The Greatest of Marlys

Annie Mok at TCJ reviewed The Greatest of Marlys, a compilation published by Drawn & Quarterly.

This is one of those occasions in which I couldn't resist stealing, so, here it is: this is what a comics masterpiece looks like:

Lynda Barry, The Greatest of Marlys, 2016 [1988].

By the way, let me remind you: nothing happens except life. And that's what really matters, isn't it? Life...

Bradford W. Wright's Intellectual Dishonesty

Bradford W. Wright wrote a book. The title: Comic Book Nation published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 2001 (my copy is the paperback edition published in 2003). On page 246 the below page is reproduced in black and white:

Stan Lee (w), Gene Colan (a), Joe Sinnott (i), Artie Simek (l), no colorist was credited, "The Sting of the Scorpion", Captain America # 122, February 1970 (3).

Below is the caption in Comic Book Nation (247): 

 

Wright's thesis is that superheroes, a fascistoid genre if I ever saw one, was leaning towards the left of the political spectre in the early 1970s. What he "forgot" to show was page 5 of the same story. I'll do it for him (you're welcome!):

Stan Lee (w), Gene Colan (a), Joe Sinnott (i), Artie Simek (l), no colorist was credited, "The Sting of the Scorpion", Captain America # 122, February 1970.

Martin Luther King was spawned by the establishment? Really Mr. Lee?... What this page basically says is: let's stop with this liberal nonsense and go on with our fascist escapism business as usual, shall we?!...

PS As for Mr. Rogers' tastes in literature: no comment!...

My Main Criterion

  
 Yoshiharu Tsuge, Garo #47, June 1968. The greatest comic magazine ever published... (My good condition copy which, in the weird lingo of comics collectors really means: my worn, wrecked,  damaged copy.)

Raquel Garzón conveyed beautifully my main criterion to judge great art (my translation; she's talking about novels, but, to me, it may be applied to any art form):

Novels lacking events and fury, without winners and epics. Novels which base their mastery in the details and are read with the same ease with which we listen to the rain falling. Novels in which nothing out of the ordinary happens while we flip the pages forward.

As Raquel also says, nothing happens except life. And that's what really matters, isn't it? Life...

Fake Comics Part Two - Coda

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), Gisela Dester (a), "Ticonderoga". Sgt Kirk # 29, November 1969.

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), Gisela Dester (a), "Ticonderoga". Frontera # 12, March 1959.

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), Gisela Dester (a), "Ticonderoga". Frontera # 12, March 1959.

If the idea is to transform a landscape page into a portrait one I would say that the solution is to put two pages on top of each other. This is far from an elegant solution and it may be argued that the layout is false again. Agreed... these matters are never easy and subjectivity rears it's ugly head with each step (what really bothers me is that, apart from yours truly, nobody cares; this art form deserves to die!). In any case I accept this solution, which, contrarily to what he chose to do when Ivaldi reprinted "Sgt. Kirk," is what they both did for the "Ticonderoga" reprint in Sgt. Kirk magazine.

The washes, if we can call those blots that, in the Italian edition, are just senseless textures. But that's another problem, of course. Only recently, with the rise of the graphic novel, publishers and editors who care, and better technology, did production values reach great levels.

Fake Comics Part Two

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), no colorist was credited, "La barca del Missouri" [the Missouri barge], Kirk Western # 1, 1976.

We all know the story. Hugo Pratt spent more than a decade in Argentina where he mostly drew Héctor Oesterheld's scripts. After that he published most of this material in Italy under his name alone. It breaks my heart to read the flap text in Mondadori's Ernie Pike 1976 edition claiming that "during this fecund period he [Pratt, of course] created famous comic strips and characters: Kirk, Ticonderoga, Ernie Pike, Anna [of the Jungle], Wheeling." Reduce that to two: the mediocre Anna and the so so Wheeling. Genius simply isn't for everyone...

But enough... it's not this that brings me here today. Why are the Italian editions of Sgt. Kirk, like the one above, fake comics? Because the layout was altered (from landscape to portrait), the drawing suffered additions and cuts, and some of the text was cut off. This goes against Nelson Goodman's print rule which states that every copy must come from the original source. Besides, even comics fans (who adore Hugo Pratt) will understand that, if the additions weren't drawn by him (and I don't believe that I own something drawn by Hugo Pratt, frankly) we can't say that the drawings are entirely his, can we?

We've seen on this blog already how those changes negatively affected the work. But that's not my concern today, either. Today it's about fakeness and fakeness only.

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), "Cerco de muerte" [deathly siege], Misterix # 300, June 18, 1954 (page 409 of the "Sgt. Kirk" series).

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), "Cerco de muerte" [deathly siege], Misterix # 300, June 18, 1954 (page 410 of the "Sgt. Kirk" series)..

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a; with someone else?), "La barca del Missouri" [the Missouri barge], Kirk Western # 1, 1976 (mock up for page 34).

As you can see above page 34 of the Italian (Cenisio) edition reprints one panel pf page 409 of the series (with the left arm of General Harper and some trees added on the left) and the first tier of page 410. The second panel of page 34 is also considerably altered with some ominous wind coming from the right side of the panel added and general Harper separated from Kirk and Dr. Forbes. To do this the anonymous drawer needed to add another left arm: Kirk's this time. The caption on the left of General Harper's daughter was suppressed, the shape of the speech balloons was altered also. In the end there's more negative space in the Cenisio edition and everything is less organic. You may say that the Italian edition is less cluttered, but it the decluttering is at the expense of Oesterheld's text, well... Again, though, this is a fake comic if I ever saw one.

Just for the fun of it I'll give you another example (lacking also the original, beautiful color) with the printed page this time. Notice the Ivaldi number "304" that the Cenisio hack didn't even bother to erase. The cuts reduced the pages from 398 to 304.

 

 Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), Stefan Strocen (c), "Cerco de muerte" [deathly siege], Misterix # 298, June 4, 1954 (page 398 of the "Sgt. Kirk" series).

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a; with someone else?), "La barca del Missouri" [the Missouri barge], Kirk Western # 1, 1976 (mock up for page 14).

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a; with someone else?), "La barca del Missouri" [the Missouri barge], Kirk Western # 1, 1976 (page 14 as reprinted in the magazine).

PS  I noticed that the last but one panel of page 398 (last panel of page 14) may show another hand on the left side in the cross-hatching. Maybe I should say, then: art by Hugo Pratt and anonymous ghost artist. It's known that Hugo Pratt used ghosts, Gisela Dester and Mario Bertolini among them. This doesn't mean that the Editorial Abril page is in any way a fake. It just means that some hands remain uncredited.

Julio Schiaffino and Leopoldo Durañona

I interrupt these two posts about fake comics (to write the second post I'm waiting for a magazine which is god knows where right now) to complain about 2016! What a year! I just read that Julio Schiaffino and Leopoldo Durañona died recently. Julio Schiaffino died June 23 and Leo Durañona died last February 22.

Julio Schiaffino was a chameleon who could imitate any drawing style. I remember him mostly for some of his covers for Frontera. Below is my favorite El Eternauta cover.

 

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Julio Schiaffino (a), cover of El Eternauta [The Eternaut] # 2, December 1961. 

Leopoldo "Leo" Durañona started his career at Columba before he worked for Héctor and Jorge Oesterheld's Editorial Frontera. To me he will always be the illustrator of Héctor Germán Oesterheld's Latinoamérica y el imperialismo, 450 años de guerra [Latin America and imperialism, 450 years of war] serialized in the montonero magazine El Descamisado [the shirtless]. Living clandestinely already Oesterheld dictated his stories to him over the phone. Latinoamérica y el imperialismo, 450 años de guerra was published between July 24 1973 and March 26 1974. Leopoldo Durañona eventually fled to the United States saving his life, but I don't have a lot of interest in what he did over there...

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Leopoldo Durañona (a), Latinoamérica y el imperialismo, Doeyo y Viniegra, 2004. The cover image is a combination of two panels by Durañona: the foreground was published in El Descamisado # 42 (March 5, 1974), the background was published in El Descamisado # 35 (January 15, 1974).