Congrats to ADDTF for one solid year of reading comics naked.

Also, welcome back ADD and In Sequence.

Did I miss anyone?

 
The final flight of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry



"For me, this is the loveliest and the saddest landscape in the world. It's the same landscape as the one on the preceeding page, but I've drawn it one more time to be sure you see it clearly. It's here that the little prince appeared on Earth, then disappeared." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, from the Little Prince.

The grapevine is a weird and wonderful thing. I went to the bar last night, and one of the DJs took me aside and told me that the plane of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, writer and artist of The Little Prince, had finally been found 60 years after its disappearance.

The Little Prince is one of the most popular books ever printed, apparently surpassed only by The Bible and Das Capital in worldwide sales. A daredevil pilot first and foremost, Saint-Exupéry took on a reconnaissance mission for the Allied forces on the morning of July 31st, 1944. He never returned. His bravery and creative endeavours have been lionized in France and many other nations, with his mysterious disappearance only fueling his legendary stature. Some claim that his plane was better off left unfound, that no light should be shed on this enigma for fear of destroying its mystique. Others counter that while the plane was found, Saint-Exupéry's body was not, and the mystery continues unabated.

This article at the Christian Science Monitor is at least as good as any other, though Google will provide you with many takes on the story, if you choose.

"He dropped out of the glorious sky. We can say nothing more." - Patrick Grandjean, a French Ministry of Culture marine archaeologist.
posted by Steven at 8:17 PM

 
Chiba!



"You know, Steve, you're the only other person I can think of who could have made a movie like that..." - My pal, R.

Back when the first Kill Bill came out, the outrageous action and cool costumes inspired quite a mighty thread dedicated to the movie over on Shane's board. Unfortunately, though there are still quite a few sweet pieces left in the thread, some of the best have disappeared.

One contributor whose work is gone is comic supahstar Cameron Stewart, though someone had the foresight to save them and place the work alongside pieces by fellow inkslingers Kagan McLeod and Sam Hiti.

My favourite Kill Bill picture, the one featured at the top of this post, is courtesy of the wonderous stylings of the mysterious Bengal, easily one of the most-loved artists on Shane's, which is quite an achievement in itself. The only way Kill Bill could have been better is if it looked like that.
posted by Steven at 11:33 AM

 
Free Comic Thursday - Male Call

"There was enough death and blood and muck going on. This was no place for that." - Milton Caniff.

Best known for his groundbreaking stint on Terry and the Pirates, and his preceding and successive strips Dickie Dare and Steve Canyon, respectively, Milton Caniff also created an immensely popular comic that was rarely seen by "civilians". Male Call was one of many comics created specifically for military consumption during the war. It combined Caniff's signature compostion, brush line and snappy patter with elements that wouldn't normally be tolerated back home, like excessive pin-up style cheesecake and sexually suggestive dialogue. Hell, it wasn't even accepted overseas at times.

The strip was a real challenge for Caniff. Because military personnel were constantly moving about, he couldn't rely on the kind of serialization for which he was famous because the soldiers might not have steady access to the strip week to week. And while he was well-known for the meticulous detail of military vehicles and insignias he showcased in Terry, there was even more pressure on Male Call from the men in the service who had embraced the strip and expected perfection from it. When Caniff screwed up, boy howdy, did he ever hear about it. To top it all off, Caniff did each and every Male Call strip for free, willingly and obligingly, even when a single strip took as long as a week's worth of Terrys, or when one of his strips was rejected with no more reason than a simple "no" circled in red pencil on his work. In fact, all royalties for the reprint editions of Male Call, even those collected after the war was over, were donated to the Air Force Aid Society.

In 1946, realizing her duty was over, Male Call's star, Miss Lace, exited the scene never to reappear on newsprint again, though she promised to return if she was ever needed. Whenever called upon by veterans' organizations for a Miss Lace pin-up, Caniff always consented, never forgetting his own duty to bring a bit of cheer to those who had fought in World War II.

So, what are you waiting for? 112 strips by the greatest storyteller in the history of comics from his artistic peak! Hop to it, So'jer!
posted by Steven at 2:00 PM

 
Alley Oop

How can I have a distinctive locution if I don't even know what the word means?

One of the founding members of the Great Canadian Shield of Comic Blogging, Salgood Sam has written a post detailing his experiences on retouching classic Gasoline Alley strips for Drawn & Quarterly's upcoming collections, and how getting in that close has caused him to re-evaluate Frank King's work.

Once again, here's a 141-batch of King's Gasoline Alley strips, ableit unrestored ones, if you're interested.
posted by Steven at 1:51 PM

 
Joyeux Noel

While even the lowest selling comics from the top comic book publishing companies seem to be reprinted and repackaged almost immediately these days, comic strips haven't fared quite so well. Sure, we have Schulz's earliest material becoming available, Krazy Kat and Gasoline Alley getting the treatment they deserve, and a handful of others, but most classic strips are either out-of-print or have never even been seen outside of their initial runs in the newspapers. This is in direct contrast to the heyday of the comic strip reprints almost two decades ago, when it seemed as if just about every small press comic publisher had a series or three on the run.

Hit especially hard by this drought are the adventure strips. Back in the day, you could count on reprints of Buz Sawyer, Johnny Hazard, Rip Kirby, King of the Mounted, and Terry and the Pirates among many others. If you're anything like me you wouldn't let a little thing like out-of-print books and periodicals from decades ago stop you from digging these titles up, but hopefully you're probably nothing like me, and if that's the case you'd have a difficult time finding good ol' fashioned two-fisted newsprint adventure. That's not to say you can't still find the odd smattering of comic publishers putting up the good fight, among them Checker with Steve Canyon and Dick Tracy or Comics Revue, apparently still going strong despite not having an up-to-date site.

Enter Big Fun.

Dedicated to reprinting classic American adventure strips like the ones I mentioned above, if the first issue is any indicator Big Fun looks as if it's determined to take a page out of Dragon Lady Press' Classic Adventure Strips and straddle the line between dedicating each volume to a sole feature and breaking stories up into bite-sized anthology pieces. Personally, that's exactly the kind of presentation I prefer. The first issue is a real humdinger, with a complete Captain Easy story by Leslie Turner, Roy Crane's replacement and an artist whose strips I've never seen before. If you want to see the masterful work done by Turner's predecessor, Big Fun has started to post Crane's version of the characters online, along with a short autobiography by the cartoonist himself. They also promise to showcase advertisements and other interesting rarities by classic cartoonists to round out their selection.

However, the real show-stopper to their publication would have to be in reprinting Noel Sickles' Scorchy Smith. Sickles was a friend and contemporary of Milton Caniff, reknowned artist of Terry and the Pirates, considered one of the greatest artist of the adventure strips. Caniff has acknowledged that it was Sickles who created his technique of heavily applying heavy pools of ink in just the right spots to fake realism on a daily deadline, a style that was adopted by numerous artists not long after its creation. Sharing a studio together, their styles became so intertwined that both artists were known to ghost each others strips during crunch time. Sickle's gained from Caniff's masterful storytelling, an attribute in which Sickle's wasn't as strong in, and Caniff acquired a way of working that he refined over the remainder of his career. Sickles lasted in comics only a short time, moving onto a highly successful career as an illustrator. Though his name is not as well-known as Caniff's, Sickles' is still considerably respected in artists' circles, unknown by the general populace but embraced and emulated by those lucky to come across his work. I'd have to say I'm one of them, as Sickles is one of the top three influences on my own artwork.
posted by Steven at 3:34 AM

 
Lil' Folks

"You should keep drawing those kids, Sparky. They're kind of good." - Frank Wing, a colleague of Schulz's at Art Instruction Inc., a correspondence school with which Schulz had once been a student. During that time Wing had given him a C+ for the lesson "Drawing of Children".

It's been a little over a month since I received Charles Schulz's Lil' Folks for my birthday from J. It is by far one of the nicest, sweetest, most thoughtful gifts I have ever received. See, Charles Schulz is my favourite cartoonist. I own nearly 100 books by or about Schulz, including biographies, religious and psychological examinations of his work and collections of his Christian teen gag cartoons (which I should really talk about here sometime. They're great stuff). This sickness even prompted my brother to rename me Old Man Wintle.

I have little doubt that Lil' Folks is the second most important comic release of the year, beat out only by the first volume of the Complete Peanuts series. I really wasn't expecting much more from the book than a simple reprinting of all 135 of the Li'l Folks cartoons themselves, with maybe the obligatory biographical introduction, but editor Derrick Bangs, with the help of the Charles M. Schulz museum, really went all out. Within the first few pages of the introduction the reader is treated to both of Schulz's Just Keep Laughing gag pages for Topix, a Catholic comic magazine, followed by his two contributions to the Minneapolis Tribune (straight from Schulz's scrapbook, complete with scotch tape around the edges), a sample of the final version of Li'l Folks as seen upon a full page of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and finally a small selection of his 17 Saturday Evening Post gags, which, if anything, whets the appetite for even more Schulz obscurities. All this is presented in the first 14 pages of the book, along with a short history of Schulz's hirings, firings and rejections during those lean years before he became the most commerically successful visual artist in history. It's fascinating stuff, and I can honestly say that I would have picked up those 14 pages all on their own.

Although I prefer the more expressionist pen line Schulz took on in later years, I also have a fondness for the slick craft with which he took to using a brush early in his career. It's intriguing to watch the rapid development Schulz undertook on his first regular stint. In addition to the line quality, Schulz moves very quickly from his earlier representational style to the minimalism that he would carry through into Peanuts. I'd be very interested to know what comics, advertising or other artwork inspired him to take a more stylized, modern look. Most of the elements that would later make up Peanuts come into place in rough form in Li'l Folks first. The anthromophism of the family beagle, sophisticated language coming from the mouths of babes, cruelty in life and love, and those big round heads. You'll also find prototypes for later Peanuts characters like Pig Pen, Schroeder, and Patty to name a few. Charlie Brown actually appears four times, and with each instance he looks entirely different from the last. Taken straight off the newsprint they were originally published on, the artwork suffers slightly from the vagaries of the press. If you're like me, this only adds to the fun, as you can take the time out to count all the missing eyeballs, which were little more than black dots carelessly wiped out in the printing process (three on one page!). It's obvious from the earliest work in this volume, especially in comparison to the last half, that he may not have been ready for the big time when starting out on Li'l Folks. It's entirely possible that if Schulz hadn't paid his dues in the pages of the Pioneer Press he may not have moved onto greater things as soon as he eventually did.

Every Li'l Folks page is presented on the right side, while on the left Bangs includes comments on character development, references to current events, and common themes and repetition within the Li'l Folks pages. These are all cross-referenced according to the date of publication, so on a page with the kids' unseen hockey playing grandma, you can find her subsequent gags where she tackles baseball and football. As if this weren't enough, there's an index at the back for your convenience, with entries like ping-pong, the Bastille, and Albert Payson Terhune to name a few. The most surprising aspect of the Li'l Folks cartoons is how so many of them were recycled in later Peanuts strips. I'm not just talking about reusing a premise. Schulz actually took gags from Li'l Folks and reused dialogue and situations wholesale. Quite possibly the most shocking example of this is in the use of Peanuts very first gag, printed in a Li'l Folks page well over a year before Schulz started that strip. Perhaps the best use of the annotation pages is in not only mentioning those instances in which Schulz reused a particular gag, but in actually reprinting the Peanuts strip for comparison. At least half the annotation pages showcase a Peanuts strip or two, enough of which to nearly make a full reprint volume upon itself. Most of these strips are from the first year of Peanuts publication, and although the Complete Peanuts is now available, many of them had never been reprinted before and were therefore actually presented in Li'l Folks for the first time anywhere. It's almost a teaser for the Complete Peanuts volume.

Perhaps most importantly, Li'l Folks is pretty damn funny, especially for someone's formative work.

So far, Lil' Folks is only available through the Charles M. Schulz Museum or through Fantagraphics who is also processing orders in co-operation with the museum.
posted by Steven at 12:23 PM

 
Priorities

You know what's somewhat disturbing? That a site which I update on a daily basis, without exception, doesn't generate 1/5th the visits that a site which I rarely get a chance to update seems to get. While I'm at it, maybe I should give up on waiting for the New York Times to do a piece on Flat Earth.
posted by Steven at 12:52 AM