Today’s tentacle adventure brings us a bounty of Gold Key covers.
And just to offset all the cartoony, cutesy stuff, here’s a cover featuring an epic struggle, a life-or-death situation, a decisive skirmish between Man and Beast. (I’ll let you guess which is which, though.)
~ ds
*That’s Not Safe For Work, for those unfamiliar with the acronym. Turn back while you still can!
We all know that tentacles are often used in comics as a substitute for other, err, organs. Tentacle porn is nothing new. Still, occasionally I stumble upon something that’s just outstandingly odd and perhaps even depraved. Would one be able to find stuff online that’s far stranger and more degenerate? Indubitably. Still, within the context of Tentacle Tuesday, I’d like to think that the following offerings are firmly in the realm of “well, that was strange…”
Our first example of WTF is this cover, drawn by good ol’ William Stout.
Comixjoint explains:
« One of the great series in underground history, Denis Kitchen’s Bizarre Sex was launched in May, 1972. One could discern that this would be a “no-holds-barred” type of publication upon perusing the first issue, as the first two stories were about brother/sister incest and interracial homosexuality. Bizarre Sex became best known for issue #9, which introduced Omaha the Cat Dancer with a story that took up the whole book. After another appearance in Bizarre Sex #10, Omaha moved on to its own successful serial. The great thing about Bizarre Sex is the series matured through the years, evolving from a comic book about atypical sex into more of an in-depth review of sexual relations and the human condition. »
As this is no. 10, the last issue of Bizarre Sex, presumably that “in-depth review of the human condition” part is applicable here. The cover could have fooled me… If anyone out there has read it, do let me know!
Chester Brown has always been one sick puppy. If by now his work is creepy and boring, back in the earlier days of his career, his stories were often fascinating… for those of us who enjoy a good mindfuck and have a strong stomach, that is. As for me, I never liked his stuff: far too disturbing, in a viscerally-uncomfortable kind of way. A good demonstration of his typical sense of humour is the following 2-pager with a characteristic blend of onanism, body fluids and irony. This instalment of Adventures in Science was published in Yummy Fur no. 4 (1984).
A little bit of comic relief: a cartoon from “How the Animals Do It” by Larry Feign. Make sure to visit this page for a little video preview of this book: a little animated tale of the barnacle’s super long penis and what s/he does with it, including the brilliant quote « if no resistance is met, in it goes ».
Okay, I’ll bite. Why did the chicken cross the road? Why did the male octopus lose an arm due to sexual promiscuity?
« Male octopuses have a big problem: female octopuses. Each male wants to mate and pass on his genes to a new generation. The trouble is, the female is often larger and hungrier than he is, so there is a constant risk that, instead of mating, the female will strangle him and eat him. The males have a host of tricks to survive the mating process. Some of them can quite literally mate at arm’s length. Others sneak into a female’s den disguised as another gal, or sacrifice their entire mating arm to the female and then make a hasty retreat. » [source: Mystery of Cannibal Octopus Sex ]
Next time we encounter difficulties with our romantic entanglements, let’s remember not to complain.
Our last entry is a little more standard from the perspective of shokushu goukan. The blend of sex-and-religion is also nothing new, although some people seem to be labouring under the impression that it still has some sort of shock value in this day and age (My sleazy ex-boss from the framing store, I’m looking at you.) However, I think these scaly tentacle-penises are a reasonably original take on the theme, and I also like the choreographed sisters, who seem to be doing some sort of interpretative dance while a-waiting to be ravaged.
You can read the whole thing here – very NSFW, obviously.
~ ds
Dennis the Menace, the syndicated strip about a monstrous little kid and the mayhem he gets up to, was created by Hank Ketcham in 1951. The strip was inspired by Ketcham’s son Dennis, who was 4 years old at the time; the title was coined by Ketcham’s then-wife, Alice Louise Mahar, who’s said to have exclaimed in exasperation “Your son is a menace!” (Interestingly, she’s supposed to have said “your son“, even though Dennis was her child, too. She died of a drug overdose in 1959, when the real Dennis was 12. I really hope there’s no connection between the cause of her death and Dennis’ rambunctiousness.)
Wikipedia describes Dennis as “precocious but lovable”. I find him to be an irritating little prick who delights in tormenting his poor parents; the kind of kid who grows up to be a sociopath, happily wrecking people’s lives and then feigning complete ignorance. Tomato, tomat-oh! 😉
I had zero interest in Dennis until I stumbled upon a scan of the original art of a daily strip… and discovered that Ketcham’s art is stunning. I could happily stare at it for hours. Bonus: as it turns out, the stories can be quite interesting, especially the ones that don’t pivot as much around Dennis’ self-centered behaviour.
Here are a few strips for your consideration – a couple of dailies, a couple of Sundays. I much prefer looking at them in black and white, as I find that colour detracts from the purity and dynamism of Ketcham’s inking.
Dennis the Menace became a hit very quickly, and Ketcham started using assistants fairly early on. In the late 1950s and 60s, the strip was ghosted by Al Wiseman. (Speaking of which, do visit this website maintained by Wiseman’s grand-daughter, who doesn’t think it’s fair that the rôle her grandad played in the creation and success of this strip is so downplayed.)
After Wiseman moved on, Ketcham hired Marcus Hamilton to help out with dailies and Ron Ferdinand to work on Sunday strips; Ketcham presided over their work until his official retirement in 1994, after which they inherited the proverbial driver’s seat. He passed away in 2001, but the strip yet continues. To quote from the Dennis the Menace website, “Hank handed over the reins to Ron Ferdinand and Marcus Hamilton… two artists totally committed to carrying forward the Ketcham legacy, and keeping Dennis’ fans entertained for decades to come. Scott Ketcham (son of Hank) joined the Dennis team in 2010, helping to keep their creative finger on the pulse of current contemporary trends.” Anytime someone expresses a desire to keep a finger on “the pulse of current contemporary trends”, I get worried. Besides, their eagerness to stay relevant to modern life is conflicting with the attempt to keep things static. That’s the thing about newspaper strips that outlast their creators by decades… They get stuck in some bizarre time-warp, but with all the humour leached out. I bravely went through 50 or so dailies to figure out how Dennis the Menace was “Staying Modern”, so you wouldn’t have to. The results are much as expected: the family roles are exactly the same, with apron-ed mothers in skirts serving lunch or cleaning up, fathers working in offices, playing golf or having a beer in front of the TV (the mere three options available to men, apparently). However, now the family has a flat TV screen and a laptop, the babysitter has her nose stuck in a cellphone, and cars have some automated features. Oh, and lest I forget: women very occasionally wear jeans, a true sign of progress.
Incidentally, the real-life Dennis seems to have had one crappy childhood.
~ ds
I don’t necessarily like to contemplate this fact of life, but octopus flesh gets eaten a lot (in some countries more than others). However, comic artists are mostly a classy lot: they tend to like cephalopods, so it’s not too often that one runs across a depiction of them as a foodstuff. An octopus slashed in battle is one thing, but disgraced and transformed into a dish? What kind of person would want to illustrate *that*? Perverts, that’s who!
These bold souls who have drawn the forbidden, mentioned the unmentionable, shall surely be punished by the Elder Gods.
Let’s have a cautious peek (don’t forget to leave a sacrifice at the altar of the Octopus God, however).
Bon appétit!
~ ds
Aliens inevitably have tentacles. It’s a simple fact of life for any space explorer. Although I’m sure you wouldn’t dream of doubting my words, here are a few exhibits for your pleasure.
We’ll start off with a tentacle bonanza! This is what happens when you cross an octopus with a centipede.
When “plant creatures” (who look remarkably like toothy goldfish) gone berserk deploy their tentacles to strangle you – in space, no less – , it must be Tentacle Tuesday.
Seriously, who keeps stranding these vicious octopuses in space?
Since I like pointing things like that out, please note that all the plot points of “The Living Gun” that concern Platinum (the only girl on the team) are fucking inane. She gets jealous when Doc Magnus is wooed by a beautiful model; participates in a beauty pageant while everybody else continues with their scientific research; attacks her team-mates when she’s disqualified from the pageant for not being human; quits the Metal Men in a huff and barely makes it into the epic battle pitting Magnus and his Metal Men against the murderous, power-grabbing Solar Brain. Girls will be girls… at least when a certain writer with the initials R.K. is around.
~ ds
I’m reading a play by Anton Chekhov these days. What relevance does this have to comics? Let me explain. I don’t know about the so-called « mysterious Russian soul », but this particular play is histrionic. And the chief cause of drama, of course, is love. One woman tries to poison herself upon discovering her husband has a mistress and is preparing to run off with yet another man’s wife; others literally crawl around while trying to convince the rascal they’ve fallen in love with to condescend to granting them a small sign of affection; small children are threatened with deadly diseases; men launch into hair-tearing monologues, intermittently planning suicide or murder but never actually getting around to it; money is borrowed, and is immediately tossed in the air, friendships are shattered, insults are hurled and then profuse apologies proffered… and everybody, and I do mean everybody, goes hysterical.
Which brings us to Golden Age romance comics. Ha!
I’m not intending to suggest that *all* of them are ridiculously over the top. However, a lot of them are plotted like your average soaper – understandably, as these stories were written with a drama-hungry, lovelorn audience in mind. « Boy meets girl, everything goes well, they’re happy together » is not the kind of thing that moves copies.
Here’s a selection of covers I really like (for various reasons), depicting some common situations in a young woman’s life – like getting back-stabbed or pawed or pregnant while dreaming of some Perfect Love.
Some gals don’t merely have to contend with vigilantes, but also wolves (of the animal *and* human varieties).
Speaking of wolves, we have this cozy scene with distinctly creepy overtones. Anytime someone mentions an “experienced man”, run the other way.
“Julie fought, but now she fought as much against her own hungry response as against his muscles. Try as she would, she could not keep herself from returning that kiss with all the fiery ardor of her wild loneliness.” Untamed Love is quite racy, as the title promises, and as much over-the-top as one could wish for. The cover story is about an evil seductress, but the rest of the tales all concern themselves with a love triangle of another kind, one in which a girl has to choose between two guys. This one’s for the ladies – it’s hunks galore!
Here’s the “ravishing creature” in action, in case you’re interested:
Alaskan beauties don’t understand English grammar, but they dig the language of love! Panel from “The Wrong Road to Love”: “Julie falls in love with truck driver Steve, but he moves to Alaska to become a fisherman. She follows him there, only to discover local resident Becky considers Steve “her man.” Julie is consoled by Steve’s partner Hank. Steve and Becky run off, taking all the money Steve and Hank have earned. Julie decides to go home, but Hank says she can stay — as his wife.”
Another sentimental overload (though one would think that being at war was dramatic enough)? The redhead in the square on the right is in love with a gay man! (She was in love with a man’s fiancé, after all.) The girl at the dance is struggling to get away from a grabby asshole! (Unfortunately, all-too-common even today.) The girl in the green dress is faking it because she’s too polite to say no! (Ditto.)
“They were like two jailers, my pa and my brother Bill! At 18, I hadn’t tasted the sweetness of courtin’! And I was hungry for it… bitter hungry…” Things quickly get out of hand in this issue of First Love – a young maiden meets a charming young man who kills her brother (by accident), after which she gets shot by her dad (also by accident). The story concludes with the two lovebirds reuniting while the father realizes that “his soul is black with sin“. Geez, the things some people have to go through to reach a happy ending in a comic story.
This issue has plenty more “man-starved” maidens up for grabs…
… and one memorable male character, Alan, “the gay, vital, gloriously-alive lover”.
The next cover reminds us to never send our dates for refreshments (punch, you say? looks more like something out of a witch’s cauldron), for this is where femmes fatales lurk in hopes of snaring fresh prey.
If you want a lover who doesn’t resist, put her in a trance, first, and then Miss Smith won’t be able to help but say “yes!”
Romance comics love to pit a woman’s career against everything a female should strive for (i.e. marriage). Am I carping that romance comics weren’t very progressive in the 1950s? Ah, I wouldn’t be, if I didn’t know for a fact that Silver Age romance comics often don’t do that much better in that department.
What do we have here? Despite what one would tend to think, this necklace was stolen, not given as a romantic offering. Such are true life secrets: kleptomania, clandestine children, and double-crossed partners.
For an excellently written romp through the history of romance comics, read Tales From the Code: You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.
~ ds
Ahoy, landlubbers! Today’s Tentacle Tuesday goes back to the good ol’ days of nautical journeys, ships crushed by mighty tentacles, and brave men who end their lives as snacks for the mighty cephalopod.
Speaking of the Sargasso Sea (frequently depicted in fiction as a perilous area where ships go to die, mired in Sargassum seaweed, unable to escape), here’s another vignette about that mysterious spot. Incidentally, it is the only sea that doesn’t have land boundaries, enclosed by the Gulf Stream on the west side, the Canary Current on the east, the North Atlantic Current on the North and the North Atlantic Equatorial Current on the South. No wonder people thought it was full of mystery and danger! Even I, more or less immune to the siren’s call of wild maritime adventure, feel a little thrill at its mention. *Ahem* back to comics.
As is often the case, the original painting has a lot more detail than the printed version:
What does this peculiar, one-eyed beast look like closer up, one might ask? Something like this:
The sea can bring many (other) strange things, including a sword-wielding octopus… who should have stayed in the water, where he had the home advantage, instead of attempting to wage battle on sort-of land.
~ ds
We’d like to wish a happy birthday to Mexican cartoonist and animator Gustavo “Gus” Arriola, creator of beautiful, experimental, charming (am I running out of superlatives yet?) comic strip Gordo, published for an impressive some-forty-odd years (between 1941 and 1985, to be exact). Arriola was born on July 17th, 1917 and died in 2008, when he was 90 years old.
Gordo was designed to be a Mexican version of Li’l Abner, but Arriola quickly realized that his strip was relying on stereotypes of Mexican culture as seen through American eyes. He strove to make it truer to his mother culture, making Gordo (the main character – his real name being Perfecto Salazar Lopez, with his nickname more or less translating to « Fatso ») “an accidental ambassador” for Mexican mores.
The strip featured a lot of animals, and its plotlines often pivoted around concerns about the environment. It also regularly included recipes. For instance, Gordo’s beans and cheese recipe from a strip in 1948 got the comic strip into 60 extra newspapers. And, significantly, Gordo also had gorgeous, inventive art!
Aside from being a music aficionado, Gus Arriola was also a great connaisseur of art. R.C. Harvey, the editor/writer of “Accidental Ambassador Gordo: The Comics Strip Art of Gus Arriola” mentions Arriola’s love for jazz: “[he] finally [settled] in Carmel, where he met his life-long friend and fellow cartoonist, Eldon Dedini, and they both became fixtures at Doc’s Lab, where Hank Ketcham and other habitués of the place met weekly to admire jazz and tell stories.” Read the rest of his lovely article here.
In 1999, Arriola was interviewed by John Province for Hogan’s Alley no. 6 – it’s well worth a read if you’ve got some spare quality time! You can read the interview here.
Want to see more? Head over to the Fabulous Fifites blog, where many scans of Sundays strips are available for perusal. (Ger Apeldoorn, the blog’s author, did a monumental job of scanning newspaper strips for our enjoyment.)
~ ds
Heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go. Octopuses have to work, too (at least occasionally). (And while they work, they have to restrain from grabbing unwilling passersby, as they don’t want to get slapped with a sexual assault lawsuit. I present to you a list of some of the professions that cephalopods excel at… no hanky-panky involved.
They’re musicians!
Cooks!
Entertainers!
Athletes!
~ ds
Richard Thompson*, cartoonist extraordinaire and an exceptionally kind and talented man, tragically passed away in 2016 – and I don’t like to throw the word “tragically” about without good cause. His was a rare combination of wit, imagination, and style – think of how often one comes across an excellent writer whose material suffers from his poor drawing ability, or an artist whose beautiful art is like en empty shell, with nary a story nor convincing characterization in sight. Thompson had ideas, tons of ideas, and he was able to translate them into visuals with a dynamic pen-line and elegant watercolours.
His first truly successful strip was Richard’s Poor Almanac, which ran in the Washington Post for seven years or so from 1997. These little gems have been collected in “Richard’s Poor Almanac: 12 Months of Misinformation in Handy Cartoon Form” in 2004, but sadly this wonderful volume is quite out of print. You can get your fix from GoComics, however, as they’re re-running the whole thing here.
*not the musician.
Here’s a few strips from Richard’s Poor Almanac that always make me chuckle, no matter how many times I see them.
The sprawling, madcap Almanac presented “misinformation in handy cartoon form” on subjects ranging from traditional almanac fodder like weather phenomena and local fauna to entertainment and political news. “The ideal cartoon for the Almanac was made up off the top of my head with no research, with only its own comic logic holding it together,” noted the artist in The Art of Richard Thompson. (Andrew Farago for the Comics Journal.)
You may have heard about the Almanac thanks to the fame of “Make the Pie Higher”.
«Upon learning that George W. Bush had opted not to invite an official poet to his inauguration ceremony in January 2001, Thompson composed his own poem from Bush malapropisms, and assembled them into a free-form verse entitled “Make the Pie Higher”. The cartoon was widely circulated online over the next year, was set to music by multiple composers, and earned its own entry on the fact-checking website Snopes.com. » (source)
~ ds
Who's Out There? 