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 - Day 1148: Star Trek #6, July 1984

One last little bit of Star Trek, but I think we'll be back soon.

Though today's cover makes it look like the duplicated Kirk will be the main thrust of the issue, it's little more than an inconvenient circumstance that occurs late in the comic. Where other stories might make the shape-shifting assassin the primary focus of the story, it's really the reasons for the assassination attempt that are the salient aspect. The politics of the story is the important part. Further, the familial relationship between the assassin and target reveals a far less utopian society that the television series (well, TOS and TNG, at least) show us. There are those within the Federation who disagree with that body's policies and actions. It seems to me that the utopian aspect perhaps tends to the more basic needs, the lower tiers of Maslow's hierarchy, whereas the higher levels, dealing with morality and governance, are still very much areas of debate. As they are in our own time. In the way, the Star Trek comic is doing what TV Trek, and any good science fiction, does very well: turns a mirror upon us and asks what we see.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1147: Star Trek #5, June 1984

One of the things that Jim Kirk is known for, within and without the fictional universe, is breaking (or bending, as he would say) the Prime Directive. This tenet of non-interference drives the exploratory wing of Starfleet, but what Kirk's experiences nicely demonstrate for us is that no rule can be absolute. There's always going to be a time when disregarding, or creatively interpreting, a rule is necessary.

Kirk excels at this. Not so much the man up there on the cover who, at no time, does anything remotely like what he's doing there.

I don't remember how much of the series deals with these kind of surreptitious incursions onto less-developed worlds, but it will be interesting to see how the colonial aspect of Starfleet is parsed through these encounters.

A further aspect of this is that in today's issue, Ensign Bearclaw is said to have had a "traditional Indian upbringing," a term that just seems highly inappropriate to the ostensibly utopian universe of the Federation. There's no real acknowledgment of how Bearclaw might react, given his traditional upbringing, to the work of Starfleet and the Federation. And I think the real problem here is not so much the depiction of Bearclaw as a tracker - that's something that is rather believable of someone of his background. But there's a lack of any other representation, the Indigenous person who isn't a tracker. I was talking to my students about representation and the danger of stereotyping today. Hopefully Mike Barr will be able to steer away from stereotyping.

It's very "thinky," this Star Trek comic.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1146: Star Trek #4, May 1984

Our story concludes, with the Excalbians facing off against the Organians. There's something interesting being said in this comic about the nature of Good and Evil. The Excalbians simply do not see their role as Evil, and Kirk plays on this in his solution to the problem of the story. It's true that the bad guys never think they're the bad guys. Well, hardly ever.

Reading these comics is like half-remembering a dream. I've read them before, numerous times, but it really has been so long that when I read a story, some details come back, but not all of them.

A couple more issues of this series, a taste of where Barr, Sutton, and company are going to take us, then we'll boldly go somewhere else in the collection.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1145: Star Trek #3, April 1984

Though TNG claimed that Worf was amongst the first, if not the first, Klingon to serve aboard a Federation vessel, there is also the case of Konom. Where the action of this storyline is the usual Federation versus Klingons, the threat of war, etc., the story of Konom actually gives us some emotional depth. Yesterday's comic was titled "..the Only Good Klingon," of course trading on the usual completion of that phrase "...is a dead one." However, what the title actually refers to is a Klingon who cannot stomach the killing and bloodshed that define his civilization. It is Konom who gives the Enterprise the first clue as to the Klingons' new tech, and he assists Kirk and Bryce in escaping the space station. Konom remains an important character throughout this series, and there's some excellent stories dealing with the prejudicial treatment he receives. His first friend is Ensign Bryce, whose father was killed by the very regiment to which Konom was assigned. Their relationship is a nice way of looking the reparation of long-burned bridges.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1144: Star Trek #2, March 1984

The tag line at the top is a little disingenuous. Yes, Kirk's there, but so are Saavik and the newly-introduced Ensign Bryce, who, along with her other new recruit cohort, is amongst the reasons I love this series so much. The opening of the first issue shows the death of two characters named Bearclaw and Bryce aboard the ship that the Enterprise is investigating. Similarly, as the Enterprise leaves Earth, two new recruits bearing the same names are aboard. The drama that unfolds between these two ensigns is excellent, and gives us a perspective on a few things that we don't often see in Star Trek. First, there's some generational trauma going on here, as Ensign Bearclaw blames father's death on Bryce's father. Bryce, on the other hand, claims her father did his job, and couldn't have done anything more. Add to this the fact that Bearclaw is an Indigenous person, and you've got some interesting commentary, both on recent and historical traumas. I'm curious to see how Barr and co. handle Bearclaw's portrayal. The second interesting thing these characters do for us is show us what life is actually like aboard the Enterprise. They're bored a lot of the time, or just fed up with one another - there might be a lot of people on board, but a small population is a small population. There was a Star Trek: TNG episode ("Lower Decks"?) that attempted something similar to this, but the advantage of the serialized comic medium is that a story is often going to be more drawn out that on television, leaving more space for the development of ancillary characters.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1143: Star Trek #1, February 1984

The edge of my copy of this comic, just over by where Uhura is on the cover, is quite damaged, torn and split and worn. That's because I've read and re-read this series many times over the last 34 years. My copy of this comic was first purchased by my Mum, who collected comics right along side me for quite some time. It was she who picked this one up, and the first issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the first issue of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. She wasn't a fan of Miller's take on the Dark Knight.

But she did like this series, and collected all 56 issues, along with the film tie-ins and annuals. And then she gave them to me. Which I'm totally fine with, because I really, truly love this series. Mike Barr and company perfectly translate what's great about Star Trek to a different medium. They work within the boundaries of the films that were coming out at the time, but tell remarkable stories that capture the action and the thought of the original series, while also embracing the serial nature of the medium.

I'm going to have many things to say about this run, I'm sure. But for today, let me just say I'm really excited to be delving back into it. It's been ages since I've read it.

And it makes me think of my Mum.

More to come...