, you know), then she gets carried off (again) by a giant ape that shows up from nowhere, and Kaänga, still in T-Rex form, hotly pursues them and kills the ape. Then the hero of our tale, as clean and Arian as he can possibly be (nevermind that he just climbed from the bloody insides of an animal corpse), takes Ann’s hand and leads her out from the tunneled cave, reasoning at some point that if there’s human skulls in the passage, there must be a way out of those tunnels. (Um, no, it just means the pterodactyls and/or giant ape have had a lot of silly little humans for supper that they’ve brought in from elsewhere.)
« That should teach you not to tangle with a tuff little ghost! »
Amongst Harvey Comics’ cast of monomaniacal characters, Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost’s propensity for trying to scare folks out of their skin with a hearty « Boo! » seemed sanest. After all, that’s what ghosts are s’posed to do, even if they’re from Brooklyn.
Here’s a tiny sample of some of Spooky’s spookiest covers, from the incredibly fertile mind and pen of unsung conceptual genius Warren Kremer.
Spooky no. 77 (Dec. 1963, Harvey). Say, is that Mrs. Rich getting hit up for some treats?Spooky Haunted House no. 10 (Apr. 1974, Harvey)Spooky Haunted House no. 12 (Aug. 1974, Harvey)Spooky Haunted House no. 13 (Oct. 1974, Harvey)Tuff Ghosts Starring Spooky no. 27 (March 1967, Harvey)
As reading material, the Harvey books were mush for the mind, but they sure had purty covers. Note how Harvey was the only comics company that treated the Comics Code Authority stamp with such contempt: if it doesn’t get half cropped off, it’s coloured as to be barely visible. The damn thing, even at its smallest, *was* a visual blight. Bless that art director! Then came barcodes… and the battle wasn’t even worth waging anymore.
In 1943, Albert Chartier, a French-Canadian cartoonist and illustrator (and commonly accepted as the father of Québec’s “bande dessinée“), was offered the chance of creating his own comic strip for the “Bulletin des agriculteurs” (Farmers’ Bulletin). Thus began Onésime, Chartier’s most popular and enduring œuvre.
Onésime was the perfect strip for the Bulletin’s audience: inspired by life in rural areas of Québec (in particular, picturesque Saint-Jean-de-Matha), it was a charming chronicle of the countryside. It lasted all the way until 2002 (it is said that four generations of Québecois learned to read with Onésime!), and reflected the changes in Quebec’s social landscape, making it a priceless historical document as well an as excellent comic.
This strip (originally published in November 1959) was scanned from Drawn & Quarterly #5 (August 2003). As far as I know, D&Q’s 47 pages of “Albert Chartier – a Retrospective” is the only existing English version of Onésime (the French-to-English translation is credited to Helge Dascher; the redrawn letters, to Dirk Rehm).
While Onésime is Chartier’s best known work, here’s something that’s even harder to come by for your enjoyment – a strip in which Kiki gets carried away. You can meet Kiki in “Une piquante petite brunette” (roughly translated to “a spicy little brunette”), a beautifully done, quite entertaining collection of previously unpublished Chartier strips about a young woman’s adventures (Les 400 coups, 2008).
« It is Friday the 13th and you are right on time — ten minutes to midnight! »
The Anti-13 is that rarest of creatures: an unflinchingly skeptical tale published in the pages of a supernatural-themed comic book in the midst of the 1970s occult craze. Hats off, folks!
As the thirteenth fatefully falls on a Friday this month, I’m inspired to trot out a story from my very favourite issue of Gold Key’s Grimm’s Ghost Stories no. 26 (Sept. 1975). So what elevates this particular entry above its brethren? Admittedly, the competition from other issues is pretty tepid. Truth be told, though, all comers are swept out the door by a winning pair of yarns from the great Arnold Drake (1924 – 2007, co-creator of The Doom Patrol, Deadman and the original Guardians of the Galaxy): The Servant of Chan (illustrated by Luis Dominguez) and this one, the bracingly skeptical The Anti-13 (illustrated by John Celardo).
« Within the hour, Roger Parris’ eyes had been removed from his still warm corpse! »
Some specimens of walking corpse are kind enough to just snap your neck or rip out your throat, but not old Roger Parris… he was, and remains, a spiteful coot.
This is Black Magic vol. 4 no. 4 (#28, Jan.-Feb. 1954, Prize), illustrating “An Eye for an Eye”. Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Joe Simon and/or Kirby.
The story’s opening panel. For my money’s S&K’s Black Magic offered the scariest ride in 50s horror… often with unlikely, seemingly innocuous topics, and without showing much in the way of gore or gratuitous imagery. They took the Val Lewton high road, if you will.I’m reminded of another old dear who was inordinately attached to her earthly possessions (in her case, a ring) even after kicking the bucket. Well… not quite, it turned out. From Mario Bava‘s 1963 omnibus film, “I tre volti della paura” (aka “Les trois visages de la peur”, or “Black Sabbath”)’s most spine-tingling segment, “La goccia d’acqua” (“The drop of water”).
Carol Lay (born 1952) is an illustrator and cartoonist who has done a variety of work – some comic books published, collections of Story Minute (probably the strip she’s best known for), as well as illustrations for The New Yorker and such.
Her drawing style is easily recognizable (and not necessarily up at everyone’s street – some people can’t get past her highly stylized way of drawing mouths, for instance), but what makes her work most appealing to me is Lay’s sense of humour. I’m not even sure that “humour” is the right word for it – her stories have set-ups that are imaginative but often completely surreal, if not far-fetched; yet her characterizations of people ring absolutely true.
She excels at one-pagers, but longer stories are great, too. Here’s an example of the former, a typical Story Minute:
There are four collections of Lay’s weekly strips out there: three paperbacks, published by Kitchen Sink (Joy Ride, Strip Joint and Now, Endsville), are quite out of print, so keep an eye out for used copies in second-hand bookstores. The latest one, Illiterature, was published in 2012 by Boom!Town in hardcover (and I believe there was supposed to be a volume 2… still waiting for that one.)
The Kitchen Sink collections have beautiful painted covers, another reason for seeking them out. They also contain some longer (say, around 20 or 30 pages) stories, for instance one of my favourites, Joy Ride (that gave its name to the whole collection), set in a world where minds can be transferred between bodies, being fat is outlawed, and “drivers” are people whose job involves forcing fat people to get into shape by temporarily taking over their personality.
And this is the back:
You can read Lay’s webcomic (some of it includes coloured Story Minute strips – originally, they were black-and-white – and most of it is longer, new stories) at http://www.gocomics.com/lay-lines
« Geez! What’s he been feedin’ that horse?! I’m runnin’ wide-open — and he’s gainin’ on me! »
I won’t pretend that The Headless Horseman Rides Again is all that good a comic book, even by the standards of 1973 Marvel. It’s a clumsy narrative hodgepodge, a tangle of tough guy private dick clichés and your basic Scooby Doo plot, courtesy of Gary Friedrich (Ghost Rider, Son of Satan). But it’s agreeably moody in spots, considerably helped along by a solid art job by the prolific George Tuska (1916-2009), who’s not, for once at Marvel, saddled (ha!) with the likes of Vince Colletta. Here he’s smartly matched with the fine but generally undervalued Jack Abel (1927-1996), whose velvety strokes significantly add to the fittingly nocturnal ambiance.
I happen to own a page of original art from the issue, and here are some of my favourite panels. This is page 7 of 20. Script by Gary Friedrich, pencils by George Tuska, inks by Jack Abel. Love that Abel smoke!
The issue bears your typical hyperkinetic Gil Kane 70s cover, winningly inked by Ernie Chua/Chan. This is Supernatural Thrillers no. 6 (Nov. 1973, Marvel).
The published version…… and a peek at the original artwork. Note the absence of the alterations presumably made on an overlay, namely the texture on the foreground rock and the halftone mist across the middle.
Who's Out There? 