Rip Jagger's Other Dojo

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". ...

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 po...

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...

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 a...

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...