Here’s a seasonal Sunday strip from Archie creator* Bob Montana (October 23, 1920 – January 4, 1975), from October 31, 1948. Do note (or try not to) how sultrily Veronica is portrayed in comparison to her more restrained depictions in subsequent, supposedly less prudish decades.
*You can safely ignore the outlandish claims of the Goldwater family on that. They may run the company, but they ain’t created squat, despite their long tradition of shoe-horning themselves into the credits. And of screwing over the actual creators of their flock of golden geese.
On a damp and chilly night, is there a finer way to keep warm than huddling with your beloved?
From The New Yorker 1955-1965 Album, published by Harper & Row.
Richard Decker, (b. Philadelphia, PA, May 6, 1907, d. November 1, 1988) fruitfully spent four decades as a contract cartoonist for the New Yorker. His association with the magazine began in 1929.
Along the same ordre d’idées, here’s a bonus piece about the evocative magic of old time radio, by long-time Gasoline Alley cartoonist (and bluegrass fiddler) Jim Scancarelli (b. 1941), from the April, 1979 issue of Child Life Magazine.
Care to fully capture and bask in this delicious melancholy? Go ahead, pour yourself a snifter of your favourite poison, hunker down in your coziest chair, and enjoy an episode or three of the classic The Shadow radio show, starring Orson Welles.
He wasn’t the first to seize upon the connection, but Charles Burns does evoke powerfully, and with tenebrous poetic grace, certain salient parallels between teenagers and the living dead, between decomposition and acne… I can’t help but be reminded of the undead masses shambling at the mall in George A. Romero‘s Dawn of the Dead (1978), trapped in the empty cycle of their old, ingrained habits.
Originally published in Raw Volume 2 no. 2 – Required Reading for the Post-Literate (May 1990, Penguin Books.) Edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly.
The talented pen of Arnold Roth (born 1929, and still alive, hey!) has graced the pages of what will seem like a slightly exaggerated, but in no way exhaustive, list (but no, he’s indeed appeared in all of these): The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Esquire and Playboy; Harvey Kurtzman‘s publications Trump, Humbug and Help!; The National Lampoon and Punch (Roth lived in England for a while), and The Progressive.
The topic of Roth’s contributions to Kurtzman’s satirical publications will no doubt crop up at some later juncture, but in the meantime, let’s have a look at some of Roth’s solo lampoonery and comic-form persiflage (not to mention the beauty of his inking line and the dynamism of his compositions).
Roth created a Sunday strip called Poor Arnold’s Almanac for the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate, published from 1959 to 1961. In 1989, it was revived as a Sunday *and* a daily for Creators Syndicate, and lasted until 1990. This strip is from April 24th, 1959.
Speaking of solo work, I also adore his Comick Books of Pets (published in October 1976).
« Found, Raised, Washed, Curried, Combed, Fed, and Cared for in Every Other Way. »
Roth’s art is also rather striking in black-and-white. To wit:
1978. Note the actual Vitruvian Man, L’Uomo Vitruviano, standing in line on the right.
In the early 1970s, despite the western genre’s waning prospects in comics, DC found itself with a surprise hit in John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga‘s antihero Jonah Hex, thanks to a healthy infusion of grit and spaghetti sauce. The battle-scarred Civil War veteran first reared his memorably homely puss in All-Star Western no. 10 (Feb.–Mar. 1972), which soon changed its title to Weird Western Tales with issue 12 to better accommodate its new star.
WWT’s reliably great covers probably didn’t hurt sales. Most of them were the work of Argentine Luis Dominguez, in tandem with the all-star design team of publisher Carmine Infantino, art director Nick Cardy and production manager / colourist Jack Adler. These covers all possess that elusive allure of « Mysterioso », as Infantino termed it.
This is Weird Western no. 25 (Nov.-Dec. 1974), featuring Showdown with the Dangling Man. Script by Michael Fleisher, art by Noly Panaligan.
Before midnight strikes and this Tentacle Tuesday waves us a teary goodbye, I shall endeavour to demonstrate that octopuses are vicious, grabby little miscreants who, in their quest for food and fun, don’t discriminate between species!
Oh, what the hell, I’ll just give three examples.
Here’s an octopus attacking a duck (to be more precise, a super duck, which is nevertheless gastronomically similar to its plainer cousin):
Super Duck Comics no. 5, Fall 1945, published by Archie Comics back when they were MLJ. Cover by Al Fagaly.
And here’s one attacking a gorilla… err, sorry, ape.
This is Planet of the Apes no. 15 (December 1975). Art by Bob Larkin.
It’s perhaps worth mentioning that French auteur Pierre Boulle wrote “La planète des singes” in 1963; the latter was translated as “Monkey Planet” in the UK and as “Planet of the Apes” in the US. (For once I’m with the Americans; “ape” sounds considerably more threatening than the childish “monkey”.) Marvel put out both a magazine (29 issues) and a comic book (12 issues) in the 70s – though frankly, there are so many comic tie-ins for this franchise, that I have nor the knowledge nor the desire to figure out what’s what or when or by who it was published. I’ll stick with the “tentacles, girl in bikini, pretty art” bit, though.
And here’s our last scene for today, an octopus attacking a bear. Actually, on the cover it’s unclear whether it’s attacking or protecting the bear, but having read the story, I can assure you that the pink cephalopod has bear meat on its mind.
Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact, vol. 10, no. 14 (March 19, 1955). The cover story, Pearl Divers, is scripted by Eric St. Clair and illustrated by Paul Eismann.
Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact was a Catholic comic book series distributed in parochial schools from 1946 to 1972… surprisingly, it’s often lots of fun, and occasionally within its pages one stumbles onto the work of a well-known artist like Murphy Anderson.
So whatever anthropomorphic species you may be, remember, don’t get your tuchus too close to the grabby tentacle of a hungry cephalopod!
I must confess (good for the soul!) I’ve never actually seen a Hugo doll in the rubbery flesh (not could I afford one at the prices they command nowadays) but I’ve always loved this ad, which appeared in plenty of comic books in the year of our lord 1975.
« Snerk! Snerk! » does sound like something Peter Lorre would say, bless his black soul. Writer and illustrator unknown, regrettably. Anyone?The whole kit and kaboodle. The rest is up to you.« He’s a puppet, too! »
Our boy, pardon, man Hugo was the brainchild of polyvalent filmmaker, author, illustrator and monster maker Alan Ormsby, man of a thousand hats. That explains (nearly) everything! To give you an inkling of the man’s astounding versatility, here are a pair of illustrations from Ormsby’s wonderful Movie Monsters (Scholastic Book Services, 1975), essential reading for the creepy kid lurking within.
Brown Bag Frankenstein: « When you’ve covered the headpiece with paper towels and it’s about half dry, glue the ‘L’ brackets in place on the forehead, as shown. »« How to turn from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde before their very eyes! ».
« Oh, it’s just one of those endless dark roads where ghoul men seem to lurk at night. »
Gee, thanks, Penny. At least it’s a shortcut. Jaime Hernandez makes sparing usage of the explicitly supernatural in his work, and he still likes to keep you guessing… but the goosebumps are real, all right.
In « Chiller! », Maggie lets her imagination run wild while driving home on the 696, « The Horror Highway », as Penny Century flippantly puts it.
This is Penny Century #2 (Fantagraphics Books Inc., March, 1998.) Cover and just about everything else by Jaime Hernandez; “Computer colorist: Chris Brownrigg.Maggie and the Ghoul Man go way back, thanks to those spine-tinglers Izzy told her when they were lil’ kids. And hey, there’s that lady from Black Sabbath again! A taste of our cover tale, the aptly-titled « Chiller! »
Here’s a fetchingly morbid cover Mr. Brian Bolland crafted for Eagle Comics’ reprints of the dystopian cream of Mega-City One’s hard-working Judges Dredd, Child, Anderson, Smiley, Volt, Stalker, Priest, Fish, De Gaulle… and so on, citizen. Filmic adaptations have largely missed the finer points of this oft-excellent series by focussing on the radical mayhem at the detriment of the protagonist’s unflagging fairness. But then again, such is usually the fate of « badass » characters who are nuanced in comics… think early Jonah Hex, for instance.
This is Judge Dreddno. 3 (January, 1984), featuring Judge Death Lives, by John Wagner and Bolland, from the pages of 2000 ADnos. 224-228 (1981). These are Judges Death and Anderson; I leave it to you to suss out which is which.
Oh, and if you and your three best bros are looking for a high-concept Halloween group costume, why not terrorize the neighbourhood as the Four Dark Judges?
« Deadworld! Long ago its judges realised all crime was committed by the living. Therefore, life itself was declared illegal. » From 2000 AD no. 225 (Aug. 15 1981, IPC) In the usual order: Judges Fire, Fear, Mortis and Death. Art, once more, by Brian Bolland.
Yes, I’m sure that jungle inhabitants had to fight off vicious, anatomically impossible pterodactyls all the freaking time. Man, has John Celardo, the artist of this cover, ever seen a pterodactyl? … Oh, right, I guess he hasn’t. That still doesn’t justify this monstrosity, though.
Mark Twain comes to mind:
« The less said about the pterodactyl the better. It was a spectacle, that beast! a mixture of buzzard and alligator, a sarcasm, an affront to all animated nature, a butt for the ribald jests of an unfeeling world. »
*This* pterodactyl certainly looks like a butt for jests, given that its spine is twisted like a strand of DNA, and that its head has been put on backwards.
Jungle Comics no. 17 (May 1941). Cover by John Celardo.
The premise of Valley of the Killer-Birds is exactly the same as the raison d’être of all the other ‘Jungle Lord’ comics: Kaänga (who, judging from the umlaut, is probably Danish, just like Häagen-Dazs) has to rescue his damsel-in-distress yet again. I’m sure you are dying to know what the plot is like, so here it is in more detail:
Ann, Kaänga’s mate, is “blown off her perch” (where she was roosting, presumably) by a strong wind, and is carried off by a pterodactyl that just happens to be passing by at the moment, probably on its way to the grocery store. Kaänga tries to follow, but falls off a cliff, is carried (unconscious) through a watery tunnel, and lands in “a weird prehistoric valley”. He then effortlessly kills a a dinosaur that looks like a slightly smaller-than-average T-Rex and climbs into its skin (that somehow fits him perfectly), plays dead, gets carried off by another pterodactyl and dropped off at some random cave, miraculously the same cave where Ann is captive, and even more preposterously just a few meters away from her standing coyly by in a typical “just look at my bikini!” pose. Then he waves at her with his paw (understandably, she doesn’t understand why a dinosaur is waving at her – it’s those super-short front paws, you know), then she gets carried off (again) by a giant ape that shows up from nowhere, and Kaänga, still in T-Rex form, hotly pursues them and kills the ape. Then the hero of our tale, as clean and Arian as he can possibly be (nevermind that he just climbed from the bloody insides of an animal corpse), takes Ann’s hand and leads her out from the tunneled cave, reasoning at some point that if there’s human skulls in the passage, there must be a way out of those tunnels. (Um, no, it just means the pterodactyls and/or giant ape have had a lot of silly little humans for supper that they’ve brought in from elsewhere.)
Who's Out There? 