Month: October 2019

Tentacle Tuesday: In Your Neighbourhood and Mine

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Today’s post may step a bit outside my usual purview, which is to say that the octopuses I am introducing do not come from the pages of comics per se. They’re used for mercantile purposes, to attract public to a concert, sell a book or deliver a message. But though they are octopuses in advertising, their artists still clearly have their hearts (and fingers) in the cartooning world.

Exhibit A is this cover for Centipede Press’ edition of Masters of Science Fiction: Fritz Leiber. This edition was limited to 500 numbered copies, so it will surprise no-one when I state that it’s quite sold out (See? Tentacles sell.) The cover is by Jim & Ruth Keegan, a wife-and-husband team, also the authors of the comic The Adventures of Two-Gun Bob.

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Next, we have two music-related scenes, both from the Spanish side of things. ¡Fíjate!

The Roctopus Tea Party Festival takes place in Toledo, Spain. (Due to language constraints, I’m not exactly sure how many editions of it there have been.) Each poster features an octopus, but this is my favourite of the lot.

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Whoever designed the festival’s logo knew how to harness the power of a lone octopus eye.

This Mardid “lunch box restaurant & tiki room” (now sadly defunct) held a series of “Galician lunches with DJ” splendidly named Día del Tentáculo. With a little Google Translate magic, I came up with this description: « Imagine a restaurant where you can eat hamburger with shiitake and jalapeños, drink the mythical Mai Tai cocktail or enjoy Tentacle Day with the best Galician octopus. And all while listening to good music in an environment inspired by the 50’s America. Sounds like an explosive mix, right? » The hamburger sounds good, but it’s really the Galician octopus that draws one in!

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As the Spanish artist Roberto Argüelles held a few exhibitions of his art at Lunch Box, I’m going to assume this is his artwork.

This one I spotted plastered over some other poster in my neighbourhood. It states something like « Ultimatum: provide wages for all internships at all levels, or we go on strike. »

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At first I assumed this was poster for a sci-fi convention in San Francisco, but it turned out to be the cover of a comics anthology published by Skodaman Press.

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Art by Chuck Whelon.

~ ds

Hallowe’en Countdown III, Day 22

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« I saw old Autumn in the misty morn stand shadowless like silence, listening to silence. » — Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

Jim Woodring‘s Frank, cogently termed « a bipedal, bucktoothed animal of uncertain species » was introduced to readers on the cover of Jim no. 4 (Dec. 1990, Fantagraphics), virtually straight from his genitor’s id. He would turn out to be Woodring’s most enduring creation. I was absolutely in awe of Woodring’s original, somewhat autobiographical showcase title, Jim. But it practically sold in the negative numbers (I recall an admiring / dismayed Dan Clowes stating something to that effect during an interview), and dammit, a genius like Woodring should be able to earn a living in freedom and dignity, so I understand the slight shift in gears. Though I miss Woodring’s tremendous verbal gifts, Frank’s is a rather extraordinary universe.

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This is Tantalizing Stories no. 1 (Oct. 1992, Tundra), a duplex anthology shared by Woodring and Mark Martin. Painted cover by Woodring, of course.

Speaking of Tundra, its tale is quite a colourful one: it was the publisher that The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles built; an act of atonement? « Tundra was certainly, not to put too fine a point on it, the biggest and most absurd (as well as the most idealistic) publishing catastrophe in the history of comics — maybe in the history of the print medium. » [ source ]

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Frank observes the signs of autumn, which puts him in a contemplative, melancholy mood; the middle tier of page 2.

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Yeah, I’ve been to a couple of those parties too.
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The party sequence; I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending, which comes one page later. Read the issue in full here. Woodring is of that rare complete breed of cartoonist, a uniquely soulful writer and a master of both black and white and colour rendering, quite autonomous but also a fine collaborator.

Woodring, nearly three decades down the line, has stated that he’s ‘extremely interested’ in wrapping up Frank’s adventures.

-RG

Hallowe’en Countdown III, Day 21

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« Mama threw out my Hooded Cobra and Black Widow! »

A delightful entry in the 1960s monster craze, Gold Key’s anonymously-created The Little Monsters first reared their fetchingly homely heads in the back pages of The Three Stooges no. 17 (May, 1964), predating by several months the near-simultaneous (just a week apart!) arrival on the tube of both The Addams Family and The Munsters. Now this ghastly family unit, assembled in the laboratory of kindly mad scientist Dr. Frankenfurter, comprised Papa Mildew, Mama Demonica, and their titular kids, ‘orrible Orvie and Awful Annie. The Little Monsters enjoyed a quite respectable rampage in comics, running amok for 44 issues between 1964 and 1978, outlasting by some years the craze that spawned them.

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In this half-pager is from Little Monsters no. 7 (Dec. 1966, Gold Key), Papa Mildew essays Greta Garbo’s immortal line. Writer and artist unknown and uncredited, for shame. Pete Alvarado has been proposed as a possibility, but the man’s chameleonic versatility complicates identification somewhat.

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Ah, why be stingy? Let’s have a few more short pieces from the same issue.

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– RG

Hallowe’en Countdown III, Day 20

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« Eeeeeeeeeee! A horrible monster! He wants to… to eat me! »

With the coming of Hallowe’en, you have to get all the bases covered: an ungodly hoard of candy, a pumpkin to carve and assorted decorations to array about the house. Thank your lucky stars for the lightness of your burden: the average Balkan peasant also has to polish his pitchfork, sharpen and set out wooden stakes, gather sprigs of wolfsbane, and round up the requisite number of torches.

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A detail from page eight: Grandenetti at his late-period finest, each page crackling with nervous energy and brimming with shadowy ambiance.

This merry nocturnal chase is brought to you by the team of Otto Binder, writer, and local favourite Jerry Grandenetti, illustrator. It comes from the sixth issue (January, 1969) of Cracked‘s go at a Warren-style Monster mag, For Monsters Only (10 issues… plus a  best-of “annual”, sporadically published between 1965 and 1972). This was Frankenstein ’68, the first of three entries in Binder and Grandenetti’s The Secret Files of Marc Vangoro*, featured in issues 6, 7 and 8 of the mag. Well worth hunting down.

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While this material has never, to my knowledge, been reprinted, and as copies of these long-neglected mags are getting scarcer and naturally pricier, fear not… for some kind souls have taken the considerable trouble of scanning, and more to the point, sharing them. In this particular case, look here.

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Here’s the cover you need to keep an eye for. This is Cracked’s For Monsters Only no. 6 (Jan. 1969). That handsome fella is said to be the creation of the renowned wildlife painter Charles Fracé, of all people.
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It’s heartening to know that the original art still exists and is in presumably caring hands.

– RG

*perhaps a knowing wink at Grandenetti’s (with fellow Eisner Studio acolytes Marilyn Mercer and Abe Kanegson) 1949-51 classic The Secret Files of Dr. Drew, blessedly available in an exemplary edition, thanks to the sterling efforts of cartoonist-scholar Michael T. Gilbert.

Hallowe’en Countdown III, Day 19

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« Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel. » — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Here’s the earliest recorded appearance of Futurama’s Phillip J. Fry, and it would appear that he’s in for a heap of trouble… voodoo trouble! Fortunately, world-class sleuth Ellery Queen is on the case and on his side. That’s him discreetly crouching behind a gravestone.

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This once-upon-a-midnight-dreary George Wilson beauty served as the cover of Dell’s Four Color no. 1243 (Nov. ’61 – Jan. ’62), the tale of The Witch’s Victim, featuring interior art by Mike Sekowsky, with inks by, from the look of it, George Roussos.

I wonder what Fry had done to get a coven so howling mad at him? I mean, just look at that innocent face…

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Here’s how the painting fared in print.

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A couple of sample pages from the story…. interesting to see the tension between the staid-by-design Dell style and a bit of an iconoclast like Sekowsky. It’s impressive that Mr. S. could find the time, between pencilling the rollicking monthly adventures of Snapper Carr, to moonlight for the competition… but here we are.

Has your interest been piqued ? Enjoy the tale in its entirety, courtesy of Karswell’s fine blog, The Horrors of It All.

– RG

Hallowe’en Countdown III, Day 18

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« There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know. » — Ambrose Bierce

Here’s an unusual specimen: a two-headed, twin-gendered Australian cartoonist. Beryl Antonia Yeoman (1912-1970, b. Brisbane, Queensland) formed, in 1937, a cartooning partnership with her brother, Harold Underwood Thompson (1911-1996, b. West Kirby, Cheshire) when they adopted the nom de plume of Anton.

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From the sound of it, Beryl was the power behind the throne, as she produced the Anton cartoons on her own during Harold’s active duty in the Royal Navy during WWII. The pair reconvened after the war and created wonderful cartoons for such publications as Punch, Lilliput, Men Only (ha!), Tatler, The Evening Standard (solo Harold!) and Private Eye. Beryl was the only female member of Punch’s exclusive Toby Club.

Today, a charming bistro named in honour of the artful siblings still operates in Wells, Somerset; it features Anton’s art on its walls. How’s that for posterity?

This slyly cozy cartoon made the cut for the splendid 1952 anthology The Best Cartoons From Punch.

And while we’re on the subject of ghostly radio stories, give one of these a try.

– RG

Hallowe’en Countdown III, Day 17

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« I may turn up as flies on your ceiling. »

From the earliest issues of  Love & Rockets (circa the early 1980s), it was quite evident that Jaime Hernandez was a cartoonist of the first order.

At first, he kept the tone of the proceedings fairly jovial; but gradually, a little darkness crept into the ambiance. Not systematically, mind you: it was just the natural course of things. For all that, he didn’t sacrifice one bit of his light touch; he was just expanding his range, the simple process of his artistic maturation.

The first time he fully demonstrated that he could evoke the texture and the essence of terror… was a milestone. In 1989’s Flies on the Ceiling, he stunned readers with a dizzying, yet understated tale that lifted the veil on a murky chapter of Izzy’s past. In the telling, he adroitly looses a startling panoply of techniques and ingredients that this reader wasn’t nearly prepared for. A true brain-singer.

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Roman Catholic iconography, traditional Mexican beliefs and rituals, dead-on psychology, awful things hinted at in the margins. An excerpt from Flies on the Ceiling: the Story of Isabel in Mexico (Love & Rockets no. 29,  Fantagraphics) [ Read it here. ]
Jaime occasionally returns to the realm of the uncanny (we’ve featured him in a past countdown entry), but never treads the same path twice. A few further samples, if you will:

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Poor Ray has a singularly vivid nightmare. Hopefully, that’s all it is. This ghoulish entry appeared on the back cover of Penny Century no. 3 (Sept. 1998, Fantagraphics). Story and art by Jaime Hernandez, colours by Chris Brownrigg.

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La Bianca: a True Story appeared in the Gilbert Hernandez-edited all-ages anthology Measles no. 2 (Easter 1999, Fantagraphics.)
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Jaime in a spooky-lite register, for a 1994 Rhino Records spoken-word anthology featuring such titans of the macabre as Boris Karloff, Brother Theodore and Nelson Olmsted.

– RG

Hallowe’en Countdown III, Day 16

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« Mirrors toins things in revoise! Everything in Mirrorland is opposite! So naturally I’m a tough ghost and you’re a sissy spook! » — Poil in Through the Looking Glass (Spooky no. 121, 1970… read it here)

The Harvey Comics line, in its peak years (from the late Fifties to the mid-seventies, say) was essentially a collection of monomaniacal characters. As Daniel Clowes deemed in his classic lampoon of the Harvey cast, theirs is a Playful Obsession (read it here.)

Richie Rich had his moolah, Little Lotta wolfed down everything in sight, Little Dot found stimulation in… dots, and so on. Casper the Friendly Ghost’s uncouth counterpart, the 30s kid gang-inspired Spooky (complete with Brooklyn accent and « doiby » hat), loved to, well, scare people (and things!) with a hearty « Boo! », Hot Stuff raised the temperature wherever he went. On the other hand, Casper and Little Audrey’s adventures didn’t rely on such gimmicks, possibly from predating the rest of the Harvey gang, originating in animation in Casper’s case, and… folklore in Audrey’s:

« One day, Li’l Audrey was playing with matches. Her mother told her she’d better stop before someone got hurt. But Li’l Audrey was awfully hard-headed and kept playing with matches, and eventually she burned their house down.

“Oh, Li’l Audrey, you are sure gonna catch it when your father comes home!” said her mother.

But Li’l Audrey just laughed and laughed, because she knew her father had come home early to take a nap. »

The Harvey line’s covers were by far its most precious asset: endless riffs on a character’s particular motif, granted, but spun out in well-designed, nimbly-executed and brightly-coloured scenes… virtually the work of a single creative whirlwind, art director-illustrator Warren Kremer (1921-2003).

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This is Little Lotta no. 57 (Jan. 1965). Lotta may have been a glutton, but she was also super-strong.
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This is Playful Little Audrey no. 71 (Aug. 1967).
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This is Playful Little Audrey no. 73 (Dec. 1967).
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This is Hot Stuff Sizzlers no. 43 (Nov. 1970).
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This is Casper the Friendly Ghost no. 149 (Jan. 1971).
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This is Spooky Haunted House no. 9 (Feb. 1974). Note that Spooky’s girlfriend’s actual name is ‘Pearl’… he just pronounces it ‘Poil’. Upon occasion, the ‘tuff little ghost’ essays the rôle of the spookee rather than his usual spooker (or is that “spookist”?)
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This is Little Dot no. 156 (Dec. 1974). I’m not sure what the kid’s so terrified of… maybe he’s never had the measles?

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This is Wendy, the Good Little Witch no. 87 (Apr. 1975). [ds: these just might be edible mushrooms.]
In all cases, artwork by the legendarily prolific Warren Kremer. As we demonstrated last year, the Harvey house style hardly was the only range he could draw in.

– RG

Tentacle Tuesday: Monsters With Really Long Arms

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A favourite trope of tentacular obsession in comics is populating stories with monsters boasting exceptionally long arms (sometimes more than one pair) that they can wind around stuff with ease. In other words, monsters with tentacle forelimbs. You’d have to abstain from comics altogether to never encounter that of which I speak (or stick to slice-of-life comics, I guess). A little demonstration is in order.

Here’s a trick question: what kind of being lives on planet Octo? Duh: Octo-men! The following Flip Falcon story, illustrated by Don Rico (and not “Orville Wells”, despite claims to the contrary), was printed in Fantastic Comics no. 17 (April 1941).

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Interesting that “dog” is used as a slur even on planet Octo, despite there clearly being no canines around.
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Nasty little brutes, aren’t they?

The Super-Tests of the Super-Pets! (scripted by Edmond Hamilton, penciled by John Forte and inked by Sheldon Moldoff) is every bit as goofy as it sounds. I actually enjoyed reading it, much to my own amazement. Anyway, while Proty II (Chameleon Boy’s pet) transforms into quite a few creatures to pass the super-test, he clearly favours tentacular forms (and who could blame him?) This was published in Adventure Comics no. 322 (July 1964).

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How is it worse to be a jellyfish instead of some sort of blobby ectoplasm thing?

Speaking of Proty II and ectoplasm, a dozen issues later, the Legion decides to visit his home planet, which is just full of these jello-marshmallow doughboys, Protean citizens all. Part I: The Unknown Legionnaire and Part II: The Secret of Unknown Boy! (both parts scripted by Edmond Hamilton, penciled by John Forte and inked by Sheldon Moldoff) were published in Adventure Comics no. 334 (July 1965).

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To terrify Proteans, whose appendages are borderline tentacles, Saturn Girl decides to conjure up a… monster with tentacles.
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In case you didn’t believe me that Proteans have “tentacles”.
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The shape-shifting Proteans turn into more streamlined versions of themselves, with more pronounced tentacles. I swear, everyone is obsessed.

Next, I’d like to regale you with a fight scene illustrated by Murphy Anderson (yum!): Scourge of the Human Race!, scripted by Gardner Fox and published in Hawkman no. 15 (August-September 1966).

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Isn’t it a lovely last panel?

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If I Can’t Be Clark Kent… Nobody Can!, published in Action Comics no. 524 (October 1981), scripted by Martin Pasko, penciled by Curt Swan and inked by Frank Chiaramonte, offers us a nice helping of tentacles.

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If I should see an octopus
Lift its arms out of the sea
Or see its shadow rising up
Cross the rooftops above the streets
I’d follow those dancing limbs
To the spinning edge of the sky
Where all the boats fall off the world
Into the octopus’s eye

~ ds

Hallowe’en Countdown III, Day 15

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« Each time I enter this fog, it feels as though icy fingers were clutching at me! »

Étrange aventures, a squarebound quarterly digest (roughly 5 x 7 inches, 164 pages), was one of many titles published in France by Arédit / Artima between 1966 and 1984 through its Comics Pocket imprint. Étranges aventures was one of the collection’s flagship titles, with a healthy run of 79 issues from July, 1966 to March, 1984. Its contents were mostly repackaged and reformatted translations of various DC and Marvel (and the odd Charlton) comics in black and white, but with fun painted recreations of the original covers for the twenty-or-so issues. At under fifty cents a pop, they presented a bargain to the cash-strapped aficionado, thrifty access to scarce and/or pricey items.

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This is Étranges aventures no. 12 (April 1969); the issue is rounded out with The Challengers of the Unknown, Rip Hunter… Time Master, and The Doom Patrol.

This issue was a relative exception, cover-featuring an original work (or at least not an American one), the sort of material the publisher usually reserved for its more “serious” titles. These were often comics adaptations of horror or suspense novels issued earlier by mother company Les Presses de la Cité under its Fleuve Noir imprint. Graphic novels? Exactly.

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« If… if this giant is real…it must stand over twenty meters high! »
« That’s a mighty big ‘If’, Barney. Let’s take a closer look at him. »
He pulls from his pocket a small but powerful flashlight…
« Too late… the mist has hidden him. »
Cautiously, they climb through the sinister fog…
« Here’s the entrance… if the door isn’t locked or blocked by rust! »
« It takes quite a bit to frazzle my nerves… but this situation has given me cold sweats! »
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« Welcome to the giant’s lair. He who has had the courage to venture this far will regret not having been cowardly, for he will find death. »
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Prosaically, the whole affair turns out to be the work of unscrupulous special effects experts, vulgarly after some jewels. All this imaginative and diabolically elaborate work and expense for some shiny baubles!  Still, it’s all about mood.

Writer and artist unknown. And nationality, for that matter. In places, the artwork has clearly been resized and adjusted, and switches back and forth between halftone and line art reproduction. So the lasting mystery lies not in the story, but in its provenance.

– RG