Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Booksteve Reviews: Slow Death Zero

 


One of the most disturbing books I ever read was Last Gasp’s Anthology of Slow Death, which I ran across when I was 15 years old. I am now 62 and jaded, yet Last Gasp’s new Slow Death Zero, which serves as both a celebration and continuation of the original comic book series,is yet another of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read.

 

In the interest of full disclosure, allow me to point out that while I did not work in any way whatsoever on this book, Jon B. Cooke, Slow Death Zero’s co-editor alongside legendary Baba Ron Turner, is also my editor on the TwoMorrows magazine Comic Book Creator, where I will have a regular column beginning soon.

 

Turner himself, the “unreconstructed hippie” who turned Last Gasp Eco-Funnies into a successful small press that’s lasted for more than half a century, acts as your host for many of the book’s entries, a modern-day Crypt Keeper, if you will. He’s even a character himself in one story.

 


 

William Stout, who in 1975 did the memorably deranged cover of Slow Death # 7, returns here to provide another memorable cover, this one filled with endangered Antarctic species glaring at the reader while a skeletal figure in a bright red coat plants a flag, all under a title delineated in an appropriately E.C.-style font.

 

Subtitled “The Comix Anthology of Ecological Horror,”Slow Death Zero is, like the 11-issue underground comic that preceded it, a diverse collection of stories that hit home because they hold up uncomfortable truths and force us to look at them whether we want to or not.

 



  

And diverse doesn’t really begin to describe the material on view here, from the gorgeously traditional Bryan Talbot color artwork in what I feel is the book’s overall best piece, to the virtually incomprehensible black and white scrawling of Savage Pencil, an artist equally as respected in some circles.


  



  

In between, you have folks like Stout, Errol McCarthy, and Tim Boxell, contributors to the original version, and even R. Crumb and the late Greg Irons with older material. Hot contemporary cartoonists like Peter Bagge and Peter Kuper are here, as is the notorious Mike Diana, the only cartoonist ever convicted for obscenity in America. Recognizable names such as Bob Fingerman, Danny Hellman, and the great Rick Veitch show up throughout, along with a baker’s dozen stories of varying quality by writers and artists whose work I had never before encountered. Drew Friedman and Ken Meyer, Jr. also appear.


 

 

As with any anthology, I didn’t actually like all the stories. Some are just kind of there and a couple are fairly incomprehensible. And yet they all fit. No one ever said art had to be pretty. 


 

 

To single out a couple of the best stories, though, Bruce Jones and the late Rich Corben offer up the black and white “Garbage Man,” a darkly humorous and tragic post-apocalyptic tale very much in the tradition of the early underground stories that brought Corben fame. This is his final comics story.

 

“Mootants,” by Kevin Jackson and (one of my personal favorites) Hunt Emerson, is a light-hearted, colorful, but powerful tale of our changing environment and its effect on the moose population.



 

All the stories in the book are about our changing environment, global warming, pollution, and the climate crisis. In fact, the book is even dedicated to young Greta Thunberg, the activist who has given at least some hope that her generation will care more than ours has, and maybe—just maybe—be able to stem the seemingly inevitable tide of self-destruction.

 

That’s how the reader feels by the end of the book. Most of the stories herein are at best bleak and unnerving, holding up a mirror to show that we are the monsters who are destroying Mother Earth. Some, like Stout’s “Antarctica,” offer at least some hope. Fantasy, science-fiction, humor, and a long piece on the true horrors of modern warfare all swirl together in the best underground traditions of Slow Death.

 

By the way, those comix traditions are nicely remembered in Jon B. Cooke’s opening Intro and long, informative history of the comic—Last Gasp’s first—which ran intermittently between 1970 and 1992.

 

Underground comix have sadly become a footnote to today’s collectors, who seem to think they were all about sex and violence if they think of them at all. But Slow Death was always about wanting to make a difference, no matter how small, wanting to make people think, and hopefully act. As disturbing as it is, I’m pleased to report that Slow Death Zero continues in that tradition.

   

Booksteve recommends.  

 

Due out in March, you can pre-order copies at the Last Gasp site here: https://lastgasp.com


Sunday, February 21, 2021

Two Spectres

  


Above you see The Spectre, one of DC's longest running and most controversial characters, created by Superman's Jerry Siegel of all people.

Police detective Jim Corrigan was murdered but brought back--sometimes. It's complicated--so that his powerful ghost can wreak havoc on villains.

Below you see The Spectre, a UK series that ran in SMASH in 1969. It featured crusading reporter Jim Jordan, who is murdered but brought back to life so his powerful ghost can wreak havoc on villains. 

He didn't have the cool green ensemble, though. 


 

  

  
 

Saturday, February 20, 2021

Courageous Cat Matchbooks



Matchbooks??!! Rather an odd marketing ploy for Bob Kane's early 1960s Batman rip-off cartoon which, if I recall correctly, frequent Bob Kane ghost Sheldon Moldoff later claimed to have done all then heavy lifting on, as usual. 

 

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

The Spirit Lives


 

Someone on Facebook last night mentioned they hadn't heard of THE SPIRIT until recently. I started writing a comment with a brief history of the strip only to realize there's nothing brief about THE SPIRIT!

Will Eisner, of course, began the strip in a unique 8 page version that was the lead strip in a 16 page Sunday newspaper insert in 1940.  

And THE SPIRIT has never really been gone for long since. Although the original newspaper series that had begun in 1940 ended in 1952 with the now-classic Wallace Wood Outer Space stories, the character returned in several unauthorized reprints from IW/Super Comics just a few years later. Harvey Kurtzman’s HELP! magazine reprinted a story in the early ‘60s. Former SPIRIT scripter Jules Feiffer had an Eisner SPIRIT story in his best seller, THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES in 1965 and a New York newspaper printed an all-new Spirit story in early 1966. Harvey comics released two quarter comics mixing reprints and new material later that year and there was a limited edition collection of the SPIRIT daily newspaper strip. In 1970, the fanzine CAPTAIN GEORGE’S COMIC WORLD reprinted yet another full Eisner story. Jim Steranko’s 2nd HISTORY OF COMICS followed suit. Meanwhile, Eisner was introduced to the concept of underground comix and the Spirit turned up on a cover of Denis Kitchen’s SNARF. In 1973, Kitchen published the first of two undergrounds starring the Spirit, again offering both new and old material under great new Eisner covers. For the fan market, there were 4 or 5 collections called THE SPIRIT BAG, which offered annotated black and white SPIRIT reprints from the beginning, and 4 or 5 volumes of THE DAILY SPIRIT, reprinting the non-Eisner newspaper comic strip from the 1940s.  


 Warren Publishing ran a newly re-colored (by Rich Corben) SPIRIT story in one of their mags which led to their long running black and white SPIRIT magazine and several color special editions. When that mag finished its run, Denis Kitchen teamed again with Will for even more magazine issues, several trade paperbacks, and later a long color/b&w comic book run reprinting the whole series in order. As that came to an end, Will finally agreed to new SPIRIT stories by others, which have continued to this day from various publishers. The Spirit has even recently returned to the newspapers in an all-new adventure with DICK TRACY! Along the way, Eisner did an all-new giant sized 3 page SPIRIT tabloid, a jam issue with many of the most popular 1980s cartoonists, a team up with Michael Chabon’s Escapist, and DC reprinted the entire run of “official” SPIRIT stories in more than 20 hardcover editions. Oh, and don’t forget the two movies—a failed TV pilot from the 1970s starring future FLASH GORDON Sam Jones, and director Frank Miller’s startlingly bad misfire major motion picture.

He's just a guy in a mask...but he's proven particularly hard to kill. 




Below are just some of the items mentioned above!