My Favorite Caveman

I started building towards this topic a little over two years ago. Regular readers know the struggle, but we've finally wrangled the beast back around this way...

One of Jack Kirby's many great concepts was the inception of the Inhumans (and similarly the Eternals & Deviants). Highly advanced alien races experimenting on emerging Humanity to see what they can make from the raw clay of Man. (the species, not the sex)

In 1975, over at Gold Key Comics, a new caveman comic crawled up on the shore - Don Glut and Jesse Santos teamed up like peanut butter & chocolate and brought us Tragg and the Sky Gods. Engaging the same basic concepts, they didn't jump ahead thousands of years to see the results. Instead, they told the tale of the new Humans resulting from their experiments, and their interactions with the primitive world of cavemen and dinosaurs. (It's comics, not science)

After two issues, they switched to painted covers. Still Jesse Santos and still looking mighty fine, but i really prefer the psychedelia infused feel of his inks. Here's the other drawn-not-painted cover -

Tragg only had 8 issues, plus a Gold Key Spotlight comic. Some will tell you that there's also that issue of The Occult Files Of Dr. Spektor, but that's a single panel lacking even name designations, so it's a cameo at most. That's not a whole lot of comics, but they were fairly densely packed. The first issue has 25 pages of story - let's ago ahead and dive in rather than have me try to break things down for you...

Let me pause to say how much i enjoy the way Don & Jesse play together. Beyond Tragg, they also teamed for the aforementioned Dr. Spektor, and for Dagar The Invincible, too, along with a smattering of Mystery tales.
I rather thought that we'd have covered some of them by now, but we'll get there.

Meanwhile, let's cover the rest of this series, shall we? 
Here are Jesse's painted covers for the run of Tragg -

...and, what the heck - here's the cover to that issue of The Occult Files Of Dr. Spektor that has the single panel in it. Just because...

I expect we'll be back to check on Tragg and Lorn's progress. But i also expected we'd be here two years ago...

page art by Jesse Santos for Tragg And The Sky Gods #1 (plus covers) (1975)

Our Flibbertigibbet Brummagem Snollygoster Fake President

As we all watch the fiasco of what happens when Fake President meets Real Crisis, a lot of us are running out of things to call the Twitter Twit. Sure, a lot of newer words like 'fucktard' might be more worthy than he is, but those really belong to the kids, don't they? What about us oldsters trapped in his clown horror show?

After all, you may have noticed that pretty much the only time i use his name is when referring to the Trump Flu. This isn't a "he who must not be named" kind of situation. It's most definitely a "it isn't worthy of a name" and is way too in love with it. Trump Flu is the one place he's earned his name, so i say let's let him have that one. 
That leaves us wondering how to refer to the critter*?

Might i offer a few classic suggestions?


FLIBBERTIGIBBET
A person who is regarded as silly, flighty, irresponsible. Especially one prone to excessive talking.

BRUMMAGEM
Something cheap and showy; especially used referring to cheap, gaudy jewelry.

SNOLLYGOSTER
Someone self-serving, especially a politician, whose actions are motivated by self-interest rather than higher principles.

Well, i suppose we should have some imagery in here, should we not?
Let's see...

How about a little tale i'd call "Mistakes Were Made" -

Apologies to Rowley, Prodes, and Quatermouse.

Now, if you'll pardon me, i'm off to indulge in a bit of my usual gadzookery* in other arenas...

page art from Animal Weirdness #1 by Geoff Rowley and Prodes, modification and ramble by -3- (1974, 2020)

===

*(If you want to argue that he's vegetable or mineral instead, i won't put up a tough fight)

**(GADZOOKERY
The use of archaic words or expressions.)

Freedom! Think You Can Keep It?

50 years ago, give or take a couple of months, a full century after the end of the Civil War, Denny O'Neil stood up and asked a question that was LONG overdue...

It might seem odd to focus on a white man on Juneteenth, but it's not without reason. Denny died last week - another timely reminder and warning. 

Meanwhile, another white...  well, no - i can't lie and call that weak child a 'Man'. Our fake pres has clearly established he's anything but, and far to weak to Ever man up. So -

Meanwhile, our fake president is leading primitives who would gladly see slavery re-established. (No, modern corporations aren't working to bring back slavery - they know serfdom is much cheaper, and easier to apply to all 'races' ... Equality!) All part of his push to make America great again by taking it back to the days of a Mad King, before Americans died to free themselves from the whims of one deranged individual.

We've reached a point where we're not moving forward, and evil, greedy addicts are working desperately to drag us back and shove us down. They're already selling the notion that the "Middle Class" was a fleeting accident that shouldn't really have happened, not the result of Americans fighting for their fair share and being gunned down in the streets by government troops working for the corporate owners. 

Of course, since we give power over to Addicts and Sociopaths, it's no surprise that they take everything they can grab as well.

Black Americans are on the forefront. They experience the Boot every day and know how terrible it can be. And worse, they're viewed as disposable - as are we all to varying degrees.

We're at one of those tipping points where things could actually get better, but you can be damned sure that the money junkies are going to do everything in their considerable power to make it worse instead.

All Lives Matter.

You may have heard that from some who are trying to deflect from Black Lives Matter. The statement is true - but it means that all of us - Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, White, Green, Blue - All Of Us have an obligation to defend and protect All Lives.
Otherwise, none are safe and all of us are diminished.

And, dude - if you think your white ass is safe and secure... Where's your weekend?
The simple concept of "Working For The Weekend" has already been taken away. In most cases these days, the company now owns you around the clock, seven days a week.

As the junkies keeping sucking up an ever increasing share to fill that need fore MORE, the lines between black & white flat out disappear. 

Don't be a fucking idiot.

Protect and support your black sisters and brothers - or nobody's going to be left to support and protect You.

panel art by Neal Adams from Green Lantern #76 (1970)

My Favorite Martin

We lost another fine creator, damnit.

I find myself wondering - is it harder losing folks that we watched break into comics and followed over the years? Or does it feel weightier when they're about our own age?

With Marty Pasko, both factors were present.

If you've read comics for any length of time, you've likely seen his name. I'm not really going to talk about Marty's works right now - i'm sure plenty of folks are doing that on the net this week. Instead, i'm going to let Marty talk about comics. 

Martin Pasko loved comics. He loved them so much that editors wound up naming him Pesky Pasko because he was always giving them feedback, letting them know what he thought was right or wrong about their books. (And prepping himself as a story teller along the way)

Long before Marty was writing comic book tales, many of us were reading his words in the letter pages -

In fact, Marty was seen so often in the letters pages, he became a subject of the letters as well as his own missives appearing...

By yon by - lest you think that he only wrote to DC...

That said, i mostly remember seeing him in the Distinguished Competition's lettercols. All over the place in their reader mailbags; Green Lantern...

...Plastic Man...

...Strange Sports Stories...

...and most especially, The Flash...

Sometimes he appeared so often one might think that Marty was the regular writer on the book. For example (and note that there was only a 1-2 issue gap beforehand) his letters appeared in #s 198, 199, 200, and 201...

Sometimes Life enjoys being amusing. A couple years later this letter appeared in The Flash #226 -

The very next issue, it was Pasko's MP signing the editor's replies -

Julie finally got even.

letters by Marty Pasko from Action #s 359 & 391, Atom & Hawkman #s 42 & 44, Daredevil #s 60, 63 & 70, Detective #s 383, 389, 401, 402, 404, 406, & 408, Green Lantern #s 69 & 73, Justice League Of America #82, Plastic Man #9, Strange Sports Stories #4, The Flash #s 195, 198-201, 209, & 226-228, and World's Finest Comics #s 201, 203, 205, & 207 (oh, man - you didn't want all the years, did you? I want to post this today. Um... 1960s, 1970s)