Who Says They Can't?

A bit of common 'wisdom' in our society is "Those who can - Do; Those who can't - Teach."

This notion is born out of our society's one true religion - Wealth*. Obviously, they'd be somewhere making more money than the ridiculously small amount the caretakers of the next generation are paid. Nobody in their right mind would be wasting their life making less money than was possible for them, right?

I mean, it's not like the education and future of our children is something that we consider any sort of priority. In fact, in today's world those both are considered resources to be mined and exploited for immediate wealth at the expense of future generations.

So, of course, those who Teach can't Do.

Allow me to offer a counter argument -

This lovely painting of Doctor Strange comes from the cover of Rocket Blast Comicollector, a fanzine from the 60s & 70s that featured a great pool of talent and the print equivalent of the dealer's room from conventions of later eras. I've been digging through old issues hunting for some of Grass Green's work from the time, but so far it's mostly been his contemporaries like Ronn Foss and Biljo White that have turned up.

Along the way, i stumbled across this painted cover to RBCC #80 and was reminded of the artist - John Adkins Richardson. Odds are, you're not familiar with him, eh?

Here's some of his comic work from the same year, coming to us from Wally Wood's magazine, Witzend #8. Because this story has nudity, only sample pages are presented here. The full version of the story is included in the mirror of this post in our adult content 'back room' at The Other Voice Of ODD!

From the following year (1972) in Fever Dreams #1, here's the first three pages of The Unicorn Quest. (Complete story in the The Other version of this post in the back room)

As we see above, the man can Do, but the reason you likely haven't heard of him is because he chose to teach. Last i knew, he was the Professor Emeritus of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. He's got a few books out on the subject, too, including Modern Art And Scientific Thought (published the same year as the story above), The Complete Book Of Cartooning, and Art: The Way It Is.

We really need to drop a lot of silly, counterproductive notions like this from our collective thought.
And, y'know, invest in our children's future like any rational society would do.

art by John Adkins Richardson from RBCC #80, Witzend #8, and Fever Dreams #1 (1971, 1972)

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*(People may talk religion and teach children morality but, on the societal level, all that goes out the window and into the trash as soon as "real world" decisions need making. The one thing we truely worship is Money and, despite the frequent misquotes, it's Love Of Money that is the root of all evil. (Though that's not quite true - a great deal of evil is born of mere indifference and casual disregard, too))

In The Days Before The Panther Ruled

When it comes to oddly unique stories, the coolest tale for Ebon doesn't appear on the pages of the comic. Cover-dated 1970, Ebon was published in December of 1969 in San Franciso when the undergrounds were in full bloom.

Larry Fuller had a desire to tell the story of an authentic black super hero, an idea that started a few years earlier, while he was still serving in the Air Force. After returning to civilian life and moving to San Francisco, he ran into what might seem like an insurmountable problem to any other man. He couldn't find an artist for the book. He did, however, have the G.I. Bill, which provided for college education for service veterans. So to accomplish his dream, he used it to go to art school and learn to draw the book - both pencils and inks.

While the comic suffers for the lack of a more experienced and polished inker, it's amazing to think it was created by someone who hadn't the skills to even attempt it only a 2 or 3 years before that point. The book stands as a testament to what ambition and drive can accomplish when a man has a vision and the will to achieve it.

The entire story runs 26 pages, so we'll be trimming a bit for length -

 Our hero is taken up to the ship, and learns of Oju and his people - a once fearsome warrior race now dedicated to the prevention of destruction and violence. He explains that centuries ago "our greatest explorer, Jom, came here and found life!"

Jom's Heart acts as a catalyst, foreshadowing the Inhuman's Terrigenesis in later Marvel comics, and is rendered comatose. Oju's machines tend to Valentine while he undergoes his metamorphosis, and soon...

 The book was published by Gary Arlington, a San Francisco comic shop owner, and it had exceedingly low distribution - fewer than 100 copies were sold.

Without being able to generate the necessary audience, issue 2 was never produced. Last i knew, Fuller still had designs on continuing the character, and mentions intent to do so on his website. However, it doesn't seem to have been updated in this century, so there's no telling there.

Quite interestingly, Fuller later wound up working together with Grass Green - the creator of Super Soul American from our previous post. As yet, i've been unable to find copies of those comics. Damn.

A little over a year later, another small publisher produced an even harder to find comic:

Written and published by Tom Floyd, with strong artwork from Eric O'Kelley, the book starred Steven Thomas who is transformed by a fairly generic laboratory accident into the Soul Wonder Of The World, with powers of Strength, Invulnerability and Flight. Leader Comics operated out of Indiana, which likely didn't help the distribution.

As we've seen above, distribution was a big problem for the independent publisher. There was, however, one black hero who got his own title from a major publisher way back in 1965...

We'll talk about Lobo next time...

Blue Monday, not Monday Blues

Fighting the urge to draw back deeper into the cave today. Nearly Monday Blues instead of

Instead of withdrawing, how about we dig something up out of the darkness? Say maybe an Un-comic with a Frank Frazetta cover for a Neal Adams comic strip? That work for you?
Hope so...


NOTE: The images from this post contain nudity, and thus have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics. (Fair warning, there's not a whole lot of nudity, but a lot of oddity. And you do get a naked cover from Frazetta)
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.


Ah, 70s....  how we miss you.

Dragula by Tony Hendra and Neal Adams from National Lampoon #20 (1971)

Losing Len

While i was recovering here, little attention was paid to the outside world. When peeking out again, i find we lost another one of the Greats on Sunday.
I'm sure you all have already heard Len Wein has left us, and many others have spoken on his huge body of work and lasting creations, ranging from Swamp Thing to Wolverine. Here's J.M. DeMatteis's personal remembrance of the man. He'll tell you far more, and fare more eloquently, than i could.
So, i'm not gong to try to encompass his career, or tell you how reliably entertaining his work was. I'm just going to point out that you've probably only seen a fraction of it. Besides the huge number of books he worked on at the Big Two, he wrote plenty for other publishers, such as Warren and Skywald, where we'll be going today. Here's the introduction to The Bravados by Len Wein from Wild West Action #1:

Sure, he was famous for writing Horror and Superhero books. Did ya know he wrote Westerns, too? And more. There was just one boundary limiting him.
He wrote good stuff.

The Bravados by Len Wein, Syd Shores and Mike Esposito for Wild West Action #1 (1971)

Kirby's Dynamic New Aliens (King Kirby 095)

We looked previously at the introduction of  Jack Kirby's world into DC's mainstream, with the Hairies providing the first glimpse of what was to follow. While Jack unveiled the Cadmus Project, the Evil Factory, and their varied offspring in the man stories, he also ran little 2 page bits to build more background for his world.
But first, he ran one of his forward thinking essays to get us thinking, too-

One of the many reasons i always enjoy when The King is writing his own stories is his tendency to explore thoughts and possibilities that society in general hasn't really yet noticed. The essays on Machine Man are another good example of the sort of deep thinking that can lie behind the wild tales we read.
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Now here are the other 2-pagers, beyond the one we've already seen:

To wrap this one up, here's Kirby's pin-up of one of the greatest D.N.Aliens of all:

Dubblilex knows you want to argue - but don't.

text & Jack Kirby page art from Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #s 135, 143, 144, 146 & 148 (1971-1972)