Kaavad

My Rajasthani Kaavad shrine.

A couple of weeks ago I received by mail the most peculiar comic of my comics collection: a Rajasthani Kaavad (see above).

Comics writer Vidyun Sabhaney talks about the Kaavad and two other visual narrative traditions of India below.

Dogmatic

I continue to get rumors coming from the fantasyland that is the comics milieu saying that I'm too dogmatic. So, let me leave you with this tweet for the day: dogmatic is someone who doesn't agree with us.

This Art Form Deserves To Die - Coda

Carlos Alberto Santos, Mundo de Aventuras (first series) # 1128: "Drama em Orchre [sic] Flat," May 6, 1971 (the issue reprints "Marshall of Ochre Flat," [London] Evening News, December 19, 1968 - April 18, 1969).

Nikai Andrews asked me: "How did you come across Matt Marriott anyway?"

Here's my answer:

A lot of the Matt Marriott story arcs were published in Portugal in a mag titled Mundo de Aventuras [a world of adventures]. The production values were as poor as poor can get: with pulp paper, layouts completely changed, drawings chopped up or expanded by some hack, ugly mech types, balloons all over the art, etc... Since I think that the series improved dramatically during the 1970s and production values in Mundo e Aventuras improved a lot, I was old enough to be impressed by such 1970s tales as "Mary A Pregadora" ("Gospel Mary") or "Uma Nota de Dez Dólares" ("A Ten Dollar Bill").

As you can see below the production values of the ADCCC (All Devon Comics Collectors Club) aren't stellar exactly (I would say that they are uneven, being the example at hand one of the worst).  

James Edgar (w), Tony Weare (a), Daily Strips # 144 published by the ADCCC (this issue reprints "Zincville Colorado," [London] Evening News, June 22, 1970 - October 10, 1970).

Even so, look at the strips above as a page in Mundo de Aventuras below. I don't even know where to start; I'll just say that the whole shebang is there and I don't need to repeat it.   

James Edgar (w) [translator ?], Tony Weare (a) [with some hack], Mundo de Aventuras (first   series) # 1201: "A História de Vinc Bill," [sic] September 28, 1972. 

Those who read The Crib regularly know that I don't have a lot of respect for comics publishers and comics editors (small wonder, with examples like these), but it goes without saying that there are some exceptions like the great Héctor Germán Oesterheld (let's not forget that he was also a publisher; that's, of course, the only explanation to the question: how is it even possible that such stories were published back in the 1950s?). Chris Oliveros is another one, and let's not forget those guys at L'Association and Sins Entido and Frémok and Christian Humbert-Droz and Gary Groth and Kim Thompson (I miss you Kim!) and... and... I would not put those responsible for the second series of Mundo de Aventuras in the same league (far from it), but the fact is that they were responsible, during the 1970s, for three Matt Marriott comic books that respected the original material denying Mundo de Aventuras' terrible past (see below). 

Tony Weare, Mundo de Aventuras (second series) # 23: "Uma Nota de Dez Dólares," March 7, 1974 (the issue reprints "A Ten Dollar Bill," [London] Evening News, May 9, 1972 - September 7, 1972). There's a Portuguese fanzine (or prozine) reprinting all the Matt Marriott strory arcs, but about that, the less said, the better.

When I was in my teens I loved Matt Marriott (strangely enough I loved Tony Weare's style - I also loved the work of Eric Parker, by the way), but I couldn't realize what to me today seems painfully obvious: as good as Eric Parker's drawings are Buck Jones isn't Matt Marriott. It's the difference between a childish, manichean, racist, comic book and an adult, complex comic strip. It's as simple as that.

This Art Form Deserves To Die

Advertising in the Previews Catalog for volume 27 (!) of the Modesty Blaise comic strip reprint collection by Titan Books, September 2015.

Imagine that all the world's museums (The National Gallery in London included) despised the work of Francisco de Goya or William Turner being full of mediocre crap instead. Imagine that publishers shunned the work of Marcel Proust or Virginia Woolf (that's... ahem... not that difficult to imagine because it's happening already). Imagine that the work of Ingmar Bergman or David Lean was completely ignored (again, that's... etc... etc...). You get my point. 

Impossible? That's exactly what happens in comics.

Apart from the amateur publications of the ADCCC (All Devon Comics Collector's Club) no one else but Titan Books is reprinting British newspaper comic strips. And what does Titan publish, I hear you asking? Great newspaper comics series like Carol Day or Matt Marriott? Not at all! What Titan Books is publishing is crap like the one that you can see above.

Maybe they thought something like: "OK, enough mediocre pap! Let's do things right and publish all the seventy Matt Marriott story arcs." Unfortunately, no, they added crap to their already existing pile of crap as you can see below. 

As I repeatedly said on this blog: this art form deserves to die!

Advertising in the Previews Catalog for a volume reprinting four James Bond comic strip story arcs published by Titan Books, October 2015.

Elsa

Murió Elsa, allá en el ya lejano 21 de junio del año que ahora termina. Recién ahora me entero, pero bueno, lo que verdaderamente importa es que me viene a la memoria la única vez que la vi. Fue en Amadora, cuando conocí a sus nietos Martín y Fernando y, momento inolvidable, me presentaron a Elsa. Lo que en la ocasión le dije, lo que pude decirle por entre la emoción en un balbuceo fue "es un honor". Y sí que lo fue, y sí que lo es, uno de los más grandes de mi vida.

Hector Germán Oesterheld's and Francisco Solano Lopéz's The Eternaut

Hector Germán Oesterheld (w), Francisco Solano Lopéz (a), The Eternaut, Fantagraphics Books, November 23, 2015 [Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal # 1, Editorial Frontera, September 4, 1957 - Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal # 106, September 9, 1959.] 

Fantagraphics will [...] reprint the series for the first time in English  (translated as The EterNOnaut because as Eternaut it sounds like "Eat her not"). 

Diego Cordoba on this Blog, December 5, 2014.

Oesterheld's work will never be published in any English speaking country.

Yours truly on this very blog on August 31, 2014.

Both quotes above are wrong, as you can see above. Kudos to Fanta! Now, if they only published Oesterheld's and Solano's masterpiece Amapola Negra - "Black Poppy"! That would be truly amazing...

Ed Brubaker

Ed Brubaker (w), Stefano Gaudiano (a), "Here and Now," Dark Horse Presents # 96, April 1995.

Digging through my comics collection I stumbled upon the above anthology with the first installment of a story I remember loving twenty years ago... ...and then it hit me: there's no Ed Brubaker in my comics canon! How is that even possible? What a blunder!...

Well, that's corrected now. I don't remember a thing, really, but I'm confident enough to include "Here and Now" and An Accidental Death in my first post (the latter was also serialized in Dark Horse Presents, # 65 - 67 - August - November 1992, to be exact, being compiled later by Fantagraphics Books - see below). 

I followed Ed Brubaker's career since his Lowlife days until his noirish, mainstreamy collections Criminal 1 - 5 and 6 - 10, 2007. It's true that he was a mediocre draftsman, but he was (is?) a brilliant writer.

If you can tell me what's Ed been doing since then, please don't hesitate and do.

Ed Brubaker (w), Eric Shanower (a), An Accidental Death, Fantagraphics Books, December 1993.