SMALL TYPES: "THE MAGAZINE FOR YOUNG CANADIANS"

 

SMALL TYPES Magazine, Volume 2, #3 (May 1955). Small Types Club was a CBC radio and tv lunchtime kids show in the 1950s that was hosted by Byng Whitteker. The bi-monthly magazine, founded and edited by Stella Craig, served as a complement to the show and was sort of like a Canadian version of Highlights Magazine, with stories and activities and, shockingly, multiple pages of comics! It looks like every issue during this period had a comics insert bound in, and this issue reprints full-colour stories from Felix the Cat # 55, published a few months earlier in the USA (by Toby PRESS, September 1954). There were Canadian editions of Felix published in the 1950s by Superior Publication, so maybe Small Types, printed in comic book size, was associated with Superior in some way, or perhaps was printed by Superior on their presses. The reprinted Felix material is by Otto Mesmer and Joe Oriola.

DAVE SIM ON KIRBY'S FOURTH WORLD

Dave Sim writing in CANAR #1, 1972:

"KIRBY VIEW --This is to serve as a kind of response to Rick Seiler's Kirby 'opinionations' in this same issue.

I maintain that Kirby has little or no talent. His writing disgusts me even more than the work of early Gerry Conway. His creations seem to be of less than human quality. He is at his best designing a fight sequence, and he knows it. Thus, most of his books become little more than twenty odd pages of villains getting their heads caved in while the hero rants and raves over his cause with no emotion at all. Kirby's characters never seem to come alive. One cannot picture ever seeing an human qualities in Orion. And don't mistake human qualities for qualities found in other Kirby creations (Black Bolt, Silver Surfer, etc.) for they are equally monotonous in their steadfast gazes and intent close-mouthed convictions.

The Fourth World 'epics' failed for one reason. None of the books had anything that could rationally be called a uniting force. What they amounted to was a mish-mash of characters who exist for battle, use the Earth as a battleground and seldom say more tha two words without a) punching b) killing c) disintegrating an opponent who is equally mute. 

Now for some conclusions on this topic. Why do these characters exist? They are Kirby creations and it is a well-known fact that the only way to maintain Jack Kirby as a staff artist is to cater to his wants. One of these wants is total freedom to change, distort, or completely destroy anything in the panel art at DC. He changed Superman into something less than he should be, totally demolished anything it took DC thirty years to build Jimmy Olsen into ... and left both characters when he was through with them. This is somewhat reminiscent of ushering a spoiled child into a room of antique toys, permitting him to smash them at will and guiding him to another room. 

Now, the almighty King demands that he be granted a team of artists at his California headquarters that he might continue his Fourth World Farce. Whom would he take? Neal Adams? Jim Aparo? Joe Kubert? Certainly sacrificing these gentlemen to the pseudo science fiction slop of the Fourth World means nothing ... if the King is satiated by it. "

___

*Dave Sim writing as a 16-year-old fanboy for his friend John Balge's fanzine Comic Art News and Reviews. This early column proves that Sim has always had bad taste and his head up his ass. 

First Doug Wright's Family in The Canadian, 1967

Originally published in the nationally syndicated magazine Weekend (originating in the Montreal Standard but included as an insert in different papers across the country), the comic strip "Doug Wright's Family" moved to upstart competitor The Canadian in 1967. Here's the first strip from The Canadian, printed with a short article trumpeting their new acquisition, with a great photo of Doug Wright, pictured with his eldest son. Both magazines were general interest publications with features for the whole family, from political news, to sports, fashion, celebrity profiles, and weird Cold War fantasies like the one pictured here. The two magazines merged 10 years later.

LONDON ONTARIO & MY SECRET COMICS ORIGINS

SECRET ORIGINS

by BK MUNN

Comics from 40 years ago: MAY 1982. 

I fell down one of those online rabbit holes of looking at old comics by year and month, and realized what an important year 1982 was to my mental "development" and the evolution of my taste. This issue of The Comics Journal came out in May 1982 but I didn't buy it until a few months later. At the time, I was buying my superhero comics from spinner racks in corner stores. If Guelph had a comic shop then, I don't think I knew about it. I was visiting my cousins in London, Ontario during summer vacation and they took me to a magazine shop, one of those places that specialized in international newspapers and other exotic publications. They also had a large wall of new comics, and I remember I was very excited to find all four issues of the New Teen Titans miniseries that I hadn't been aware of as that sort of thing didn't usually make it to drug stores and Mac's Milk in Guelph. The regular monthly Titans comic book was my favourite at the time as a teenybopper and here were four brand new comics drawn by my favourite artist George Perez (Perez just died last week, reminding me I hadn't bought a new comic by him in 35 or so years). 

Along with the comics was this issue of TCJ with its electrifying Neal Adams cover, the first "fanzine" I'd ever seen in the wild, and the whole thing blew my 12 year old mind.  It wasn't really a fanzine but a 130-page real magazine full of serious "adult" articles and reviews of comics I'd never seen or heard of (or imagined!). Along with the epic Neal Adams interview (Adams died recently as well; all my childhood heroes are passing!), there were long articles about Moebius, the early Dr. Seuss, Judge Dredd and 2000AD, underground comics, illustrations by the Hernandez Brothers, a cinematic 2-page ad for Cerebus the Aardvark, and a whole lot of trash talk about my beloved Marvel and DC comic books. It was like an education in the history and potential of the comics artform in one single magazine and changed the way I thought about my little pubescent collecting hobby. Of course the first thing I sought out was the Adams' "Ms. Mystic" comic advertised on the cover (it was a major disappointment after the hype Adams gave it in his interview, hilarious in hindsight), but eventually I also bought my first issue of Cerebus and by 1986 or so, with a regular subscription to the Comis Journal magazine arriving in my maiIbox monthly, I had transitioned to the full-on insufferable teenage comics snob I still am today, reading only the arty-est, punkest, and most impenetrably obscure small press and self-published comix, and collecting ancient cartoon ephemera long forgotten by mainstream society. I blame this issue of The Comics Journal for keeping me interested in comics long after the then-accepted period of juvenile infatuation, continuing well into middle age, and for my continued stunted social development and collecting obsessions.

Kirby Collaborators: John Berendt

by BK Munn

John Berendt, the writer of the 1967 Esquire piece Kirby illo'd about Jack Ruby, one of my favourite Kirby art jobs, was later the bestselling author of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil".  I suspect Kirby and Berendt came together for the first time a year earlier when Jack and Marie Severin did the illustrations for the 1966 Esquire feature on the Marvel Comics phenomenon. At the time of the Kennedy Assassination described in the comic, Berendt, a junior editor at Esquire, was doing a six-month hitch in the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Polk, Louisiana.You can read Berendt's account of his time in the army, including how he heard about Kennedy and Ruby, here. 

(Kirby gives credit to Berendt as writer in the famous 1969 Mark Herbert interview, published in the Nostalgia Journal in 1976, reprinted below as well.) 

It Was a Golden Age: Cracked, 1958

There Were Giants in Those Days





From the contents page of Cracked #5, October 1958. We see here half of the once-and-future Marvel Bullpen along with the once-and-future Mad Magazine "Usual Gang of Idiots". The creators of Superman, The Human Torch, and The Submariner rubbing elbows with the artists behind Little Annie Fannie and Torchy. And for all that, it still reads like any issue of Cracked from anytime during its 50-odd-year run.

The full list reads as follows.

Editor: Sol Brodsky.

Artists: Carl Burgos, John Severin, Bill McCartney, Joe Maneely, Bill Everett, Syd Shores, Bernard Bailey, Jack Davis, Bill Elder, Al Jaffee, Jerry Behar.

Writers: Paul Laikin, Bill Ward, Jerry Siegal(sic), Carl Memling, Dick Richards, Fernando West, Teddy Bee.



At this early date, John Severin is already the workhorse of the magazine, followed closely in term of pages by Bill Ward (who also appears here as "McCartney," I think). Severin does front and back covers and two strips.





Will Elder subscription ad



And is this a self-portrait of Human-Torch-creator Carl Burgos? Look closely:





Some nice post-EC early Jack Davis in this double-page spread. There is just so much going on here!





Lots of quality stuff here, the knowledge of which is bound to make you popular with the opposite sex.