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From the early days of cartooning until the market went south in the 1980s, there are a lot of humor publications (and would-be humor publications) that all followed the same basic format: black and white gag cartoons, jokes, odd little articles and features, and the occasional pin-up girl. Many of these publications sported cartoons from cartoonists who would go on to careers at the top cartoon markets like Playboy and The New Yorker, and many of these publications served as dumping grounds by cartoonists who sold off their rejects: selling a dozen cartoons at once that had already made the rounds for $15 each was a quick $180, a way to monetize finished work that no one else wanted. Hey, cartooning is a business, too.
The publications had names like Best Cartoons, Broadway Laughs, Army Fun, Laff Time, Cartoon Carnival, Cartoon Capers and Good Humor and were published by companies like Charlton (at the same time they were publishing their comic books) and Crestwood and Magazine Management. You can guess the target audience by some of the titles.
One of my favorites of that era was the digest-sized Army Laughs (one of many similar titles published by Crestwood), which featured a high-volume of risqué military-based cartoons – almost all of them sexist, along with the usual jokes, text features and teasing pin-up girls with funny captions.
Click to continue reading FORGOTTEN COMICS: ARMY LAUGHS with Bill Wenzel
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Marvel Comics Review: Amazing Spider-Man #601
Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, Marvel Comics,
Rating: ** 1/2*
As readers know from my postings here at Comix 411, I just recently began reading Amazing Spider-Man after a long absence. I was turned off by the “Brand New Day” storyline and refused to collect Spider-Man. Well, the latest Amazing Spider-Man annual got me interested in Spidey again after a great story revolving around Ben Reilly. I also really enjoyed issue #600 of Amazing and was looking forward to this issue after we saw the return of Mary Jane at the end of #600. Since Amazing Spider-Man began being published three times a month, we’ve had a revolving team of writers and artists. In this issue we see Mark Waid take over the writing chores and, unfortunately, I was disappointed.
Mark Waid has done some great comic book work in the past. He’s the reason I love the characters of Captain America and the Flash (Wally West). His stories and the development of these characters was amazing and textbook for what I consider good comic book writing. Over the past few years, Mark Waid’s work hasn’t really interested me all that much.
The story opens up with Peter Parker in bed with a hangover from Aunt May’s wedding. He notices that he’s not alone and instead of Mary Jane being in bed with him, he discovers that he slept with his roommate Michelle Gonzales. Peter has no memory of their night together, which upsets her and results in her storming out. Thinking that he no longer has a roommate or a place to live Peter spends half the time this issue trying to find a new place to live. The other half is spent trying to remember when and where he was going to meet up with Mary Jane. While at the wedding reception, Peter got up the courage to talk with her and they made a date to talk.
Click to continue reading Marvel Comics Review: Amazing Spider-Man #601
Harry Partridge is the brainchild behind this clever spoof of what could have been a late 80s action/adventure cartoon. Hailing from the UK, the Swindon native has cultivated a strong following on his YouTube channel, Happy Harry Toons, with nearly 16,000 subscribers to date.
A renaissance wunderkind, the 21-year-old has written, directed, scored, acted, et cetera all of his cartoons; lulling viewers into a false sense of security with a clean exterior and friendly characters, then beating them senseless with sledgehammer punchlines. Currently, Happy Harry Toons has fifteen of Partridge’s unique animated sequences online for viewing; ranging from 15-second blips to two and half minute shorts.
You can read about the talented indie-animator’s current projects on Newsgrounds. Partridge gives a candid interview with KittySneezes.com on his artistic influences and work process. His devientART profile is a great source for his still work and concept art for projects in development. And if his blog ever starts up, his first and only post from January 2008, can be read here.
Occasionally, I find things that are so weird, I just have to post them. There are a lot of bloggers who post random panels of comic book weirdness. Mike Sterling does it over at Progressive Ruin; Mark Waid does it at his Boom! blog with Great Moments In Comics; and so does Steven Thompson at Booksteve’s Library. That’s just three from the many hundreds.
Click to continue reading DAVY CROCKETT, KING OF THE FREUD FRONTIER
Marvel Comics Review: Captain America: Reborn #2
Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, Marvel Comics,
Rating: *** 1/2*
Another very good issue from the team of Ed Brubaker and Bryan Hitch. Captain America: Reborn picks up right where issue one left off. Steve Rogers is not dead and his friends in the Marvel Universe are trying to rescue him. Steve is stuck in time as his consciousness is living inside his body in the past. He keeps jumping from one moment in his life to the next. In the last issue, we saw Steve as he stormed the beaches on D-Day and in this issue we see moments such as a battle between him and Master Man and Steve visiting President Roosevelt. He also goes back to the moment where he took the Super-Soldier Serum - more on that later.
Back in the present, the current Captain America, Bucky Barnes, and the Black Widow are battling the Dark Avengers and Norman Osborn’s HAMMER. They are looking for the device that the Red Skull and Arnim Zola used that resulted in Steve Rogers getting stuck in time after his assassination. Unfortunately, the Dark Avengers are able to defeat and capture them. They are interrogated by Norman Osborn.
Under the influence of the Red Skull, Sharon Carter shot Steve Rogers. However, there was another assassin who took part in the crime: Crossbones. To the general public, he is the lone gunman and has been incarcerated for the crime alongside his girlfriend, the Red Skull’s daughter, Sin. Norman Osborn has a discussion with them and a deal is struck. Which brings us back to Bucky and the Black Widow. Osborn is interrogating them and reveals that he has released the information to the public that Sharon Carter was in on the assassination and that she is now wanted by the law. Bucky and Widow are angry of course, but they’re powerless as Osborn tells Black Widow that he is going to release her, but she must bring Sharon Carter back with her or he will kill Bucky. Why is Norman doing this? Power. The deal he made with Crossbones and Sin is to help bring about the return of Steve Rogers as Captain America and I think he needs Sharon to help bring this about.
A Captain America leading his Dark Avengers, under his control? How deliciously evil! Go, Norman! Norman Osborn has really become the number one bad guy in the Marvel Universe over the past year. Kudos to Marvel for really using the character in this manner after years of simply just being another resurrected Spider-Man villain. Norman has become Marvel’s answer to Lex Luthor.
Click to continue reading Marvel Comics Review: Captain America: Reborn #2
DC Comics Review: Justice Society of America #29
Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,
Rating: ***
I have given Geoff Johns a lot of praise in numerous posts over the past few months. So I won’t go into that here. I mentioned before how I was disappointed that he’d be leaving the Justice Society of America and hoped that the new writers would do well because I love these characters. After a two-issue guest stint by Jerry Ordway, the new writing team of Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges begins here in issue #29. Jesus Merino is the new artist for the title and begins his run here as well. I liked his work here. It’s strong and it reminds me a bit of the work that was done by the previous artist, Dale Eaglesham. Willingham and Sturges do a good job, but they didn’t knock my socks off with their first issue in control.
The two writers are best known for their critically acclaimed work on the Vertigo title Jack of Fables a spin-off of the Vertigo title Fables which is also written by Willingham. I’ve never read these titles, so this is the first time I’ve been introduced to their work. The story here was okay. It revolves around two things that may be connected somehow by the end of the story arc. Flash discovers a black orb in the JSA headquarters. It’s a mysterious orb and the team doesn’t know what it is or where it came from. After some investigating, the team discovers that the orb is in fact their teammate Obsidian. Somehow his body has transformed into this orb and Mister. Terrific takes it upon himself to investigate why this has happened.
A smaller side plot is also intertwined between the two major events that occur in this issue. In this issue we see two new junior members join the team. One is a sidekick to the current Mister America. Evidently the Golden Age Mister America had a sidekick called the All-American Kid. I did some research and I didn’t find a reference to the character on Wikipedia so this might be a retcon. The original Kid was killed during World War II and the new one is the great-nephew to the original. The second is a young boy named King Chimera. He is the son of a Golden Age character named King Standish. A little known character who didn’t show up immediately after a Google search. He’s arrogant and has the power to create illusions.
Click to continue reading DC Comics Review: Justice Society of America #29
DC Comics Review: Detective Comics #855
Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,
Rating: ***
The first issue of the new Detective Comics featuring Batwoman as the lead character was very good. I was not expecting to like it, but I was very surprised at how good it turned out. Unfortunately, the second issue did not thrill me as much the first one did. This issue wasn’t bad, in fact it was pretty good. I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I did the last one.
In the last issue we saw Batwoman was looking to find out who was the new leader of the Religion of Crime (ROC). She discovered that the new leader was a woman who looks like a Goth version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice. The cliffhanger for the last issue had Batwoman confronting Alice and shooting her. We weren’t sure if the gun was a real gun or not and I thought that if it was, it would be a cool twist to the Batman universe to have one of Bruce’s “followers” use a gun. It would have been very cool if DC went this route and it would have added to the story of Dick Grayson now being Batman, but DC did not go in this direction as the gun that Batwoman used was not a real gun. It was a gun that shoots pepper spray bullets.
Batwoman takes Alice away from her minions and uses something to dilute the effects of the pepper spray. Batwoman wants to know what the ROC wants with her. In a very cool scene, artist J.H. Williams III does something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in a comic. He presents the POV of the story from the inside of Alice’s mouth. There we see her fiddling around with a razor blade that she has in the inside of her mouth and then bites down on it and uses it as a knife to slash Batwoman in the face. Very cool. My hat is off to Mr. Williams on his work on this issue. The way he tells the story written by Greg Rucka is very different. It kind of reminds me of the work I saw Tony Harris do on the Starman title in the 90s.
Click to continue reading DC Comics Review: Detective Comics #855
COMIC CON INTERNATIONAL: Booth Babes and the Ultraverse
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,
And here we go with the final installment of Old Comic Book Convention Photos week. I think everyone knows what a “Booth Babe” is – she’s the model-like girl at a convention who usually works in an exhibitor’s display area or prowls around in front of it, chatting with potential customers and repeating all the talking points she’s been given for the day. She might even be handing out product literature or free samples and you willingly take it because “Hey, a pretty girl is giving me stuff.” You could always find booth babes at car shows, boat shows, and consumer electronics shows like CES. The same types of places where Adam West might show up to lean against one of the original Batmobiles.
Back in the 1990s, there was an explosion of booth babes at comic book conventions, usually at a publisher’s booth. Sometimes they were actually on staff at the publishing company, sometimes not. Thanks to the explosion of Image Comics in the early 1990s, there was a tremendous increase in costumed characters as well – not the fans dressed in costume, but professional models, male and female, hired by the publisher to wear custom-made costumes based on characters in their books. They would hang around the booth or stroll around on the floor, mingling with the fans, driving traffic back to their booth and posing for “Hey! Look at me with a pretty girl at the convention!” photos with tubby fans in too-small X-Men t-shirts. Image had them, Harris Publications trotted out a couple of different Vampirellas, and other publishers jumped in.
Malibu Comics, always able to identify and then exploit a trend, had their own costumed characters with the launch of the Ultraverse in 1993.
Click to continue reading COMIC CON INTERNATIONAL: Booth Babes and the Ultraverse
You might not be aware of it, but you may be driving a version of the Batmobile. Throughout the vehicle’s history, artists and filmmakers alike used popular car base models to construct the Caped Crusader’s famous ride. The History of the Batmobile website indexes more than 200 variations on Batsy’s wheels, and provides information on the inspiration behind each version.
For example, the first Batmobile is a copy of a RED 1936 Cord. From 1970-1987, it seems Batman drove a pretty standard black corvette (complete with “battering ram” and “armor plated body panels”, of course).
I looked for my old Ford Tempo GL, a maroon four-door sedan with a broken air conditioner, but came up empty. I searched for Honda Civics, or hybrids, to see if Batman was becoming more eco-friendly in the current times, but found gas-guzzlers in their place.
Now, with “stealth mode” available in Toyota Priuses, it might not be too long before Bruce Wayne goes “green,” trading in his 10 mpg (highway) hummer-tank for a sleek EV-1. But maybe not, because after all, muscle cars look more fierce than fuel economy cars. I honestly, can’t see criminals shaking in their boots when when chased by a moped-inspired bat-bike, but that’s just me.
A great comic book resource to have. Enjoy strolling through Batmobile memory lane.
COMIC CON INTERNATIONAL: Brian Pulido, Steven Hughes and Evil Ernie
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials,
Welcome to the next installment of a look into my scrapbook of oddball photos from the San Diego Comic Con, 1990s edition. Malibu Comics started publishing Evil Ernie, written by Brian Pulido and illustrated by Steven Hughes, in December 1991. Ernie was a fantastically psychotic character and it was easy to see that Brian had dreams of an empire – taking Ernie and growing it not only into a series of spin-off comics, but also creating a publishing company that could spread out into movies. I think Ernie started out as a screenplay, but I could be wrong.
At that time, Malibu was mostly a company that published only creator-owned material. Evil Ernie was a creator-owned property - Brian retained all rights and Malibu just had publishing rights. Once Brian’s Malibu contract was completed, he launched not just Evil Ernie but a slew of other projects through his own company, Chaos! Comics.
Click to continue reading COMIC CON INTERNATIONAL: Brian Pulido, Steven Hughes and Evil Ernie
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