Showing posts with label 1974. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1974. Show all posts

29 June 2020

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.)


28 August 2019

No Laff

Did you know that Watergate was NOT a scandal about water? Younger readers might be confused by that, but it's True! It might actually seem to be a familiar story to you - all about a man who thought that if the President did it, it's not a crime.

Here, let's let Alice show you...


We'll see about that...

Meanwhile - where did this come from? Perhaps a further sampling might offer a little hint?


No?
Okay - here's a more direct clue to the book...


Well, it was more clue if your brain runs in the same deranged circles mine does. This was what happened when Marvel Comics collided with Kitchen Sink in the Underground. It was History -


Well, not quite what i meant, but - okay.

Of course, even when Marvel went underground, superheroes followed...


No worries - we've got another token, so we can keep playing next time...

page art by Bill Sanders, Basil Wolverton, Ted Richards & Justin Green, Leslie Carbarga and Peter Poplaski for Comix Book #s 1-3 (1974, 1975)

01 August 2019

He Does What He Must...

Even a hermit tends to keep at least one friend. I'm off today to chill with him and watch Avengers: Endgame. No telling if i'll make it back for a more substantial post.

While i'm gone, you can chill with Galactus as John Byrne reveals what he looks like without the helmet 8 years before he went drinking with Herc...


Now i'm off to be a Watcher...

the big G by John Byrne from Contemporary Pictorial Literature #11 (1974)

31 July 2019

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)

27 July 2019

Good Lord ... The Monster From The IC!

It's hard to convey to younger readers just how different things were before the Internet and the WWWeb. Now we're drowning in too much information; so much it becomes nigh impossible to discern how much is fact based. Answers to every question are a quick search away.

But once upon a time, if you had questions about comics, movies, tv, etc.,...  you needed a geek. Obviously not a chicken head biting carnival geek - you needed a media geek with great retention and access. We didn't have home video so we couldn't check the tape to see what we wanted to know. Maybe you could catch an episode in summer reruns, or wait until that movie showed up on tv and hope they didn't trim the part you were pondering.

Some of us ancient geezers even resorted to audio taping tv shows so we could revisit bits later. And, for a brief period before home video became a standard, they started selling photo-novels that were simply screen shots from tv episodes or movies with the dialogue in comic style word balloons.

Maybe, if you were really lucky, you had a book that covered some small part of comic or movie history that could answer a few questions. Comic shops did not yet exist, so one had to rely on what you and your friends had stashed in the closet. And this was a time when one could not even be sure that every issue of a title would actually be available at the store where one shopped. Comics spinner racks were not a major concern for shopkeepers, and they most certainly were not concerned with what filled them.

So, us geeks held a special position as keepers and disseminators of lost and hidden lore. Most schools had at least one or two, and sometimes there was even some weird old adult who kept the lore.

Back in the RBCC, they had the Information Center. Actually, Raymond Miller started the Information Center in The Comic Reader back in the early '60s, but it moved with him over to the Rocket's Blast Comic Collector and there it continued on through 1973. (And beyond)

That's where we come in, and we loop back around to yesterday's post.

What all those seemingly random drawings have in common is that Don Rosa drew them as part of his answers when he took over the Information Center with #108 -



Raymond was not an artist, so the column had been purely textual up until this point, sporting only the occasional spot illo from a guest artist (Jim Jones in Ray's final column) or a photo reference. He had tired of the work after providing the service for over a decade and stepped down - so don't be thinking Don rode in and bushwhacked him. Ray stuck around as a consultant for those tricky Golden Age comics questions, as you'll see looking at the headers below.

That nice clean logo up above lasted only one issue. In fact, they all lasted only one issue - a new header for every column, and boy did they get busy...































...eventually came his 'final' column, to make way for his revived Pertwillaby Papers comic...



Yes, it was 1976 - he wasn't just pumping up the column's history.

So... how did all those toons last time fit in? Well, they used to have tails, but i trimmed them to keep them from being distracting. The tails would lead to one of the questions & answers on that page to liven up the presentation - like so:




(Yes, this one came from the same Ray Miller who used to produce the zine)




Now, you might think that the answer above was laying a bit of snark down on the questioner, but to be fair - he served it up on himself, too -


And, it probably comes as no big surprise that he managed to sneak in references to the Pertwillaby Papers along the way...



He even provided a clear and compelling answer to a question i've still seen debated in this decade...



Hopefully, that gives you a fair clue on one of the reasons why Don was highly regarded even before the work that came later.

But not the only reasons...

art by Don Rosa from RBCC #s 108-128 (1973-1976)