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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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There are a lot of ways to “push comix forward.” I hope this qualifies.
We meet Helen, a beautiful but troubled young woman traveling across country, or to be more precise, she’s looking for a place to hide and grieve. She talks to herself as if she’s two people, and to some extent Males is helped by readers’ perceptions of what Humanoids usually publishes, as they might expect more of a supernatural explanation for her unhinged state. Her unfocused escape, or Fate, brings her to a remote house where a man lives alone and takes her in for a time. The reason for his solitude is readily apparent: he has exaggerated features, such as a large jaw and forehead, his affliction most likely acromegaly, a pituitary disorder that made non-actor Rondo Hatton a star briefly. The man, Lloyd, is almost crippled by loneliness, but he has found a kind of peace alone, in a house without mirrors and where the grocer leaves his goods by the door, never seeing him. But the arrival of Helen arouses not just his kindness, it also makes him hope, little by little, that maybe she just might feel something for him. The story is freighted with emotion, but to Males’ credit, he never goes over the top. In fact, the restraint and care with which these two wounded people talk with each other and try to learn the other’s story creates a wonderfully delicate romantic tension. There is something of the quality here of The Age of Innocence, where the mere removal of an opera glove is suffused with eroticism. Males draws his romance with a confident line obviously trained over many years and with scores of influences. Helen has something of a Spanish quality to her face, but I’m not fluent enough in European artists to see obvious influences on Males. I will say that fans of Michael Lark, Sean Phillips and Alex Toth should find the artwork attractive and even jaw-dropping in places. And just looking at it again for this review makes me want to read it again. An excellent graphic novel. $14.99
One thing often not mentioned about this legendary run is that Englehart and Rogers only worked together for six issues, the first three being penciled by Walt Simonson. Those hoping for Manhunter-quality work from Simonson here will be disappointed as inker Al Milgrom is as unsubtle as ever, with some pages looking like they were inked during a coffee break. As this book had a back-up feature, the stories themselves are short, usually around sixteen pages, but that just forces Englehart to keep things brisk, not a bad thing. In these first few tales, Batman tangles not only with new villain Dr. Phosphorus, but corrupt politician Rupert Thorne and those in his pocket. Batman is even slapped with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury because of his vigilantism. Odd plot turns like this, and interesting character bits like Alfred and Commissioner Gordon being “old friends” were typical for Englehart in his heyday, as was the hip dialogue for everyone, which is very amusing but holds up better than, say, Denny O’Neil’s power-to-the-people shtick in Green Lantern/Green Arrow. By the end of Simonson’s time, Silver St. Cloud is introduced, arguably the one great love of Batman’s life, though many fans might not ever have heard of her for as seldom as she has appeared since the end of this run. She doesn’t make much of an impact in her debut, largely due to Milgrom, but what does stand out is how suave Englehart writes Bruce Wayne. Most writers have chosen to write the public Wayne as a fop and playboy with no dimension, a man of no consequence so as to throw anyone off the scent that he could be the driven crimefighter, Batman. Englehart tries another angle, one that’s not an angle at all: he makes Bruce Wayne a real person. Not a role, not a stifling flesh suit for the haunted boy trapped inside, but a man who can enjoy himself and enjoy the company of others on the rare occasions he’s not on the job. Rogers makes his start with a challenging script calling for romantic tension and plenty of action tinged with hallucinogenic qualities, as Wayne has been exposed to some sort of gas when he visits a mysterious clinic for tests. Helping him immeasurably throughout the run are the precise but human inks and then-novel added Zipatone textures of Terry Austin. Englehart brings back Hugo Strange, who hadn’t been seen since Detective Comics #46 decades earlier, and Batman is not only soon overcome, but Strange discovers his secret identity. I don’t want to continue listing the various plot elements of this run, but suffice to say Englehart keeps things surprising while still playing fair with readers. More important than the Batman’s tussles with Phosphorus, Strange, the Penguin, Deadshot and the Joker (the famous “Laughing Fish” story is in here, still one of the best Joker stories ever), though, is that Englehart gives Batman/Wayne a real woman to love, someone bright and passionate and able to not only figure out his secret on her own, but to accept it. It’s inevitable they should part, even for a daring writer like Englehart, but their parting still retains its power. When Englehart winds up his run, settling the questions of Silver and Rupert Thorne and the Joker’s latest scheme, the book is over and in satisfactory fashion. However, as Rogers stayed on a little longer, his stories with subsequent writer Len Wein are included as well, a fine two-parter with Clayface acting as aperitif to the rich meal that preceded it. $12.95 DC Comics
Imaginary World Comics is, unlike Circus a traditional-sized comicbook rather than a softcover kids’ book, and it’s also in color, but is more of a collection of very light, whimsical gags, usually two per page. If it’s enough for you to see a piece of toast and an egg with hula hoops spinning around their torsos, or a slice of bacon selling ice cream treats, then this is your book, but while one would have to be really hardhearted to actively dislike these books, it is hard to figure just who the perfect audience is for them. $4.00 and $3.00. Imaginary World.
In a format similar to, but a little larger than, Fantagraphics’ The Complete Peanuts series, the book collects not quite the beginning of Gasoline Alley, but once it had settled into its premise of three married men and one bachelor who hung around a garage most of the time and thought about little else but their cars. Sometimes it’s a three or four panel strip and sometimes a one panel gag, so it seems King was just trying to fit in wherever the paper would allow. And if that’s all the strip remained, nobody would remember it today. But very soon, King takes things in a drastic direction, by having lead character, the bachelor Walt Wallet, find a baby boy on his doorstep, whom he subsequently names Skeezix, temporarily at first, and with no explanation as to the name’s origin. As the lengthy Introduction to this volume discusses, there is no definitive story as to whether King decided to change the strip or whether his editor at the time demanded it for commercial reasons. What is important is that King and his wife had lost their first child at birth, and that Skeezix’s debuted coincided with the birth of another King, a son, and this real-life event provided King not just with endless material, but also with the defining “gimmick” of the strip, that unlike most comics characters, the folks in Gasoline Alley actually age. From the beginning of the book, the charm and cleverness of King’s writing and cartooning come through clearly, even on very slight gags involving the upkeep of automobiles. But when Walt finds Skeezix and is thrust into fatherhood, I fell hard for it. A newly single father myself, with a few pounds to lose and a pervasive interest in something most women don’t care about (cars for Walt, comics for me), well, how could I not identify with it? Like Walt, I’m constantly around married people and much of my time is devoted to parenting, but as the running joke of the strip goes, he “knows when (he’s) well off!” more than me. King gets a lot of mileage out of Walt trying to raise Skeezix with his car-oriented knowledge (picking out strollers like he’s picking out a new coupe’, filling Skeezix’s “tank” with fuel, etc.), and it works so well because he’s not a clueless or careless father, but an immensely devoted one, who is simply transferring his ingenuity, boundless energy and attention to details from maintaining a car to raising a healthy, happy, beloved boy. All this would be good enough to sustain the book, and it’s fascinating to see Skeezix’s development from swaddling baby to crawling, walking, talking, destructive-but-loveable tyke, but King adds a poignant dimension to the strip with the frequent worries by Walt that someday, the biological mother or father of Skeezix might come and take him away. Having lost his first child, King knows something about this feeling. It becomes even more dramatic when hints are dropped that the otherwise delightful Mrs. Phyllis Blossom may just be a reason for this type of concern from Walt. It’s really some great writing during this period in 1922, because King keeps much of this worry just bubbling under the surface of the main storyline of who Mrs. Blossom is and whether she might be the one for whom Walt gives up his comfortable bachelorhood. One aspect of the book I was surprised to find was so inoffensive, since it had been built up in the Introduction, was the treatment of Black housekeeper Rachel. The facial design is unquestionably an unfortunate caricature typical of the time, yes, but otherwise she’s the most positive female character in the strip. The wives of Walt’s friends, when they’re seen, are interested only in gossip, matchmaking and fashion, while Rachel is excellent and utterly reliable at her job and in caring for Skeezix. I found it significant that after firing a series of incompetent or mean White nannies for Skeezix, Walt hired Rachel without a moment’s hesitation or comment on her race, and nowhere in the book is any of the humor derived from any characteristic or shortcoming of Rachel’s. It would be much fairer to criticize King’s depiction of the other women, who are largely interchangeable and stereotypical, but even this begins to change with the introduction of Mrs. Blossom. The bottom line is, I kind of expected this to be a book one gets because one should rather than out of a great interest; something to look handsome on a bookshelf and to read and review almost like homework. But I was completely taken by it, the easygoing humor and warmth of it, and I burned through this volume like it was a summer suspense novel. As Ware writes, it is his hope that when the strip is finally collected, many years from now, it will join Krazy Kat and Peanuts as one of the greatest comic strips of all time, and at this point I’m inclined to agree. Drawn and Quarterly Publications. $29.95
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Different Ugliness, Different Madness by Mark Males looks to be one of the last releases by 
Flytrap Episode One: Juggling Act by 
Batman: Strange Apparitions by Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin represents the reason readers today are being treated to the odd but endearing Batman: Dark Detective miniseries from the same creators. Englehart writes in his Introduction that his run on Detective Comics in 1977-78 was a condition of agreeing to work on Justice League of America, and that, rather rare for the time, he would only agree to write these books for one year, as he was planning to quit comics forever and move to Europe. Also rare is that not only would Rogers debut in comics on a high-profile book to great acclaim, the resulting work was actually completed after Englehart had written all his scripts, so there was no interaction between writer and artist.
Mr. Toast at the Circus and Imaginary World Comics #1 are new comics from Dan Goodsell, who was peddling them at Comic-Con International: San Diego this year. A nice, unassuming guy making nice, unassuming comics in a simple, open style designed to appeal to all ages, both starring Mr. Toast, who’s basically just a piece of toast with eyes and a mouth and tiny limbs. The art is just plain fun to look at, and I was happy to put up the “Mr. Toast in Outer Space” poster in my children’s room, but I must confess I was a bit disappointed with the books themselves. Circus introduces Mr. Toast and the rest of a wacky, anthropomorphic, food-based circus troupe, but after they’re all introduced, the book is over. I would have liked for Goodsell to put more thought into an actual story set at this circus. Seeing a red onion sell peanuts or a big lemon selling cold drinks made from himself is cute, but where do you go from there?
Walt and Skeezix Book One: 1921-1922 is the first of an ambitious, chronological collection of the Gasoline Alley comic strips by Frank King. Rather than try to fool you readers that my comics background is impeccable and I’ve long been a fan of King, I’ll just be honest here. The reason I picked this book up is because Chris Ware designed it, and it was on sale. Ware’s involvement legitimized this work for me, as it did with his cover designs for the ongoing Krazy and Ignatz collections. Other than the fact I used to know Yellow Kid creator Robert Outcault’s grandson and saw some framed originals, and read some early Batman strips in the library as a kid, I have never been all that interested in the early comic strips. In fact, what kept me from buying the Drawn & Quarterly annual collections over the years were the generous Gasoline Alley reprints, which at first glance were merely quaint and not impressive enough to erase bad memories of the strips as it was when I was growing up and reading it in The Chicago Tribune, written and drawn by others and full of fussy or ridiculous folks with unfathomable history together. But, as I said, I instantly clicked with Herriman’s work, and that finally opened me up to the possibility that there was some work from that long ago that still held up.