A Whole Wide World of Talent

Alexey Gorbut’s Kommie Krackle

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Contemporary Russian cartoonist (and colourist) Alexey Gorbut, born in Yekaterinburg, had been drawing (by his own admission) since babyhood. When asked in an interview to describe his work in three words, he said ‘I’m always drawing’. As clearly seen from his art, he is a great fan of Golden and Silver age comics, an devotee of old horror comics (he specifically mentions Chamber of Chills* and Tales from the Crypt as favourite anthologies in this interview), with a special affection for Steve Ditko and Alex Raymond. While he wears these influences on his sleeve, his work still boasts plenty of Slavic trimmings, which makes for a really fun blend of styles and perspectives.

Gorbut mostly self-published his stories until 2016. Alexey Volkov spotted his work while looking for an illustrator for a project requiring a Kirby-esque hand, and, smitten with Gorbut’s style and his proclivity for drawing on paper instead of a tablet, offered him to collaborate on a book to be published by Jellyfish Jam. The Alexeys’ first book together was «Победители невозможного » (2017), a sort of Metal Men seen through the lens of Soviet sci-fi. A team comprising four members who possess fantastical powers, two men, one woman and an android, is on the search — to exact revenge — for their creator, a mysterious time traveller.

The cover of «Победители невозможного » (2017), which translates to something like ‘Vanquishers of the impossible’. “Krackle” notwithstanding, the result actually did not come out Kirby-esque at all — you can see some inside page samples here.

Their next significant collaboration was «Вор теней» (Thief of Shadows), plotted by Volkov and Kirill Kutuzov, who were old childhood friends and partners in comic crimes. The first four issues were published in 2019 by aforementioned Jellyfish Jam, with publishing rights picked up by Bubble Comics on issue 5 and onwards. The series is still going strong, and the Kutuzov, Gorbut and Volkov trio became such a steady team in readers’ minds that they were even assigned an unofficial acronym, KGV (which of course brings to mind ‘KGB’).

Page from Вор теней no. 1: Вор теней и час волка (May 2019, Jellyfish Jam).
Вор теней no. 2: Вор теней против бандитов-футуристов (July 2019, Jellyfish Jam).
The cover of the first collection gathering the first five issues, published in 2020 by Bubble Comics.

« Майор Гром 1939 » (‘Major Thunder 1939’), a seven-story collection, came into being in 2019, a successful stab at recreating a golden age comic with ‘old-school’ storytelling and wackiness.. and far more interesting than Bubble’s Major Grom franchise it sprang from, if you ask me. Volkov and Gorbut took the main series’ characters and transferred their raison d’être to the Soviet era, cooking up a delirious blend of parody with a heavy sprinkling of American comic influences defused by Soviet lifestyle snippets. Titillating details abound, like corrupt billionaire Plague Doctor becoming the Plague Physician, a child of noblemen murdered by the Bolsheviks.

Майор Гром 1939 no. 1… October 1939, I mean 2019, published by Bubble Comics.
Alternate cover for no. 1. If it looks familiar…

… it’s because it should!

Detective Comics no. 31 (September 1939), cover by — or at least credited to — Bob Kane.

Superhero/sci-fi series «МИР» (2020 and ongoing) is written by Volkov and illustrated by Madibek Musabekov, with the former drawing “real-life” action and the latter, dream sequences and such. Musabekov has a perfectly ordinary, dull, tablet-drawn style devoid of any personality, and he also draws all the covers so that’s one series I’m not going to touch… but Gorbut’s alternate covers can be nice.

МИР no. 1 (August 2020, Bubble Comics)… on the other hand, now ‘Kirby-esque’ has caught up.

More recently Gorbut has adapted Nick Perumov‘s «Кольцо Тьмы» (The Ring of Darkness) fantasy novel series. If it looks like a Lord of the Rings rip-off, that’s because it’s purposefully set in Tolkien’s word, with a hobbit protagonist (not that it makes it less of a rip-off, mind). As it happens, I recently read a novel (from another fantasy cycle) by Perumov, and co-admin RG can confirm that I kept swearing at its prose throughout, though I still finished it out of a sort of morbid fascination. Gorbut’s art is nothing to sneer at, just too bad it’s tied to something so trite. Here is the cover of Volume 1, « Кольцо Тьмы: Эльфийский клинок » (2022, Alpaca), as well as some inside pages:

Those trees in the background are rather Bilibin-esque, which I really like.

Finally, for more of a Slavic effect (though not devoid of certain European influence!), here are two comics covers created for « Русы против Ящеров » (Lizards Must Die), a videogame released in 2023.

~ ds

* While from the context it’s clear he meant the 1950s Harvey anthology, I think it’s safe to assume he’s equally fond of the 1970s Marvel one.

The “Blandly Subversive” Len Norris

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« Len Norris portrays rather the little man in his everyday complications, and by showing us his, and our own predicaments, he helps relieve us of the burden of the daily toll of bloodshed and terror we see in the news pages. » — Stu Keate

Here’s to a semi-forgotten Canadian legend.

In my long-ago teen years, when I began haunting second-hand bookstores, single-author collections of political cartoons were everywhere, dirt-cheap, largely interchangeable to the untrained eye.. and evidently hard to dispose of.

Most common were collections of The Daily Express’ Ronald “Carl” Giles (1916 – 1995), AKA Giles — but this being Canada, we saw plenty from The Montreal Gazette’s Terry Mosher AKA Aislin and the Vancouver Sun’s twin cartooning stars, Roy Peterson and Len Norris. Peterson is the one that first caught my eye — Vancouver was a long way off — thanks to his quarter-century run illustrating Allan Fotheringham‘s back page column in Maclean’s Magazine. However, I shelled out folding kale for but a single one of these collections, and it was the one comprising the cream of Norris’ 1960-61 output; it turned up in a long-neglected chest at my folks’ place last month, and so it’s ripe for rediscovery.

Here’s a bit of background on the man… born in 1913 in London, England…

« Norris came to Canada with his family when he was 13, growing up in Port Arthur, Ont. (now Thunder Bay). He moved to Toronto during the Great Depression, where his artistic talents landed him jobs in ad agencies. Before he joined The Sun, he was the art director for Canadian Homes and Gardens Magazine.

Norris didn’t become a full-time cartoonist until he joined The Vancouver Sun in 1950.

Norris was a sensation out of the box, picking up a National Newspaper Award for Top Canadian Cartoonist in 1952. His work was so popular that 27 collections of his cartoons were published.

He produced an estimated 8,000 cartoons during his 38 years at The Sun. He officially retired in 1979, but kept producing two cartoons a week until he finally hung up his pen in 1988, at age 75. He died in 1997 at 83. » [ source ]

Ah, those quaint Colonials… « The phrase “the natives are getting restless” emerged from racist colonial origins. It sets up a scenario where wise, cool minds are overseeing and running things. And there is a more “savage,” “uncivilized” set of local people, the natives, who are seen as subordinate. Who deserve to be ruled by the lighter-skinned European colonists. »
Quite timeless, that one — regrettably.
Unlike a couple of these political parties, the Shrine Circus is still around — so it might have been the savvier investment after all.
You can take the Englishman out of England, but… it’s snap to picture this appearing in the pages of Punch instead of a North American newspaper.
Note that each and every child has his or her own ambulatory posture. Now that’s draftsmanship. Clearly, in Norris’ case, the verisimilitude of each detail, every gesture, springs from a deep well of visual observation — and he was no slouch with the verbal either.
Like many a cartoonist, Norris was unambiguously on the side of the animals.
I can relate far more readily with this gag since I’ve acquired a home with both a septic tank and lots of greenery.
While the point might be a tad obvious — though still worth making — the expert composition is what makes this one special.
Speaking of that Punch spirit: with this particular cartoon, Norris gleefully wanders into Rowland Emett‘s garden patch.
I love how Norris didn’t stack the deck, where a lesser light surely would have: the members of the academic body on the right are still recognizably educators.
Ah, poor Laika. Such a heartbreaking tale. Though she notably inspired a monument in Moscow, an outstanding Finnish rock band, a moving verse of a Divine Comedy song, and this cartoon, it’s a given that the poor doggie would have rather lived her life in peace than die alone and terrified.

The next two make it thanks to bravura use of compositional space. Such chops!

With a population of 3,985 — and rising — Grand Forks, BC, “is Boundary Country’s largest city”. All kidding aside, it does look like a very nice place to visit.
Dig if you will the artist’s mastery of volume and gesture, of costume and body language. The Mr. Coyne alluded to is James Elliott Coyne (1910-1979), who was the Bank of Canada’s second Governor, from 1955 to 1961. He resigned in the aftermath of what was known as The Coyne Affair.

His Vancouver Sun colleague Trevor Lautens eloquently depicted the Norris he knew: « Len limned not the pompous event, but the pompous event’s effect on ordinary people. He seemed a small-c conservative, but look and you will find that his drawings were blandly subversive. The bureaucrats were black-suited, pince-nezed satraps. Pietistic Social Crediters wore haloes and walked on fluffy clouds. The Victoria Conservative Club was populated by dozing, look-alike, pear-shaped gents with walrus moustaches. »

For a deeper burrow into Norris’ œuvre and legacy, here’s a fine documentary film on the subject.

-RG

José Delbo and Billy the Kid’s Long, Dusty Trail

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« There will be no questions asked if I kill you here, gringo! » — Bad hombre Alejandro Roja

On February 5, 2024, versatile veteran cartoonist José Delbo (born in Buenos Aires, Argentine, on December 9, 1933) left us at the most respectable age of ninety. Comics fans of a certain age will no doubt recall him chiefly from his long stint on DC’s Wonder Woman (1975-1981, issues no. 222-286), but to my mind, that’s hardly his finest hour: he wasn’t done any favours there, hobbled as he was by pedestrian (or worse) writing and indifferent (or worse) inking. Same goes for his run on Batgirl (1976-82) in Batman Family and Detective Comics.

For a detailed rundown of his remarkably long and varied career, you can’t go wrong with this excellent bio.

This post’s title gave away my candidate for Delbo’s magnum opus, such as it is; but I would be remiss in failing to also note his charming work on Dell’s The Monkees (fifteen issues), where he got to demonstrate his deft hand at humour; and his winningly bizarre collaboration with Tony Tallarico, Geronimo Jones (nine issues, 1971-73, plus one that remains unpublished).

This is Billy the Kid no. 58 (Nov. 1966, Charlton), Delbo’s second issue on the title but his first cover. After this one, he would go on to pencil and ink the subsequent fifty or so covers and most of the inside features. When you find an artist who can draw horses, you hold on to him (or her)! How many, among the current generation, could successfully handle that particular mission?

Incidentally, Billy’s distinctive steed appears to be an Appaloosa: « The Appaloosa’s eye-catching pattern comes from the spotted horses brought into the Americas by Spanish Conquistadors. Known as the Dalmatian horse breed, it was bred in the mid-18th century by the Native American Nez Percé people. Its name comes from the Palouse River that flows through what used to be Nez Percé territory. » [ source ]

Charlton Comics’ flagship western title, Billy the Kid (153 issues, 1955-1983, including its first five as “Masked Raider”), endured as long as it did for good cause: notable runs by accomplished artists, among them John Severin, Rocco Mastroserio, Luis Domínguez, Delbo, and finally Warren Sattler. Yet, for my money, it’s Joe Gill’s spare but psychologically consistent and highly humane scripting that holds the enterprise together.

This is Billy the Kid no. 69 (Nov. 1968, Charlton).
This is Billy the Kid no. 74 (Sept. 1969, Charlton).
This is Billy the Kid no. 80 (Sept. 1970, Charlton).
This is Billy the Kid no. 94 (Aug. 1972, Charlton); I love the clever signpost integration of the featured title.
This is Billy the Kid no. 98 (Jan. 1973, Charlton). Readers accustomed to Marvel and DC-style hype may notice how light on text these covers are. A lot of shouting isn’t what sells a cover: an arresting visual will do that.
This is Billy the Kid no. 102 (June 1973, Charlton).
This is Billy the Kid no. 103 (Aug. 1973, Charlton).
This is Billy the Kid no. 106 (Dec. 1973, Charlton). The foxy villainess Billy’s tussling with is La Duquesa, featured in “Slave of Beauty”.

Happy trails, and gracias for everything, Señor Delbo!

-RG

Folk-Artist: Hua Junwu and the National Style

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Hua Junwu (華君武, 1915-2010) hailed from Hangzhou. He was born during a hectic epoch — life tossed him around quite a bit, but unlike a lot of his contemporaries, he was able to navigate through these changing times with dry feet. He had been drawing since his school days, but the seeds of his artistic career were sown around the time he moved to Shanghai to become a student at Utopia University, where he first began submitting his cartoons to magazines for publication, as well as meeting like-minded artists.

A year after the Second Sino-Japanese War started, in 1938, he left the Japanese-occupied Shanghai for Yan’an (the seat of the Communist government at that time) and worked at the Lu Xun Academy of Literature and Art, also contributing anti-Japanese propaganda cartoons to publications like Jiefang Daily. Japan formally surrendered in 1945, but the same year saw an escalation of the struggle for power between the Nationalists and the Communists, which signalled the start of the Third Chinese Revolutionary Civil War. Hua travelled through Northeast China, working as a reporter and cartoonist for Northeast Daily. 1949 saw the founding of the People’s Republic, and Hua joined People’s Daily as the head of its art department, and the China Artists Association as its Secretary-General in 1953.

In his introduction to Selected Cartoons of Hua Junwu (New World Press, 1984), Hua credits German artist E. O. Plauen (see Circus Acrobats of Life: E. O. Plauen’s Father and Son) as one of his main artistic influences. I was amused that the other artist who had Hua’s utmost admiration was Georgi Sapojnikov, a former officer of the Russian Imperial Army who occupied the spot of daily cartoonist in North China Daily News, working under the pseudonym Sapajou*.

There was considerable difference between rural Yan’an and sophisticated Shanghai, and this change of scenery is what shaped the artist’s style into its distinctive form. To quote Hua, « Shanghai in the 1930s was a cross between a colonial and feudal society, a special territory where Chinese and foreigners lived cheek by jowl. As I had learned so much from foreigners’ cartoons, my own cartoons were inevitably rather foreign in flavour. Fortunately, the only people who paid any attention to cartoons in the Shanghai of those days were, I suppose, a few intellectuals who were also foreign influenced, so I was able to get by. » After his move to Yan’an in the late 40s, Hua found his audience changing from the aforementioned ‘few intellectuals’ to a readership of mostly peasants, who found his foreign-based style alien and hard to understand. Feeling like ‘a round peg in a square hole’ and heavily influenced by the writings of Mao Zedong, Hua adopted a philosophy of ‘national style’, ‘the Chinese style and spirit which the common people of China love‘, for which he is now fondly remembered.

This collection, as noted on the cover, is bilingual – the cartoons in Chinese are included on the left, with their English translations on the right (Hua Junwu drew the English letters himself, to keep their Chinese flavour). However, in interests of intelligibility, we are just including the translated versions.

I just wanted to share some fun cartoons, but this post once again dragged me into the 20th century and its bloodshed, as well as the history of communism (this time from a Chinese perspective). Some topics are rich veins to mine, full of interesting filaments that lead to their own story.

~ ds

* The story of ‘White’ Russian refugees fleeing to Shanghai during the civil war between Bolsheviks and Tsarists is a fascinating topic in itself. Of more relevance to this post is this quote from Citizens of No State: Daily Life of Shanghai White Russians, 1920s-1930s: « A man endowed with the gift of reducing the complexities of Chinese politics to a single image and of capturing the ebullient, chaotic nature of Shanghai without sentimentality or cynicism, Sapojnikov worked for the newspaper for more than two decades. » I think a post about Sapajou is needed at some point in the future…

Death to Global Imperialism: D. Moor and the Bolsheviks

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D. Moor may not ring like a convincingly Slavic name, but it is the nom de plume of Russian illustrator Dmitry Stakhievich Orlov (1883-1946). Why the D. abbreviation was picked is obvious; as for the family name, he plucked it from The Robbers, a 1781 play by German Friedrich Schiller about two brothers, one of whom Orlov thought he resembled in temperament.

Orlov adopted his pseudonym in 1907, when he switched careers from typography to political cartooning after one of his caricatures was printed in a newspaper. His biting sense of humour was not always well received by the Tsarist régime, and occasionally censored, which provoked the passionate Orlov into even more acerbic mockery. In these years he also designed posters for silent films, which in a way forecast his future as an affichiste. After the Russian Revolution of 1905, Orlov joined the ranks of those actively working in favour of an uprising; when in 1917 Russia fell into civil war that would lead to the formation of the USSR, D. Moor put to good use his aggressive anti-religious stance and talent for caricaturing politics.

‘Three Russian attractions: Tsar bell, Tsar cannon, and Tsar Nicholas. Tsar bell doesn’t ring, Tsar cannon doesn’t shoot, Tsar Nicholas doesn’t reign…’, 1917
Orlov’s poster for Убійца (1910)*

He was responsible for creating much in the way of striking agitprop, and is often cited as the father of the Soviet propaganda poster. His most famous poster** was not only aped by other illustrators during Orlov’s lifetime, but also acquired great popularity after the USSR fell apart***.

The Solemn Promise (1919)
Death to Global Imperialism (1919)
Help (1921). This is one of D. Moor’s most striking posters, and refers to those affected by the Povolzhye famine, which began in 1921 and lasted until 1922, killing an estimated six million people. Note the starving peasant being pierced by a single stalk of wheat.

I may be somewhat straining the definition of ‘comics’ by writing this post, yet some of D. Moor’s posters clearly feature linear graphic storytelling.

Labor (1920)
The White Guards and the Deserter (1919)
The Soviet Turnip (1920). This alludes to a classic fairytale in which a family is collectively trying to rip out a big turnip from the ground, even involving the help of the dog, the cat, and the mouse.
This uses two proverbs to make its point – under ‘Before’, ‘One with a plow, seven with a spoon’ and under ‘Now’, ‘The idle don’t get to eat’. (1920)

Alongside his active production of posters, D. Moor continued his career as a political caricaturist, publishing his anti-religious work in The Godless at the Workbench magazine (Безбожник у станка) — nice title, isn’t it? — and regularly contributing to various satirical magazines and communist newspapers, such as Pravda or Krokodil.

« We’re done with earthly kings, now comes the turn of heavenly ones », 1922
« Where will such a leader guide you? » (1930)

During World War II, Orlov of course supported anti-Nazi efforts (well, once Germany launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, at any rate).

1941. This is kind of untranslatable, but in Russian Hitler and Himmler are spelled with a hard ‘G’, not an H, leaving us with the quartet of Himmler, Göring, Hitler and Goebbels all starting with G… as well as the word for ‘shit’ (govno, говно).

Throughout his life Orlov also taught art at several institutions, and historical accounts indicate that he was a warm and talented teacher adored by his students. Did Orlov enthusiastically embrace the censorship-happy Soviet system, or was he just another artist trapped in a moment of history? I don’t have an answer for this, as one gets a very different perspective depending on which biography one consults and in which language – some emphasise his fervour for Soviet labour, and some philosophically note that he was anti-Soviet ‘like any self-respecting honest intellectual’.

You can take a look at more posters here, or head over here (perhaps with the help of google translate) to take a peek at caricatures poking (careful) fun at some Soviet figures.

~ ds

* An especially interesting thing for me was that his work spans the years of the orthographic reform in Russian. The reform was planned long before 1918 to combat the peasants’ illiteracy, so it wasn’t tied to the revolution per se, but since it came into effect in 1918, it was instilled by the Bolsheviks. The movie title, for example, is written with the letter ‘і’, which was kicked out of the alphabet.

** I am not including it for reasons of ubiquity, but take a look here.

*** Plenty of ex-Soviets feel an irresistible nostalgia about the USSR years, as if their memory can only conjure rose-coloured memories and erases everything unsavoury. The « Have you registered as a volunteer? » poster has been aped and parodied in social media.

Jean-Michel Folon: Just Another Belgian Genius?

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« Less is more. » — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Once again, my initial instinct when I hit upon the notion of showcasing the work of Jean-Michel Folon was: « is he too obvious a subject? ». Then reason stepped in with: « to whom, exactly? »

Which brings me to my own tiny Folon anecdote: about twenty years ago, I was helping out a friend, who usually took off the month of January to travel. As it happened, it was usually the worst month for art freelancers, at least in my experience, so he was helping me out too.

Anyway, instead of working from home or some ad agency’s offices, I would work from his boutique, manning the four telephone lines while his regular employees handled the in-person traffic. One day, I took an order from a nice lady who, while I was filling out the relevant papers, gave her last name as Folon. « Like the illustrator? », I asked. « Yes indeed, he’s my cousin! », she replied, clearly delighted. « I’ve been living here in Canada for thirty years, and you’re the first person who’s ever asked! ». Which goes to show that one should think twice before extrapolating from one’s familiarity with a given subject. Or to put it simply, just because you’ve heard of someone, don’t assume everyone else does… whether they should have or not.

I can’t make mention of Folon without bringing up his strongest formative influences, Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) and André François (1915-2005); we’ll return to these gentlemen in due time.

To put it succinctly, Steinberg brought greater graphic and thematic purity to the gag cartoon… by dispensing with the gag, at least in the traditional sense. Not everyone dared to follow that perilous path, but Folon did, and similarly thrived.

Born in Brussels in 1934, Folon initially studied architecture, but soon detoured into drawing and never returned to his early vocation, though he certainly erected his share of edifices… on paper. He timidly began submitting drawings in 1957. A decade later, he had scaled and conquered the lofty North American market, landing cover assignments with The New Yorker, Esquire and Fortune, among others.

For example, this model of witty understatement from the week of April 11, 1970.

He turned his confident, limpid vision across all printed media, but also sculpture, tapestry, stained glass and animation. He passed away in 2005, but not before designing and establishing his own museum. Be sure to check this stunning place out!

Such a multifaceted career and œuvre being too gargantuan in scope for a simple blog post, I’ll mostly stick to a sampling of some of Jean-Michel’s drawings, produced during his first decade as a professional artist.

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And here’s some of his later work:

This is Folon’s jacket for the 45 RPM single issue of Michel Colombier’s music (his adaptation of a baroque adagio by composer Alessandro Marcello). It had originally been recorded in 1971 for his US debut album, Wings (for Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss’ A&M label), which bore a variation of this Folon image as its European cover; the North American one was, to put it mildly, hideous.

Colombier, incidentally, belonged to that coterie of poor souls who did all the heavy lifting while their ‘collaborator’, Serge Gainsbourg, received and happily hogged all the credit.

In 1975, Colombier recycled the recycled adagio as the opening and closing theme for French public national television channel Antenne 2’s daily programming, accompanied by an appropriately graceful animated sequence by Folon.
Another local connection: Folon handled the artwork for this 1979 LP by musical whiz Jean Robitaille, who’d recently co-written the lovely 1976 Summer Olympics’ theme song. But my favourite Robitaille song has to be his duet with beloved songstress Renée Claude (1939-2020), St-Jovite, a fiendishly clever song about a singular sort of voodoo.
I must say I’m gobsmacked at the idea of the French post office selecting a Belgian artist to illustrate its stamp commemorating the 1989 bicentennial of the French Revolution. But what do I know? Folon did a great job.
When I state that Belgium seems to truly value its artists (see another example here), this is the sort of thing I mean: in 2010, five years after his passing, his native land issued a set of ten postage stamps saluting “The Magic of Folon”. ’nuff said.

-RG

Tomie and Soichi’s Snowy Winter Vacation

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There are some weather phenomena one quickly learns to associate with specific plots – fog denotes something creepy or mysterious, rain evokes haunting melancholy, wind howls like the souls of victims. Snow is a bit less obvious, though its connotations often run the gamut from coziness to isolation. Manga artist Junji Ito (see Tentacle Tuesday: Junji Ito’s Remina) often uses weather to mirror his characters’ emotions, so it is no surprise that he has a few snowstorm stories under his belt. I welcome snow — in this part of the world, we were lucky enough to finally get a white landscape just in time for New Year’s — but I definitely not want to be trapped in the wintry world depicted by Ito!

Here are a few pages from Fun Winter Vacation, a chapter/self-contained story from Souichi’s Diary of Delights (1997). Souichi is a little creep with more than a slight penchant for the occult, so weird shit happens whenever he is present. That’s him hiding behind the tree in the first panel – fetching lad, isn’t he? One might say he brings people’s darkest thoughts out into the open. You can read the full story here (remember to read right to left!) I’ve heard some readers complain that this narrative doesn’t quite make sense… welcome to Ito’s dreamlike logic. These episodes are meant to be absorbed like a nightmare one can’t quite wake up from, not dissected in the manner of an A leads to B equation.

Revenge, originally published in the June 1993 issue of manga magazine Monthly Halloween, is standard Ito fare, and concerns itself with a woman so beautiful that she drives people to madness… in this case, the notorious Tomie, who dispatches a few new victims and nibbles on a wee bit of human flesh in this snowbound vignette.

Read Revenge in full here, and of course support Ito by purchasing his books. Publisher Viz Media is currently issuing plenty of them in a handsome hardcover format, including stories never previously translated to English.

~ ds

Hallowe’en Countdown VII, Day 16

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« When asked if they would like to have sex with me, 30 per cent said, “Yes”, while the other 70 per cent replied, “What, again?” — Silvio Berlusconi

A certain subset of Italian Fumetti — namely the sex and horror digests of the 1970s — constitutes a quagmire of oft-truly repellent material in which indisputable gems yet glimmer bright. Mostly the covers… designed to lure the sailor — or reader — to his doom.

While several of the most prolific artists of the medium were evidently talented fellows, only a couple (Averardo Ciriello being the other one) truly draw my interest, since, despite low pay and a breakneck production pace, they didn’t swipe much… or at all — unlike their colleagues. For most of the industry and society, consent and copyright appeared to be pretty fuzzy, casually dismissed notions.

I favour the work of Fernando Carcupino (1922-2003) over that of his contemporaries because he always knew how to keep things light, bright and original — never wallowing in poor taste or sadism, even when the subject matter called for it, and I thank him for it. Here are some highlights from his illustrious career.

A piece from La Settimana Umoristica no. 5 (Apr. 1954) entitled “Celluloid Terror”. All the classic ghouls are there, even that very year’s Creature From the Black Lagoon. Carcupino could spot an enduring classic from a long way off!
A selection of our fine products, as they appeared in print.
Vampirissimo no. 11 (Nov. 1975, Edifumetto). “An Abyss of Terror”.
Leaned in too close and got poked in the eye! I Sanguinari no. 9 (July 1975, Edifumetto). “Flamenco of the Damned”.
Il Vampiro no. 5 (March 1974, Edifumetto). “The Black Snow”. Why, hello, Mr. Chaney!
Lo Scheletro no. 13 (July 1974, Edifumetto). “The Grim Bell Ringer”.
Zora la Vampira no. 1 (Jan. 1974, Edifumetto) — “Human Flesh” In French, Zora became ‘Zara‘, for some reason.
Lo Scheletro no. 3 (March 1975, Edifumetto). “The Abominable King Kong”.
Tabù no. 23 (Oct. 1975, Edifumetto). “Please Don’t Bite My Butt”.
I Notturni no. 9 (Sept. 1973, Edifumetto). “Peter the Fornicator”. Impressive, given his mug.
Vampirissimo no. 8 (Aug. 1974, Edifumetto). “Death by Fright”. Oh, he’s a spooky one, all right.
Vampirissimo no. 7 (July 1974, Edifumetto). “Monster Dimension”. This is the sort of composition and treatment that Bill Sienkiewicz would “introduce” to mainstream comics a decade later, blowing the minds of Marvel Zombies who’d consumed naught but the House of Ideas’ offal, just as Jim Steranko had blown their older brothers’, a decade prior.
Lo Scheletro no. 7 (Apr. 1974, Edifumetto). “Demon in Love”.
This fine* monograph from Korero Press (2019) spotlights a certain facet of Carcupino’s œuvre, though it’s pretty light on the horror, which is fine by me. The narrow thematic focus (on sex, the other half of the equation) does manage to render the proceedings a tad tedious after a while, but that’s to be expected. For a better sense of the man’s versatility, check out his website.

-RG

*marred somewhat by the usual “We Italians...” introduction, yet another variation on the line of “we are so passionate, we love women so much, we can’t control ourselves” bullshit. I guess it’s perfectly commonplace, for some people, to confuse misogyny with love . Right…

Circus Acrobats of Life: E. O. Plauen’s Father and Son

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Today’s featured strip was once immensely popular in its native Germany, but who now remembers the name of Erich Ohser  (1903 – 1944) or his nom de plume E. O. Plauen*? Sic transit gloria mundi, alas.

Cartoonist and illustrator Ohser belonged to a set of three Erichs, the other two being Erich Kästner, a satirist and journalist, and Erich Knauf, a newspaper editor and poet. The three met in Leipzig and found in each other sympathetic souls with a common aesthetic and worldview. The Erich trifecta moved to Berlin at the end of the 1920s, where Knauf became the editor of publishing house Büchergilde Gutenberg, which published Ohser’s cartoons and illustrations as well as volumes of Kästner’s poetry.

All Erichs were ardently opposed to the emerging scourge of Nazis, but Ohser’s caricatures were particularly biting and ‘depicted [HItler and Goebbels]’ cohorts as gangs of dull-witted thugs, employing all the weapons of caricature: exaggeration and distortion, one-sided emphasis and intentional grotesquerie‘**. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Ohser’s work opportunities dried up completely as he was not admitted to the Reich Chamber of Culture, which meant that he couldn’t work at all. Fortunately, the editor of Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung finagled a special permission from the Ministry of Propaganda – Ohser could continue working, as long as he used a pseudonym and stayed firmly away from political material. Such was the birth, in 1934, of the weekly strip Vater und Sohn and the sobriquet ‘e.o.p.’, later expanded more officially to E. O. Plauen.

Ohser and his son Christian, who was surely an inspiration for the strip.

Father and Son won Ohser public acclaim, as well as financial success, but also many copycats and some inevitable appropriation – to Ohser’s chagrin, the strip’s characters were used to advertise Nazi charity drives and political events. Ohser ended the strip in 1937, probably because he felt that his creation was being misused by other hands, but he continued to work on cartoons and illustrations under the same pseudonym. He also had to put his talent at the service of the reviled enemy to survive, producing caricatures of anti-Nazi figures such as Churchill and Roosevelt for Nazi weekly newspaper Das Reich.

« ‘I draw against the Allies – and not for the National Socialists’: This is how Ohser justified his disturbing caricatures of the 1940s to a friend of his, the writer Hans Fallada. He drew Russia as a murderous bear beast, America as a greasy, greedy capitalist, England as a bloodthirsty colonial ruler – it’s hard to believe that the same man gave the world the touching ‘Father and Son’ picture stories. » [source]

This uncomfortable position of living a sort of double life screeched to a halt when Ohser and Knauf were arrested in 1944 after being denounced by their roommate for anti-Nazi sentiment. Ohser committed suicide in his cell the night before the hearing. Knauf was killed a month later after being sentenced to execution by the court.

There are a few collections in various languages drifting about, but the definitive English-language one was published in 2017 by New York Review Comics. Here are a few excerpts from the latter, lovingly colorised (as is often the case around here) by co-admin RG. I also limited my selections to one-pagers, which leaves out (for example) the pleasantly surreal episode spanning many weeks when Father and Son get stranded on a desert island.

The advantage of mute strips is their universality! (Speaking of mute strips, go check out Mr. Mum’s International ‘Anything Can Happen’ Club…)

« Resemblance ». Ohser and his son Christian were regulars at the Berlin Zoo, which is reflected in a lot of strips, as is Ohser’s clear love and respect for animals.
« Nicely cropped »
« Unsuccessful overture »
« Too bad! »
« Cautionary example »
« A letter from the fishes »
« The birthday surprise »
« Trading sobs »
« Occupation: inventor »
Ohser’s son Christian holding a collection of Father and Son strips.

~ ds

* Plauen is the name of the town where Ohser grew up.

** From the afterword to Vater und Sohn (2015) by Elke Schulze, translated to English.

Curse Like a Russian: The Language of Peasant Revelry

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« The world of mat is virtually inaccessible to foreigners studying Russian. It is too situational and semantically capricious, too dependent on ludic intonational subtleties. Mat is linguistic theatre, verbal performance art. It exploits the Russian language’s flexible range of suffixes and prefixes, and toys with phonetically similar words from the standard lexicon in order to generate anthropomorphic images. »

Invariably people ardently desire to learn bad words when encountering an immigrant who speaks a language they do not*. While one could surely write an essay arguing that the type of words used as expletives reveals something about the soul of the people in question (as a minimum, it’s a quick way to check what is considered more scandalous in that culture – genitals or religious terminology?), the allure of being able to say ‘fuck’ or whatever when it’s the only thing you can say in that language escapes me.

Idiomatic curses are another kettle of fish, a fascinating topic. Being the bearer of a language, one doesn’t often pause to think how weird a lot of sayings would sound to foreign ears. Russian cursing is quite popular in non-Slavic circles (see Elizabeth Olsen swearing at Conan in Russian on TBS…**), and its basic components are very straightforward (assorted body parts). However, there is considerable artistry involved in combining these blocks and spinning them into a scathing sentence that will inflict proper psychological damage to the target. This could be said about many cultures indeed, but I can confirm that the Slavs cherish their curse slang and go about using it with tender love and great gusto.

Journalist Elmira Kuznetsova and Canadian cartoonist and animator Jess Pollard have undertaken the charming task of (literally) translating and illustrating some choice Russian curses. I’ll quote from an article about this project:

« Jess is learning Russian and one night I was trying to translate to her the Russian curse “На хую я вертел.” The phrase translates as “I don’t care” but the literal meaning is “I spun it on my dick”. Just for laughs, Jess drew a sketch depicting random things being spun on male genitalia. We laughed so hard both at the image and at the absurdity of the literal translation, we decided to make more illustrations. This turned into a comic magazine that we called “An Illustrated Treasury of Russian Curses” that was printed in a batch of 50 copies and sold to our friends. »

Please consider the following as a sampler of A Treasury of Russian Curses (A selection of curses for community building, successful business, and ideal first dates) — I selected a few favourites from volumes I, II and III. Follow this project’s Instagram account, and support a cool idea by buying printed copies or PDFs over at Pollard’s website.

I’d like to point out that the word ‘dick’ selected for these translations doesn’t carry even half the clout of the Russian equivalent, which is one of the Really Bad Words, with arguably more punch than ‘fuck’. The non seven-armed eight-dicked person looks genuinely horrified.
This is a downright poetic and melancholic mental image. Poor little dick.
Co-admin RG rightly pointed out that the bird illustrated resembles a swallow far more than a sparrow.
You will not be surprised to learn that this rhymes in Russian. This scene (complete with Pollard’s favourite smoking raven/crow that appears on the cover of every collection, as well as on her website) is very Slavic indeed, evoking folklore in which a bogatyr must choose which path to follow at crossroads (also note the typical helmet).
More like surfing — and infinitely more stylish, wouldn’t you say?

I give the highest recommendation to The unique power of Russia’s underground language, written by Victor Evrofeyev and published in The New Yorker (a beautifully translated version by Andrew Bromfield) on September 15, 2003. This post’s introductory paragraph is from it, but here are a few more quotes to whet your appetite:

« When I think of mat, I think of the monstrous energy field of that planet. Mat is a protean language in which archaic strata mix with modernity. It has a unique ability to break free of its erotic context and to characterize universal human feelings and conditions, to express admiration and contempt, ecstasy and catastrophe. »

« Although it retains its sense of blasphemy, mat, in its original form, was also a language of peasant revelry and the liberation of the flesh. In traditional folk culture, women sang obscene ditties as a challenge to their husbands or an invitation to their suitors. Pushkin’s bawdy early poem « Tsar Nikita and His Forty Daughters » describes a culture that has lost the cunt, or, rather, forty cunts: the Tsar dispatches his heralds in search of them and after arduous ordeals they are recovered. »

~ ds

* Life is full of such little repetitive ‘pleasures’, like having to tolerate jokes about magic mushrooms whenever talking about about how one likes to go mushroom picking…

** Why they’re both amused that a reference to the ‘female region’ can be used as a bad word in Russian is puzzling, as English easily offers ‘cunt’ as an equivalent.