The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1999: Teen Titans #20, March-April 1969

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Another of my Silver Age score at Purple Gorilla. Though, as with many older comics, there's no credits, the GCD tells me that this was written and pencilled by Neal Adams. Adams is one of those artists who flies at the periphery of my knowledge. I sometimes think that my lack of knowledge of the earlier greats is a huge absence in the comics encyclopedia in my brain, but that lack also leaves room for me to learn and discover new things. Like how great Neal Adams' art is. I've seen some of his later work in various Batman comics, and the Green Lantern/Green Arrow stuff he did, but this is pretty early work, less than a decade after Marvel and The Fantastic Four reinvigorate superheroes.

A weird, one-shot story about the Titans having to convince some other teens that the strange cult/protest group they've joined isn't as benign as they think. There's another crimefighter involved, named Joshua, who basically functions as a Batman stand-in, as far as I can tell, and who recruits the Titans because he's too old for the duped teens to listen to. And then there's that title, that I really feel must be a spelling error.

All that said, Mr. Adams' art is phenomenal. Crazy angles and figures constantly in motion, and only slightly stilted dialogue while trying to ape the teen lingo. Or perhaps it just feels that way because the language is so dated.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1273: International Insanity v.2 #2, March 1977

More of the same, really. The comics were okay, particularly the King Kong goes to prom comic at the end, but there was still that strange, not quite sure if they're feminists or if they're mocking feminists, and perhaps I read these things from far too 21st century a point of view. Maybe I'm drawing a binary distinction where there isn't one.

But there was definitely a lot of ethnically-motivated humour in here, and it's really pretty distasteful.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1272: International Insanity #2, September 1976

Not sure what to say about this one.

The comics were amusing, though had a strange tone to them. It was very difficult to tell, for example, if the superhero parody "Single Woman" was for or against women's lib. There was a slight sense of mockery, but then the main character in the story is a very forthright and capable character, which seems to be a good thing, but then there are moments where it's like she's being mocked for it.

Anyway, there's a short Neal Adams strip in here which was quite amusing, but aside from that I'm not too impressed. And there was some really dodgy ethnic humour in the magazine too. Though I've just realized that perhaps that's one of the reasons it's called International Insanity.

I'll read through the other issue of this that I have tomorrow. More to come...

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...