The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2270: The First Kingdom #6, 1977

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 I have definitely, definitely, complained on this blog about misleading covers on comics. Sadly, today's is one. Tundran and Fara, seen so joyously holding hands and hunting on the cover, never meet in the interior of the issue. Fara's life, post-slavery (oh, yeah, she's enslaved and leads a revolt and then escapes last issue), is taken up with the old hunter Nator, who is banished after Darkemoor is slain. He hitches his star to her wagon and trains and befriends her. Though the passage of time is not always well-delineated in the series, I think by the end of this issue, she's about 11 or 12. You'll notice that even from the cover, Mr. Katz has started changing her design, especially in light of how she was depicted on the previous cover. While Tundran retains his muscled build, Fara's is fading into the lithe form of the vast majority of women in the series. This is not to say that they're not still strong warriors, only that the "ideal" that Katz shoots for in his depictions is more influenced by the thin female forms of the 70s than by what an actual hunter/warrior maiden might actually look like.

However, far more intriguing is the delving back into the past of Terog and Himemet's lives. Definitely more of a science fiction bent, and some really intriguing clues dropped as to the origins of the Transgods of Helleas Voran. There's an introductory piece by Mark Evanier in this issue, and he notes that, in creating such rich and complex worlds, few writers manage to do so "without pillaging other creators' universes." He goes on to say that Katz actually has, and I think I'd have to agree. I don't see any reflections of other epics, fictional or not, aside from the very broad strokes of there being gods, and a godly realm, and a hell realm, though with the aforementioned clues in this issue, I'm starting to question if those realms, and those gods, are actually what I think they are. And then there's the mysterious references to "the experiment" throughout the issue. There's something deep and interesting going on here. I'm happy to be experiencing it.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2269: The First Kingdom #5, 1976

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 "The Children of the Tamra." The Tamra, if I'm understanding context, is what the people of this era call Earth, so in naming Tundran and Fara (whose birth is chronicled this issue, and who is the reincarnation of the goddess Selowan) so, we're being given yet another clue as to the importance of these two characters. You'll also see a seated figure up there between the two children - this is the Oracle, who has shown up since the first issue and given some dire predictions about Tundran's life. Poor kid.

I have to say, these kids are ripped. Not just on the cover, but as we witness their development through the issue, they're in super-great shape. As is, literally, everyone in the series. Perhaps it's as a result of the harsh environment in which they live, but there doesn't look like there's the opportunity, or genetic predisposition I suppose, to grow...softer. This is a hard world full of hard people. That said, both children were born of great love, so beneath the chiseled exteriors must dwell some gentler emotion.

I'm going to step lightly into a dodgy subject now. I want to offer some thoughts on Mr. Katz's depictions of nude and semi-nude children in this issue. I noted in a previous post that the majority of the people in this series are bare with the exception of tiny, tiny codpieces. In introducing characters who are minors, I wondered how Mr. Katz would handle the nudity. Turns out, he handles it just the same way he handles the nudity of everyone involved. It's there because of the environment and that's it. Not for titillation but for narrative consistency. What's quite wonderful about these depictions is that there's really not that much difference between the pre-pubescent forms of Tundran and Fara - perhaps some slight deviations due to biological sex, but in their abilities and their early development, they're just kids. I'm curious to see if, as the two mature, if they err more toward the typical representations of male and female in the rest of the series. Males seem to be muscular and developed, while women are slender and lithe, with little muscle definition. I think to take away Fara's more muscular design simply because she goes through puberty would be a shame. If she's to be a companion for Tundran (and I think that's where things are heading), then let her keep her warrior physique as he tries to regain his kingdom.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2268: The First Kingdom #4, 1976

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Book four completes the introductory parts of The First Kingdom, introducing what Mr. Katz himself calls the hero of the series, Tundran. Though I came to enjoy Darkenmoor's story, it seems he is a precursor, and that his son, born in tragic circumstances, will be the focal character for the remaining 20 books of the epic.

The other interesting aspect added in today's comic is a dash of science fiction, as we are given the origins of Darkenmoor's mutant companion Terog and his love Himemet. Their story cements the idea that this is a post-apocalyptic Earth, as the two mutants start out life as human-looking creatures from another galaxy who head to Earth to try to stop the imminent nuclear holocaust. They don't quite make it, and then are exposed to radiation that turns them to their current, diminutive (and long-lived?) forms. I'm curious to see if the science fiction aspect becomes more prominent as the series unfolds, though I only have up to issue 8, so I'm going to have to do some hunting soon.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2267: The First Kingdom #3, 1975

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And finally we see the founding of Darkenmoor's "Gan," the major city of the First Kingdom. I find it amusing that the technological level is probably about Iron Age but no one wears any clothes. I'm considering that it could be that the temperature is constantly so warm that they don't need clothes, and that there's no nudity taboo in the culture. Or that Katz just like drawing (and who doesn't?) naked people. It reminds me very much of Mike Grell's work on The Warlord, and that series explicitly notes the temperature of Skataris. Perhaps with this being technically a post-apocalyptic setting, the ambient radiation adds to the temperature. It certainly is meant to have mutated many, if not all, of the animals in the world, and some of the people.

One character I'm finding both confusing and annoying is an old prophet who just keeps showing up and dropping cryptic hints about Darkenmoor's son and then disappearing. I'm just not sure where he came from - he's one of the few characters that we haven't really been given even a little bit of background. I'm banking on time traveller.

We also get our first major death, maybe, in today's issue. Nedlaya, Darkenmoor's mortal love, despairingly throws herself from a cliff after finding out about the hunter's immortal love, Selowan. I say maybe because there's never a body recovered, and somehow Darkenmoor needs to sire an heir and Nedlaya was the primary candidate for Queen and Mother that we've seen thus far.

Katz produced this series, to begin with, 2 issues per year. And he leaves us on cliffhangers, which is a strange choice for such a spaced-out publication schedule. I think I'd have made each issue self-contained. Trying to keep the momentum of a cliffhanger over 6 months would be difficult, and, aside from Darkenmoor and Selowan, the characters are fairly thinly-scripted, so there's not a lot of investment there yet either. This is another of those series that, I think, works better as a whole rather than as a serial.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Links

An interview with Mr. Katz from a few years back. Some insight into the series and its finale.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2266: The First Kingdom #2, 1975

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 I read the first issue of this sprawling epic years ago as part of my magazine read-through. I don't think that's likely to pick up any time in the near future, and I'm curious as to where the story's heading, so let's get stuck in.

Continuing the tale of Darkenmoor the hunter as he travels across the wasted realms to found the First Kingdom, Katz's epic continues to lay out the history of the post-apocalyptic world (well, we're assuming it's post-apocalyptic - the editorials make reference to this, but there's been little evidence in the actual narrative). Today's issue gives us some history of the "Transgods" that seem to rule over this world. I was concerned that it was going to turn into one of those things where I'd have to try and remember a billion names, but it really doesn't appear so. There's a large-ish main cast, but not so large that I have to turn back pages and remember who each character is. The only problem is that with some of the gods the designs are very, very similar. There's differences in height, but not a lot of difference in design, even of clothing. But there's few enough of the characters that it only takes moments to sort out who we're talking about.

As much as I'm getting to know the characters, there's definitely a sense that it's not really Darkenmoor and his people we're that interested in, so much as his son, of whose future fate we get occasional glimpses and prophecies.

And then there's that format. As I noted in my previous entry I'm not a huge fan of the reliance on expositive captioning, but the editorials have pointed to the experimental nature of Katz's work. I'm trying to embrace that.

More to follow.

Further Reading or Related Links

The First Kingdom puts me in mind of Marvel's awesome Weirdworld.

And, this venerable series still has a web presence! 

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 34: Gasm #2, December 1977

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There were so many "adult-themed" magazines in the 70s it's sometimes hard to imagine. It's a marketplace that no longer exists, I think, as mainstream comics are now capable of showing in their pages the sorts of things that were only possible in black and white magazines in the 70s.

 

That said, Gasm, cover and name aside, is pretty tame by comparison. There's not that much graphic violence and not that much nudity.  The stories are in the same vein as much of the sci-fi output of the decade, though only one or two venture into that weird, post-psychedelic cosmic strangeness that one can sometimes expect from the black and white mags of the era. I think it must be the influence of the undergrounds on so many of the artists working at the time. There's definitely something of the undergrounds to one or two of the stories in today's magazine.

On the other hand, nothing really jumped out at me. The titular story is pretty good, and printed in colour, but that aside, there wasn't anything that made me gasp or laugh out loud. Good, but not great.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Links

 

For another low-rent Heavy Metal, check out Rump.

And for an adult sci-fi/fantasy magazine done right, you can't do much better than Epic Illustrated.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 33: Psycho #7, July 1972

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There's this weird thing that a lot of the 70s horror magazines did where they told stories in the second person. That means that each caption box used the term "you" for the focal character, as if the reader were meant to be stepping into the shoes of the character in the story. I'm sure at the time it was a cool way of writing stories, and it hearkens back somewhat to the EC horror comics of the 50s, as I've noted before about some of these B&W horror magazines. But it gets a bit tired when virtually every story in this issue is doing it. Further, there's actually a story that not only uses the second person voice in its captions, but also presents all of the action from a first person point of view. It sort of works, but it sort of doesn't, though I kind of wonder if this has something to do with readers being slightly more critically savvy, and slightly more aware of ironic distance, in contemporary times. Or maybe it's just me.

There's some amazing Pablo Marcos art in this issue. He's an artist I'm coming to appreciate more and more, and I think I'll have to start going through the old horror mags I've got to see a bit more of his work. It reminds me of the old historical comics in style, just with lots more nudity and violence.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 32: Vampi - Tainted Love Giant-Size Ashcan, July 2001

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Almost certainly one of the promo comics I got when I was opening up my comic store, this ashcan reads a lot like an anime. The action is fast and furious, and there are characters just appearing with no context or anything, and it's quite violent. Again, just like a lot of anime. And I suppose that was the purpose of this reimagining of Vampirella - not to necessarily reflect manga publishing and tropes of the time, but to take advantage of the North American fascination with anime that was prevalent in the early 2000s. Not that that fascination has gone away at all, but I think we're more used to it now. This series came out around the same time that the Marvel Mangaverse experiment was underway - if you could rethink something from a manga/anime perspective, you could generally get it published.

Aside from that, there's not really a lot to say about this issue. It is an ashcan, after all. I have a couple of issues of the actual series in the collection, so I'll find out eventually if the addition of dialogue helps or hinders the attempt to capture, using a venerable North American sex symbol, the Japanese comic/animation aesthetic.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 31: Weird v.8 #1, February 1974

Aside from the editors, there are no credits in this magazine, so I can't tell you who drew what. Even the GCD page only lists artists - there's no record of who wrote the various stories. I find this difficult, though it's a thing that happens all the time in literary studies. We can't always know who wrote a particular piece, though contemporary digital humanists have algorithms they can run on a text that will tell us if it shares enough similarities with known writers to potentially be a lost work of some sort. The other side, however, is that very often a piece has no pedigree and no clues as to its provenance.

What got me about this magazine was the second story, entitled "Shadow of Evil." It's not that the story was necessarily a good one - it was middling, like most of the stuff in this magazine - but that it was printed completely in the wrong order, a fact I only realized as I was finishing it. I sometimes find that reprints will cut out a page or two, or revamp them, in order to fit a new publishing medium. This story is a reprint, but the revamp seems to have simply been to print it in the wrong order. *sigh*

And I can't get work as an editor.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 30: Heavy Metal v.33 #8, Fall 2009

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Going to try to get back to my weekly magazine. Otherwise it'll be the 90 Years of Comics Project, and I'd like to think that I'll finish this strange and interesting journey one day.

I'm trying to figure out ways to get the rest of my comic collection into the house and out of the garage, and the magazines, Heavy Metal and otherwise, are amongst those items in the garage. The other night I brought a couple of boxes in, and this magazine had been put into one of the boxes while I was packing. It's been a while since I read an issue, so I thought I'd check it out.

Pat Mills loves to right ultra-violence. I know that that's a given for anyone who's read 2000A.D., but I'm not super-familiar with that magazine, or Mills' work in general, so it was a bit of a revelation for me. I enjoyed Claudia Vampire Knight: Violent Women, despite not having any background for the series. After a moment's confusion, the context of the piece helped me understand the setting. It was pretty cool, very violent, and quite funny, actually. The other long-from piece in this issue was Call of the Locnar, a call-back to some of the oldest HM stories, and featured some flashes of setting that I remember from watching Heavy Metal the movie in my pre-teen years. I wonder how it would hold up these days.

More, hopefully, to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1667: Marvel Super Special #20, 1981 (Movie Adaptation Week)

I'm reasonably sure I've seen this film, though there really is a good chance that I haven't. I have vague impressions of it, though I would only have been 7 when it came out.

Maybe I haven't seen this film.

I'd really like to, though, because this was a pretty great story. While I'm concerned that the special effects may not have aged particularly well, the tale that's told is pretty solid. There's lots of cool twists, some very mythic stuff going on, especially the bits that touch on Christianity. It's a story that really feels like it could have happened in our world. Though I can't really say why without spoiling one of the coolest parts, IMHO, of the story.

Apprentice wizard Galen has to face off against the last dragon. That's all I'll say. It sounds like a pretty standard fantasy story, but, as I mentioned, there's neat twists that definitely set it apart from the usual bunch. Though I grew up on a pretty steady diet of Dragonlance in my early teens, I've never really been a huge fan of the genre. Given my penchant for Dungeons & Dragons, that's a bit odd, but I think I've always taken from superheroes the same sort of escapism that fantasy brings. We geeks, we sometimes focus on one genre to the virtual exclusion of all others. So it's worth noting, for me at least, when a fantasy story does resonate. This one did.

Denny O'Neil adapts the screenplay, and Marie Severin and John Tartaglione handle the art. One of my planned theme weeks will feature Ms. Severin and a couple of other female artists from the early days of Marvel. The likenesses to the cast of the film are well done. I can't imagine having to draw a story in which you had an actual real-life original that could be compared to your work on pretty much every page.

The back half of the magazine is given over to "making of" features. There is, of course, one that focusses on the creation of Vermithrax Perjorative ("The Worm of Thrace Which Makes Things Worse") - the titular dragon. One particular part of that article jumped out at me in the first description in the article: "...it is the last of the great dragons, a four-hundred year old androgyne, a fire-breathing monstrosity" (emphasis mine). There's no other mention of this in the entire magazine, but I find the idea that the dragon is non-binary very interesting. On the one hand, the creature is squarely conceived as an evil force outside of nature, contrary to humanity and it's perceived binary of male/female. From this perspective, the dragon represents something contrary to Christian binary worldview. On the other hand, Christianity is not well-presented in this story, particularly, and even the ending hints at a hidden way of perceiving magic within the Christian framework that comes to dominate the world. But the dragon is still (SPOILER in case you missed the title of the comic!) slain, and the magic, and androgyny, they represented is hidden. I'm perhaps making too much of this, but I'm fascinated by the appearance of gender identities that are becoming more widely recognized in older works of literature.It tells us a lot about cultural attitudes toward such things through history.

(Of course I've just realized that the main female lead in the story begins in drag, so as to avoid the lottery of maidens sacrificed to the dragon, but "comes out" partway through the story. Maybe I need to think more about this one.)

"You can't stop me. After all, I've been a man longer than you have."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1666: Marvel Spring Special #1, 1988 (Movie Adaptation Week)

In an effort to get back to regular updates, I'm doing some theme weeks. This week we'll be looking at film adaptations. Like novelizations of films, these are always a bit of a dodgy prospect. The comic can't deviate too far from the source material, though there are instances where the comic was created from an earlier draft of a script and features things not in the film. I imagine that artists would also try as hard as possible to give the characters in the comic as much resemblance to the actors as possible, but in a stylized art form, that's not always easy. As such, adaptations can disappoint for not cleaving quite so photo-realistically to the film they adapt.

I've never seen the Elvira, Mistress of the Dark film. Or if I have, there's no recollection of it in my brain. I know of Elvira, mainly because of her prominent cleavage that was in the background of my adolescence, but I don't think I ever watched any of her television shows. For those not in the know, Cassandra Peterson plays Elvira as a late-night horror film host, sort of a sexy version of the Crypt Keeper. She's also featured in comics where she plays a similar role. At some point her popularity must have crested and she got her own feature film. The story is somewhat akin to Footloose, though with a slinky goth/valley girl in the role of agitator rather than Kevin Bacon. The sultry Elvira inspires the youth of the town to overthrow the restrictive laws of the older generation.

One thing that I'm curious about is whether or not each discreet scene in the comic follows the film. I suppose this would hinge on whether or not the artists were able to see the film prior to creating the comic. If not, I imagine that Colon made decisions for each scene that might have been substantially different from the choices director James Signorelli made. I am not, however, going to sit through the film just for the sake of comparison, I'm afraid. The story just wasn't that good.

Join me at the movies again tomorrow, won't you?

"Hey! I've seen "The People's Court"! I'm entitled to one phone call and a strip search!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 29: Eerie #109, February 1980

Since I've been doing some investigation of pre-Code horror, I thought I'd have a look at some of the horror magazine I picked up back when I got my Heavy Metal collection. At the time I thought that the HMs and the undergrounds in that purchase were the real treasures, and treasures they certainly are. But my unfamiliarity with the Warren magazines led me to overlook them, and that's a mistake.

When thinking about the tradition of EC horror comics, it is a tradition on two fronts. The first, of course, is the stories. They are, for the most part, amazing - artists and writers at the top of their games. The second front is the role it played in the crackdowns on comics in the 50s - EC becomes a metonym for the lost potential of the genre after the creation of the Comics Code. When I read Bruce Jones' series Twisted Tales a while ago, I saw him as one carrying on the tradition of these experimental tales of fear. But I neglected to note at that time that the Warren magazines of the 60s and 70s were also bearers of that torch. Mr. Jones, of course, contributes to these magazines before taking his tales to Pacific. Though they lose something in the black and white format (I've never been one of those fans who prefers B&W over colour. They both have their pros and cons.), the style is there, as is the desire to shock and amuse.

This was one of the first Eeries I've ever read, and it was okay. None of the stories wowed me. But the quality was certainly high enough that I can see why these mags are so revered. One thing that they add to the tradition, and perhaps this is inherited by Bruce Jones' later series, is women in varying states of undress. The EC comics got away with a lot in terms of their portrayals of women, but at least the ladies were clothed. The Warren magazines seem to want to equate horror and nudity, which is a strange connection to make (Eros and Thanatos, perhaps?). The question, I suppose, is does the tradition benefit from this addition?

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 28: Doctor Who Summer Special, 1980

Thinking about it, it's entirely possible that I actually brought this comic with me when we moved to Canada in 1980. We emigrated in July of 1980, so there's a good chance I'd been bought the Summer special to read on the plane. I'm going to have to headcannon that one - my memory doesn't stretch that far back (except in those strange, dream-like flashes that accompany early memory - this is one of those comics that helps me to understand Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library," in that I can almost hear and see myself as a six year old, based on my knowledge of how they act - I have very vague remembrances of the woman sitting beside me, upon whom I think I vomitted - I remember being at the very front of the 747, moved there because my Mum needed a crib for my youngest brother, barely 6 months old - my Mum, who travelled to Canada, a month behind my Dad, with a 6 year old, a 3 year old, and a 6 month old, is as close to a superhero as any of us are every going to see - how many times have I opened this comic in the last almost-40 years?).

The special reprints the first adventure of the Doctor in his weekly comic, and I just love this story. I've been reading it for so long that it's ingrained on my brain. Reading it again, encountering the Iron Legion again, after so many years, was like meeting up with old friends, and you pick up a conversation like no time at all has passed. I missed Morris, and Vesuvius.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 27: Vampire Tales #6, August 1974

My quest to read all things Gerber led me into an area of Marvel's legacy that is completely esoteric to me - fittingly, perhaps. The Marvel horror magazines of this era never held much draw for me as a kid, when they were in their dotage, and the older stuff was just never available enough to even register on my pre-pubescent brain. If is wasn't superheroes or Transformers, I wasn't interested.

In today's issue, we have the first story of Lilith, the daughter of Dracula, plotted by Marv Wolfman and dialogued by Mr. Gerber. It's an interesting way of writing. If I understand the Marvel method, Wolfman would have plotted it, given it to Bob Brown, who would have drawn it, and then it would have gone to Gerber, who would dialogue the art according to the plot. I guess it makes more sense if the same person plots and scripts, but when it's someone else, that would be strange. Conversely, perhaps that's a more truly representative way of thinking about the collaborative process of comics. The dialogue is provided after the story has been told. Though I imagine Brown would be thinking about speech bubble placement while he was drawing.

It's not a collaboration that I see in contemporary comics that much, except perhaps in cases where a writer has...um...unexpectedly departed a title, where they might be credited with the story, along with a fill-in scripter.

So, as far as a Gerber piece, it was middling. Lilith is a nicely feminist character, despite her typical superheroine garb, but the stories really are pretty run of the mill. The same goes for the other tales in here, all interesting takes on vampires, but nothing that leapt out at me. Maybe that's a good thing in a vampire comic ;D

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 26: The First Kingdom #1, 1974

It's been half a year since I did a Friday magazine. It's been a busy few months, and something had to give, unfortunately. I'm feeling a bit more on top of things lately, so I'm going to try to get ahead on these and make them more regular. Let's shoot for bi-weekly, for now, shall we?

The First Kingdom was amongst the magazines that I procured with my large Heavy Metal purchase in 2012. I didn't know anything about it, but educated myself as to its genesis thanks to the mighty Internet. Jack Katz began this story in 1974 and finished it in 1986 with the 24th installment. The First Kingdom is a sprawling, generational future history story, set after the inevitable nuclear war that seemed to be just around the corner throughout the 70s and 80s. It reminds me, as much as I'm familiar with them, of those big, epic fantasy series, like the George R.R. Martin ones, or Robert Jordan. There's all kinds of people and names that you know you're going to be expected to remember in someone's lineage 10 issues down the line. This feeling is intensified by the style in which the story is told. Having read this first issue, I wonder if Don McGregor didn't have it in mind when he did the Killraven comics. In the introduction, Katz himself calls it a "novel in which the characters live in front of you," and cites Hal Foster's Prince Valiant as an inspiration. There's definitely more of the novel to this graphic novel. That said, the characters do speak, though in an unbounded way. Katz does not do speech bubbles. The one off-putting thing for me about the text, however, is that it's all typeset. Narration is in block, dialogue in lower case, but still typeset. I'd never really thought about it before, but the organic look of a font is a way that we equate the text we see upon the page with a spoken voice. And if that text is typeset, the whole thing sound like a robot.

To me, at least.

But perhaps that really works, almost as if we're experiencing this narrative through some holographic future technology that allows us to relive the beginnings of this civilization. They just can't get the voices right?

Did I say that it's pretty cool?

It's pretty cool. If you can get your hands on a copy, it's worthwhile. It's just different enough from the usual comics fare that I think anyone would be entertained by it.

Onward.

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...