Everything I Know about Cats I Learned from Krazy Kat

Whenever Charlie does something particularly wild or stupid, I tell him he’s a crazy cat. Except in my mind, I’m spelling it “Krazy Kat,” even though I know he and perhaps most of you don’t get the reference.

My late stepfather was a political cartoonist. Like most such artists, he would use characters out of the day’s news to populate his graphic editorial commentary, but he also ...

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From the September 2014 issue of the Marina Times

Moebius Is Dead

There was rotten news to wake up to this morning: French comics legend Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, has passed away.

This past fall, I had the pleasure of meeting a neighbor who is an artist and designer (and builder and inventor ... all very cool). He showed me some of his artwork, fantastic, thin-lined illustrations of people on flying contraptions against alien-looking landscapes. I said to him, "I don't know if you'll think I'm crazy or not, but what this reminds me of is Moebius." He immediately smiled and agreed, noting how much he admired Moebius' work.

Moebius, one of the creative geniuses behind the French comics magazine Metal Hurlant (which came to the U.S. as Heavy Metal and to Germany as Schwer Metall and to other countries under other names), leaves behind a staggering amount of work from around the world over many decades. Below is just a sample.

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

From 2012-03-10

Pew! Pew! Pew! Zzzzaaap!

Why post this? Because I like to think I live in a world – er, universe – in which spacemen can have laser battles with robotic warriors in orbit. That's why. Is that a crime?

Defunding NPR

The latest political cartoon from my stepfather, Lyle Lahey.

The History of Wisconsin Governor Walker – in Cartoons

Many of you already know that my stepfather, Lyle Lahey, is a veteran political cartoonist in Wisconsin, having worked for decades at the now-defunct Green Bay News-Chronicle.

For the past several years, he has been producing his political cartoons for the web, only taking a leave of absence recently to accommodate a move across town. Then he picked a great time to come back: right in the middle of the brouhaha over Wisconsin's right-wing governor, Scott Walker, and his plans to radically alter the state's politics and economics. (Let's just say Lyle puts the "haha" in "brouhaha").

Here, then, is a small collection of Lahey comics on the topic of Wisconsin's famous and infamous maximum leader. You can see new and more than 560 archived Lahey comics at his main site, and you can follow his new ones on his blog.

Click on the cartoons to view them in larger format.

Good Reading Tips from Comix 211

Tom Mason has some great genre-related weekend reading tips over at Comix 411.

I know, the weekend's over, but check out his links (I have a dog in this race, BTW) and plan your next weekend.

The Starlog Project: Starlog #160, November 1990: The Flash – in a Pan

Audiences weren’t exactly enamored of the previous Flash – the Dino De Laurentiis Flash Gordon film from 1980. But 10 years later, in 1990, CBS TV aired a different comics-based hero, The Flash, as a regular series. It starred John Wesley Shipp, and noteworthy guest stars include Mark Hamill. The Flash only lasted one, 22-episode season, and in that respect it resembled various failed attempts to bring science-fiction or comics projects to the small screen in the 1970s. I’m no Flash expert or fan, but from what I gathered from listening to other folks who were Flash-ers, this series was fairly well received and appreciated by comics fans (unlike many of the cheapo 1970s productions alluded to above), if not the network.

So, short-lived but well-loved.

Meanwhile this month, in other Starlog-ish news, Lia Pelosia is now listed as a consultant, along with former publisher Kerry O’Quinn, in the staff box. Also, the company ceased publication of its Bob Martin-spawned real/reel horror magazine Toxic Horror, and one of its other horror film magazines, Gorezone, has switched from bimonthly (six times a year) to quarterly (four times annually) publication. Starlog, Fangoria, and Comics Scene are all chugging along healthily, however. And, after a couple years’ interregnum, the Starlog Festival SF conventions return, with a January 12-13, 1991 event in Anaheim, California, with appearances from Patrick Stewart (Whoopi Goldberg’s boy toy, as you’ll see), Bill Mumy, Denise Crosby, Joe Barbera, and others.

Starlog #160
76 pages (including cover)
Cover price: $3.95

Classified ad of the month: “STAR WARS Can get ya it got me good. I got over stocked with original Star Wars style A posters & Anakins U.S. $80 each ...” Oh, if only people’d pay the extra 30 cents to have correct punctuation in their ads.

The rundown: That’s John Wesley Shipp as The Flash on the cover; Kim Hunter in full Planet of the Apes get-up is on the contents page; Communications letters are overwhelmingly devoted to commenting on various Star Trek topics (such as how to defeat the Borg), with the remainder a grab bag of Land of the Giants, James Coburn, Airwolf, and Quantum Leap commenters; and David McDonnell’s Medialog includes the truly scary news that the people who brought to TV the mind-numbingly boring and annoying series thirtysomething are planning a Robin Hood movie, which (thankfully) never materialized. (For you readers too young and blessed not to have lived through an episode of thirtysomething, just know that it was the show that confirmed in the rest of the population the conviction that Baby Boomers were self-absorbed and whiny. That show, the network suits saw fit to run for four seasons. The Flash could have livened up those characters.)

“Patrick Stewart doesn’t have much hair, but, boy, is that man sexy!” – or so says Whoopi Goldberg in her interview with Marc Shapiro, in which she discusses her recurring guest star role on Star Trek: The Next Generation and her role in Ghost; David Hutchison’s Videolog column notes the release of some Woody Wookpecker cartoons, plus other genre releases; Steve Swires interviews Edward Judd, star of The Day the Earth Caught Fire and First Men in the Moon; Tom Waver and Michael Brunas do a Q&A with actress Kim Hunter about her days as an ape on the Planet of the Apes movies; Marc Shapiro talks with Alien Nation star Eric Pierpoint, who portrays detective George Francisco in that series; Shapiro also has a short talk with actress Lauren Woodlan, who portrays alien kid Emily Francisco on Alien Nation; and Frank Garcia profiles actor Brian Tochi, who guest starred in the original Star Trek episode “And the Children Shall Lead” and also appeared in Space Academy, The Twilight Zone, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Marc Shapiro keeps giving us more this issue: he explores the new superhero TV series The Flash; the Fan Network section includes a directory of fan clubs and the convention calendar; Bill Warren previews Eve of Destruction, which stars Renee Soutendijk and Gregory Hines; in the first of a multi-part article, Edward Gross talks with veteran writer George R.R. Martin about TV’s Beauty & the Beast, about which Martin comments, “To the extent that if your ratings are strong, you earn yourself the freedom to do whatever you want. When your ratings begin to sink, and I experienced this on Twilight Zone too, suddenly you’ve got a lot of ‘help’ from the network and the studio. And it’s not necessarily the help you want. On Twilight Zone, things got so bad at the end that we had two network representatives sitting in on our story meetings. We never got that bad on Beauty & the Beast, but yes, we did go with more action in the middle of the second season and definitely in the third.”; in “Lord of Disaster,” Lowell Goldman talks with director John Guillermin about The Towering Inferno, King Kong, Sheena, and more; in part two of Mark Phillips’ talk with the writers of The Land of the Giants, future Dynasty creator Richard Shapiro notes about his involvement with Giants: “My writing career was not exactly soaring when I got my first script assignment for Giants. I needed the credit, I needed the money and frankly, I would have worked for anybody who offered to hire me.”; Kerry O’Quinn’s From the Bridge column explores his enchantment by total solar eclipses; and ye kindly editor, David McDonnell uses his Liner Notes column to – perhaps oddly, perhaps uniquely – suggest other magazines of interest (from other companies) to which Starlog readers should subscribe.

“Ah! That was great! Jonathan [Harris] and I remained friends years after the show [Space Academy]. Jonathan always had a story to tell. I would just sit with him and marvel at the stories about stage from way back and he would have them all. I remember every morning, he would bring a whole box of Tootsie Pops! He was terrific, so much fun, so clever, so witty, so much arrogance. He was testy. The first time I met him was at a doctor’s office – we were having our medical checkups for insurance purposes. In there were Pamela [Ferdin] and Jonathan Harris! I went up to him and said, ‘How do you do, I’m Brian Tochi, what’s your name?’ And he looks at me! ‘You do not know me, really?’“

–Brian Tochi, actor, interviewed by Frank Garcia: “Star Child”

To see more issues, click on Starlog Internet Archive Project below or visit The Starlog Project’s permanent home.

Panel Discussion on the Modern Graphic Novel

Graphic novels began to earn literary and even intellectual respect in the 1980s with works such as Art Spiegelman's Maus (a Holocaust tale), around the same time people were being blown away by Watchmen and various Batman reimaginings.

Now, I don't think real cartoonists (or at least mature ones) care about being called graphic novelists and not cartoonists or comics artists. I know professional cartoonists, and they love and are proud of comics and cartoons. The semantic battle over graphic novels as a term really just involves communicating with the non-comics folks who look down upon anything illustrated (but whose reading list usually is filled with hackwork airport books and crap self-help tomes).

That said, there's a new generation or two of long-form comics -- erk, graphic novels -- that are evolving this storytelling form in cool new ways. People who are interested in this topic might want to check out the video below of a recent panel discussion in San Francisco featuring some comics heroes.

SFX Reviews Gay Superheroes

There are entire web sites devoted to the topic of gay (or gayish) superheroes. But if you want a good overview, check out this online article from UK science-fiction magazine SFX.

Creepy #3 Finally About to Debut

Fangoria has a preview of some of the pages from the next (third) edition of Dark Horse's wonderful Creepy revival.

I still wish Dark Horse would increase the frequency of this title.

SFX Publisher Future Launches "Comic Heroes" Quarterly Magazine

'Twas just a matter of time, I suppose. Powerhouse UK publisher Future, which produces the 150-page science fiction media magazine SFX, among other titles, is launching a quarterly magazine devoted to comics. Called Comic Heroes, the new magazine will be unveiled in mid-March in the UK; no word yet when it'll show up in the colonies.

The new magazine will be 132 pages and will sell in the UK for £7.99; it will be 132 pages. (A normal issue of SFX costs just £3.99 and retails in the United States for about $9.99, so expect Comic Heroes to be a wallet-killer.)  The move to create a comics-focused magazine comes after a superhero special issue of SFX, which proved to be one of the most successful issues ever, according to The Guardian newspaper.

It's a good move, though I hope they won't be too parochial to superheroes. Of the two parts of its name, it's the "comic" that interests me the most. The Guardian article plays up the superhero aspect quite a lot, and it makes sense that they would focus on popular superhero comics, TV programs, and movies. But, writing as someone who never found superheroes to be all that interesting, I hope they will cover the vast array of other interesting non-superhero comics out there. In fact, it was always the lesser-known comics articles that interested me in (all three iterations of the late, great) Comics Scene magazine. That was the magazine that introduced me to Cerebus the Aardvaark, to mention only one.

(And, because this blog glories in diversionary asides, did you know there's a Cerebus Wiki? Yup.)

Comics and Science Fiction, Part II: Strange Galaxy

I'm sure I'll be finding new examples of forgotten science fiction/fantasy comics magazines for months and years to come, but here's just one I neglected to include in my recent post on the topic: Strange Galaxy. I'd never even heard about it until 10 minutes ago, when I stumbled upon it on eBay through a serendipitous series of clicks that is too complicated to repeat here.

Needless to say, I've never seen the magazine in person, but I think we can guess its content from this cover:

Comics and Science Fiction: I Want My Space Opera Illustrated!

The short story is the perfect medium for science fiction. Of course, the novel is also the perfect medium for science fiction. Orson Welles proved that radio is the perfect medium for science fiction. In fact, movies, television, paintings, records/CDs and model kits are all perfect media for science fiction. All of those statements are true; science fiction has worked and mostly still works in each of those media.

But today I want to explore another true statement: Comics are the perfect medium for science fiction. So why has it been so difficult to find a solid, long-lasting SF comic publication for the last few decades?

In the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a lot of SF comics action, especially following the breakout success of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind at the box office. At the highest end, there was Heavy Metal magazine, which National Lampoon licensed from the French original, Metal Hurlant. HM was joined in 1980 by Marvel's great Epic Illustrated magazine. Both magazine-sized anthology comics mixed science fiction and fantasy, and -- let's be frank -- well-endowed women who had somehow lost their shirts. Whether it was the creative ownership granted to the artists and writers, the exhilarating experimentation with new story and graphic types, or the women -- I'm not sure -- but both magazines represented a kind of golden era of SF and fantasy comics, certainly in the magazine format.

Meanwhile, in the early 1980s, the great Warren magazine empire collapsed. As a result, we not only lost Warren's horror-themed magazines Creepy and Eerie (which occasionally dabbled in SF), but its science fiction comics magazine 1994 (which had changed its original name from 1984). 1994 played in the same sexy SF area as Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated, but it focused more on black-and-white stories.

By the mid-1980s, though, things were changing. Heavy Metal was reduced to a quarterly publication schedule, and Epic Illustrated ceased publication altogether. HM would continue with its lower profile until it was bought by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator Kevin Eastman, who publishes it to this day. Epic continued as the brand name of a series of Marvel comics.

What else was there? When 1994 and Epic died and Heavy Metal refocused on longer stories, I don't believe there was any high-profile comics magazine featuring lots of quality short SF and fantasy. Long gone were past titles such as Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction or -- shudder -- Strange Adventures. Yes, you can still scour eBay for foreign classics such as Pilote or Metal Hurlant, but the pickings are slim. (Completists might also want to scrounge around for the three issues of Omni Comix from the mid-1990s. Or better yet, just buy anything by Moebius.)

Why is this? As editor Michael A. Burstein notes in the first (and so far only) edition of Outbound, comics and science fiction would seem to be natural partners, but they are rarely paired successfully. They should work well, because the ability to illustrate the imaginative settings of SF stories is the strength of comics; plus, of course, many SF stories have a healthy dose of action and adventure, which also make them great for comics. What might not seem to be a natural is the more intellectual, internal SF story, in which there are fewer explosions and more thinking. But anyone who's been a fan of the great Japanese manga series Planetes knows you can mix space ships, conflict, intelligent stories, and good art, and you can come up with a classic SF comic.

Outbound, by the way, is a comic-book-sized anthology published by the Boston Comics Roundtable. It features a nice variety of stories, some good original voices and art, naturally some weak spots, and, like Heavy Metal's early years, a couple stories that must only make sense if you're heavily into some sort of drug experience.

I do not know if there will be a second issue of Outbound, but I am encouraged to see someone trying to build something in this market space. It is clearly a tough niche in which to survive, but if enough people get in there and show what can be done, sooner or later some publisher will concoct the correct recipe. Then we'll get some great professional space opera, thought-provoking explorations of SF ideas, and mind-bending concepts.

Fangoria Graphix on ComicMix

ComicMix has an interesting interview with Fangoria Graphix Associate Editor Troy Brownfield. If you're at all interested in how a horror comics company operates and what are its plans for the future, check it out.

Of geeky interest is that the interview was conducted by Robert Greenberger, who himself was once the managing editor of famed horror magazine Fangoria. Greenberger (who also was the founding editor of the late, great Comics Scene magazine and is a media tie-in expert), writes an interesting blog here.

If only Fango's web site were visible today ...

Berkeley Breathed, Bloom County Creator Is Older & Wiser

In the 1980s, there appeared in the newspapers a comic strip that thrilled me. It was fresh and satirical and smart and funny -- all things I liked to believe I was, too. And it seemed like the first comic strip for my generation. It wasn't another 40-year-old strip being drawn by the sons of the original comic creator. It wasn't an aging 1960s/1970s strip with an attitude equally out-of-time. Bloom County was a daily dose of quality and silliness that made you wonder why the heck other comic strips couldn't be half as good.

Bloom County ran from 1980 to 1989, when creator (and comics l'enfant terrible) Berkeley Breathed decided it was time to exit. During its run, Breathed even picked up a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. (He did two other strips later on, Outland and Opus, but neither did anything for me.) The only thing that kept intelligent comics fans going after Bloom County was a little strip called Calvin and Hobbes, which still had another five or six years of life left in it before its creator, Bill Watterson, also decided it was time to exit.

These thoughts come to me not because of encroaching middle age but because of news that a collection of Bloom County strips is headed our way, with the first edition available this week. Bloom County: The Complete Collection, Volume One: 1980-1982 (shown above) has a pretty self-explanatory title, at least as far as what the book includes. But if you weren't alive in the 1980s and reading newspapers, then you probably don't know how great it was to find supposedly neutered, apolitical comics characters go to Canada for baby seal clubbing season or expose animal torture in the cosmetics industry. Remember Opus returning from Granada after the U.S. invasion? This was not your Peanuts or Hagar the Horrible. But it was always funny and well-done.

Breathed was not a hero to everyone, and, as an LA Times article points out, he was something of a pariah within the comics industry due to his I-don't-need-you attitude toward them and their accomplishments. I didn't know about some of the feuds that are pointed out in the article, but I do remember one that didn't make it into the article. When Breathed won his coveted Pulitzer, no less than editorial cartooning giant Oliphant apparently was unamused by this young upstart. Breathed, in typical 20-something swagger and in-your-facedness, proceeded to relentlessly (and almost cruelly) pillory Oliphant's work in Bloom County.

The Times article is noteworthy because it shows that Breathed has grown up and is able to give proper perspective and criticism to his own work and actions. He takes himself to task for passing up the chance to make friends with Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, who had reached out to him after Breathed was seriously injured in an accident. He also comes clean about copping from Doonesbury in his early work. When Garry Trudeau pointed that out and Breathed didn't respond well, any chance of friendship or mentorship pretty much evaporated.

Says Breathed in the Times article:

“He came as close to a hero for me as I was going to have in the comics world. ... But I earned his spite by doing a lot of things wrong, and then when he called me on it, and did so relatively benignly, I was a smartass. I was, what, 21? I didn’t handle it well. After that, he had no interest in having a beer with me.”

The Times article is well worth reading, and not only for the above. You also learn about Breathed's friendship with Watterson and his film and children's book success. And it all serves to whet your appetite for the first volume of Bloom County's complete collection.

Review of DC Showcase Strange Adventures -- Sheesh!

Other than the old EC horror titles, I have little interest in reading comics from the 1950s. I've never been into superheroes, I never liked stories that treated their readers like children (even if they were children), and, well, the 1950s just don't particularly interest me. The 1940s? Now that was a decade, awful and interesting. And lots of adventure in the 1930s. But the '50s were mostly boring.

However, when I saw that DC had published a DC Showcase collection of 1950s science fiction title Strange Adventures, I bought it with the hope that I could at least enjoy some cheesy space opera. I also figured it would be nice to take a break from time to time from the mammoth history book I'm reading (waaay too much about the Prussian "Fredericks," frankly).

So, a couple Strange Adventures stories before I turn off the light and go to sleep. It was a good plan.

There's no nice way to say this: The stories are terrible. Though the art is actually quite nice, the stories show an absolute ignorance of science, bad plotting, silly motivations, and an eight-year-old's view that every antagonist has to be out to take over the world. (That laboratory ape that just gained super intelligence? He's out to take over the earth. Those Martians who just landed? Wanna take over the earth.) Frankly, it's rather painful to read. Thank goodness James Warren came along and realized he could escape the comics code by publishing magazines instead of comic books.

Sheesh. Seriously, just "sheesh." This book sort of saps your love for life.

Another Giant Gundam

Yesterday I posted a video about the giant (well, "life"-sized) Gundam that was built in Japan to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Mobile Suit Gundam. A later report says that the closing ceremony for the statue was canceled due to an approaching typhoon.

But just because the ceremony was canceled, of course, doesn't mean the giant robot still stands. All good things must come to an end, so by now, the 18-meter-tall guardian of truth, justice, and the Japanese way is probably well off into the solar system, fighting the Zeon forces.

But seeing that video reminded me of some photos I took of a display of large (but hardly life-sized) Gundam robots at San Francisco's downtown Metreon shopping mall a half-dozen years ago. There was a full-body Gundam, a huge Gundam head, and a full Zaku suit. (Please forgive me; I don't know exactly which iteration of Zaku this one was.)

All three of the statues were up on the second floor, right outside the (now-defunct) Things from Another World comic shop, which also sold lots of models, figurines, books, t-shirts, etc.

It was a nice display, but it, too, didn't last. I'm just impressed that the Zaku and the Gundam never got in a fight. Woulda really messed up the store.

Inspired by Cerebus Again (After Nearly 30 Years)

Waaaaay back in the January 1983 issue of the short-lived Comics Scene magazine, there is a letter by yours truly printed on page 6 in which I mention the independent comic book Cerebus. I had begun reading Cerebus because of an article in Comics Scene, and I would read the comic off-and-on for years. In fact, after I'd stopped following it, I began to read it again after another article about Cerebus (and its creator, Dave Sim) in an issue of the reborn Comics Scene in 1987.

Comics Scene was reborn yet again in the early part of this decade, but it only last three issues and I don't recall an article about Cerebus in it. But last week I picked up the first three copies of Cerebus Archive during a visit to a downtown San Francisco comics shop, and I've enjoyed seeing Sim dig up his material from the mid-1970s. (So far, it's all been pre-Cerebus stuff; the "archive" really refers to Sim's career, not -- yet, at least -- to the famed misanthropic sword-carrying aardvark.)

Granted, unless you have a high tolerance for reprinted rejection letters Sim received from Charleton Comics, Playgirl, Warren, and other publishers, you might not be too interested in this archive. But there are plenty of other treats in the publication, including lots of correspondence from Gene Day, Sim's friend, supporter and collaborator, who appears to have been a wonderful soul but a terrible typist. Through it all, you get a nice glimpse into the bootstrapping world of independent aspiring comics creators.

Now here comes this development. There's going to be an announcement about Cerebus TV -- details at CerebusTV, appropriately enough. What's Cerebus TV? Haven't a clue.

Magazine News Roundup: Levi Johnson, Creepy, Gay GOPers, Obamas on Covers, & More

Oh, what a week in magazines!

• Levi Johnson, the father of Sarah Palin's granddaughter, wrote an article in Vanity Fair that manages to surprise us even more -- and we thought we were immune to further Palinalia.
• Oh, and Levi Johnson is reportedly going to pose nude or semi-nude for Playgirl (presumably for its web site, because it ceased printing issues last year).
• Meanwhile, "actress" Linday Lohan has turned down nearly $1 million offered to her to pose nude for Playboy.
• The Obama takeover of America's publishing industry continues. One of the Obamas will be on covers of a number of Rodale magazines, including the newly launched Children's Health. President Obama will be the cover man of Men's Health's October issue. They will not be nude.
• Print magazines are dead, eh? Then why did a record 75 new titles launch in August? Huh, Mr./Ms. Smarty-Pants?
• Disgraced South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's wife Jenny does a tell-all in the September issue of Vogue. And it doesn't look good for him.
• Also, bad-boy Sanford is being tipped as the culprit behind rumors that Andre Bauer, his lt. governor and fellow Republican, is gay. It doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure this out: If Sanford is behind it, he's pretty clearly trying to scare off the easily-scared conservatives in the state government from forcing him out of office, because his position would then be filled by the presumably unfit-to-redecorate-the-governor's-mansion Bauer.
• Dark Horse Comics launched its new comics-size edition of former magazine-sized comics magazine Creepy. It's got all-new material; it's still continuing to publish its excellent hard-bound reprint editions collecting all of the original Warren Creepy magazines (and separately the Eerie magazines).

Why Is Disney Buying Marvel Comics?

Starlog.com has a short note that media giant Disney has purchased Marvel Comics for about $4 billion.

The New York Times reports that "Isaac Perlmutter, Marvel’s chief executive, will continue to oversee his company’s properties, including more than 5,000 characters that also include Iron Man and the X-Men." So who knows what Disney has in store for the creation of new characters or the print side of the Marvel comics universe, but it will certainly put it in a great position to exploit the characters in film and television. In the past decade, there have been numerous wildly successful Marvel movies, including the X-Men and Spiderman series and the first Ironman.

So it'll be great for business. Time will tell if it will be great for readers and other audiences.

UPDATE at 7:15 am: The Wall Street Journal posted the official press release. Read it here. In it, Walt Disney chief Robert Iger says those magic words that make fans' hearts go pitter-patter: "We believe that adding Marvel to Disney's unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation." Which means, they'll get richer. But hey, if it gives a sound financial backing to a major comics publisher, who's really going to complain?