A 1968 ad full of spooky, green-glowy fun for the kiddies. An… interesting appropriation of Jewish mysticism. After all, Zohar and Kabbalah don’t really fall within the usual range of docile toy industry gibberish, straying closer to the realm of sideshow hucksterism, with its fortune-telling automatons.
Wikipedia tells us: « The Zohar (Hebrew: זֹהַר, lit. “Splendor” or “Radiance”) is the foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah.
There are people of religions besides Judaism, or even those without religious affiliation, who delve in the Zohar out of curiosity, or as a technology for people who are seeking meaningful and practical answers about the meaning of their lives… »
It’s hard not to draw a parallel between this toy’s name and eerie oculus and Charles Burns‘ Big Baby tale of a « Teen Plague » (from Raw vol. 2 no. 1, 1989). Be careful out there, kids!
« Taste the Kiss of the Almighty Kaballa-Bonga! »I know, Mike. I can hardly believe it either.
« Modern technology has tripled the life expectancy of the professional insulter »
It was forty-eight years ago today, which is to say Thursday, April the 20th, 1970, when a certain short, dumpy, cheap-cigar-chomping 1500-year-old green witch first crash-landed into the funny pages, though we wouldn’t know she was green until that Sunday.
The cast’s principal players: Broom-Hilda, Gaylord Buzzard and Irwin Troll. Colour by Barbara Marker.
Russell Myers‘ (born October 9, 1938 in Pittsburg, Kansas, and still with us) Broom-Hilda has been easy to take for granted… it’s never been a trendy strip, but it’s always had its adherents, a somewhat enlightened, or at least less dim than average, passel of loonies, to which I proudly belong.
One of my favourite B-H collections… an oversize one-shot issued in 1978. And don’t let the subtitle throw you: *all* Broom-Hilda books are profoundly silly.An undated strip from 1970.Grelber always gets the last laugh. August 17, 1973. Bet you never knew that Grelber shared a genteel hobby with Nero Wolfe.This Sunday strip comes from just about a year into the run, April 4, 1971, back when Broomie still was allowed to enjoy all of her little hobbies. A day in the life of the resilient Irwin Troll, Mother Nature’s Personal Friend.Low-key and surreal, the March 11, 1974 strip. Pour me a cup of that jaunty java!Wise words from the strip’s resident intellectual, Gaylord Buzzard (Sept. 13, 1973)
Over the long years, the changing times and the powers-that-be had Broomie clean up her act, stripping her of her beloved vices one after the other. Well, she’s held on to her gluttony and lust, but no longer indulges her passion for third-rate tobacco and beer. Still, since there was so much more in the strip’s DNA, the eschewing of Broomie’s low-down habits was not fatal.
The author as he appeared in 1985’s Broom-Hilda Book One (and only), in the “Blackthorne’s Comic-Strip Preserves” series. « To retain this standard of madness requires a good deal of sane and sensible methods. The gags don’t just occur to Russell; he creates them. Like all humorists, he observes where others only look. Others see a man going through a revolving door, Russell sees a man stuck in a revolving door. Perverse, perhaps, but perversity is the trigger of humor. Why else do we laugh at a man stepping into a manhole? »
« Once there was a fellow and his name was Buzz He was just a rookie cop, just a baby Fuzz He patrolled the Sunset Strip in the land of the free and the home of the hip He protected you and me until he met a girl called Alice D
Alice was the girl that all the hippies dread And they called her Sweet Alice the Head Alice it was plain to see was full of pot and STD She’d attract a great big crowd because her inner peace was much too loud »
Biff Rose, “Buzz the Fuzz” (1968)
This day in history: On April 16, 1943, the hallucinogenic effects of LSD were discovered.
Here’s an account of the event, from the folks at History.com:
In Basel, Switzerland, Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist working at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory, accidentally consumes LSD-25, a synthetic drug he had created in 1938 as part of his research into the medicinal value of lysergic acid compounds. After taking the drug, formally known as lysergic acid diethylamide, Dr. Hofmann was disturbed by unusual sensations and hallucinations. In his notes, he related the experience:
« Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant, intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours. After some two hours this condition faded away. »
After intentionally taking the drug again to confirm that it had caused this strange physical and mental state, Dr. Hofmann published a report announcing his discovery, and so LSD made its entry into the world as a hallucinogenic drug. Widespread use of the so-called « mind-expanding » drug did not begin until the 1960s, when counterculture figures such as Albert M. Hubbard, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey publicly expounded on the benefits of using LSD as a recreational drug. The manufacture, sale, possession, and use of LSD, known to cause negative reactions in some of those who take it, were made illegal in the United States in 1965.
The genial Dr. Hofmann.
As a little digestif for the history lesson, here’s a poisoned bonbon from Thomas Ott (b. 1966, Zurich… a mere 76 km from Basel!), a proven meister of both comics storytelling and of the singularly exacting technique of scratchboard. This is Ott’s highly condensed and updated version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, “Alice”, from 1992. I wouldn’t advise its use in preparing a book report.
Just this once, inquisitive English-speakers won’t be left out in the cold or reaching for their translation dictionaries, as Ott’s work is mostly mute, the only text appearing incidentally on newspapers, signs and assorted objects, and in English at that.
Ott’s chosen milieu is the perpetual nighttime of American film noir (which in turn comes from the French roman noir, a term first used in the 1700s to describe British gothics, becoming synonymous, in the 20th century, with bleak crime novels), so the headlines and billboards are in Inglés. In addition to the classic noir recipe, the Swiss artisan injects a discreet but usually lethal dose of his quite sardonic wit.
Jonah Hex originators John Albano (1922-2005) and Tony DeZuniga (1941-2012) take the piss out of their boy in a little tale that was, according to Paul Levitz, intended for a (self) parody title provisionally titled Zany (having cycled through the tentative monikers Black Humor and Weird Humor), and that never saw the light of day… This feature was the only one completed for the abortive endeavour, and it saw print in the Plop!-themed issue of The Amazing World of DC Comics (October, 1976), its thirteenth, of course. Incidentally, Plop!’s own cancellation was announced in that very issue of AWODCC. Bummer.
Why, yes… now that you mention it, an ice-cold root beer *would* be nice.« Lying out in the ‘dessert‘ », Jonah? That was either a root-beer float mirage or a careless letterer’s oversight.
I would be earning myself a sound flogging if I didn’t share Sergio Aragonés‘ adroitly-done cover, so here it is.
The punchline to the EC story “Pleasant Screams!”, written by the usual Bill Gaines / Al Feldstein combo, with art by Joe Orlando. From Tales From the Cryptno. 37 (August, 1953) Can anyone in the class tell me where this panel was swiped and quoted (to hilarious effect) in the eighties? The answer follows…
Here it comes… pencils down, everyone!
Poor Fifi. He hardly seems to be the right breed of pooch for the Canadian Arctic, not to mention its special precipitations. Reprinted several times since, this edifying tale of poetic justice first saw print in the final issue of the Yummy Fur mini-comic (no. 7, Sept. 1985, Tortured Canoe).Chester’s closing argument in the case.
Ah, for a return to the days when we didn’t know way too much about Chester Brown, when he was a mysterious, self-published cartooning genius and Châteauguay‘s finest son. I remember how awestruck I was upon encountering his brilliant Yummy Fur minis, available at Toronto’s gone-but-not-forgotten Dragon Lady comic book store in the early-to-mid 1980s. What a surreal breath of fresh air they were!
A cat’s meow and a cow’s moo
I can recite ’em all Just tell me where it hurts yuh, honey
and I’ll tell you who to call Nobody can get no sleep There’s someone on ev’ryone’s toes But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
everybody’s gonna wanna doze.
The source of Bobby Zimmerman‘s inspiration: Anthony Quinn as “Inuk” in The Savage Innocents (1960). Back then, people dressed like this where and when it was actually cold; nowadays, it may be sunny and well above freezing, but those fierce, dauntless Polar explorers roam the streets in great numbers, clad in their fashionable down-filled, fur-lined hooded coats…
« They were bitter, war-weary men and the old woman’s music was comforting — perhaps too comforting… »
Writer and occasional penciller William ‘Willi’ Franz (1950-2026) broke into the comics industry at the tender age of 15, selling his first script to Charlton editor Dick Giordano in 1966.
Will Franz, September 1971. A photo « …taken at the Manhattan insurance company where I worked as an accounting technician. My wall is covered with cartoons I made of various office friends and personnel. » Source: Will Franz and Charlton Spotlight.
While best known for his fruitful collaborations with his mentor, the great Sam Glanzman (1924-2017), namely The Iron Corporal, The Devil’s Brigade and most enduringly The Lonely War of Willy Schultz, Franz also scattered a few gems that the light has mostly missed.
My favourite among these has to be his final story for Charlton, The Organist and the SS, published in Attackno. 8 (Nov. 1972). Franz’s bleak, nuanced and markedly pacifist tales had drawn the military’s ire, back in the late ’60s, and this somber little piece of doom might have, too, if anyone had been paying attention.
As Franz recalls in a 2015 interview with Richard Arndt, published in Charlton Spotlight no. 9 (Winter-Spring 2015-2016):
« I was told that a lot of Charlton sales were on military bases. They were a staple on Army bases. I, and my stories, were dropped in 1969, out of the blue. Things were heating up in Vietnam.
I was blacklisted at Charlton because a guy had put my name and stories down as one of the reasons he registered as a conscientious objector. I found out other people were throwing my name around. Someone in the army apparently said that my stuff, maybe like [Archie] Goodwin’s stuff, was too blood and guts. It was going to make soldiers *not* want to kill the gooks. The army can’t have that! »
Well, evidently Charlton (presumably managing editor George Wildman, bless his heart) let Will sneak back into the fold, if briefly, after the heat was off, otherwise I’d be writing about some other topic entirely.
Without further preamble, please savour this pitch-black, existentialist play of war and death, but mind the thorns.
Will’s layout for the opening splash of our story. It’s always a treat to see what liberties the illustrator takes… or doesn’t.
This issue is chock-full of arrivals and departures: it opens with a story from new recruit Warren Sattler, trying his hand at a few short mystery and war stories before he found his niche in excellent collaborations with Joe Gill on Billy the Kid and Yang; next up is Jack Keller, who was winding up his comics career, what with Charlton’s remaining pair of hot rod books, Drag ‘n’ Wheels and Hot Rods and Racing Cars, soon to be scrapped. He would move, appropriately enough, to making a living selling cars. Finally, Argentine ace Leo Duranoña (b. 1938) was just passing through Charlton, crafting a handful of finely-hewn tales before moving on to DC and Warren… among others.
Cards on the table time: I never did much like Tintin. While there’s no denying the technical virtuosity and high imagination on display in Hergé’s work*, as a child, his overly-meticulous line and storytelling struck me as flat, sterile and remote. I thought I was just about alone in this view.
There was a Tintin-esque series I did delight in, and that was Martin le Malin, a translation of the Dutch « De Avonturen van Pinkie Pienter ». While much derided and nearly forgotten today, Pinkie remains, in my view, a misunderstood and under-appreciated work.
I was to learn, decades later, that the series was in fact created in response to the very aspects of Tintin that left me cold. In 1951, Dutch painter J.H. Koeleman (born October 30, 1926), while visiting his brother, learned from his young nephews that they were somewhat frustrated with and repelled by Tintin, finding the stories too complicated and the artwork too fastidious. From this incident, Uncle J.H. hit upon the idea of creating a series using a deliberately naïve and relatively primitive style, something closer in tone and essence to what a talented and imaginative child would craft for himself.
Koeleman produced and self-published a pair of albums, which were met with critical praise but disappointing sales. However, in early 1953, established publisher Mulder & Zoon came knocking and offered the man a deal: they would, using the greater resources at their disposal, republish and distribute his early efforts. The joint venture worked splendidly… at least for a time. In total, Koeleman wrote and drew twelve Pinkie Pienter albums between 1953 and 1958. These were also published in softcover 16-page colour instalments, which is the format I encountered them in. In my youth, they were everywhere: (long gone) supermarkets, department stores… and at 39 cents apiece, they offered a fine deal.
However, during Expo 58 (aka the Brussels World’s Fair), long-simmering tensions came to a head between the author and his publisher. Koeleman walked out, and the less said about his successors, the better. For it is in the later Martin le Malin albums that we can plainly witness the difference between intentional simplicity and economy… and sheer incompetence.
Today, I’ll focus on my favourite saga, « Les Martiens atterrissent » (Number 6 in the series, and serialized in « La soucoupe volante », « D’étranges visiteurs de l’espace » and « L’attaque des Martiens »).
In the actual story, Martin’s bumbling sidekick, Floris Fidel (Floris Fiedel in the original) has been shrunk by Martian leader Plasticos (isn’t he just adorable?), but on the cover, while their size ratio remains constant, it’s Plastico who’s grown gigantic.
You go to bed quietly, and the next thing you know, Martians are trampling your hedgerows and peeking in your window. Next time, draw the curtains. Love the way the cat runs for it in panel 5.
Martin finds that piloting unfamiliar spacecraft is not something you pick up on the fly.
Having captured Martian Aluminicus’ spacesuit, Martin tries, and fails, to infiltrate the invaders’ ranks.
Oops. Another one of Floris’ screwups lands Martin in hot water.
I only learned today, while researching this post, that Pinkie/Martin was also published in English! Is anyone familiar with this edition?
The copies I’ve seen for sale are listed in far-flung Australia. Curiouser and curiouser…
The Martin cameo, as it appeared on the back of the first edition albums.
And here’s a custom-made Plastico (with Florisse in tow) needle-felted by WOT’s own multitalented ds.
Brooding pretty boy (is that you, Brian Setzer?) is about to get a pleasant shock in this Dave Stevens (1955-2008) cover featuring a “punk rocker” in the well-scrubbed tradition of, say, Lea Thompson in the infamous Howard the Duck movie. Still, it’s a dazzler, as you’d be right to expect from Mr. Stevens.
« The marine life is crushed and broken by its own atoms — which cannot reduce as fast as the water. »
I’ve been sitting on this particular entry awhile, having realized that the most opportune time to share it would be today, March 22, which happens to be World Water Day*.
In comics, few if any creators have generated so many explosive, pulse-pounding images as did Jack Kirby (1917-1994). And yet… this solemn, understated scene has likely haunted me most of all. The visuals are splendid, sure, but it’s the nature of the situation, the conceptual ramifications of the thing, that make it stick.
This splash appeared near the opening of OMAC’s final adventure, one that pitted him against Sandor Skuba, a rogue genius seizing and hoarding the planet’s water in view of controlling humanity. Threat-wise, all the adversaries that the One Man Army Corps had tangled with were mere preludes to this impressive madman. As Kirby left DC before he could wrap up the storyline as he intended, no-one walks away from this skirmish**, notwithstanding the final panel, subsequent revivals and reboots and corruptions of Kirby’s ideas by (inevitably) lesser hands and minds (and conversely bigger egos).
This is OMAC no. 7 (Sept.-Oct. 1975) and « The Ocean Stealers! », scripted, pencilled and edited by Jack Kirby, inked and lettered by D. Bruce Berry.
In light of the current practices of certain corporations, notably the Swiss transnational Nestlé, Kirby was sadly prescient and clear-eyed again. As evidenced by recent events, given the technological means, today’s robber barons would not hesitate.
Writer and comics historian Mark Evanier, who spent some years as Kirby’s assistant in the ’70s, writes, in his foreword to the DC’s exemplary reprint collection Jack Kirby’s OMAC: One Man Army Corps (2008): « So consider this fair warning: the last issue comes to a whiplash-inducing sudden stop. Jack had been setting up something big for number 9, but since he was gone and there wasn’t going to be a number 9, a new last panel (not by Kirby) was inserted to remove the immediate cliffhanger.» … a panel created, at that, with the finesse of 10-year-old unburdened by a sense of pacing. “Wharoom” to you too.
-RG
*Don’t buy the duplicitous hype, though! A perfect example of the fox guarding the henhouse.
A panel from « Return of the Swamp Beast! », story by Jane and Bob (RL) Stine, art by Stephen R. Bissette, originally published in Weird Worlds no. 3 (Oct. 1979, Scholastic.) This is the colour version from the one-shot Bissette & Veitch’s Fear Book (April, 1986, Eclipse.) Colours by Brendan McDonough.
Ah, that old Earth’s taken another whirl, and so today, the wonderful Stephen Bissette, that most erudite master of terror *and* one of the truest, most steadfast gentlemen the medium has known, observes another birthday. He first breached this plane of existence in the wilds of Vermont some sixty-odd years ago today, on March 14, 1955. Let’s wish him all the best, shall we?
The original art of this silk-spewing splash was reportedly acquired, by proxy, by erstwhile Calvin Klein Jeans model Brooke Shields. I like to envision it occupying a place of honour in the dining room of her favourite mansion. Or perhaps in the bedroom, right above the headboard?
This is from Saga of the Swamp Thing no. 19 (December, 1983, DC.) Quite respectably co-plotted and scripted by Martin Pasko (with Mr. Bissette), this predates epochal game-changer The Anatomy Lesson, but the Bissette/Totleben dream combo was already scorching eyeballs, en attendant Mr. Alan Moore’s accession.
Newlyweds Rich and Jamie meet this dusty fellow, for the first and final time, in Egyptian Graffiti, story by Jane and Bob Stine, art by Stephen R. Bissette, originally published in Weird Worlds no. 2 (March 1979, Scholastic), also collected in Bissette & Veitch’s Fear Book , with colours by Michele Wrightson.
-RG
*George Carlin may have said that, or something to that effect. Who knows, these days?
