The Erotic Art Of Wallace Wood!

Wally Wood was one of the great artists in the history of the comic book form, and one of the most troubled. He was a mercurial figure, starting out on the sci-fi and horror comics of his day in the 50's and elevating to the best of them at EC Comics before broadening out to humor and superheroes and more. He was always it seemed a maverick of sorts, spending a few months at Marvel revising Daredevil, stopping at Tower to develop the THUNDER Agents, beginning Doctor Doom's series, visiting DC to spruce up the Justice Society of America, and all the while working at the edges of the establishment in the Undergrounds with work that the Big Two would never publish, most of it with a distinctive slant on explicit sex.

Much of Wally Wood's notorious sexy stuff was collected some years ago in a French collection titled "Con de Fee" and that title was lifted by Fantagraphics for their relatively modern collection of Wood's "dirty comics".

His racy cartoons kick off the collection, lifted from magazine here and there and science fictional and other wise. 

One of the most famous pieces in the tome is Wood's Malice in Wonderland which takes Dodgson's little darling and retools her, so to speak for National Screw. There are pages dedicated to the Wizard of Ooz also. 

Some oddities I'd never seen before are some sexy fable revisions from a men's magazine called Cavalcade.

Dragonella is included, a very Woodesque fairy tale. 

For Marvel he kicked off their Pussycat series, also in one of the copious men's magazines that were quite common once upon a time. 

Of a more purely satirical form is the infamous Disneyland orgy scene from The Realist Magazine. It's one of the gems in this book and I'm very happy to at long last have it in a hard copy format after admiring it for years online. 

Wood's somewhat gritty pages "My Word" from the ground level  Apple Comix #1 are included as well. 

Wood did some really attractive if naughty covers for Screw Magazine and there are several more than seen here. Some I'd never seen before.

Gang Bang is a flat-out soft-porn comic and features some of Wood's more outrageous takes on popular comic strip characters from across the decades. His voluptuous if dizzy Sally Forth is on hand as well. 

There's lots of other things here such as "The Brave Nude World" originally done for Someday Comics and lots of wacky sexy sci-fi images like the one above which require no comment.  This isn't a collection for those who think comics are for children only. These are not those comics, these are comics for adults, admittedly in some cases adults with a singular focus. Wood's style (which truth told diminishes mightily as the years roll by in this collection) is so spare and clean and sleek that when he uses it for naughty purposes it still resonates with a shimmer less polished porn fails to achieve at all.

I'll let Wally Wood himself (or guys on his staff at least)  handle my usual closing.

The Qualities Of Life!

The pages above by the master of comics Will Eisner appeared in the pornographic magazine National Screw, an attempt by publisher Al Goldstein to broaden the marketplace appeal of his long-running hardcore opinion paper Screw Magazine. One of the things that the work of Will Eisner in the 70's and 80's did for me was to inform how comics could function if aimed at an adult audience. Now folks might consider a prurient magazine like National Screw only "adult" in the limited way the term is used for pornographic materials, but what adult really means when visited by a man of Eisner's perspective and talent is the use of the medium to say something important. The pages of "Will Eisner's The Gleeful Guide to The Qualities of Life" above will no doubt offend many, but that's what proper saitre ought to do and it seems clear to me that it's the attitudes that Eisner is accused of expressing in this work which the piece is actually pointing to and mocking.

Will Eisner produced a number of "Gleeful Guides" to life in the modern era, or at least those parts of it on the fringes of what was once dubbed the counter culture and beyond. 

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Meet Mr. Product!

I picked these two tomes on  a whim and I'm exceedingly glad I did. The United States as a modern society is structured almost completely around the marketplace. Our economy lives and breathes on what we as a populace buy and what we buy is determined rarely by absolute need but by want and that want is guided by the devilishly delightful marketing schemes produced by the myriad ad men and women of the world. When print dominated the delivery systems colorful icons were useful to stop the eye in a sea of advertising and made the sign stand up and out in the sprawling suburban landscape. These two books showcase many of the cute little figures used to humanize the sometimes arcane aspects of modern life. Smiling faces almost always because a light-hearted tone was seen as essential. The same rules that dictated a/most exclusively happy endings in the avalanche of Hollywood offerings dictated that ads make you smile and maybe chuckle and perhaps even laugh. 

I had thought to included a host of the little characters here but then I found this link on which a goodly number are shown and that's good enough I suspect. Check it out to get a real feel for what's in these two books. The compilers have done well in designing a clean package, copious and surprising characters arrayed on pages that never seem cramped, at least to my eye. Enjoy!

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Battlefields Of The Imagination!

Adorning most of the comic books of my early years were copious ads enticing money from the pockets of youngsters already ensnared in the imaginative adventures of some hero or other. They fed on the notion that the impulses demanding action which fed the bristling imaginations of youth would extend yet further. These ads were often well crafted, sometime by the same talents which made the comic story itself, a published variation of the 80's action hero cartoons which blended commerce and entertainment in arguably less than purely fair ways for fanciful youngsters. The classic Roman soldiers ad above by Russ Heath is the most exquisite example. I for my part was made immune to these cries for more money because I simply did not have any more to give. As paltry a sum as a buck ninety-eight seems today it was nearly a full month of comics back then.

Above are many of the classic ads which decorated the comics, the Revolutionary soldiers ad again made by Russ Heath. For all the adventure and excitement they promised to naive youngsters, the truth of them was something else again.

The secret of these ads, the thing which made them viable was that the soldiers whether Roman, Medieval, modern, or  Revolutionary were all two-dimensional -- they were flat and so being were easily crammed into small boxes and so delivered on the numbers promised. Was it a cheat?  Far less than many of these ads found in comics I think, you got soldiers and and being toys they could be played with. That's fair enough I suppose, though sleight of hand is involved still. 

These ads are fondly remembered by folks of my vintage, so much so that parodies such as the one above give a neat chuckle and a warm feeling in the nostalgic heart.

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The Good Guys Of The Galaxy!

Contained in The Complete Cosmo the Merry Martian collection from Archie Comics is issue #665 of Archie which serves up a clever homage to the Guardians of the Galaxy making use of Archie and Jughead and an offbeat assembly of heroes from across the many decades of the Archie universe.

Like the second iteration of the Guardians themselves, the team is made up of nigh forgotten characters from a host of genres.

One stalwart if MLJ's Golden Age superhero of the animal set -- the mighty Super Duck. While he dropped the Super Duck gig pretty quickly and became a more commonplace figure not unlike his predecessor Donald and his later variant Howard, we have Super Duck here in his full heroic regalia.

Also on hand is a Silver Age great, the space explorer and Buck Roger wannabe turned superhero wannabe the tragically traditionally handsome Captain Sprocket.

Sprocket was a somewhat regular denizen of Archie's Madhouse comic, a magazine which slid between genres almost on a monthly basis.

A case in point is fellow hero the downright weird Captain Pumpernik. Above you see all two pages of his debut appearance in Archie's Madhouse #50. He's a bizarro blend of Bela Lugosi and Buster Crabbe by way of  Lou Costello. 

The final member of this wacko team is Cat Girl who debuted in Adventures of the Fly in Archie's Silver Age attempt to revive its MLJ heroes.

As far as I can find out she appeared in two later issues of The Adventures of the Jaguar a year or so later.

So with this set up you see the similarity. A washed up superhero from another era (Captain Sprocket and Starlord), a crossover talking animal (Super Duck and Rocket Racoon), a deadly femme fatale (Cat Girl and Gamora), and...well I can't make Pumpernik fit unless he's supposed to be Drax the Destroyer (Drax and "Dracs" maybe). That makes Cosmo into Groot and that doesn't work for me though they are both space critters of another era, but I'm glad he's here. I want Jughead to be Groot with his single-minded quest for a snack and of course Archie is Archie. All in all a fun batch of "heroes" and a delightful one-off comic even in these blighted times.

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