Mystery Hoard: Dr. Seuss's Boners

Graphic Novel Review: Skim

Skim
words by Mariko Tamaki
drawings by Jillian Tamaki
Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press
143 pages
$18.95

review by BK Munn

This gorgeous new graphic novel answers the question, what if 80s sitcom The Facts of Life was really a drama about Wiccan ceremonies, lesbian crushes, casual racism, and suicide?

Sixteen-year-old diarist Kimberley Keiko Cameron (aka Skim) is already having a hard time negotiating the preppy world of her Catholic all-girls school when she is plunged headfirst into adulthood. For Skim, "being sixteen is officially the worst thing I've ever been." Like every teenager, alternately bored, embarrassed, and confused, Skim tries several strategies to forge a unique identity for herself, with little success. Even the goth subculture Skim imagines as a refuge from the lameness of her middle class surroundings turns out to be one big letdown. In one of Skim's funniest sequences, the cult of adult Wiccans Skim and her best friend Lisa join turns out to be little more than an AA support group for hooking up burned-out ex-druggies.



The suicide of a cheerleader's boyfriend sets the plot of the book in motion and brings into focus the cracks behind the facade of highschool innocence, friendship, and Skim's own ironic distance from her own emerging womanhood and adult awareness. As her school becomes obsessed with death and suicide, Skim argues with and eventually drifts away from her best friend, moving towards new relationships and her first romance (with hippie English teacher Ms. Archer).

Skim is a delicious balancing act between words and pictures, with Skim's studiously deadpan narration contrasted and enlivened by Jillian Tamaki's fluid drawing style. Luxurious panels, alternately spartan and highly detailed, depending on the story's mood and dramatic necessity, take us step-by-step through every moment of Skim's experience. There are almost no false notes in this book, graphically or textually, a difficult performance in any work that strives to capture the nuances of teenage interiority and speech patterns.



One of the book's major themes is the series of disappointments with the adult world that adolescence is fraught with. Skim progresses through disillusionment after disillusionment, but is luckily girded with the twin weapons of sarcasm and a practiced ability to fade into the background. But these tools are almost not enough to guarantee her survival when she is forced to experience firsthand the heartache she has previously only been a sardonic observer to. In the course of the book, Skim is drawn inexorably into adulthood through a gamut of betrayals and epiphanies, all of which she faithfully chronicles for us.

The conceit of the book is that the visual aspect represents a drawn diary --the unconscious working in tandem to give a (literally) well-rounded picture of Skim's experience. Textually, this takes the form of crossed-out confessions, list-making, and subtle, funny observations expressed as Zen equations ("me=seriously screwed"; "my school=goldfish tank of stupid"). Graphically, the pictures often take the story beyond the diaristic, a perfect use of the comics form, showing what Skim can't bring herself to confess verbally through the use of body language and tiny facial expressions; skilled use of black and white, chiaroscuro effects, gray washes, and easy, virtuoso line-work. Certain key scenes are entirely wordless and Jillian Tamaki's visual storytelling skills are utilized to the maximum with almost surreal effect.

An early version of Skim was published by Kiss Machine in 2005 and writer Mariko Tamaki reworked the story as a play before the graphic novel version took its current shape. The minimalist prose, humour, and tight structure of the book seems to be a result of this process, filtered through the eye of Jillian Tamaki. The whole effect is a darkly funny, bittersweet coming of age story.


--------

Skim Booklaunch
This Is Not A Reading Series
Wednesday, March 26th. 7:30-12pm
The Gladstone Hotel, Toronto
Free
Mariko and Jillian Tamaki will be interviewed by Toronto writer Jessica Westhead, with Brad Mackay introducing.

Skim news at Jillian Tamaki's blog.

International Shakespeare in the Comics Day

March 15 is International Shakespeare in the Comics Day!

Top 5 Shakespearean Comics:


1. The Mighty Thor by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

Stan introduced a pseudo-Elizabethan language to this superhero series about Norse gods, lending the dialogue an epic, Shakespearian quality. As well, Kirby's creation of Volstagg, equal parts Falstaff and Porthos of the 3 Musketeers, introduced one of the more interesting secondary characters of the Marvel Universe.


2. Asterix and the The Great Divide

This retelling of Romeo and Juliet the first volume in the Asterix series to be written and drawn entirely by cartoonist Albert Uderzo after the death of his longtime partner Rene Goscinny and is a charming change of pace for Asterix and Obelix.


3. Oscar Zarate's Othello

Best know for his collaboration with Alan Moore on A Small Killing, this imaginative adaptation by the Argentinian Zarate is one of the best straight-up comic versions of the original play.


4. Julius Caesar by Wally Wood

The best comics adaptation of Julius Caesar is a parody of the 1954 Marlon Brando film version, illustrated by Wally Wood and written by Kurtzman and printed in MAD #17. MAD loves the bard, but this early piece is the best. Caesar got the full biographical treatment in Frontline Combat #8 (1952).


5. Batman, Dick Tracy and Spider-Man

Hardboiled Hamlets. All three of these characters are essentially revenge dramas (revenge melodramas?). All three are premised on the death of a father figure and the resulting metaphorical relentless, humourless, hunt for a killer. That's all I've got. I'm sure it's more complicated.

Beware: Shakespeare in the Comics

March 15 is International Shakespeare in the Comics Day!

Mystery Hoard: Walter Trier

Walter Trier (1890-1951)

Trier was born in Prague but moved to Munich in 1909. He contributed to the German humour and cartoon magazines of the day (especially Kladderadatsch and the left-wing Simplicissimus ) and was equally at home as a caustic satirist and cartoonist and an illustrator of children's stories. His opposition to the Nazi regime led him to flee Germany, finally settling in England (where he produced anti-German propaganda) before emigrating to Canada in the late-40s.

Trier contributed to publications in the UK (Lilliput), Canada and the USA (including many New Yorker covers). A huge talent.

Trier has several pieces (a large archive actually, including many of his sculptures and children's toys) in the permanent collection of the AGO.

You can see some of it here.

I found this old peanut butter jar, capped with a Trier illustration, at an antique shop around the corner from our store. It cost $3.

Canon II

As various bloggers are reporting, a new report says there were over 3,300 graphic novels published in the U.S. and Canada in 2007. That's quite a bit to keep on top of and illustrates quite handily the value of the various awards and critical lists that are now a major pillar of comics culture. Specifically, the job of actually figuring out what is worth reading (vs reading 9 comics a day or just giving up) and what will continue to be worth re-reading in the future, just keeps getting harder. Not to mention the threat of an avalanche of titles actually huurting sales, as Tom Spurgeon mentions in reference to recent events in France. Heck, the latest Comics Journal, featuring the "Best of 2006" articles, listed over 150 books and strips. Too many? Of course, few people ever ask the question, "Are there too many books?"

One of the traditional tools for separating the wheat from the chaff in book terms is the idea of a canon, which has been discussed alot lately. Since the issue seems likely to become a theme of the comics blogosphere, with new posts daily, herewith some more

Notes: On the Comics Canon

We often imagine one of the requisites for canonical status is immortality --specifically the sort of immortality that exists when the work of one artist is given new life though the work of another, down through the generations. In this sense, early caricaturists like Cruikshank, Topffer, Tenniel, and many others have been canonized by their followers. These artists not only created great art; they created great art that continues to inspire the cartoonists of today. As was said of Wilhelm Busch, they have "stumbled into immortality."

18th and 19th Century

"The want of genuine imagination is always proved by caricature." --Wm. Hazlitt

"I have endured to treat my subjects as a dramatic writer, my picture is my stage, my men and women my players, who by means of certain actions and gestures are to exhibit a show�" --William Hogarth

My own preliminary fantasy canon list would include the work of all those artists dug up by David Kunzle and the great old obscure stuff in Seth's 40 Cartoon Books of Interest. Ideally, all comics readers would be miniature Wimbledon Greens, setting aside an hour every night to pore over an old comic book or ancient print by the likes of Daumier, with nothing but a magnifying glass and perfect silence for company.

20th Century

Ana Merino articulates a feminist critic's position on underground comics by women, relative to the canon: "What I am aiming for is the natural and unprejudiced recognition that will widen the thematical canon of comics and allow those written by women to enter more thoroughly, more easily, in greater quantities and to wider recognition and acceptance."

Ray Zone, in a review of the Masters show, sums up the treatment of comics in U.S. galleries and provides a rough guide to what makes a work of sequential art canonical: "reflexive self-awareness that one is producing lasting art with its own set of parameters."

Mystery Hoard: 1940s Comics Used as Insulation

This is a fascinating article about a mystery hoard of old paper found in the walls of an building in Grand Bend, Ontario.

As the boards and nails are pulled from the walls, Bill and Bram Steele were amazed to find the treasures in what was once the Statton home, and Kay’s Do Drop In, main street, Grand Bend.

As the father and son renovate the building to expand BJs Diner, they could not believe how this building was insulted. Valentine cards to Marilyn Statton and stacks of London Free Press 1947-1948 kept the heat in to this small family home. The cards are as clean and pristine as they were 60 years ago. "To Marilyn Statton from Carol Gill" reads one card.

Bram was amazed as he went through the pages of the newspapers and comics the colour as vibrant as it was six decades ago. The first news paper he took out of the wall had a front page story entitled "Grand Bend buys fire truck unit." It was dated Feb 23, 1948.

I love these kinds of stories. Even more, I would love to have more details about these mysterious "comics" that were exposed. As a collector of paper ephemera and old comic strips and comic books, my curiosity is quite agitated. When we moved into our current house, we found some old paper in the crawlspace of the attic. The former owner had worked for the local cab company and there was taxi ephemera, timetables and worksheets, and, most disturbingly, a tiny crutch once used by a child. Not a such a great haul.

Canon Wars

The Scapegoats of Tomorrow

Pity we poor comics canon-builders. Given the raw materials of some Donald Duck comics, political cartoons, and the violent fantasies of misogynist morons, how are we to construct a critical edifice to withstand the schlongs and marrows of outrageous fan opinion and professorial snobbiness?

Over at the newsarama blog, Chris Mautner returns to the subject of canon formation and the American comics canon (or canons: Mautner sees three separate canons championed by fans of comic strips, superhero comics, and so-called literary comics). The whole thing seems to have started as a response to an article by Jennifer de Guzman about the lack of a comics canon or even critical writing on comics.

The discussion leads a few others to offer their own lists, none of which come close to the grandaddy of all such lists, the Comics Journal's top 100 English-Language Comics of the 20th Century list from 1999. Still a far cry from the 3000 canonical works that make up the Western literary canon that Harold Bloom talks about in his 1994 book, but a good start in terms of a list for talking about what is "good" in the books and strips of the last 108 years, and broader than something like the Masters of American Comics exhibit. The Journal list certainly began a discussion, as Douglas Wolk notes in his new book. In a related turn, John Holbo writes on Wolk's Reading Comics, arguing that, despite Wolk's assertions to the contrary, the book actually functions as part of a larger canon-forming movement among U.S. comics critics, or at least is responding to an already existing canon (but not really "smashing" a canon, as the book's dust-jacket and Wolk both insist).

Outside of the usual academic concerns with canon-building (and Mautner's latest post includes a few paragraphs from David Ball, professor at Dickinson College), and as much as I love lists, I wonder how useful these lists are, especially as currently formulated. Will any of these comics still be considered great 10, 20, 50 or 100 years from now? Does it do any good to look at these things out of context? Shouldn't we consider, at least, cartoon books of the 19th Century? In practical terms, wouldn't a decade-by-decade survey of great U.S. comics, or a list that confined itself to U.S. graphic novels be more edifying? Lumping together open-ended serials, gag-a-day strips, and consolidated narratives really muddies the waters and limits any kind of focus to the most basic formal similarities.

The nature of comics criticism and the general appreciation of comics worldwide has opened up considerably over the last decade, with groundbreaking anthologies like Dan Nadel's Art Out of Time, Todd Hignite's Comic Art, Bart Beatty's Unpopular Culture, and the explosion of translated manga really transforming the way many of us think about comics and comics greatness, but the real "job" of canon formation is really going on in the Academy, in dozens of undergrad introductory courses in "The Graphic Novel" and post-grad seminars in "Sequential Narrative."

While the Academy has canonised many members whose names half a century later are forgotten, or are remembered only to be called up with a smile or a shrug, it has persistently ignored those who have employed the pencil instead of the brush, or have used ink instead of misusing paint. But it is unnecessary to pursue the subject farther; that the names of Keene, Leech, and Tenniel are not on the roll of the Academy is surely far more to the discredit of the institution than of the artists themselves, who presumably, from the Academic point of view, are "no artists." As Mr. du Maurier has pointed out, Punch's artists will have their revenge: "If the illustrator confine himself to his own particular branch, he must not hope for any very high place in the hierarchy of art. The great prizes are not for him! No doubt it will be all the same a hundred years hence—but for this: if he has done his work well, he has faithfully represented the life of his time, he has perpetuated what he has seen with his own bodily eyes; and for that reason alone his unpretending little sketches may, perhaps, have more interest for those who come across them in another hundred years than many an ambitious historical or classical canvas that has cost its painter infinite labour, imagination, and research, and won for him in his own time the highest rewards in money, fame, and Academical distinction. For genius alone can keep such fancy-work as this alive, and the so-called genius of to-day may be the scapegoat of to-morrow." ---The History of Punch by MH Spielmann, 1895

The List: Lists and the Listing Listers Who List Them: The 100 Best Reviewed Comics of 2007

Blogger Dick Hyacinth has finally posted his list of 100 comics and graphic novels from the myriad end-of-year "best of" lists, both online and in print --a huge variety of sources (Hyacinth lost track). A monumental undertaking, the list has quite a few great books on it. It also has many books that will be either obscure or entirely new to many readers, myself included. The two major features of the list are the lack of superhero comics and lack of manga, the subject matter of roughly 90% of all internet noise concerning comics and, I suppose, based on bestseller lists, the largest income generators.

I love lists like this even though, like bestseller lists, they are never going to be a scientific guide to quality. But I will settle for popular, especially since there are so few comics reviewers whose taste, comics knowledge, focus or worldview is developed and consistent enough to make reading them on a regular basis worthwhile. Beyond the occasional Tom Spurgeon review and the Comics Journal, my reading of reviews if fairly scattershot and inconsistent. I'll click on a link at the Comics Reporter or Journalista, but I'm more likely to read a review if I feel it's not likely I'll actually read the book (for instance, I might read a review of the new Iron Fist series written by Ed Brubaker or a review of a new manga series intended for teenage girls like Shugo Chara, #44 on the Canadian bestseller charts this week). On the other hand, once I've read something, I'm curious what other readers experience of the book was and will often hunt down a favourite reviewer's thoughts on the matter. But I'm more likely to seek out a long, considered piece of criticism more than the short bookchat-style review that is the stock-in-trade of most blogs and newspapers and one of Gore Vidal's famous betes noires. You know, Donald Phelps vs Publishers Weekly.

Anyway, a very interesting list. My own list would have maybe put Alias the Cat over Scott Pilgrim, and Shortcomings over Exit Wounds (and most of the classic comic strip collections like Popeye and Walt and Skeezix over everything else), and I would have had more anthologies, but why quibble with a machine-made list?

Superman is a Leap Year Baby!

Comics fans have long known that Superman's extraordinary vitality and youthfulness are due in part to the fact that he celebrates a birthday only once every four years. Yes, today, February 29, is Superman's birthday, and people are celebrating, as this messageboard indicates.

Long a letters page staple, the explanation that Superman ages slowly because of his odd birthday could only appeal to an idiot or a long-time comics reader like myself. If my memory serves, over the years this legend has been added to with sci-fi factoids that reference the planet Krypton, the length of its days, etc. Just the sort of thing to delight a young otaku but guaranteed to annoy the casual fan. My understanding is that the Superman editors (perhaps Mort Weisinger or maybe E. Nelson Bridwell or Julie Schwartz came up with the notion, who can say?) cribbed the idea from Capt. Marvel, the prototype for much of Superman's mythology and extended family. Marvel's birthday is first mentioned as far back as 1943 in Whiz Comics #47 and is firmly established in Whiz Comics #52 (Mar. 1944) --a story probably written by Otto Binder who also wrote many of Superman's greatest adventures. Capt. Marvel in turn may have borrowed the idea from Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie. Readers were no doubt anxious to understand why Annie did not seem to age like Skeezix of Gasoline Alley and the Leap Year idea is an answer befitting the whimsical yet earnest adventure strip.

In any regard, this year is the 70th anniversary of Superman's publication in Action Comics #1 and there are celebrations planned throughout the year. By my count, since 1938 Superman has had 18 birthdays...

More:

Superman is in good company, as this site notes.


Mark Evanier delves into the question here, here and here.

Video Link: Stars Wars, by a 3 Year Old

What Would Captain America Do?

Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada is scheduled to appear on the Colbert Report tonight, ostensibly to plug the return of Captain America to comic books this week. Quesada appeared on the show during the hype over the death of the character last year but this time he will have to cross a picket line of striking WGA writers to do it. As this discussion and others indicate, Quesada, a comic book writer as well as an executive, will effectively be acting as a scab or strikebreaker when he appears on the show. Fans of the comics should ask themselves, would Captain America cross a picket line?

----
Related: Mark Evanier answers the musical question, "Why picket?"

(image by downside)

A Second to Wreck It

Beastie Boys fail to ask the musical question, who's more fascistic, Superman or Lex Luthor?

A Strong Enough Uterus

Kevin Smith's Mallrats: sort of funny as a movie, genius as a Superfriends episode.

Review: I, Otaku

I, Otaku
by Jiro Suzuki
Seven Seas
200 pages
$9.99 US/$11.00 Can
ISBN 978-1-933164-76-2

review by BK Munn

I was irresistibly drawn to this book by its title, which manages to combine a certain melodramatic self-importance with extremely nerdy subject matter. It's a measure of the breadth of the manga market and the development of North American otaku culture that this book even exists at all. The fact that I even stumbled across it at all speaks volumes.

This is the first volume of a series about Enatsu Sota, a highschool student secretly obsessed with anime character Papico, a treacly-cute, pink-clad girl with huge puppy-dog ears. Outwardly well-adjusted, Sota feels compelled to hide his vast collection of dvds, posters, fan magazines, doujinshi, and vinyl figurines from his sports-playing buddies and from his girlfriend Eri. Sota is in constant fear of having his otaku secret discovered and goes to great lengths to avoid detection of his habit. Of course, in predictable teen manga style, the peace of his perfectly segregated universe is shattered and world's collide when Sota's desperate search for the "ultra limited edition Wonder Digital Dokidoki Doggy Papico figure" makes Eri suspicious enough to follow him into the bowels of the collector's underworld and engage in a battle for his collector's soul.




I, Otaku is subtitled "Struggle in Akihabara" --a reference to the section of Tokyo renowned for its massive selection of of businesses catering to the otaku crowd-- and the story's main action revolves around am Akihabara shop called Otakudu Headquarters (or "Otaku Shrine"). Otaku Headquarters is run by the eccentric Mano Takuro, the self-appointed "President of the Closet Otaku Extermination Committee." It is Mano's goal to "out" all hidden fans like Sota, forcing them to publicly embrace their geekdom and give up any pretense of a normal life and social respectability. In many ways, the mysterious and slightly Mephistophelean Mano embodies the stereotype of the comic shop owner, an uber-nerd who forces his opinions on the shy, paranoid misfits who are his customers, tempting them with treasures that he may withhold for some minor violation of the otaku code. Mano resents Eri and constantly intervenes between her and Sota. For Mano, human relationships must conform to otaku stereotypes: All girls must be interested in yaoi, or boy-boy love, and all boys must only fetishize two-dimensional fantasy women.



Mano also functions as something of a father-figure for Sota, advising him not only on the true way of otakudom, but also on more important life matters such as friendship and honesty. The friction between the two spheres of Sota's life, real world love and otaku obsession, makes for rich comic material with ample opportunity to satirize trends and pop culture. The book has several funny set-pieces and farcical moments, all handled with a light-hearted tone and manic cartooning style full of abrupt shifts in perspective, overlapping internal dialogue, and slapstick --all of which is only mildly confusing. The drawing style is quite broad, ranging from simplified cartoony to wild exaggeration to ironic approximation of the tropes and tics of moody love manga and teen melodrama.



The highlight of the volume is the beginning of an epic battle between the denizens of Otaku Headquarters and the owner of neighbouring rival, Manga Cave. This conflict is the subject of I, Otaku's final chapters and the source of some of its funniest lines. The conflict takes the form of a model-building contest for store supremacy and is a parody of scenes from sports and fight manga (and is also a little reminiscent of Evan Dorkin's Eltingville stories). The sequence includes some supremely arch dialogue, such as "You fools ... don't you know that the concept of having more people working on a project to hasten its completion does not apply to plastic model building? To create a plastic model ... is to have a conversation with your own soul!"

With situations that may feel familiar to long-time comic fans, and lots of relevance for a Japan-fixated culture, I, Otaku is a cute humour comic, recommended for charming and highly-skewed insights into the world of Japanese pop, especially the dilemma of the closet otaku; a picture of adolescent angst that doesn't take itself too seriously.

-----

online preview

I, Otaku at Chapters-Indigo

---
revolutionary content: very little

That Time is Now

Review: Dream of the Rarebit Fiend

The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1904-1913) by Winsor McCay
Compiled, edited, and published by Ulrich Merkl
464 pages (139 in color)
$114.00

"An Epic of the Unconscious"

review by BK Munn



This beautiful book was the most overwhelming comics publication of 2007. A labour of love for editor and publisher Ulrich Merkl, The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend represents years of research and collecting and the end result is one of the best examples of archival scholarship combined with great comic art I've ever experienced --and I do mean experienced. The book kind of takes over your life once you get hold of it, sort of like a positive, highly covet-able version of that suitcase full of "dull care" that Mr. Bunion in McCay's Pilgrim's Progress strip was always trying to get rid of.

The metaphor is apt: The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend is among the largest and heaviest books I own. It's suitcase-like dimensions are 17 x 12 inches and it weighs in at a whopping nine-and-a-half pounds! (That's 43 x 31 cm, and 4.3 kg, for non-U.S. readers.) It is full of thousands of illustrations and strip reprints, in colour and black-and-white, and includes several scholarly essays by the Italian comics historian Alfredo Castelli, all gorgeously printed on quality paper. The book also comes with a dvd containing all of the episodes and a catalogue raisonne of the strip.



But enough of the physicality. Why is this really a great book? Because McCay's Rarebit Fiend is a fantastic, amazingly inventive, and quite funny comic strip that is a joy to read and stands as a high-water mark in the history of comic art.

When Winsor McCay drew the first episode of Rarebit Fiend, he was 34 and just starting out as the editorial cartoonist for the New York Evening Telegram and the New York Herald. Although he had been a commercial artist and cartoonist for over a decade, it was in New York where he would make his fortune and introduce his most famous and lasting creations. Between 1904 and 1905, McCay created a half-dozen comic strips, including Little Sammy Sneeze, Hungry Henrietta, A Pilgrim's Progress, Little Nemo in Slumberland, and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Although he is probably best remembered for the elaborate Sunday pages he created for Little Nemo (reprinted last year in the magnificent Splendid Sundays), his adult work in Rarebit Fiend represents a more elaborate exploration of dream imagery and themes of anxiety, urbanism, horror, and humour.



The premise of the strip is that each night a different individual suffers nightmares after eating Welsh Rarebit, basically cheese on toast, and wakes up after barely escaping some fantastic, or phantasmagoric, calamity. The rarebit-eaters who populate the strip experience all kinds of assaults and expressions of phobias, from everyday objects and devices that come to life, to transformations of their bodies, physical violence, and travels through time and space, all drawn with a combination of a draughtsman's precision and a caricaturist's skill at exaggeration and manipulation. In McCay's strip, humans are transformed into giants, faces mutate, trains collide, cities are wrecked, and men fly to the moon. These events are presented in a believable, meticulously detailed series of panels that slowly escalate in terms of absurdity or horror, depending on the theme of the strip. McCay created hundreds of these episodes over many years, rarely repeating himself, and always seemed to capture that vague feeling of unease combined with inevitability that characterizes many dreams. And he did it without skimping on detail, imagination, or irony.

Dream of the Rarebit Fiend also represents the glory years of McCay as a comic artist. A pioneer in animation, McCay eventually relaxed his production of comic strips in favour of editorial cartoons and touring his various animated movies (Gertie the Dinosaur, et al) on the vaudeville circuit. Although he briefly relaunched his more popular creations every now and then, he never quite matched the sustained brilliance and creativity that he managed during the initial run of Rarebit. The strip as a whole reads as one long dream, experienced from a variety of viewpoints and dispositions, comprising a sort of epic of the unconscious.



The book presents the strip in chronological order, one episode or dream per page, with each strip annotated with dates, historical and biographical details about the artist, and notes about the strips real-world inspirations and references. These notes are very tastefully presented in the margins and sometimes contain great photos and bits and scraps of comic art. In addition, the book has several long text pieces and features, including a chronology of McCay's life and many examples of his work, as well as rare reproductions of the work of other cartoonists and artists who either influenced or were influenced by McCay. Alfredo Castelli provides two essays, one on the "Precursors and Epigones of Winsor McCay" and one on McCay's motivations. Jeremy Taylor also provides an essay on the dream imagery and symbolism in the strip. Much of this material is supplemented and elaborated on by editor Merkl's extensive notes, indexes, and lists, drawn from the strips and from McCay's contemporaries and spiritual descendants. All in all, The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiend is the most complete collection of a classic comic strip I've ever seen and rewards repeated readings with elaborate connections and associations that rival the gargantuan achievement of McCay's dream poems. My only quibbles are minor: the over-reliance on red as the main secondary colour for highlighting the supplementary material, some repetition in same, and, of course, the sometimes less-than-perfect reproduction of the 100-year-old newspaper materials, some of which only exist on microfilm or in damaged paper form. The vast (vast!) majority of the images are crystal clear, with sharp lines and rich blacks, but every once in a great while the dream is disturbed by a slightly-less-sharp image or letter, making me wish for a time machine to view the originals. Lacking a time-machine, this massive, highly recommended book is the best device for communing with the work of one of the towering geniuses of comics.

----

The book is available direct from the publisher at www.rarebit-fiend-book.com
Ordering info is here.
Discounts are available on bulk purchases, so buy one for a friend.
It would make a perfect Holiday gift!

In Canada, the book is available through The Beguiling. I have also heard that is available through the D+Q store but haven't confirmed this. See here for other stores.

----

revolutionary content rating: 7/proletcult surrealism

Robin Hood in Canada

Canadian Classics


Ted McCall was a writer notable for creating two early adventure comic strips that ran in Canadian newspapers. In 1933, he created Men of the Mounted, an RCMP strip illustrated by cartoonist Harry Hall. The strip ran in the Toronto Telegram and was eventually immortalized as a Big Little Book.

McCall's second creation was a comic strip version of Robin Hood, chiefly illustrated by Toronto Telegram staffer Charles Snelgrove. Essentially an also-ran in the Prince Valiant-style medieval serial sweeps, this strip had a fairly long life. McCall took the strip to comic book form in the 1940s, during the boom in Canadian comics publishing. Robin Hood and Company ran for 30-odd issues in various formats, from 1941-46.

The incredibly boring episode featured here was printed in the Niagara Falls Evening Review, December 21, 1937. (click on the strip to enlarge the image)

See more at John Adcock's blog!

Snow in the Comics, Part 3: Only 15 More Days Until Beethoven's Birthday!

Snow in Charles Schulz's Peanuts
Part 3 of 3

by BK Munn

I'm sure that Robert Short tackled this in his Gospel According to Peanuts --before the recent Michaelis bio, the most extensive critical treatment of Schulz's work in print-- but I have to wonder if the use of Beethoven's birthday in the strip, coming so close to Christmas, is another aspect of the religiosity of Peanuts, some sort of parable about empty ceremony or advertising. It's funny, I've never really thought about it before. For some, Beethoven is on a Christ-level of greatness (plus, he actually existed), and therefore an apt metaphor for Baby Jesus and his season. I always thought this sign business was hilarious but I also always suspected I was missing something: a function of what Jonathan Franzen called "the koanlike inscrutability" of Schulz's humour.



Anyway, with all this snow, I'm put in mind of how Peanuts seems to contain the most extensive treatment of snow and winter of any comic, with the possible exception of some theoretical Scandinavian or Inuit strip I have yet to encounter. Of course, you could pick almost any subject and Peanuts will have treated it exhaustively, from football to philosophy, from World War I to worms --it was a smart strip that ran for 50 years. (And with the handy index in Fantagraphics' new Complete Peanuts, you can actually look these things up.) Winter holds a central place in the iconography of the strip, not just as a marker for the passage of time and the basis for seasonal gags, but as a metaphor for psychological states and the various major themes of the strip.



I'm sure Schulz liked winter --he certainly liked to play hockey. Sometimes, though, it does seem like he's stretching it a bit, playing on what he thinks other people feel about the season, and poking at those feelings as bit.



Like everything in the strip, snow has its bad side, something capable of instilling terminal ennui and a soul-blackening, body melting, shivering dread.

Speaking of which, I wonder if Canada is ever mentioned in the strip? That would be a grim series of strips. Back to the index...



Next time: the forecast calls for more snow
Part 2
Part 1

Evel Knievel: Ghost Rider

Evel Knievel, 1938-2007

Evel Knievel, the daredevil motorcycle stuntman and marketing genius, died yesterday. Born Robert Craig Knievel in Butte, Montana, Knievel became a prominent cultural figure in the 1970s as a result of skilled showmanship and several spectacular stunts, several of which brought him grievous bodily harm along with millions of dollars.

Like many men my age, as a young boy I was a fan of Knievel and eagerly awaited his many tv appearances. Contributing to this interest was the line of Knievel toys I coveted and which were relentlessly marketed to me through a variety of media. It may seem strange that a Canadian youngster would be interested in this red-white-and-blue costumed, all-American motorcycle-man, but as a young comic book fan in the 1970s, Knievel's presence and influence were unavoidable.

To start with, Ideal Toys advertised Knievel toys on the back covers of Marvel comics for a period of what seemed like years. Knievel was a natural fit for the Marvel audience and for the Marvel decade that spawned a horde of long-haired monster, barbarian, kung-fu, and rock star comics. The "bad boy"-sounding name and often-gory results of his stunts, combined with the fearlessness and costume of a superhero, made him appear a comic book character come to life, and I could imagine him traveling across America, like Howard the Duck or Bill Bixby on the Incredible Hulk tv show, helping people with their problems and jumping over tanks of sharks.

As Scott Shaw! explains here, Knievel was also the star of his own comic book, a giveaway produced for Ideal Toys and included with the purchase of the toys. The comic tells the story of how Knievel uses several of his trade-marked vehicles to foil a mysterious villain's plot against a racetrack, Scooby-Doo style. The Canadian connection here is that the book was likely illustrated by Hamilton-born Superman artist Win Mortimer.

Coincidentally, yesterday I purchased a partial Mystery Hoard of 1970s comic books, several of which feature Evel Knievel ads. The one at the top of this article was found on the back cover of Son of Satan #8, a Marvel comic from 1976 that also features full-page ads for Hostess Cupcakes, The Six Million Dollar Man's "Mission Control Center", and Ricochet Racers. The ad prominently features Evel's son, Robbie Knievel, who grew up to be a major daredevil as well.

Here's another ad, from the back cover of Tomb of Dracula #41 (1975), pitching Knievel as an adventure hero in the mold of the G.I.Joe and Big Jim dolls:



(I can't help but wonder if my discovery of this Hoard, mostly made up of the sort of more outre and blasphemous titles that alternately shocked, frightened, fascinated, and imperiled my mortal soul during my Catholic boyhood, was in some manner a portent or harbinger of Knievel's death! All of these comics, from Jack Kirby's New Gods to Steve Gerber's Omega the Unknown, are obsessed with themes of death, the afterlife, capes, and pointy collars. And I discovered them only hours before I heard of Knievel's death on the radio in my car.)



Perhaps the most lasting legacy of Evel Knievel, besides an industry of daredevils, racers, and monster truck rallies, can be found in the comics that he was featured in and inspired. He was the obvious inspiration for the Johnny Blaze character, a circus motorcycle rider who is transformed into the flaming-skulled, demonic Ghost Rider, later described as "Evel Knievel meets Faust". As well, he seems to have been the inspiration for the earlier Hell-Rider, featured in a series published by Skywald in 1971.



While Knievel never "landed" a full comic book series, his rival and thunder-stealer The Human Fly did successfully make the jump to four colours in 1977 and drove on for 19 issues until the Marvel decade came to an end in 1979. Based on real-life stuntman Rick Rojatt's escapades, the comic actuallly co-starred Ghost Rider in one issue. Just like Win Mortimer, the mysterious Rojatt is rumoured to be Canadian as well, and is the subject of an upcoming documentary by Tony Babinski. (By contrast, the very un-Canadian Team America was a lacklustre 1980s version of the 70s stuntman comics mini-genre.) Just like his toys and the man himself, these comics were gaudy, gory classics that promised more than they delivered.

R.I.P. Evel Kneivel, stuntriding superhero. The legend rides on in the lost comics of the 1970s.