Ziggy at 40

Set for release next week, on June 7, the hardbound 40th anniversary collection of Ziggy cartoons is a good-looking book. Block-like and solid, with each page displaying a single-panel cartoon; the few strips cover two-page spreads.

The book even comes with an outside band, similar to those on books by cerebral cartoonists such as Seth and Chris Ware.

A copy arrived unsolicited at the newspaper where I work. And as I looked through the cartoons — organized by decade — I recalled how I never really thought Ziggy was particularly funny.

Just a few examples, chosen at random: Ziggy, bald in the longtime tradition of comic strip characters dating back to the Yellow Kid and Henry, sits before his computer. A large calendar tell us it’s Jan. 1, 2001. The monitor intones: “Good morning, Dave …”

The joke, see, is the scary HAL computer that said “Good morning, Dave” was in the movie, 2001. Get it?

In another, Ziggy says to a doctor that “I hate to tell you this, but I’ve found three typos in your diploma!!”

Is the point that the doctor might be a quack? There’s nothing sinister in the physician’s appearance, beyond that he looks pretty bored. And who can blame him for that.

Ziggy started life, if I recall correctly, as a greeting-card character. He continues to this day to be drawn by the son of his creator, Tom Wilson.

And therein lies his charm, I guess … and he must hold an attraction, as the cartoon is carried by 500 daily and Sunday newspapers, according to the book’s accompanying publicity.

Ziggy’s jokes are simple and require little to no energy on the reader’s part. Sort of a round Bazooka Joe, without the gum.

For some cartoon readers, there’s a warm spot for that in their day.

Stan Lee

In a glossary at the back of his It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken, Seth defines Marvel Comics this way:

“Back in the 1960s it was a wonderfully fun line of comics books — especially the Kirby and Ditko stuff. Now, it’s a hateful media conglomerate that popularizes bad drawing.”

By “hateful” I’m not sure if Seth specifically means the big-budget movies, the “bad drawing” or how Marvel has treated illustrators and creators — or all of the above. But to get some detail on the years-long battle involving Marvel, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jim Shooter and lots of lawyers over the rights to ideas, characters and art work, take a look at Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book.

Authors Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon try to be even-handed and give all sides equal space to air their recollections of who promised what to whom when. Chapter 19, “Step Right Up!,” details Kirby’s struggle to reclaim the 8,000 pages of art he did for Marvel and what Lee did — or did not do — to help his former colleague.

As a bonus, the rarely heard-from Steve Ditko pops up as a Greek chorus, pretty much to keep everyone else more or less honest. Which isn’t easy as, all things considered, it wasn’t pretty.

Clyde Fans Book 1

I’ve just finished Seth’s Clyde Fans Book 1 — collected from issues 10-15 of his comic book, Palookaville — and I suppose, all things considered, it’d be too much to hope for a happy ending at the conclustion of Book 2 ….

As with other stories of his, Seth’s pacing is the genius of his work.

Part 1 of this book consists of Abe Marchcard, in 1997, wandering through the offices, the residence above and the basement below of family-owned Clyde Fans, now out of business. He putters, picks things up, puts them down somewhere else, straightens a picture, takes a bath, lights a cigar, prepares supper, goes outside and comes back in, turns on a radio and moves on, for 68 pages — all the while telling us about the company’s history, salesmanship in general and his brother, Simon, in particular.

Part 2 shows Simon attempting to make cold calls in 1957, in the town of Dominion (a regular stopping-off point for Seth characters in others stories). He’s anxious, lacking in self-confidence and sales skill — he’s clearly is not suited to this affable, self-driven line of work. He’s sweating in winter.

Seth punctuates Simon’s movements around town with panels of Abe, testily puffing his cigar — “Are you listening to me, Simon?” “Selling isn’t a game.” “I don’t think you’re up for this.” — to reinforce Simon’s own awareness of his failing. The memories keep intruding.

At one point during his miserable day, Simon stops in a diner and he’s surrounded — in the eatery and on the page — by other patrons talking, talking, talking about their lives, aspirations, opinions and gossip. Simon is desperately trying — belatedly — to create a life. They are living theirs.

George Sprott 1894-1975

I'll make certain to keep this blog from turning into a Seth fan page. But his evocative stuff continues to amaze me.

For example, toward the end of his 2009 book, George Sprott 1894-1975, the biography of an Ontario television personality, amateur Arctic explorer, lecturer and overall heel, parts of which ran in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, the narrator speculates on Sprott’s afterlife. Is he now a ghost hovering near the woods where he played as a child? Out on the tundra having more adventures? By the bar, in the now-defunct Melody Grill, where he drank his dinner for years?

In the 25 tight panels containing the text for this one-page chapter, the artist shows us angles of downtown buildings at night — office windows, a large clock, awnings, a streetlamp, a full moon. But as we pull back and view the page as a whole, we realize they’re not separate images. The two dozen-plus squares form one scene, one image, of the city bathed in moonlight and adorned with a clear night’s stars.

We need to see the big picture. Just as the artist is telling us we must view George Sprott’s life, not in snippets, but as a complete story.

This also might be Sprott’s view from his own office, the white lines holding the panels representing his window panes, and where he sits alone in the dark, late at night.

It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken, Part 2

The way Seth works his magic is with silence. It’s how he controls pacing. Here’s an example, from pages 123 through 128 of the paperback edition of his first book, It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken:

As Seth and his friend Chet walk along a Toronto street, he bemoans his most recent breakup with a girlfriend, Ruthie. Seth and Chet stop at a tall building, which Seth notes looks “pretty … against the night sky.” In the next panel, we see the building, set against the stars.

“There’s something in the decay of old things that provokes an evocative sadness for the vanished past,” Seth says, and proceeds to ruminate on the value of lost things, on the quality of old things well made. He speculates his continuing search to track down a one-hit-wonder New Yorker cartoonist, Kalo, might be in vain and pointless.

We’re shown the building again. In the next panel, we see stars in an otherwise barren sky. Then a wider panel of other city buildings.

Next, with no fanfare, a flashback, across a two-page spread: Seth breaking up with Ruthie, and not doing it well. “You’ll regret this later,” she promises, unsmiling. “Trust me.”

Then, present day, as Seth sits in his apartment petting his cat. We see his rotary-dial telephone next to an opened phone book. Then he dials, and waits. He asks for the number of real estate office in Strathroy, another step in his quest to find Kalo.

Then a wide panel across the bottom of the page, showing that building again, and with the other buildings around it, at night.

This reminds me of what movie director Michelangelo Antonioni did in his famous trilogy from the early 1960s. Watch Jeanne Moreau walking around near the beginning of La Notte — the scene continues for long minutes, without dialog, as she and the camera look up at buildings, along empty streets, the heels of her shoes echoing. Silence and thought.

Later, on page 134’s final two panels, Seth tells us, “… It was crazy to think I could find Kalo. Only now, after studying tons of old magazines, can I see that there are literally hundreds of obscure cartoonists — any of whom could have sold, through a stroke of luck, a lone gag to The New Yorker.” (He does keep searching.)

Those panels show us a long shot of small, dark houses, few lights on in their tiny windows, peeked at through tree branches and illuminated only by moonlight. Silence and thought.

See my earlier post on this book here.

It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken, Part 1

It’s that comma in the title, don’t you see? It’s grammatically unnecessary, but it’s inclusion seems to hearken to an older, by-gone time. Which is a key theme in Seth’s marvelous It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken, a collection of stories from his Palookaville comic books.

Much of this semi-autobiographical tale follows the always-melancholic cartoonist as he visits his mother (to whom the title is attributed, as an often-spoken comment) and brother, rides trains, wonders about past girl friends, borrows money, walks a lot thinking deep thoughts about old cartoons and Canada, and, mostly, tries to track down information about a deceased cartoonist who worked in the 1940s and ’50s under the name of Kalo.

The great conceit about the book is Kalo is fictional — even though Seth has included not only samples of the cartoonist’s work culled from during his supposed rise and fall, from magazines as varied as The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire and Gee-Whiz, as well as an actual 1940s-era photo of the artist leaning against a building somewhere in Manhattan.

All of which gives Seth, as a working cartoonist himself, much to contemplate: How do we know when we’re at our peak? And how to we handle what comes later?

More to come.

Eisner/Miller, Part 3

In Eisner/Miller, Charles Brownstein’s joint interviews with Will Eisner and Frank Miller, the cartoonists note that many of their predecessors considered themselves entertainers. It wasn’t until the current generation that comic book writers and illustrators — Miller, Chris Ware, Seth, the Hernandez Brothers, et al. — started to think of themselves as artists.

As the form began to be contemplated as art, I guess, that made the practitioners artists.

Early on in the book, Eisner talks about how he did his own lettering for Contract With God — all of it — and Miller suggests that “was really a departure.”

“I was more mature” by then, Eisner replies, “and I had something to say.”

“You got to us. We started regarding ourselves as novelists. It’s as if you said ‘These’ll be permanent.’”

And thus was born the graphic novel and graphic novelists. Let there be light.

See my earlier posts on Eisner/Miller: A One-on-One Interview here and here.

In the Studio, Part 1

One of the best things about In the Studio: Visits With Contemporary Cartoonists is how the likes of R. Crumb, Jaime Hernandez and Seth tell you what and who their influences were and what struck them about those earlier works, then — bam — you can see a sample of that inspiration juxtaposed with the work of the artist.

Crumb, for example, waxes on about the strong crosshatching used by 19th century newspaper illustrator Thomas Nast (the guy who drew the image of how we’ve come to see Santa Claus, among other achievements), and there’s a sample of a Nast 1879 Harper’s Weekly magazine cover on page 19. On page 20 are two black-and-white pieces by Crumb, and we can see for our own eyes how Crumb took the cue.

Hernandez mentions a 1952 cover for the comic book Canteen Kate he especially liked, drawn by Matt Baker. It’s reproduced on page 142, showing a closeup of smiling, plucky Kate herself, hair tussled. On the previous page is Hernandez’s own 1986 Love and Rockets number 15 cover, depicting an equally close image of Rena, one his characters. She, too, is joyful and her hair is even more mussed.

Seth cites illustrator Doug Wright — in particular Wright’s choice of “beautifully evocative” color — who worked from 1948 to 1980. Chris Ware acclaims Frank King’s “masterpiece” Gasoline Alley, deeming that newspaper strip “a 50-year-long comic strip novel that captures and distills the ineffable passage of time through the regular touch of an artist’s pen to paper.” Everyone familiar with Ware’s own books knows of his consuming interest in measuring that “passage of time.”

More to come ….

Wimbledon Green, Part 3

OK, these may be my final thoughts on Seth’s wonderful Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Book Collector in the World.

I wonder if the author considered titling it, The Mystery of Wimbledon Green. It has an abundance of clues, blind alleys, tempting hints and unresolved questions about the main character. Who is he really? Where did he come from? Why did he disappear?

One character early on even contends Green’s handlebar moustache is fake.

In a later chapter narrated by Roofings Hatch, Green’s valet and personal assistant — “though never his confidante” — Hatch relates how every afternoon Green labored over a manuscript. “Just what he was writing was never clear to me and as soon as he stopped writing, it went back in the safe,” Hatch recalls, a la one of the interviewees in Citizen Kane. “The manuscript was enormous and always growing larger. Perhaps it was an autobiography.”

He also mentions how Green often could be observed staring “pensively out the window. He seemed to be watching for something. Afraid.”

We’re never told what was in the manuscript, or what Green feared … though we can guess, from information elsewhere in the book.

But the most touching mystery, I think, comes from Hatch (and the author), as the valet tells how Green would spend an hour each day “answering letters, sorting new acquisitions and writing cheques ….” In that panel, Seth has drawn our hero reading a letter, and a single tear runs down cheek and onto that big white moustache.

Why is he crying? Who sent the letter? What does it say?

As with so many things in real life, we never find out.

Read my earlier posts on Wimbledon Green here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

Wimbledon Green, Part 2

In Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Book Collector in the World, Seth drops in selections from the Golden Age library of said “greatest comic book collector.” Here are a few of those wacky titles, with author’s descriptions:

• Mighty Orbit #9 — “Sputnik inspired. Popular robot comic.”
• Alimony Comics #3 — “I’m taking every cent,” declares the woman on its cover.
• Patty Pigtails #1 — “Irritating girls’ comic.”
• The Wubbs, no # — (Inspired by The Gumps maybe?)
• Gee #48 — Featuring “the death of Capt. Well-Being.”
• Keen Funnies #12 — “One of those perfect Saturday afternoon comics.”

And at the end of Wimbledon Green, the protagonist bids us, “Good night, dear friends.” Melancholy, perplexing at times and quite charming. The book itself, like the made-up Keen Funnies, is nearly perfect.

See Part 1 of my rave on Wimbledon Green here.

Wilmbledon Green, Part 1

In his introduction to Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Book Collector in the World, Seth trashes his own work:

“The drawing is poor, the lettering shoddy, the page compositions and storytelling perfunctory,” he writes by way of apology to his loyal readers. “The whole thing was drawn in the spirit of ‘good enough.’ …Even I find some of the characters ugly.”

Is he kidding? Wimbledon Green is wonderful stuff. A great, heartfelt story combined with charming art.

A series of stories, actually. Billed as “from the sketchbook” of Canadian cartoonist Seth (aka Gregory Gallant), the series are told from various perspectives — not of all of which are trustworthy — of comic book dealers, longtime collectors, a valet and one private detective about the life of Wimbledon Green, an eccentric “force of nature” with a mysterious past (and future) who could deduce the publication year of a comic book merely by examining the staples or smelling the ink.

Seth also lovingly creates artists and characters from this fictional world’s Golden Age of comic books — Lester Moore and Hal Drake, the Green Ghost, hobos Fine and Dandy, Mr. Meteor and Sally Saturn, among others — and some are discussed in depth. He does this so fully, I wouldn’t mind tracking down a copy of Fine and Dandy myself, after reading Wimbledon’s “short talk” about them.

We should all be able to turn out such “shoddy” work as Seth’s Wimbledon Green. I strongly recommend this book.

More on Wimbledon Green next time.

O, Nancy: An Anthology of Graphic Fiction

Oh, I get it now. After all this time, after reading how Robert Crumb claimed he had his daughter home-schooled in France with old Little Lulu comic books, and noting the frequent references by Bill Griffith and Patrick McDonnell to Nancy comic strips, I finally see what the attraction is, thanks to Ivan Brunetti’s book, An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories.

I admit I never thought Nancy in particular was especially clever, even when I read them as a child. I mostly recall cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller’s drawings of “hippies” as wearing torn clothes and always possessing guitars with broken strings and lots of flies. He seemed to confuse free-spiritedness with sloth and dishonesty.

But in his anthology’s introduction, Brunetti uses a 1958 strip about Nancy dreaming she’s being boiled, steamed and baked to demonstrate “algebraically balanced composition,” rhythm and efficiency. The final panel shows the girl waking up in bed to discover she’s been buried under a mountain of winter coats and hats. Each garment is clearly distinguishable from the other, by checks, stripes or dots.

“… The graphic clarity of the pile of coats … in lesser hands could have been turned into a gray, undifferentiated mush. Clutter was never depicted so unclutteredly,” he writes.

See?

The anthology itself has a lot about Charles Schultz and nothing about Will Eisner, and with samples from Crumb, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez (but not Mario), Charles Burns, Lynda Barry, Seth and Art Spiegelman, among the other usual suspects.

More later on this book.