The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1932: Ghost Manor #45, September 1979

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There's something so very intriguing about the Charlton Comics horror output from the 70s. While researching today's featured creator, the late Wayne Howard, I found an excellent articulation of this intriguing feeling from blogger Mark Andrew at Comics Should Be Good: "...since Charlton didn't want to do anything that'd offend your average 9-year-old, you can feel this book fighting against the uber-restrictive comics code." This is the sense that I get every time I read a Charlton horror title. The writers and artists want to be telling us much more interesting stories.

The other really interesting thing I came across, thanks to Mr. Howard's Wikipedia page, is that he was the first comics creator to receive the "Created by" credit in a comic for his work on Midnight Tales for Charlton. Such credits become common over the course of the 80s and 90s, but Mr. Howard was there first.

Much is made in a lot of the things I read about Mr. Howard's art style, some calling him the best of the Wally Wood school of artists, some calling him a really good imitator of Wood. I think they're really saying the same thing, but the language they're using really shifts meaning. I don't think there's anything wrong with coming from an artistic school - we see so many creators who are Kirby-inspired - where do we draw the line between practitioner of particular artistic techniques and wholesale copier? For the record, I think Howard's art is fantastic - it is dynamic while hanging onto a sense of menace that, as Mr. Andrew above notes, fights against the restrictive reigns of the Comics Code. The comic is really quite well done, for the genre of non-scary scary comic (?), and were I still an academic, I'd probably have something to say about the depictions of the Devil in this book and some of the similarities I see to the depiction of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. But I'm not still an academic, so never mind.

One last interesting thing to note is that Mr. Howard apparently did not want to talk about his work for Charlton, turning down an interview in 2001 with Comic Book Artist. I'm curious as to why this was the case, but that may simply be one of the great unsolved questions of comics.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1335: Creepy Things #2, 1978

I figured since I only have one other issue of this series in the collection, I should read it.

One thing I don't often comment on with regard to my comics is their actual physical condition. I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to the state of my comics. If I can still read them, they have a place in the collection. Once I get into the habit, I'll be posting pictures of the actual covers to the 40yearsofcomics Instagram. I had meant to point out yesterday that that issue was one of the smelliest comics I've ever come across. It has that mildew-y, old bookstore smell, but far more than any other comic in my collection. I've actually left it sitting open for a bit in the hope that it will air out.

Today's issue is in much worse shape. There's no staples, and where they appear to have been is about a centimeter in from the spine. The pages are cut slightly wrong, so I'm missing the border and some sides of panels on the right hand pages of the comic. It's also definitely seen some wear, though considering it's a stapleless comic, it's in pretty good shape. All the pages are there, for one thing. That aside, it's a pretty good comic. Loads better than yesterday's. The final story, "Slimes, Slogs and Glumps," is excellent, sort of a what if someone brought a young Lovecraftian creature home as a pet. It actually reminds me of the "Dart" story in Stranger Things 2. There's some wonderful art in here, though one or two of the stories still feel like they're missing something. I feel as if the editorial decision was that each story had to be a particular length, and instead of rewriting, they just took pages out and hoped it made sense.

Anyway, that's all the Creepy Things for now. I'll definitely keep my eyes peeled, though maybe for the original Charlton versions. If feel like the reproduction work on these reprints isn't what it could be.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 58 - The Complete Rog 2000, July 1982

I can't for the life of me remember where I got this book. I got it recently, I know that, but where from has completely escaped me. I think it must have been a cheap bin somewhere, as I've made my feelings about the work of John Byrne known pretty clearly. That said, this also represents some very early Roger Stern work, so I suppose it has a place of some distinction in my collection.

Rog 2000 started out as a fictional robotic editor for a fanzine called CPL. It seems the character fairly oozed personality from the moment he was put upon the page, and a series of short stories, all collected here, followed.

Rog's adventures are silly. They know exactly what they are and aspire to be nothing more than an entertainment, a diversion. Rog hunts a slime creature, visits a "haunted" house, encounters a little old witch. There's no continuity, no recurring characters, no need to invest more than a surface read of the piece. Which, for me at least, is a very odd phenomenon. I as telling my classes today that we can certainly choose to read a piece of art with the express intention of an escapist, surface reading, but that there is almost certainly a deeper reading we can perform. I'm not sure if that's the case with Rog 2000. I mean, I sure one could, but I'm also fairly sure that there was nothing of the sort in the minds of those writing and drawing the tales within.

Seems like a terrible thing for someone who attempts to teach critical reading and thinking practices to say, but every now and again we have to acknowledge that, in some cases, there is only surface to some works of art. This doesn't make them bad...just simple.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 423: Haunted Love #2, June 1973 ("Wuv, twue wuv" Week, Day 3)

I don't know why I'm surprised to find such big-name creators working on a romance title from Charlton. I always forget that Charlton was a force to be reckoned with for some time in the late 70s and early 80s. I also have to work past that bias I have that superheroes are intrinsically the height of work for creators in comics. I know I would hate to do one thing for work for the rest of my life, so why should those involved in comics be any different? In fact, I can think of one or two contemporary professionals who should take a *cough cough Geoff Johns* break from superheroes for a bit, before one or both of them dies a horrendous death.

(Oops. Too late, DC Comics.)

Today's comic got me thinking about story lengths. There's two stories in this issue. The first, "Richard," is 8 pages long, and the second, "I'll Never Let You Go," is twice that. But "Richard" is a far superior tale. There's an odd juxtaposition of early 20th century-style clothing and seventies dialogue, but Staton's art is gorgeous, and Cuti's script is tightly-paced and plotted. (Also, Cuti produced a strange little underground comix series called Moonie that I am now hunting for, because it looks fucking bizarre.) There's even a rather lovely twist in the story in that the final teary love-revelation comes between two brothers, one deceased but still watching over his sibling, rather than the usual innocent waif and her hunky man. This offers a nice juxtaposition with the second story, though that's really the only interesting thing about it, in my opinion. "Never" is a cliched story of a woman whose bad-boy boyfriend dies in a car crash, and continues to haunt her even after she marries a nice guy (see that cover up there? That's literally all you need to know). The art is competent, but pales in comparison to Staton's work. Perhaps it would have been wiser to lead with this story so that the really stellar piece would end the comic. There's some nice use of flashback sequences, but, as with a number of the stories I've read over the last couple of days, the ending is just ridiculously rushed. The husband goes from not believing his wife to seeing and combating the ghost in the space of maybe 2 panels (and not two "a year passes" panels), and we're never given a good explanation as to why the ghost seemed to have been attracted to the house that eventually burns down (as they do), rather than the woman he was ostensibly haunting.

And so I wonder if the length of the piece allowed for too many extraneous details. Maybe we didn't need the flashbacks. Maybe this piece would have worked better as a short story, concentrating on the space and the setting and the situation, rather than the history, of the characters. Those other stories I mentioned above, with the rapid endings, are often ones of just this nature, regardless of the history of the characters we read about, and the stretch of time that becomes important in the tales is the one that comes "happily ever after" the end of the story. The effective romance stories, I'm finding, are the ones that tell the tale of the moment of love, rather than its history.

He said, having read probably less than 10 romance comics in his life. I guess we'll see over the next few days if my hypothesis is born out.

For those who might be interested, here's Nicola Cuti's Moonie at Comixjoint (which I've just discovered and it's amazing). More romance tomorrow. See you then.