The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2410: Two-Fisted Tales #7, April 1994

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Publisher: Russ Cochran

Writer: Harvey Kurtzman & Ed Rock

Artists: Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Johnny Craig, John Severin

We're coming up to the end of Year 7, and, as I noted in the last post, this year has been difficult. Hell, the last couple of years have been difficult, but that's the same story that everyone has right now, so at least I'm not alone. But I've quit my delivery job, I'm having a go at writing full time, and I love it, and I want to get the project up and running again.

I don't read, or generally consume, media that has to do with war or crime. They're two human activities that I am pretty much against hallowing through art. Unless, that is, the art is decrying the darker natures that lead us to these pursuits. While I acknowledge that they're fertile places for stories to be told, the sometimes celebratory atmosphere of such tales makes me uncomfortable. But when Mike at the Purple Gorilla suggests something to me, I'd be a fool not to listen. And, of course, the tales in this comic don't celebrate war - they decry it and point to the horrible inequities and violence that grow from it.

That said, as much as the stories and art were fucking brilliant, it didn't resonate with me as much as the horror and sci-fi titles coming out of the company at the same time. I have a much easier time finding my metaphors in things that I can fully divorce from reality. In stories that take place in less-stylized settings, I sometimes have a hard time finding the piece of the tale that resonates with me. Perhaps that's something to keep in mind as I move on.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1354: Vault of Horror #2, October 1990

(I'm a bit behind. I read the comics, but I'm just getting them blogged now.)

Now that I have a bit of perspective, I can see where the kinds of stories Bruce Jones told in yesterday's comic come from. While I stand by my assertion that Mr. Jones is a master of the short story form, I also see now that he is upholding a venerable, and important, tradition in comics. Something I think is interesting about this is that his stories, like those in today's comic, do not suffer under the auspices of the Comics Code. And are therefore better.

I know that sounds like a sweeping statement, and some of the greatest comics I've read were produced under that governing body. But I also know that a number of the comics I've read in my life were significantly changed from the way that their creators originally envisioned them. In a well-told story, the parts aren't simply interchangeable. You can't swap out one climax for another. The parts work together as a gestalt. The trouble of censorship is that it ignores the holistic nature of storytelling and encourages a pattern instead. It may be a wide pattern, but it's a pattern nonetheless, which by its very nature occludes that which is not part of the pattern.

Anyway, the reason that these horror comics are so good is that they are allowed to think beyond the pattern. In fact, they were creating the medium from which, in this case, the pattern was born. I think I've already said that I recently read The League of Regrettable Superheroes, and one thing that Mr. Morris mentions in the introduction is that this early period of comics was one of unprecedented experimentation. Though they weren't always good, the ideas were very often strange and novel. The Comics Code discourages this kind of experimentation and encourages instead that writers pull from a large, but still limited, subset of medium's capability. It's publications like Jones' Twisted Tales, from an indie publisher, that keeps this experimental attitude alive until the mainstream catches up in the late 90s to early 2000s.

I've been struck over the last decade or so by the amazing variety of really, really good comics that are out there. It's impossible to read them all, and across the board, all genres, all (most?) publishers, are telling some fantastic stories. I think in part the dissolution of the Comics Code in recent times has allowed writers to tell stories they want to tell in much greater range, and in mainstream vehicles. Rather than the subset, they have access to the Source. I mean, if the Code were still around, there's no way we'd have the Bat Penis.

And that is all you will ever see me say about that most stupid of recent comics phenomena.


More to come...