Planet Comics #49 (July 1947) features a very nice cover credited to Joe Doolin. A Fiction House regular, Doolin did a lot of very nice work for that company. Modern readers could favorably compare the cover art and the fine line work to Bolland or McGuire.
The comic books of the Golden Age often get short-shrift from readers for several reasons. One factor as to why they are often dismissed is due to the quality of writing and art. While lack of interest by many in the works of an earlier era is a factor, honestly, many of the old comics are a chore to read even in the context of the times. It is often only my own fanatic love of the pulps that get me through many of the old magazines and comic books, not because of the silly science or impossible plots but because lots of times the story is just simply awful.
There are several instances where the other Planet Comics features are are superior in concept and execution to Futura. The Nazi-allegory setting of the Lost World aside there are many enjoyable chapters in that series. Mysta of the Moon contains some very high-concept ideas I have not noticed before their appearence in that series, but have noticed cropping up over the years in different science fiction media afterwards. The quality of the art in the lead stories rarely dipped below a certain point in execution, even when it was clear the magazine was in its final days.
Other than the printing process, publishing deadlines were probably the main reason that many of the pulps and comic books suffered in percieved quality. Overworked and notoriously underpaid creators of the time had to work fast. Often one artist or writer would work on several features at once over various titles, using different pen names or laboring under one house name. Even strips a creator has a fondness for and invested interest could suffer under less than ideal working conditions.
The next several chapters of the Futura Saga seems to be affected by such creative problems. If the letters pages were any true indication Futura was appreciated by fans over several of the other regular features, yet the strip received little cover space and perhaps less editorial attention. Chapter 6 of Futura's story in Planet Comics #49 still retains some great concepts and a few panels reveal some fine line work not entirely wiped out by the inking and printing process, but something was happening behind the scenes creatively and it appears as if short cuts were being applied that was then reflected in the quality of the strip.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Futura - Chapter 7
Monday, August 25, 2008
If only this was our Earth
In What If v2 #30 (October 1991) Ron Marz* scripted an alternate universe tale of nationwide social change brought about by the activist child of Sue and Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four.
I've always enjoyed this particular page for featuring some look-alike Bush Sr. and Cheney characters when they realize that the orgy of unchecked feeding at the public trough and abuse of a nation for personal gain is over. I think the sequence could easily apply to 2008. Ha ha! That's right guys, you better worry!
Power to the people!
Man, I hope the next guys are better than the last bunch.
* I am so very thankful for all those wonderful, subversive, hippies that worked at Marvel.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
The Puzzle of the Crazy Kitchen
I can only find two items wrong in this puzzle: 1) Betty is wearing shoes and 2) Betty is, oddly, not pregnant.
How many mistakes can you find?
From Picture news #3 (March 1949).
Big Red's gone troppo, driving and other things
Item! The family and I went out to celebrate my son going to college by eating at one of those silly family theme restaurants the other night. I thought this coaster from the restaurant featuring some kangaroos apparently hopping away in terror from one of their zombie, cannibalistic mates wielding a fork and knife amusing.
The restaurant, as you know, offers authentic Australian cuisine. My meal consisted of: Large white grubs found under a rock, snake, frog and a heady beverage of fermented saliva served in an ostrich egg.
Item! On the drive home it was rush hour and I was paused at the on-ramp to I-805 from I-8. Being used to the area at this time frame I kept glancing up at my rear-view mirror. It paid off. A car was approaching from behind at high speed. Obviously the driver was inattentive and not at all prepared for all the cars on the highway to have gone from 65 to zero in the span of a few hundred feet. The driver slammed on his brakes and with tires squealing, went into a skid aimed right at the back of my car.
After a quick visual check of the car in front of me revealed no signs of containing babies or children (I'm that kind of guy), I calmly turned the wheel and gently rolled off onto the paved shoulder by the on-ramp and forwards a few feet. The car behind me came to a shuddering halt with the front bumper even with my rear passenger door. If I had remained in place on the highway I would have been struck pretty hard by the other vehicle. After a few moments traffic started moving again and I pulled back onto the road, the formerly inattentive driver now alert and keeping a good distance from other cars.
This is the second time I have had to perform a similar maneuver at that particular ramp. The last incident was a few years ago in nearly the same location. Makes me question how many accidents occur regularly in this area.
Item! I'm not one of those people who name their cars. The most of a moniker any vehicle I own gets is New Car or Old Car or something similar. Much of the terseness comes from communicating with the wife via sign language. Just signing using simple gestures saves wear and tear on the fingers, not to mention time. The last two cars we owned were just called Red Car and Blue Car. Those I sold when leaving for California and the car I have now we just call Free Car.
It isn't pretty but it costs nearly nothing to drive. I did however recently notice a little while ago that the car I've been driving for a year has a promotional Too Fast Too Furious 2 cover on the steering-wheel. When people talk of bad sequels they usually mention something from the Matrix Trilogy, Electric Boogaloo 2 or Elektra. But I nominate 2F2F2 as the worst sequel of all time. I can only think the family member didn't care what they used to grip the wheel and that the cover was free or under a dollar but maybe I should rethink my relationship with that one person. Hopefully he wasn't a fan of the film. More proof that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Item! I haven't thanked Bully's pal, John DiBello enough but he helped pull me through a crappy year by his gifts of books and graphic novels. While he never asked for anything in return I know I've been remiss in reviewing them because to do so would require I give careful attention and thought to them. Since my head was mainly focused on getting to the end of the day, this would do a disservice to John and his kindness. As anyone who cares to check my archives is aware, I don't really apply any careful thought to what I post. I'm in a position now that I can give the materials he sent the consideration they deserve.
Thanks again, John and Bully!
Item! Because you can't get enough SCHATZI!
Saturday, August 23, 2008
The Whispering Gorilla
The Whispering Gorilla is another example of where the storytelling of the the pulps influenced the several decades of the comic books that replaced them.
The Whispering Gorilla is a story of a crime-victim who had his brain transplanted into the body of a gorilla. Wasting no time, the protagonist quickly escapes to exact horrible revenge on those that preyed upon the innocents of the city and created his horrible condition. Over the course of the story the character says goodbye (after a fashion) to the wife he lost when his body was destroyed and accomplishes his mission, though a severe beating he receives at the clubs of frightened police reduces his human brain to that of a simple, instinctual animal.
While this is a pretty standard revenge plot that has a few touches of the Shadow thrown in an interesting aside to the story is that "W.G.", as he is known to be popularly called, is a public figure, albeit with a "secret identity." Most noteworthy is the idea that since people can not truly determine if the intelligent, talking gorilla attending their social gatherings is human or not, the populace at large treats him as if he is anyways, so as not to offend. Whether this respect is out of a healthy dose of fear or politeness is not clear.
This basic story of a person changed through circumstance to return in a more powerful and less helpless form would proliferate in the Golden Age of comics and absolutely saturate the Silver Age, particularly that of DC Comics, the comic book industry being where pulp veterans Otto Binder, Julius Schwartz and others moved to after the decline of the pulp market. You could barely pick up a Silver Age title without finding at least one brain transplant story in it. The Silver Age character of the Congorilla is a direct descendant of this type of story. Transformation is the primary theme of the comic book, carried over from the pulp heroes with their ritualistic costume and uniform changes. Modern comics still follow the old pulp formula and one of the greatest modern booms in comic book creativity, that of Marvel of the 1960s, is founded on the very same idea.
From Fantastic Adventures (May 1940). Story by Don Wilcox. Cover painted by Stockton Mulford. Interior illustrations by Robert Fuqua.
Daffy and Nothingness
Snagged another original sketch from professional animator Arland Barron when he stopped by work the other day.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Friday Catblogging
The Cataaaa. Thursday, August 21, 2008
Have you had any formal art training?
The long-lost and infamous '501' jeans commercial from 1991 directed by Spike Lee and featuring Rob Liefeld.
Don't get me started.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Important. Go read.
It was only until recently that news organizations stopped referring to Comic-Con attendees as weird, virginal losers who liked nothing more than dressing up like the characters from their favorite Japanese cartoon. The local coverage of the Con recognized that it was no longer just about buying the first appearance of Green Lantern, Hammer film festivals and getting a sketch from an artist. The SDCC is now a major media event. Yes, there was the usual story about people dressing up as Storm Troopers from Star Wars, Slave-Girl Princess Leia and Spider-Man but the news is visual and any reporter that failed to mention or display them would be remiss in their duties.
Not that Mr. DiBello described goings on equal to the Tailhook Scandal, and convention attendees everywhere usually have a habit of going a bit wild. Still, this isn't Spring Break in Florida. It's behavior resulting from the mentality of "if a woman dresses like that, she's asking for it." The actions of a few ignorant jerks that was reported by Mr. DiBello and observed by others would have resulted in police involvement and arrests had the same activity taken place on the street, in a mall or on the beach.
I'm giving my support to those calling for improved security, policy and procedures so the next Con can be enjoyed by everyone.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Inconceivable!
As I write this I'm too flabbergasted to be furious. After a little while I'll come out of shock and then get angry and then probably ill, if my previous reactions to this situation are any indication to what my immediate future holds.
I never went into detail much (preferring to be comical about a serious situation) but I left Maryland, fled really, a year and change ago for California. I grew up in San Diego. I left a wife and child behind in Maryland for a number of months while I sought new employment and a place to live.
In Maryland I had a pretty good job and a pretty good life. I wasn't crazy about the people but the area was nice. That life fell apart as a pay error that initially shorted me a few hundred dollars snowballed from a simple accounting error into a series of horrible events that set me back decades. If I had known what would have happened when I sent in the pay error request to be compensated for a couple days of work I would have let it go. The simple error and the attempts of the payroll department to pay me about two hundred dollars turned into not being compensated the following weeks for over a thousand bucks. Then many screw ups later, many thousands of dollars.
What happened was: Back pay via payroll checks were issued to me which I deposited. Accounting then canceled the checks because they thought I was issued them erroneously. They did not tell me they placed a stop payment on the checks. I incurred a lot of returned check fees. Rent payments, utilities, car payments were all returned as insufficient. Then that problem was fixed. Then electronic deposits to my account were made. Then once again without bothering to inform me, the electronic deposits were reversed after I had paid all my outstanding bills. I then went weeks without being paid, was paid back, then wasn't paid again. This occurred again and again. The Union backed me up and ordered the company to pay me. The company agreed and then continued to screw up. Eventually I was given a $50 gift card for my troubles. I was informed I was being sent all my back pay (but would not be compensated for all the related late fees, overdraft fees, court costs and etc.) by express courier. I was even given check numbers. The expected package never arrived and I discovered I was given bogus tracking numbers by the accountants. The checks were never printed. I had enough and I gave notice.
In just a few months the late fees, court-related costs and compounded errors escalated to a point where I lost everything. Already halved by paying my wife's medical fees for things not covered by insurance, our savings were wiped out. The new job I secured after I left the old one didn't bring funds in quickly enough as I was being paid bi-weekly instead of weekly. Right then timing was everything. For example, If I owed the bank $600 by the end of the week or I lose a car to repossession, then payroll would screw it up give me only $100 of a promised $2500. Eventually, not having thousands of dollars available to keep the wolves from the door I was forced to abandon everything and move back to California with a suitcase and $150 in my pocket. It has taken us nearly two years to financially break even from the mess we were in and we still can't buy anything with a check or credit card because my former employer refused to acknowledge they caused my accounts to be overdrawn by wrongly placing stop payments on checks and reversing electronic deposits. The emotional wreck of my family life is still healing even though we have been reunited for over a year.
This is all fall out from a formerly good company which after a famous buyout and merger fell apart organizationally. Employees who had been with the company for decades were discarded in favor of the new companies' young and poorly-trained managers. After only a short conversation with any Manager one could easily determine who had been with the old company and who had been brought in from the parent company. A manager could usually be picked out as a new import because they were the ones shrilly berating employees in public. Many of the Managers were former residents of a cubicle farm who were transferred to the new division after taking a class in retail management and then were placed in charge.
After the merger a nationwide training division, payroll department and printing service was shut down as too expensive and everything was outsourced. Advertisements were routinely misprinted. Pricing was chaotic and riddled with errors. And apparently, the new Accounting and Payroll service was outsourced to a team of dyslexic gerbils who operated out of Afghanistan. I speculate this is what happened because only brainless rodents with difficulty in interpreting a second language because of a reading disability could be so ridiculously incompetent. In less than a year after the merger a large and successful company was destroyed and made marginal. Some say it was on purpose so it could be torn apart and the pieces sold off for profit.
Now what has got me all dizzy from reliving the nightmare is that the same accounting office which I unsuccessfully argued with for over two years to get what was was owed...
This office I talked to on a nearly daily basis and then several times a week for a year (at about 3 hours per conversation, because each call was like the very first and no one, including the accountant I had spoken to several times that week, knew or remembered anything)...
This accounting department which was completely incapable of compensating me for the work I did, plus compounded in a most ridiculous fashion with error after error after error which I would suspect were intentional acts specifically planned to destroy my life if not for the daily evidence that everyone involved in the company from the bottom up were all comically inept...
This is the same accounting department which previously had no record of paying me, agreed they owed me money, yet dissembled, denied and ignored me...
This office contacted me yesterday by letter and disclosed that I had "several unclaimed payroll checks" in their office. I was informed in the letter that my money has been sitting in their accounts with funds owed me from the beginning of July to December 2006. The letter also tells me If I do not respond and claim the money owed me within 30 days the funds would then be presumed abandoned and turned over to the State Treasurer.
I'm sending the response today overnight via FedEx. Believe me, these tracking numbers will not be in the least bit bogus.
Inconceivable.
Friday, August 15, 2008
He's prepared for any Jazz emergency
Roland Kirk as photographed by Jan Persson.
From Down Beat magazine (August 21, 1969).
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
It's a case of too much pin-up girl
Not much plot, yet nonetheless a riveting read. From Picture News #3 (March 1946).
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
4 out of 5 Drunken European Prostitutes prefer Gillette!
For their men, that is.
From Astounding Science Fiction (April 1943).
Monday, August 11, 2008
Where's my jump-belt?
From Magnus, Robot Fighter (Gold Key Comics, August 1965).
Sunday, August 10, 2008
They drove their fields of force against the fivefold bars
From The Skylark of Valeron, Astounding Stories (January 1935). Story by Edward E. Smith with art by Elliot Dold.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
The doors of vast airlocks opened
From The Skylark of Valeron, Astounding Stories (January 1935). Story by Edward E. Smith with art by Elliot Dold.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
You have become a demigod!
From Mind Over Matter. Astounding Stories, January 1935. Story by Raymond Z. Gallum with art by M. Marchioni.
Exclusive preview of the new on-going Mary Marvel series spun out of FINAL CRISIS!
The radical change in the characterization of Mary Marvel in Final Crisis #3 is probably temporary and I think she will she'll be a hero again, however flawed. But Morrison likes screwing with reader's minds so Mary's new personality could very well be as permanent as it gets in comic books. Still, once Mary was spiritually corrupted it can't be undone and she is going to be changed forever by the experience. "Our" sweet little heroine is gone forever.
I'm liking Final Crisis so far. It's coming together nicely.
Original cover of Mary Marvel #1 (December 1945) for comparison here.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Uzza, uzza, uzza
From Astounding Stories, Flight on Titan. Story by Stanley G. Weinbaum. Art by M. Marchioni. (January 1935).
Monday, August 04, 2008
Futura - Chapter 6
Some newsstand silliness graces the cover of Planet Comics #48 (May 1947). For a comic book that featured scantily-clad men and women in every story the cover features a giant sexless robot with the crotch area obscured by a cloud. The theory being that parents may not pay attention to the interior art if the exterior image is deemed harmless enough at first glance.
This kind of bait-and-switch was a specialty of comic books of the era as they tried to gain a market share wracked by the decline of the pulps. Decades before comic books were attacked by the public and politicians as being unwholesome the pulp magazines suffered a similar trial. Declared obscene, many pulp titles were forced to be hidden behind the newsstand counters. Public pressure was mounting to shut down the publishers of the racy and violent magazines, even though it was primarily the adult audience of working joes and soldiers that purchased the books and not children.
Eventually the campaign for decency, poor products and a saturated and changing market forced most of the pulp magazines to fold or evolve into mainstream magazines. In some ways the pulps were sabotaged from within. Like in the modern era of comic books, publishers desperate for a dwindling market share resorted to gimmicks to increase or stabilize plummeting sales. For the pulps, titillation and cheesecake, if not outright pornography, were utilized to interest readers and boost. Something similar could be observed in the comic books of the 1990s. Both eras enjoyed a brief surge in sales followed by a devastating collapse, if for different reasons.
Sabotage is the theme for Chapter 6 of the Futura saga. But where the pulp and comic book markets sabotaged themselves, Futura projects her struggle outwards and engages in attacks on the infrastructure of the Brain-Men!
This is also the second chapter where disguise and transformation plays a major role in the fight against the tyrants. Hiding a powerful bomb in a log, Futura gambles that she can enter the stronghold of the tyrants unobserved, destroying their power station and laboratories in one massive strike. While evenst do not go all according to plan Futura does eventually succeed after a fashion. Adopting another identity also saves the day as Futura enters the fortress of the Brain Men, setting the scene for adventures to come.
Enjoy!
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Mistress of the Blue Bolts
This would be a cool pattern for a stained glass window in my home.
Valdina, Mistress of the Blue Bolts from Star Pirates, Planet Comics #48 (May 1947).
Futura Chapter 6 tomorrow!
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Hobo in La Jolla - Supervillain Update
This is Cliff.
Say "Hi" to Cliff everyone!
I know his name because last month Cliff, in a drunken tantrum, shortly after being ejected from an adjacent property by the police for throwing a drunken tantrum*, randomly attacked and vandalized a car in the parking lot.
My car.
Cliff went to jail for the act but now he is once again free and wandering around the area having more drunken tantrums. He seems to have some problem with the concept of staying off staying off the property and keeping away from the customers, so I foresee more legal problems for Cliff in the near future.
I'm thinking of getting Cliff registered with the Guild of Calamitous Intent. Cliff easily qualifies as a supervillain. A semi-normal person until he drinks his special chemical formula, Cliff transforms into a feral, screaming psycho who engages in random property damage and mayhem which continues until a specialized team of heroes takes him out of action with their high-tech weapons and tactics. That's classic comic book stuff. Cliff also has the identity-concealing costume down, but he needs a proper supervillain moniker. Perhaps something like The Rampaging Imbiber or The Screaming Jerk-Face.
* Or as the police officer called it, "Acting like Cliff".
