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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 Thursday, September 29, 2005
The Alan Class comic books ware black-and-white, 7" by 9-1/4" inch anthologies published in England and reprinting material from several American comics companies. They weren't exact reprints of individual issues; each 52-page issue would feature stories taken from several issues and sometimes from several American publishers. Work from Marvel/Atlas could and did appear side-by-side with work from Charlton or ACG.
In three decades, from 1959-1989, Alan Class published in the neighborhood of 1500 comic books. No dates appear on these comics, so the best I can do is guesstimate that SINISTER TALES #176 came out sometime in the mid-to-late 1970s.
SINISTER TALES #176 is a bit unusual in my admittedly limited experience collecting Alan Class comics. Most of the issues I've written about to date seemed constructed around a strong cover, a complete issue of some American title, and then stories from other issues to fill out the page count. In this, every story is taken from a different issue.
Charlton is represented by the cover and lead story, both of them drawn by Dick Giordano. "The Painting" originally appeared in STRANGE SUSPENSE STORIES #72 [October, 1964]. The protagonist of the six-page tale is an artist, never satisfied with his own work, whose gift brings him to a sad end, forever trying to recreate a portrait which, seemingly, gave him power over life and death. My summary is more interesting than the story itself, but the tale's basic premise was a good one.
The issue's other five stories are from five different issues of ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN and UNKNOWN WORLDS. They're an odd mix, perfectly in keeping with ACG editor Richard E. Hughes' quirky style. The editor wrote most of the stories he published under a plethora of pseudonyms.
"The Devil and the War Bride" is from AITU #44 [June, 1953]. Satan gives uncanny powers to a quick-tempered Irish woman, making her his unwitting emissary on Earth. Her husband undoes her evil and frees her from Satan, but the story ends before he can enroll her in an anger management program. The GRAND COMICS DATABASE has Pete Riss as the artist.
"The Man Who Died Too Soon" [AITU #43; May, 1953] has the Grim Reaper making the equivalent of an accounting era and ends up in an afterlife courtroom. Tony Cataldo was the artist.
"A Perfect Gentleman" [UNKNOWN WORLDS #47; April-May, 1966] brings a murderer to justice millions of years before he was born. It's a frankly dumb story by Hughes - writing as "Curt Carpenter" - and artist Pete Costanza.
In "The Spectral Pirate" [AITU #25; November, 1951], the title character is restored to life when a struggling art expert uses an infra-red device to determine the authenticity of a portrait of the murderous buccaneer. It's not a bad little yarn as the expert and his girlfriend try to get the pirate back into the painting before the painting's owner discovers what has happened. If Al Camy, the artist of this story, had been a pirate, his nickname would've been "Dirty Brigand." You can get your own pirate nickname by going to this website:
www.mess.be/pirate-names-male.php
The best story in the issue is "The Picture That Was Cursed" [AITU #137; December-January, 1963]. The Hughes script - credited to "Zev Zimmer" - is downright unsettling as a movie about a great romance suffers tragedies of both earthly and supernatural origins. The Paul Reinman art is very effective throughout the story, which has another of those hereafter courtroom scenes of which Hughes was so clearly enamored.
Alan Class comics, though becoming more sought after in recent years, are still a fairly economical way of reading some great and not-so-great stories of the 1950s and 1960s. Look for more on them in future editions of this column.
One more thing. I want to thank the members of Yahoo's ACG-comics group for their help in identifying where the above stories appeared. If you've an interest in the American Comics Group, you can check out the group at:
groups.yahoo.com/group/ACG-comics
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ALTER EGO
ALTER EGO #51 [TwoMorrows; $5.95] cover features an interview with Lew Sayre Schwartz, who drew Batman stories from 1846 to 1953. I don't know how editor Roy Thomas manages to produce a new issue every month. I can barely find time to read each 100-page treasure before the next one is published.
Conducted by Jon B. Cooke, the Schwartz interview runs 28 of those pages. It's followed by a 22-page piece on Australian comic books; a brief interview with the late Dave Berg on his years at Fawcett, Timely, Quality, and MAD; the second part of Michael T. Gilbert's remembrance of Will Eisner; artist Alex Toth on night, shadows, and mood; a tribute to Canadian artist Ed Furness; a talk with comics fan and educator Glen Johnson; a lively letters column; and contributions from Fawcett mainstays Marc Swayze, Otto Binder, and C.C. Beck. Whew!
A/E might not have the attraction of the "now" for some comics fans, but the magazine does the heavy lifting of exploring how the comics industry got started and how it developed, honoring dozens of creators in the process. For comics history, there is simply no better magazine.
ALTER EGO #51 gets its usual five out of five Tonys.
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BETTY
BETTY #149 is an "off" issue. It's not so much that its four stories have familiar themes (the Archie/Betty/Veronica triangle, teen fads, the economic gulf between the gals, Betty's devotion to Archie) - that's common for Archie comics - it's that the scripts lack the snappy dialogue or clever twists on the themes which would have overcome the sameness thereof. They read like the writers had phoned them in.
Penciller Stan Goldberg (inked by John Lowe) still managed to turn in some sweet drawing, but even terrific art can't save poor writing for a story guy like me. However, you can credit Goldberg for earning this issue its solitary Tony.
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CITY OF TOMORROW
Howard Chaykin's CITY OF TOMORROW #1-2 [Wildstorm; $2.99] were reviewed here on August 17. To quote myself:
The "city" is Columbia, a utopian community whose citizens are served by robots built to recreate a golden age of innocence that never truly existed. The "tomorrow" is a near-future America where terrorist attacks have allowed the government to amass and abuse great power with the overriding responsibility of covering its illegal tracks.
Protagonist Tucker Foyle is a ex-black ops agent, the "ex" by virtue of his being ordered "cleared" to cover some of those afore-mentioned tracks. His father created Columbia and that's where the inconveniently still alive Tucker returns, only to discover a virus has turned the city's mechanical workers into rival crime families: the Doppelgangsters and the Cosa Nanostra.
I gave those initial issues my top rating and the concluding four issues came darn close to scoring as high. In issues #3-6, we saw the gang war heat up, discovered that both Foyle's father and the government had roles in the nastiness, learned how Foyle's mom really died, watched Foyle fall in love with a robot, and ended up with new leadership in Columbia.
As writer, Chaykin kept the issues exciting, funny, and sexy, three of many things he does really well. As artist, he did some of his best work ever, ably backed up by colorist Michelle Madsen. Even at four Tonys each, the issues are well worth buying/reading and I hope the series is collected in trade paperback sooner rather than later.
So why am I being stingy with that fifth Tony? It's partially because, while I like the Foyle/Ash romance, I didn't think it was as convincing as it needed to be. It's partially because the stuff with Foyle's dad was a bit of a cliche. It's partially because I felt the ending should have carried more impact. Still, on a more positive note, I like the possibility of more stories set in this city of tomorrow and the world of tomorrow around it. Anytime and anywhere, I'll always make the time to check out new comic books by Howard Chaykin.
CITY OF TOMORROW #3-6 get four Tonys each.
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COMICS IN THE COMICS
CLEATS creator Bill Hinds does double duty every day. Besides writing and drawing this strip about soccer-playing kids and their parents, he's also the artist of TANK McNAMARA, which is written by Jeff Millar. The above strip from September 1 is a perfect fit for our "Comics in the Comics," featuring, as it does, an homage to a classic running gag from Charles Schulz's PEANUTS.
For more CLEATS and more on Hinds, go to:
www.ayso-l.org/cleats/home.htm
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TONY'S MAILBOX
Today's letter comes from WILLIAM VAUGHAN:
Thank you for your September 9, 2005 column on Katrina. As a Mississippi native and resident and a former resident of Louisiana, I appreciate your request to your readers to send donations to the Red Cross or other relief charities for hurricane victims. All of my friends on the Gulf Coast made it out alive and unhurt, but one, a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi extension, lost his house and everything he couldn't carry away. Now, we are finding out that the "comprehensive" hurricane damage policies sold by many insurance companies only cover wind damage, hiding the fact that they don't cover storm surge damage in the fine print. Guess what causes most damage in a hurricane?
Just as bad are the no-bid reconstruction contracts handed out to Bush administration cronies the day before Katrina hit. You'd think that we were in Michelangelo's studio down here with all the chiseling going on.
Thanks for speaking out against the corruption and trying to do some good for those who need it. You are a class act.
I'm sorry to hear of your depression. I hope that what follows will give you some cheer. First, Mississippi has a state Attorney General who realizes elected officials are public and not corporate servants. On behalf of the state of Mississippi, he is suing the insurance companies that promoted and sold fraudulent policies to unsuspecting homeowners.
There are many other individuals who did what they could to help. One of my fellow Greens up in Tupelo took in a mutual friend who had to flee the Gulf Coast ahead of the storm. Another friend, an amateur magician who was an acquaintance of Walter Gibson's, performed for evacuees here in Jackson.
The members of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance provided services and legal advice for immigrants on the Coast who were affected by Katrina and continue to help organize the struggle against employers who try to exploit them as overworked, underpaid indentured servants. The plutocrats who run this country may be scum but the American people are not. As politically blind as too many Americans are, most, as individuals, have considerable decency and generosity in them and will help those in need if given a fair chance to do so.
Your readers who donated to Tony's Online Tips to help you out and no doubt are being just as generous in responding to your call for donations to hurricane relief are fine examples of this truth. On behalf of my fellow Mississippians and my friends in Louisiana, my thanks to all of them. I hope things are better for you in the days ahead.
Since there's no way I can top this letter, I'll call it a day and add my thanks to all in the comics community who did whatever they could to help the hurricane victims. It makes me proud to be part of this community.
I'll be back tomorrow with more stuff.
Tony Isabella
<< 09/28/2005 | 09/29/2005 | 09/30/2005 >>
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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.
Please send material you would like me to review to:
Tony's Online Tips
840 Damon Drive
Medina, OH 44256
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