Héctor Germán Oesterheld's and Carlos Roume's Nahuel Barros' Last Story

Children's adventure comics in the 20th century were frequently colonial popaganda. The examples are quite numerous, but I'll just cite the American newspaper comic strips "Tarzan" (1929 - c. 2000) and "Tim Tyler's Luck" (1928 - 1996) or the Belgian album Tintin au Congo (Editions du Petit «Vingtième», 1931; British edition: Tintin in the Congo, Sundancer, 1991).

In the formulaic and manichean children's western comics genre the indians were "the savages" whom the white hero needed to defeat in order to save the good guys from some barbarous torture and death. (See: http://www.bluecorncomics.com/savagena.htm.)

I knew all of the above when I recently read the "Nahuel Barros" series (nine stories in Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal: # 7, October, 16, 1957 - # 101, August, 5, 1959; two stories in Hora Cero Extra!: # 6, February, 1959, # 7, March, 1959) by the greats Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w) and Carlos Roume (a).

Roume is one of those graphic artists that are enormously underrated. His loose brush depicted faces with great Naturalism. He was more of a portraitist than a landscape artist though. His landscape views of the Pampa were always evocative, but a bit sketchy for this scribe's taste...

On the other hand I stressed admiration for Héctor Oesterheld on this blog already, but I also know that he was a workaholic. He wrote almost all of the stories that his Editorial Frontera (frontier publishing house) put in print. Some of them undoubtedly suffer because of that: they're either rushed, or formulaic. The point is: when he was good, he was very good, and even in his less inspired moments we can find some phrase that's the mark of a genius.

"Nahuel Barros" is kind of an Argentinian western set in the Pampa region. It isn't exactly revolutionary when we compare it with its northern cousin. The Pampa indians are presented more as an abstraction against which the white guys have to fight than anything else, good or evil (to Carlos Roume's credit, some of the lower class "white guys," soldiers and settlers, of course, look more like the Indians they are fighting against than they look European - whatever that means). Nahuel is uneducated, but he has a great practical intelligence and a great knowledge of the Pampa (he is a "baqueano," a quiet expert on everything related to the region). Also: in a typically Oesterheldian way he's very modest: he just believes in doing his job, he doesn't embark in the hero mythology.

So, I was disappointed... until the untitled last story, that is...

I wrote about the absent hero before on The Crib. I referred at the time to another Argentinian comics character, Alack Sinner. Here's what I said: "Alack Sinner is part of that meagre gallery of what I called elsewhere "the absent hero." Against North American inspired mass art hero mythology, the true anti-hero that is Alack Sinner disappears gradually to show the world around him. This is an Argentinian tradition that goes back to the often lauded Oesterheldian "collective hero" (what we have here is the anonymous collective anti-hero)."

I can't say the same thing in Nahuel Barros' case, but it's true that he's just dead weight in his last story. Writing in a commercial medium for children Oesterheld knew that he had to follow some genre rules. Even if he couldn't forget his hero completely, in order to go beyond those rules he could, and did, tone down his actions...

On the other hand it seems to me that Oesterheld wanted to surpass manicheism jumping to the "wrong" side. In this story we (the readers and main characters) aren't hunters (Nahuel and friends are the pursuers), we are the hunted.

Is this story worthy of the best Oesterheld? Maybe not... In the end it's just a simple story about a boy growing up, that's all... Why is it here as part of my canon, then? In the same issue in which the story ends Sgt. Kirk (drawn by Jorge Moliterni) says, while being delirious (my translation): "...there are no palefaces, or indians... there are just men... just men..." Such a clear anti-racist statement put in the context of the late fifties' commercial comics culture is amazing. And it deserves to be remembered.

Who were the Pampa Indians? I found the following on a www site (http://tinyurl.com/cpfm85): "The designation of "pampas"; to the aborigines who were populating the pampas was not [...] self-imposed, but came imposed by the Spanish. The word isn't even from their own language, but Quechuan, and means "plain". So, all the Indians who were living in this geographical territory known as pampas were called pampas, in spite of the fact that they belonged to different cultures." The same site mentions a substitution of Puelches-Guenaken for Mapuche and Araucanians: "(it is good to remember that this phenomenon of ethnic substitution here in our country was called Araucanizacion of the Pampas and Patagonia)."

Nahuel Barros' last story narrates the discovery of the Pampas by a boy from Buenos Aires and his friendship with Chonki, a Pampa Indian. In the end both characters go South to explore the mysteries of Patagonia. Meanwhile, where's Nahuel Barros? Instead of bringing the boy, Pedro Quiroga, back to "civilization" and his family, he accompanies both friends in their exploration trip... An unrealistic turn of events, no doubt, but a telling one, nonetheless: in a surprising escapist ending they turn their backs to the ugly reality (the huincas - new Incas, meaning: "invaders" - and their shock against the "Pampas)"; but a "savage" goes with them this time... Even more telling: it was Chonki's idea in the first place...

Images:

Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal [zero hour's weekly supplement]'s covers by Carlos Roume: # 73 (January, 21, 1959), # 87 (April, 29, 1959).

Caricature - Coda

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Images:

1. caricatures by the supreme genius of the second millennium: Leonardo da Vinci (after 1490);

2. the last panel of a "Flash Gordon" sunday page (April, 24, 1938) by Alex Raymond (as published in Flash Gordon, "The Tides of Battle," volume three of the Kitchen Sink reprints, 1992); the caricature in this image is more a plot problem than a matter of drawing style: following the pseudo science of physiognomy many comics artists in manichean children's adventure comics used their characters' outer appearance to convey their personality; the Edward G. Robinson look-alike above is obviously a villain; this absurd theory is a caricature of science, of course, so, even if the image is not what I, for one, call "a caricature," the use of physiognomy to tell a story is a narrative caricature through visual means (another problem that I have with "Flash Gordon" and other strips like it is how racist these comics are when beauty canons are chosen to combat evil: the hero is a blond, athletic, upper class, Caucasian stereotype, the villain, Ming, is the stereotype of a 19th century Chinese ruler);

3. James Gillray was a better artist than Alex Raymond; he proved it mocking physiognomy one hundred and forty years before the "Flash Gordon" page above was published (print, 1798);

4. Honoré Daumier did this comic (the metamorphosis of king Louis-Philippe into a pear; a slang for "idiot") after drawings by Charles Philipon (c. 1831): Le Charivari, January, 17, 1834 (where the images appeared with a text); after being condemned they had to publish the judges' sentence in their magazine (they gladly complied, as we can see): Le Charivari # 58, February, 27, 1834;

5. Thomas Nast's "The Brains," Harper's Weekly, October 12, 1871; the drawing represents corrupt New York politician William Marcy "Boss" Tweed;

6. one of the worst racist stereotypes to ever appear in a comic: Chop-Chop, a character in the series "Blackhawks" by Reed Crandall (here in a detail of a drawing published in the History of Comics, vol. 2, by Jim Steranko, Supergraphics, 1972); what's shocking is the contrast between the way in which the other characters are physiognomically represented and the crass Chop-Chop stereotype (besides from Chop-Chop I could cite Will Eisner's Ebony White and many other "mammies," "coons," etc...);

7., 8., 9. contemporary comics artists are trying to use caricatural drawing styles in new, creative, serious (believe it or not), ways;

7. page from Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library # 14 (Spring, 2000); we must distinguish between caricature and caricatural drawing; the character Jimmy Corrigan can't be a caricature because it doesn't exist (there's no referent); but he was drawn in a caricatural way; Chris Ware views the drawing in a comic as a kind of writing; these are more like puppets than complex representations of people; emotional connections with the reader come more from the story itself than from these cold, distant, visual representations (the mask effect of Art Spiegelman's animal heads in Maus comes also to mind); or... we connect with their alienation precisely because they are apparently disconnected from the world around them;

8. page from Malus by Jochen Gerner (Drozophile, Spring, 2002); Jochen Gerner uses the ironic tactic of applying caricatural representations (and his drawings are even more schematical than Chris Ware's) in ways that are unexpected (but mostly ironical): here he applied it to the news of real road accidents;

9. page by Seth published on the front cover flap of the dustjacket of An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, & True Stories (edited by Ivan Brunetti, Yale University Press, 2006); the last panel may be the punchline, but I completely agree with it because, even if I like them, I don't follow Kantian aesthetics into art-for-art's-sake-land.

Caricature

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Comics and caricature are two very different things. If images are used in most comics this means that the whole array of visual styles may be used by comics artists. This is rather obvious, but not on the minds of those who view comics through stereotyped colored eye glasses. They simply link comics and Saturday morning cartoons or something similar: comics are funny; comics are silly pictures; comics are childish... etc... comics are caricatures...
There are reasons why caricature was used in such a massive way in comics since the 18th century. Some have to do with the medium of distribution: the newspapers. Caricature was once a powerful tool to satirize politicians (e. g.: the Boss Tweed affair, the Louis-Philippe affair) and, until the recent crisis, editorial cartoonists called newspapers their home (comics artists were their "compagnons de route"). Plus: since politicians lost all power, making fun of them is like satirizing the court jester (what's the point?). On the other hand, inasmuch as economy is the only real game being played, no one laughs at those who really detain power because: 1) maybe (I certainly don't) we really don't know who they are (?); 2) they own the media and they aren't very fond of the idea, to say the least...

But, to quote Peter David, I digress...

Other reasons to explain the above are practical (or technical if you wish): comics are very hard to do; in order to be efficient and deliver his or her work on time a cartoonist has to rely on visual shortcuts. Caricaturing is about exaggerating certain features, sure ("caricature" comes from the Latin word "caricare," which means "to charge"), but it is also about simplifying situations. Sometimes it's about stereotyping (as we all know there's an ugly history of racial caricaturing out there). (These deadline problems shouldn't worry alternative artists with day jobs, I suppose...)

Ernst Gombrich wrote about caricature's history (see link below) having just positive things to say about it. He asked himself why did caricature appear so late in the history of art (?). Gombrich's answer makes sense to me (at least the part that's rooted in Sociology, not psychoanalysis; i. e.: it's not Ernst Gombrich's conclusion, it's Rudolf Wittkover's and Heinrich Breuer's: Die Handzeichnungen des Gianlorenzo Bernini [Bernini's drawings; Bernini was, after the Carracci brothers - & cousin -, one of the first and, duh... best caricaturists ever...], H. Keller, 1931): "The other explanation [...] seeks a solution in the evolution of civilization and society. The spirit of witty criticism and mockery on one side, the sense of the individuality of people on the other, were not developed in a way which would lead to the appreciation of the joke of caricature. Certainly there is truth in this explanation. The social atmosphere of the beginning of the seventeenth century is marked by a culture of wit, esprit and an insight into human nature which created the immortal types of Don Quixote and Falstaff." Gombrich goes on contextualizing caricature as part of the newfound artist's freedom during the Mannerist period: "we are now able to describe caricature in the psychological terms which cover the whole ‘Manneristic’ conception of art. In caricature, too, the artist projects an image transformed by the primary process [the "transformation, ambiguity and condensation" of dreams], giving it as his view of the man. He consciously alters his model, distorts it, plays with its features, and thus shows the power of his imagination — which can exalt as well as degrade. Instead of an objective portrayal of the outer world he substitutes his subjective vision, thus starting an evolution which leads by a winding road to its culmination in modern art."

All this is fine and dandy, but it seems to me that caricature debases its subject most of the times. That's what Pierre Bourdieu says in Distinction (La distinction, Les Editions de Minuit, 2002 [1979]: 229), Harvard University Press, 1984: 208 (translation by Richard Nice): "authority of whatever sort contains a power of seduction which it would be naive to reduce to the effect of self-interested servility. That is why political contestation has always made use of caricature, a distortion of the bodily image intended to break the charm and hold up to ridicule one of the principles of the effect of authority imposition." Why have comics artists persisted (something that they continue to do, as a matter of fact) in using caricature as their chosen style if they want to be serious artists, then? My guess is that tradition is a mighty force to reckon with. Comics artists admire and follow other comics artists before them and this is a very difficult thread to break. As difficult as the obsolete mandatory use of India ink on white paper...

Images:

1., 2. in the images above I compare the imposing mass of Agathla's Needle in Monument Valley

(1. painting by James Swinnerton, a pioneer of American newspaper comics; image published in Jimmy Swinnerton, The Artist and His Work by Harold G. Davidson, Hearst Books, 1985) with a completely deflated image of the same monument

(2. caricature by George Herriman, c. 1925; as published in Krazy Kat, The Comic Art of George Herriman by Patrick McDonell, Karen O'Connell, Georgia de Havenon, Abrams, 1986); it's exactly because caricature debases things that Chris Ware said the following: "Artists like [...] myself, are all trying to tell potent stories with the tools of jokes. It's as though we're trying to write a powerful, deeply engaging, richly detailed epic with a series of limericks." (Dangerous Drawings by Andrea Juno, Juno Books, 1997: 33);

3., 4. the same comparison may be done here between a serious painting by Lyonel Feininger

(3. Vogelwolke [bird cloud], 1927) and one of his comics pages

(4. Wee Willie Winkie's World, 1906; detail; I find Wee Willie Winkie's World quite charming, though...).

PS Ernst Gombrich on caricature:
http://www.gombrich.co.uk/showdoc.php?id=85

PPS According to this site:http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/ The Crib is worth exactly $0.00. That's very disappointing! I thought that it was worth at least $1,00. Darn!...

Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds Interview

Images and sounds:

my third post on this blog is titled "Rutu Modan's Jamilti." Here's, as a distant kind of second coda to that post, an interview with Rutu about her great graphic novel Exit Wounds

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Art Spiegelman's Maus - Coda # 2

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Images and sounds:

1. the cover of Breakdowns, From Maus to Now by Art Spiegelman (Belier Press, 1977);

2. "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" (page published in Breakdowns: 1977 [Short Order Comics # 2, 1974]) quotes a Duke Ellington song to give the reader (with the "dripping faucet" continuous bass allusion), a sense of rhythm; in this page Art Spiegelman also experimented with collage, Cubism, out of sync word / image combos, the back-and-forth eye movement of the reader following the ball bouncing, etc...; Spiegelman explained this page panel by panel in Alternative Media magazine (Fall, 1978);

3. Art Spiegelman did some graphic experiences while creating Maus (The Comics Journal # 65 - where this image was also published -, August, 1981: 116): "One solution I thought was interesting involved using this Eastern European children's books wood engraving style that I'd seen in some books of illustrations. But I found myself thoroughly dissatisfied with these woodcut illustrations. [...] The cat, as seen by the mouse, is big, brutal, almost twice the size of the mouse creatures [...]. It tells you how to feel, it tells you how to think, in a way that I would rather not push."; this is a definition of kitsch according to Umberto Eco (The Open Work, Harvard University Press, 1989: 181; translation by Umberto Eco and Anna Cancogni): "the prefabrication and imposition of an effect.";

4. Art Spiegelman at Auschwitz: photo published in the first "Maus" pamphlet (Raw, Volume 1, # 2, December, 1980);

5. Art Spiegelman's cover of booklet five of the "Maus" serialization in Raw (Volume 1, # 6, May, 1984);

6. the cover of Maus, A Survivor's Tale, book one (My father Bleeds History) of two, by Art Spiegelman (Pantheon Books, 1986);

7. as many New Yorkers (see topper "The New Normal" in the first page of the book, below), Art Spiegelman was greatly affected by the 9 / 11 events; the same haunting image was used as a cover of The New Yorker (September, 24, 2001) and as the cover of his book In the Shadow of No Towers (Pantheon Books, 2004);

8. In the Shadow of No Towers' first page;

9. Animation film by Lars Edwards (and crew; music by Pat Carney, The Black Keys) publicizing Art Spiegelman's latest (sketch)book(s; three to be exact) (Be A Nose, McSweeney's, March, 2009).

Art Spiegelman's Maus - Coda # 1

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Images:

1. Raw, Volume 1, # 1's cover (July, 1980) by Art Spiegelman ("The Graphix Magazine of Postponed Suicides," quotes my favorite philosopher, E. M. Cioran, who said: "A book is a postponed suicide," The Trouble With Being Born, Viking Press, 1976 [De l'inconvénient d'être né, Gallimard, 1973]: 99 - translation by Richard Howard; the colored scene on the window - and logo - is a collage; sorry for the low resolution);

2. Raw, Volume 2, # 1 (1989; cover by Gary Panter; another type of "collage;" yes, those are Popeye's, huh, nuts...);

3. page by Cathy Millet as published in her book Show (Le Dernier Terrain Vague, 1980); the same story was published in Raw, volume 1, # 2, December, 1980 ("09.26.79. In the hall. It's hot and I feel like a vantage" / "01.07.80. (4 P. M.). I finally get to the living room. No cigarettes. I leave." / "04.21.80. Nor are they in our bedroom whose stucco ceiling is painted salmon. The bed is covered with a whiskey-colored polyester and cotton quilt. Only the cat is there."); slightly skewed geometrical drawings, half-tone dots and text used to create a nouveau roman (Robbe-Grillet) effect;

4. another European artist who published in Raw was the Spaniard Mariscal (image from "Little Mr. Horseman," Raw, Volume 1, # 4, March, 1982); charming as his work may be sometimes, Mariscal created some of the frivolous trendy imagery which was the worst of the eighties' visual culture;

5. on the opposite side from Mariscal, Yoshiharu Tsuge is one of the best artists who ever drew and wrote comics; without wanting to reveal too much: capital page from "Red Flowers," Raw, volume 1, # 7 (May 1985);

6. Jimbo tells it like it is: "Subtlety has no place in this world!!!"; Raw one-shot # 1: Jimbo by Gary Panter (1982);

7. Raw one-shot # 3: Jack Survives by Jerry Moriarty (1984), frontispiece page (detail); here's what Jerry himself had to say about his character: "Jack died in 1953. He was my father. [...] I see Jack as a witness of constant change adapting to each newer world with less understanding. Former values become obsolete and are a burden to him. Yet they remain underneath it all. My Jack forgets experiences so he innocently repeats mistakes.";

8. page from Sue Coe' X (Raw one-shot # 6, 1986; Art Spiegelman participated in the writing - the credits don't explain how, but, anyway: great text!);

9. first page from "The Bowing Machine" by Alan Moore (w) and Mark Beyer (a); Raw, Volume 2, # 3 (1991).

Art Spiegelman's Maus

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At the mid-seventies American underground comics were, as Art Spiegelman put it (The Comics Journal # 65, August, 1981: 106) "going through a slump. [...] [T]he underground comix market was shrinking, and we [Spiegelman and Bill Griffith] felt it was necessary to create a life raft of some kind for the artists that we thought belonged in print." Said "raft" was Arcade the Comics Revue (issue # 1, Spring, 1975 - issue # 7, Fall, 1976). The artists who "belonged in print" were, with editors included, Robert Crumb (who gave permission to use the title of an old mimeographed comic book that he did with his brother Charles back in the sixties - issue # 1: April, 1960 -; Crumb also agreed to draw the covers of the new Arcade; he drew five of them), Kim Deitch, Spain Rodriguez, Justin Green, Jay Kinney, Jay Lynch, etc... old glories of the dying underground movement, all of them... Here's an excellent text by Alan Moore about Arcade: http://www.readyourselfraw.com/recommended/rec_alanmoore/arcade/arcade.htm.

After the Arcade experience Art Spiegelman "swore [he'd] never be involved with a magazine again" (The Comics Journal # 145, October, 1991: 97), but (97, 98): "[he met] Françoise Mouly and she wanted to do a magazine[.]" Said mag was the amazing Raw (volume 1: # 1, July, 1980 - # 8, September, 1986; volume 2: # 1, 1989 - # 3, 1991).

Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly chose to publish the work of both American and European artists. The first issue of Raw exemplifies this perfectly: a text by Alfred Jarry (Raw starts under the sign of the Pataphysique...) illustrated by Gary Panter (...and Punk aesthetics), is followed by Kaz and "Manhattan" by Jacques Tardi. Joost Swarte, Ever Meulen, Mariscal, the Bazooka group, Marc Caro, Pascal Doury, Cathy Millet, Francis Masse, Europeans all, also published in Raw magazine. The Americans were: Bill Griffith, Justin Green, Kim Deitch, Robert Crumb, Jerry Moriarty, Charles Burns, Mark Beyer, Ben Katchor, Drew Friedman, Mark Newgarden. There's also a South American exception: Muñoz & Sampayo. Issue # 7, "The Torn-Again Graphix Mag" (because the cover was, you know?, torn) included a special section dedicated to Japan with the work of: Teruhiko Yumura, Shigeru Sugiura, and... the great Yoshiharu Tsuge with his marvelous "Red Flowers." A few artists from the first half of the 20th century, like George Herriman and Winsor McCay, were also remembered now and then...

Volume two of the magazine brought us all of the above, plus: Richard McGuire, with his great story "Here," Mattotti & Kramsky, Lynda Barry, with "Sneaking Out" and "The Most Obvious Question," Chris Ware, with "I Guess," Alan Moore, writing for Mark Beyer (!) a memorable "The Bowing Machine."

Raw's first volume was graphic arts oriented in a way that may very well be behind Chris Ware's control of his books as art objects. From the size of the mag (10,5 x 14 inches) to the different papers chosen, everything showed an enormous attention to detail and great taste. Raw Books also published some extraordinary one-shots like Jimbo (Raw one-shot # 1: 1982) by Gary Panter (whose covers were corrugated cardboard while the interior was printed on newsprint; as strange as it seems this is a highly sophisticated, beautifully designed book - not to mention that the "cheap" materials match Panter's ratty aesthetics perfectly) and Jack Survives (Raw one-shot # 3: 1984) by Jerry Moriarty (in which the colors were printed on the cover while the black lines were printed on an acetate dust jacket).

Raw mixed the old school undergrounders and the (back then) new alternative comics artists, but their aesthetics didn't clash because Raw wasn't satirical (even if some satire could also be found in its pages). Raw has been accused of being all about style, not substance. There's some truth in the allegation, I guess, but one just has to remember Sue Coe's highly politicized work or, obviously, Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus (which began serialization in Raw # 2, December, 1980), to recognize that Raw wasn't always about experimentation and form.

Maus (published in book form in 1986, with the subtitle "My Father Bleeds History," and 1991, with the subtitle "And Here My Troubles Began)" is both an autobiography and a biography. It portrays Spiegelman's difficult relationship with his father (the heritage of trauma, so to speak), Vladek, a survivor from Auschwitz, while narrating the latter's life story.

Art Spiegelman explained Maus' birth (The Comics Journal # 65, August, 1981: 103): "somebody was putting together a comic book called Funny Aminal [sic] Comics, and I was invited [by Justin Green] to do a story for that book, whose only guideline was that it involve anthropomorphic characters. [...] I was looking at some films that were being shown at a film course [...] that included a lot of early animated cartoons. I was really struck by the cat and mouse cartoons. I saw that the mice in those cartoons were very similar to the negroes in the other cartoons that were being shown in the same days, and realized that this cat and mouse thing was just a metaphor for some kind of oppression. I wanted to do a comic strip in which the mice were blacks and the cats were the whites[.][...] I was never going to be able to give this any authenticity, because I just didn't know the material [.][...] On the other hand , there was an involvement with oppression that was much closer to my own life: my father and mother's experience in concentration camps, and my awareness of myself as a Jew." (The "[sic]" above is in the original text.)

At first view "Maus" was at odds with other Raw comics and Art Spiegelman's previous work (e. g.: what was collected in Breakdowns, Belier Press, 1977) because the former was more formalist and more visual oriented. With "Maus" Spiegelman wanted to (The Comics Journal # 145, October, 1991: 98): "feel more like [he] was writing than drawing." On the other hand Raw's first volume's size wasn't right for an intimate, low profile story like "Maus" (The Comics journal # 65, August, 1981: 119): "The final solution [I hope that no pun was intended!] was a separate small-sized booklet[.][...] Seeing these small pages of kind of doodle drawings, almost - they're rough, quick drawings - mounted together makes it seem like we found somebody's diary, and are publishing facsimiles of it. And that's kind of nice."

At second view, though (The Comics Journal # 180, September, 1995: 76): "all the things I had been interested in from 1970-78, had to be used and deployed, but deployed in such a way as to make something fairly seamless happen. [...] I'm talking about things like panel size, the rhythms that happen on a page, where your eye is driven across a page." Sometimes Spiegelman uses the old Dell children's comics eight panel grid to depict scenes from the present and completely unpredictable page layouts (with diagrams or some panels blown up, for instance) when he's depicting Vladek's recollections. We can't compare our daily routine in times of peace with the disruption of that same routine when a war is going on and we're in the eye of the storm.

Images and sounds:

1. Robert Crumb's Arcade # 26, September, 1962, featuring Fritz the Cat (the contrast between Fritz's colorful life and the bleak black and white around him is indication enough of Crumb's mastery); one aspect of Robert Crumb's art that's not mentioned very often is how good he is designing types; the arc in the letter "A" above is a touch of class;

2. Arcade the Comics Revue # 1's cover also by Robert Crumb (Spring, 1975);

3. editorial for Arcade the Comics Revue # 1 by Bill Griffith and Art Spiegelman (as published in The Comics Journal # 65 - August, 1981): both editors mean well ("arcade is gonna be a comics magazine for adults!," but they predict financial hard times: "just a couple of deadbeats!!" concludes the booth owner;

4. one year later Murphy's law proves to be right once again (editorial in Arcade # 5, Spring, 1976, as published in Rebel Visions, The Underground Comix Revolution 1963 - 1975, Fantagraphics, 2002);

5. Art Spiegelman (or "John") self-deprecatingly feels a little embarrassed for choosing comics as a medium for self-expression (Print vol. 35, issue # 3 - Print, a graphic arts magazine, published 6 issues per volume, so, this is issue # 207; a small strip at the bottom is missing);

6. "Maus music" as Art Spiegelman called the Comedian Harmonists' work (The Comics Journal # 180, September, 1995: 105), stormy weather over Germany indeed; Stormy Weather is a song written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler (1933).

PS A Raw history by Bill Kartalopoulos: http://64.23.98.142/indy/winter_2005/raw_01/index.html

An online Print mag interview with Art Spiegelman:

http://www.printmag.com/design_articles/ArtSpiegelman1/tabid/461/Default.aspx