Fear of the body 1 of 4

A "sketch" for a series about being squeamish and repressed. Or this might be the last one.

Teaching o' the comics

My friend, the painter Terence Donovan, invited me to teach a comics class with him at a local arts center. It's fun--mostly because Terence is a great, warm teacher who the kids love and trust. Then Duffy, the rigid dilettante, hands out "worksheets" and lectures on clarity. Luckily, the kids just draw funny comics and don't take my posturing too seriously. And in fact, they do like the worksheets, for the most part.

Here's some I handed out last week. Each kid blew through them in about 3 minutes!
(Click for bigger.)

I am an professional editor!

Did I mention I'm available to edit comics on a freelance basis? That's right! See the list of some of my comics credits on the left; search the internet for nice things said about my professionalism and abilities; look at this picture of me intently reading something (that I didn't actually edit). It all adds up to one thing: this guy was born to be paid for editing comics. "This guy" is me, by the way.

I know blogs aren't always the place to do this kind of thing. Not very info- or enter-taining. But still, it's all true!

Power Glove 1/20/10

Some editor! I used the phrase "for a sec" or "for a second" three times. I'll be fixing that.

Parts of the Dog--1990 comic by your host

In 1990 I decided to be a cartoonist and I moved to New York. This was one of the first comics (well, more of a humor piece) that I did in my swank Brooklyn apartment with real live comics tools--crow quill, India ink, and bristol board. Turned out okay, if you like the doggie humor. It was never published anyplace but my sister in law liked it enough to hang a copy in her bathroom. That's the highest flattery as far as I'm concerned!

Please note, I did not draw the dog. It's from my trusty Webster's 9th New Collegiate Dictionary.

Click on the thumbnail below to see it big and readable.

Power Glove 1/14/10

Power Glove 1/13/10

I'm going to start updating my Power Glove "graphic" "novel" in black and white here and put the color (eventually) at my webcomics nation page.

For those few of you who don't know my Power Glove work (it's possible there are a few of you) the story starts here. Seriously, this will seem totally random at first, but I need to post frequently if I'm ever to finish!

You gotta love killer teddy bears...and Tom Sutton

Because everything he drew was just dead on. I never read a Tom Sutton story where I wasn't really drawn to the art and storytelling. Sutton approached every story with a cartoonist's sensibilities combined with an illustrator's chops--always efficiently done but with enough weird detail (sometimes more than enough) to make you look twice at a lot of images. Sort of like Toth via Wrightson...or something like that. Sutton's art always made it look like he was having a blast.

For a Charton horror comic, this Sutton-drawn story has an unusually coherent and forward-moving plot. Who wrote it? The Grand Comics Database doesn't list the writer, but I'm going to guess Tom himself did the job, because it's so much less a mess than most Charlton stories...the dialog and captions have a cartoonist's economy (at least for 1971, when it was originally published). But I could totally be wrong.

Please note: Laura Galen=Awesome

Nickelodeon Magazine, where I have been lucky enough to be comics editor for 12 years, has been discontinued. I'm incredibly honored to have worked there. It was the job of my life--I got to work with a vast array of talented and funny people (staff and cartoonists) and the end result was always a magazine I was proud to have been a part of. An amazing opportunity--one that frankly still dazzles me.

I owe it all to--and kids everywhere should thank--Laura Galen, who started and ran the magazine (as editor-in-chief and then as Editorial Director) for all 16 years, hired the staff, and always, always pushed for excellence. Take a bow, Laura! We love you and we loved Nick Mag!

King Aroo is coming!

I haven't heard anything in the way of release dates yet, but Dean Mullaney at IDW is putting together a complete collection of Jack Kent's great comic King Aroo. I really don't have a lot to say except that Kent's work is really charming and it WORKS so well. Completely unpretentious but very smart.

Here's a Sunday from the mid 50s:



And here's a daily I was lucky to get off of ebay (scanned in color so you can see Kent's blue line work):



King Aroo lasted from 1950 through the mid 60's--a pretty long run by today's standards, but when talked about historically it's always considered a strip that got cut off in its youth. Only one reprint book ever came out during its run--covering much, but not all, of the first year. Rick Marschall's NEMO reprinted a fantastic surreal run of dailies in the 80s, and Tom Devlin edited a collection of Sunday's for an oversize Comics Journal special a few years ago (using Sundays from my collection, I'm collector-proud to add.) But all that adds up to a small fraction of the run of the strip.

I haven't used this spottily updated blog to plug anything until now, but if you like good cartooning, you should really check out this reprint series when it comes out!

Rufus and Flook Versus Moses Maggot 2

As promised, more Flook. More pages posted soon, I hope.

Rufus and Flook Versus Moses Maggot

I've finally gotten my hands on a Rufus and Flook collection!

I've been curious about this English daily strip since I read its intriguing entry in Maurice Horn's WORLD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMICS. The cartoonist and jazz musician Wally Fawkes (using the pen name Trog) drew it from the 50s through the 80s, with various writers. According to what I've gleaned online, it was inspired in part by Barnaby and began as a whimsical mid-century "kid and magical pal" adventure strip. It grew to resemble Pogo in that it mixed humor with social and political commentary. Readers from the UK will please excuse my having to put everything in terms of American comics.

As for this book, which hails from the earlier period, it's pretty good! Eccentric characters having lighthearted fantastic adventures--not as dry and witty as Barnaby, but probably a better attention-grabber for kids. The drawing is pretty great in a style I can only call "British" (because it reminds me of other Brit comics I've seen--if anyone knows what specific tradition/influences Fawkes came out of, please post a comment and let me know!)

Mr. Fawkes recently retired from professional cartooning (he was an editorial cartoonist too).

Would folks be interested in scans of the entire book? I can post over a few weeks. Let me know after you get a taste!

Nice endpapers...





The collection starts with a collection of strips retelling how Rufus met Flook.




And now I'm a blogger!

Robotman "Around the World in 24 Hours", drawn by Jimmy Thompson

Jimmy Thompson drew great Robotman backup comics in Star Spangled Comics and in Detective Comics in the 1940s. I've been on the lookout for Thompson Robotman stories ever since reading an enjoyable one in DC's GREATEST GOLDEN AGE STORIES EVER TOLD (bizarre title, yes). Recently, Pappy's Golden Age posted a great one from Detective 152.

Here's the only Thompson Robotman story I own--from Detective 151. I don't know who wrote it and neither does the Grand Comics Database.








Even in this era of "let's reprint everything" Thompson's Robotman probably won't be getting a collection. Neither artist or character is that famous, and for that matter Thompson didn't even create the characters; Jerry Siegel and Leo Nowak did. It isn't brilliantly weird (like Fletcher Hanks's comics). It's just imaginative, funny, and well drawn (and nicely lettered, if I may be so nerdly). Still, I hope I get to see more of these stories.