It's Alive!

Here is yet one more charming Wally Wood cover, this one for the fanzine EC Lives! Echoes of his classic EC science fiction space covers is evident as well as his yen to drawn petite but buxom women. My favorite part of this are the expressions on the little space animals as they like our hero look upon that which lives. Charm and clarity and even a touch of grace -- beautiful work.

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A Minnesota Woody In King Arthur's Court!

I cannot know, but likely Wally Wood's dream job was drawing the comic strip Prince Valiant. I might be wrong and the answer is Flash Gordon, but the strip Wood had a chance to draw was in fact Valiant. Hal Foster was nearing the end of his tenure on the massive successful comic strip he'd created decades before and was casting about for new talent to take the artistic helm while he continued to write. The call went out and two comic book favorites -- Wally Wood and Gray Morrow were selected to prepare sample pages, pages which actually ran in the strips longstanding continuity. Above is Wally Wood's effort.

Here it is in glorious black and white. Wood was able to mimic Foster's style quite effectively here, thereby hiding his own distinctive flourishes. While not a ghost the new artist was expected to maintain the look and feel of the strip and Wood does a stellar job here. Neither Morrow nor Wood got the gig, which went to John Cullen Murphy. 

Wood of course was no stranger to Prince Valiant in print, having done the definitive spoof of the comic for MAD magazine many years before in a little effort called "Prince Violent". Read the full effort here. 

He'd turn his hand to spoofing the strip again in the Marvel Mini-Comic Prince Violet. But he wasn't done yet. 

Some years later for his porn comic Gang Bang #2 Wood once again visited Camelot and gave Foster's Prince a distinctively naughty turn in "Prince Violate". Notice he Wood makes specific use of the very designs used some years before in his try-out for the official strip itself. In fact those are the best panels in this effort which produced at the end of Wood's career sadly show his diminished talents. It's a raunchy and sometimes funny spoof featuring an abundance of fellatio, but not prime Wood sadly. To see more check it out here, but make sure to clear away the kiddies. 

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A Confidential Update!

Comic Book Confidential is a 1988 film about the purpose of comics and asks an important question, though rarely explicitly. Are comic books art? The film shows that the comics are a significant part of the American landscape, screwed down into the fabric of the culture. As one quirky interview after another unfolds, none exactly like the last (my favorite is one with Dan O'Neill where two buxom babes play pool throughout the discussion) but all of them taken in roughly chronological order as best can be found. The emphasis is clearly on comics of a superheroic nature, though thankfully not to distraction. It was fun to see a Stan Lee in good health and clear voice and Will Eisner too looked fresh as a daisy. Since these giants have gone on it's nifty to be reminded of them in their prime. That goes for Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Feldstein, and Bill Gaines well. Frank Miller is still a youth, full of piss and vinegar. It's a nifty time capsule of a period when comics were thought to be dying a slow steady death but before the 90's utterly changed the game for all the players. 

I imagine most who might travel here have likely seen it, but I hadn't so maybe you are likewise. If  you'd like to do so here it is thanks to the miracle of Youtube. Enjoy!

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His World!

In the pages of EC's Weird Science #22 there's a story titled simply "My World". It was written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Wally Wood. Here is that story in its original art form. That first page in particular is magnificent in the depth of image one can see, reminding me of the misty backgrounds of Skull Island in the original  King Kong of all places.

It's almost like a visit inside the imagination of the creators themselves, or perhaps more particularly Wood himself as his artwork drives this vignette more than most EC offerings. The sprawling capacities of science fiction have rarely been better portrayed.

This story has been often reprinted, but I read it most recently in Comics About Cartoonists - Stories about the World's Oddest Profession from Craig Yoe. 

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Under Cover In Plain Sight!

It seems that the long wished-for discussion on racism in America is finally here. What will be the results of that conversation remain to be seen, and given the steps retreating from racial harmony which have been made in the last several years in the Supreme Court and elsewhere, I am not particularly hopeful. But I'm more optimistic than I was a week ago. In a country where "white privilege" is still up for debate (a spurious one at best) I cannot say with any confidence that people have come far enough. But I'd like to think that not unlike gun regulations, the broader population is actually in more harmony than the relatively few loudmouths who dominate the debate and dominate the donations lists for politicians. Maybe the evidence of our eyes has finally shaken off decades of scales and broken the spell of denial that many white Americans have comforted themselves with so long, and maybe a new way forward can be forged. 

Above is arguably Wally Wood's most famous comic book cover for EC's Shock SupenStories #6. The cover is connected to the story drawn by Wood and written by Al Fieldstein with plot assist by Bill Gaines titled "Under Cover". To read that story check out this link. Wood's artwork is even more compelling in lush black and white than in color and that's saying something indeed. 

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Desert Fox!

Beneath Harvey Kurtzman's evocative and exciting cover for Frontline Combat #3 is a story by Kurtzman which seeks to set a record straight, to clarify the understanding of the horror of the Nazis.

General Erwin Rommel is sometimes seen as a "good Nazi" or something like that. He was a German serving his country in time of war and not really all that keen about the atrocities back in the homeland as he pressed his forces across North Africa and elsewhere. He was rumored to have plotted to kill Hitler at one point, though evidence scant. Hitler purger him nonetheless, a little suicide between enemies for the good of the Reich.

With the assist of up and coming artist Wally Wood, Kurtzman tells his story which contrasts the romanticized accounts of Rommel's bravado and cunning with grotesque and gruesome images of the dead and dying and tortured in the land he fought to defend. Kurtzman is specifically saying that there is no "good Nazi", that all share in the blame for the purges and gas chambers and the lot of it. He makes his point quite poignantly.

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Master Race!

The fascinating collection We Spoke Out - Comic Books and the Holocaust begins its largely chronological survey of comics which addressed the Holocaust with arguably the single finest story to do so -- "The Master Race" by Bernie Krigstein for the debut issue of Impact from the venerated EC Comics.

Beneath the Jack Davis cover is a story which elegantly and (no pun intended) masterfully guides the reader through a frightening tale of an evil man who meets a justice of a sort at long last.

Krigtstein's storytelling, his control of time and space and his fidelity to keeping the reader's eyes exactly where he wants them, makes "Master Race" a compelling eight-page read. Apparently it began as a typical six-page EC yarn, but Krigstein wanted a few more pages to tell the tale properly and adding those two pages caused a deadline to be missed and and a delay of a year before the public was able to encounter this response to the Nazi menace which defined the 20th century. Here in the original is "Master Race" by Bernard Krigstein.

The premise of We Spoke Out is that for a host of political reasons, the Holocaust was not a subject taught or much discussed in America save for popular culture and in particular comic books. The examination of the horrors of the Nazi nightmare are begun magnificently with "Master Race". 

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The Pages Of War!

"War,uh yeah! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"

Edwin Starr was right of course, but let's look at it another way. What is war good for? It made for some damn fine comic books over the decades. March derives its very name from the ancient god of war "Mars", so it's fitting that this month at the Dojo we look at some finest war comics from across the broad spectrum of what the genre has produced. 

At the center will be the best YOe Book yet -- We Spoke Out - Comic Books and the Holocaust. This is a fascinating overview of how the horrific event that transformed the latter half of the twentieth century was seen in comics. There are stories here from the 50's through the modern age, and reflect a broad spectrum of how an attempted genocide created heroes and villains and more. I'll be taking a comic by comic look (as does the book itself) and that means comics from Marvel, EC, DC, Warren, and more. Expect the expected and the unexpected as well as we have classic war yarns and superhero jaunts and other stories besides. 

This seemed also a grand time to fish out that copy of Yossel, April 19, 1943 by Joe Kubert that's been nestled in my collection for years waiting its turn on the night table. This is a highly personal story by perhaps the finest war artist of all time. There are some other Kubert stories I'd like to get as well, to but time will tell.

The Unknown Anti-War Comics features comic books from the defunct and fondly remembered Charlton Comics. The stories might not be as heavy as those in the tomes above, but maybe they are of value nonetheless.

Another weird one is Nuke' Em Classic Cold War Comics Celebrating the End of the World from Hermes Press. This one reprints just two vintage early 50's series - Atomic War and World War III from the little comic house Ace. If these comics are right, we're lucky to be here.

The weekend tent pole reviews will be a of Warren Magazines critically acclaimed Blazing Combat. War comics were once big business, but only if you could get them into military base PX's and this is one comic book magazine that raised the ire of the military brass when they caught wind of its less than gung-ho attitudes about the Vietnam War, then blazing at full tilt on the Asian continent and in the politics of the United States. There are some of the finest war stories ever in these pages and I'm eager to read them all over again.

So that's it (and maybe a few other things as time permits and circumstances demand but it's a packed house), war, war and more war. But tales of war are rarely about war, but about the peace which always seems to brief and so fragile. Join me.

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