Carlos Roume

The Crib is one year old, but, unfortunately, I'm not in the mood to celebrate because, according to Mariano Chinelli at the Eternautas discussion list, Carlos Roume passed away last week. I'm very sorry because another of the greats has disappeared. I love his work (I think that he's highly underrated - almost no one cared enough to talk about his passing), but I never met him... Now I never will...

Images:
Another great comics artist (a writer: Héctor Germán Oesterheld, I bet...) says goodbye to Carlos Roume when he left Argentina to work for Fleetway in England (Frontera Extra # 11, September, 1959). He says, among other things: "He's going away, but "his" Old Homeland [Oesterheld plays with the title of one of their series: "Patria Vieja"] goes with him. He wants to turn our gaucho themes famous in Europe. We are sure that he will succeed. He has more than enough talent to do it."

It seems to me that Oesterheld was wrong though: as far as I know Carlos Roume never found another writer like him. As many others during most of the 20th century he may very well have wasted his talent doing mediocre genre comics for children...
A more recent portrait of the maestro, found here: http://tinyurl.com/yb96z8b (photo by Rubén Pinella, Tandil, October, 2007).

Rius' Las historietas (Los Agachados # 66) - Coda

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1. Las historietas starts with an highly flawed history of the medium; in this first image Rius almost falls into the temptation of what I call the nationalistic fallacy (he says that the first comic was created in Mexico: it's the codex Borgia: http://tinyurl.com/y8dse9n)...

2. ...but he refrains himself saying that the first comic was published in Germany by Wilhelm Busch: Bilder zur Jobsiade (pictures to illustrate the saga of [Hieronymus] Jobs; my flawed, I'm sure, translation); not only did Rius say that the book was published in 1860 (predating Max und Moritz - 1865; Bilder zur Jobsiade was published in 1872), he also ignored Rodolphe Töpffer (and I must add the disclaimer that I don't believe that Töpffer did the first comic); other names were ignored and facts mistaken;

3. even if Rius liked some American comics (Prince Valiant, for instance) he had a strong dislike of the superhero genre: "With Superman comics began to "degenerate." They became the herald of violence; of collective (and productive) stupidity" / "Be tough with him: he's a poor pinko!!" (my translation as in 4., 5., 6.);

4. "After the superheroes came the supercowboys, the superdetectives, the super-secret agents, the supermonsters... All perfectly and cinematically executed.. In a veiled or openly biased intention against Blacks, Latinos, Yellow or Red people." / "We White people are the only goodies!" / "In all American comics the hero is always white.. and the baddies are always Blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, Russians, Cubans [are these red?, ed.], or Redskins.. (When they're not baddies they're idiots or lazy)."

5. I'm no expert in comics from the former communist countries, but we seem to have to believe Rius' word when he sez that great comics were produced in Czechoslovakia, Poland, et al!... I agree with more than one of his criticisms (as you can guess reading The Crib), but this manichean belief that everything was bad in Capitalist countries (and Rius doesn't say that, mind... as I said before he states his fondness for a few American comic strip series) and everything was great in the so-called communist countries is far from an intelligent and critical position...
6. Rius also wrote in Las historietas about Mexican comics; he's critical of them because either they're imported from Gringo country or they're done in Mexico copying Gringo's ways; "In the same way as fumettis [telenovelas] Mexican comics serve the publishers' only interest" / "To sell." / "And what sells? What's gruesome, vulgar, what gives people violence, sadism, "love," false values, fantastic adventures, in a word..As Mr. Bertrand Russell (R.I.P.) put it: Opium of the best quality!"

Rius' Las historietas (Los Agachados # 66)

Eduardo del Rio (aka Rius) is a left wing Mexican political cartoonist who edited two comic book series: Los supermachos [the supermachos - one hundred issues: 1964 - 1967 - in Spanish: http://supermachos.toliro.com/] and Los agachados [the stooped ones - two hundred and ninety two issues: 1968 - 1977: Bob Agnew's translation, here: http://tinyurl.com/p2dsh8 (I also saw this title translated as "the underdogs")].

"Las historietas: El método más barato para embrutecerse... (o cultivarse... según...)" [comics: the cheapest way to stultify oneself... (or to cultivate oneself... it depends...) - my translation] is issue # 66 of Rius' Los agachados. It was published on april, 4, 1971, by Editorial Posada. In the first page of the comic book Rius wrote: "Historieta hecha por la tribú Rius © 1969." This suggests that Rius wasn't the only person involved in the creation of this essay in comics form.

Cultural studies is a discipline that started in England by the hand of Richard Hoggart during the fifties. Even if it mostly relies on almost the opposite view now (mainly because of theories developed around Bowling Green University in the United States), Hoggart "lament[ed] the loss of an authentic popular culture and [...] denounc[ed] the imposition of mass culture by the culture industries." (As we can read in his wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hoggart). The previous decade Dwight MacDonald expressed the same ideas in his mag Politics (there's also the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno: http://tinyurl.com/oqxtqk). Rius follows these views, but he was a comics artist so, he has to see some good in comics too (ditto Umberto Eco, more or less around the same time). What he denounces are the violence and stupidity of some comics made in U.S.A. (superhero comics, mainly; in France he denounces the cheap use of sexploitation), the greediness of publishers and the stupidity of the audiences: "Mientras peor es la pelicula. Más larga es la cola..." (the worst the film is, the longer the line to attend it - my translation).

Anne Rubenstein's Bad language, naked ladies, and other threats to the nation [about Mexican comics]: http://tinyurl.com/qb4ft8

Image:

Los Agachados # 66 (cover, April, 4, 1971). Alley Oop, a caveman (!), is at the helm of the comics ship.

PS The Crib is on a hiatus, but I hope to return to work in September (in almost a year I did only half of what I intend to do with it).

Martin Vaughn-James

This is the stuff life is made of, I guess... I'm sometimes happy at The Crib for receiving a brilliant original page (like that Carlos Roume one, just the other day)... sometimes, like today, I'm very sad because another artist in my canon passed away. Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter announced the passing of Martin Vaughn-James: http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/martin_vaughn_james_1943_2009/
This is a text that I wrote for the Summer, 2004, issue of Indy Magazine online (by the way: many thanks to Bill Kartalopoulos for being such a great editor at a time in which I had a bit of a writer's block): http://www.indyworld.com/indy/summer_2004/isabelinho_cage/
What can I say more, but thanks Martin?!... I'll never forget you!...

Images:
Martin Vaughn-James' The Cage's cover (Coach House Press, 1975; a little strip is missing at the bottom); Martin's inscription in my copy of The Cage: For Domingos, in Lisbon, city of dreams..

Repros - Coda

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1. a Prince Valiant (by Hal Foster) panel as published in a Portuguese edition (Príncipe Valente, volume 1, Editorial Presença [presence publishing house], 1972); what a mess!... (and, yes, in case you're wondering: the panel was published crooked as shown);

2. when I first saw my good friend Manuel Caldas' Príncipe Valente edition (Livros de Papel [paper books], 2005) I thought: I've been disrespected by publishers who were selling comics in about the same way as they very well could be selling potatoes (and they would sell rotten potatoes if people were dumb enough to buy them: are comics readers somewhat less bright than potato buyers?, I guess so...); if you like Hal Foster's art (or Warren Tufts') do yourself a favor and buy Manuel's editions in Spanish and Portuguese (http://www.manuelcaldas.com/) or in English (http://tinyurl.com/l8qcxr; http://tinyurl.com/l252ck: scroll down a bit, please...); these are labors of love; (only now, after all these years, did I notice that Hal Foster used aerial perspective in this spectacular image!, thanks Manel!);

3. a Winsor McCay self-portrait as published in Winsor McCay Early Works Volume VIII (Checker Books, 2006); nothing excuses such bad resolution and such bad design and production values!;

4. the same drawing as published in John Canemaker's Winsor McCay His life and Art (Abbeville Press, 1987); it's not Manuel Caldas repro quality, but, at least, it's a decent one;

5. this is a messy edition of Héctor Germán Oesterherld's and Alberto Breccia's Mort Cinder (Colihue, 1997); the repro quality is not the only problem: notice how a balloon content mysteriously disappeared in panel four;

6. the same page as in # 5. above as published in the excellent Italian edition: Mort Cinder, Sacrificio alla luna, L. F. Bona Editori, 1977; the repro is so good that it maintains an original art feel;

7. the last panel of an absolute comics masterpiece: "Un tenente tedesco" [A German Lieutenant] by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Hugo Pratt (Mondadori, 1976 - one of two pirate editions; the other one was by Ivaldi); not only was the panel published crooked as shown, it also lost almost all the washes (the lines aren't that greatly reproduced either);

8. the same panel as originally published in Hora Cero (monthly) # 3 (July, 1957); no comments needed... (the original title of the story is "Un teniente alemán..."; as an aside: I can't understand why the Laconia became the Lacinia either?, it's not even a case of laconism...);

9. people blame technology sometimes (or the lack of it) for bad repro, but how can a body explain this superlative color edition of Flash Gordon done back in 1980!?, Flash Gordon, Le peuple de la mer (Slatkine B. D.); the only thing that I know is that the book was printed in Switzerland; if anyone can give me more details I will be much obliged...

Repros

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It's great at my crib, pardon me, at The Crib, when I can get my greedy, fetishist, mitts on some original art mentioned in my canon or thereabouts. Unfortunately these occasions are very few and far between because, either these artists aren't selling their art at all or I can't afford it.

Anyway, last June 23 was a happy day for yours truly indeed because I received from Mauro Barreiro in Argentina (don't forget to visit his CAF - Comic Art Fans - gallery at http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryRoom.asp?GSub=67500) a Carlos Roume page from Nahuel Barros' last story in Hora Cero Suplemento Semanal (# 92, June, 4, 1959; it's the 28th page of the story) and a stunning Alberto Breccia portrait. Looking at these beautiful drawings I found myself thinking about how bad repros have been and how carelessly publishers have treated comic art. In the next coda I'll post some more good and bad examples...

Images:

1. original drawing by Carlos Roume and...

2. ...published repro: Carlos Roume drew with a thin brush on light weight matte, coated paper; this technique gave his lines a wonderful impressionistic fluidity; the lines' values vary from light grey to deep black; all this is lost in the repro on cheap pulp paper;

3., 4., 5., 6., 7., 8. more examples;

9. a wonderful felt-tip pen drawing by the great Alberto Breccia (done 23 days before he died).

Chris Ware's The Acme Novelty Library # 18 - Coda # 2

Images and Sounds:
A Chris Ware's Quimby the Mouse animation by John Kuramoto; music: Eugene by Andrew Bird.