The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1498: National Lampoon v.1 #81, December 1976

Pretty disappointing issue for comics, to be honest. Not many of the regulars, not "Trots and Bonnie" and no "Idyl."

It did, however, have this amazing ad for Tom Waits records. This ad was definitely the best part of the issue:

"@*!!*@* Motherfucker !@*!* Asshole @! *!@!**!* Cunt *!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1497: National Lampoon v.1 #78, September 1976

Another full-colour "Trots and Bonnie" in this one. So fricking great. Not to mention that we get a full-page Trina Robbins comic, a very, very weird little gem called "Planet Love." One of the things that keeps me from thinking that the National Lampoon people are not simply cruel and vindictive is that they've got some really great lady cartoonists working for them, cartoonists who are very much inflected by the second wave of Feminism. Smart ladies like that wouldn't work for a bunch of misogynist racists, right?

That's the hope, anyway. And, of course, National Lampoon is satire. All of the horrible words and ideas contained in the magazine are there for the purpose of making fun of those self same words and ideas. That doesn't make them any easier to read, and nor should they be easy to read, quite frankly. As I noted yesterday, I'm not sure that making such things humorous serves the purpose that we think it might, but that's something I'm going to have to put a lot more thought to.

One more issue tomorrow, and then back to some comics.

"Our up-to-date Spaspek machines are plugged in and waiting to teach you Calustan in two days!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1496: National Lampoon v.1 #76, July 1976

This one was really, really hard to read. The whole thing is a parody of Southern U.S. culture, skewering the Rebels and everything that their side of the Civil War stood for. So there's a lot (A LOT) of racist writing, a lot of horrendous social ideas, all presented under the shiny veneer of satire. The trouble is, seeing how the United States is currently deporting itself with regard to race, class, gender, everything, makes this satire distasteful. They may have thought they were making fun of a dying culture, but sometimes, in this case and in the case of facists/nazis, cultures should simply be left to die. Remember them, historically, sure, but let's stop using them as sites of entertainment. When we do this, we de-fang what is really a very brutal, destructive way of thinking. While satire in some ways connotes superiority in the presumed reader, that superiority, the ironic stance, can also obscure the danger of destructive cultures. If we get so used to laughing at it, how can we be ready to stop it when it rears its head again. To me, this is what's happening with the growth of white supremacy in North America - we spent so much time laughing at it that when it ran for president, we thought it was a joke.

"Remember, don't be fooled by ecology, environmentalism, or any of the rest of that crap!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1495: National Lampoon v.1 #72, March 1976

Some fun comics in today's issue, though I am looking forward to getting back to traditional comics. I feel bad flipping past all of the articles in this magazine. I only like it for the pictures ;D.

The "Turtle Farms of South America Expose," illustrated by Frank Springer is pretty hilarious. The real gem, however, is a full-colour "Trots and Bonnie," in which Bonnie gets quite naughty. This isn't the first full-colour, multi-page TnB I've seen, and they're always a welcome treat. I've been kicking around getting the collected edition. Perhaps when I've got a job.

The other content was quite excellent - the bar for comics in National Lampoon is pretty high, to be honest. There's some Spain, Gahan Wilson, and the usual ridiculous photo stories.

"You throw it into a pail with battery acid - then you stir it around with a screw driver."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1494: National Lampoon v.1 #71, February 1976

You'll notice up there on the cover the words "Clowning Around with Tits."

One thing I will say about National Lampoon is that you're pretty much always guaranteed at least on nice picture of breasts per issue. Now, before I'm shit upon, yes, it sucks that there aren't as many bare-chested men with rippling abs and lovely pecs. It sucks that there aren't more representative body shapes and colours as well. I'd love to see all of that just as much as you would. But in reading something that's now 40+ years in the past, especially something as contentious as National Lampoon, one has to see the positives where one can.

And I'm positive that there's always going to be some nice breasts to look at in National Lampoon.

Today's issue also had a comic in it about people who came to realize they were made of ink, and that their world was defined by panels, and it did some fucking wonderful, insane things with self-referential comics.

Actually, just read it. It's fucking great. From the mind of Ed Subitzky.

"Well, Solevitch believes it's all done for something called a 'reader'!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1493: National Lampoon v.1 #61, April 1975

Always a mixed bag with National Lampoon. Today's issue was so-so.

The comics section at the end of the issue is always fantastic. Those are A-list artists at the top of their games as far as I'm concerned.

The stuff in the magazine itself sometimes reflects too much the casual misogyny and racism that was deemed acceptable at the time. It's one of the reasons that, for this project at least, I'm only reading the sequential content of each issue.

I haven't mentioned the covers very much, either for this series or for any of the magazines that I've read. I noticed last night as I was adding yesterday's issue to the database, that the covers of magazines and the covers of comics have a very different design aesthetic. The database I use for my collection (Collectorz.com) allows one to view each listing as a small cover graphic. When I have something like National Lampoon or Heavy Metal sitting next to more traditional comics fare, it's easy to see the difference. But it's not something I'd noticed before.

A few months back I was deep into reading old 50s horror titles and got a crash course from the text features in Tales Too Terrible To Tell, the New England Comics pre-Code reprint series. George Suarez points to Avon Publishing's Eerie as one of the earliest horror comics, but notes that they had paperback artists design the cover, and it looks like it:

I love comics, but I have absolutely no concept of design. So to be able to see these differences is pretty neat for me.

"Ahh...wait, what, what's all dis dark shit?..Where da fuk is I at?!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1492: National Lampoon v.1 #59, February 1975

Jumping back through time, and back into the magazines, I'm going to continue just reading the comics in these issues right now.

This one was a bit tough to get through. The main comics feature, an insert like the "Son 'o God" comics, was called "Heil Love," and took the form of a 60s romance comic telling the story of Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler.

There was a time that we could mock the Nazis, to a certain extent, and that was a time when the relatively insulated world of Western media thought that Nazis were a thing of the past. There's a naive hope evident in any of these kinds of media pieces (thinking here of The Whitest Kids U'Know's "Triumph of the Ill") that, really, this is a form of thought that we'll never see again, a sad, embarrassing moment of the human race's past.

Guess not.

There were a couple of photo features in here, one supposedly written in Spanish, but as if the writer had only a very, very basic knowledge of the language. Uncomfortably racist in the same way as the Hitler comic, really. I know this is all meant to be irony, and gonzo humour, but it's a bit hard to take in our current day and age.

That aside, the Wilson, Bode, Flenniken, et al. comics were amazing as usual. I look forward to seeing what other really and truly bizarre things the Lampoon throws at me next.

"Los dos hombres gladiola mortal."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1261: National Lampoon #57, December 1974

About time we come to the end of my look at National Lampoon. We'll get back to them soon, but I can only take so much sarcasm. Time to read something a bit more earnest.

What I will say of this small taste of 70s satire magazines is that they weren't afraid to let go with both barrels. Even that picture on the cover. I can't imagine the controversy it would cause today, let alone when it was published. Though, now that I think about it, perhaps things were a bit more liberal, in some ways, than they are today.

Today's issue featured yet another stellar line-up of artists - I really had no idea that they all worked for this magazine. The Vaughn Bode stuff is a real treat, as is Shary Flenniken's "Trots and Bonnie" - a definite draw if I find any more of these magazines on the cheap. Though I still have quite a few to work through.

Tomorrow I'll start evening things out. And you'll see what that means in due time. More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1260: National Lampoon #55, August 1973

Another rather valuable issue of the magazine according to my guide, though given the fact that I can fully remove the front cover, and it has no back one, mine's not quite as valuable as all that. However, given the subject matter of the issue, perhaps being able to remove covers is quite serendipitous.

I'd hazard a guess that, much like yesterday's issue, it's a matter of the confluence of artists, coupled with the spicy nature of the subject being covered. Vaughn Bode makes an always welcome appearance, there's an extended and coloured "Trots and Bonnie," Neal Adams illustrates "VD Comics," and Ralph Reese illustrates a very, very strange sex ed. lesson.

Given that this caliber of artist is working in the issue, it's no surprise that it's all really good. The usual "Funny Pages" are all excellent, there's a great single page piece by Edward Sorel that really captures the hypocrisy of Nixon's presidency, and echoes rather nicely the state of the U.S. at the present time. Though higher and higher prices are really what keep me from reading magazines on a regular basis, I kind of wish we had something similar to National Lampoon now. I suppose The Onion is very similar. Do they do comics?

One more issue of National Lampoon tomorrow, and then on to something else. More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1259: National Lampoon #41, August 1973

Turns out that this issue, according to Fogel's guide, is worth a cool $100 in Near Mint condition. It's a confluence of great artists, Frazetta, Bode, Adams, I think that makes it worth so much. And the comics really are of pretty stellar quality, both the featured ones and the regular ones in the "Funny Pages" feature.

I got these magazines, as I've said, when I purchased a large magazine collection just before we moved to Calgary. I bought the collection primarily because it was a large run of Heavy Metal, spanning the magazine's whole history, and a full run of Marvel's Epic Illustrated. I'd decided this would be a good window into the European comics my soon-to-be supervisor Bart loved so much. The less said of that the better.

But I also got a fair number of National Lampoon, Creepy, Eerie, and various underground comix. It's only in the last little while that I've realized what a great deal this collection was. I think I paid $200-$300 for the lot, and there's some really amazing comics and magazines in the collection now. I've often fantasized about finding that lost cache of comics in an attic or at a garage sale, but in a lot of ways I have to acknowledge that that's what happened here. The person I bought them from wanted to get rid of them, and I was happy to take them. It's only now, 6 years later, though, that I'm starting to really get an idea of what it is I bought.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1258: National Lampoon #33, December 1972

That really is one off-putting cover.

Today's issue has some of the most racist comics I've ever read in it. Now, given that it's National Lampoon, we are most definitely in the realm of satire, but the words themselves, regardless of the context, are still hard to read, especially when coming from the mouth of a person, albeit a cartooned one. This is one of the great uses of satire, I think, not just to amuse us, or poke fun at something, but to remind us of the uncomfortable nature of language. In satire we can use words that we might not in our regular, more civil conversation or consideration, but we should never become comfortable with those words. Ironic detachment is fundamental to satire, but unfortunately we don't teach these ideas nearly as much as we could. I can absolutely imagine someone not schooled in the idea of satire reading "Chess Piece" and either being completely and utterly insulted and disgusted by it (as it would be utterly repulsive if not satiric), or, worse, completely convinced by it. In today's world, a story like this would have to have been prefaced by a disclaimer, so that everyone knew that it was satire. Does this mean we've become less-astute as readers?

Probably.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1257: National Lampoon #29, August 1972

Another discovery I've made since procuring my underground price guide is that a lot of the big names in underground comix actually did work in National Lampoon. A few years back I got a bunch of issues of the magazine in a lot I bought of Heavy Metals and other fantasy magazines. I was never really that into them, but held on to them just in case they came in handy for something. Which, inevitably, they have.

Actually, I have rifled through them a bit. Neal Adams's "Son of God" comics are amazing, and I'm sure I could have fit them into my dissertation somehow. And there's a bunch of Jeff Jones strips in them, and Jones is an artist I absolutely adore.

So what I did today, and probably will for the foreseeable future for this magazine, is I just read the comics. There were 23 pages, plus a few single-panel gags sprinkled throughout, which is just about the same as a regular comic. The text bits are funny, but are also very, very topical. Some of the critique of Nixon that I see in the comics is perhaps a little more relatable to us nowadays, but I don't know who a lot of the figures that get fun (and occasional vitriol) poked at them are.

The comics were cool. As I noted, there's some Jeff Jones with his excellent "Idyl," some single panel and strips from Gahan Wilson, and a full "comic" inserted that's riffs on the old EC titles, but is about the life of George Wallace. And this is the problem - I don't know who that is. The comic was funny, but I was missing the context.

I think I'll poke about through these a bit more for a few days. I had planned out a full month of interesting things to read, but these mags have taken my attention. More to come...