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Plunge Into Reverie With Blegvad’s Leviathan

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« Babies of course are not human — they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates. » — Richard Hughes

I am fairly neutral about children, and prefer to stay away from them for the most part (although there are some pleasant exceptions to this rule). However, I enthusiastically dig through children’s books when given half a chance, and greatly enjoy comics about ankle biters of the ‘wise far beyond their years’ variety. Some authors’ worlds are so compelling that one wishes to be teleported into them. Who wouldn’t love to hang out with Sugar and Spike, or Cul de Sac’s Alice, or Daniel Pinkwater’s Robert Nifkin?

Though I have no such desire to rub elbows with the faceless, introspective Leviathan, his perambulations are great fun to watch. As per his name, he’s more than a little bit of a megalomaniac – as one can argue that all children are. Bred from a long line of ‘more or less faceless neotenic grotesques‘, such as Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby or Walter Berndt’s Smitty, Levi is an infant trying to make sense of the world around him through philosophical musings, an occasional break through the fourth wall, and conversations with his feline companion, Cat.

His patriarch is American Peter Blegvad, son of Danish illustrator Erik Blegvad (which accounts for the hard-to-pronounce family name that I tend to misspell as ‘Blevgrad’, since ‘grad’ is a common suffix for a city in Russian*), more known for his musical career than remembered for his cartooning one. Leviathan was published in the Sunday section of British newspaper The Independent** from 1992 to 1999, and some of the strips were collected in The Book of Leviathan, issued in 2000 by The Overlook Press. The latter is how I came across this strip, in the apartment of a friend kind enough to give me his copy when he saw how absorbed I was.

Levi’s big sister Rebecca is a habitual tyrant, though not without a certain charm.
In case you’re wondering re: snow vocabulary, some have disputed this claim as false and stemming from a misunderstanding of Eskimo-Aleut languages, which are agglutinative, and can form new words by combining other words. Here’s a quick article if you’re curious about the specifics.
This strip is downright Ben Katchor-ish.
Like all great observers of children’s rituals, Blegvad clearly had some children around to inspire him.

Q: How did you get the idea of naming a tiny baby Leviathan?

A: From my own kids: they’re both, you bring them home and they’re bigger than anything else in your life.

Q: Why did you switch from Levi’s parents to the Cat?

A: The Cat was easier to draw.

Leviathan seems to invite a hate-or-love kind of response from readers; as Rafi Zabor notes in the introduction to the collection, ‘I have met a few intelligent, literate, artistically sophisticated people who just don’t get it, and their non-response to what is obviously just for starters a classic of its kind, assuming it has a kind, has always puzzled me. ‘ As somebody who belongs in neither camp, I would suggest that this strip sometimes has its head up it arse, and goes so far into self-indulgent metaphysics that it loses its anchor for the sake of willful obfuscation – and sometimes it’s brilliant and very funny. As if to demonstrate the former, Zabor finishes his introduction with ‘Words fail. Times change. Cats meow. Leviathan swims in its native deep, glistening through serial sea-green waters, sending off spectra of intelligible light as it steers with ribbed and radiant fins.’ Nevermind such dubious metaphors – I posit that it’s Leviathan’s playfulness, juggling as it does quotes from long-dead philosophers, questionable puns and surreal vignettes flavoured with Freudio-biblical mythology, is worth the occasional muddle through a high-concept strip that didn’t quite pan out.

~ ds

* I keep misspelling his name as ‘Blevgad’, which would be very unmelodic to Russian ears, as ‘blev‘ means ‘puke’ and ‘gad‘ is sort of like ‘bastard’. I did in fact misspell it several times in this very blog post, until co-admin RG set me straight. Very embarrassing.

** Was this because Leviathan was too erudite and weird for American audiences? Blegvad was born in NYC in 1951, but was raised in England, spent some years in Germany, then returned to NYC in 1977. Given his proclivity for quoting British authors, I think his sensibilities lie more with Albion.

Rowland Emett’s Ramshackle Poesy in Motion

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« The whistle of the old steam trains … could conjure up visions of bleak distances with one solitary wail. » — M.C. Beaton

A couple of years back, I gave our readers an introductory sample of the genius (hardly too strong a word in his case) of Rowland Emett (1906-1990), and vowed I would return with a fuller, more lingering look.

Since I got the biographical trimmings out of the way that time, today, I’ll merely offer you an even dozen of my favourites.

Can’t tell a trébuchet from a catapult from a ballista? This handy guide will steer you right!
Prof. Lightning’s moniker is evidently well-earned.
Another inventive step in the harnessing of solar power.
While this particular train route sadly does not exist (as an editor once wrote, “the great Emett, whose crazy world seems so much saner than our own…”), there are some lovely birding tours available throughout that green and pleasant land, from Land’s End to John o’Groats.
Said nationalisation took place in 1948. Here’s a bit of background on that historic endeavour.

-RG

Oor Wullie and His Trusty, Rusty Auld Bucket

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See the janny? See ma granny?
Ma granny hit um wi a sanny
then she timmed the bucket owerum
an he tummelt doon the sterr
an he landed in the dunny
wi the baikie in his herr.*

The home of Scottish strip Oor Wullie is The Sunday Post, distributed by D.C Thomson (publishers of, notably, The Beano and The Dandy). You may note that I used the present tense – this strip was brought into the world in 1936, but astonishingly it’s still going strong (it celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2016, to give a quick idea to those who prefer not to launch into mathematical cogitations). It has, through the years, gone through a number of different hands, but it was originally created by comics writer and editor Robert Duncan Low and drawn by cartoonist Dudley Dexter Watkins, who died very much in the cartooning saddle in 1969. His work was reprinted for a bit, until new blood could be found to take over, first in the shape of Tom Lavery (who was told to imitate Watkins’ style), then followed by a bevy of other cartoonists since then.

The Low & Watkins duo also came up with The Broons, which started the same year and ran in The Sunday Post as well, to the point where the strips were often collectively referred to as Broons & Oor Wullie. There’s a lovely documentary about The Broons here.

Reading Oor Wullie is loads of fun, and a big part of that is its use of Scottish slang – not so much of it that action is obscured, but enough for plenty of colour and also the opportunity to pick up some new vocabulary. Did you know that ‘oxter‘ means ‘armpit‘, for example?

To quote from perceptive article THE BROONS AND OOR WULLIE from Indira Neville‘s blog,

« […] the use of the dialect reflected the publisher D. C. Thomson’s ‘realist’ editorial policy and focus on authenticity. It was intended to attract a large Scottish urban audience and in this was really successful. Both strips were massive hits and at their peak had an estimated readership of three million (79% of the adult population of Scotland!) 

One of the most interesting aspects of Oor Wullie and The Broons is that for most Scots they were/are the only mainstream, regularly available written representation of their spoken language. In being this they have an increased relevance within the current Scottish language revival. The National Library of Scotland is even using Oor Wullie as a means to introduce and engage children in the richness of the lexicon. It has a website that’s ‘a guid fun wey tae lairn oor language‘. »

Wullie (or William) is a pretty standard boy prototype: prone to mischief and frequently embroiled in neighbourhood fights, embarrassed when his mam dresses him in nice clothing, but basically an honest lad with his heart in the right place. In that sense, he reminds me of Sluggo. You may note that every page starts and ends with Wullie sitting on his favourite bucket – every boy needs a good friend!

The following strips have been scanned from a 1976 collection, ‘selected from the Sunday Post and earlier Oor Wullie books‘. The artist is the aforementioned Dudley Watkins (which I can confidently claim, as each page is signed – I also compared the art to some original Dudley art being sold online, and this conclusion seems legit).

To celebrate Our Wullie‘s 80th birthday in 2016, 86 statues of Wullie in different costumes were placed around Dundee for the Bucket Trail event (including Oor Bowie, a David Jones tribute). This was a great hit, and Wullie’s BIG Bucket Trail was launched in 2019, with around 200 statues installed all around Scotland. View them here, they’re really fun.

When one thinks that a Moscow-born Russian (that would be me) would be greatly enjoying a classic Scottish comic some decades later… the world works out in funny ways.

~ ds

* From The Ballad of Janitor MacKay by Margaret Green

Hallowe’en Countdown VI, Day 17

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« In this club all members are equal, be they of claw, talon or fang; skin, fur or scale; from grave, tomb or laboratory; if they slither, walk or crawl; if they breathe, gasp or do neither. No one monster will take precedence over another. » — Signed EATM Ghoul (Hon Sec)

Like many a horror fan of my generation, I grew up adoring Amicus Productions‘ films, particularly their multi-segment entries, known as Portmanteau movies. These include fine adaptations of Robert Bloch stories, generally scripted by the master himself: Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1971) and Asylum (1973), and a pair of well-crafted adaptations of EC Comics, 1972’s Tales From the Crypt and 1973’s The Vault of Horror, which unveiled these classics to an eager new audience.

With 1974’s From Beyond the Grave, Amicus partners Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg found themselves a new wellspring in British author Ronald Henry Glynn Chetwynd-Hayes (1919-2001). While some consider 1981’s Chetwynd-Hayes portmanteau The Monster Club part of the Amicus œuvre, the company had been dissolved in 1975… but as the film was produced by Subotsky, the notion is not without merit.

And so… comics? Enter UK comics maven Derek ‘Dez’ Skinn. As Dez tells it:

« Milton Subotsky, the London-based US powerhouse behind the horror film company Amicus Films, had always been madly envious that rivals Hammer had their own magazine and was constantly twisting my arm to work with him. When he got a distribution deal on R. Chetwynd-Hayes’ The Monster Club, he saw his chance. Actors including Vincent Price and John Carradine were signed up but there was no time to shoot any footage to promote the production at the Cannes Film Festival. So he called me up and asked if we could adapt the film into comic strip format, much like we’d done with Hammer, so that printed copies could be used to sell the film overseas at Cannes.

We only printed 1,000 copies of The Monster Club, making it an instant collectors’ item in fan circles! Adapting the film script myself, I assigned John Bolton to produce the 26 pages of artwork (although David Lloyd valiantly came in to handle one chapter because of the tight deadline). Targeted at an international audience of film buyers on lush glossy paper, it was surely the most inexpensive yet effective film promotion ever! » [ source ]

The cover of the original paperback edition (March 1976, New English Library). Would it have killed them to credit the cover artist, whose work is surely a strong selling point?

This material was reprinted (waste not, want not!) in Halls of Horror nos. 25 and 26 in 1983, then in North America, in a coloured version, in John Bolton’s Halls of Horror nos. 1 and 2 (both June 1985, Eclipse). And so here we are.

John Bolton’s (who else?) double spread cover painting.

As far as the adaptation goes, I must confess I far prefer the witty linking bits to the stories proper.

Lest we forget, this version was coloured by Tim Smith.

Among the most intriguing features of Chetwynd-Hayes’ book is his clever conceit of monsters forming an oppressed (by humanity) society with its own castes, hybrids, classifications and creeds. Here’s a most helpful table:

And the happy conclusion (after plenty of angst and grue in the stories). The movie’s better and the book better yet, but this was a worthwhile project and a fun curio.

This is The Ghoul, one of a set of specialty images Bolton created for the film’s promotion:

In closing, here’s a catchy musical number from the film, performed by one of my musical heroes, B.A. Robertson… not to be confused with T.M. Robertson, another favourite musician.

-RG

Hallowe’en Countdown VI, Day 9

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« I love you more than anybody in the world… I love you for millions and millions of things, clocks and vampires and dirty nails and squiggly paintings and lovely hair and being dizzy and falling dreams. » — Dylan Thomas

We’ve just had quite a nocturnal downpour over here, and so it seemed entirely à propos to feature that finest of all rainy night ghostly tales, Dylan Thomas’ The Followers, a late-career short story written in 1952. I would have loved to direct you to the full text of it, but can’t seem to find anything of the sort online.

« It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. »

I’ve long been fascinated by English publisher J.M. Dent’s ‘series’ of Dylan Thomas illustrated booklets. First came the highly successful ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales‘, in 1959, which kick-started the storied career of Ellen Raskin: « A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas was the book that Raskin first printed herself to show as a sample to publishers in an effort to become a free-lance illustrator, a project that set her on her way to success in the field. Though the Christmas poem had been illustrated often, this was a memorable edition. »

A Child’s Christmas in Wales was followed — striking the iron while it was hot — by The Outing in 1971(!), then by Holiday Memory the following year. Then, finally, in 1976 came the final, and possibly finest, entry: The Followers. These last three were superbly illustrated by Meg Stevens.

Miss Stevens demonstrated her mastery of the scratchboard medium through her three Thomas adaptations.

« It was six o’clock on a winter’s evening. Thin, dingy rain spat and drizzled past the lighted street lamps. The pavements shone long and yellow. »
« A silent man and woman, dressed in black, carried the wreaths from the front of their flower shop into the scented deadly darkness behind the window lights. Then the lights went out. »
« We walked towards the Marlborough, dodging umbrella spokes, smacked by our windy macs, stained by steaming lamplight, seeing the sodden, blown scourings and street-wash of the town, papers, rags, dregs, rinds, fag-ends, balls of fur, flap, float, and cringe along the gutters, hearing the sneeze and rattle of the bony trams and a ship hoot like a fog-ditched owl in the bay… »
« We walked on heavily, with wilful feet, splashing the passers-by. »
« “I wonder what’s the point of following people”, Leslie said, “it’s kind of daft. It never gets you anywhere. All you do is follow them home and then try to look through the window and see what they’re doing and mostly there’s curtains anyway. I bet nobody else does things like that.” »
« “Doesn’t anything happen anywhere?” I said “in the whole wide world? I think the News of the World is all made up. Nobody murders no one. There isn’t any sin any more, or love, or death, or pearls or divorces and mink-coats or anything, or putting arsenic in the cocoa…” »
« “Good night, old man,” Leslie said. “Good night,” I said. And we went our different ways. »

Regrettably, in the absence of a full text of the story, I can’t convey to you the supernatural component of the story. But I assure you, it’s well worth the looking up, and I dare hope that the palpable mood of Mr. Thomas’ prose and Ms. Stevens’ sublime scratchboard renderings were sufficient to put you in the proper, receptive frame of mind.

-RG

Nothing Much Happens to Mr. Mamoulian

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« Somebody said that drawing a page of comics ought to be as easy as writing a letter to a friend. So I did just that. I took a bit of paper and drew in ink whatever came into my head. I tried to surprise myself. If I made a mistake it would just have to stay there. » — Brian Bolland

Brian Bolland‘s habitual style is easy to recognize, and co-admin RG and I are both fond of it. But there was a time when the normally meticulous Bolland decided to do something different, something much more sketchy and spontaneous. The result was the vaguely Armenian-sounding Mr. Mamoulian, who doesn’t look much like one of Brian Bolland’s ankle-biters (unless one is the proud owner of a perceptive eye)… until he encounters some pretty women, which are a dead giveaway.

Mr. Mamoulian, a pervy sort of ‘older’ (40-ish?) guy prone to bouts of nihilism and crippled by self-doubt, engages in the sort of things listless people do, when they are not quite sure how to occupy their time*: sit on park benches while others are at work, shuffle stuff around their apartment from point A to point B (and back again), enjoy a cuppa, and stare at the ceiling after waking up in the middle of the night. He is obsessed with feminine beauty, but uneasy with the ramifications of being obsessed with it. Rattled by the passage of time, irked by life’s idiosyncrasies, trapped in and by his body, he’s nevertheless a silly and rather comforting presence as we follow him on one of his aimless traipses around the rainy countryside, witness one of his exchanges with his imaginary naked lady friend (Bubbles Bourbasch), or coo at his surprisingly congenial friendship with punkette Evelin Shit-Face.

* These days, of course, one just stares into a cellphone/binge-watches a show on whatever streaming service, which is prompted by the same impulse, but it somewhat less romantic.

The proverbial beautiful English weather.
The early days of the fragile friendship between Mamoulian and Evie (who, for all her punky pretensions, is a rather well-mannered, thoughtful young woman).
Mamoulian is silent – does he condone Mr. Carstairs’ patter? Disapprove of it? Probably a bit of both. In the end, it’s his behaviour that matters – Evie is a person to him. As for Mr. Carstairs, he’s a spot-on portrayal of a first-class hypocrite.
Here Mamoulian’s reflections are reminiscent of the philosophical musings of Marc Hempel’s Genital Ben.

Mr. Mamoulian is arguably a peephole right into Bolland’s id, but it’s not at all an uncomfortable experience (unlike, say, peeking into the mind of Chester Brown, who creeps me out in a big way), even when the strip goes creepily dreamlike, or addresses uncomfortable topics (for some, the couple of bondage-related pages – not included here to avoid ruffling feathers – would be it; apparently ‘Bolland is noted by some for his use of bondage imagery‘, though I honestly think that’s a bit of an overstatement). In the end, Mamoulian’s character is casually tapping into many sources of frustration and confusion that rattle around most human heads. He is relatable.

Bolland calls Mr. Mamoulian ‘not very good’, but I obviously disagree with this assessment, as you’ve probably noticed by now. I love the sketchiness of the art, its surreal energy. The strip is, by turns, hilarious, depressing and always very, very British (and not just because of the continuous tea-drinking). I believe we can all relate to Mamoulian’s struggles with being alive, and the notions of freedom and art. We also get tantalizing glimpses of punk and metal scene through Evie and Steve’s interludes.

Yet another hypocrite – ‘The boots just go back on, the socks that had stayed on / The next time they see you, they treat you like dirt.‘ Bolland is so good at body language.
Mr. Mamoulian’s first encounter with Bubbles (off screen), who is later to visit him at night as her imaginary nude self. Interestingly, it seems to be her name, not her looks, that stuns his imagination.
One of American Suzy’s many conceptual experiments.

In terms of style, both in terms of art and storytelling, I suppose this strip fits comfortably into a set of British semi-autobiographical strips from the mid to late 80s – Eddie Cambpell’s Alec and Glenn Dakin’s Abraham Rat, for example, both of them also gloriously funny and contemplative and excellent. As a matter of fact, Mr. Mamoulian was first published in Paul Gravett‘s Escape Magazine* (read a lovely article about it here**), home of Cambell and Dakin’s strips as well…

* Mr. Mamoulian first appeared in Escape no. 11 (1987).

** To quote from the aforementioned article, Glenn Dakin in The Comics Journal no. 238, October 2001, explained that Escape “provided a focal point for people. People would meet up and discuss their dreams and ideas and get together as friends or have arguments and fall out and sometimes even if somebody annoys you or if somebody didn’t seem to have respect for your work, that would be enough to fill you with enough anger to go out there and try to prove them wrong.” Recently, John Bagnall told me, “To some readers at the time, Escape Artists were sometimes generalized as the school of strips “where nothing happened”, but their approaches were actually much more disparate. As for the social scene, there was a loose sense of unity when we would meet up in London, though naturally not everyone got on well or were even huge fans of certain people’s work.

~ ds

Still Henpecked After All These Years: Harry Hanan’s Louie

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I’ve talked about Harry Hanan‘s Louie before (see Louie Reads Some Ghastly Comics), but as this post dates from the early-ish days of WOT, it included only one image. My opinion of it has also changed. I called it an ‘endearing’ strip, but I’ve come to feel that the overall effect of watching this schlemiel fail at absolutely everything, day after day, is rather bleak. On the other hand, this daily drudgery makes his rare moments of joy stand out in stark contrast.

‘Hen-pecked’ husbands are a favourite topic of all manner of comedians, so in that regard Louie is not an interesting character; as a matter of fact, his insignificance and inability to stand up for himself reek of desperation, and he evokes a mixture of condescension and pity from the attentive reader. I like him best when he’s out alone, observing something weird happening à la Mr. Mum, getting the short end of the stick from inanimate objects – anything is better than being scolded and shoved around by his wife, really.

The series ran from 1947 until 1976. At the very beginning, Louie was an unlucky criminal; when the strip garnered some popularity and English-born Hanan moved to the United States, his character became an honest man, though he seemed to hold a number of different jobs, from the classic door-to-door salesman to soda jerk. He was considerably sprightlier and full of mischief, and instead of his ever-present wife towering over him, he had a shifting cast of females staring with incomprehension at his antics.

Daily from August 2, 1952, seventy years ago and change!
Three daily strips from 1954.
Sunday strip from December 15, 1957.

By the 70s, Louie is more of a tired shambling shell, constantly getting yelled at by his wife, his boss, or just about anybody, really. Still, some fun moments occur —

Strip from January 1, 1970. This is the one that made me think of its contemporary (and infinitely superior, sorry) strip Mr. Mum.
Strip from May 3, 1972. Attempts to discipline others as payback for the moments when you are the one being ordered around always backfire…
Strip from January 10, 1972. Once Louie abandoned his omnium gatherum of jobs, he settled down as a typical office worker with an equally typical tyrannical boss.
Strip from 1972 (exact date unknown). The wife looks downright vindictive, which is interesting since quilters I know tend to have the facial expressions of any person engaged in a beloved craft – enthusiastic, peaceful, or concentrated…
Strip from November 14, 1972. An office worker, and one of British origin at that, surely would have an umbrella in his possession?
 Sunday strip from July 20, 1975, in which Louie gets (meekly) combative.

The line between domestic comedy and domestic tragedy is a thin one – one of my grandfathers, though not a loser, distinctly marched in the direction indicated by his wife (my grandmother), so I have developed an allergy to that kind of relationship early on. Your mileage with Louie may vary!

~ ds

Trust the Man From Cancer!

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« I’ve always wanted to be a giant space crab. » — Gabe Newell

We have quite a treat for you this week. One of our very favourite creators, Mr. Glenn Dakin, has genially agreed to shed light on the inception of one of his lesser-known (but nonetheless striking) creations, Mr. Crusht Acean, aka ‘The Man From Cancer’. Take it away, Mr. Dakin!

Glenn Dakin: The phrase The Man From Cancer came to me when I was writing a song, referring to myself as a typical Cancerian.

It gave me the idea for a detective organisation where all its members were Cancerian. Of course it had that Man From U.N.C.L.E. association. As I was discussing this idea with my brother down the pub, I said – as a joke – that in order to get a magazine interested in the idea the character would have to actually BE a crab. As soon as I said this, I knew it could work…

Phil was the obvious choice to draw it, as the superb consistency of his style and great visual imagination would make readers accept the bizarre idea as a reality. Also we worked a lot together.

When I told Phil about it, he said ‘how did you know I was Cancer?‘ (much to my surprise). So it was clearly in the stars!

Marvel UK were just launching STRIP, in which creators could keep the rights to their work, so it was a natural place to send. Dan Abnett was the editor and he really got what we were trying to do with the absurd humour. After the first two-parter, he offered us a regular one-page slot.

This is Strip no. 11 (July 7, 1990, Marvel UK). Cover by Phil Elliott.

Who’s Out There?: Judging from the supplementary materials (Strip no. 11), you seem to have quite fully worked out Mr. Crush Tacean’s universe. Did you have lofty plans for the series?

GD: Not so much lofty plans, but whenever Dan Abnett gave us a chance to expand it, we enjoyed enlarging the madness of the world. These supplementary materials were created for STRIP to remind readers of the story half way through, and get new readers on board, after we had been dropped for a couple of issues.

I remember that as my confidence on it grew, and we had the story where we took the force of gravity to court, I started to think of it as a kind of visual Goon Show, following its own absurd logic.

WOT?: Could you shed some light on the series’ publication history? Were the instalments that didn’t appear in ‘Strip’ published elsewhere before they were collected in ‘The Rockpool Files’? (by Slave Labor in Sept. 2009)

GD: You will have to ask Phil that, they might have appeared somewhere, but I don’t think so. We did have a two-pager in a Channel Tunnel magazine!

WOT?: What brought about the change of title? I was quite fond of ‘The Man From Cancer’, I must say.

GD: We were asked to change the name as ‘Cancer’ – we were told – was not exactly a fun buzzword.

« Sez who? »

I think that was the suggestion of Slave Labor, the publisher. The Rockpool Files was the first thing that came into my head, and Phil liked it. The Rockford Files had just been on TV, of course!

This is the book you have to get. While it’s rather… compact (14 x 21,5 cm), in glorious black and white, and out of print, it’s very nearly comprehensive… and most of all, it exists!

WOT?: What’s the story behind these huge gaps between appearances (issues 2 to 9, then 11 to 16)?

GD: As far as I remember, the second half of the Diukalakadu story appeared the next issue in STRIP [no.2 — RG]. Then Dan asked Phil and I to keep it going as a regular feature. We agreed, but as they were working many issues ahead, it took us a little while to launch the new stories.

The only problem was, as it was an anthology comic with multiple contributors, the page count was hard to level out every issue. As the only one-pager, Man From Cancer was the easiest to drop. I think getting asked to create the supplementary materials mentioned above, was a bit of an apology for us being so bumped around. Also the text story ‘Wallow’ in the Rockpool Files book, was originally created in 24 hours by special request of Dan, to solve a pagination crisis when a strip didn’t turn up in time. But then STRIP was canned before it could appear.

WOT?: You’ve collaborated quite a bit with other cartoonists. I presume that the division of labour varies from project to project. In this case, was there a clear line between the job titles? Did you serve strictly as the writer, or did you provide storyboards, layouts or conceptual sketches? And vice versa on Phil’s part?

GD: I never typed up a script for Phil, I just drew a rough of the strip. In this I visualised a lot of the characters, but it was up to Phil if he followed my suggestions. Sometimes he would create an amazing surprise like a giant octopus answering the phones at Cancer HQ. Phil didn’t write anything but he did loads of visual world-creation as we went along.

This tale, the second Man From Cancer investigation, appeared in Strip nos. 9-11, 16-19 (1990, Marvel UK). The lovely colours are by Steve White.

And since I hinted at the existence of ‘supplementary materials’, it would be callous of me to leave them unseen.

A bit of context from Mr. Dakin: « How nice to see this after all these years!
I read it with great trepidation, wondering what on earth I had said… The upbeat piece on the left ‘I’m an optimum overview kind of guy…‘ was supposed to be by Mr C Urchin (Crusht’s cheerfully inept assistant), which is why it reads a bit odd, with Crusht at the top. I think the original plan got lost when it was given to the designer at Marvel UK. »

I hope you enjoyed our chat with Mr. Dakin, whom I cannot thank enough for his generosity and charming manner. In the event that your interest has been piqued, take a gander at our earlier post entitled Glenn Dakin’s Alter Ego, Abraham Rat.

-RG

Brian Bolland’s Indomitable Animal Animus

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« Even as a youngster reading 2000 AD from its first issue in 1977, it was clear that Brian’s artwork was special. It was the perfect mixture of American-inspired dynamism, a British sense of the absurd, and avant-garde European SF imagery, rendered in meticulous, almost inhumanly perfect linework. It was a deeply seductive style… » — David Roach

As far as I can tell, everyone loves Brian Bolland‘s (b. 1951) work. It’s sophisticated in design yet direct, highly detailed yet clean as a whistle *and* neat as a pin, technically adept, varied but unfailingly his. As a sequential cartoonist, he can be a bit stiff, but as a cover artist, he’s pretty untouchable. For about a second and a half, I was tempted to spotlight his work in our Hot Streak! category, but that would have been absurd, such is Bolland’s high level of consistency and volume of work. So I’ll “merely” feature an even dozen of his Animal Man covers (out of a total of 64, 1988-1993).

After Alan Moore made an unexpected splash with his work on Swamp Thing, the folks at DC scrambled, in ‘have you got a sister?‘ fashion, to strip-mine the UK’s writerly talent pool. In came Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Pete Milligan, Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, and so on…

For the cockiest of these writers, the typical bravura move was to prove their commercial acumen by revamping the most obscure existing character they could think of* (typically, characters DC’s then-editors had never heard of); in Gaiman’s case, it was Sheldon Mayer’s Black Orchid**, and in Morrison’s, Animal Man. As minor characters (a lesson learned from Alan Moore’s Watchmen), these heroes could be subjected to numberless and unceasing torments and humiliations at the writer’s whim.

Created by writer Dave Wood and illustrator Carmine Infantino, Animal Man was introduced, sans costume at first, presumably as he was intended as a one-off, in DC’s long-running SF anthology Strange Adventures no. 180 (Sept. 1965). First known as A-Man, he gained his superhero togs in his third appearance, Strange Adventures no. 190 (July 1966). After a mere five appearances in SA, he virtually vanished… until the second ‘British Invasion‘.

This is Animal Man no. 5 (Winter 1988, DC); logo by Todd Klein. In this celebrated issue, Grant Morrison mashes up the Bernie Krigstein segments of Harvey Kurtzman‘s Bringing Back Father! (Mad no. 17, Nov. 1954, EC) and Alan Moore and Don Simpson‘s In Pictopia! (Anything Goes! no. 6, Dec. 1986, Fantagraphics) then anoints the ointment onto a Wile E. Coyote/Jesus avatar.
This is Animal Man no. 7 (Jan. 1989, DC). Bolland’s tonal versatility is a tremendous boon, his superpower, if you will. He brings to this cover a deft comic touch intended, but sadly lacking from the inside story.
This is Animal Man no. 18 (Dec. 1989, DC), a clever reverse-emphasis homage to one of the great covers of the 1960s, Carmine Infantino (designer) and Neal Adams (penciller-inker)’s Strange Adventures no. 207 (Dec. 1967, DC), winner of the 1967 Alley Award for best cover of the year.
This is Animal Man no. 24 (June 1990, DC). Bolland has a ball redrawing classic Silver Age covers… including issues of Brother Power the Geek, The Inferior Five and Swing With Scooter! The central figure is an old Justice Society foe, the Psycho-Pirate (Mark II in this case), created in 1965 by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson. The GCD notes: « Cover prominently features several of the key comics that established the concept of the multiverse (The Flash no. 123, Green Lantern no. 40, Justice League of America no. 21). » Oh, you thought *Marvel* had come up with the ‘Multiverse‘? It’s high time you met Hugh Everett. And while we’re on the subject, here’s a touching song his son wrote about him.
This is Animal Man no. 25 (July 1990, DC), a sharp illustration of that old favourite, the Infinite monkey theorem.
First writer switch! Morrison out, Milligan in. This is Animal Man no. 28 (Oct. 1990, DC). Back to front: the Notional Man (with the forceps), the Front Page, Animal Man, and Nowhere Man (as in…)
A bold change of pace, this is Animal Man no. 36 (June 1991, DC). Milligan out, Veitch in.
This is Animal Man no. 41 (Nov. 1991, DC).
This is Animal Man no. 48 (June 1992, DC). At the centre of the gloopy pink monster hovers snappy dresser and fellow animal-powered justicer B’wana Beast.
This is Animal Man no. 49 (July 1992, DC).
Veitch out, Delano in, and a layout change to boot. This is Animal Man no. 51 (Sept. 1992, DC). By now, it’s pretty much a straight horror title.
This is Animal Man no. 54 (Dec. 1992, DC), a striking homage to Henry Fuseli‘s immortal painting, The Nightmare.

-RG

*To be fair, their first eighty-five choices likely had proved unavailable.

**Mayer had asked that his 1970s creation, The Black Orchid, never be given an origin or have her mystery dispelled. Gaiman just aped what Mr. Moore had done (but brilliantly) with Swamp Thing… and made her a literal plant. Bah.

H. M. Bateman’s Absurdist Pieces of Astonishing Design

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Henry Mayo Bateman (1887-1970) was a British cartoonist now frequently described as ‘the most innovative cartoonist of his generation’. His main claim to fame is the ‘The Man Who…‘ cartoons; as it often happens with when the popularity of a creation goes far beyond what the artist originally had in mind, Bateman himself was ambivalent about it, and felt constrained by its acclaim. Be as it may, a lot of his cartoon collections (most of them hopelessly out of print) are named according to this template: Man Who Drew 20th Century (1969), The Man Who Was H. M. Bateman (1982), H. M. Bateman: The Man Who Went Mad on Paper (2012)… The one I have in my collection broke away from this mold –it’s a French collection titled Mimodrames, with all text inside, including the titles of cartoons, in both French and English. Strangely, the French cartoon captions seem more à propos than the English ones.

Case in point: this was called ‘Prisoner when arrested clung to the railings‘, which in French was translated to ‘Le protestataire qui se cramponna aux grilles à l’arrivée de la police‘, and yet protestataire is more like ‘protester’, not ‘prisoner’, which I think is more fitting.

Bateman seemed to be predestined for his career; having decided at the ripe old age of 13 to dedicate his life to becoming an artist, he spent all his free time drawing and sold his first cartoon at 14 (!) Though his father was adamant that his sole male offspring should follow his footsteps and become a respectable businessman, Bateman’s small yet steadily increasing income from his cartoons and the growing demand for them by halfpenny weekly comic papers finally forced his pa to grudgingly agree to his son pursuing a career in art. Bateman was 16 at the time.

‘The Man who filled his fountain pen with the hotel ink’

Bateman continued to sell cartoons throughout his studies; by 1906, his work was in demand by many publications much fancier than the inexpensive comic papers he started out in. Percy Venner Bradshaw, fellow artist and founder of the Press Art School, meeting him that year for the first time, found a ‘quiet, shy, delicate boy who was much more interested in colour than in line work, and who could only with difficulty be induced to talk about either‘. A fitting description of a man who appeared quiet and reserved, who felt things more keenly than his peers or his colleagues – a swift glance at his best work dispels an impression of similarity between him and the rowdier cartoonists. Not that Bateman couldn’t be funny – but something lurked behind the chuckle, some dark cloud lingering over his characters. As Anthony Anderson (not the American actor, nor the British murderer; all I was able to find out about him is that he’s listed as an editor of many books) notes in the introduction to Mimodrames:

 « The more one examines his drawings the more one feels that, despite his conservatism, Bateman’s sympathies lay not with the offended but with the offender, a sympathy for the underdog, the little man. Indeed, in many of his cartoons, especially during the war, the little man was often Bateman himself – a clear self-portrait. »

This sensitivity comes loud and clear through Bateman’s writing as well – to quote, for example, his description of a medical examination undergone in 1916, when conscription for WWI was in full swing:

 « In company with other doubtfuls, I was made to hop naked and submit to a bombardment of tests before a glaring army doctor sternly ordered me to ‘go away and get some clothes on’, as if I was responsible for appearing before him in that condition. And in return for my afternoon’s exhibition I was handed an unhealthy looking card bearing the magic symbol of C.3. I had done what I could to convert myself to cannon fodder. I just wasn’t fit for it. »

This description reminds me of Brel’s Au suivant (for those who don’t speak French, Scott Walker’s Next).

‘The Maid who was but human’, or ‘La bonne avait de l’humour’ (something like ‘the maid had a sense of humour).
‘The Man who broke the tube’

I would also be remiss in failing to mention his work for satirical magazines Punch and the Tatler (the famous ‘The man who…’ cartoons ran in the latter, often in glorious colour double-page spreads). According to Anderson, Bateman became the highest paid cartoonist in Britain around the 1920s and 1930s.

‘The editor of a yellow newspaper receiving news of a horrible murder committed in circumstances of the most revolting atrocity’

Bateman’s dearest ambition throughout his life seemed to have been to become a serious, dedicated painter. When he was 46, he set his lucrative career aside, and went to Spain and France to paint. Anderson ends the introduction with the nicest epitaph I’ve read in a while:

« He spent the next three decades gradually shedding more and more of his old life, retiring to a small house on the edge of Dartmoor, travelling extensively and on his own […], always with his sketch books, his paints and his fishing rod. He became peaceful, solitary, content. He died on the island of Gozo in 1970, still painting every day, living in a small hotel with very few possessions but in the room with the finest view. »

Another source mentions that Bateman fought long and hard with Inland Revenue, so perhaps his self-exile to Gozo, an island in Malta, was not as poetic as it sounds. I wasn’t able to find much information about that, other than his obvious dislike of taxmen (exemplified by cartoons such as The Income Tax Official in Hades) – but taking periodic stabs at the taxman is a traditional cartoonist sport, so it doesn’t really prove anything.

‘The Income-Tax Worm at Work’

These were some of my favourite Bateman pages, I hope you enjoyed them!

~ ds