Uncomics 002 - Nationally Screwed

NOTE: The images for this article have been moved to our back room following the restructure of this site due to adult content. (Yes, that includes the Will Eisner pages) The text remains for you to decide if you want to go look at the pictures. Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.

I've mentioned that part of my Comic Archeology projects is mining through old men's magazines. Some may think this an odd choice of place to look. So let's take a look at National Screw magazine, launched by ... shall we say carnally-infamous publisher Al Goldstein back in 1976.

Right there on the cover - an interview with Bill Gaines - the father of EC comics and Mad Magazine - and an all new comic from comics legend Wally Wood! Turning to the table of contents, the comic art sensibility is immediately evident, with artwork outweighing photos for the article images.

Flip through the magazine and you'll find abundant levels of art illustrations (including Don Martin!) and comic strips...

...the beginning of a four issue serialization of Wally Wood's new (at the time) Malice In Wonderland...


...and even photo layouts in comic book form...


...closing with a Norml ad featuring art by B. Kliban. (another day)

Comics are right there in the magazine's DNA every bit as much as flesh, fetish, and assorted filth.

But enough of all that. We'll come back to some of that later, but that's not why we're here today, let's jump to issue #3 for today's feature comic. In the turbulent 70s, everyone needed a little help to completely grok the ever-changing world around them.

Boundaries were falling, horizons were expanding, and there were no maps to this strange new social territory. Where could people turn for guidance? Who could teach us how to live in these times?

The even more legendary Will Eisner steps up to help with his all too brief guide to The Quality Of Life:

Will Eisner's work from National Screw #3 (1977) all other art from National Screw #1 (1976)

Art Mysteries - or WhoTF? - first in an endless series

Simple question:

Whose work is this?

These images contain nudity.

Following the restructure of this site,

adult material has been moved to our back room.

(Text remains for you to be able to decide if you wish to go look)

Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive

of the original post to view the artwork.

The signature reads rogers, but that's less helpful than one might hope. These illustrations were published in Knight magazine, cover dated September 1966, book-ending an unrelated Harlan Ellison story.
That's too early for a then-16 years old Marshall Rogers, rather late and/or stylistically wrong for Hubert Rogers, Alva Rogers, Howard Rogers, or Julie Homberger Rogers - all of whom have been known to do illustration work - and the signature is all wrong any of them.

For the intellectually curious, the upper illustration is for an article entitled That Old Sex Magic (on dark arts used to lure lovers) and The Night Is For Running, a story by Allan Nixon.
Knight was a California based publication, so his (her?) work could have appeared in a variety of magazines from the period. Unfortunately, that issue was grabbed simply because i had not encountered the magazine before - so no more on hand to go digging through.
I'm definitely curious to see more. Perhaps even some sequential art and not just single story snapshots, but i'll take what i can find.

Any clues who this is?

I'll be sure to update if i find more.

Illustrations from Knight v.5 #8 (1966)

Duck, Duck, Goosed

NOTE: Following the restructure of this site, the adult content has been moved to our back room. Text remains so that you (and search engines) may know what to expect, but if you wish to see the collection of adult oriented artwork (naked women and ducks) from Carl Barks, please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post.

We all know Carl Barks, right?
You know...  the guy who taught us all about capitalism when we were growing up:

The Man who brought us those great adventures with Scrooge, Donald, and the family...

...and all those other wonderful ducks...

... what...the...  ducks?

Duckin' A!
It must be another..

This  week featuring (pretty obviously) the great Carl Barks!

Long before he became famous for his work with the Disney characters, Barks enjoyed drawing women and bawdy humor. Early cartoon work for magazines like Calgary EyeOpener provided a playground for the budding artist.


In 1939 he released a Nude Lithograph with work reminiscent of great modern European erotic artists:


Throughout his highly prolific career he continued to use the female form as a way to get away from the ducks and enjoy his art.

My favorite works (though i love those simple figure studies above) come from a period when Disney revoked his license to paint the Duck family and he humorously responded with a series of commissions entitled Famous Figures Of History As They Might Have Looked Had Their Genes Gotten Mixed With Waterfowl, such as this delightful piece, Mountain Man:

(Yes, that's Myron Moose in the background)

I believe Disney restored his license fairly swiftly after learning of these paintings.

Everything but the logo by the great Carl Barks (spread over half a century or more)

What The Haney?

Do you remember Prez!, the "Imaginary" DC series about the USA's first 18 year old president?
Groovy surrealist fantasy & social satire in a private little world?

so....       Nope. Just - Nope.

Snell, over at Slay, Monstrobot...!, pointed out the existence of this book a few years back. It's just wrong. What sort of reality bending/dimension hopping/rift breaching could bring about this situation?
Let's look, shall we?

Wait -what? So many things wrong on this page that we can't even go into all of them here!
Prez Rickard is now president on Earth One? And no one thinks this is odd? Is that Geraldo Rivera? Those Pants!
Who's responsible for this? This kind of IDC reality bending - it's Bob Haney, right?

NOPE. Supergirl goes ape courtesy of Cary Bates (a known breacher!), aided & abetted by Art Saaf & Vince Colletta. Not a Haney hiney in sight. And yet, still we have this kind of wtf science happening:

...um, what?

Either televisions on Earth One are vastly more sophisticated than any technology we can as yet begin to imagine, or NO! It Doesn't Work That Way! X-ray vision shows you a photon cannon shooting back at you! (Inside the cathode ray tube that forms the tv screen. I miss CRTs just because we don't have photon cannons in the house any more.)
Supergirl and Prez greet each other with familiarity, both seeming to be quite at home in this odd universe...

... and Prez, being Prez, fixes a time piece...

...before they split up and go on with their lives...

Right On. But this was not an isolated attempt on Pres. Prez's life. Along his travel route they find an antique clock auction, and Prez finds the only broken clock in the place...

They quickly realize that not only is this part of an ongoing plot, but the plotters also have access to restricted information, like Prez's route. In short order, it's decided to abandon plans, and Supergirl will fly him to the White House instead.
Of course, that's exactly what our baddies expected:

 

But mere magic isn't enough. It's augmented by...

Is that a Photon Cannon? You mock me, sirs. Mock me!
ahem...
Reinforced by science, the curse is fired at Supergirl, leading to her King Kong moment:

So.... to top things off - science dilutes sorcery, making it ineffective on Kryptonians?
Are we sure Bob Haney wasn't involved? Mentoring Cary or something?

Well, obviously the thing to do is to jump ahead a few issues and see how the responded to the barrage of questions from the readers.
Oh. That was the last issue of the series. Clever bastards.
But fine. I can roll with this.

Bring On the epic Batman Vs. Boss Smiley mega-series!

true madness by Cary Bates, Art Saaf & Vince Colletta from Supergirl #10 (1974)

22 Panels That Always Work!!

As a Public Service, here's Wally Wood's invaluable reference for comic book artists - 22 Panels That Always Work!!

(Actually, it's as much private service as public service. Now i can find it without hunting when i want to refer to it.)

Sunday Morning Funnies - Intermedia Romance

When i go mining through the lost archives on my Comics Archeology jaunts, comic books are not the only focus of the digs. I'm also tapping veins of pre-comicbook magazines going back to the old half-dimes of the 19th century, and men's magazines of the 20th century. There's a  lot of interesting art to be found in the story illustrations, advertising, comics and cartoons hiding in some of those pages.
Sometimes Comics and Cartoons cross-pollinate.
45 years ago...

NOTE: Due to restructuring of the blog,

the artwork has been moved to our back room.

Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive

 of the original post for Art Lutner's Superman cartoon.

Art Lutner having fun in bed from Gallery #2 (December 1972)

Down Memory Lane - a half century later

50 years back, in the January 1967 of Superman a very interesting "Letters Page" ran under the heading of DOWN MEMORY LANE. The previous August in Adventure comics, the editors asked for letters from parents instead of the readers. Their purpose being to get their perspective on how Superman had changed since he debuted three decades earlier. Can you imagine that? The editors at DC actually wanting to hear from the public?
It was a different time.

Let's take a look at their responses. Perhaps it might provide some insights half a century later.

"One thing never changed - stories dealing with the brotherhood of man."
Oh, damnit. Can't think to type. Music in head too loud...

...Your lifelong membership is FREE

keep agivin' each brother all you can

OH aren't you proud to be

in that Fraternity

the great big Brotherhoo-

Oh - um...  Draw your own conclusions.

Good stories. Yup, can't argue with that being key.

Well, he wasn't wrong there.(then?)

For younger readers, when he says 'scanning' he means perusing, not archiving. Scanners weren't even telepathic head poppers yet, much less personal archiving & duplicating machines.

"A great improvement in your comics is the letter page."
For younger readers (again), this was back in a time when the publishers wanted Readers, so the idea of the letters page made sense. In the current market, readers are an annoyance, Collectors are much preferred.  Readers want actual stories to follow, and they often share what they read. Collectors just want events that might be worth money later, and they often buy multiple copies, sometimes without wasting their valuable time 'reading'.
Readers once vastly outnumbered collectors, but today are mostly anecdotal. They're out there, but when's the last time you actually saw one?

Through all the subsequent evolution, Superman has ben a human character..."
Umm....  not last time i looked.

Skipping past a time when 10 cents was hard-earned money...  Times changed on that one, eh? It's a lot harder to convey Patriotic messages in a time when directly opposed views are both labelled "patriotic" and both called "treason". Patriotism gets confused with Old World Nationalism with Fascism with whatever Extremism the speaker has embraced.
Hard to fault not heavily embracing that one. It comes across as parody too often.
And it can come back to bite you in the ass when definitions change again. (See 1950's Captain America and later retcons)

Fifty years later, how much of the above still holds true?
I really couldn't say. I gave up on the comics a while back. Worked out pretty well for me. The world in my head never suffered through the depredations of villain worship, among many other horrors inflicted upon them (and their readers). What shuddering whispers pass my way keep me from wanting to return to the books any time soon.

Last i saw in the comics, and most certainly in the movies, there's little recognizable from that character 50 years ago.

Here's the whole page, from Superman #192:

I wonder if Tyler Hoechlin's going to be brought back for Season 3?

DOWN MEMORY LANE from Superman #192 (Jan 1967)

Parents Never Understand

Back before it was quite so obvious that my beastly size was going to negate any dreams of being an astronaut, before we abandoned the moon for whatever reason, there was one cool toy that taunted me:

I said one toy, but that's misleading. One of the best things was the many supplemental toys, and how very well they were integrated to build your toy adventures. Yeah, the comic ads look okay, but what about the actual toys themselves?
They were actually well designed, detailed, and the TV commercials made them seem even more desirable.

 

Man, we ached for these. Major Matt Mason was the bad ass toy we all wanted, me more than anyone.

I got a Billy BlastOff instead. 

Yeah. No difference there...

Major Matt Mason 2-page ad from Metamorpho #14 (1967)

Muktuk Raking

I still haven't figured out what to call it when the post is nothing more than "ooOOOOoooo - LOOK! Pretty picture!!" At least, not the colour pics. (BBW Art is a feature that hasn't debuted yet) Frankly, not a single angle that's bubbled up holds appeal for me. Nor is any so wretched that i feel compelled to use it. I'm sure something will occur to me, but in the meantime...

ooOOOOoooo - LOOK! Pretty picture!!

 

This is Alex Horley's cover painting for issue #2 of Muktuk Wolfsbreath: Hard-Boiled Shaman, a delightfully odd Vertigo 3-issue miniseries from back in 1998. The series is worth coming back to for a look inside, but today i was just perusing pretty pictures. And trying to think of a name for this feature. (Or is running covers with clean cover art a separate feature of its own? Where's the damn editor?!)

Alex Horley artwork from the exterior of Muktuk Wolfsbreath: Hard-Boiled Shaman #2 (1998)

Saturday Solutions #002

Here's the answer to yesterday's Friday Fun & Games puzzle, tightly packed to preserve freshness (for 43 years):

Puzzle Solution from Amazing World Of DC Comics #2 (1974)

Meanwhile, 43 Years Ago... Friday Fun&Games #002

It's time once again for

 

We've visited FOOM a few times already. Let's stop over on the other side of the street at the Amazing World Of DC Comics. From the first issue, a puzzle from the Answer Man himself, Bob Rozakis:

 

Remember, it's 55 titles, not 52! And the years is 1974, so boot up the way-back processors and start hunting. 

Word Search Puzzle from Amazing World Of DC Comics #1 (1974)

Damn

We lost another  of the Great Ones today:

 

We Miss You Already

And now, a palette cleanser for your eyes after that last taste.
A Ruiz Burgos* Saturday Sampler platter:

 

Just lovely, aren't they? These are 9 his 10 Saturdays. For a much better look at these, and a gallery of his other comic book based paintings, you really should visit his site. 

===

*(Ruiz Burgos is only the last half of his name. The first half has escaped into one of my memory holes, and the website was broken, refusing to feed me the bio page)

My Apologies in advance

CAUTION!

This Post May Be Disturbing For Some Viewers.
Proceed At Your Own Risk.

Post continues after the Bat-Bumper...

Um...   nope.
I don't have an introduction for this. Rule 34 would be easier to explain.
Better to talk after. I'll put on a pot of tea while you ...  um...  

...here - just look

I don't know if familiarity with the original Rubens painting makes first viewing better or worse. I can say that context didn't really help. Also - love the addition of the peeping toms.

So...

What the hell just happened to you?
Hillary White (Rabbit), that's what.
And don't expect her to apologize for it. She'll just slap you again.

That's Waiting To Surprise Bae. (Did you want to know that 'Bae' has been established as Darth Vader in other paintings?)
But, if you like getting slapped like that (I do) then head on over to Hillary's Portfolio and enjoy yourself!

Fewer Death Traps

Welcome to Comics Archeology 303. (What? You wanted 101 from a guy with a 3 fetish?)
Those of you who do not already have your books, please send me all the money.

Today we'll be discussing a very recent find. I was mining an entirely different vein when a glimpse of something called Willie Lumpkin caught my eye.
I started reading Fantastic Four more than 50 years ago. Willie Lumpkin's been around since WAY back in FF#11.
This guy:


Now, let me point out a couple things right up front.
First, as indicated by that '50 years ago' reference, i'm from a time when 'fandom' meant you and a few kids you knew who traded comics for something new to read. Generally you all shopped at the same one or two places with spinner rack (so they didn't have to waste a lot of space on them comic book things). But, y'know - Billy's big brother went up to Macon where the 5&Dime had TWO spinner racks, and titles we'd only heard of in ads in the books our store ordered. That's an event that was on the scale of the San Diego Comic Con (or whatever it's officially called these days. I haven't been in this century) And that's about the extent of new information we got on what was going on in the world of comics.
There were no magazines, no databases, no connections. If you REALLY felt the need to try to connect beyond that little local tribe, your only option was to write to the fans who got their letters printed, once Stan Lee (he was first, right?) started printing their addresses with the letters.
Second, due to some sociopathic hermit tendencies, disconnection remains my lifestyle, despite attempts at otherwise over the years. (Even APAs - topic for another day)

Combine the two, and this means that there are going to be big gaping gaps in my knowledge. I may well know what's known to me, but my knowledge of ignorance is quite limited. That being the case, it may turn out that some things we discover here in Comics Archeology are actually well known to everybody outside my cave. In those cases, perhaps my ignorance itself will be entertaining in this age of reality tv programs.

So - moving along with the topic at hand - Willie Lumpkin.
I chipped around this new vein and found several dailies and several Sunday strips. Lo and behold - they're about a mailman named Willie Lumpkin.

 
And it's credited to Lee & DeCarlo! WTF? Was Stan off writing strips in 1960?
I tried to foist this mystery off on someone else, but just a week later, while reading through an old interview with Stan from Oui magazine back in '77 (Great articles, but no - I didn't just buy it for the articles) and near the end this exchange pops up:

Not long after that, i stumbled across* this in an interview from Comic Book Artist #2:

So - Yup!
Another odd bit in the Stan Lee story of which i was unaware. As lost to history as the names of his children. (Seriously - has anyone ever heard them referred to by name? And who's that Lieber guy working on the Netflix Marvel series? Any relation? Argh - more mysteries!)

===

*(This is why it's hard for me to get too angry at the Universe enjoying itself so much using me as the punchline to many of its jokes. It makes up for it be dumping things i want to know, and strange things i didn't know i wanted to know, in my path for me to find. I'd never know to look for The Man With The Smallest Penis In Existence And The Electron Microscope Technician Who Loved Him, so the Universe sends those things to me instead.)

Willie Lumpkin breaching worlds from Fantastic Four #11 and Willie Lumpkin dailies (1963&1960)

Hunt Emerson Predicts The Future

Hunt Emerson called it back in 1983:

 

lightly tweaked Rear View of Graphixus #2 by Hunt Emerson (1983)

Marvelite Memories Maximus, Son

Back in the very first issue of FOOM (the official Marvel members-only fanzine) they initiated a new feature, though they had yet to name it Bullpen Bios. I present that page here in full that you may enjoy Stan Lee's bombastic hyperbole in his bio, and for us old geezers, a bit of what John Buscema was doing before he burst onto the late 60s Marvel comics scene. (It was the late 60s - of course it was a 'scene'!)
While reading that introductory word balloon, keep in mind - this is the very first issue.

Notice that to inaugurate this feature, they chose what they thought were the most important figures to introduce - the guys writing & drawing the Fantastic Four - emphasized by using the FF to introduce the feature. They are, after all, the First Family of Marvel Comics. Their adventures form the very core of that universe, both on and off planet Earth.

They are obviously the most important part of the Marvel Comics Universe.

Sure wish the decision makers at Marvel Comics could get their diapers changed and remember that.

(Yeah, yeah. I know. Imitating Snell again. But when the man's right, he's right!)

Page 3 boys from FOOM #1 (1973)