Showing posts with label Comic strips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comic strips. Show all posts

Review: "Sky Masters of the Space Force - The Complete Sunday Strips 1959-1960"


Talk about a labor of love. This first-ever complete collection of Jack Kirby's Sunday "Sky Masters" comic strips in color is truly a thing of beauty.

Spanish graphic designer Ferran Delgado spent literally years on the book, reproducing the art from the best sources he could find, whether they be printers proofs, published strips or color guides. The 54 full-page Sundays are printed in large format and are supplemented by additional material, including a detailed history of the strip, examples of the original artwork, Kirby's original color guides and 100 rare extra panels, which were discarded by most newspapers due to formatting considerations.

Inspired by the United States' fledgling steps into outer space, the short-lived "Sky Masters" strip was Kirby's most successful foray into newspaper strips, running first in daily installments starting in September 1958 and with Sunday strips added beginning in February 1959. Delgado also adds text pieces that detail some of the contemporary news stories and scientific developments that influenced the strip's storylines and artwork.

Initially, scripts were provided by Dave Wood, Kirby's colleague on DC Comics' "Challengers of the Unknown" title, with inks by the legendary EC Comics/Mad Magazine artist, Wally Wood, who'd also worked on "Challengers" stories with Kirby.

The teaming of these two giants of comics art is one of the things that makes "Sky Masters" so special. Wood did classic space-based stories on his own and the blending of his rich inks on various space hardware and moonscapes with Kirby's dynamic figures is spectacular. While Wally Wood gets equal billing on the cover here, it should be mentioned that only the first 22 Sundays feature his inks. The rest were inked by Dick Ayers, or Kirby on his own with assists from his wife, Roz. Kirby also wrote many of the later strips on his own.

While Kirby takes some imaginative leaps in putting man in space, and on the moon, ahead of actual events, the action is at a human level and based on emerging or envisioned technology. As a result, it's all fairly realistic. There are no aliens or ray guns, but, as he did throughout his career, Kirby does imagine a few things that eventually became reality, such as books with electronic displays. You could very well be reading this blog on such a device right now.

"Sky" Masters, the lead character here, and his colleagues on the Space Force (yes, Kirby invented that first, too) are an engaging bunch who interact in a lively way - not unlike the Challengers, or the Marvel heroes Kirby would create shortly after this strip's demise.

"Sky Masters" ended as a result of a lawsuit filed by DC editor Jack Schiff, who claimed he'd made the deal that led to the strip being produced and was not provided a percentage of the profits as promised. Kirby denied such a deal had been made, but Schiff prevailed, gaining a percentage interest in the strip. This led Kirby to quit producing "Sky Masters"in 1961 and to his departure from DC.ultimately, to the creation of the Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, the Avengers and more at Marvel with Stan Lee. In the long run, I'd say Kirby and comics fans alike came out the winners.

Copies of this English edition of Delgado's book are apparently hard to find now, unfortunately, and from his posts on the Collected Editions forums, it sounds like its very unlikely more will be published. I suggest snagging one now wherever, and however, you can.

I suppose this means hopes for a collection of the "Sky Masters" dailies from Delgado are also slim, which is too bad. Hermes Press recently published a collection of those, but I skipped it, due to being unimpressed by Hermes' work in the past. Plus, a have an old paperback collection of those. 

Sometimes labors of love, I'm afraid, don't pay off monetarily. But, man, I'm glad this book exists.




Coming Up: "King of the Comics: 100 Years of King Features"


Out Oct. 30. Pre-order from Amazon now.



Details:

King Features has had a more illustrious and long-lasting history than any other newspaper syndicate, even as it leads the way into the digital age and beyond.

Krazy Kat! Popeye! Flash Gordon! Beetle Bailey! Blondie! Prince Valiant! Hagar the Horrible! Barney Google and Snuffy Smith! Baby Blues! Mutt & Jeff! Zits! Juliet Jones! Buz Sawyer! Steve Canyon! Bizarro! Hi & Lois! Maggie & Jiggs! Johnny Hazard! There are simply too many to list!

From the earliest days, when William Randolph Hearst first added cartoons to his newspapers, comic strips have had a profound impact on popular culture. With the consolidation of Hearst's various distribution channels in November 1915, King Features was born. A century later, the world's largest syndicate leads the way into the 21st century and beyond.

Tarzan Original Daily Strips coming soon from IDW

Up for pre-order at Amazon now, IDW Publishing will release a first volume collecting the Tarzan daily comic strips in April.

Details:
Three amazing firsts hit the newspaper strip pages in January 1929: the introduction of Buck Rogers as a Sunday, the debut of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan as a daily strip, and the first newspaper strip art by Hal Foster. It was Foster who illustrated all 60 episodes of ERB's seminal Tarzan of the Apes. And now LOAC Essentials brings you all of Foster's first comics work, reproduced from ERB's syndicate proofs. In addition, this book includes The Return of Tarzan, Beasts of Tarzan, and Son of Tarzan, each drawn by Rex Maxon. All together the first 300 daily Tarzan comics ever produced, all together in a single, affordable package!


Details on IDW's collection of Golden Age Superman Sunday comic strips

From the press release:
Continuing to set the gold standard in comics preservation, IDW Publishing's Library of American Comics, in partnership with DC Entertainment, will release the amazing never-before reprinted adventures of Superman that appeared in the Sunday newspapers for more than twenty-five years. The strips will be releases in in chronological order in three sub-sets: the 1940s Golden Age, the 1950s Atomic Age, and the 1960s Silver Age.

The first volume in the Superman: Golden Age Sundays series will collect 170 sequential Sundays, from May 9, 1943 through August 4, 1946, beginning where the Superman Sunday Classic book by DC Comics and Kitchen Sink Press left off. These World War II-era stories feature work by legendary artists such as Wayne Boring and Jack Burnley.

"We're printing the series in an oversized 9.25" x 12" format," says editor Dean Mullaney, "so that readers can fully enjoy these glorious full-color tabloid Sundays."

The stories include the complete "Superman's Service to Servicemen" series, which ran from late Summer of 1943 until a few months after the Second World War ended. In these human interest tales, Superman responds to requests from men and women of the armed services, as well as their family members back home. In supporting troop morale, Superman travels from the Mediterranean theatre to the bleak Aleutian Islands to the steamy South Pacific. He helps a wounded Army Air Corps pilot return home to witness the birth of his twins; solves numerous romantic misunderstandings; checks up on mothers for their worried sons overseas...while simultaneously stopping enemy torpedoes, bombs, and bullets!

In a clever transition to the post-War world, there's a flashback to Superman's origin and Clark Kent's first assignment at the Daily Planet, followed by a thrilling inter-stellar saga in which Superman comes face to face with Queen Arda of the planet Suprania, who threatened to kill Lois Lane unless the Man of Steel agrees to become her King!

These Sunday strips represent an important era in the development of the Man of Steel into an international phenomenon. Each book in the series features an introduction by Mark Waid and covers drawn by Peter Poplaski.

Superman: Golden Age Sundays joins The Library of American Comics and IDW's line of archival DC classic newspaper strips, first started with Superman: Silver Age Dailies, which will continue into 2014, as well as the 1940s Wonder Woman and the 1960s Batman.


Review: Tarzan: The Sunday Comics 1931-33

The first thing that must be said of this collection of Foster's groundbreaking Tarzan  Sunday strips is that it's HUGE.

Paying closer attention to its dimensions while ordering it from Amazon would've spared me the shock of it's arrival on my doorstep. What did I order that was that big, and how much did it cost?!!

While skinny in depth  -- it contains around 100 strips in all -- the book stands 20 inches tall and 15 inches wide. Open it up and it may eclipse your coffee table. I have no idea where or how to shelve it...

All that said, however, the bigness of the book does allow you to immerse yourself in Tarzan's adventures, just as newspaper readers did back in the 1930s. And Foster certainly made use of, and gloried in, the enormous canvas those broadsheets provided.

As comics historian Mark Evanier notes in his introduction, the realization of what was possible on the comics page, and the freedom it provided, became more and more apparent to the artist as he continued working on "Tarzan."

A magazine and calendar illustrator, Foster wasn't crazy about doing comics work at first. He figured it was beneath him. But the money was good. Early on, he doled out some of the work to assistants, adding some of the finishing touches. Readers familiar with his later work on "Prince Valiant" may find the first few months of strips on display here primitive. And they are.

But, once Foster's imagination took hold, and he saw the potential of filling these huge pages with his art, he became more hands-on and more creative. By the end of the book, which features several weeks of strips set in Egypt, the art has become much more detailed, beautiful and grand.

Everywhere, there is Foster's love of the human form -- not just Tarzan in action fighting, swimming, swinging through the jungle, but beautiful women and a variety of supporting characters. There's also the animals and fauna of the jungle, in addition to the wide desert, detailed Egyptian temples and more. His detail, fine brushwork and colors (done himself) combine into gorgeous whole.

For a generation of readers without television and only occasional glimpses of the amazing via the movies, Foster opened up wide fields of the imagination to view.

Through the course of the book, we see the creation both of the comic adventure strip, which paved the way for comic book heroes and storytelling, and the creation of Foster the pioneering comic strip artist.

This was a master artist, the inspiration for Alex Raymond and Milt Caniff, who, in turn, went on to inspire nearly every comic strip and comic book artist since, whether they know it or not.

Comic strips and political cartoons had been around for a while by the time Tarzan landed on the comics page. But adventure strips and realistic art were new. Only Tarzan and the crudely drawn Buck Rogers strip, focused on providing suspense and action rather than laughs.

As Evanier notes, many syndicates and newspaper publishers didn't feel there was a market for a realistically drawn, "serious" strip in the comics section. If Foster hadn't proved them wrong, the comics might not have developed, or developed quite differently.

So, this is a collection of important work and nice to have in print once again, even though I'm not sure where I'll put it now that I've finished reading it.

It should be noted that some online reviewers are disappointed in this edition, published by Dark Horse Comics, saying that NBM did a better job in its 1990s reprints of Foster's "Tarzan" run. I can't make the comparison, having missed those books.

I do wish, however, that Dark Horse had used "flat" rather than glossy paper stock for the strips. I don't like art printed on reflective paper, and prefer something that's closer, but more durable, than the original newsprint.

I also agree with some reviewers that some of the line work and colors are on the murky side. The NBM editions reportedly look better. That said, the quality is still quite good for strips this old and they are very readable. The reproduction seems to improve as Foster's linework and art become more detailed later in the book.

If you're pickier than me, and have the patience and funds to hunt down the NBM versions, you may want to go that route. I'm mainly just happy to have another batch of classic comic strips back in print.




Review: Superman - The Silver Age Dailies 1959-61

Great chunks of Superman lore is readily available in various collections these days: Many of the comic books have been republished; the 1950s TV show, most of the movies and the fabulous Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1940s are on DVD and Blu-ray.

But "Superman: The Silver Age Dailies" presents a lost chapter of the Man of Steel's history.

Kitchen Sink published nice collections of the 1940s Superman strip several years ago, but this new collection shares strips that haven't been seen since they first appeared in newspapers in the late 1950 and early 1960s.

Published by IDW, which has done such a fabulous job collecting the newspaper strips of Milt Caniff along with other classic comic strips, this volume nicely presents three years' worth of adventures in well-reproduced black-and-white.

Further volumes from the 1960s are planned, with IDW working it's way backward through the 1950s' "Atom Age" and eventually republishing the 1940s Golden-Age strips.

By the time the project is finished, fans will have a chance to see Superman's complete comic strip adventures, which ran all the way from 1939 to 1966. Volumes collecting the shorter-lived Batman and Wonder Woman strips are also planned.

This first Superman volume presents three years' worth of strips over 280-some pages, starting in 1959 and running through the end of 1961.

All told, there are 16 stories of varying lengths, all of which will be slightly familiar, yet also startlingly different to fans who know their silver-age Superman stories backwards and forwards. This is because scripter Jerry Siegel (who created Superman with artist Joe Shuster) adapted the tales from tales that originally appeared in Superman, Action Comics and Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane around the same time.

Nine of the stories are illustrated by Curt Swan, while the rest feature art by Wayne Boring -- two of the all-time classic Superman artists, doing superb work within the confines of the tiny, three-panels-per-day format of newspaper comics.

Adding a layer of interest, is that Swan and Boring are frequently providing art for stories that were penciled by other artists in the comic book versions. So, in the newspaper strip, you'll have Swan and Boring illustrating adventures that were originally illustrated by other great Superman, artists such as Al Plastino and George Papp, or the great Lois Lane artist Kurt Schaffenberger.

In a couple of cases in this book, Curt Swan illustrated newspaper versions of stories originally done in the comic books by Boring, or each artist reinterprets his own comic book work for the newspaper format.

Many of the stories are expanded, too, from the comic versions, featuring new and expanded scenes. They read well, too, as a collection, considering the necessity in newspaper strips of regularly using exposition to remind readers what happened the day before, or to bring new readers up to speed.

The plots are typical of the silver age: check your logical mind at the door.

All sorts of improbable things occur, from Superman's head turning into that of a lion to his being investigated by the IRS for tax evasion. This is also the Flying God version of Superman, with seemingly limitless superpowers. When it's convenient to the story, he uses his "telescopic vision" to see occurrences half a world away, or uses his super-strength to scoop a baseball diamond out of the ground. His only weaknesses are kryptonite and his inability to propose to Lois Lane.

It's all fun stuff if you don't take it too seriously (and why would you?).

The spotlight tale is an adaptation of "Superman's Return to Krypton," originally published in issue 141 of the Superman comic book.  The story is poignant, considering it comes from a time when superheroes tended to show little emotional depth.

In the story, Superman travels through time and returns, as an adult, to pre-explosion Krypton. He meets his own parents, but can't reveal who he is. Nor can he reveal Krypton's fate to them, or change it. He also falls in love with a woman he knows is doomed.  The story is expanded from the comic book version and provides an excellent reason to have these long lost strips back in print.

There's a nice introduction providing historical perspective and color covers of the Superman comic books adapted in the strips, though there's no information about how these strips were recovered and prepared for republication. There's also no mention in the introduction where they came from, only a tiny credit to collector Sid Friedfertig in the indicia at the front. Seems like he deserves a bit more attention. But additional volumes are on the way, and more opportunities to go into such details.


The roots of Crockett Johnson's Barnaby

The Comics Journal recollects the origins of "Barnaby," an underrated but beloved comic strip by Crockett Johnson, creator of the classic children's book "Harold and the Purple Crayon."

Fantagraphics, which publishes the Journal, is collecting the complete strip in a series of hardcovers, the first of which comes out in June.
Barnaby’s fans have included Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, Family Circus creator Bil Keane, and graphic novelists Daniel Clowes, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware. It had many fans beyond the world of comics, too. Dorothy Parker compared Barnaby to Huckleberry Finn, and said: “I think, and I am trying to talk calmly, that Barnaby and his friends and oppressors are the most important additions to American arts and letters in Lord knows how many years. I know that they are the most important additions to my heart.”
 

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See an excerpt of Fantagraphics' upcoming Mickey Mouse Sunday comics collection

I'm loving all this Disney stuff from Fantagraphics. This upcoming collection of Floyd Gottfredson's Sunday strips looks like yet another item on my Amazon shopping list:

We’re jumping from black and white to classic color — as Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse series makes its 1932-35 Sunday strip debut! Bright hues highlight our hero as he enjoys four years' worth of wild weekend epics... taking him from Uncle Mortimer’s Wild West ranch to the icy peak of frigid Mount Fishflake! And in this volume, Mickey is joined by a famous co-star: Donald Duck!
Floyd Gottfredson, artist of the Sunday Mickey Mouse from 1932-38, created the most famous Mickey tales ever told in print. These Sunday specials — many never before reprinted — also feature the work of later Donald Duck master Al Taliaferro. Collectively, they form a collection that fans have been seeking for a lifetime! Highlights include "Mickey’s Nephews," introducing Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse, and "Dr. Oofgay’s Secret Serum," which turns Horace Horsecollar into a brainwashed wild mustang! Classic gag stories round out the book, offering manic Mouse mischief at a fever pitch.
Restored from Disney’s art sources and enhanced with a meticulous recreation of the strips' original color, Call of the Wild also brings you more than 30 pages of chromatic supplementary features! You’ll enjoy rare behind-the-scenes art, vintage publicity material, and fascinating commentary by a prismatic pack of Disney scholars, including an appreciation of Gottfredson by celebrated alternative cartoonist Kevin Huizenga.
Check out a 21-page excerpt here.


IDW to publish silver-age Superman, Batman and 1944 Wonder Woman newspaper strips

This is cool news: Whilst the 1940s runs of the Superman and Batman comic strips have been published in book form, we haven't seen collection of later strips.

IDW typically does a great job with these historic comics projects, so I look forward to these..

Details:
Although DC and Kitchen Sink Press reprinted the first few years of the Superman and Batman newspaper strips in the 1990s, they only scratched the surface of the comics’ run: Superman, which featured the work of such creators as Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Curt Swan and Wayne Boring, was serialized from 1939 to 1966. The Batman strip, originally titled Batman and Robin, saw three major runs — 1943 to 1946, 1966 to 1974, and 1989-1991. Wonder Woman’s newspaper tenure was much short-lived, lasting less than a year (in 1944).
The Superman daily strips will be released in three collections, organized by era — the Silver Age, the Atomic Age and the Golden Age — with Sunday reprints published in a separate, concurrent series later in the year.
“It’s like discovering an entire alternate universe of famous Silver Age comic book stories,” Dean Mullaney, who’s editing and designing the series, said in a statement. “It’s better than an imaginary story — it’s Jerry Siegel doing a remake of his classic Superman’s Return to Krypton! … it’s Curt Swan, not Al Plastino, drawing The Menace of Metallo. Superman fans might want to consider these strips as taking place on a brand-new world — Earth-N for Newspapers!”
Pete Poplaski, who created the covers for the Kitchen Sink Press editions, designed the covers, while It’s Superman! author Tom DeHaven wrote the foreword  for the Silver Age collection.


Fantagraphics announces Peanuts "Every Sunday" collections

Fantagraphics is supplementing its "Complete Peanuts" collections with a new series of books focusing on just the Sunday strips, in large, color format. The first volume will be out this fall.

Background:
Designed as a series of ten massive coffee-table quality books, each one containing a half-decade's worth of Sunday strips, Peanuts Every Sunday is a book to be enjoyed any day, not just Sundays. Remembered by Peanuts fans from the original newspaper strips, the striking colors of the Red Baron dashing across the sky to the soft blue hue of Linus' blanket to Woodstock's fuzzy yellow head all grace the pages of Peanuts Every Sunday. Enjoy the secret pleasure of seeing Charlie's original zigzag shirt in many colors before becoming its trademark yellow.

IDW to collect Russ Manning Tarzan comic strips

Oooh, this is good news! IDW Publishing is teasing a new series of books collecting Russ Manning's run on the Tarzan newspaper strip. The first volume will be out in May.

I'm reading Dark Horse's new collection of Manning's Tarzan comics for Gold Key (so great!) right now. I'll need this one, too!


First Fantagraphics collection of Mickey Mouse Sunday strips out next May

This just turned up on Amazon:

Out May 20, 2013.

 We’re jumping from black and white to classic color—as Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse series makes its 1932-35 Sunday strip debut! Bright hues highlight our hero as he enjoys four years’ worth of wild weekend epics... taking him from Uncle Mortimer’s Wild West ranch to the icy peak of frigid Mount Fishflake! And in this volume, Mickey is joined by a famous co-star: Donald Duck! Floyd Gottfredson, artist of the Sunday Mickey Mouse from 1932-38, created the most famous Mickey tales ever told in print. These Sunday specials—many never before reprinted—also feature the work of later Donald Duck master Al Taliaferro. Collectively, they form a collection that fans have been seeking for a lifetime! Highlights include “Mickey’s Nephews,” introducing Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse, and “Dr. Oofgay’s Secret Serum,” which turns Horace Horsecollar into a brainwashed wild mustang! Classic gag stories round out the book, offering manic Mouse mischief at a fever pitch. Restored from Disney’s art sources and enhanced with a meticulous recreation of the strips’ original color, Call of the Wild also brings you more than 30 pages of chromatic supplementary features! You’ll enjoy rare behind-the-scenes art, vintage publicity material, and fascinating commentary by a prismatic pack of Disney scholars.

Today's Google doodle celebrates Little Nemo in Slumberland

It's the 107th anniversary of Windsor McCay's gorgeously illustrated Sunday comics strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland" and Google has provided a fun Nemo animation in celebration.


Download a preview of Fantagraphics' Complete Pogo Vol. 1

The first installment of Fantagraphics' complete collection of Walt Kelly's Pogo comic strips is out later this month. You can download a 27-page preview here.

Details of the book:

Pogo - Vol. 1 of the Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: "Through the Wild Blue Wonder"

Walt Kelly started his career at age 13 in Connecticut as a cartoonist and reporter for the Bridgeport Post. In 1935, he moved to Los Angeles and joined the Walt Disney Studio, where he worked on classic animated films, including Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Fantasia. Rather than take sides in a bitter labor strike, he moved back east in 1941 and began drawing comic books.
It was during this time that Kelly created Pogo Possum. The character first appeared in Animal Comics as a secondary player in the “Albert the Alligator” feature. It didn’t take long until Pogo became the comic’s leading character. After WWII, Kelly became artistic director at the New York Star, where he turned Pogo into a daily strip. By late 1949, Pogo appeared in hundreds of newspapers. Until his death in 1973, Kelly produced a feature that has become widely cherished among casual readers and aficionados alike.
Kelly blended nonsense language, poetry, and political and social satire to make Pogo an essential contribution to American “intellectual” comics. As the strip progressed, it became a hilarious platform for Kelly’s scathing political views in which he skewered national bogeymen like J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon.
Walt Kelly started when newspaper strips shied away from politics — Pogo was ahead of its time and ahead of later strips (such as Doonesbury and The Boondocks) that tackled political issues. Our first (of 12) volume reprints approximately the first two years of Pogo — dailies and (for the first time) full-color Sundays.
This first volume also introduces such enduring supporting characters as Porkypine, Churchy LaFemme, Beauregard Bugleboy, Seminole Sam, Howland Owl, and many others. And for Christmas, 1949, Kelly started his tradition of regaling his readers with his infamously and gloriously mangled Christmas carols.
Special features in this sumptuous premiere volume, which is produced with the full cooperation of Kelly’s heirs, include a biographical introduction by Kelly biographer Steve Thompson, an extensive section by comics historian R.C. Harvey explaining some of the more obscure current references of the time, a foreword by legendary columnist Jimmy Breslin, and more.