Underground Monday

Presuming you have one...   Who's your favorite underground comics creator?

That's a pretty tough question for some folks, for others, it's an instant answer. This is one of the rare categories where i can narrow out a single favorite, despite how much i may enjoy many others. Decades after his death, you can still find oblique references in my artwork, such as in this painting:

That should narrow it down to one of two people, and given that the other one is still alive in the wilds of Ohio, the answer becomes obvious.
Hm, what?
Yeah, 'obvious' is subject to definition. First off - the pertinent aspect of the above image is the name of her truck, painted on the door - the Overland Vegetable Stagecoach.
NOW it's obvious, right?

Overland Vegetable Stagecoach was the team name used by Dave Sheridan and Fred Schrier for a few issues worth of work they created way back in the day for Mother's Oats. No slight to Fred Schrier here (I built the Time Machine according to his schematics, and it worked magnificently), but Dave Sheridan was touched in the head in a way i've been touched, so his work just felt closer to home at times.

Many of those who recognize his name will do so from Sheridan's work with Gilbert Shelton on Those Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and/or from his most famous creation - Dealer McDope. But today let's look at how Dave Sheridan can appear in a book with classic underground creators like Robert Crumb, Jaxon, and Spain - and still be the Star of the book. Besides, today is the first day of the week, which means this has all been a circumlocutory approach to...

Our subject today?
The Oh-So-70s nunsploitation undergound book from Last Gasp Eco-Funnies starring The Leather Nun, and Tales thereof.

Allow us to elaborate:

NOTE: This advert and the following pages contain nudity and have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.

Dave Sheridan provided the cover for the book:


And while there is very definitely a singular Leather Nun character, as depicted above, the individual stories are not all bound to her (Her?).  At most, She provides the thematic (and moral?) core of the title, but that's loosely applied.

Another underground creator who's very high up on my list is Jaxon, who here decided to go historical again with the story of a 'mad' Arab monk named Alhazared and 


This is unbelievable to Alhazared, who knows her "pussy is as dainty and delicate as it was before <her> luscious mons sprouted its first silky hairs, centuries ago." However, closer inspection reveals...

After studying a necromiconic tomb, Alhazared realizes his own magicks have caused the problem, having "warped time upon itself, in the process juxtaposing our dimension with another - beyond finite comprehension"
As we all know (right?) "the minions of the Great Old Ones inhabit this dark abyss, lurking, waiting for some mortal blunder to provide them a gateway" through which the banished Elder Gods might return to regain their ascendancy...



With minimal foreplay, the pair proceed to couple within the confines of the protective magic circle before it's too late...



Jaxon probably pairs best with Sheridan, but the two should maybe not be read in combination on heavy drugs, especially psychedelic hallucinogens.

Spain, on the other hand, goes for the cold hard digs into society & religion with his 3 page tale:



R. Crumb, Himself, has his own brief encounter with Religion and A Nun, if not THE Nun, (and finds he's having nun of that) in the middle of short examination of his inner drives:


Meanwhile, Pat Ryan sticks with the religion theme, but switches to Father Justin Thyme and the Confessions Of A Teen Confessioner...


...and Roger Brand's tale, Br'er Dragon's Dream (or The Meat Will Please Come To Order) just tossed that memo in the trash and went off into strange scifi territory:


But the core of the book is Dave Sheridan's tale. It's reminiscent of his implicitly drug fueled mindwarped journeys/tales as a part of the Overland Vegetable Stagecoach, shifting between levels of reality quite casually. It's a fair example of what i enjoy about his work. Note that pages 2-5 are smaller than the others. That's because they were originally formatted 2 to a page - sideways - on pages 2 & 3 of the original comic.


One of those aches i get inside is when i think he died before 40, and all that we lost with him.

Keep Hanging In There, Fred!

pages by indicated artists from Tales Of The Leather Nun (1973)

Sunday Morning Make Believe

Last Saturday, we pondered briefly upon the origins of Supersnipe. Inspiration is a theme that's been nagging in the back of my head for a post, which lead me to wondering what sources George Marcoux might have drawn from when creating his character.

So let's jump back a generation previous, to the newspaper comics of 1915, where we find an odd little strip called Bobby Make-Believe. Before we proceed, let me point out that this is not to be confused with Billy Make Believe, the newspaper comic from 2 decades after Bobby. Despite the name, the comic bears no resemblance from what little i've read. For example:

 Billy is the kid sidekick, even with the lead character status. And the adventures seem to be actually happening, within the world of the comic. I've yet to see any sequence that breaks to an external reality.

 Obviously, since it was before the dawn of superheroes, Bobby couldn't be pretending to be a superhero. Since nothing else measures up to that, he had to keep switching off every week. Here's the earliest strip i can find, from 1915, January 31st:

You'll likely note the grainy, kind of crappy quality of the image. Ragstock paper for newspapers from over 100 years ago really wasn't meant to last. All i've been able to find from those old strips is microfiche copies, so we make do with what history has managed to salvage. Also, due to the quality, and the small text balloons, these images are a bit larger than the typical pages posted here for easier reading.

Bobby Make-Believe only ran for 2 years, but the creator, Frank King, went on to much greater recognition when he switched from Winsor McKay-esque fantasy to down-to-earth family life with Gasoline Alley, started the following year. (Yep - late next year will mark a century of Gasoline Alley!)

Here're 10 more from over the next couple years to give you some idea of the flavour of the strip. (Though i'm skipping over the semaphore lessons for now)

Bobby Make-Believe by Frank King for Chicago Sunday Tribune (1915-1917)

Saturday the 14th Solutions

Dig, you curious cats. Here're the answers you seek!

BELOW
Meanwhile, back on #46...
Readers of the comments may have noticed that the Martian Mindbender (arguably the greatest encyclopedic mind on comics in the midwest) declared the answer to be "Esmeralda".
Our quizmasters, John Stanley & Mal Whyte, proclaim the answer to be "Desi"
Let's check with Legal for our definitive answer:

I'm calling it as Desdemona. Never argue with money bearing lawyers.

BTW - Did you know that George Herriman was an assistant on early Mutt & Jeff, home of Cicero's Cat? So if you see any similarities to Krazy Kat in design, now you know why.
Of course, Herriman took things to his own glorious heights, far removed these beginnings. But the echoes are there.
Meanwhile, if you'd like to check out more of Cicero's Cat from Al Smith (despite the Bud Fisher credit, Smith worked for decades under Fisher's name) visit John Glen Taylor's Easily Mused post featuring 25 old Cicero's Cat toppers.

quiz from The Great Comics Game by John Stanley & Mal Whyte (1966), Cicero's Cat from Cicero's Cat #s 1 & 2 (1959)

Friday Fun & Games 013 - Do Ya Feel Lucky?

Welcome once again to our regular way of wimping out on Friday Night Fights. Yes, it's

We're still groovin' on Supersnipe from the last time we went to this particular well for Friday Fun & Games. Dare we hope for another such discovery in our return visit? Let's find out.

As nearly always, tune in tomorrow for the answers.

Supersnipe's Got Ya Covered

Very simple post today - let's look at some Supersnipe covers.
Okay - let's look at a bunch of them - say, a dozen and a half. In addition to what we've already seen, that'll encompass most of the George Marcoux covers. I'm limiting this look to only those he did, though there were almost as many done without him.
I think that rather than any elaborate sorting scheme, we'll just go chronologically.

Note that blurb for the Pig Latin special course. That was a one page series that went on for over a year, pretty much just listing the Pig Latin version of various words for kids to memorize by rote instead of just getting them to use the rules and sort it for themselves.
I think this may have been the single oddest feature of the title, in its way.

NEW! Dotty Loves Trouble!
Yep - they added a 'girl's comic' to round out the book.

And the final, posthumously published, Marcoux cover:

I lied, kinda.
While those covers are indeed chronologically presented, my favorite three were withheld for the end here. Perhaps not surprisingly, they are the most phantasmagorical of his covers.

While other strips get blurbs on the cover, Supersnipe's frequent partners Ulysses Q. Wacky gets only one mention above, and kid detective Herlock Domes, none at all. (And, yes - that image that just popped up in your head is probably fairly close - deerstalker cap and all)

Of course, there was this one...

Not only does that mention Wacky on the cover, but it's actually a Wacky story that's the basis for the cover. Ulysses and Supersnipe team up to tunnel to the center of the Earth. Guess what they find...

Supersnipe covers by George Marcoux (1943-46)