Random Thoughts

Amusing Stories (1986) #1 by Scott Shaw and Don Dougherty

This was solicited as a continuing series, but only a single issue was published.

Half the issue is Dougherty’s Blast — I did a quick Google, and this seems to be the only appearance of these characters. It’s a zany space action comedy thing, and it’s quite accomplished. That is, the jokes are, yes, amusing, and the plot rumbles along in a nice way.

Dougherty’s artwork is classic “big nose” — and sometimes he drops into this rendering. Pretty cool.

The second half of the issue is by Scott Shaw!, and is apparently the only appearance of this character, too?

There used to be a law saying that you had to feature a Shaw! story if you were doing a funny anthology in the early 80s, so I’ve read a bunch of his work without really … paying attention.

Like Blast, this Urban Gorilla thing is drawn in a pretty standard way, but the jokes are more hoary.

So a second issue was definitely planned?

And is featured on the Renegade Press “coming up” page.

RJS writes in Amazing Heroes Preview Special #4, page 10:

Announced in the last Preview Special
as a Blackthorne book, publisher/editor
Deni Loubert assures us that Amusing
Stories will, in fact, be coming out
under the Renegade banner. ‘*Doh
[Dougherty) and Scott [Shawl ape
proached me first with the project,”
Loubert informed us, “butt during
negotiations, the Renegade, offices
moved and I lost their number. Later on,
I heard it announced as a Blackthorne
product and was able to contact them
again. I’ve since reestablished negoti-
ations and have been told by Scott and
Don that I can announce it as a Rene-
gade book.”

Heh. Drama!

Renegade ad copy in Amazing Heroes #113, page 60:

“Urban Gorilla”
created by Scott Shaw!
Urban Gorilla, like most superheroes, has a
secret identity: by day he lives in the city zoo in the
guise of Goril!a, But at night, he dons his
three-piece suit and roams the City in search of
justice for ail city animals. He’s .
Urban Gorilla!
Shaw! has pointed cut that Urban Gcnfia serves
a twc-fc!d putpcse: he’s a gccd parody character
because, essentially, he’s the protector and
aggressive representative cf ali domestic animals
in the city and the second purpose is that he deals
with all the things in everyday ‘ife that dnve us
crazy. He has a very direct manner when dealing
with irritants like door-to-door salesmen, people
who talk during a movie, and real estate agents.
“When first sericusy put ‘Urban Gorilla*
together, he was intended as an animation package
with other characters I’d created.” Now “Urban
Gorilla” comes to your store, alcng with a whole
cast cf bizarre characters that will make you think
twice when you visit the zoo next time!

Ah, Shaw! designed the character for an animation pitch..

Russell Freund writes in The Comics Journal #116, page 67:

Meanwhile, over at the absolute
opposite end of the Spectrum of
Pretension, we find Amusing
Stories, some good funny stuff
from Scott Shaw! and Don
Dougherty. This isn’t the sort Of
book that cries for penetrating
critical analysis, and since I seldom
provide any, we’re evenly matched.
Let me just way that while I smile
at Shaw!’s nifty Hanna-Barbarian
cartooning, Dougherty’s Jay Ward-
like zaniness tickles me more. His
• ‘Blast” is a sort Of interplanetary
Dudley Do-right, locked in mortal
combat with the wicked Emperor
Raymond, self-proclaimed ruler Of
the universe and romance novelist.
It’d make a pretty neat animated
cartoon series, and that may be
what Dougherty ultimately has in
mind, but in the meantime, it
makes a pretty neat comic book.

Yup.

I was unable to find any discussion of the book on the intertubes, or any mention of why the second issue never happened. Presumably both creators were busy with animation work.

This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.

Maxwell Mouse Follies (1986) #1-6 by Joe Sinardi

We’re now in the Black and White boom period of the US comics market — patient zero, Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters #1, had been released and had shown that people desperate for the next Teenage Mutant etc Turtles would snap up any #1, as long as it’s black and white.

I’ve seen nothing to indicate that Deni Loubert had that in mind when expanding the Renegade line-up, though, but it explains how these oddball titles Renegade were publishing in 1986 (and the first half of 87) had sales sufficient to keep them going for a while.

And, indeed, this comic had been in the pipeline for a few years, but Loubert hadn’t been in a position to publish it before now.

So — we’re in funny animal territory here, and it’s immediately somewhat attractive? The anthropomorphic design here is strange, though, even for funny animals. The characters have the classic four fingered (and gloves) design, but the two main characters (Maxwell and Monica) seem oddly… nude. Maxwell wears a tie and shoes, and Monica wears a necklace and shoes, and it just seems really weird. I mean Donald Duck wears a jacket, at least.

As in Neil the Horse, we get a few musical numbers, attractively designed. (But no sheet music.)

When Monica dresses up, it looks even weirder.

And those are hefty tails for mice.

You don’t see quotations from Walt Whitman in funny animal books that often.

Anyway, this book is surprisingly well made. There’s a lot of amusing bits and references to other comics, and the stories are fun and… actually make sense. I read Strata earlier tonight, so perhaps that has tempered my expectations, but I really enjoyed reading these comics. They move along at a brisk pace.

And some of the jokes you could actually picture in a screwball comedy of the 30s.

You gotta have paper dolls.

I don’t really have much to say about this comic — it’s nice — so let’s look at some Renegade Press oddities. In the first year, they stubbornly put the Canadian price at the top, which perhaps made sense when Loubert was stationed in Canada… but not even then, because surely you want to have the lowest dollar amount at the top? And besides, the US is a much bigger market.

But! When Renegade increase the price across the board, they did put the US price at the top… but it kinda looks the same, eh? The top number remains $2.00.

Clever!

Back in Maxwell Mouse land, we get a two-part story about Monica going off to Europe to marry (or not) a couple of princes. It’s a solid story, and it’s got plenty of amusing gags to keep things puttering along.

There’s perhaps a surfeit of talking (mouse) heads, but we also get some amusing action scenes.

The sixth and final issue is a grab bag of stuff, so I guess sales were tanking or Sinardi was getting busy elsewhere. For instance, we get at 48 (!) question trivia contest…

… and a non-Maxwell story probably meant for an anthology somewhere.

This series has never been reprinted, and neither has the original first issue:

But you can get these comics cheaply.

Looks like Sinardi has plans to bring this series back somehow?

I was unable to find any articles about this series on the intertubes, but Dale Luciano writes in The Comics Journal #69, page 50:

Like a scene out of a ’30s movie, Maxwell
Mouse Follies begins with a luckless hbbo
ambling up to a nattily dressed sharpie
with a Harlowesque blonde draped all over
his arm. “Brother… could you spare a
dime??” comes the familiar refrain from the
hapless hobo. “Outta da way, riff-raff!”
barks the sharpie, belting the hobo a solid
‘ ‘BOFF!”‘ across the chin. “Ooh! You’re so
strong!!” coos the blonde to the sharpie, as
they stroll off down the avenue. ‘As the
forlorn hobo picks up his cap, writer-artist
Joe Sinardi has a luckless hobo-mouse
amble into the panel, followed by a sharpie
mouse and his date. Whereupon the entire
ritual episode is repeated verbatim, placing
the story in depression era New York as
experienced by mice.
It’s a good framing device for this affec-
tionate, clever parody of the conventions
of ’30s Hollywood musicals (as in “Broad-
way! Music! Drama! Romance!”).

[…]

From every indication, Sinardi has had a
good time writing and drawing Maxwell
Mouse Follies. He manages quite a few neat
travesties on standard cliches of the
genre—a wryly nonsensical caption at the
opening reads, “The Thirties… Hard
Times… Touch a star and touch the pave-
ment… In the end, it feels the same,” which
somehow manages to sound exactly like
’30s Hollywood doggerel-poetry—yet
Sinardi’s affection for the era and the
dramatic conventions are always apparent.
Basically, Sinardi reproduces the stock
situations of ’30s musicals and plays them
out in a fairly farcical way. Many of the
humorous results are silly, and gags and
situations don’t always pay off as they
should. Sinardi as writer hasn’t always
come up with enough funny lines to keep
the material aloft, but Maxwell Mouse
Follies has an antic, quirky spirit that keeps
you charmed and entertained. The weak-
ness of any single episode and a tendency
toward too much anthropomorphic cute-
ness are compensated for by the overall
appeal of Sinardi’s concept. I wish some of
the writing were better, but the book is still
good.

Russell Freund writes in The Comics Journal #110, page 59:

A couple of new Renegade funny books
also aim to beguile. Each misses its mark by
only a hair. Maxwell Mouse Follies, by Joe
Sinardi, advertises itself as offering “funny
animal comics in the classic tradition,” and
that’s fair enough, if we can expand the
classic tradition to include the liberal
sprinkling Of hells and dammits found here.
Sinardi’s art has plenty of charm, and he
has worked out a delightful mousie.sized
culture, so-existing With the human-scaled
Manhattan of the 1930s. What’re missing
here are the laughs. The second issue
revolves around a adorable little
orphan mousie named Bitsy who provides
about as much fun as a rotten molar. Max-
well Mouse Follies is busy and cute instead
of funny.

And here’s a page from an Amazing Heroes Swimsuit Special:

This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.

Strata (1986) #1-5 by Joe Judt, Ray Murtaugh, Jim Brozman and others

Renegade’s publishing profile is pretty odd, to say the least, but most of the series published by Loubert up till now had been by a single creator, or at most a writer/artist pair. This is the first that has a writer/penciller/inker line-up, I think?

Let’s read the first three pages together.

Well, that’s kinda stylish? It’s very stark: No cross-hatching or tone or anything, but a pleasing variation in line weights and black spotting.

It’s also a bit difficult to actually read — my eyes are skidding all around these pages without finding any purchase whatsoever.

And that’s even before we get to the other worlds, where the design of the world and the characters makes things even more difficult to grasp.

Like… what… what’s going on? If you sit down and concentrate and interpret each panel, character by character, it’s not impossible to make out what’s happening here, but it’s just migraine on paper.

I know nothing about the creators, but I’m going to go ahead and guess that the penciller (at least) is quite young, and has an idea about making chaotic, fun comics, but the chops just aren’t there. Instead of being over-the-top weird action, it’s just a bunch of noise.

That the story doesn’t make much sense (I think? it’s hard to tell) either doesn’t help.

And it turns out that we’re on… Discworld? I mean Strata.

That age-old question: “What does a graphic designer do?” The answer is “Not work at Renegade”.

… Oh! I didn’t get that it was a swastika! I just thought it was a very odd collection of panels oddly cropped.

So perhaps they had a graphic designer anyway.

In the first year or so, Deni Loubert had written introductions to all the comics. But by now she’s just running the same one in all the comics (per month). Makes sense.

I wondered whether there was going to be rapid artistic development on display here, but nope.

So risque.

Inker Brozman does the all the artwork on this amusing back-up story written by Jack Herman. It’s about Picasso being hired as a police sketch artist.

Yup.

In the third issue, somebody has finally tipped the artists about something called “tone”, and the pages suddenly become legible. But at the same time, they also lose the stark attractive qualities the artwork had.

Panel-popping sword work.

I guess if you’re charitable, you could say that the storytelling and the artwork reflects the state of the protagonist pretty well. He’s confused about the world he’s in, so the reader should be confused, too?

But…

And then… they didn’t really ignore the giant otters in the next issue?

“The ring!”? What? I guess my eyes had glazed over at this point that I even missed there being a ring in here?

Or is it a reference to Tolkien? I mean, just because this comic isn’t funny doesn’t mean that it wasn’t meant to be funny; perhaps I just missed it.

And then the series ends like this.

A perfect mess, I guess.

The series wasn’t picked up by a different comics company, so I guess it was just abandoned. It hasn’t been reprinted, either.

Somebody writes in Amazing Heroes #92, page 58:

Strata presents a competently writ-
ten fantasy adventure. Too little time
is spent developing the character of
Flambeau, and too much is devoted
to the slash and stab antics of the
otters. One Bould expect them to be
played as humorous foils to the
human, but there is nothing about
them which is in the slightest bit
amusing. They are simply two talk-
ing animals that don’t have a lick of
sense.
The plot involved—a man is mys-
teriously transported to another
world to which he must tty to adjust
or from which he must try to escape
—is at least as old as the early pulps
(and indeed has antecedents in an-
cient mythology). Still, it is one that
has not been milked completely dry,
and can still be presented effective-
ly. Scripter Joe Judt has done a reas-
onably good job in that department,
though certainly not delivering any-
thing particularly noteworthy or
memorable.
His yeoman-like efforts are com-‘
pletely undermined by the poor
visuals to be found in this issue. It
is a veritable cornucopia of rotten
fruit. The art looks like the work of
a man who learned to draw from
reading old Harvy comics while
dropping acid.
Penciller Ray Murtaugh’s panels
vseren’t laid out on the page so much
as spilled. Each page is a cluttered
jumble of images fighting for atten-
tion but succeeding only in obscur-
ing those around, above and beneath
them. The only uniformity they pre-
sent is in their unattractiveness. The
almost total lack of line work leaves
nothing but sparse black-and-white
illustrations that blend one into the
other.

Harsh! I have no idea what “almost total lack of line work” means. It’s nothing but line work. Oh, they mean cross-hatching? Sure.

Russell Freund writes in The Comics Journal #109, page 53:

Strata could become delightfully Car-
rotoid with only a slight push. It’s a serio•
comic space opera, less richly detåiled than
Nexus, but in that same zany vein. The art
is almost there. Ray Murtaugh’s engaging
pencils have a nearly Burdenesque loopi-
ness; I liked his wild biplanes and his
spaceships that look like, well, watermelons
being gang-banged (you have to see these
things to believe ’em), and his Commander
D’art could be Lady Luck’s Peecolo caught
in a time warp. I wish his hero didn’t 100k
so much like something out of Mike Ploog,
but that’s a quibble. This is good, fresh
work.
I would prescribe a dose of Burden for Joe
Judt, the’ writer, however. There’s a scene
where the lovely lady space ranger throws
herself at the hero and he demurs, saying,
“l don’t love you,” and goes into a song and
dance about having to feel “something
magical.” This bit just begs to be played as
an absurd, Burdenesque vaudeville duet for
skewed egos. Instead, Judt treats his char-
acterS as rational beings, albeit With a touch
of humor. Strata is fun, but it isn’t as inven-
tive as the best books in its field. A judicious
dose of brain dama#, evenly applied, would
help.

Heidi MacDonals writes in Amazing Heroes Preview Special #2, page 117:

Flambeau also finds that having
ones dreams come true isn’t all beer
and skitties. “He’s a very ethical and
morat guy.” says Judt, “and he’s sud-
denly tossed into a world where every-
thing he beiieves and thinks is no longer
true. Nothing is realty as it seems in this
world: nothing is as it seems in this
book. Even it you think you know what
it’s really about. that maynot be true
“There”lbe a iot of swashbuckling.
and a lot of bad jokes. I try to keep
ttyngs as insane as I possibly can!’

Well, that bit was achieved…

I’m unable to find anybody discussing Strata on the interwebs. Joe Judt doesn’t seem to have done anything in comics after this, but Murtaugh seems to be working in comics still, and so is Brozman.

This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.

Manimal (1986) #1 by Ernie Colón

Renegade was a very hands-off company, editorially… but for such a creator-friendly publisher, they sure were vague about credits. Nowhere in this comic does it say explicitly who created it. Even the indicia is vague: It’s “© 1985”, but by whom? (Who? Hoo?) It was “designed & produced” by Robin Snyder… but does that mean that he wrote it? It’s not an unreasonable guess, because he did write some of the stuff in the Revolver anthology.

But let’s read the first three pages of Manimal.

So this is quite grisly, and apparently a comic about a man/monster who kills scientists.

I like Colón’s artwork (and it’s presumably by him, because the back cover is signed by him, and besides — it looks quite like Colón artwork). There’s some nice storytelling touches: The final panel of the left-hand page is of a foot print (“… and feet like a man”), and the first panel on the next page is of a man who’s walking, with feet saying “tap tap tap tap”.

Clvr aspect-to-aspect scene change, right?

I mean, it’s just a little thing, but it’s fun.

Then it turns out that the scientist (who was killed) was totally evil!

The panel transition I nattered on about up there made me really wonder about transitions like this. There’s a hand very prominently displayed in three of these panels — does that have a meaning?

… probably not.

Then it turns out that the doctor was a real, actual Dachau killing Nazi, and the Manimal guy was the result of Nazi experiments on Jews. (And now Manimal is killing Nazis, of course.)

Is this really crass? Or, like Inglorious Basterds, an apt revenge fantasy? Or both?

That’s a very odd pose, even for a corpse. (Manimal’s girlfriend here gets fridged by some Nazis, because having his parents in Dachau wasn’t… sufficient?)

I should have known it! Manimal wasn’t made for this comic — it’s a serial, probably meant for some anthology. It’s not in magazine aspect ratio, so probably not for a Warren anthology?

The Revolver anthology was a collection of junk Snyder had apparently not been able to sell anywhere else (plus some Ditko stuff), so perhaps this is just more of that?

The traditional jailhouse greeting.

Super-attractive artwork, though.

We get three of these eight page stories, but there’s really no resolution. It feels like it was designed as a serial where Manimal would go around killing Nazis every episode, but the final page seems to have been reworked as an ending of sorts. It’s a complete non sequitur, though — we’re not even given a hint as to how he got out of jail.

Somebody (possibly Colón? According to Gary Usher’s Robin Snyder’s Comic Book List) writes about how victims deserve “more than Manimal”.

And then there’s a back-up story (presumably by the same creators? It still looks like Colón?) called Tender Machine 10061. It’s interesting graphically: Note very 60s Spanish comic like psychedelia and pictures integrated.

The story is O. Henryish.

These stories apparently originally were printed in Hot Stuf’, a 70s anthology I’ve never heard about before.

Bill Sherman reviews Hot Stuf’ in The Comics Journal #51, page 70:

What differentiates “Manimal” from
similar current company comic pulp
is its level of action—paperback
violence reminiscent of Gil Kane’s
undeservedly forgotten His Name Is
Savage—and Colön’s willingness ,
however tangentially , to delve into
the morally murky areas his
subject brings forth. Black’s anger,
responsible for his transformation,
never fully abates as it does with
Bruce Banner’s Hulkishness, and
this makes him a discomforting type
of hero. Instead of overexposing his
lead in the Marvel manner, ColÖn
focuses on others’ responses to
him; the approach reduces easy
sentimentality at the same time as
it builds Black’s “reailty.”

“Manirnal”‘s opening chapter, in
fact, seems the weakest for its
greater focus on Black: an intmduc—
tory confrontation with the detective
who will dog the Manimal is especially
clumsy and awkwardly set up. But
as the series progressed and context
for Black’s actions filled in, such
moments vanished. Black becomes
increasingly taciturn , as if his
vendetta has begun to blunt his
fragile humanity even further, and
his only spoken moment of self-
defense by the third chapter is a
brief diatribe against court protection
Of war criminals. C016n’s art, too,
which in the opening relies a bit too
much on the kind of medium shot
comic strip composition Art Spiegelman
satirized in “Malpractice Suite,”
grows more varied as the series
progresses. I’m not sure where he
intended taking the strip: as the
uncompleted series now stands
(three chapters in) it has potential
for moving in several thematic
directions—including a retreat into
pat superheroics. I’d have liked to
see Black’s moral certainty shaken
a bit.

Well… He’s killing Nazis… What’s to shake?

R A Jones writes in Amazing Heroes #94, page 54:

FINAL SOLUTIONS

[…]

Tho story presented in Manimal is
composed of three separate install-
ments which veteran writer/artist Er-
nie had originally crafted for
another publication in the 1970s. I
have long enjoyed Colon’s artM)rk,
and this presents some of his finest.
The richness in texture and tone
gives it the appearance of having
been reproduced directly from his
pencils. It has a realistic flavor to it
often missing from his inked work;
not the slightest trace of his cartoon
influences leaks through here. The
images are not pretty, for this is not
a pretty tale, but deliver the graphic
irnpact of Colon’s message with full
force.
My opinion of his script is not
quite so favorable. Current patterns
in comics lead many to believe that
the fans will not sample your work
unless it wears at least the trappings
of fantasy. Unfortunately, I suspect
this assertion may well be true. In this
instance, it serves to over-
ly dilute the issue at hand.

[…]

Displaying it in the context of
a comic book superhero/fantasy/hor-
ror story often adds to the problem.
So it is here. Colon’s depictions of
the atrocities committed by the Nazis
are relatively mild—incredibly tame
when compared to the graphic dis-
embowelling and dismemberment
inflicted by the “good guy.” The
manimal comes off as little more
than a more vicious version of the
Hulk, while the ex-Nazis are pre-
sented in such a way that they resem-
ble a Mafia clan.

MW writes in Amazing Heroes Preview Special #2, page 72:

This January, Renegade Press plans to
release Ernie Colon’s Manimal, a strip
that originally appeared in the black-
and-white magazine Hot Stuf.’ Explains
Colon, “It’s very incomplete; it was
meant to be an ongoing thing. It looks
like a one-note deal—here’s a guy go-
ing around blowing ex-Nazis’ heads
off—but it was meant to take off from
there, and never got a chance to
because Hot Stuf’ was cancelled.
Since then, I’ve just been sitting on the
pages.
“Manimal is the story of a young man
whose parents were killed in a concen-
tration camp as part of a ‘medical’
experiment—they were injected with
rabies. He was born in the camp, and
became the recipient of mutated genes,
which turn him into a beast when he
gets angry.” Publisher Deni Loubert
wishes to warn readers that the story
content is rather intense, and not for
everyone.

Bhob Stewart writes in The Comics Journal #86, page 15:

Artist Ernie Colon and Hot
Stuf’ editor Sal Quartuccio have
taken legal action against NBC-
TV, 20th Century-Fox, and
Glen A. Larson productions,
charging that the new NBC
science fantasy series Manimal
features a character used
without permission from Hot
Colon and Quartuccio
sought a temporary restraining
order to halt the debut of
Mammal. This was denied by a
New York Federal judge, and
the series premiered on
September 30 as scheduled.

Manimal hasn’t been continued or reprinted since this edition.

There’s not much about it on the interwebs, but there’s this.

This blog post is part of the Renegades and Aardvarks series.