shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 1, 2020 9:04:43 GMT -5
Pogo was also a huge influence on Bill Watterson. In his Comics Journal interview, the three strips he mentioned are Peanuts, Pogo and Krazy Kat. Funny you should mention Krazy Kat, as he is coming soon to this discussion  |
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Post by Prince Hal on May 1, 2020 15:10:03 GMT -5
I've been a longtime fan of Pogo and Walt Kelly, so of course i'm glad to see you've chosen this for the next "free read." (Pun for teachers.) Pogo as a character was about three years old here, and you can see his and the other characters' personalities taking shape nicely. The newspaper strip would not begin until May of 1949 in the pages of the short-lived New York Star Pogo himself has evolved from a scraggly little guy...  into a form much closer to his eventual shape. The longer nose and smaller eyes we see here in Animal Comics gave him a somewhat less gentle appearance than he would eventually attain.  This story could easily be seen as a daily and Sunday strip. It incorporates so much of what made the strip so charming. Like many of the stories, this one is a farce marked by mistaken assumptions, characters who always revert to form, coincidence, silliness and like Pogo himself, good-natured fun. Skillfully plotted and written, it's a perfect example of how a formula story can rise to great heights. One can easily imagine a parent enjoying this as much as the child to whom he's reading it. (A far cry from the Atomic Mouse stuff.) And this is early Kelly; the best was obviously yet to come. No comic strip lends itself so well to being read aloud as Pogo does. You can hear each character's voice so clearly the more of these stories you read. Albert is perhaps the most fun to read aloud. With his steady stream of cornpone, malaprops, and self-assuredness, he's reminiscent of Senator Claghorn and his animated descendant Foghorn Leghorn, and as the years go by, he also adds a touch of rural philosophizing, akin to Sheriff Andy Taylor. Kelly was not always as sentimental and sweet as he is in this story. His satire was equal parts Swift and Twain, his love of language and employment of it Joycean, his scalpel sharp and unsparing. Like Doonesbury, Pogo more often appeared on the op/ed pages than in the funny pages. I can't tell you how important it was for me and many others to read Pogo during the Nixon/ Agnew years (I think I will in a future Comic Fan's Memories post!); his evisceration of Agnew (whom he portrayed appropriately as an officious hyena), rivaled his earlier disembowelment of Joseph McCarthy, when Kelly was one of the few who dared to take him on. |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 1, 2020 20:26:58 GMT -5
Yeah, Kelly's portrayal of McCarthy as Simple J Malarkey was a strong counterpoint, only surpassed by Edward R Murrow's evisceration of him on tv. and who can forget Kelly's condemnation of mankind and its effect on the planet...  |
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Post by electricmastro on May 1, 2020 20:47:11 GMT -5
Haven’t read too much Walt Kelly and the features from Animal Comics #23 were fine, though I did feel like mentioning his Nibble and Nubble feature from #28, which felt quite charming to me.   |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 1, 2020 20:56:36 GMT -5
The Pogo story is a pretty good representation of the kinds of stories Kelly did and the tone of many of the Sunday strips, later. I still recall one I saw in Maurice Horn's 1st edition of The World Encyclopedia of Comics, in the color section of reprints. Churchy and Howland are on an opposing team to Pogo. They don't have a baseball, so they fake pitching it, thinking Pogo will never know. Pog says "Crack" outloud, then starts running the bases, while Churchy and Howland stand there puzzled. Pogo slides in for a home run and the confused boys asked if he touched all the bases. he answers "Every one of 'em," then saunters off, whistling innocently. Churchy and Howland stare after him and say, "You think he's smarter than he looks?"
The others have fine artistry, though definite young kid appeal. The Uncle Wiggly story brings back childhood memories. I never read the stories, nor had them read to me; but, there was a book collection of Uncle Wiggly stories at my grandfather's house (believe it belonged to one of my uncles or something, at some point) and I flipped through it to look at the illustrations several times. There were a few old books there, like that, including a Blondie one (there were a few prose books with Dagwood & Blondie), a copy of Ivanhoe, and a WW2 history series that someone had collected. My grandfather was a farmer and had an old farmhouse (parts of the original house were log, hidden by more modern walls) and it had an upstairs loft, with a huge old featherbed (which we three kids slept in, under a mound of blankets, in the winter), a baby crib (which I slept in, when I was very young), another bed with metal springs (parents usually got that one), and a box spring and mattress, used whenever one of the families was visiting. The house had wood floors and a wood burning stove (plus a more modern gas stove and gas heater, in another part of the house) and then the farm buildings, including barn, for us kids to play in, while avoiding presents left by my grandfather's cows. That farm was like a magical place, when we were kids and this stuff just brought back memories of all that.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 1, 2020 21:00:03 GMT -5
ps Pogo is very much in that rural and Southern storytelling tradition, as seen in things like the Br'er Rabbit stories of Uncle Remus, where the smaller but wiser creature gets one up on the bullies (metaphors from slave stories about getting one over on "master"). My dad's family was of that kind of storytelling tradition, where they would sit around and visit, rather than watch tv or something (though we did do that). People would swap stories about locals or events, or memories of events, exaggerated or not. There is much of that in Pogo.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 3, 2020 10:23:46 GMT -5
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Post by MWGallaher on May 3, 2020 16:44:51 GMT -5
"The bullets have no effect!"
"That's why they call me Dynamic Man!"
Maybe you should get in touch with Dictionary Man, dude.
Dynamic Man appears to be a quite shameless Superman knock-off. The story tells us virtually nothing about him, he's just an arbitrarily-super-powered hero that shows up. Nicely drawn, though, and I gotta give 'em credit for coming up with a threat that can't be countered with physical strength: the "Red Plague," which is insinuated to be a pretty ghastly disease being intentionally spread by our villain.
Mr. E: cool name, lame visual (a red jump suit). Pretty nice artwork here.
Yankee Boy: Pathetic logo, lame art, boring design, but it's still better than doppelganger Star Spangled Kid!
Ima Slooth: I can't be bothered to do more than skim this comedy feature. I think American moms finally wised up and stopped using the name "Ima". It always reminds me of the legendary but supposedly real woman whose married name was "Ima Pigg".
Dan Hastings: It seems like every Golden Age anthology had some characters that went by ordinary street names. How's "Dan Hastings" ever supposed to become a kid's favorite feature? Lots of Fletcher Hanks-like jutting profiles and weird neck in the art here, but doesn't rise to the primitive genius of Hanks' work.
Insurance Ike: Not the best of Jack Cole in this one-pager. Seems like Ike would know a "Dan Hastings" in that line of work.
The Echo: Now that's a cool super-hero monicker. Too bad it's wasted on a ventriloquist in a business suit.
Lucky Coyne: Cute name for another plain-clothes action hero.
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Post by electricmastro on May 3, 2020 16:51:41 GMT -5
"The bullets have no effect!" "That's why they call me Dynamic Man!" Maybe you should get in touch with Dictionary Man, dude. Dynamic Man appears to be a quite shameless Superman knock-off. The story tells us virtually nothing about him, he's just an arbitrarily-super-powered hero that shows up. Nicely drawn, though, and I gotta give 'em credit for coming up with a threat that can't be countered with physical strength: the "Red Plague," which is insinuated to be a pretty ghastly disease being intentionally spread by our villain. Mr. E: cool name, lame visual (a red jump suit). Pretty nice artwork here. Yankee Boy: Pathetic logo, lame art, boring design, but it's still better than doppelganger Star Spangled Kid! Ima Slooth: I can't be bothered to do more than skim this comedy feature. I think American moms finally wised up and stopped using the name "Ima". It always reminds me of the legendary but supposedly real woman whose married name was "Ima Pigg". Dan Hastings: It seems like every Golden Age anthology had some characters that went by ordinary street names. How's "Dan Hastings" ever supposed to become a kid's favorite feature? Lots of Fletcher Hanks-like jutting profiles and weird neck in the art here, but doesn't rise to the primitive genius of Hanks' work. Insurance Ike: Not the best of Jack Cole in this one-pager. Seems like Ike would know a "Dan Hastings" in that line of work. The Echo: Now that's a cool super-hero monicker. Too bad it's wasted on a ventriloquist in a business suit. Lucky Coyne: Cute name for another plain-clothes action hero. I find it interesting because this Dynamic Man is actually a robot, but I don’t think the writers really played that up beyond the origin,  |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 3, 2020 17:36:23 GMT -5
I find it interesting because this Dynamic Man is actually a robot, but I don’t think the writers really played that up beyond the origin, If I understand correctly, he also both is and is not an unlicensed continuation of a Timely character, right? Seems like keeping the origin and nature of the character ambiguous might have been helpful in dodging lawsuits. |
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Post by electricmastro on May 3, 2020 17:47:26 GMT -5
I find it interesting because this Dynamic Man is actually a robot, but I don’t think the writers really played that up beyond the origin, If I understand correctly, he also both is and is not an unlicensed continuation of a Timely character, right? Seems like keeping the origin and nature of the character ambiguous might have been helpful in dodging lawsuits. Yeah, Marvel had their own Dynamic Man robot hero, which only appeared in four issues, and it had been over a year since he appeared by the time Dynamic produced their own such hero.  Still though, I suppose Dynamic felt concerned enough to change his origin, so in Dynamic Comics #14, his name is suddenly Bert McQuade, with no mention of having been a robot.  |
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Post by Prince Hal on May 3, 2020 17:49:22 GMT -5
MWGallaher, I believe you’re thinking of Ima Hogg of Texas, a famous socialite and philanthropist. She was named after a Civil War nurse, IIRC, whose name was Imogene or Imogene. Her parents didn’t think it through, but she was always good-natured about it. What isn’t true is that she had a sister named Yura, as many claim. She had brothers, but no sister.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 3, 2020 18:41:50 GMT -5
And now, it's time for Political Agenda Commentary, where we discuss the issues of today. Today's issue is Number 12, from Dynamic Comics..... Dynamic Man: Here we see that the "plague" is really just a conspiracy to deprive us of property and freedom by some elitist egghead. The liberal media is complicit in fear-mongering designed to delude the public. Fake news! Mr E: Yet another innocent is railroaded by a system designed to deprive the rights of the poor. Eye-for-an-eye mentality has overwhelmed the rights of the accused and hysteria over crime that overloooks socio-economic conditions has an innocent man on death row. It is now up to a social justice warrior to find the real culprits and bring them to justice. We see that only social justice warriors can see the true value in the contributions of the altitude-challenged citizens, as they provide key assistance that captures the real crooks. Of course, the corporate media denies them their due by putting the white, blond-haired, blue eyed man at the forefront of the story, thereby reinsuring a Euro-centric view of heroic adventure. Yankee Boy: This story shows the value of homeschooling your children, rather than putting them into the hands of the public school systems, as they cannot even manage a simple bus ride. The valiant home-schooled child, steeped in patriotic fervor goes forth with American exceptionalism and catches the Fake News man who rigged the accident, thereby stalling the train that is a vital link in our economic supremacy over a communist dominated world. His friend, who was immunized, leading to horrible disfigurement, pays the price that Yankee Boy's wouldn't. Ima Slooth: Here we see how women are subjugated by the patriarchy into the prison of conventional marriage. The mother sees the worthlessness of the husband; but, she has been so long under the thumb of masculine society that she is powerless. The poor wife must resort to subterfuge to bring in the true hero into this; the liberated woman who refuses to conform to male standards of beauty and who then pulls the sheet off the patriarchy's boogeyMAN, thereby revealing him to be the pathetic figure that he is. Of course, the male-dominated system cannot handle an unfettered woman and has to slap her down at the end. Political Agenda Commentary now ends its broadcasting day. Please rise for our National Anthem... Dan Hasting: No joke; this is just bad. Insurance Ike: Ike could have avoided this tragedy if he had just listened to his local agent. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there! The Echo: THE ECHO MAKES A FINE HERO! The Echo Makes A Fine Hero! The Echo makes a fine hero! the echo makes a fine hero! The Echo makes a fine hero!Lucky Coyne: This dame walked into my office, said she had a case. I took two slugs of bourbon; one for me and one for the bullet lodged in my rib. I'm a private eye, the name's Lucky Coyne. Obviously, my parents were morons. I tried changing it, but I didn't have enough for the administration fee, so I took the case. The skirt says she has a mansion that's haunted. I flip a coin and I take my assistant to the house. We see ghosts and get trapped, then are rescued by some teenagers, including some hippie and a dog. We catch the ghosts and pull off his mask. It's the old caretaker and he says he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids. I put two slugs in him for using a cliche and potentially getting us sued by Warner Bros. The dame gets her rocks back and stiffs us on the payment. I'm still stuck with a dumb name. I head to the nearest bar to drown my sorrows. Dale Evans says it's easy to learn dancing...  ...especially when you buy this 14-part course, Trigger Teaches You to Waltz! You'll get step-by-step instructions from the master of the 4-step. Then, you can preview Trigger's Guide to Mambo, at no obligation. But, that's not all. If you order now, you can get this special bonus edition of Roy Rogers Breakin' 2, Western Swing Boogaloo! Operators are standing by.... You can lick any auto repair job....  Yes, any automobile repair activity can be accomplished with just a simple flick of the tongue! Why pay expensive mechanics to bash your prized machinery with iron and steel tools when flesh can accomplish the job, with an easy clean-up. Order today and we will include the new Sneeze Your Way to Peak Fitness booklet. 72 easy-to following sneezing exercises that will turn you into an Olympic champion! Only $39.99 for 8-track, 49.99 for cassette, or pay in just 3 monthly installments of $29.99. Operators are standing by... Interesting mix of comics and some nice art, except for Dan Hastings. The opening story is an interesting gimmick, though I think page count limited it and made it feel rushed. Cataldo (if that is the artist) seems to have either worked in the Eisner-Iger shop or was following Lou Fine as several action panels look like Fine and/or Mac Raboy. Mr E looks very Eisner and Charles Sultan did work for Eisner, at one point. I agree that this isn't Jack Cole's best work; but, it is mildly amusing. Not a bad comic, overall. Great cover. Note: Just felt a bit silly today and the lead story sounded like it came from the conspiracy theories of some of the wing nuts on the news, lately. |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 3, 2020 18:43:11 GMT -5
MWGallaher , I believe you’re thinking of Ima Hogg of Texas, a famous socialite and philanthropist. She was named after a Civil War nurse, IIRC, whose name was Imogene or Imogene. Her parents didn’t think it through, but she was always good-natured about it. What isn’t true is that she had a sister named Yura, as many claim. She had brothers, but no sister. Named Boss, no doubt. |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 3, 2020 18:59:20 GMT -5
I find it interesting because this Dynamic Man is actually a robot, but I don’t think the writers really played that up beyond the origin, If I understand correctly, he also both is and is not an unlicensed continuation of a Timely character, right? Seems like keeping the origin and nature of the character ambiguous might have been helpful in dodging lawsuits. Timely was using Funnies, Inc for its early comics, so I wonder if they ever actually trademarked Dynamic Man. No idea if it was created during Funnies, Inc time frame, as Joe Simon said, after he became editor, they used them less and hired their own staff. It's possible that Lloyd Jacquet didn't sell the right to that character to Goodman, along with the others, or Timely forgot about the character and didn't pay attention with Chesler or Jacquet sold that name to Chesler. Or, everyone had enough knock-off characters that weren't doing Superman business and felt it was wiser not to cast stones inside their glass houses, lest it be wrapped in a counter-suit. |
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