Random Thoughts

Shadows from the Grave (1987) #1-2 by Kevin McConnell, David Day and Dan Day

I had the second issue of this as a teenager, but I never bothered getting the first one at the time, so I’ve got a bad feeling about this…

Well, OK, the artwork by the Day Brothers is pretty nicely rendered — very appropriate for the genre. But the writing is so leaden, and kinda… nonsensical?

The stories come with a hokey O. Henry ending, which is very typical and all.

And while the inking here is kinda interesting, the figures and faces themselves seem kinda dashed off?

*sigh*

Hey, that’s a pretty nice layout. I mean, it’s really wonky, but it’s got an insane Eisner/Ingels mash-up feeling going, which is fun.

And then we get a portfolio (with inks by Paul Lambo).

If anything, the second issue is even more tedious than the first one. A roman vampire drinking the blood of Jesus — hasn’t that been done a few times before? (Or perhaps after, and this is patient zero?)

It’s funny because she’s a bitch, you see?

I wonder where these pieces were originally meant to be published? I’m assuming they weren’t made for this series, but (as usual) there’s no contextualisation of the stories whatsoever in the comic.

The final story is almost kind of interesting — they’re mashing up a whole bunch of Poe stuff? I think? I’m no expert.

It’s still not very entertaining.

So what is this? Time for some internet investigation!

Amazing Heroes Preview Special #4, page 99:

Originally titled Flesh and Blood (the
title was changed when Jan Strnad
announced his Flesh and Bones book
starring Dalgoda), this two-issue mini-
series will feature three horror stories in
each issue. Two of the stories will be
continued from one issue to the next,
while the others (“Epitaph” and “A
Grave Mistake”) wilt be self-contained.
The first story, “Flesh and Blood,” is
a psychological horror story set in the
present time. The second story, “The
Vicious Circle,” is a Dan Day piece set
in Salem, Massachusetts, Russia, and
Mexico. This story spans the time
period from 1860 to 1932, Much of this
psychological thriller is told via
flashbacks.
We were assured by writer Kevin Mc-
Connell (a formerAH editor) that these
stories are “No-nonsense, vitriolic
horror stories.” He further described
them as “Scary and disturbing,” and
“definitely not for kids.” McConnell cited
H.P Lovecraft and Stephen King among
his influences and stated that the Days’
visual approach to storytelling will only
enhance the tales.
If the response to these initial twin
issues is as good as Kevin hopes, he
mentioned the possibility of continuing
the titles as a regular series. “Itm a big
horror fan, and there aren’t really a lot
of horror books on the stands today.
Hopefully, the fans will like this book,
because I could generate a lot of horror
stories.”
The books will feature full-color
painted covers by David and Dan Day.

So these aren’t reprints from a 70s fanzine or anything!?

Amazing Heroes #110, page 14:

Shadows From the Grave (Rene-
gade) is a two-issue mini-series
featuring “horror in the tradition of
EC and the Warren Magazines: ‘
written by erstwhile Amazing
Heroes editor KEVIN McCON-
NELL and drawn by DAVID DAY
and DAN DAY.

Oh! It’s written by a critic… no wonder… I’ve googled a bit, and he doesn’t seem to have written any other comics? It’s not a trivial name to google for, though, so I may be missing something.

It looks like some of these stories may have been reprinted in one of the many Day Brothers reprint projects.

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

Jacques Boivin’s Love Fantasy (1987) #1 by Jacques Boivin and others

This comic has three short stories, all with artwork by Boivin, but with different writers, which is a somewhat unusual approach.

The first one is written by Mike Baron (of Nexus fame, presumably). It’s a vignette about a guy without any particular qualities (except being a “nice guy”)…

… who creeps on a cashier, but then (by sheer coinkidink) meets her in a different context, and Woody Allen movies (and fucking) ensues. It’s a very slight, somewhat creepy story.

The second story is written by Arn Saba (of Neil the Horse fame) and is inked by Bernie Mireault (of The Jam fame). It’s an actual story! It’s part of the general Eureka Street story Saba had dabbled with before, and the characters have some depth. Saba manages to squeeze a lot of stuff into these pages, and it’s a fun, brisk read.

The final story is written by Mark Shainblum (of… er… fame?), with artwork by Boivin and Gabriel Morrisette (of mainstream fame), and it’s a very nerdy fantasy story.

The depiction of comics fans at a convention seems very accurate, though!

Boivin would go on to illustrate Melody:

Jacques Boivin is the artist of the erotic comic ‘Mélody’, that appeared at Kitchen Sink Press from 1988. The comic was created three years earlier, when exotic dancer Sylvie Rancourt created a comics alter-ego for herself. The Boivin version of the comic was a big hit.

I remember liking Melody a lot, but it’s probably mostly forgotten these days — Sylvie Rancourt’s own version of her story was reprinted by Drawn & Quarterly, and it’s excellent. And very different.

Amazing Heroes #124, page 58:

Romance is back. Tentatively, in-
deed. Not in the same forms we
knew it before, but isn’t that always
the way? But, with this and the
forthcoming Renegade Romance
(and with California Girls in a
slightly different genre), romance
has unquestionably found its way
back to comics. And, to borrow a
phrase, “It’s about damn time.”

[…]

Love Famasy isn’t what it might
have been. but it’s a good start. The
highlight of the issue is “The Perfect
Guy,”
written by Saba, with
Mireault inking Boivin. It’s just a
funny. bittersweet little story about
a female artist nearing her “middle
years” who become infatuated with
a charming young guy who proves
to be a bigger and bigger jerk as the
story progresses. It sparkles with
little details of humor and humanity,
as the artist’s agents, punky
neighbor, teenaged daughter. and an
old hippie named Meatball who’s
fixing the plumbing troop through
the house tossing out different
perspectives on the woman, her
man. and her predicament. The
team of Boivin and Mireault bring
it to life with a pleasant mixture of
everyday reality and cartoon clarity.
The story written by Baron,
“Check-Out Girl,” disappointed me.
The concept had promise: A man
finds that a ‘Aoman who turns down
his advances in one context is much
more receptive in another, and
wonders why; he tries to interpret
the situation in tertns of power and
prestige, while she puts it on an
interpersonal, emotional footing.
The trouble is. the plot feels like just
an exposition of that concept, as the
characters talk out their perceptions
in a singularly undramatic resolu-
tion. This seems like just the kind
of trap that “relationship comics”
are going to have to sidestep.
And then there’s “Royal Con
Interlude (Introducing Magic-
stone),” written by Mark Shainblum
and drawn by Morrissette and
Boivin. It’s a nicely turned little tale,
a fantasy with some super-heroish
elements, set in the milieu of a
comic book convention. I can’t say.
though, whether I like it or not,
because my reactions to the work
itself are colored by my disappoint-
ment at finding a story in this comic,
of all comics, which relies on fan-
nish references and seems to require
of its readers some familiarity with
the super-hero scene. But I may be
overreacting. Maybe stories like this
can be useful bridges between the
realm of super-heroes and that of
“off genre” comics. Maybe this will
draw people into romance stories
who might otherwise have ignored
them.
Whatever its drawbacks, Love
Fantasy is good enough to show that
love stories can-be made to work in
modern comic books with an adult
orientation. I hope this is only the
beginning.

Hey! I agree with everything there, which doesn’t happen a lot.

This book has never been reprinted, but it’s easily available.

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

Friends (1987) #1-3 by Bill Dinardo

When I was considering doing a blog series about Renegade, the first thing that popped into my mind was “Yeah! Friends! I get to read Friends again!” Which is pretty odd, since I could just re-read it anyway, but…

I remember Friends well from when I was a teenager. That is, I remember reading it, and going totally “this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever read”. I remember showing it to a friend saying “look! how weird this is!” I don’t quite remember if he then backed away while nodding slowly…

But I don’t actually remember anything much about the contents, other than it all being like… tableauxes… (That’s a word.)

I may be misremembering — it’s been a while. Let’s read the first three pages together:

See? I told you so! It’s so weird! It’s like from an alternate dimension where Windsor McCay was the dominant comics paradigm, but it’s more than that: Everything is laid out as if a stage play, with full figure panels most of the time, but zooming in to half figure characters sometimes.

The balloon placement makes everything very horizontal, very left to right… and everybody is of identical height and body build, with essentially the same faces and hairdos. And their heads mostly poke out of the top of the panels.

There’s also a lot of walking… and they all walk in step, very close to each other.

It’s so weird! I mean, it’s weirder than most experimental comics, and it’s kinda not — the plot (as it is) is straightforward and simple, with low stakes drama.

The first issue is about these two guys throwing mud at some beehives, because… because… that’s what kids do? We get no explanation… but the tough guy (with the interestingly white-stippled black sweater) tells us that his older brother is a marine stationed in Beirut.

The storytelling isn’t dreamlike, and it isn’t nostalgic — it’s something that’s adjacent to both, but without hitting either. Here’s the dramatic beehive scene, and the excerpt from Will’s diary is about another incident altogether.

So the tough guys saves “viewpoint” character by throwing mud at him… while crying…

OK, while typing this, my normal scepticism rears its head, and I’m starting to think “is it possible that this is supposed to be a parody of something?” This didn’t occur at all to me while reading this, because I was sitting there, slack-jawed; amazed at what’s going on.

And then the Marine brother dies! Like that! Totally abruptly.

So on the left, we get into semantics about what happened in Watts in the 60s… and then on the right we get the only time the characters laugh, I think?

Hard guys! Untucked shirts! Jeans!

This is how to be a hard guy: This swagger, this strut. It’s a pretty subtle variation from how Dinardo’s other characters walk, but it’s still palpable. It’s like Dinardo is challenging himself to create a comic with only the most minuscule variations possible between the characters and still have it possible to read the differences — and he’s successful.

Epic fight scene!

The first issue is 24 pages long, while the other two are 32, so we get a back-up story in those two issues. First out is a Walking Man Comics thing… I really like these? Is he using rubber stamps to create these comics? They’ve got a nice flow.

I guess some of the beats in this comic are reminiscent of sitcom abruptness.

Most of the characters cry at one point or another, which isn’t very sitcom-like.

I love the posture on the guy on the ground in the top panel.

And then it ends. This is the final two panels. (Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that one of the guys is from another panel. It’s really not given much attention in the comic (I mean, aside from him being able to make things float), and it’s perhaps another sitcom-like thing. (Shades of Mork and Mindy.)

So there you have it: It’s just as odd as I remembered from when I read it as a teenager. Those short ankles, long thighs; the affectless faces; the gentle but weirdly affecting storylines…

It’s like nothing else, and it’s hard to even make a value judgement about this, because… what do you compere it with?

It’s a reading experience like nothing else, and I found it hugely enjoyable.

*gasp* A girl! I don’t think there was a single other girl (or woman) in the rest of the book?

Phil Yeh (there’s another blast from the past) does the final back-up story.

Dinardo has apparently published no other comics besides this one and appearing in two of the Penguin and Pencilguin issues. (Two six page Friends strips, apparently — I don’t have those issues.)

Googling around led me to this Bill Dinardo, who I wasn’t sure was the right one… until I followed the link to his etsy page.

Yup, that’s the same Dinardo all right.

Friends has never been reprinted, but you can still pick up the series cheaply:

Renegade got quotes from some very appropriate creators — Rick Geary is super quirky, and Chadwick was going for some gentle storytelling…

Heh:

Oh, Dinardo was also in an issue of Patrick Rabbit.

Heidi MacDonald writes in Amazing Heroes Preview Special #5, page 51:

Will and his alien friend Miles continue to
learn about different types of courage in
Bill Dinardo’s whimsical Friends.
Courage, he says, is one. of the main
ideas behind the series. For instance, the
first issue dealt with Brian, Will’s physic-
ally strong friend. Subsequent issues will
similarly spotlight Will’s other friends (hey,
dat’s de name of the book, gang), while
gradually revealing more of the story of
why Miles was forced to leave his home
Planet.
The second issue spotlights ßialos.
‘ “He’s brave, but he’s not physically
strong, like Brian,” Dinardo explains. “But
he’ll never back down from what he thinks
is true.” This determination gets Bialos,
Will and Miles in trouble with some tough
kids known as the Hard Boys.
There’s also Cliff, who’s a bit of a bully,
and Steve, the class clown. In the second
issue we’ll see one of the Pags, the alien
race who devastated Miles’ home. In fact,
the Pags will play a more important role
as the series progresses. Still, Dinardo
shies away from the term “science fiction”
for the book. “It’s more of a day-in-the-life
sort of thing. It’s basically Miles showing
something to Will that will help him to
become a more complete human being.”
The book will probably have a back-up
series. Matt Levin’s idiosyncratic “Walking
Man” will be featured in several issues.

Heidi MacDonald writes in Amazing Heroes #133, page 133:

PENGUIN AND
PENCILGUIN

[…]

Bill Dinardo’s whimsical “Friends”
continues as the back-up strip. Though
the regular series from Renegade has
been cancelled, Dinardo still plans on
finishing up the story of Bialos and the
mystery of Miles and the Pags some
place and some time.

I’m unable to find anybody talking about Friends on the intertubes. Dinardo has a strip about grammer, though. Here’s a sample:

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

Wimmen’s Comix (1987) #11-13

The first ten issues of Wimmen’s Comix were published by Last Gasp. I’ve got them here in some shortbox somewhere, but since this is a blog series about Renegade, I’m gonna skip re-reading them now.

Besides, I re-read it all somewhat recently when I got the box set collecting the entire series (and more). (By the way, I wish there were more reprint projects like this — I love reading anthologies: There’s a bunch out there that are really solid and have exciting work that’s never been reprinted. But I know I’m in a minority here…)

Anyway, after a decade and a half with the decidedly underground Last Gasp, Wimmen’s Comix is now with the decidedly direct market Renegade Press. So I wondered whether this would affect the talent pool. Issue eleven is edited by Dori Seda and Krystine Kryttre, both of whom a underground-affiliated artists…

As usual, there’s a theme to the issues, and this one is about fashion. So here we have Trina Robbins does a fun horror/shoe story.

Mary Fleener in prime cubismo mode…

Leslie Sternbergh doing an amazingly cluttered thing about the joys of buying shoes…

Krystine Kryttre’s artwork is stunning as usual. I love how the scratchy lines continue all the way to the edges of the page.

Dori Seda does a really sedate strip (well, sedate for Dori Seda)…

Barb Rausch and… Carel Moiseiwitch! She’s flabbergastingly awesome. Which reminds me — I wanted to check whether the box set was reproduced from originals or just shot from the printed comics.

Here’s the same panel from the box set, and it… looks pretty much identical? All the same printing defects? So I think the box set was shot from the printed comics.

A whole bunch of paper dolls, as is appropriate.

Underground comix royalty Aline Kominsky with a story about clothes sales psychosis…

So — this issue is jam packed (few stories are longer than two pages), and it almost all underground artists. So I guess the reason for moving to Renegade wasn’t necessarily to go more “mainstream”? Although the stories here are pretty slight… but funny.

The only story that’s in any way “edgy” is this one by Melinda Gebbie. I love her oddball storytelling rhythms — the story flows in a kinda magical way, and then ends with a great gag.

Happening upon a Gebbie story in an old anthology is always a delight. Somebody should publish a Gebbie career retrospective already.

The twelfth issue (edited by Angela Bocage and Rebecka Wright) is a 3D issue — and this is more of a direct market thing (Renegade had done several 3D publications by this time). The 3D is by Ray Zone, as usual, but… I don’t think it quite pops the way it should? I may have slightly off 3D glasses… the blue doesn’t quite nix out the red.

But this Dori Seda Page did really pop.

And we do get a whole lot more artists that aren’t totally underground affiliated, like Cynthia Martin above.

The best page here is this one by Krystine Kryttre, and I can’t recall anybody else doing a 3D page like this, where the figures are sort of hovering into the void. It’s a great idea.

As you’d expect with a 3D issue, it’s pretty light in content. Angela Bocage does the most memorable piece — “Why We Do It” — which is about cutting.

And this sort of effect, where you only see things through one eye, is pretty painful to read, which is on purpose, I guess.

The final Renegade issue doesn’t actually mention “Renegade” anywhere — Renegade was shutting down around this time, so I guess it might make sense to go “stealth”.

Lee Binswanger and Caryn Leschen are the editors.

Carol Tyler!

The longest thing here is this one by some Italian creators (credits above). It doesn’t really fit well with the rest of the pieces…

The funniest bit here is this one by Judy Becker… which is also the least occult piece, probably. (Oh, yeah, that’s the theme for the issue.)

A Moiseiwitch back cover!

Anyway, those were the three issues… and you can perhaps see a shift from less harsh subject matters in the previous issues? But it’s not a radical shift, I think.

After Renegade’s collapse, Wimmen’s Comix moved over to Rip Off Press for the final few issues.

The Fantagraphics box set was generally positively received:

On a much more positive note Wimmen’s Comix should take its share of the credit for nurturing so many now-celebrated women comix artists who have eased the genre out of the underground and into the mainstream of comics and graphic novels—and for providing a lot of raucous laughs to themselves and their readers on the way.

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

Kafka (1987) #1-6 by Steven T. Seagle & Stefano Gaudiano

(I will be discussing the plot of this 35 year old comic here (which I usually don’t much), so if you don’t want spoilers, skip this one.)

This was a series I had when I was a teenager — and I remember really liking it, but… that’s all I remember. Let’s read the first few pages:

This is during the black and white boom, and it sounds from Deni Loubert’s editorial that it’s starting to bust, right?

Anyway, we seem to be off to a very moody start…

… involving a guy in a witness protection programme, and things are very mysterious indeed. The artwork is quite rough-hewn, which fits the pacing very well — the storytelling is what they’d call “decompressed” a few years later. That is, things take a lot of pages to happen, with lots of little beats.

I wonder whether the artwork was done only vaguely larger than the printed size — it’s got that organic look to the linework… Can’t find any pages of Kafka on Heritage, though, so I guess it’ll have to remain a guess.

Hey! Corto Martese on the wall! Oh, yeah, Gaudiano is Italian…

Anyway, I’m totally in: This is so moody and interesting, and it can go in any direction.

Seagle asks the reader to slow down while reading, even if there isn’t much text on these pages. I think that’s pretty futile: People will read in the tempo set by the pages, and it’s a brisk read.

The recap in the second issue takes longer to read than the first issue.

JUST KIDDING.

It turns out that the protagonist can cloud people’s minds… yes, kinda like Doctor Who with his special warrant card, but not quite. But the way this is introduced (there’s some in a previous sequence, and then there’s this) feels very fresh: No explanations, it’s just shown. It’s fun!

Seagle explains that there are no mistakes in Kafka. He does sound a bit full of himself, doesn’t he?

There’s a painted back cover on each issue, and there’s about 28 story pages, so it feels like a pretty generous package.

The paintings look rough in less pleasing ways than the interior artwork, though.

And then… booo! It turns out that the protagonist was a secret gummint experiment, and you’ve got things like the guy not even asking what the experiment was supposed to achieve before participating.

Over a few pages, the creators manage to pretty much disrupt any interest I had in the plot: We’re talking Wolverine here; a super-hero created by a shadowy organisation.

It’s a shame, because everything was going so well.

It’s not that the remainder of the series is bad — it’s tense and taut and all those good things, but we’ve seen all this stuff before.

I’m still not sure what the concentration camps with the people saying “Kafka” was supposed to be about. But that’s probably on me!

So there you have it: A really intriguing reading experience… up to a point.

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

Another way might be simply to
declare “Look at me, I’m dif-
ferent,” to yell “Theater” at a
crowded fire, to yell “Kafka!”
from a jam-packed comic book
rack.
The creators of Kafka eschew
standard artist/writer credits, but
the editorial makes it clear that
Steven T. Seagle did the writing
and Stefano Gaudiano the art. It’s
quite a little editorial. In it Seagle
invites comparison to, of all
people, Samuel Beckett, and sug-
gests that the reader approach this
comic book in the same spirit in
which he would approach one of
the Absurdist master’s texts.
We’re not perhaps smitten with
ourselves just a bit, are we Mr.
Seagle?
For Pete’s sake, this is only a
thriller, folks, although actually a
pretty entertaining one. Don’t be
over-awed. Gaudiano’s artwork is
a little gawky but it gets the job
done. There’s a neat plot twist in
the first issue that lets the story take
off at a nicely urgent pace. I won’t
describe what because you
could read the first issue of Kafta
in the time it would take you to
read my synopsis of it. There’s
about as much text in this whole
issue as there is on a typical page
Of Fantastic Four. You could read
it in a wink, but be warned: in so
doing, you would be flying in the
face of Mr. Seagle’s sincere admo-
nition. “Rather than glancing at a
panel and mcwing on,” he suggests,
“consider the panel. There is a lot
of intentional silence in
Okay. But to this reader, the
aural accompaniment to isn’t
so much an absurd silence, laden
with angst and despair, but that
something more along the lines of
the theme of “Mission: Impos-
sible.••

Heh heh.

It was nominated for the 1988 Will Eisner Awards, but I’m guessing it didn’t win, since that was the year of Watchmen.

Huh. Valkyrie, the Airboy spinoff, was one of the other nominees. Didn’t expect that.

A collected edition was released in 1990 by Caliber, and again in 2006 by Active Images, and again again in 2013 (by Image).

The reviews are mixed:

The arrival of two sets of pickup team at the beginning really captured my attention.
After that, I lost all interest.

Uhm uhm:

I am not much of a reader I don’t like reading at all and this book that I read was interesting and it was called Kafka and it was very suspenseful and you really wanted to know what was gonna happen next.

Uhm:

Although I do enjoy noir thrillers, I hardly find myself enjoying the novel as I should. The comic-style art is raw and darkly uninviting like the noir environment it thrive and it have its cheesy predictable moments associated with man-on-the-run trope to keep up the pace while sacrificing on plot and character substance.

It doesn’t, that’s true:

Seagle supposedly came across the word as Polish slang spoken in concentration camps that was used to describe someone taken in the night. His hero, Daniel Hutton, has repeated flashbacks to his own time in such a camp, though the timeline doesn’t quite seem to work.

Oh! The Image edition has toning very reminiscent of Varenne. Looks cool.

Looks like everybody agrees with me, so I’m starting to wonder whether I was wrong:

Despite Seagle’s reworking of Kafka, the ending still feels rushed and difficult to believe. Hutton’s final escape is so obvious, I almost shouted at the page.

Both Seagle and Gaudiano have had long, successful careers in comics after Kafka, which I think perhaps explains that it’s been reprinted so many times.

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