Random Thoughts

Cerebus (1985) #81-111 by Dave Sim & Gerhard

This batch of Cerebus comics are the issues collected as Church & State II; December 1985 to June 1988. Let’s see how it starts:

Ah, yeah: Cerebus is the Eastern Pope, but had been thrown into the Lower City (of Iest) by a Thrunk, a very big stone monster. And then meets up with the Roach, of course, while having a bad cold. You with me? Sure!

Also: Sim and Gerhard’s artwork is still reaching new heights.

I may be in the minority here, but I think there’s a kind of diminishing return on these Marvel parodies. This is about the verbiage of Secret Wars, and the blocks of recapping the Fleagle Bros are engaging in here is pretty much spot on, but… is it hilarious? Is it? Or is it just kinda slightly amusing?

It doesn’t help that everybody speaks in funny voices at the same time. And the Cebebud god a cod thing gets really annoying after a while.

Fan service.

In case anybody wonders:

Mardas lived in Athens until his death on 13 January 2017 at age 74 from pneumonia

I think Sim is hinting at these hangers-on being leeches on the creative lights, and I think he’s probably talking about himself being Lennon.

Finally Astoria sums up the central tenets of Kevillism!

I interpreted this as Michelle saying she was going to tell Cerebus all about the truth of things in the next issue… but that doesn’t happen, so she said all the had to say in this issue, I guess? It wasn’t particularly illuminating. Except showing Weisshaupt to be even less of a political genius than we had reason to believe. (But at this point, it had been shown pretty conclusively that he wasn’t that smart anyway, so…)

But Sim is so good at this! Reading these scenes, it’s really effective: You really feel like you’re getting vitally interesting information conveyed (and in an amusing way, too), but then you start to think about it, and…

The pics on the back covers are uniformly horrible, and I wonder why. I mean, snapping shots isn’t that difficult.

We’re getting a foreshadowing of the High Society paperback: Sim really wants more money, but isn’t quite sure about how to make that happen. DC had (at this time) allegedly offered Sim a lot of money to buy Cerebus, and that had apparently started Sim thinking…

Oh, yeah, I had forgotten that Church & State was divided into “books” (of uncertain lengths). Sim had planned out the entire storyline at this point, but not how many issues this would result in.

I think this is a parody of Dark Knight Returns? And also… even having read this a bunch of times, I’m not sure why Cerebus starts running after the Roach?

And also: I remember being really frustrated (as a teenager, reading this for the first time) with the lack of details about what the layout of Iest was. I mean, there’s the Lower City (seen here) and the Upper City (which is growing into a tower), or is it?

The confusion stems from pages like this, where Cerebus is crawling up to the Upper City (probably), but we see panels like this where there’s apparently a Black Tower behind him? But that is supposed to be Cerebus thinking about the Tower, I guess.

On the one hand, this confusion fits the frantic action of these scenes. On the other hand, I think… it’s perhaps not a confusion that was intended? It’s a thing in Cerebus generally: It’s seldom conveyed where things are in relation to each other.

Sim says that he’s fed up with letter writers and nasty people having opinions about Cerebus.

But he produces these awesome promotional posters. I mean, what comic shop wouldn’t want to put these on the walls and watch the issues of Cerebus fly off the shelves?

I kinda think these years are the Imperial Phase of Cerebus. Gerhard had come aboard, so Sim didn’t have to draw so much stuff, and every issue of Cerebus seemed to sell more than the previous one (peaking at 33K, though), and Cerebus was critically well-regarded and Sim was doing all the drugs and having fun (I’m just going off the pics here), and Sim was starting to head an entire movement of self publishers…

However, 86-87 was the black and white boom (and bust), so all black and white comics were increasing in sale at this point. And Sim’s deranged politics hadn’t really been made manifest yet, and both the imploding sales and growing unease (and disinterest) in Cerebus happens about… four years from now? I think? We’ll see later in this blog series, I guess.

So: The Imperial Phase.

Because Cerebus is really cooking in these sequences. It seems like everything is finally happening, and everything is going to connect and make some kind of deep, satisfying sense. In addition to being exciting on a scene to scene basis, of course.

Sim expresses appreciation for the work editors do.

Sim’s Marxian dialogue is so effortlessly hilarious.

Sim had found out how to get rich quick: He printed up 6K copies of High Society, and sold them via mail order at $20 a pop, giving him a cool $100K in profits (apparently). Good for him. The problem was, though, that this pissed off comics retailers and distributors, because he didn’t offer the books to them. Sim here tells them to go fuck themselves. (I’m paraphrasing loosely.)

The reasoning here is… it’s… he spends a lot of time speculating that a large part of his readership is people working in comics shops, so they’d been getting Cerebus at a discount anyway, so… er… something.

Cerebus Jam was planned as a bi-monthly companion series, but it took more than a year to get the first issue done, so Sim here says he’s just going to run the pieces planned for #2 in Cerebus. This seems to be the only piece though, and I guess it’s about DC editor Julie Schwartz, who was notorious for sexually harassing any women in his path?

Anyway, Sim warns off all women in the comics industry that harassment is endemic, especially at conventions and the like. I don’t think that was talked about a lot at the time… it just took (counts on fingers) 30 more years for that to get some general attention.

The four page story (which melds Doran’s and Sim’s (and Gerhard’s I guess) artwork pretty flawlessly) is a even more vague on particulars than the introduction.

Cerebus shows consideration.

I talked about this issue in the blog post about Mister X, but it’s a pretty major plot element here. I mean, Cerebus has gotten an apparently mystical, possibly holy golden sphere, but Seth and Bill Marks inadvertently distract him so much that the sphere turns into gold coins again. It’s brilliant storytelling, because it’s so… so… annoying!

Comics shops have been buying copies anyway, and are selling them at the proper mark-up… which makes me wonder whether Sim could just have framed this differently and avoided the controversy. I mean: Sell the book both through the distributors and also directly to people. And taking $20 in either case? (I.e., not giving volume discounts to anybody.) Comics publishers rarely do that, though, and it might have pissed off as many retailers, anyway.

cat yronwode, the Eclipse editor, writes in to say that she pissed off at Sim’s anti-editor stance.

And then Cerebus rapes Astoria.

Now, Cerebus had been killing babies and old people en masse in previous issues, but the framing had been comedic. This is something qualitatively different, and I wonder whether this was what started souring people to Cerebus. I mean, it’s one thing to read a series about a not-very-smart, selfish, somewhat murderous barbarian trying to conquer most of the world… all fun stuff!… but having the protagonist be a rapist, too, makes it more “hm”.

Sim regales us with stories about how hot he is, seemingly without any sense of this being ridiculous.

Cerebus explains.

Sim announces that he’ll allow distributors to buy the collections if they place sufficiently high orders. Perhaps.

I’ve kvetched in previous blog posts about how unconvincing some of the machinations in Cerebus are. I mean, here we have Astoria, who’s supposed to be very smart indeed, ascribing Cerebus’ actions as having some kind of deeper meanings. But she knows better than anybody else that he’s about as smart as lichen. So why?

Because Sim couldn’t come up with anything smarter himself.

Sim announces that he’s going to stop smoking pot every day, all day long.

I think the trial scene is masterful. It seems like as if everything is coming together! It all fits! It all connects! It’s wonderful.

I want to go to Hawaii, too!

Apparently some (?) readers didn’t think that Cerebus raped Astoria, but Sim is pretty adamant.

An editor explains to Colleen Doran about human anatomy.

The thing about that masterful revelation in the trial scene, though… is that it all hinges on Weisshaupt being totally prescient. I mean, first he arranged for the Countess to give Cerebus the means to blow up Thrunk. Then he somehow arranged for a golden sphere to appear during the trial to allow Cerebus to ascend (and become Tarim, Weisshaupt assumed). It’s super lazy plotting, having Weisshaupt being the not-quite-deus in the machina, and it doesn’t really make that much sense if you stop to think about it.

If you don’t, though, these are super thrilling issues, and re-reading them now was pure delight: They’re propulsive and exciting.

Trina Robbins (and others) take up the invitation from Sim to write in and express their opinions on Astoria’s rape.

If you wondered what kinds of things Sim was thinking about now that he’s stopped being stoned all day…

Perhaps he should have gone back to smoking?

Just when things were barrelling along most wonderfully, we get a cross-over issue with Bob Burden’s Flaming Carrot. It feels pretty irrelevant.

A very strange person writes in with an apparent death threat (he probably thought he was being kinda funny?) because Sim hadn’t signed several cases of Cerebus comics at a convention.

He writes in back again and justifies his original letter… because he was… angry.

If Sim was dealing with this kind of shit on a daily basis it clarifies his anger directed at fans.

Sim decided against offering the reprint collections to the distributors, and Diamond retaliates with an extraordinary letter of extortion: If Sim doesn’t change his mind, Diamond is going to tank Puma Blues (also published by Sim). It’s pretty despicable.

Meanwhile, Cerebus really did ascend, but instead of becoming Tarim, he meets a guy on the moon who apparently explains everything… but with a kinda anti-Tarim slant. It turns out (ten years later in Cerebus) that most of what he’s saying are lies, but it’s not clear whether Sim meant for this to be the truth at the time. My guess is that Sim changed his mind after going off all the drugs and finding religion. (I guess he didn’t check the look on his junkie face (see editorial up there).)

Meanwhile, all the text pages in these issues are taken up with the battle between Sim and the distributors.

Sim says he will never back down. (Spoilers: He backs down a few months later.)

Of course, Cerebus is so dim that he just wanders off in the middle of that guy explaining the secrets to how Suentus Po conquered … er… stuff. (It didn’t seem very interesting to me, either, so I sympathise with Cerebus.)

The guy on the moon explains that The Big Bang was Tarim (the void) raping Terim (the light). (I think.)

And also that there’s something mysterious meaning involved in going to the moon. But we didn’t take the hint the universe was trying to send us!

I think you can see Sim’s later “there are signs everywhere” weirdness already at this point.

And then this sixtyish issue sequence ends… pretty much like Sim had ended all the stories: Cerebus is off somewhere where the action isn’t. The end! (The invasion in issue #19, the ending to High Society, many of the earlier one-issue stories.)

Since Sim uses this ending so often, it’s either because he’s really fond of it… or because he writes himself into corners and has to hit the reset button.

I think it works OK here, but it is a bit of a disappointment.

And of course: Pages and pages of distributors writing about what a meanie Sim is.

I think the second part of Church and State is probably the most accomplished Cerebus sequence, but it’s hard to love. It doesn’t have a lot of structure, and part one is even messier.

TP writes in The Comics Journal #120, page 9:

Diamond Comics Distributors, one of
the nation’s largest comics distributors,
has notified Aardvark One Interna-
tional publisher Dave Sim that it will
no longer distribute the comic Puma
Blues as a response to Sim’s decision
to not offer his graphic novel High
Society to distributors. In a letter to
Sim, Diamond’s National Account
Represenative Bill Schanes said Dia-
mond felt “betrayed” and “penalized
for the unbusinesslike behavior and
practices of others” in not being able
to carry the second printing of High
Society. “If it is your intention to pick
and choose which products you want
distributors to carry, it should be our
privilege to choose what we wish to
distribute. Therefore, it is our feeling
we should no longer carry and promote
puma Blues.”
Sim told the Journal, he believes that
Diamond’s dropping of puma Blues is
an act of “blackmail” indicative of
what he sees as a larger “anti-creators
stance” on the part of comic
distributors.
When High Society. a $25.00 collec-
tion of the popular black-and-white
comic Cerebus, was first printed in
mid-1986 Sim sold it exclusively by
mail order Circumventing the usual
distribution channels enabled him to
retain an additional 504) % of the pm-
fits that the normal,distributors• and
retailers’ discount usually consumes.
That added income, Sim wrote in
CerebLS #87, ensures ‘the survival and
success of creative liberty” by giving
him a stable capital base. Sim has
subsequently published Other
graphic novels, Cerebus ($22) and
Church and State (S25) and sold both
exclusively by mail order. A 25% dis-
count is offered for orders in quantity:
for 18 copies of Cerebus or 16
THE COMICS JOURNAL #120, March 1988
copies Of Church and State or High
Society.
Schanes contends, however, that dis-
tributors are being treated unfairly. He
asserted that after years of supporting
the low profit products Of
Aardvark One International and its
sister company Aardvark-Vanaheim,
distributors and retailers deserve to
also get a percentage of the larger pro-
fits that High Society will make.
Schanes also quoted in his letter the
praise of Aardvark-Vanaheim’s Ad-
ministrator Karen McKiel who told
him Diamond “was one of your ‘best
distributors and the most financially
Strong based On years of prompt
payments.”‘
When High Society went into a se-
cond printing in the late summer of
1987 Sim agreed to let distributors
carry it on the condition that they could
solicit high orders. The nation’s largest
distributor, Capital City, neglected to
solicit for the book, however, because
they believed, due to a miscommunica-
tion, it wouldn’t be available to them.
Without an order from Capital City
Aardvark-Vanaheim still received
orders for 4 copies. However, on
October 9 Sim sent a letter to
distributors canceling High Society’s
direct distribution “Because of [low]
advance orders.”

Gary Groth writes in The Comics Journal #121, page 5:

Cerebus’s Dave Sim has declared war on two
direct-sales distributors, Bud Plant and
Diamond. As usual, it’s being played out as a
Creators vs. The Oppressors drama, which is
not a little misleading. But when Sim puts Bud
Plant On an ‘ ‘anti-c•reator” blacklist, he’s for-
saking any claim to being just or even
reasonable, and his use of the tactics and ter-
minology of McCarthyism is disconcerting to
say the least.

[…]

But, in what I can only see as an attempt to
punish Plant for returning the books in the first
place, Sim now refuses to ship Aardvark-
Vanaheim books to Plant’s Denver warehouse,
shipping them instead to Grass Valley, Cali-
fornia, whence they have to be shipped by Plant
to Denver and even further to St. Louis. This
smacks Of pure vindictiveness since it helps no
one, hurts both Sim and Plant (not to mention
the creators of the books), Costs money, and
serves no useful purpose.

Next, Sim is putting Plant on an anti-creator
list to be published in Cerebus. This is not
merely vindictive but downright unjust. Of all
the distributors in the direct-sales market, Bud
Plant has probably been the most resolute in his
support for creators whose work he admires. He
is probably the distributor most knowledgeable
about comics and most respectful of the good
work being done in the medium.

Somebody writes in The Comics Journal #124, page 18:

Dave Sim hosted a “summit con-
ference” with six other comics profes-
sionals who self-publish or are con-
sidering self-publishing their ‘*Ork,
from June 28 to June 30 at L’Hotel in
Toronto, Canada.
Attending the conference were Sim,
the creator of Cerebus and publisher
of Aardvark-Vanaheim and Aardvark
One International; Taboo editors
Stephen Bissette and John Totleben;
Puma Blues creators Stephen Murphy
and Michael Zulli; and Teenage Mu-
rant Ninja Turtles creators and Mirage
Studios publishers Kevin Eastman and
Peter Laird. Previously announced
guests who did not attend included
Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz, Alan
Moore, Dave Gibbons, Gerhard, and
Bob Burden.
The meeting originated as an
outgrowth of Sim’s dispute with Dia-
mond Distributors over Sim’s refusal
to sell the Cerebus High Society
graphic novel and Diamond’s threat-
ened retaliation of refusing to carry
Puma Blues. Sim announced the
meeting at the Capital City Sales con-
ference in May [See ‘ ‘Newswatch,’•
Journal #120-123].
According to a Mirage Studios press
release, much of the discussion at the
meeting revolved around the drafting
of a promised ‘ ‘Creative Manifesto” for
self-publishing comics creators. The
first draft of this document is to be
released in late July.

Somebody writes in The Comics Journal #118, page 53:

There’s still a zany pinball sensibil-
ity to Sim’s work; he’ll give you taut,
exquisitely-written exchanges between
his power brokers, and then, when the
tension is at its zenith, when an arch
of an eyebrow is like a baseball bat (to
the skull, he’ll open the floodgate for
his parodi characters, and bury you in
the broadest farce possible.

Kim Thompson interviews Sim in The Comics Journal #184, page 92:
SPURGEON: I get a sense you weren’t as interested in the
inner workings of the Church as you were in the nuts and
bolts offhe politics. Except maybefor Bishop Powers, you
don ‘t get a notion Of any of the players there.
SIM: My observations lead me to the conclusion that the
nature of faith is based, usually, on 25th generation stories,
car,’ed in stone, and the nature of the give-and-take of
politics like the two opposition parties. You’ ve got God and
the Devil when you move over into what really constitutes
the bedrock of faith. The adversarial idea behind faith — is
that necessary? In Cerebus I tried to get across that the
religion that I was dealing with , the primary religion, was not
so much concerned with the idea of God and the Devil. There
really is no Satan in the context of any of the writings that
I’ve done, apart from the peculiar splinter faction that
Cerebus was a part of when he was growing up which I threw
into the Jupiter sequence at the beginning of Minds. That in
place ofa God vs. Devil, it was more of a “Who’s going to
win, the men or the women?” Extrapolating Goddess wor-
ship and the primarily B)litical, far less religious Kevillism
as opposition to that, satisfied me that I had enough large
scale tension that was interesti ng to address to me. Certainly
far more interesting than trying to bring my own interpreta-
tion of “Is there a devil? Do we wrestle God and the devil
inside of us?” which is the sort of thing that has informed
Norman Mailer’s work from way back when. That just
became interesting as another dichotomy. I did want to
make up a civilization. As much as I wanted to talk about,
“Well, here’s North America. Here who’s I am. Here’s the
context in which I find myself,” I did also want to create a
world and make it plausible.

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

Revolver (1985) #1-6
edited by Robin Snyder

Deni Loubert says in the introduction to this anthology that she’s not much of a fan of anthologies. Myself, I love anthologies: Every issue is an opportunity to surprise and delight the readers with something new and unexpected.

But I understand why many people shy away from anthologies: Since they don’t sell much, many of them (and especially the non “art comics” oriented ones) devolve into the editor calling around to friends and acquaintances asking “do you have any crap in a cupboard somewhere I could use? I mean, unseen works of great art?”

Let’s see what kind of anthology this is.

Loubert says in the introduction that they want to have some kind of consistency, so there’s gonna be a long Ditko story in each issue, as well as a bunch of shorter stories. And that’s a pretty good idea, structurally.

The “Star Guider” serial (by Jack C Harris and Steve Ditko) has to have the lamest title ever… it’s about a guy who’s … a guide … to the … OK, he’s a tracker or something.

The pages are drawn in a magazine form factor, so I guess this was originally meant for some other magazine?

The reproduction is pretty horrible at points — looks like it’s been shot from bad xeroxes?

The ending is a standard twist ending, and a blank box under Star Guider as he walks off into… the… moonset. I’m guessing that box had some text about the next issue/story, but was scrubbed when this story was repurposed for Revolver?

Annoyingly enough, the stories mostly don’t have credits. Everybody’s mentioned in the indicia, so this is by Bill DuBay, I guess? It’s… it’s a joke, I guess? (Explainer: “The devil[,] you say” can mean both “I don’t really believe you” and “was it the devil”. You’re welcome.)

It’s a tonal whip lash from the very serious Star Guider story, though.

Rich Margopoulis and Tom Mandrake do perhaps the stupidest story here, but at least the monsters look good. The lettering is by “the Joe Kubert School”, so perhaps they were also students there? It reads like a story from a teenager.

Henry Boltinoff contributes a… I’m gonna go ahead and call it a joke.

Bill DuBay and Vicatan do a story that’s pretty standard, and in this company, that makes it stand out. I mean, it’s something you could see being published in an actual professional magazine.

This may or may not be by Cliff Thomas, and is very sci fi.

OK, I think it’s pretty obvious what kind of anthology this is: It’s the “hey… got anything I could print?” kind of anthology that gives anthologies a bad rap.

With expectations properly adjusted, perhaps the rest of the issues will be more fun to read. I mean, I’m not morally opposed to fanzines or anything.

Cosmic!

At least Ditko’s artwork is fun to look at.

And this is the last appearance of Star Guider. Perhaps Ditko couldn’t take the moral ambiguity of that utterance: “You caused my father to be responsible for the death of my world!” Caused him to be responsible… That’s more like A=A’, isn’t it?

Ernie Colon does some wacky layouts, dude.

And there’s a … crypt keeper kinda guy in here? I guess this was made for some other anthology.

In the third issue, there’s no Star Guider (even if the cover proudly announces “STAR GUIDER”), but insted we get a pretty wacky Ditko story. Love those patterns.

Grate expectations… This is the best page from Richard Connolly. I swear! It is! The other ones were even worse!

We get this random two page story by Romeo Tangal and Robin Snyder, and are promised that they’ll be back next issue. They aren’t.

This magazine is such a grab bag of randomness that it’s almost enough to flip me from “what the fuck” to “what the fuck? Interesting!”

On the left, we have a joke (by Jim Stenstrum) which derives the humour from that military guy killing a black soldier.

On the right, we have another Henry Boltinoff piece, which derives its humour from All Mort Walker Comic Strips Ever. Only more obvious.

You could perhaps discern some kind of warped, strange editorial stance here: It’s iconoclastic! It’s avant garde! It’s outsider art!

Or it’s “hey, got any pages I can use? Can’t pay.”

The only thing here that’s actually good is this thing by Steven Bissette and Bob Stine (from the late 70s). Unfortunately, it’s been reprinted a bunch of places before (and probably after).

In the fifth issue, we get 20 pages of a proposed Ditko strip that was meant for a defunct magazine. It’s utterly incomprehensible, but you can’t argue with the manic energy.

We also get character info… about characters like that living highway…

Ah. That explains why that Ditko thing in the third issue was odd. Even on a Ditko scale. Perhaps.

The final issue is dominated by this story by Robin Snyder and Adolfo Buylla. It’s really bad, but the artwork is professional.

Padding out the issue, we get a three page ad comic (!?): Solargirl, which looks like it was done by teenagers?

And then a kinda strange text piece, and then a pin-up.

That’s it. Revolver over…

Or is it? Nope: They dropped the name from the cover, but the Revolver series continues in Static and Murder, before ending with the Revolver Annual. I meant to cover the entire series in one blog post, but I really can’t face reading the rest of it right now, so I’ll just split it up.

You’re welcome.

R A Jones writes in Amazing Heroes #84, page 56:

Revolver is the newest addition to the
Renegade Press line-up of black-and-
white cornics. An anthology title, its
contents appear to have been
plucked from inventory shelves all
over the place. All of them should
have been left in storage.

[…]

That’s it. No conflict, no drama—-
no point. In both story and visual
look, this could have passed for one
of those silly s-f TV series of the ’50s.
The biggest kick for me, reading a
rough photoqtat review copy, was the
story’s final caption that had yet to
be remowd–such being necessi-
tated by its message that the reader
could look forward to seeing another
adventure of Star Guide in “the next
issue of… Astral Frontier!” That and
the feel the qtory almost make one
suspect thiq story had originally been
intended for one of Charlton’s old
science fiction fantasy books of 1.5
years past.
Indeed, every feature preqented
here seems to haw been culled from
other companies’ leftovers. There’s
ewn a oneoage gag strip by Murrary
Boltinoff that looks like it came right
from d DC comic of the 1960s.
Representing the “New Tdlent
Showcase” school, vee have a story
by Rich Margopoulos and Tom Man-
drake, entitled “Marshal of the
Zodiåc.” Simon Marshal, a space
wayfarer, is engaged in a champione
ghip card game with his former
friend and partner, Shawn O’Brien.
Marshal attempts to cheat by use of
a telepathic implant dnd a robot who
is monitoring his opponent’s hand.
O’Brien wins despite this—thus prov-
ing that he was cheating. That was
what Marshdl was trying to prove; at
least he managed to convince a jury
I have my
that vvas his intention.
doubts. This story is mon more point-
less than the Star Guider tale.
The next offering is called “Star-
lad.” VVhile it is uncredited, the art
dppears to haw been supplied by the
Redondo Studio. Coupled with a ref-
erence to the Rook, the original
market for thie tale would appear to
have been one of the Warren maga-
zines (and possibly points to Bill
DuBay as the scripter).

[…]

This book is simply dreadful from
beginning to end. To put it another
way—if Revolver was loaded with
live ammo, it would probably blow
up in your face. Avoid it.

I usually disagree with everything R A Jones writes, so this seriously makes me reconsider my take on Revolver: Perhaps it was kinda brilliant? Perhaps?

It’s possible.

This series has apparently never been reprinted, and I’m unable to find any reviews of it on the intertubes.

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

Wordsmith (1985) #1-12
by Dave Darrigo and Richard G. Taylor

I liked Renegade a lot back in the 80s, and comics like this were a major part of that: Comics that just seem… out of whack with what anybody else was publishing.

This comic is about a pulp writer… in the mid-to-late 30s… and… that’s it: The writer isn’t a detective by night, and there’s no alien invasion, and there’s not a spy sub plot. It’s about a pulp writer.

It’s so low concept that only Renegade would have thought this was something commercially viable to publish.

And it starts off pretty sweet, with pages like this that illustrate the creative process. I like the crumpled-up panels. And if it was all like this, this would have been a fun series.

Taylor’s artwork is pretty attractive, even if it’s slavishly drawn from photo reference. It’s got an attractive stiffness to it, and the usage of different zip-a-tones and patterns works really well.

Unfortunately, when the people acting out the parts look unconvincing, then it all just looks wonky. The worst “actor” here is really the guy who’s doing the lead, unfortunately: He’s always looking down or away and holding his chin. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Taylor used himself as the model. Especially since those glasses look really 70s and not very 30s.

(Ooops, blurry pic.) It’s also got the same problem Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor has: It’s talking a lot about making art, and coming up with really good stuff. (The writer protagonist here is really successful and everybody loves his stories.) McCloud had an artist who was supposed to be awesome, but whenever his artwork was shown on the page, it was the worst god-awful crap ever, which kinda undermined the story. The problem isn’t as severe here: But that line up there took a lot of work (in-story) to be created, and it’s supposed to be fantastically good… and… well, you can probably read yourself, even if it’s blurry.

Darrigo really loves the pulps, I think is what he’s saying here. I have read very little, and the little I’ve read has bored me silly.

So — in every issue, we get a couple scenes from whatever the protagonist is writing, but the bulk of each issue is about his life, moving around in New York and talking to people.

The protagonist feels pressure to write serious literature instead of violent pulp stories, but the wise editor sets him straight with some tired platitudes.

Oh, yeah, there’s a pin-up in most issues… and … they’re not particularly good?

Don Hutchinson also has a recurring column about the pulps. It’s very rah rah pulps.

The dialogue is unbelievably stilted. It’s not just that nobody talks like this, but it’s just … I know, I’m so eloquent tonight.

Taylor uses the tones in many interesting ways, like the abstract block shapes to the left, and perhaps less successfully as the wallpaper to the right. But I do like all his schlumpy (that’s a word) pants.

Er, uhm, OK, thanks for letting us know…

It’s a family affair — Taylor’s dad is doing the lettering, and somebody else named Taylor is doing the photo references.

I soon came to dread reading the pulp excerpts: If there’s anything I hate more than reading plot recaps, I don’t know what that is, but reading these telegraphed scenes is also tedious.

OK, re-reading these comics, I have to say that I’m really disappointed. I only had a handful of issues as a teenager, and I remembered them as being more interesting than they are. So now I’m slipping into “angry old man shouts at old comics” mode, which isn’t what I was going for, and isn’t very interesting to read, so I’ll try to not kvetch so much….

Darrigo announces that they’re going to a quarterly schedule. Strangely enough, they also go to a 32 page format (up from 24), so the number of pages pr. year doesn’t change that much. Perhaps they had planned on adding more letters pages and columns, but most of the issues are wall-to-wall Wordsmith…

OH GOD A BASEBALL STORY LARD HAVE MERCY

The main story is a lot more interesting than the pulp stories, but… er… OK, here, the protagonist meets a Nazi writer. And that’s as dramatic as things get.

The main problem, I think, is that the protagonist is just kinda vaguely a nice guy, and has no character traits beyond that (and being really into pulps). For instance, for some reason this socialite beauty is his girlfriend… but why? He looks like a slob, he’s not witty or particularly smart, he has no interest beyond writing his pulps… so this millionaire’s daughter hooks up with him? Because he said he was a writer and she assumed he meant of literature?

Taylor does some pinups himself.

Heh, a check from D. Loubert.

In one issue, we get an entire pulp western for 22 pages, and it’s so tedious that I couldn’t make myself read it all. Sorry! Blog concept failure! I promised to read all the Renegade comics, but I failed.

Then, preposterously enough, the remaining ten pages is about how everybody is so impressed by that turd of a story that they start offering him jobs left and right.

OK, OK, OK…

Finally! Dramatic fight scene!

Love that pose.

What a wordsmith.

In the final issue, the pulps meet super-hero comics, and the protagonist teams up with “Jake Corby” for an issue of Freedom Fighter.

Taylor does a pretty amusing pastiche of Kirby, eh?

The series does get a proper ending of sorts, which is nice.

Heh. Pin-ups from Al Davidson…

And I guess I was right that Taylor used himself as the model? Even the glasses? It’s like I’ve got ESPN or something.

But what did the critics think?

Somebody writes in Amazing Heroes #112, page 64:

And, yes, I have one major com-
plaint. The pulp stories written by
the protagonist, Clay Washburn
(which Darrigo cleverly weaves into
the comics as a sort of alternative
storyline), are just too god-awful to
be believed. I guess Darrigo’s play-
ing campily with the overwriting
and corniness that afflicted many of
the pulps, but these are so mon-
strously cliched and lousily written
that it’s impssible to imagine them
being published by even the crassest
pulp house. This issue’s story—in
which Congo Carson saves the shite
women from the savages through the
old predict-the-eclipse routine—
would have been laughed out the
door even in 1935. It’s downright
painful to pound thmugh four pages
of this self-conscious garbage at the
beginning of a story.
This purposely bad writing is par-
ticularly odd considering Darrigo’s
espoused fondness for the pulps; he
seems to be deriding them rather
than paying them tribute. If nothing
else, he owes it to Frank Gruber to
capture some of the genuine fun and
freshness of the actual pulps. Hav-
ing drawn so much from the man’s
remarkably similar pieces of work
from two very different sources.
Both are stories of young dreamers
trying to make it in the pulp pub-
lishing world of New York during
the Depression; one a pulp novelist,
the other a comic book artist. The
first is put together by a couple of
youngsters from secondary sources.
The other is pulled from memory by
a man who lived it all, a pioneer of
comics and one of the medium’s few
true masters. Both are quiet, bit-
tersweet, ultimately very optimistic
tales, low on plot and sensation but
rich in detail. Each is a fond tribute
to a lost phase of America’s growth,
an era of great tribulation but
astonishingly high hopes.
Eisner’s work, of course, is the
better of the two. Wordsmith has
some fine content, but it’s a rather
shapeless and imbalanced work,
never quite able to pack as much
drama as it should into its scenes.
The Dreamer has a similarly loose
storyline, but it’s given form and
strength by Eisner’s mastery of
visual storytelling. He has invented
and assimilated so many subtle
tricks over the decades that he can
draw more feeling from a tiny inci-
dent in his Dreamer’s career than
young storytellers like Darrigo and
Taylor can give to the great traumas
of their Wordsmith’s life.

Will Murray writes in Comics Scene Volume #2, page 14:

Time Out for
“Wordsmith”
ordsmith, Renegade’s ex-
perimental novelistic
story of 1935 pulp magazine writer
Clay Washburn, will undergo
dramatic changes beginning this
summer in an effort to resolve the
characteris fate before being
suspended with issue #12.
“The series’ time frame is going
to be telescoped radically,”
according to creator/writer Dave
Darrigo, beginning with issue #10.
“It’s a story involving the Spanish
Civil War. Clay tries to stop a
friend of his from going to fight in
the Spanish Civil war.
“Issue #11 jumps to the first
week of September in 1939,”
Darigo continues. “Clay is married
and his wife is expecting, and ac-
tually gives birth on the same day
the war breaks out in Europe,
when the Germans invaded
Poland. By this time, Clay is work-
ing in Hollywood and has broken
into the slick magazines. His
good friend at the newsstand, Joe,
dies. And that emphasizes the
passing of the era.
“Issue #12 should be of interest
to most comic fans. Clay’s editor,
Sam Kaiser, is released from the
pulp house he’s working at and
signs on with a comic book
publisher. He recruits Clay to do
his own version of Captain
America, basing it on one of his
old pulp characters. Then, Clay
gets recruited into the Army. Not
as a soldier. He’s a paper shuffler.
He heads off to Washington at the
story’s end. That’s where Word-
smith ends, for now.”
Darrigo says that while
-E Renegade Press would like to con-
tinue Wordsmith, low royalties
caused by slowing sales have
made it difficult for artist Rick
Taylor to continue the series.

Somebody writes in The Comics Journal #107, page 54:

As it turns out, though, Washburn
needn’t worry about literary pretensions.
Here’s how he marries Off a gunslinger and
a schoolmarm stand-in: ‘Tunney stepped up
to Cynthia. It had been a close shave with
the barber of fate, but he’d come through
it in One piece. The girl looked up at him
with a teqder yearning. She waited anxious-
ly for him to speak. ‘I’m not getting any
younger, Miss Cynthia. I could use a good
woman to look after these tired, old bones
you know what I mean?'”
Real-life interlude: can you hear the girl
slam the door in his face? I thought you
could.
For a supposed professional, Washburn is
a poor writer. • ‘Congo Carson,” the latest
of his literary pretensions, is dropped out
of a cage suspended over a man-eating tiger.
How does he survive? Washburn doesn’t
know either—he has written himself into a
corner. One Can imagine Fitzergerald kill-
ing off Gatsby only to realize four chapters
later that he still needs him.
But, here is where the initial gimmick of
Wordsmith comes into play. As with DC
Challenge readers are given the Opportuni-
ty to solve the writer’s problem. Washburn
falls asleep at the typewriter, then takes a
shower—two whole pages Of diversion (do
the readers have their thinking caps on?).
Finally, Washburn concocts a way out: Car-
son fends Off the tiger with a torch, then
throws the torch into the air, where it ignites
the rope holding the cage over him. The
cage falls over him and he is safe.
Except… the rope would have to be
• soaked liberally with gasoline to catch that
quickly. Also, though it was initially held
at bay, did the tiger just hang back and
watch the rest of this? And, once the cage
was “protecting” Carson, why didn’t the
tiger just leap at it as cats are wont to and
knock it over?
The answer to all this is simple. What is
at play here is pålp logic. Comic-book logic
The sort of logic that has torches instantly
incinerating thick hemp ana that holds
tigers at bay. The sort of logic that makes
me stop reading and start throwing.
Issue #2 was, in a way, worse. Suddenly
Washburn finds himself faced with an
ethical question: are his stories too violent
and is he, therefore, a violent person by
nature? To find out, he visits a wealthy
writer friend Of his, a murder-mystery
author who assures Washburn that writing
murder mysteries is only slightly more
prestigious than pulp fiction. When Wash.
burn poses his question, Fergus, the presti-
gious friend, tells him to lose his literary
pretensions (of course! what else?). “Ethical
doubts?” Fergus asks, “I don’t understand.”
This character then goes into a monologue
that surely sums up writer Dave Darrigo’s
frame of mind: “Your answer won’t be found
in logic, my boy. There is nothing logical
about popular fiction. people read—and
write—these stories on primitive instinct.”
Voila. Man-eating tigers sitting calmly on
the sideliens. Hemp incinerated,
The monologue goes on: “You must learn
to wear blinkers to your mit)d. And just like
a horse, you have to 100k straight ahead and
follow the path that your story reveals. I’ve
told you my ‘recipe for news-stand soup;
haven’t l? You need a quart Of violence; a
glass of sentiment.”
This great literpry figure wraps up the
meeting with these thoughts about Wash-
burn: “The boy has a good head on his
shoulders. But he thinks too much.”
Now, one could interpret this as Darrigo
winking at us; he knows that this is hooey,
and he’s going to expose how wrong the old
man’s thinking is. However, how does Wash-
burn rationalize his lead character’s
violence?
‘”Sorry about the mess,’ Bendix told his
old friend on the force. Detective Chuck
Webster shrugged and said, ‘If these hoods
didn’t shoot at you, then they’d just shoot
at somebody else.'”
Actually, they would not have shooting
at anyone had not Washburn created them.
And so, whether or not he and Darrigo like
to think so, his ethical problem remains.

Somebody writes in Amazing Heroes #83, page 56:

VVhen you hdve a lead character
who is as as lifeless as old laundry
and about as interesting as bread
mold, ‘you’d bettor put him in a story
that packs a punch if you want to
hold ‘your audience. Having him
struggle to find the right words to put
in a fictional character’s mouth does
not qualify as compelling drama.
The art, though made up of excel-
lent cornponents, owrall adds to the
feeling of listlessness. Rick Taylor has
d very fine illustrative style,
an influence by the terrific Doug
Wildey. Unfortundtely, that’s all he
presents here—illustrations. It looks
more fike a series of static photo-
graphs than the story of genuine
people. Everyone tooks posed and,
in his effort to draw realistic faces
Taylor has forgotten to give any of
them expressions. With a little more
emotion, Rick could become an out-
standing talent.

Russell Freund writes in The Comics Journal #112, page 44:

The sixth issue Of Wordsmith has a few
interesing panels near the beginning where
Clay, the hero, is walking down the street
having an internal monologue, and I swear
it’s like something out of Harvey Pekar and
Gerry Shamray. I compliment Darrigo and
Taylor on their choice of inspiration here,
although this book is still nowhere near in
American Splendor’s league. This issue Clav
settles down to write some “serious litera-
ture,” a turgid W WI novel he intends to call
“The Dirt of Heaven.” The problem with
this series remains that Clay is a no-talent
meatball. and Dave Darrigo insists on
treating him as a sensitive. creative artist.
It’s frustrating to watch this promising book
continue ro miss its mark, the same way,
issue after issue. Still, it ends with a decent
scene where Clay meets a vain, drunken
novelist, and the man’s arrogance is plaved
for a kind of sour comedy. (l think so, any-
way. It cracked me up.) If Wordsmith were
about sodden, chiseling Virgil Grant, the
contumelious man of the letters, I would
probably be an ardent fan.

So this book got plenty of attention at the time — and all of it negative? I guess I wasn’t the only one who was intrigued by the concept, and then disappointed when actually reading it.

Jim Wilson writes in The Comics Journal #105, page 46:

Darrigo’s script flows well, avoids ungram-
matical and clumsy lapses so common in
comics, and combines a surprisingly un-
pretentious and convincing portrait of a’
struggling writer with elegant ’30s flavor
thgat seems very natural end not at all
forced or tacked on. The same natural
formality is evident in the brief moments
Of Washburn with his friends.
A few comments on Taylor’s art. His
detailed style is far superior to a lot of what
passes for art in comics. His work suggests
a more classical, illustrative approach; clearly
his artistic references are far broader than
just other comic books. He gives us an
acceptable and accurate potrayal of the New
York City Of the period; obviously he did
his homework and researched the architec-
ture and style of the 1930s (even including
a background showing the famous “NO Way
Like the American Way” billboard framing
a there is more nuance and
expressiveness in the faces of these charac-
ters than there are in a whole year’s worth
Of mainstream comics (Terry Beatty would
do well to study the way this man draws
faces. )
The biggest flaw in the art is Taylor’s diffi-
culty in spotting blacks, which gives the art
a cluttered, flat, and two-dimensional
appearance. It reminds me Of the comment
that the first half of an artist’s career is learn.
ing what to put in; the second is spent learn-
ing what to leave out. This “less is more”
theory is put to good use in the work of
Eisner and Toth, and—if may be so bold—
I’d suggest that Taylor spend a bit of time
studying the style of those two masters.
The book concludes with a prose after-
word, “Long Live the Pulps,” which is
author Darrigo’s paean to the magazines
that are his hero’s bread and butter, and an
attempt to give readers a background in the
“dime novels” from which the comics
evolved. It should be interesting to those
unfamiliar With the form (and for those
really interested, Steranko’s comprehensive
chapter on the pulps in his History of Comics
I is a good source).
I urge everyone to follow and support this
book. It is potentially solid gold, and proves
once and for all that comics don’t have to
be pointlesSly violent or display bare.
breasted pin-ups girls to be maéure.

Well, that one was positive.

The series continued with nine issues from Caliber Press. They also reprinted all the Renegade issues in two volumes.

Neither series seems to have been reprinted since.

This person seems to like the one issue they found:

What the hell is going on? That’s two weeks in a row now that I’ve come across these comic books that are fantastic, but are now languishing unwanted, unnoticed, unloved, there in the bargain bin. What the hell happens? How do we lose track of these books? What does it say about a culture that spawns these artistic moments and then disposes of them without a second thought?

And that’s all I could find on dar intertubes.

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