The Spacegirl and the Scarlet Sparrow

Decorah, with sudden burst of sun ©Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

 The day after attending a wedding last weekend in Decorah, in northeast Iowa — a town known internationally for the drama of its internet-cam eagles — I happened upon Dragonfly, a small bookstore downtown. On display inside were the three volumes of the “Zita the Spacegirl” graphic novel series.

These adventures, written and drawn by Ben Hatke from 2010 to 2014, mix a little Star Wars, some Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, more than a dash of Alice in Wonderland and sizable doses of charm and whimsy. Lots of running, lucky narrow escapes and myriad weird-looking creatures and robots.

The protagonist is a feisty young girl who looks a lot like a 21st-century version of Ed Vedier’s “Little Annie Rooney” newspaper strip and acts with the verve of plucky young adventuress throughout time.

It’s a fun story of Zita as she grows into her hero status over the course the tale. But the drawing itself is what I really lured me — deceptively simple, the characters move easily, and their emotions quick to decipher.

And there’s a great pun when hearts attack a planet, in book two, “Legends of Zita theSpacegirl.”

You should take a look.

Which brings us to another plucky adventurer, though in her early 20s I’d be reluctant to call her still a girl. Tyler appears to have seen off the Chancellor — again — but now she has to fulfill her part of the bargain she made with Dargelos.

That will entail heading directly into Rongeur-occupied Europe, in 1927. It’s an altered history — again — and one in which her enemy knows her well and likely has the table set — ahem — for her coming.

Check out the adventure of “Slipped” at slippedcomic.blogspot.com.

Come on, it’ll be fun.

© Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

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.

Joined in progress

Cartier Tour image © Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

 Have we talked about Rutu Modan’s “The Property”?

I picked up a copy at the Wexner Center in Columbus, between CXC events last October, and I admit I bought it entirely for its look.

The inside cover, in fact, is what sold me — a two-page spread of pinks, soft blues, grays and greens, an imaginary Sweden in summer.

And as I paged through the novel, I was taken with Modan’s spare but not sparing drawings of expressive people who don’t tell us, or each other, what they’re really thinking as they make their way around Warsaw. You have to track their faces and body language.

But the art is matched by a deeply embracing story: The protagonist, Mica, believes she is in Poland to help her grandmother reclaim property taken from their family during World War II. But her grandmother, prickly even in the best of circumstances, has other goals, which she never explains to Mica.

 In the end, the novel is about living with decisions, with a glimmer of hope salted in. Take a look.

***

Meanwhile, in chapter 370 of “Slipped,” Tyler Wilson — aka the Scarlet Sparrow — is in the literal clutches of the returned Chancellor, who last time we saw him had grown to gigantic size and was nearly mad, due to an injection of growth serum. But now he’s in control of his faculties and even larger. And he’s threatening to eat Tyler, with extreme malice.

Cartier Tour, on the other hand, is having her own confrontation with Delacroix, the quasi-demon, whom she claims owes her … something.

And then there’s Pip, who has shown up and appears about ready to take a hand — or, paw — in the action.

You can see what’s what by following this link.

***

And by the way, this month marks eight full years since I launched “Slipped” — two states and two or so jobs ago for me. So thank you for reading, even if you’ve joined the adventures of the Scarlet Sparrow and her friends in progress.

Real-life adventures

 

© Michael Chevy Castranova 2016

I’ve determined Bill Griffith’s graphic memoir that came out late last year, “Invisible Ink,” very well could be the ideal gateway gift book for people who’ve not read graphic novels before.

I picked up a copy at CXC in Columbus last autumn, where Griffith was one of the speakers. As with everything he does, this book is even smarter than it first seems. It’s revealing family history with a lot of talk about the business of cartooning and quite a bit of nostalgia.

Meanwhile, in chapter 366 of “Slipped,” the Scarlet Sparrow knew it was a trap … and walked right in anyway. And more surprises are around the corner.

Take a look.

Characters development

Cartier Tour, Mendacity Wilson, Tyler Wilson images and characters © Michael Chevy Castranova 2015

One of the cool things about Chris Schweizer’s very cool 2011 “Sketchbooks,” which I picked up at the Cartoons Columbus Crossroads earlier this month, is it’s a true sketchbook.

As he notes in the introduction, lots of so-called sketchbooks in fact show finished art. His book intentionally shows works in progress. You can see how he arrived at the ideas, the characters’ looks, that he ultimately used.

Very cool.

Meanwhile, in chapter 353 of “Slipped,” the wildebeest Delacroix somehow convinces Cartier Tour, the chrono-bounty hunter, to accompany Tyler Wilson and Pip on their part of the elaborate and, frankly, dangerous mission with which he’s tasked them.

Part Star Wars, part Seven Samurai.

Take a look, please. A new adventure is about to begin for the reluctant Scarlet Sparrow.

Inspiration and writer’s’s block

Slipped images and story © Michael Chevy Castranova 2015

Last weekend’s Cartoon Crossroads Columbus events were great fun. I bought lots of books, including Dylan Horrocks’s “Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen,” an entertaining graphic-novel adventure about writer’s block and creativity and originality, and had a good chat with Chris Schweizer while I picked up a couple of his excellent sketchbooks.

Also there was Bill Griffith, promoting “Invisible Ink,” his memoir about his mother and her affair with cartoonist Lawrence Lariar.

I didn’t think I’d ever heard of Lariar — until Griffith talked about Lariar’s mail-order cartooning lessons based on the notion that all characters should start in the shape of peanut. I recall even as a child thinking that was pretty ridiculous.

During his Friday afternoon presentation, Griffith talked about how he’s taken the advice of Ernie Bushmiller, of “Nancy” fame, when stuck for an idea: Griffith calls out all his characters, then asks, “OK, who has an idea today? And Mr. Toad raises his hand and says, ‘Me, I have an idea today.’”

Which reminded me of when I working through the two most-recent chapters of “Slipped,” 351 and 352. I couldn’t see a credible way to motivate Tyler and Mendacity to take up the adventure Delacroix had proposed. Then the characters just acted it out — the sisters would brave the wildebeest’s dubious plan, they said, to find their father.

And Cartier herself decided she should be part of Tyler’s quest.

Though, frankly, Tyler has never liked sharing, just as she makes it known if she thinks she hasn’t been the focus of a story for too long.

Whose comic strip is this, after all, she’s asked.

Take a look … .

Labor Day special

© Michael Chevy Castranova 2015

The limits of the scanner I use retrains how big the paper I draw on can be and therefore how detailed my drawings can be. But for the holiday, here’s one good image of new character — villain or hero still to be determined — Cartier Tour, on those Paris rooftops in chapter 348 of “Slipped.”
I think I like her. How long she sticks around depends on how gets along with the Scarlet Sparrow. See what you think with this link to “Slipped.”
Last post I mentioned the “Phantom Lady” collection of comic books from the 1940s. The stories are wacky — often all the other characters recognize her on sight, but some have no idea who she is. She wears no mask, but no one, not even her dopey boyfriend, ever realizes she is Sandra Knight, daughter of a famous senator — who is rendered very differently in each story in which he appears.
And the stories make absolutely no sense.
But it doesn’t matter, as the drawings and poses of the characters — mostly by Matt Baker and especially in volume two — are everything in this series.
I’m also enamored these days with Michael Avon Oeming’s “Powers” art. Cartoon-y people doing very serious things. It reminds me a little of the later Corto Maltese stories.

A new ally? Or a future foe?

In chapter 345, the Scarlet Sparrow, aka Tyler Wilson, and her sister Mendacity meet up with a stranger on the rooftops of Paris, in 1926. What does she want? Nothing helpful, it seems, as she’s pointing some kind of futuristic weapon at the pair.
But in “Slipped,” you never know.
Please follow along for the thrilling adventures of the Scarlet Sparrow and her pals.
Based on the newspaper adventure comic strips of the 1930s and ’40s, “Slipped” is modeling after “Terry and the Pirates,” “Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy” and so many other strips of that turbulent era — but a 21st century twist.
Take a look — http://slippedcomic.blogspot.com/

Slipped and related images © Michael Chevy Castranova, 2015

Catch up with Slipped: The adventure comic strip

Take a look at the latest chapter in Slipped, my online-only 1930s-style adventure comic strip, by following the link below.
The comic strip/graphic novel — part Terry and the Pirates, part Corto Maltese and a little bit Star Crash — has been running for more than seven years, and if you’re just tuning in, here’s what’s happening:
After many daring adventures in time and even to the moon, Tyler Wilson, aka the Scarlet Sparrow, has returned to Paris in 1926 to confront her younger sister, Mendacity, who has assumed the Scarlet Sparrow guise as a cat burglar. After a brief rooftop struggle, which Tyler wins, Mendacity says she’s up to something far more complex than simple thefts.
So here is your chance to catch up with their battles with each other, the forces of fascism and even the devil himself ….

And if you want a recap of all seven-plus years, start here.

From chapter 344 of Slipped. Slipped is © Michael Chevy Castranova, 2015

Joe Sacco’s “The Great War” review

Here’s a link to my review of Joe Sacco’s amazing, 24-foot-long book, “The Great War,” about the Battle of the Somme, as it appeared in The Gazette daily newspaper in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. http://thegazette.com/2014/03/26/the-great-war-a-great-graphic-book-for-a-terrible-day/

Doonesbury at 40

Like ice cream flavors, superstar newspaper comics strips have their day. Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, Garfield — they all highlighted refrigerator doors and office cubicles. Doonesbury was like that.

At one Cartoon Festival at Ohio State University in the early 1980s, a professional cartoonist in the audience asked a panelist who represented G.B. Trudeau’s syndicate why the Doonesbury artist was allowed to have a shorter lead time. He must, the questioner insisted despite repeated denials — how else could he be so timely?

And while it might be the political jibes many longtime readers recall, the human touches were what made the strip not only better than most, but a story we looked for each day.

You can’t deny what got you wasn’t as much seeing D.B.’s missing limb, lost in the Iraq war, but the character, for the first time, without a helmet. Or when Lacey died, just fading out of the frame.

Moreover, when he wasn’t telling truth to power, Trudeau was very, very funny. Often, he still is.

Now comes 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective. In the tradition of those enormous Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes anthologies, the very funny Doonesbury has its day again.

Release date will be Oct. 26. The book will weigh in with 1,800 strips and 18 essays by Trudeau.

You can read an excerpt in The Atlantic here.

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.

Milton Caniff, Part 3

While I’ve noted Robert C. Harvey’s 952-page tribute to cartoonist Milton Caniff is far too hefty for casual reading — trying holding it upright while lying in bed at night — I don’t want to suggest it’s not worthy.

Meanwhile … is exhaustive, and that’s part of its virtue, too. Points in the text are aptly supported with examples from Caniff’s work, as well as from contemporaries and pals Al Capp, Noel “Bud” Sickles and others. And it boasts a good number of photos, including even a couple shots of the walls of the Palm, the 1930s speakeasy where New York City-based cartoonists hung out and drank, when not scribbling their work on the vertical surfaces.

Yes, Harvey and Fantagraphics could have broken this into two volumes or, gee, maybe left out a few details. (While waxing about Caniff’s first arrival in Manhattan to work for Associated Press, Harvey names all the theaters Caniff could have spied while standing at 42nd Street and Broadway … and the names of what shows were playing there and who was starring in them.)

But if you want to know just about everything about how the oft-called Rembrandt of the Comics rose and rose even more in his chosen profession — from early days in Ohio to chatting with U.S. presidents — this is the golden source. Nary a negative word is said about its subject, but I can’t imagine finding a more thorough and entertaining trove of information.

Read my earlier posts on this book here and here.

‘9 Chickweed Lane’ saga still going

My second guess was correct. Brooke McEldowney’s nine-month-long newspaper-strip tale of parted WWII lovers didn’t end this past month but took yet another lap as Juliette and her daughter, Edda, discover Peter Kiesl — recently revealed to be Juliette’s biological father — alive in Vienna.

Kiesl follows them back to New Hampshire to show up at Edna’s (Juliette’s mother and his lover in New York City) front yard.

Will he stay? Will he go? The story, it seems, continues ….

Read my earlier post on this here.

Siegel and Shuster’s Funnyman

When last we saw our heroes, Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster of Cleveland, Ohio, were still fuming as they came to realize how much they’d lost by signing away the rights, for a relative pittance, to their creation who could leap tall buildings with a single bound.

Hoping to catch lightning in a bottle a second time — and on this occasion hold onto it — illustrator Shuster, a fan of Danny Kaye, came up with the idea of Funnyman, a character who looked very much like the movie comedian and was, well, funny. Siegel, returning from service in World War II, recast Funnyman as a crime fighter. And the two were off again in hopes of fame and comics glory.

Thomas Andrae and Mel Gordon tell the tale of Funnyman’s short life, and include samples of the comic book and the newspaper strips that appeared from 1948 to 1949, in Siegel and Shuster’s Funnyman: The First Jewish Superhero, From the Creators of Superman. The book, published in paperback just this past month, also dwells on the character’s origins — as well as that of Krypton’s most famous son — in Jewish culture and humor, as the book’s subtitle suggests.

As for the character himself and the comics world he inhabited, the humor is dated — oversized clown shoes with springs, baggy polka-dot pants, goofy gadgets, ludicrous villains and countless prat falls.

That said, based on the evidence of this book there’s no denying Funnyman, for all its shtick, was silly and entertaining. “Aw,” its hero would reply if he were still around, “it was nuttin’.”

New ‘Crumb’ From Criterion

Crumb, the 1995 documentary on the genius that is Robert Crumb and his odd family, has been released on DVD and Blu-ray by the always classy Criterion Collection.

It features a new commentary track by director Terry Zwigoff, a booklet and deleted scenes.

The movie talks about Crumb’s working style and his influences. It also spends time on his siblings, one of whom devoted his days to moving a long string through his digestive system.

Umm …. Yeah, that’s a hard image to clear.

But, still, the documentary as a whole is fascinating, one every aspiring cartoonist and documentary maker should see. (There even was a debate at the time over whether Zwigoff, who later directed Ghost World, based on Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel, should have cut the bit where his camera person stumbled and almost fell off a roof, if she hadn’t been grabbed by the cartoonist himself.)

‘Cathy’ to Cease

I once saw Cathy Guisewite on a panel in Columbus at one of Ohio State University’s early Festivals of Cartoon Art, oh, back in the 1980s. She was on stage with Tom Batiuk, creator of Funky Winkerbean; Irwin Hasen, whose name topped the Dondi newspaper strip; and Fred Lasswell, whose name ran with the Snuffy Smith strip.

One highlight of the discussion came after an audience member asked how much time was required to produce a daily and Sunday strip. Hasen and Lasswell, who confessed to using an unspecified number of assistants, claimed they only spent a couple hours a day, at most.

Guisewite, pop-eyed and open-mouthed, looked at the audience in comic disbelief. She then banged her forehead repeatedly on the table, much to the amusement of all in attendance … except maybe for Hasen and Lasswell.

She and Batiuk, who each produced their strips solo in those days (and maybe still do), both said their work consumed every waking moment.

The distinction between the old and new guard couldn’t have been clearer.

Guisewite, now 60, has announced she’ll stop her strip, Cathy, Oct. 3 — she wants to spend more time with her family, she said. While over time Cathy has become formulaic — panel 1: statement; panel 2: build on statement; panel 3: increase absurdity of statement; panel 4: Cathy makes a wry observation … or “Aack!” — in its late-1970s heyday it broke ground. The strip addressed everyday silliness of office work and the single life for women. Greeting cards followed.

And Cathy — the cartoon character and the cartoonist — could be very funny.

‘9 Chickweed Lane’ Ends WWII Tale?

It appears Brooke McEldowney might be coming to conclusion of his eight-month-long storyline in 9 Chickweed Lane of grandmother Edna’s flashback about her days as a USO singer and spy during World War II.

Or maybe he’s just getting his second wind. After all, the tale ends — if this is the end — with Edna confessing to her daughter, Juliette, that Austrian opera singer Peter Kiesl, whom she met when he was a prisoner of war in England, is Juliette’s father — not Edna’s husband, American war hero (and her handler as a spy) Bill O’Malley.

Surely there’ll need to be long, agonizing talks with granddaughter Edda and just about everyone else in the strip. Not one of these characters seems to be able to keep a secret.

But it was an intriguing story and never flagged. Bravo.

Read my post on the start, more or less, of this storyline here.

2010 Eisner Awards

Winners of 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards of note — well, to me, at least, and readers of this blog — presented at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego include:

• Best Adaptation from Another Work:
Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter, adapted by Darwyn Cooke (IDW)

• Best Comics-Related Book:
The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics, by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle (Abrams ComicArts)

• And Vault of Midnight comic book store — I’ve followed it in its various locations around Ann Arbor, Michigan, over the years, and I stop in every time I’m in town — won the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award.

The Hunter

Darwyn Cooke, who revived Will Eisner’s The Spirit a few years back, perfectly captures the tone of early 1960s Camelot, with its cocktails and cigarettes, hour-glass-shaped willing women and Space Age hotel exteriors — at least, that world of fictional tough-guy detectives — in his adaptation of crime writer Donald E. Westlake’s The Hunter.

In smoky, moody blues and deep blacks, the protagonist Parker, eyebrows perpetually cocked, pounds the urban pavement as well as his urbane enemies, leaving gorgeous “dames” panting after him — assuming they’re still breathing at all when he leaves them. Listen and you can hear the Miles Davis soundtrack.

The story certainly isn’t populated with Salvation Army types. But these characters grab us (hopefully not by the throat) and stick with us.

“I just got rid of the woman with the bag. I haven’t killed any of these jokers yet, but the next one I will. And if the money doesn’t show, you’re next.” Krak! Bam! Hunf!