My Kingdom Come (King Kirby 001)

I don't know who's your king, but i do know who should be.
August is here, and His time of celebration is upon us!

 

If you were not already aware, Jack "King" Kirby would have been 100 on the 28th of this month. Let's celebrate with 100 posts of King Kirby! 

Not quite as insane as it sounds - most will be covers, splashes, and other artwork But also early works (next up: the first credited collaboration of Simon & Kirby?); rare, lost or otherwise oft forgotten tales; old magazine & fanzine bits; special goodies, and some more of my own works & manipulations (as above) to celebrate a Century Of Kirby.

And now you know why The King hasn't be mentioned here until now.

Original cover from Strange Tales #134 (1965) modified by -3- (2017)

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)