Random Thoughts

Kaktus Valley #1 by edited by Gary Panter and John Carlin (213x273mm)

There was a period where alternative comics types were trying to do kids for comics, but… kinda half-hearted? Like… it’d seem really odd to imagine any kids actually reading these comics? This is one of those.

The main story (which is only ten pages long) is about these two characters, Kaktan & Aledor, who are cacti, I guess, and it’s by Ric Heitzman and Gary Panter.

I wonder whether this was done as a pitch for a cartoon or something? You can almost see it working — they get a friend from outer space, and they can fight pollution or something.

The rest of the book is totally random. Wayne White does a couple pages, and Mark Beyer does a very, very helpful and kid friendly page.

Patrick McDonnell does a couple of pretty pages…

Mark Newgarden critiques the entire concept (I think)?

And then we get a slight return to the desert.

This is one of those oddball comics that would suddenly appear in the late 80s/early 90s — and then sink without a trace, with no explanation.

But now we have the intertubes. Let’s see if anybody knows what this was all about.

Amazing Heroes Preview Special #11, page 65:

KAKTUS
Written ard illustrated by VARIOUS; edited by
GARY PANIER
32 pages; $225; FANTAGRAPHCS
BOOKS
For kids who are tired of ducks and mice and
little dots and friendly ghosts comes Kaktust
the postmodern kid’s comic for postmodern
kids. As brainstormed by John Cartin and
Gary Panter, with artwork by (among others)
Pantert Ric Heitzmann, and Mark Beyer,
Kaktus combines the sensibility of &æwee’s
Playhouse (for which, as you will certainly
remember, Panter created the Emmy Award-
winning set designs) with that of RAW
magazine. The gentle inhabitants of Kaktus
Valley are but some of the magical and
peculiar characters appearing in this comic,
which will appeal to lovers of outre graphics
and tiny tots alike!

Robert Rowe writes in Amazing Heroes #184, page 115:

KAKTUS #1
Written and illustrated by VARIOUS; edited
by GARY PANTER & RICK HEITZMAN. Pub.
lished by FANTAGRAPHICS
The talent involved in Kaktus includes
Gary Panter, Mark Beyer, Mark New-
garden, Wayne White, Patrick Mc-
Donnell, and David Sandlin.
The objective of this comic is, I
guess, to create entertaining and in-
formative comics for kids. ‘I’he con-
tributors have all succeeded. The art
in all the stories is very good, and the
writing is imaginative and concise, a
rare combination in comics these days.
The comic is called Kaktus because
some of the stories are set in a fantasy
desert called Kaktus Valley.
I’m not a kid, but I enjoyed reading
this comic very much. Parents should
buy this for their children because of
its wholesome, easy-to-read approach.
If you like the idea of new comics
targeted for a young audience but also
capable of holding an older reader’s
attention, then Kaktus is your comic.

This was apparently indeed a proposed animated series:

Although proposals for animated series, such as Kaktus Valley or Pee Wee himself, never quite made it, his Pink Donkey And The Fly took off as a cult hit on The Cartoon Network’s website.

So I’m guessing the reason this book ended up being published was because they’d already done the first story?

And as usual with Panter stuff, I sure saved a lot of money buying it as the time. I’m so frugal. Without realising it.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman (158x229mm)

So how many editions of this book does a body need? I talked about this book in this blog post, but I’ve never actually seen a copy of the original edition before, and when I happened upon a cheap copy on the ebays, I couldn’t help myself. (I’m not addicted to buying copies of Maus! I can stop whenever I want!)

But now that I’ve got it, I wanted to see whether Spiegelman has revised it any…

So it looks like I’ve got the seventh printing here. Since a new edition was published around 1990 (difficult to google), it means that (at minimum) there was a new printing every year after this book was published.

Comparing this edition with the collected edition, it doesn’t look like Spiegelman did any revisions between this one and the subsequent editions. (The first chapters were completely redrawn before this edition was published — these pages in the Raw booklets look quite a lot scratchier).

It’s a very nice edition — it’s not often you see a book get a paperback edition first and then a hardback edition later, which is what happened here. This book was retitled Maus I: My Father Bleeds History and paired with the second volume, both hardbound.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Binky’s Guide To Love by Matt Groening (287x287mm)

What!? Lynda Barry has been demoted from Funk Queen of the Universe!?

Anyway, this book completes the format journey: These collections started out as spine-less stapled things, and then they got a spine (friendlier to book stores), and then they lost the staples, and now we have a large-format hardback book: All respectable and stuff. And there’s more than twice as many pages as the other collections — it’s 125 pages long.

But… we have a return of the staple from the first few collections: A themed series on a subject. The last few collections had been themeless, but this time, we start off with a 25 part series about love.

Which is a kind of re-run of the series collected in Love is Hell, I guess, but Groening has more to say. And while many of the strips in the previous collection had seemed less… work-intensive… than Groening’s earlier work, here he’s back to his earliest style: Very dense, great visual variety, and very funny.

So something seems to have invigorated Groening. It’s not like Life if Hell was bad in the previous couple of years, but it seemed like it was more dashed off than earlier.

The Guide section lasts for 25 pages, and then there’s a hundred more of misc stuff.

The major new thing in these books is, of course, all the strips about Groening and his two sons (Will and Abe). So we get a lot of strips in the “kids do the darndest things”, but… funny.

And a couple strips about fame and stuff.

Another new thing is how Groening does a continuity (of sorts) over several weeks.

It seems like Will and Abe had a proper upbringing where they learned about all the important cultural icons.

Aaaand… with that strip, Groening is, officially, old.

And then there’s a study section…

… and since this is proper, serious book, we also get a proper, serious index.

It’s a really enjoyable book. Groening seemed slightly off form in the previous collection, but it’s all good again here. I do think the smaller, simpler format was more attractive, but what the hey.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Scratchez by Bow Lewis and Kathe Pritz (105x139mm & 169x261mm)

I had one of these comics already — the sixth issue (the one with the cover by The Pizz), and I vaguely remember that issue as being kinda adjacent to the comics I’ve been discussing in this blog series, so I bought all the other issues I could find — I think I have 1-4 (mini-comic sized) and then #6 and #8. So let’s read them.

These are quite nice mini-comics — 36 to 68 pages long.

The pieces veer more towards newave (small press) comics, but there’s also a bunch of stuff that’s more arty.

I’d say about a third of the pieces are more illustration than comics.

The quality varies wildly — and the most amateurish stuff in here is probably the stuff by Bob Lewis himself.

But there’s some good jokes in here.

And some interesting art. (Georgia Myers.)

Not a lot of formal play, but some. (Ruth Hansen.)

There’s a few bits in here that’s really quite strong (Lisa Austin here), but it’s mostly not very interesting, I think.

Oo, nice cover by The Pizz.

In the fourth issue, we get the first editorial. (Ish.)

And things get really chatty from then on.

Ooh! Another cover by The Pizz.

Scratchez switches to the normal US comic book format, and now the editors have so much space to yammer on and on…

The first full-size book prints a few things in smaller format (probably arrived before they decided to switch format?), but most seem made for this larger format… but they cram in text anywhere there’s space, like at the bottom of this The Pizz strip.

The seventh issue received the highest accolade possible for a comic book in 1986 — a negative review by Don Thompson of the Buyer’s Guide. “Bad art and meaningless stories”. It didn’t get more prestigious than that in those days.

Co-editor Kathe Pritz’s artwork gets better and better, but the story still doesn’t make much sense by the eighth issue (which is the final one I have — I don’t know how many there were).

Look at them cramming text in here — even in the gutters.

And finally something that’s pretty relevant for this blog series — the Carel Moiseiwitch strip about the CIA manuals (much-reprinted in anthologies).

The Comics Journal #99, page 89:

Co-edited by Lewis and Pritz, Scratchez is
a lively collection Of material, with lovely
color overlays on the done by Lewis.
It’s an innovative use Of the format. Com-
menting on the function of Scratchez, LCAVis
says, • ‘It’s made up of lots of different artists
with unique styles finding acceptance on
whatever level is right or each of them.”

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Road Kill by Gary Panter (218x142mm)

Originally, this blog series was projected to be about 90 posts long, but we’re now up to 140 posts (I think), and I’m still adding things to the in queue. The feature creep has two reasons: I’m finding more stuff out there that I didn’t know existed (like this book), and I’m adding more post-80s stuff (I had originally planned on having a cut-off at the final Raw issue).

Looking at the stack of comics left now, none of them are books that I originally planned on including, so I guess you can consider these… er… bonus posts.

I know! So interesting.

This is a roughly-made little booklet of Panter’s sketchbook drawings — but these are a lot more accomplished drawings than in later sketchbooks like Satiroplastic.

The book has a very rough-hewn quality — the trimming is jagged and the binding is, er, original… it feels like a pretty mysterious artefact. The artwork’s very Gary Panter, but in a relaxed way.

*gasp*

And there’s even a little comic strip in here.

Very hand made feeling — the cover is glued onto the cardboard, and the back cover has a stuff sticky-taped to it.

Perfect!

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.