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Reviews and commentary by Tony Isabella
"America's Most Beloved Comic-Book Writer & Columnist"
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TONY'S ONLINE TIPS
for Sunday, June 5, 2005
I didn't plan to write about AMAZING STORIES OF SUSPENSE #184 today. I was seeking art for yesterday's "100 Things I Love About Comics" column and went to my stack of unread Alan Class comics - those black-and-white reprints published in Great Britain from the 1960s through the 1980s - for something to use for art. The above Bill Everett cover caught my eye and got the nod.
The issue lay on my desk after I scanned the cover. I picked it up, flipped through it, read the cover story, and then another story, and then...and here we are.
Be warned. There are spoilers ahead.
The cover is from STRANGE TALES #55 [February, 1957] and has little in common with the story it illustrates, save that both have a jack-in-the-box. The Mac Pakula-drawn story has a gang of thugs cheating African villagers out of their ivory. Wanting more ivory faster, the thugs force the village "witch doctor" to lead them to a sacred elephants' graveyard. What emerges from the jack-in-the-box they inexplicably find there is a towering avatar of an angry tribal elephant god. As with many stories of this post-Code era, what happened next was left to the reader's imagination.
There are eight other stories in this issue:
"I Must Enter the Tomb of Tut-Am-Tit!" from TALES OF SUSPENSE #35 [November, 1962], drawn by Don Heck;
"A Voice in the Dark" from TOS #37 [January, 1963], written by Larry Lieber and drawn by Paul Reinman;
"His Name Was...Merlin!" from TOS #27 [March, 1962], written by Stan Lee, drawn by Steve Ditko
"Behold--The Monster!" from TOS #37, written by Lee, drawn by Ditko;
"Kraggoom! The Creature Who Caught An Astronaut!" from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #78 [March, 1962], pencilled by Jack Kirby and inked by Ditko);
"The Toy Soldiers" from TALES TO ASTONISH #39 [January, 1963], written by Lee, drawn by Ditko;
"I Found the Impossible World!" from TALES TO ASTONISH #38 [December, 1962], plot by Lee, script by Lieber, drawn by Heck; and the bizarrely hilarious
"A Shaggy Wolf Story" from JOURNEY INTO UNKNOWN WORLDS #59 [August, 1957], drawn by Al Williamson.
Time travel plays a role in three of these stories, including both of those drawn by Heck. The guy trying to enter Tut-Am-Tut's tomb is a time-traveling thief trying to recover something stolen from him. "The Impossible World" is the future wherein a scientist from our time gives tourists a bad name. In "Merlin," one of those five-page Lee/Ditko surprise ending tales I love so much, a crooked stage magician disrespects the legendary wizard from which he takes his name and tricks. The plots aren't blindingly original, but the execution is fun and the art is terrific.
Seemingly inanimate objects are forces of justice in "A Voice in the Dark" and "The Toy Soldiers." The latter is a favorite of mine, which I first read when I scored TTA #39 in a baseball cards for comics trade. I think I completed both my Ant-Man and Iron Man collections that day.
"Behold--The Monster!" is part of what could be a sub-genre in pre-Marvel Universe comics. Aliens smart enough to cross the stars to invade Earth are too cowardly and stupid to conquer us because they flee in terror at the sight of a monster built to promote a science fiction movie. Remember when Mister Fantastic scared away the shape-shifting Skrulls with panels clipped from STRANGE TALES and TALES OF SUSPENSE?
"Kraggoom" goes all over the place. A rich guy somehow cons and falsifies his way into becoming an astronaut. An disembodied alien takes to take over his body, but the shock shatters the man's mind, causing the alien to fade into nothingness. Though doctors later question how he got through the medical screening, the ironic ending has the rich guy's caretakers calling him one of the bravest men of our time.
"A Shaggy Wolf Story" is only three pages, but it's a hoot and a half. A fur company is making coats from the radioactive fur of wolves affected by Russian H-bomb tests in Siberia. In addition to their long and luxurious pelts, the wolves also gain intelligence and the power to pass on their gifts to other wolves. A group of wolves cuts a deal with the furriers: stop killing animals for fur and they'll show the executives how to change short-haired pelts into long-haired beauties like their own.
The business bigwigs accept the deal. The super-wolves then use their radioactive powers to turn the short hair of the men into full-fledged fur like their own. Gasp!
Laughs, a message even PETA might approve, and gorgeous Al Williamson art. How can Marvel continue to resist reprinting gems like this in trade paperbacks?
Look for more Alan Class fun in future columns.
******
COMICS IN THE COMICS
Batman is the "star" of today's collection of newspaper comic strips featuring characters from other strips or comic books. Our lead-off "batter" is cartoonist Bob Thaves and his FRANK AND ERNEST strip for May 12. If you've never seen the strip, here's a quick description from their website:
FRANK AND ERNEST chronicles the adventures of two "every man" characters who are anything but ordinary! They are able to appear in different settings, time periods - even manifested as things and creatures other than people. The variety in the strip extends to their observations about a wide variety of subjects.
The site itself is quite nice and packed with features. You can visit it at:
www.frankandernest.com
THE FLYING McCOY BROTHERS is a single-panel comic by brothers Gary and Glenn McCoy. This recent addition to the comics pages is described as a "delightfully absurd panel [that] takes superheroes, office humor, huggable animals and twisted relationships, blending them in a bizarre marriage of Gary Larson, The New Yorker, Conan O'Brien and MAD. Both award-winning humorists and cartoonists, this duo creates a one-of-a-kind comic panel."
The above panel is from May 31. I'm not sold on the new panel yet, but if you'd like to check it out for yourself, you can head over to the uComics website at:
www.ucomics.com/theflyingmccoys
Our final Batman appearance is my favorite of the three. It's Matt Janz's OUT OF THE GENE POLL for May 7. Janz is a relatively young cartoonist. Here's some info on him:
Matt Janz began his journey into cartooning in 1981 at age 11, when a collection of his "Dumbbells" cartoons was published by his local library in Franklin Park, Illinois. He spent his adolescent years at the drawing board, creating many comic strips and stifling any athleticism he might have had.
In 1994, Janz began the first stages of what would eventually evolve into "Out of the Gene Pool." In 2000, he was one of the first recipients of The Washington Post Writers Group's FineToon Fellowship. Through this innovative training program for aspiring cartoonists, he continued to develop his strip and became the first "FineTooner" to be syndicated.
Matt lives near Chicago and, as of this writing, has not yet been kicked out of the gene pool.
You can read OUT OF THE GENE POOL online here:
www.comics.com/wash/genepool
If any of the loyal legions of TOT readers come across comic strips and panels like those above, or other self-referential comic strips and panels, please send them my way. Thanks.
******
NOTES ON THE 100
In yesterday's TOT, I ran a random list of 100 things I love about comics with the promise I would be expanding on that in this week's columns. Starting today.
When the original piece ran in CBG, I received a great deal of very positive mail on it. Many of the writers said they would love to see the list of "10,000 things I love about comics" to which I made joking reference at the end of my column. For now, let's just say I wasn't entirely kidding there.
Only one or two readers failed to take note of my caveat that the list was a random one. It was never intended to be a list of the 100 things I love *best* about comics and I tried to make that clear in my opening remarks. Nevertheless, these readers took me to task for leaving some of the things they love best about comics off my random list. They named some terrific comics and creators - Concrete, Neal Adams, etc. - but random is as random does and I'm not sure even 10,000 entries would be enough to include every last thing I love about comics.
I only received one truly nasty e-mail, a venomous note from a foaming-at-the-mouth zealot who bashed me for not giving proper respect to Jack Kirby and then went on to bash Stan Lee for various imaginary crimes. If I were ever to do a list of the things that I don't love about comics, that mercifully small group of Kirby and Steve Ditko fans who feel they must savage Stan to show their love for their preferred creators would be at or near the very top of my list. Me, there's room in my heart to love all three men for all the entertainment they've all created over the years.
In the name of accuracy...
Stan got two mentions on my list and Jack got one admittedly short mention. Stan was praised with Ditko for their creation of Doctor Strange, then named as the comics editor and writer who had the greatest impact on my own comics career. Given that Stan was one of my first bosses and that, during my first months at Marvel, I worked with him on a nigh-daily basis, I didn't think that was at all excessive.
As for Kirby, putting aside Venom Boy's wretched ignorance of the many times I've written about Jack in glowing and reverential terms, I could almost have seen his point. I was running tight on space and all I wrote was that Kirby's presence on my list required no further explanation. I wrote the same thing about Carl Barks and Will Eisner.
Kirby, Barks, and Eisner. That's as good a "holy" trinity of sequential artistry as you're likely to find. Did I really have to explain why they were on my list?
I'll have more notes on "the 100" tomorrow.
******
TONY'S CENTENNIAL COVERS
Just for the heck of it, I'm gonna pair my "notes on the 100" with centennial covers from THE GRAND COMICS DATABASE, that font of knowledge found at:
www.comics.org
First up is ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN #100, the long-running supernatural and science fiction comic published by ACG (American Comics Group) from 1948 to 1967. Though AITU starred the costumed hero Nemesis for a few years in the 1960s, it was, otherwise, your basic anthology title from start to finish.
This hundredth issue, so noted by a cover blurb, carried the cover date of September, 1958, and was edited by Richard E. Hughes. Under various aliases, Hughes was also ACG's most prolific writer. The GCD credits him with "The Head Man," a 14-page story drawn by Ogden Whitney. Also in the issue:
"Preliminary Hearing" (credits not known at the present time, 4 pages);
"Phantom Submarine" (art by Paul Reinman, 3 pages); and,
"Nothing Ever Happens to Halloran" (John Forte, 5 pages).
Forte is an artist who was much better than I ever realized as a youngster. He drew superb expressions, realistic characters with just a hint of caricature, and a very "real" real world. He was a pretty decent storyteller as well and it's always a treat to come across one of his jobs for ACG, Atlas, or DC, where he draw Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Tales of the Bizarro World, and the first couple years of the Legion of Super-Heroes in ADVENTURE COMICS.
THE OFFICIAL OVERSTREET COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE opines a near-mint copy of AITU #100 will sell for $70, which doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me. A quick check of eBay revealed no completed or current auctions for the issue.
That's all I have this time. Thanks for spending part of your day with me. I'll be back soon with more stuff.
Tony Isabella
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THE "TONY" SCALE
ZERO: Burn your money before buying any comic receiving this rating. It doesn't *necessarily* mean there's absolutely nothing of value here - though it *could* - but whatever value it might possess shrinks into insignificance before its overall awfulness.
ONE: Buy something else. Maybe I found something which wasn't completely dreadful in the item, but not enough for me to recommend it when there are better comics available. I only want what's best for you, my children.
TWO: Basic judgment call. I found some value, but not enough to recommend it. My review should give you enough info to decide if you want to take a chance on it. Are you feeling lucky today, punk? Well, are you?
THREE: This denotes something I find perfectly respectable. There are better books out there, but I wouldn't regret buying this item. Based on my review, you should be able to determine if it's of interest to you. Let the Force guide you.
FOUR: I recommend anything earning this rating. Unless you don't like the genre, subject matter, or past work of the creators, I believe you'll enjoy this item. Isn't it uncanny how I can look right into your soul that way?
FIVE: Anything getting this rating is among the best comicdom has to offer. You should buy/read this, even if the genre/subject matter doesn't appeal to you. It's for your own good. Me, I live for comics and books this good...but not in a pathetic "Comic-Book Guy" sort of way.
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