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Not that the original Mad magazine needs any more praise, but you really do appreciate how special it was when you look at the level of its imitators.
Fooey was published in 1961 when Mad was ripping up the cultural landscape and I guess Scoff Publishing figured they could do a knock-off half as well and still make a few bucks. Unfortunately, Fooey isn't quite half as good as Mad is. More like twenty-fifths.
Not that Mad was always the Algonquin Round Table all the time(or even most of it), but Fooey has a really cheap, thrown-together look to it(as you can partly see from the cover; they couldn't have sprung for a color photo for the cover of their first issue?).
Most of the humor pieces are done with photographs, but there are some drawings here, and with this piece on the inside cover, you can see the level of art and wit that you're in store for:
After this, there's an ad for "Helene Hurtuss Shamfoo", a text piece called "I Struggled For $uccess", "Advice to the Loveworn" (featuring Sylvia Stern, a guy in drag), an ad for "Mrs. Wigoil" featuring another man in drag, a section about funny horoscopes where I couldn't tell where the jokes actually were; "Over the Tea, Bags" with Ambrosia Gallstones, yet another man in drag(man + women's clothes = funny!).
There's also a section with funny greeting cards, featuring a typical sentiment on the front and the kicker on the back; this being the closest Fooey gets to a Mad-style bit; a long piece starring Floradora Lovelard, who looks like Jonathan Winters in drag...ok, what the hell is with all the guys in drag??
Next is "Sporto, the Talking Dog"(another text piece), "Fooey's Underbridged Illustrated Dictionary", "Great Art Monsterpieces", which went either completely over my head or doesn't actually contain any jokes; another text piece called "My Sister Stole My Loverboy"(which features photos of guess what), "Choice Cuts", which features jokes set to old-style stock art(hey, at least its not guys in drag), some fake ads, and then it all wraps up with a back inside/back outside cover gag aimed at the world of advertising, a frequent Mad target:
Naked butts on a back cover...a little surprising, I gotta admit.
I tried to do some research on Fooey, but as you might've imagined, there isn't exactly a large fan following out there("See you all at FooeyCon 2008!"), so the best info I could find was via eBay.
Fooey lasted at least three issues, multiple copies of which I found for sale, some helpfully including cover scans:
...that second issue cover looks really cool, actually; but I'm not quite curious enough to pick it up. Who knows? Maybe things got better after the first issue.
Even though I gave the creators of Fooey a hard time, credit must be given for the attempt by a couple of small fry to try and put out their own humor magazine. I wish we had more of that nowadays!
Even the ads for 1984 featured nudity!
Definitely an unusual sales pitch...
I just found this ad in an old issue of The Phantom Stranger, which is where I found all the ads DC did for King Kirby's two aborted magazine projects. Did DC figure that PS had an older audience who would be more interested in these?
It's interesting that DC mentions that they are sold out of the two magazines(then why did they cancel them so abruptly?), so they are going back to press on them. Pretty unusual, no?
This was an enormously fun magazine from 1993, put out at the height of the Batman: The Animated Series' popularity(funny then, that Superman gets top billing).
This was another one of those cases where I saw aboslutely no promotion for this thing, and just happened to come across it at a newsstand. I apparently wasn't the only one who missed it; S&BM wasn't around too long, something around eight measly issues.
The cover is by Ty Templeton, and folds out to become a poster, and on top of that, comes with a centerfold that you can match up with the cover to make one giant poster, which is a way-cool donnybrook featuring most of the biggest heroes of the DCU and their bad guys:
Anyway, once I got past that, there are a whole load of fun features in this mag, starting off with a two-page "Daily Planet" supplement, featuring small, kid-attention-span-size articles about things in the news, a page called "Penguin's Puns", and then a six-page "Origin of Superman" comic sequence written by Karl Kesel and drawn by the late, great Mike Parobeck.
Next is an article on collecting trading cards, and then is "The Secret Origin of Batman", also by Kesel and Parobeck.
Some other members of the DCU get some love, as there's a two-page feature called "The Hero File" about Wonder Woman.
This awesome drawing is by Kevin Nowlan doing his more cartoony style, and I love this piece so much I think it could've been used as presentation art for a Wonder Woman cartoon series. Wouldn't you watch a show that looked like this?
Next is a two-page text story about Robin and the Huntress(written by Denny O'Neil, no less!), an article on the "Superman is Dead" storyline, and then a profile of Mike Carlin.
This makes for a really attractive, fun package, perfect for kids who are just getting introduced to these characters. I could never find the following issues at the time, but they're easily(and cheaply) found on ebay, and I plan to pick those up in the future.
I guess this magazine is little far afield of what we normally cover here, but it charmed me because
A)It's exactly the kind of cash-in one-shot that Warren would've done, and
B)It's published by Fawcett, legendary comics publisher, long since driven out of the comics biz by those nasty DC lawyers
This was published in 1972, just as the show was becoming a cultural phenomenon, so Fawcett's timing was perfect. Usually comics publishers are embarassingly behind the times when it comes to cashing in on a trend, but I guess the relative simplicity of putting this together helped get it out as soon as possible.
It opens with "The Bunkers are Born", a piece on the show's creator, Norman Lear. After that is a series of profiles of the show's stars, starting with Carroll O'Connor as Archie, of course, and the most unispiring pull-quote to ever headline an article:
...jeez, you'd think the star of a hit TV series would be a little more cheerful.
After some nice photos of O'Connor with his wife, his brother, and his dog, we have some stills from some of his movies like Cleopatra and Waterhole #3.
Next up is Jean Stapleton as Edith Bunker, also with photos of her private life and some of her film and stage credits.
Third is Rob Reiner as Mike Stivic, opening with Rob's Hollywood-centric upbringing, being the son of the legendary Carl Reiner(Am I the only one who thinks Carl Reiner looks eerily like Andy Kaufman here?):
It also talks about Reiner's career as writer on The Smothers Brothers Show, and his recent marriage to Penny Marshall.
Next is Sally Struthers as Gloria, and then Mike Evans as Lionel Jefferson, followed by "The Lucky Thirteen", a summary of the episodes aired so far.
The magazine ends with a behind the scenes piece on the new season, and what critics have been saying about the show. There's no ads in this magazine, making for a pretty attractive package. I wonder if mags like this were done for other shows? I'd love to have a M*A*S*H one like this.
But the fun's not over yet! Someone, many years ago, bothered to tear out some TV listings from a contemporary TV Guide or some similar publication and slip them inside the magazine. One of the shows listed(along with picture) is a Raquel Welch special called The Funny Papers:
...this is just all kinds of wrong. A mini-skirted pulchritudinous Annie played by Racquel Welch, sitting on Daddy Warbucks' lap? Jeepers!
I bet King Features Syndicate was just thrilled over this.
Even Fantagraphics got into the b/w magazine act!
I vaguely remember this magazine being around at the time, and even though I was rapidly expanding my comic book reading subject matter I never went near this--I think the cover(by Alec Stevens) just sort of scared me off.
I guess it was sort of designed to do exactly that--if you'd be scared off by this image, this isn't the magazine for you in the first place.
On the inside covers are reprints of the 1927 comic strip "Dot and Dash" by Cliff Sterrett, and then there's an introduction by publisher Gary Groth. Of course, Gary Groth isn't going to give you a Stan Lee-style "Hey, kids! This new magazine is the most pulse-pounding collection of stories you'll ever read! Excelsior!" intro; no, he welcomes you right off the bat with this:
First up is Alec Steven's all b/w adaptation of H.P.Lovecraft's "The Outsider", six pages of paranoia and madness. Well done and visually arresting.
Next is R.Crumb with a cute(for him) two-pager called "Troubles with Cute Old Refrigerators", and then Eddie Campbell's untitled piece, about, among other things, a man entranced by a woman he meets named Georgette. I didn't totally understand all that was going on here, but Campbell's art perfectly captures the hazy, brief snippets of memory that remain after a transformative experience.
I love this panel, where our hero sees Georgette at a party, and she literally is different from everyone else. I've had experiences like this, and this is a great visual interpretation of that feeling.
Next is Susan Catherine's "Overheard at America's Lunch Counters" which reads sort of like a bit Jay Leno would do on the Tonight Show; and then is a text piece called "Mr.Hamadryad", featuring a frontpiece by Kenneth Smith.
Following that is more "Dot and Dash", and then is Dori Seda's "The Confidante", featuring three people who don't ever say what they really mean.
Next is Richard Sala's creepy "The Thirteen Fingers", a story about one man finding out about a mysterious group and wanting to see what's going on behind closed doors. I absolutely loved the story, and its unsettling, downbeat ending, but I couldn't get past Sala's gallery of grotesques populating the tale:
The story seems so wonderfully, creepily real, yet the art kept me at a distance from it. Hey, that's just me...
Next is Drew Friedman's "Tor Johnson in the Country" (Friedman and Johnson are the Scorsese and DeNiro of indy comics), and then is Justin Green's take on the classic comic book ad, "Hero of the Beach Revisited."
Mitch Manzer's "Rory Randall, The Singin' Cowboy" fills the rest of the mag up, with a fifteen page story, but there's room for just one more piece, a one-page feature called "Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas" with a spot illustration by one of my favorites, Rick Geary.
There is a lot of neat stuff here; Prime Cuts ran for ten issues and even though I couldn't find too much info on the series(the GCDB only shows two out of the ten covers) I'd definitely be into searching out more of them. I'll just skip any more Groth introductions.
Another magazine that stretches the boundaries of this blog's subject matter, Flashback was another one of those early-70s magazines all about old-timey stuff, in this case old Hollywood films. Normally I wouldn't have included a magazine like this, but the Jack Davis cover won me over.
Marvel's distributor Curtis Circulation put out Nostalgia Illustrated(and ran ads for it in the Marvel comic b/w magazines), but this little curio is from the oddly named Pentagram Publications(!) and ended up being a pretty solid magazine.
After the nifty Davis cover, the magazine is broken down into sections about Hollywood's Golden Age, like:
"The Escapist Film"--stills and text on Lost Horizon, The Sea Hawk, Mark of Zorro, and Gunga Din
"The 'B' Westerns"--Prairie Moon, The Cherokee Flash, Renegade Trail
"The Musical Films"--Gold Diggers of 1933, Gold Diggers of 1935, Alexander's Ragtime Band, The Great Ziegfeld
"The Comedy Film"--The Paleface, My Little Chickadee, Keep 'Em Flying, Way Out West, Sailor Beware
"The Horror Film"--Mask of Fu Manchu, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Frankenstein, Creature From the Black Lagoon
"The 'B' Film"--Mr.Moto's Last Warning, The Saint, Sherlock Holmes in Washington, The Chinese Cat
"The Blockbusters"--Mutiny on the Bounty, Dark Passage, Gilda, Touch of Evil, Sunset Boulevard, King Kong, The Women"Serials"--Dick Tracy, The Adventures of Captain Marvel, The Phantom, The Crimson Ghost, plus a neat section on Flash Gordon featuring some comic art:
...and in the back there's a neat section highlighting books about movies and a substantially large section on comics, recommending such publications as Steranko's History of Comics, The Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy, Batman: From the 30s to the 70s, even some EC reprints!
They also had some of Captain Company-esque thing set up, because there was an order form and a couple of catalog pages where you could order books on movies, even 8mm and 16mm film strips!
Whoever Pentagram was, they must have had some vague connection to someone or someones at Mad, since the inside back cover features this subscription ad drawn by Mort Drucker!
I haven't been able to find any info on Flashback other than issues I've found for sale on ebay--the first three, all with covers by Jack Davis. The first three are easy to find so due to the complete lack of any other issues I have a hunch these were the only ones published.
These photo magazines were cheap to produce so after Warren blazed the trail with Famous Monsters of Filmland there was all of a sudden an avalanche of them, and of course most of the folded quickly. Judging from this first issue, Flashback was one of the better ones.
In 1987, Marvel experimented with this a second Conan magazine, titled The Conan Saga--an all-reprint b/w title running, in order, the stories from the color Conan the Barbarian comic.
Asking readers to fork over two bucks for reprints was risky, but it obviously worked--Saga ran for ninety-seven issues, a great run for a reprint book, and an extraordinary run for a comic magazine. Roy Thomas has said that at one point, Marvel was making more money from Savage Sword of Conan than any other publication they had. I'm sure that earned everybody's favorite barbarian a lot of respect at the House of Ideas.
This first issue features a new Barry Smith cover, and reprints Conan the Barbarian #s 1-3:
"The Coming of Conan" by Roy Thomas, Smith, and Dan Adkins
"Lair of the Beast-Men!" by Thomas, Smith, and Sal Buscema
"The Twilight of the Grim Grey God!" by Thomas, Smith, and Buscema
There's also a text piece about Hyboria by Alan Zelenetz, and a beautiful inside cover pin-up by Smith:
I grew up seeing Smith's work as it looks now, and when I would go back and look at those old Conans I couldn't reconcile the two very different looks.
The inside back cover features a pencil sketch by Smith as an ad for the next issue; but as far as my research could find, the sketch doesn't appear in Conan Saga #2...?
I just love this thing--if I could find one on eBay, I would so bring it with me to cons.
Is that Louise Jones/Simonson as our model?
I found this ad on the back of a Marvel Super Special, about six months before Epic the magazine debuted.
I get the feeling the artist, Peter Ledger, wasn't given a lot of specific instruction--"Just make it big, like in the Mighty Marvel Manner!"
Marvel must have gotten a good deal on a lotta paper, because in the late 80s they were cranking out all kinds of new b/w magazines with a volume not since their early 70s heydey.
Definitely an odd choice of movies to adapt, the Nightmare on Elm Street film series was by 1989 on fire popularity-wise; they were cranking out a new one per year almost and Freddy Kruger had managed to evolve from the bad guy in the series to almost an anti-hero; he got all the best quips and he started finding his way into mass-merchandising.
First up, if you need a cover both brutal yet sexy, who do you call? Why, our pal Joe Jusko of course! I can't imagine what it must have been like, having to sit there and stare at Freddy Kruger's ugly face all the time it took to paint this. Yeesh!
Anyway, before we even get to the (book-length) story, we're met with the craziest intro any comic magazine ever had:
The story is called "Dreamstalker", and is written by Steve Gerber, half-penciled by Rich Buckler, half-penciled by Tony DeZuniga, and the finishes are by Alfredo Alcala.
I don't see much of Buckler or DeZuniga's style here, but it was a good choice to have Alcala do the finishes; his moody, doom-soaked work is perfect for this type of story. The tone is set by the creepy splash page:
We get to find out Freddy's gruesome origin intertwined with an original tale(not an adaptation of one of the movies), and I was a little shocked reading this how much Marvel and/or Gerber stuck to the tone of the movies(or some of them, at least): very, very grim and not much in the way of the easy laughs that a lot of 80s slasher films used to cut the tension.
Overall, I enjoyed this a heck of a lot more than I would have expected to; Freddy is definitely menacing in this story, and for the most part he's kept in the shadows and unlike the movies, I think it benefits from the less is more approach.
Apparently I am/was in the minority, Nightmare on Elm Street lasted only two issues, a shockingly quick demise even by comic book standards.
Update: The above assumption about poor sales by me was wrong; please read the comments section for some behind-the-scenes info by Nightmare's cover atist Joe Jusko!
Another one of those "Marvel published this?" discoveries, a comic book adaptation of the Elvira, Mistress of the Dark movie!
The movie industry is like comics sometimes, where a movie meant to capitalize on a hot trend or character comes just this side of too late, and debuts when the trend is cooling down. Often, the movie (or comic) is kind of lame, which is only one more nail in the coffin(an apt metaphor for Elvira).
I remember when the Elvira movie came out--1988--and thinking that it seemed a little late. I eventually did see it, and while I found(and still find) Cassandra Peterson as Elvira charming, the movie had a real slap-dash, thrown-together feel and it was not a great success.
Marvel certainly put an interesting group of people together for the adaptation though--the cover is by the unlikely team of Ernie Colon and our pal Joe Jusko, with the interior art by Colon and Romeo Tanghal. And it's written by Sid Jacobson, Colon's old creative partner from a thousand issues of Richie Rich!
I thought that was a brilliant stroke, getting Jacobson and Colon to do the honors, because their style keeps the story moving at a brisk clip, and trying to get someone realistic to do the art might have killed whatever whimsy might've been found within the story.
Lots of classic Colon faces show up here, like Elvira's sleazy agent(left) and he draws her with all of her...gifts on display, but it looks cute and sexy as opposed to sleazy and exploitative. I think one of the biggest things going for Elvira was that her persona was very aware of what she looked like and always seemed in control, as opposed to playing it as a dim-wit who didn't know her massive boobs were hanging out.
The plot concerns Elvira getting fired from her late-night TV gig and deciding to open an act of Vegas, except that she needs $50K to do it. Luckily, an old Aunt of hers has died, and left Elvira her beloved dog Algonquin and her creepy old house! Of course, that doesn't go over well with the tight-asses who run the town with an iron grip.
Colon throws in lots of fun bits, like in this panel where Elvira is about to be told what her Aunt left her. I love the pure look of bliss she has on her face, and then you've got the varied reactions to her...presence from the other inheritors. My tongue would probably hang out like that if I was in the same room as Elvira, too.
This was the only Elvira comic Marvel ever published, coming a year or so after DC tried making her the host of their new horror anthology, Elvira's House of Mystery. The GCDB doesn't even list this title, it was such a blip on Marvel's publication schedule. Too bad, since I think I would've loved to see Jacobson and Colon do some original Elvira adventures.
Ironically, Elvira would come back in comics as the star of her own title from Claypool, in a title that ran for an astonishing 175 issues--a hell of a run for any character. Props to Elvira and Claypool for finding the right ingredients to make her a big-time comic book star!
Marvel's b/w magazines in the eighties were always aimed at the tough(er) guy market, publications like Savage Sword of Conan, The 'Nam, and Savage Tales(mk.2) were all designed to capture this rapidly-shrinking share of the comic reading audience.
So of course, a magazine devoted to the Punisher made total sense--there really wasn't any meaner or nastier member of the Marvel Universe. And like The 'Nam, Marvel had some perfectly good material lying around, so this series started off reprinting a Punisher color comic, in this case the 1986 mini-series by Steven Grant, Mike Zeck, and John Beatty, which opened with the gangbuster premise of the Punisher in federal prison.
As a kid I was never into the Punisher that much--he seemed like an odd fit in the Marvel Universe, and I never really bought into the premise that heroes like Spider-Man and Captain America would work with him knowing his methods.
But I absolutely loved the Grant/Zeck mini-series, because it seemed Marvel allowed them to ramp up the Punisher, and take him to the extremes that someone who does what he does would experience. While Frank Castle is the obstensible hero, he's presented as just this side of nuts, and he is just as scary the bad guys he's locked up with. Amid all the bone-crunching, kicking, and punching, I think the scariest panel just has the Punisher eating a meal:
...brr!
The Punisher runs into the supervillian the Jigsaw while in prison, who of course takes this moment to exact revenge. But Grant writes his as almost comically inept, and while Jigsaw talks tough, the minute he's faced with any danger he starts blubbering for his life. It felt like Grant and Zeck were showing us a skeezy, dirtier corner of the Marvel Universe.
It ends with the Punisher throwing in with a group known as The Trust who tell him that they share the same goals he does. The last, full-page panel shows Frank Castle dumping his prison greys and reassuming his death's-head uniform.
There's also this uncredited pin-up, and a foreword and afterword about the mini-series.
The Punisher Magazine didn't last too long--sixteen issues--even though it had this superb start. This was around the time that Marvel made the decision that if people wanted more Punisher, they'd get him, and he was headlining something like three titles at a time.
I think, in the end, the Punisher is a character people don't want to spend that much time with, and he was under the control of too many creators who just thought all you had to do was have him shoot lots of bad guys. Eventually, all his titles were cancelled and he layed low for a while. But of course you can't keep Frank Castle down forever...
This made total sense to me when Marvel started it in 1988--The 'Nam was aimed at a different audience than your standard Marvel Zombie, so putting it out as a black and white magazine would put it directly in front of a more adult readership; and the lack of ads for other Marvel product made it seem even more an immersive experience.
This first issue reprints The 'Nam color series #s 1 and 2, ("First Patrol" and "Dustoff" respectively) both written by Doug Murray, pencilled by the incomparable Michael Golden, and inked by Armando Gil.
Even though I was just a teenager reared entirely on superheroes, I bought The 'Nam when it came out and I thought it was superb. Even though Golden's cartoony work seemed like an odd fit for a book about the grim realities of the Vientmam war, his brilliant storytelling and Gil's beautiful inks told Murray's story very well.
Golden uses a lot of panels per page in these first issues, and you feel very cramped and slightly claustrophobic; so when action breaks out you don't always have a good sense of where you are or what's happening:
...yet when it came time to slow down and have a moment, Murray and Golden knew how to pause, like when our ostensible main character(PFC Marks) finally starts to realize he is in a completely different world than the one he knew:
While some black and white magazine reprint material of color comics suffer without the color, I felt The 'Nam worked just as well, if not better, in black and white.
The 'Nam Magazine was just a blip on Marvel's publishing schedule; it only lasted ten issues and I couldn't even find it listed on the GCBD. Luckily, there was a fan site about the comic that provided complete cover scans.
That's too bad, since of course the color comic had a healthy run(96 issues!) and more of it could've been given the b/w magazine treatment.
Marvel figured that Howard the Duck's audience was older than their standard color line, so why not go after them more precisely and make Howard a magazine star? They cancelled the color comic in May 1979 and debuted this a few months later.
The cover painting is by Gary Hallgren, and there's an inside pin-up by Peter Ledger, which does double duty as part of the cover logo.
The opening tale is "Fowl of Fear" by Bill Mantlo and the unusual art team of Michael Golden and Klaus Janson. You wouldn't think that Golden's smooth, cartoony style would mesh well with Janson's rough, scratchy inking style, but to my eyes they make a superb team; Janson gives Golden's look a little tougher edge(along with some beautiful wash work), and yet Golden's inherent superb storytelling abilities still show through. In fact, Golden and Janson manage to make the incredibly silly story look as dramatic as any Marvel-style epic:
The story involves Howard, his buxom girlfriend Bev, and their friend Lee just after their run-in with the villanous Dr.Bong(in Howard The Duck #31) as they stumble upon a host of weirdos that would've fit quite well in a Preacher storyline.
There's a second chapter, entitled "The $64,000 Desperado", written by Mantlo but with art by Gene Colan and Bob McLeod. Here they meet Jackpot, the one-armed supervillain, who is just barely sillier than a lot of the "straight" villains running around in Marvels at the time.
Colan and McLeod make a great team, and McLeod adds a wonderfully detailed realism to Colan's work, so that you end up with panels like this one--a beautifully, realistically rendered talking duck.
Chapter Three is called "From Hell It Cometh...Chair-Thing!", by Mantlo, Colan, and Dave Simons, where they meet a giant evil, sentinet couch. Mantlo was hitting for the fences with these stories, and he maintains a light-as-air tone here, so that all this silliness seemed inspired instead of tiresome.
I had never read these issues before, and while I knew that Marvel had always pushed the envelope in regards to the, er, close relationship between Howard and Bev, here they decided the hell with it:
Can you imagine DC or Marvel trying to get away with this now? I think if the Howard the Duck movie had worked this angle, it would've been the smash hit of 1986.
A really fun issue, with a fun story, great art, and beastiality. Excelsior!
...if not the most useless piece of crap ever sold via Captain Company, its certainly in the Top Five.
From an issue of Eerie circa 1973, this is a giant, two-foot long hand, made of vinyl. That's it. It's not even colored green or orange or something, so you could act like its a monster's hand. No, its only for use if you wanted to pretend Richard Kiel was grabbing you. Hours of fun!
Not really.
One of my goals in this second iteration of the blog is to have a little more of a regular schedule; to that end my plan is to do reviews Monday through Friday, and devote weekends to ads and other ancillary material.
Now I'll admit this ad really doesn't have much to do with the b/w magazine format, except that I've only ever seen it in one(a Savage Sword of Conan), never in a color comic, and it was simply too much fun to pass up.
Appearances can be deceiving of course, but judging by this ad this looks like The Most Awesome Comic Con Ever--an appearance by Spider-Man, art lessons by John Buscema, writing lessons by Roy Thomas, free kung fu exhibitions??
And on top of that, if you need more info on it you get to correspond with Vince Colletta!! Not too intimidating, no?
It's amazing, the stuff you find on eBay.
This is a thirty-six page magazine-sized coloring book all about Jimmy Carter, who was at the time of printing(1976) running for President. The art is by none other than Neal Adams and Bob McLeod! There's no writing credit, so I assume Adams was reponsible for that, too.
The tone is acidic; the jabs at Carter are nasty and pretty mean-spirited; putting a lie to the theory that the creative community saves its sharpest barbs for the Republicans. There's jokes about Jimmy's peanut farming, gun control, Walter Mondale, Nixon, Ford, Equal Opportunity, Amy Carter, religion, and Drug Policy.
While I guess this is technically a coloring book, it feels more like a Lampoon-style magazine, since what kid would want to color caricatures of guys in suits?
The art is, of course, very nice; Adams can caricature with the best of 'em and he even gets a chance to do some realistic rendering:
...hey, that's a nice elephant, no matter how you slice it(?).
One strange book!
No magazine has been more requested to show up here than Epic Illustrated.
I never really got into Epic when it was first out(1980-1986) so I never had any issues of it in my box o' magazines, but reading this first issue made me want to read more of them.
I had always thought that Epic was full of the kind of sci-fi/fantasy that, frankly, just never appealed to me as a kid, or now--stuff with elves and mystical wizards(even now, if I read a story and it opens with "In the land of the faeries..." I go zzzzzzzzzzzz) and I guess I never bothered to actually look inside an issue and find out whether I was right.
One other thing I neve realized was the extent to which Marvel with Epic was trying to compete in the Heavy Metal/slick magazine market. This issue opens with a two-page ad(y'know, like a real magazine) for Kawasaki motorcycles, which is grown-up enough, and then facing the table of contents we get this:
...you didn't see this ad in Marvel Two-In-One much.
After an editorial by Stan Lee(of course) and some early testimonials from Ray Bradbury, George Pal, Neal Adams(who is typically frank--and even a little skeptical--about whether Marvel will treat Epic's creative people right) and others, we get...The Silver Surfer?
Yes, the first story, "The Answer", stars the Surfer and Galactus and is by Lee, John Buscema, Rudy Nebres, and colors by Rick Veitch. It's a metaphysical tale of the Surfer trying to find The Answer. It's more of a Think Piece rather than a story, per se, and probably the kind of tale Stan imagined himself "moving on" to, had the Marvel style of slam-bang action and melodrama not become the industry standard.
At first I thought it was an odd choice to open with the Surfer--if you're trying to establish a new magazine with a new identity, why open with one of Marvel's big superhero stars? I mean, what, was Ant-Man busy?
But then I realized that Marvel probably figured that, saucy denim jeans ads or no, Epic was going to have a lot of the same audience the color comics had simply because it was from Marvel, so why not gently guide that audience into this new experience, by opening with a character they all knew? Well played, Stan.
The next story is "Homespun" by Elfquest's Wendy Pini, and is the exact kind of story that would keep me from buying Epic--a tale of faeries and mystical creatures. I'm not knocking the piece--it's well done and as you can see from the splash page, exquisitely drawn and colored--it's just not my cup o' tea.
Next is "Aware" by Leo Duranona, a Warren-esque piece of two characters who know they're only characters in a story. That's been done before, of course, but at only five pages its over before it wears out its welcome.
"For The Next 60 Seconds" by Bob Larkin is similar, in that its not anything you haven't seen before(a black humor piece about the end of the world), but its only three pages and Larkin's storytelling is effective.
Jim Starlin contributes the longest tale "The Metamorphosis Odyssey", all in black and white, the first three parts of it are all in this first issue. A truly galaxy-spanning tale of a race of beings and one who has to leave his home because he won't go along with a grim plan to take over Earth(there's a lot more to it, but I can't hope it to summarize it all).
Ray Rue contributes "Lullabye of Bedlam", a Twilight Zone-ish fantasy tale, and next is a text story, "Elfspire" by John Pocsik and Thomas Blackshear. Oh no, more elves!
Next are three one-page stories all by Yugoslavian cartoonist Mirko Ilic, the first of which, "History of Human Absurdity" is a classic which reminds me of Richard Corben's Warren work:
"Convert" is another dark-humored story, this time by Ernie Colon, which means its awesome. 'Nuff said.
"Heads" is by Arthur Suydam, a tale of revenge among different races of creatures. The story was ok, but Suydam's artwork is great.
Chapters 2 and 3(titled "Za!" and "Juliet") of Starlin's "Metamorphosis Odyssey" are next("Juliet" is set outside at night, and Starlin's work is so effective and moody you can practically hear the crickets chirping); following them is "Detour" a one-page text piece by somone named...George Bush??
Last is "Topaz" by Carl Potts, who growing up I was more familiar with as an editor at Marvel, not a writer/artist. It's a light-hearted tale featuring a couple comprised of a centaur and a topless woman(yep, this magazine is for adults, all right), and Potts' work is excellent. This panel alone struck me as a marvel(sorry) of layout, rendering, and color:
Finally, there's a one-page creator's biography page by Archie Goodwin, and is unusual just for actually mentioning other company's comics, by name, something Marvel never did which always seemed a bit silly to me. Leave it to Archie Goodwin to go the classy route.
Like I said at the beginning, I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked Epic, and how varied the contents and talent were. Back issues of Epic are plentiful and cheap on eBay, so this definitely won't be the last time we talk about it here!
A seemingly unusual choice for a comic book, Emergency! was a hit TV show that ran from 1972-1979. This was another example of Charlton issuing a color comic at almost the exact same time as a b/w magazine version.
This magazine hit the stands in 1976, so Charlton was a little behind the curve, but they certainly gave it their all--after all, the main artist in this book is Neal Adams!
Charlton was a notoriously cheap company, so it seems surprising they would hire Adams(via his Continuity Associates company) who demanded, and got, top rates(as revealed in a Charlton-themed issue of Comic Book Artist, Adams and Continuity took a little less in exchange for a lot of creative freedom).
The cover painting is by Adams, and the mag kicks off with some text pieces about the show and one of the lead actors, Randolph Mantooth(what a name!) who played paramedic Johnny Gage.
The first story is simply called "The Paramedics", written by Joe Gill and uncredited artists, which means some sort of mix of Adams, Sal Almendola, Terry Austin, Joe Barney, Joe Brozowski, Rick Bryant, Klaus Janson, Dick Giordano, Bruce Patterson, Carl Potts, Josef Rubinstein, Bob Smith, and Bob Wiacek, all of whom are listed on the table of contents.
You definitely see mostly Adams' influence here, in a story that gives you the basic set-up and establishes the characters. Adams' ability at likenesses is on par with Gray Morrow, so pretty much it looks like the actors speaking in every panel.
There's another text piece about Kevin Tighe, who played Roy Desoto, and then there's a second story, also by Gill, called "Silent Death" which, if the show had looked this exciting, it would still be on the air today.
Julie London as nurse Dixie McCall gets an article next, and then is "Horror House" which to my eye looks to be mostly done by Sal Amendola, about kids getting in trouble in a seemingly-abandoned haunted house. From the title on down, the spooky content in this story(written by Nick Cuti) is way higher than the show ever did I bet, and it's another example(like the work he did for Charlton's Space: 1999 magazine) of Cuti taking the basic premise of a show and expanding it to the comic book form, making it way more exciting than the show itself.
There's two more text articles on the cast, Bobby Troupe and Robert Fuller, and then the final tale is "His Bark Is Worse Than His Bite", written by Mike Pellowski and bearing more--much more--of Adams' personal stamp in the art.
In fact, there was maybe a little too much of Adams' stamp in this story for its own good, since by his very style Adams makes everything he renders look dramatic and exciting. The dialogue suggests a slightly lighter-hearted story involving a woman bit by a possibly-rabid dog, and the paramedic's attempts to find the dog. I bet when writer Pellowski wrote "...then they find the rabid dog" he didn't expect to get this:
...holy crap!
I don't know about you, but if I got one look at this hell-beast, I would've run the other direction as fast as possible. It's such a gripping, jarring image that it doesn't really seem to be in the same world as the rest of the story.
And it doesn't stop there! Near the end of the story, one of the firemen pulls a practical joke--the old bucket of water over the door gag--on Roy Desoto, to get back at him for a joke Desoto pulled.
The gag comes off, but Desoto gets mad--real mad:
...there's an intensity in this panel rarely seen outside Deaman's raging against his fate in Strange Adventures. And the look of fear on Chet's face is right out of a House of Mystery story.
Adams is clearly giving his all here(despite the low page rates!), giving us a "10" when the story is around a "6" on the Intense-O-Meter. Maybe Adams sensed the story was just ok and tried to ramp it up a notch. Or five.
So it's a pretty interesting magazine, much more than you'd expect from a TV tie-in comic. Despite the creative people involved, neither Emergency! the comic or the magazine lasted long, only four issues each. Not for lack of trying!
