20th century Boys

Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy on Wednesday based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on what we call our “Splurge” item.

Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList if you’d like to play along in our comments section.

Brigid Alverson

If I had $15,

I’d get volume 13 of 20th Century Boys. This series is fantastic, and I hear there’s a big reveal in this volume.

If I had $30,

I’d add some floppies to the mix. This is a good week for a lot of the series I have been following on and off: Atomic Robo: Deadly Art of Science #4 ($3.50), Sixth Gun #9 ($3.99), Kill Shakespeare #9 ($3.99). Since I have a bit left over, I’ll throw in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #716 ($3.99), because I really have been enjoying that classic Disney.

Splurge

Dark Horse’s Giant Size Little Lulu, vol. 3, weighs in at over 700 pages, so for $24.99 it’s a splurge that brings value for the money. If I’m feeling particularly flush, I’d throw in Boom! Studios’ Muppet Sherlock Holmes ($9.99), just for laughs.

Chris Mautner

Godland #34

If I had $15:

It’s a quiet week for me, but the arrival of a new issue of Godland ($2.99) is always a good thing, and I’m in the need for some tongue-in-cheek Kirby riffs this week.

If I had $30:

The 13th volume of Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys is my first and really only pick here this week ($12.99). Perhaps I’ll use the money I save to get some of the other volumes in the series I currently don’t have.

Splurge:

If you’re a fan of classic comics and have the scratch to feed your need, this is a pretty good week. Marvel has volume one of their Golden Age Mystic Comics series, featuring some nice pulp-style work by Alex Schomburg ($59.99). Meanwhile, Dark Horse has the sixth volume of their Eerie Archives out ($49.99), and the third volume of the Giant Sized Little Lulu collections ($24.99). Any of those books would offer a good day’s read.

Michael May

If I had $15:

Namor: The First Mutant #7

I’d start with Namor: The First Mutant #7 ($2.99). I jumped on board with issue #5 and like what Stuart Moore’s up to with a new (to me) supporting cast. He also seems to have hit a nice balance between Namor’s dickish and heroic natures. That’s crucial to what makes the character so fascinating. I’m not totally sold on the Hell plot, but there’s enough other stuff to keep me interested for now. Three other series I’m following also hit this week: Echoes #3 (3.99), Secret Avengers #10 ($3.99), and Atomic Robo and the Deadly Art of Science ($3.50).

If I had $30:

I’d trade-wait all of those and pick up a couple of larger volumes instead. Muppet Sherlock Holmes ($9.99) combines two of my favorite things, so that’s an easy one. Also, I enjoyed the first volume of Outlaw Territory and want to read the second one ($19.99). There are a good number of weird westerns out lately, but as much as I enjoy those, it’s also nice to be able to get western stories with cowboys shooting other cowboys instead of ghosts and witches.

Splurge:

I’m having a difficult time deciding between Dark Horse’s collection of Marvel’s John Carter of Mars: Warlord of Mars ($39.99) and Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age Mystic Comics, Volume 1 ($59.99). Thanks to a few blogs that have exposed me to them, I’ve grown very fond of Golden Age adventure stories and Mystic Comics includes several genres, including superheroes, space pulp, mythological fantasy, and jungle adventures. Also, as Chris mentioned: Alex Schomburg art.

That price tag is killing me though, so I’ll probably hope for an eventual paperback collection and go with Warlord of Mars for now. I have fond memories of those John Carter comics from when I was a kid and I’d love to revisit them.

Graeme McMillan

Action Comics #898

It’s a relatively slow week when it comes to trying out new books for me, it seems. If I had $15, I’d probably go with Action Comics #898 (DC, $2.99), because I’ve been really enjoying Paul Cornell’s take on Lex Luthor and found the previous issue to be the best yet by far; New York Five #2 (DC/Vertigo, $2.99), the follow-up to a debut for Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly’s Minx sequel that impressed the hell out’ve me, even though I was really looking forward to it; and Matt Fraction and Sal Larocca’s Invincible Iron Man #501 (Marvel, $3.99), which again gets a chance based on a more-impressive-than-I’d-been-expecting previous issue (The .1 issue, which I found so much more engaging than the last year or so of the book). Sure, that’s only $10 used, but that’s because…

…If I had $30, I’d use the “spare” $15 to go add DC’s Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 5 ($19.99). I’ve been loving this series, and have waited a long time for this collection, which includes the 100th issue of the series, complete with JSA and Seven Soldiers of Victory team-ups. I really, really love this stuff.

Splurgewise, I’d probably pick up the hardcover collection of Oni Press’ Ghost Projekt Vol. 1 ($19.99); I’ve heard really good things about Joe Harris and Steve Rolston’s supernatural thriller, and the early issues I read left me ready to read more.

Jk Parkin

Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.

This month we’re looking at the career of a Golden Age artist who’s undergone a bit of a rediscovery and renaissance lately, John Stanley.

Why he’s important

Besides being a masterful storyteller, John Stanley is an important reminder that the history of the American comics industry, particularly its Golden Age, is made up of more than superheroes and EC horror titles. There was a diverse amount of material being published that aimed to appeal to a variety of interests and ages (relatively speaking). Most of it, of course, was dreck, but in Stanley’s case craftsmanship and an eagerness to entertain won out. Though he usually dealt with licensed, G-rated material, Stanley refused to hack anything out. His stories are always tightly constructed affairs, filled with memorable characters and a dry, almost macabre, wit that keeps the material from becoming too saccharine.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Stanley is how little his work has aged. It remains as witty, imaginative and fall on the floor funny as it must have seemed to young readers back in the 1950s and ’60s. Stanley’s comics are that rare beast that can be appreciated by both adults and children — our house is frequently filled with discussions of our favorite Lulu stories for example. Bottom line: he’s just plain fun to read.

Where to start

Giant Sized Little Lulu Vol. 1

Even though he didn’t create the character, Stanley is best associated with Little Lulu. As good as Marjorie Henderson Buell’s original cartoons are (and they are very good), Stanley took the character into the realm of the greatness, adding his own unique cast and spinning seemingly endless inspired variations on only a few basic themes (Lulu gets revenge on Tubby and the mean neighborhood boys, Tubby plays detective, Lulu tells little kid Alvin a story). Dark Horse has done an excellent job of reprinting these seminal stories and have 25 volumes in print as of this writing. That can seem like a frightening amount of reading to even the eager reader, so I would recommend neophytes start with the Little Lulu Color Special. While it’s not exactly a “greatest hits” collection, it does have a number of great stories including “Pieces of Eight,” “The Fuzzythingus Poopi,” and “The Case of the Mysterious Nose,” and is a good enough sampler to give you an idea of what lies ahead.

From there you should read

The rest of Dark Horse’s Little Lulu series is the obvious next step. I’d recommend reading them in order. The first couple of volumes have fallen out of print, but Dark Horse has made up for that by bundling them together and re-releasing them as “Giant-Sized” editions.

If you find your Lulu love increasing with each volume, you may want to also check out the Tubby comics, as the character proved popular enough to merit his own spin-off comic. You have a choice in this particular regard, as both Dark Horse and Drawn & Quarterly have been repackaging these old comics. The D&Q volume is the more handsomely produced and the art looks a bit cleaner, but the Dark Horse version is cheaper, the colors are a bit brighter (or, depending on your point of view, more garish) and the first volume includes stories that aren’t in the D&Q collection. It’s really a matter of preference.

Further reading

Thirteen Going On Eighteen

In the 1960s, Stanley produced a number of original creations for Dell, many of which Drawn & Quarterly is in the process of reprinting. The best of these is easily Thirteen Going on Eighteen (one volume out so far) a great slapstick teen romp that manages to outdo Archie both in terms of characterization and humor. The series is also notable as it’s one of the few of Stanley’s comics that features his original art, as he usually only did layouts, with folks like Lulu artist Irving Tripp providing the final drawings.

Stanley’s other great work from this period would be Melvin Monster (two volumes out with a third soon on the way) a hilarious little take (perhaps even parody) of the monster craze going on at the time, which stars a beleaguered little boy monster who only wishes to do good. Much of the humor comes from the characters behaving in the exact opposite fashion of traditional social norms (the schoolteacher doesn’t want kids in her class, etc.) which manages to give a bit of poignancy and edge to the comic, at least in regards to the amount of neglect and abuse poor Melvin routinely suffers through.

In addition to Lulu, Stanley wrote a number of licensed comics, including one based off of Ernie Brushmiller’s classic strip, Nancy (two volumes out so far). Faced with the choice of how to translate Brushmiller’s minimalist gag work to comic book sized epics, Stanley decided to turn it into a slightly modified version of Lulu’s world. Nancy becomes a less agressive Lulu, Sluggo is a more slovenly verison of Tubby, and so forth. The stories are entertaining enough, but only reach true inspiration whenever Nancy’s playmate Oona Goosepimple shows up. Whenever Nancy visits this very strange girl who lives in a haunted house that even Charles Addams would find daunting, the stories take a surreal turn that show Stanley at his most inventive.

Ancillary material

Nancy Vol. 2

Hopefully D&Q plans to reprint some of Stanley’s other ’60s work, including Kookie and Dunc & Lou, in the near future, but in the meantime, you can read samples of those stories, and lots more via the internet, particularly the great Stanley Stories blog. The site offers a good deal of thoughtful appreciation of Stanley’s work and methods, and frequently posts stories he did based on other licenses, like Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker and even Howdy Doody.

While he is known mostly for humor, Stanley did try his hand at a few horror stories, two of which are collected in Art in Time, Dan Nadel’s anthology of interesting, forgotten or just plain odd comics work. What makes these stories worth checking out is how Stanley avoids the typical shocks and gore of the day in favor of slowly building suspense and tension, particularly in the masterful “Crazy Quilt.”

Avoid

This is one of those rare instances in Comics College history where I honestly can’t think of a single work of Stanley’s that isn’t worth reading. While no doubt Stanley has his nadirs, none of them exist in print at the moment. Even at his most mediocre, Stanley is still leagues above just about every single one of his contemporaries.

Next month: Seth

The original Little Lulu, with a slimmer Tubby

Shaenon Garrity digs up some of the original Little Lulu comics from the pre-John Stanley days. It turns out that creator Marge Henderson’s vision was a little bit darker and definitely of her time; as Shaenon says,

I admit to being a sucker for 1930s-1940s magazine cartooning, whether it’s the inhuman crispness of Gluyas Williams or the funky scribblings of William Steig–or Marge’s style, which is somewhere in between. I can see why Seth and those guys want to draw like this, but honestly, you can’t fake it with a modern line. It’s about more than men in walrus mustaches and matronly women with triangular noses; you’ve got to capture that understated wit that says, “It’s the Depression, people–we can’t waste a single ounce of comedy. Also, we will be very grey.”

Little Lulu, Vol. 20

Steve Bissette reported yesterday that artist Irving Tripp passed away due to complications from cancer on Nov. 27 in Haines City, Florida. He was 88.

A staff artist for Dell Publishing from 1941 to 1982, Tripp is best known for his work with John Stanley on the popular Little Lulu series of comic books. While Stanley is acknowledged as the author of the series and provided layouts, Tripp was the illustrator for the comic during it’s lengthy run.

In addition to his lengthy time with Lulu, Tripp also worked on Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny comics, as well as several Disney adaptations, including Dumbo and The Reluctant Dragon. He also served in the Army during World War II, and was stationed in the Philippines.

According to his obituary in The (Lakeland, Florida) Ledger, Tripp is survived by three sons, one daughter, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Bissette has an excellent appreciation of Stanley and Tripp’s Lulu on the Schulz Library Blog, along with the official announcement from Tripp’s son in the comments. I’ll be updating this post throughout the day as more obits and remembrances start to appear.

UPDATE: Tom Spurgeon has a lengthy and well-considered obit up at his site.

Oh the inhumanity

You can see more images and a snippet from the new comic (it’s all in Portuguese) here. According to Cartoon Brew, Tubby has left his violin to lead a rock band, Annie is the gang’s geek and a videogame freak, Gloria is a fashion expert and Alvin has become a skater and surfer.

So … they’ve taken everything that was original and funny about the characters and replaced them with generic cliches? I’m sure that will work well for them.

This is all the fault of that West Side gang I betcha!