Moebius was going to be on my list, but I realized the majority of what I have read by him was written by someone else. I've read bits of Azrach and Airtight Garage, but not all of either, but have devoured most of what he has done with Jodo, the Surfer story with Lee, etc. so in the and I left him off the final 12 because the majority of his stuff I am familiar with of his was done in collaboration not as the sole heavy lifter. On my first draft of the top 12 though, he was there at #6 when Gary Spencer Millidge wound up. I'm hoping I can read more of the stuff haven't through the new Dark Horse editions coming next year. I love everything I have read by him.

-M

But as MRP said, he's seldom the writer to his works. Here in his native France, he's mostly famous for his Blueberry series, written by Charlier, and to a lesser degree for the Incal, which was indeed written by Jodo the trickster. Then, he's mostly famous for his film works, but that's it...

I'm pretty pumped for those Dark Horse Reprints myself, it's been difficult to get a hold of his work in English.

He wrote The Airtight Garage, though I've yet to read it, and Arzach which I have read and is amazing.

#6 H.T. Webster

Long gone and no doubt forgotten by most, but well worth the hunt to find his work in print or on-line.

Webster was the master of the “one-panel story” (he produced nearly 20,000 of them), with the keen eye and ear of a novelist. Indeed, his satire has been compared with Twain’s. Webster’s jabs at polite society are reminiscent of Twain’s, but even at his most barbed, Webster is a chider, and a gentle reminder to us of what makes us so human. There’s none of the bite that Twain unleashes even when he is at his kindest. Still, Webster provides a charming look at our faults as a species, with special attention paid to the pains of growing up, the eternal battle between the sexes, the fragility of the male ego, Perhaps his most famous character is one whose name has become synonymous for “simpering coward:” Casper Milquetoast, aka “The Timid Soul.” Milquetoast was so frightened by everything that when his chapeau was blown off his head and onto a patch of grass that said, “Keep off!”, he bought himself a new hat.

Webster knew people and his knowing honesty resonated with his audiences. Webster’s wit is obvious in the many “series” that ran in his daily panel: “How to Torture your Husband;” “How to Torture your Wife;” “To Hell with Fishing;” “Life’s Darkest Moment” (often centered around a young boy or girl’s first difficult encounters with romance or of some innocent pleasure denied by the people in charge); “The Thrill of a Lifetime” (just the opposite); and “Nothing can Be Done About It.” Mnay of his other cartoons were drawn from his loves: bridge, fishing, driving, poker, and golf.

No, Webster’s America never truly existed as he pictured it, but he captured the best and worst of both the plebeian and the Platonic, as have so many others since, from Preston Sturges and Ray Bradbury to John Hughes and Jim Gaffigan. It was the clever, but understanding way in which he held the mirror up to us that made people laugh at themselves and made Webster so popular.

Webby’s time as a cartoonist was a unique one, starting when rural electricity didn’t exist and ending with two nuclear powers squaring off in Korea. His satire ran the gamut form the drivers of the first automobiles to the purveyors of pabulum on television. He died in the fall of 1952, but his last cartoon wasn’t published until Apeil of ’53. That’s a whole helluva lot of ideas. Ass a wry observer of an America that is not really gone, Webster is unrivalled. Please check out the galleries and sites below for a taste of his prodigious talent.

john-adcock.blogspot.com/2008/06/h-t-webster-1885-1952.html

www.tumblr.com/search/h.t.%20webster

7. Frans Masereel - The Passion of a Man.

[edit:]
Sorry everyone, didn't realise I had posted this - meant to wait until I had time to add an explanation and an image or two. Anyway, I think this is the only one of my 12 picks that I've learned about relatively recently, having "read", if that's the right word, this "wordless novel" just a couple years ago, in the pages of the anthology Graphic Witness, which also contains works by three other works by three other artists, including Lynd Ward, who's appeared already in someone's list. Perhaps it's a sign of how powerful Masereel's short (25-page) story feels to me that I still haven't looked at the other three stories, but keep going back to Passion whenever I open the book.

I'll just post a couple images here because I discovered you can view (is that a better word than read?) the entire story at a Masereel website:  Passion
 Briefly, what strikes me about Masereel is how he can convey so much information, atmosphere, and emotion with these textless images:



Masereel turns what might be considered a banal fictional occurrence - the protagonist as a youth being arrested by the police - into a terrifying vision of a hellish world in which we are in the grip of brutal forces utterly beyond our control.

I find the whole thing remarkably powerful and moving and could give a running commentary on each image, but I'll leave it at that for this exercise. I encourage anyone interested to check out that link and give it a look. (Here's that link again: Passion)

 

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