He Followed Me Home - Can We Keep Him?

I was living in the Philippines at the height of the Groovy Age and missed much of what was happening back in the USA at the time. A few of my comics came from the Naval Post at Sangley Point. Though we weren't Navy, it was the closest U.S. Military presence, so we shopped there.

More of  comic books came from the warehouse of an importer who lived in the same village outside Manilla. Don't get the wrong impression there - we're not talking huts on stilts or anything. It more resembled an enclave - 15' walls with broken glass embedded in the tops, guards with very shiny machine guns guarding the gates, etc.,. Ferdinand Marcos' brother-in-law lived across the street from us. So our Village was a Village about as much as Federal Express or the Federal Reserve are Federal.

Across the street (highway) from the main gate were some little markets where we could buy triangular fire crackers (like the paper footballs from school days - you can see the potentials there, right?) and Filipino comics. They varied heavily in look and tone, but some were so lushly rendered and inked that i wound up spending firecracker money on them, even though i couldn't actually read them with my limited knowledge of Tagalog and Spanish (at the time).

Here're the original inked art used for a half dozen comic covers by Alex Nino from back then:

I love the contrasting textures of inks in this piece - the richly rendered living mortal
against the starkly delineated timeless/immortal/unliving beings.

I'm guessing that's an Asuwang at her side. Think shape shifting bloodsucker with a fondness for enemy's livers and no need to pair a wine with it. Also gets the hots for pretty girls, but we'll skip that part for this pic.

Readers might expect that the covers often have superior artwork to sell on flash while the interior work is perhaps more staid, focused on story telling. Rarely do i remember that being the case. The stories seemed to involve insane amounts of work in the rendering and texturing, and the effect was wonderously alien by comparison to the comics i'd seen from back in the USA.

So, imagine my delight when some of those artists started to show up in U.S. based titles not long after i returned to the United States. (And that probably explains my predilection for Warren's magazines right up front, eh?)

In 1977, Satan's Tears was released - a limited edition collection (1000 copies, s&n) with about 150 pages of Alex Nino. I think i got married that year, too. But, i'm sure that this book came out then, and it was packed with arty goodness. There were b&w reproductions of some old Filipino comic covers, some single pages from the interiors, and a whole lot of full page portfolio prints, sorted by time period and focus.

Let's take a gander at some of the richly textured line-work of Nino's art, as well as some, like this first pic, using magic markers -

Ever wonder what it would look like if Alex Nino did Jack Kirby?
There ya go!

I don't know what it is about that last pic, but i love that guy. I have an urge to read or tell stories about him.

 

Hmm...

Did i forget to mention how much i enjoy Nino's use of colour?

 

 As you might note by the print patterns, two of these images were not full page, including this last one. 

BONUS: A separate post is up in the back room with 9 extra images containing nudity - 3 of them full colour. Link to post on The Other Voice Of ODD!

all artwork by Alex Nino from Satan's Tears-The Art Of Alex Nino (1977)

Back In The R.B.C.C.

As mentioned recently, i've been digging through old fanzines as a part of my dive into the Groovy Age.
One of the biggest of those was the Rocket's Blast Comic Collector from editor James Van Hise, which ran for at least 150 issues in the 60s and 70s. I described the RBCC previously as a fanzine "that featured a great pool of talent and the print equivalent of the dealer's room from conventions of later eras" and that's still the best description i have for it.

But, y'know - That doesn't touch upon how delightfully Odd it could be, too. So let's take a look at a little tale from Brad Caslor that ran in issues 85-87 back around the end of 1971 entitled The Massacre Of The Innocents.

But first, the covers of the issues to offer another taste of the talent that passed through their pages-

Bill Black

Berni Wrightson

Don Newton

As a further indicator of how appealingly odd RBCC could be, note that they considered the title to be a completely optional feature for the cover.

Now, on to our story...

 

Alas - while it may have been a Groovy Age, not all Happenings were groovy.

Though, perhaps, foreshadows of kingdoms to come...

story by Brad Caslor, covers by indicated artists, for RBCC #s 85-87 (1971, 1972)

Blue Grass (sans music)

It seems like at least half of the stories drawn by Grass Green featured nudity and sex, making him a natural candidate for this week's edition of

As is now standard policy, this post is being published on The Other Voice Of ODD!, the 'back room' for this blog. The text is posted here for you to be able to decide if you wish to go view the artwork.
Link to post. 

Text Of Post:

Something i can relate to about Green was his insistence on creating material that was fun for him, prioritizing his personal enjoyment of the art over potential career options. For years, Dennis Kitchen tried to get him to do stories focusing on social and political themes so Green's work would fit better into Kitchen Sink's comic line-up. Perhaps we were left with a diminished legacy when Richard Green died so young, but hopefully he enjoyed his time in this world more for following his own desires. And he did gain recognition for his work in the industry even if he wasn't widely known. Even publications like Heavy Metal magazine drew upon his talents, though you likely might not have noticed at the time -


In the early 90s, Grass produced four issues of Horny Comix & Stories for Rip Off Press-



It featured pretty much whatever Green felt like creating, including his female 'Tarzan' strip, Gina Of The Jungle...



...which ended with one of the all-time great shock-takes in comics:



I love that face - i may make a t-shirt based on it.

Here's a quick peek at some of what to expect in Horny C&S -



 Warla is one of Grass Green's recurring characters. Let's stop peeking at pages and look at some full stories, starting with Warla's adventure from the second issue of Bizarre Sex -



Another of Green's regular characters was Hobo Hal. Hal was your typical down-n-out guy living rough on the road, with one small exception. Everyone wanted to "ride the hobo express", no matter where he went. You can imagine what happens when he wanders into somebody else's adult comic, like when he showed up Cherry Jubilee (because, apparently, Poptart was already taken)...



That's the typical ending to a Hobo Hall tale - run, Hal, run!
This story, from Grass Green's Good Jive #1 is probably the best summary of Hal's experiences...



Seriously. Everybody wanted to ride.



Our final tale today comes from Bizarre Sex #1 -



Oddly enough, Grass re-used this story almost 20 years later, changing from Incest to Sinnin' the title to match the title of the comic in which it appeared:



Condolences to the fannyless among you who took that bet.

everything by Grass Green for Bizarre Sex #s 1&2, Cherry's Jubilee #3, Good Jive #s 1&2, and Horny Stories & Comix #s 1,2&3 (1971, 1972, 1991, 1993)

Blue Monday Calendar 2018 Week 11

A Refreshing Lift is the title of Gil Elvgren's lovely painting from 1969 which graces this week's calendar -

Who Says They Can't?

A bit of common 'wisdom' in our society is "Those who can - Do; Those who can't - Teach."

This notion is born out of our society's one true religion - Wealth*. Obviously, they'd be somewhere making more money than the ridiculously small amount the caretakers of the next generation are paid. Nobody in their right mind would be wasting their life making less money than was possible for them, right?

I mean, it's not like the education and future of our children is something that we consider any sort of priority. In fact, in today's world those both are considered resources to be mined and exploited for immediate wealth at the expense of future generations.

So, of course, those who Teach can't Do.

Allow me to offer a counter argument -

This lovely painting of Doctor Strange comes from the cover of Rocket Blast Comicollector, a fanzine from the 60s & 70s that featured a great pool of talent and the print equivalent of the dealer's room from conventions of later eras. I've been digging through old issues hunting for some of Grass Green's work from the time, but so far it's mostly been his contemporaries like Ronn Foss and Biljo White that have turned up.

Along the way, i stumbled across this painted cover to RBCC #80 and was reminded of the artist - John Adkins Richardson. Odds are, you're not familiar with him, eh?

Here's some of his comic work from the same year, coming to us from Wally Wood's magazine, Witzend #8. Because this story has nudity, only sample pages are presented here. The full version of the story is included in the mirror of this post in our adult content 'back room' at The Other Voice Of ODD!

From the following year (1972) in Fever Dreams #1, here's the first three pages of The Unicorn Quest. (Complete story in the The Other version of this post in the back room)

As we see above, the man can Do, but the reason you likely haven't heard of him is because he chose to teach. Last i knew, he was the Professor Emeritus of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. He's got a few books out on the subject, too, including Modern Art And Scientific Thought (published the same year as the story above), The Complete Book Of Cartooning, and Art: The Way It Is.

We really need to drop a lot of silly, counterproductive notions like this from our collective thought.
And, y'know, invest in our children's future like any rational society would do.

art by John Adkins Richardson from RBCC #80, Witzend #8, and Fever Dreams #1 (1971, 1972)

===

*(People may talk religion and teach children morality but, on the societal level, all that goes out the window and into the trash as soon as "real world" decisions need making. The one thing we truely worship is Money and, despite the frequent misquotes, it's Love Of Money that is the root of all evil. (Though that's not quite true - a great deal of evil is born of mere indifference and casual disregard, too))

Before Groovy, There Was Terrific!

For our Sunday Morning Funnies this week, let's break from the Groovy Age and jump back another decade to 1958, back in the days when we only had black & white cartoons on TV. Of course, televisions were still black and white so that was okay. As a matter of fact, sometimes it was even Terrific!

And if we couldn't see the colours on TV, at least we had books to show us how they should be - 

Sometimes incredibly short little books, like less than 20 pages...

Well, i had the hat colour right at least.

words by Crosby Newell and pictures by Arthur Bartsch (1958)