Heroes and villains

Mendacity Wilson and Pip the dog — Images and text © Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

 
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I’m just finishing IDW’s “The Adventures of Dieter Lumpen,” on its Euro Comics imprint, written by Jorge Zentner and illustrated by Rubén Pellejero. The stories — collected from 1985 to 1994 — are unpredictable, sometimes-wistful tales of a protagonist who isn’t always the good guy.

But the art is breath-taking. Sweeping vistas and intimate detail, on a mood-shifting palette. I wasn’t surprised when I read that Pellejero now draws the revived CortoMaltese series (though a little perplexed that I hadn’t known the series had been revived).

Which is interesting in that Corto, as created by the great Hugo Pratt, was always noble — a defender of the defenseless and who fought on the side of lost causes. I’m not sure how I feel about his being resurrected as one of Pratt’s other characters told us Maltese was “lost” during the Spanish Civil War.

Meanwhile, in “Slipped,” the Scarlet Sparrow now has to fulfill her agreement with Dargelos. He arranged to save her — or so he says — and now she needs to do her bit.

Take a look at chapter 386.

Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates

Mark Twain once said — at least I recall it was Mark Twain, rather than Ben Franklin, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker or Groucho Marx — most writers really would prefer you read what they wrote instead of reading biographies about them.

Finding out how artists came by their inspirations and how they developed their crafts sometimes can be as fascinating as their actual work. Certainly Robert C. Harvey’s Meanwhile …., his book on Milton Caniff, is extensive and well worth the effort, with a good many samples of the cartoonist’s drawings. (You can read my posts on the biography here, here and here.)

But keep in mind IDW has been publishing handsome editions of the Ohioan’s masterwork, Terry and the Pirates. In black-and-white and color from 1934 on, you follow the adventures of Terry Lee, Pat Ryan and Connie — the “three modern musketeers,” Caniff called them — and their assorted friends — Burma, Normandie Drake, Big Stoop — and enemies — Judas, the Dragon Lady, bandits, Chinese pirates and, eventually, the whole of the Axis military.

Terry may not have been the original adventure newspaper comic strip, but certainly the most sustained and sophisticated.

Hotsy doodle.