Brief Oddities

We've got an extra post with a smattering of oddities, as mentioned above, and no real theme beyond having accumulated in the blog files. And, y'know... being Odd.

Here's a beautiful and mysterious first page from Omandu -

You may perhaps wonder where the figure absent from the white space in the middle has gone?

He escaped to the cover -

I admire an artist who is wholly committed to the work over the modern obsession for Branding. In fact, the only way to know that this is the cover for The Little Book Of Inner Space #1 is from the indicia box, hand written at the bottom of the first page -

Sadly, this seems almost completely forgotten today. The Grand Comics Database has almost no info, only the front cover.
Every time i put together a list of titles to update in their database, i lose it.
Somebody remind me after a bit and see if i've entered the particulars on this comic.

Elsewhere in Time and California...

What's this crowd waiting for...?

...the chance to party with Mary Fleener! 
Why me not there?

For a purely odd sidestep in time and space, yet somehow reminiscent of now, here's a one-pager from Look Magazine's second issue, just over 80 years ago...

And buried way down here is the single page comic that started this post going. A simple piece in every way, that works so nicely from the team of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito...

Omandu say bye-bye -

pages from The Little Book Of Inner Space #1, Life Of The Party, Look v.1#2, and Get Lost #3 (1937, 1954, 1972, 1996)

Pastime As Prologue or "Get Out Of My House!"

Following up on yesterday's tale, Maxor Of Cirod, from John Adkins Richardson, let's take a look at a few more of his works. I was sorely tempted to rerun his terrific Doctor Strange painting here, but instead i'll just note that it's worth looking back to that post if you've not seen it.

To wrap up this set, here's a self portrait of the artist - 

I've spoken a bit about him in the past, but just who is this JARichardson guy? That's the sort of question that pops up frequently when we look back at artists from the fan scene of decades ago. Fortunately for us, in this case there are interviews from back when. Today we'll look at one that ran in Golden Age #7 back in 1971 -

   John Adkins Richardson keeps martinis in an old peanut butter jar in his refrigerator. He is also a full Professor of Art at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, an elected member of the Faculty Senate, a writer of heavy books and of articles for learned journals, a nostalgia buff, a pipe-smoker, and a painter. I confronted on of his paintings in a gallery some years ago. it was a five foot square self-portrait composed of several dozen painted images mused together, montage-style, into an entity that reveals the man. His own face peers out suspiciously. His blond wife. The two sons. Captain America, bashing the bejazus out of some evil-doer with his mighty shield. Joe Louis. A few bushy nudes. A Bisley Colt. Captain Marvel. A Gee-Bee racing plane! (I thought I was the only man alive who remembered the Gee-Bee.) Hawkman. An elongated Stuka.

   I advanced on the painting and, after half an hour, decided that I knew the man who painted it better than I should know a man that I didn't know. So I hunted him up. He cheered my taste and culture; we got into the martinis. "You are a goodlooking S.O.B. and you know comics," said he. "hmmmm." "If you really like the painting, I'll do one of you." "Gawd." "Have another booze."

   My painting, a three-ply gasser, now hangs in my living room, but the conversations go on. "What was the Lone Ranger's last name?" "Anybody knows that it was Reid." "Damn! All right, who was Tank Tinker?" "Get out of my house!"

  Richardson knows things that an art professor has no real business knowing about. Early radio programs: "You mean that your wife can actually play 'Priscilla' on that piano?" "Of course, can't yours?" "Hmmmm..." But that's nothing. He knows about things like the history of modern mathematics. In fact, the University of Illinois Press is publishing a book of his on the history of modern art and scientific thought. He reads James Joyce. Gets around in the Paris subways. Knows about guitar construction, obscure jazz compositions, handguns, Capt. Midnight, home design. And, of course, the comics.

   "I just got a grant to go to the Library of Congress to study old comics books!" "I thought that was your major at Columbia University." "You mere Assistant Professors are a jealous lot." "But if my tax dollars pay you to -- !" "Get out of my house!"

Here's the actual interview. I'm too lazy to transcribe the entire thing -

For an extra bonus - here's RJ Shay's portrait of Richardson from when Gary Groth interviewed him in Fantastic Fanzine -

Yeah, we might get to that interview at some point. But wouldn't you rather check out that Elric tale he illustrated...?

I suspect we'll wind up there first, y'know?

art by John Adkins Richardson from Golden Age #7, Fantastic Fanzine #13, and Rocket's Blast Comic Collector #s 73, 77, 88, 111, 120, 138, & 149, and RJ Shay from Fantastic Fanzine Special #2 (1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975)

The Art Of Flesh (and Friends)

We've been looking at a bit of Flash Gordon parody lately, which quite naturally leads to the most ambitious effort in that arena - Flesh Gordon. Which means we'll be having this little discussion in our adult content 'back room' - The Other Voice Of ODD!

We're looking at the artwork, so we're only looking at the first movie. Flesh Meets The Cosmic Cheerleaders used no artwork for the title sequences, so they don't get to play today. But, no worries - we've got some others to join us in a bit.

So after we take a look at the title sequence artwork by  Cornelius Cole III...

...we'll be taking a peek at a few other parodies from Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood, Bill Pearson and Pete Poplaski.
And, no surprise, we'll toss in a bit of George Barr, too...

Slip on back past that brute checking ages to view the complete mirror of this post on The Other Voice Of ODD! and check it out.

artwork from Flesh Gordon (1974), Snarf #5 (1972), Witzend #11 (1978), and Naughty Knotty Woody (2007)

More UFO Nattering

UFOs are, by nature, odd and mysterious things that are frequently confusing to the perceptions. So i guess it's rather natural that the comics seem to follow suit.

I mentioned last time that Gold Key's book, UFO Flying Saucers, continued for another 6 issues beyond the 7 issues that i originally had on hand. And that Whitman published another 5 issues. (Note that Gold Key and Whitman are both divisions of the same company - Western Publishing) While digging through the archives last night, i found another 12 issues from Gold Key - they changed the title to UFO & Outer Space with issue #14. The series continued through #25 in 1980.
And so the stack has grown...

Meanwhile, we've got more of the speculative pieces from those first seven. Eschewing dramatic presentation structures, let's open with perhaps the most interesting speculative possiblity -

ARE THE UFOS LIVING BEINGS? (art by George Roussos)

WHO FLIES THE SAUCERS??? (art by Frank Bolle)

WHERE DO FLYING SAUCERS COME FROM? (art by Luiz Dominguez)

Of course, it's always good to have a handy identification guide for spotting UFOs...

MODERN TYPES OF UFOS AND FLYING SAUCERS (script by Leo Dorfman, art by Rocco Mastroserio)

UFO'S THE SHAPE THEY'RE IN (art by Luiz Dominguez)

As mentioned previously, much of the book was dedicated to case studies of UFO encounters. We haven't looked at any of those as yet, so let's close out this post with a story that combines those with the speculative works which we've been viewing...

DO CREATURES FROM OUTER SPACE WALK THE EARTH??? (art by Frank Bolle)

"It is possible that somewhere in the universe, someone is reading a horror story about a fellow creature who explored a distant planet and was attacked by four horrible little bipeds."

Yeah. I can see that. "Horrible little bipeds" being how human beings were known to galactic society seems believable.
(Hermit, remember?)

page art from UFO Flying Saucers #s 1, 4, 6, & 7 (1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1975)