The Hayfamzone Blog . . . . . . . . . . by Brian Hayes

Who Controls Art?

2012-02-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

Of course our focus here in Hayfamland is on comic book artwork, but sometimes we do widen the focus (and longtime readers may remember that one Hayfamzone Blog article was about a family of ducks). My daughter Poth is, after all, a professional artist and so I keep one eye on all the goings-on in the world of art. Two recent events are worth bringing to your attention.

I. Unlikely Inference leads to Prize Revocation

For at least ten years now, the city of Chicago has had a contest to design artwork to adorn the annual city vehicle sticker that must be adhered to the windshield of every car and truck in the city. The contest is open to high-school-aged kids who were told, this year, to base their design on the theme "Chicago's Heroes." The entrants hone their designs in their school's art class and, after the ten best designs are determined by the contest-runners, the contending designs are presented in the Chicago Sun-Times and an online vote selects the winning design. Tens of thousands of votes are cast. In each previous year, the process went perfectly smoothly.

Immediately above, you can see the design that garnered the most votes this year and was declared the winner. No problem so far. But a day or two later the City Clerk announced that winning prize of a $1000 savings bond was being revoked from the fifteen-year-old special needs student who had drawn the artwork, and the design that had garnered the second-highest number of votes (and is pictured at the top of this article) would now be declared the winner of the contest. The reason given was that those hands in the design (reaching skyward toward the symbols of police and firefighters and medical professionals) could be interpreted as gang signs being flashed.

I was outraged, the boy's mother was outraged, the boy's teacher was outraged, and local newspaper columnists were outraged. (I very much like this Chicago Sun-Times editorial that points out the obvious gang signs in the Mona Lisa and other famous works of art.) The boy's teacher even showed the piece of clip-art of hands that her student had followed closely in drawing the hands of his design. The young man was even willing to re-draw the hands to appease the contest-runners, but they never even heard his offer. Here is a video of that young artist, proudly holding his artwork.

The young lady whose superhero-based design had been in second place wisely decided that she wanted no affiliation with this tainted contest, and she has withdrawn her submission.

II. Subject's Family disapproves Artist's Vision

There will be a memorial to President Dwight Eisenhower on the Washington Mall in Washington, D.C. Widely known and well-regarded architect Frank Gehry has been awarded the challenge of designing the memorial. For one portion of it, Gehry has proposed having a youthful and barefoot image of the future president surrounded by a montage of what he would accomplish later in life. Eisenhower once referred to himself as a "barefoot boy" after World War II and Gehry expanded on this thread for his design. Here is an article with more details.

It turns out that the family of President Eisenhower is opposed to Gehry's design. They feel it juvenilizes a great figure of history.

I'm no fan of Mr. Gehry's more typical ribbon-based architectural designs, but I feel he is on target with this plan; his idea is out of the ordinary and thought-provoking and inspirational. Aren't those exactly the characteristics that an artist's idea should have?

Leaving Easy Tweet Behind

2012-02-03T21:07:00.000-08:00

I joined Twitter in April of 2009 and quickly tired of it. In October 2009 I tweeted what I thought would be my last when I wrote "I'm going to hire someone to make my twitter posts. And that's what I call being on Easy Tweet!"

(I also 'vowed' when I started The Hayfamzone Blog that I would never embed images, but now I wouldn't think of putting up a post without an image to attract your eye. Things evolve.)

The hayfamzone is, quite literally, going places in 2012. (Keep checking back and soon I'll tell you what I mean by that!)

I invite you to click on the Twitter button that I've added on the right side of this page so you can follow me (and just in case something goes awry and you don't see any button, just search on twitter for hayfamzone and you'll find me immediately); I'll be sure to send out a tweet each time I post to the blog. I definitely want you to ride the Hayfamzone Starship with me, and 2012 is the year we're going to make the jump to warp speed!

Mike Sekowsky and Ugg Boots

2012-02-02T21:57:00.000-08:00

Ugg brand boots from Australia have carved out their own niche in the footwear world over the last few years. I have long hypothesized that their popularity is due to how much they approximate the appearance of superhero boots. After all, who wouldn't want to be and look like a superhero? The Uggs specifically bring to my mind superhero boots as drawn by Mike Sekowsky, and see if you don't agree with me when you look at this 1960s Justice League splash.

Well, an article in the newspaper this week slapped me with a bit of a comeuppance. It seems that the Uggs have been popular with some Middle School kids because the inherent looseness at the top of those boots allows the scalawags to hide from sight forbidden items like cell phones and switchblades and firearms. Who knew? So much for my superhero hypothesis!

Well, anyway, here is a photo of Mike Sekowsky I came across while exhaustively researching for this article. When I first saw Marshall Rogers and Howard Chaykin in person I was struck by how much they resembled characters they might themselves have drawn, and I am struck that same way when I look at this picture of Mr. Sekowsky.

Lots of Logo Talk

2012-01-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

Alex Jay left a comment yesterday on my article regarding the Mystery Letterer of the early Jimmy Olsen comics. I've known since the 1980s that Mr. Jay designed the logo for Howard Chaykin's American Flagg (which you can see again over here) but I wasn't sure what else he's done, so I dug in and found out; here is a little biography I stumbled upon. I also investigated his blog about lettering and was interested to see proposed Green Lantern logos that Mr. Jay designed.

On the last page and inside back cover of the recent Mudman #2, Paul Grist walks us through his thought process about how he designed his comic's logo. I got a kick out him saying that he felt that by including the figure of Mudman in the logo he was going for a Marvel/DC vibe.

Here is a short article showing some well-known comics logos and featuring links to many articles on the topic written by Todd Klein.

I think I have not yet heard one positive comment about the new DC Comics logos that were recently unveiled. One writer even pointed out that the "DC COMICS" portion was not kerned properly; I had to look up what that meant (and here is a game that will teach you about kerning!). It strikes me as way too much of an in-joke that the D is peeling off the C, and no way is a layman going to look at that design and see "DC." Which means that, as a logo, it fails. I far prefer this in-your-face alternative, as drawn by Mo ALi:

You can even watch a video about a fan distressed by the new DC logo!

Broom Hilda Won!

2012-01-29T22:31:00.000-08:00

Broom Hilda has beaten F Minus! A few months ago I reported how The Chicago Tribune was running an online survey to see which of those two strips would be retained on their comics page and which one would be relegated to the junk heap.

The cartoonist of F Minus lobbied on his website for reader support, whereas Broom Hilda's Russell Myers couldn't be bothered. Starting next week, the triumphant Hilda will face a new challenger in the Tribune's Comics Carousel. Hilda has now bumped off three or four consecutive challengers and you'd think the (dizzy?) comics page editor would begin to see the light that his survey process is flawed and that Hilda will probably continue bumping off the newbies ad infinitum.

I saw the vote tally on a dedicated Tribune Comics Carousel web page: 15,387 votes in favor of Broom Hilda and 4,044 votes for F Minus. I was impressed to see that so many readers had been involved and interested enough to cast a vote.

(I went back to the same page a few days later, but the vote tally was nowhere to be found. In its place was the below drawing of "Colonel Tribune" and a terse explanation that the web page I was looking for no longer existed. It seems the newspaper intends some of its links to be very short-lived, but how peculiar that they would in this manner mock Colonel Robert R. McCormick (1880 - 1955), an early owner and publisher of the paper! )

I Figured Out What The Flash and Wonder Woman Are Saying!

2012-01-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

For the full story behind the above animation be sure to read my previous post located farther down below but, while you're right here, go ahead and click to start the YouTube music located immediately below and prepare to be engulfed in a multi-sensory experience as you feast your eyes on the magical Big All-American billboard.

Happy Hayfamzone New Year!

2012-01-01T17:29:00.000-08:00

I laughed until I cried when I saw this great animation! What in the world could The Flash and Wonder Woman be saying?

Kerry Callen gets the credit for getting this great cover-gif ball rolling, and I most definitely posted a comment on his blog letting him know I appreciated his efforts. When I shared his four covers with you last month, I went on to suggest three other covers that I believed could benefit from the same treatment.

Well, you'll never guess who picked up that gauntlet so I'll just tell you: it was Poth herself! She is not only the Princess of the Hayfamzone but also the Queen of Gifs! (But don't worry, I'm not about to start calling her Qog!) I think her Big All-American is magical.

Superman #233 was one of the most important Superman issues of the 1970s as it marked the beginning of editor Julius Schwartz's tenure on the book. And now it's alive!

Superman #14 is one of my favorite Superman covers of all time. In the interest of full disclosure, though, Poth did not animate the eagle herself. I guess one credo of the internet is Don't re-do what's already been done; Poth found an eagle-flapping-his-wings animation and she got it to roost on Superman's shoulder. (Try to take a wild guess what other comics character was holding the eagle in the original incarnation of the animation before you look here.)

Poth has previously made her mark here and here in the hayfamzone, but her animated cover gifs leave her poised to take over the entire internet. You can visit her found-images-and-gifs blog over here. Oh, and Poth is known in some circles as Jeanette Hayes.

Superheroes in Salt Lake City

2011-12-27T12:05:00.000-08:00

What better way to end the year could there be? Here is an article from The New York Times telling of some chaps who dress up in costumes and patrol their city.

The Wheel of Amos Fortune

2011-12-09T12:07:00.000-08:00

This spinner made my day when I saw it and I hope you're liking it also. All hats off to Kerry Callen for the time and effort it took to animate this gif. If you go visit his blog, you get to see three other equally excellent chestnuts: one of Batman and one of Spider-Man and one of Iron Man.

I can't take my eyes off that Wheel. It's so much fun and just perfectly executed. Thank you, Kerry! And thanks also to Mark Evanier for sharing the link in his blog or I would never have known about this great phenomenon.

It got me thinking about which other comic book covers might lend themselves to a similar animating. I was surprised at what a very small number of covers I found that I felt this would work well for. I did find three, and I'll tell you how I would animate them. The three below do not have motion like the JLA above (yet), but you can (for now) use your imagination.

This specimen from Superman #14 (1942) is one of my favorite Superman covers of all time. Other people like it also, considering the fact that a statue or two was made from that design. Do you realize that the cover was drawn by Fred Ray who was also the artist of Tomahawk for the first fifteen or twenty years of that venerable strip? By the way, I found out just recently that the original artwork to this cover was for many years in the possession of great artist Jerry Robinson (and you can watch a video of Mr. Robinson talking about the artwork over here ).

Anyway, I would animate that cover by having the eagle slowly flap his wings and by having Superman turn his head to look straight out at us and then back at the eagle.

I am also very fond of the cover to The Big All-American Comic Book #1 (1944). I would animate it by having the boy pan his head from left to right looking at all the characters, with the dog wagging his tail all the while. Oh, and two more things. Each time the boy's head carriage-returns to the left side of its panning, I would have the letters of his "WOW!" exclamation do a full 360-degree rotation AND I would have Wildcat wink.

The Neal Adams cover to Superman #233 (1971) is another great one. I would animate it by showing Superman breaking the chains.

If you feel inspired to try your own hand at animating a cover, please send me your masterpiece and I will be delighted to share it with the world.

I Like Mudman

2011-12-02T07:54:00.000-08:00

I've been enjoying the artwork of Paul Grist for years now. His Jack Staff series began way back in 2003 and his stripped-down style has always shouted "FUN!" to me.

He has now started up a new title that I feel is his best work yet. Mudman #1 hit the stands last month and it could easily have escaped your notice. But it's not too late to grab the comic for yourself! If you were a fan of the earliest issues of Spider-Man (and who wasn't?) I strongly encourage you to seek this one out because Mudman has that same cool vibe.

(I found it a bit of a funny coincidence that, in the issue of DC's My Greatest Adventure miniseries that came out the same week as Mudman #1, it was Batman himself who referred disparagingly to Aaron Lopresti's Garbage Man character as a "mud man.")

Here's a look at Mudman in action, and you can see clearly that Paul G. is giving his artwork plenty of room to breathe.

Neal Adams Narrates

2011-11-27T21:05:00.000-08:00

I have mentioned in earlier articles about artist Neal Adams' interest in earth's tectonic plates. Well, I did a little digging.

Here is a list of Mr. Adams' appearances on the Coast to Coast radio program, where he sometimes would talk about comics and other times would talk about science.

And here is a video narrated by and, I believe, animated by Mr. Adams. Pay close attention because Mr. A will quiz you when he sees you.

Justice in Granite City

2011-11-26T16:59:00.000-08:00

Recently I told you how a man's Superman collection was stolen by someone he had trusted.

I am pleased to be able to report that the villain responsible for the deed has been apprehended.

Here are the details of this gratifying new development.

Case closed!

One More Number

2011-11-25T13:37:00.000-08:00

I wrote last week about DC's New 52 movement and I named a couple of my favorite titles in the group. It slipped my mind to mention the one that I think is the best of them all.

Once every few years as I'm reading a great comic, I think to myself that it's one of the best series being published, that it's almost too wonderful and almost too beautiful. I thought that when I read Watchmen 26 years ago and I think that now when I read Batwoman.

Highly recommended.

'den not 'don

2011-11-24T12:12:00.000-08:00

The beautiful and assured lettering on view in the above Curt Swan Jimmy Olsen page is by Pat Gorden. That's right, I wrote "Pat Gorden" and not "Pat Gordon."

I reported previously how the identity of this mystery letter had vexed me and others for years. In his note to me on the matter, Mike Tiefenbacher spelled Laura Sprang's pseudonym with an unusual "en" suffix, but just about every other reference was spelling the name in the more common manner as "Gordon." I wrote back to Mike and told him of my conundrum, that I had gone with the majority and spelled the name as "Gordon" in my article but that I would change it to "Gorden" if he was certain.

Mike wrote back that he was pretty sure that that was the information given to him by letterer Milt Snappin back in 1984, but the matter could be resolved in a definite way by looking at the introduction by Joe Desris in the books that reprinted the Batman newspaper strips (Mike didn't have his copies within reach at that moment).

Well, wouldn't you know, the Hayfamzone Library had a tome of Superman newspaper reprints, but no Batman. I went ahead and ordered a Batman book on ebay and waited for it to arrive. And waited. I wrote the seller asking about the delay and he said, whoops, he'll put it in the mail now. When the book did finally arrive, I found the Joe Desris introduction to contain no mention of Pat Gorden/Gordon; the book I got was the one of Batman Sunday strips and what I was looking for must have been in the book of Batman daily strips.

Enough of this comedy of errors. Mike T. was pretty sure about the spelling and I did find one online resource that agrees, so from this point forward that great letterer will be referred to in The Hayfamzone Blog as Pat Gorden.

Numbers Game

2011-11-18T06:24:00.000-08:00

As you know, a couple of months ago DC Comics canceled all of its DC Universe series and re-started each with a new number one. (Well, not all of them. Some were swept away in the tide.) There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth but, in the time since, it is worth noting that the sky has not fallen.

I admit that I regretted losing the advanced numbering of Action Comics and Detective Comics (each of which had been published and numbered continuously since the late 1930s) as well as entirely losing the only-recently-reborn Adventure Comics. But I tried to take a wait-and-see attitude.

This radical move was certainly an act of desperation on the part of DC. They had been producing many quality comics all along but had long struggled ineffectively to loosen Marvel's stranglehold on the list of Top Ten Sellers each month. To DC's credit, they did discard some chaff that had been being published merely out of habit.

Sales have been robust on the new series and it has allowed DC to march right on into that Top Ten in a decisive way. Titles that had been limping along (like Superman, for heaven's sake) have been re-energized, while some characters that had been dormant for a few years (like Swamp Thing) have been successfully brought back onto the playing field. Some titles that absolutely nobody had been clamoring for (like Hawk and Dove and Resurrection Man) found themselves to be luckily riding the wave in, and it's curious that not a single brand new character has been introduced yet, but still most of the "New 52" have been impressing me in a very positive way.

I applaud DC for the fan-sensitive way they implemented the changes in their continuity. The Flashpoint Conceit of a cosmic reset button being hit (but not all the crystals growing in exactly the same way they previously had) is kind of fun. Marvel Comics, on the other hand, preferred to have their cake and eat it too when they continued publishing their long-running series but additionally presented new "Ultimate" versions of the old characters; out of protest against Marvel's blatant and crass commercialism I have refused to buy any of those Ultimate comics in the many years they have been running (the sole exception being whatever that miniseries was that Art Adams drew because it was just too beautifully drawn to resist).

I have two particular favorites among DC's New 52. With little success DC has tried reviving the Swamp Thing series a few times since Rick Veitch was on the book in the 1980s, but I'm here to tell you that the new storyline is the best one the character has had in these past twenty-five years (or maybe even longer). And the new Firestorm series is the best one that that character has ever had; there are now two Firestorm characters that under certain circumstances merge to become the monstrous Fury of Firestorm (somewhat reminiscent of how Jack Kirby's Forever People could collectively decide to bow out and be replaced by The Infinity Man).

I'm all in favor of good comic that are fun to read. Despite a few missteps in the New 52, DC is now providing me with even more good comics today than they were a few months ago before the changeover. I'm keeping my finger on the pulse but, even at this early juncture, I feel ready to proclaim that DC's New 52 is a creative success.

My Letter from Curt Swan

2011-11-11T13:33:00.000-08:00

Curt Swan is my favorite Superman artist of all time. He always has been and always will be.

Mr. Swan started his comics career drawing The Boy Commandos in the 1940s, but he would soon begin his association with Superman that continued well into the 1980s. I would say he was the main cover artist of the Superman family of books from the middle 1950s through the late 1960s, on titles like Action Comics and Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane and World's Finest and others. But then Neal Adams and, later, Nick Cardy took over those cover duties.

From 1971 through 1976 I would peg Mr. Swan's cover output at roughly zero pieces, as he concentrated on the Superman story interior pages. A real shame, because I always liked the Swan covers. Then came DC Super Stars #12 in late 1976 with, you guessed it, a Curt Swan cover! I am showing you that cover up above and isn't it beautiful! (By the way, whenever Mr. Swan needed to draw a ferocious monster or a life-threatening gorilla, the creature always seemed to come off his pencil resembling a cuddly teddy bear; Mr. Swan was such a nice man he was unable to draw any mean-looking creatures!)

I liked the DC Super Stars cover so much that I wrote Mr. Swan a letter in care of DC Comics telling him just that. And he very graciously wrote me a note in return! For a number of years it's been in my head that I wrote my letter right when that DCSS was released but, since Mr. Swan's reply is dated 1985, I guess something must have delayed me for six or seven years. Hm.

Well anyway, you can see the note that Mr. Swan sent me by looking right here. That fine gentleman even went so far as to enclose with the note a personalized lithograph of one of his pencil drawings, and you can view that over here.

I said it before and I'll say it again. Curt Swan is my favorite Superman artist of all time.And a really nice guy.

Comic Book Deliciousness

2011-11-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

Many things amaze me. Every day when I see an airplane in the sky it strikes me as wonderful that the huge thing doesn't drop to the ground like a rock. And I'm especially amazed that practically any piece of information can be tracked down on The Internet (which I capitalize and embolden out of reverence).

As a case in point, here is a website that presents TWO HUNDRED TWO Hostess Twinkie and Cupcake comic strip advertisements that were published in comics a couple of decades back. (The sample I'm showing above is drawn by Curt Swan and Vince Colletta and lettered by Ben Oda.) The compiler of the page went the extra mile and wrote a fairly funny quip to accompany each link ("Batman battles a man in a dog suit. Very sad day in Batman's career.").

Enjoy!

Prejudice Behind the Scenes of the Comics Page?

2011-10-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

As a youth many years ago I used to read Broom-Hilda by Russell Meyers. The feature bowed in 1970 and still runs in the newspaper, but these days the only three strips I look in on daily are Ziggy (which I find oddly calming) and Frank and Ernest (still concocting new puns after all this time) and the brilliant Mutts (an indirect descendant of the nearly-divine Calvin and Hobbes, if only in my mind).

Though I may have outgrown Broom-Hilda, it is solidly done and it does have an audience. Apparently however that audience does not include the comics page editor of The Chicago Tribune, who has been trying to give this strip the heave-ho for a number of months.

A newspaper's comics page evolves over time for a number of reasons. Some strips (like Little Orphan Annie and Brenda Starr and, for that matter, Little Nemo in Slumberland) stop being produced by their writer and artist and thereby they leave the comics page; part of the circle of life, these self-terminations open up room for new features. Sometimes though a new strip becomes available when a newspaper has no space to run it; the editor may choose to cancel the newspaper's affiliation with a still-in-production strip in order to create room for a worthwhile new feature.

For a year or so, The Chicago Tribune has presented what they call their "Comics Carousel." A strip that is ensconced on the comics page is pitted in a head-to-head competition against a new strip that is published on a trial basis until readers weigh in regarding whether the old strip should be retained or should be discarded in favor of the challenger. All well and good. To me this has the aura of a game show or even a reality show, so maybe the Comics Carousel resonates with readers.

Presently in the Carousel, Broom-Hilda is up against some new thing called F-Minus (which, by the way, is exactly the grade I would give to it). (You can view a recent Sunday's Comics Carousel over here.) What strikes me as an irregularity is that this is at least the third consecutive time in recent memory that Broom-Hilda has been a contender in the bout. She keeps winning and the comics page editor keeps setting her up again, like tenpins.

Move on, I say. Broom-Hilda has successfully defended her crown repeatedly. This editor who appears so anxious to be rid of her should either pull the trigger once and for all or else leave poor Hilda alone.

Mystery Letterer Revealed

2011-10-21T08:53:00.000-07:00

Some things you want to know are easy to find out. Others are not.

If you come across an unfamiliar word when reading you can, of course, look it up in a dictionary. But what if you know a word's meaning but can't think of the actual word? The dictionary would not be useful at all in that circumstance.

Comic Books are universal these days in their practice of giving credit to a story's writer and artist(s) and letterer and colorist. But you know that it wasn't always that way! Most comics in the 1940s and 1950s gave no hint as to the identity of the creative personnel responsible for the stories.

For about a decade now I have been particularly vexed by one unknown individual. The image above is a splash page from 1957's issue #21 of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen. No credits are given. Any fan of Curt Swan will immediately recognize that the pencilling on the page was that gentleman's handiwork, and The Grand Comics Database (G.C.D.) has tutored me that the inker is Ray Burnley. But look at the caption and word balloon lettering. It is striking! The style is consistent and assured and just plain beautiful. All of the early Jimmy Olsen issues are obviously lettered by this same individual, but who could it be? I needed to know!

I tried every which way to get the information. First line of offense: the G.C.D. was unable to help, leaving the "letterer:" field for those issues blank. Second line of offense: online I found a Letterer Index from 2006; it showed samples of various 1950s and 1960s DC Comics letterer's styles but, wouldn't you know it, the one style which that index could not penetrate was shown on a sample page from Jimmy Olsen #13! Third line of offense: I reached out to Todd Klein and Tom Orzechowski, both of them well known to be scholars of lettering as well as expert practitioners themselves, but they too were unable to discern whose style it was.

So what's left for an information seeker to do? No other scholar of lettering leapt to mind, but maybe a scholar of comics in general might happen to possess this particular pearl of knowledge? I wrote to Mike Tiefenbacher and asked if he knew who lettered the early Jimmys. His answer?

"Sure, I know. It's Pat Gordon Sprang, Dick Sprang's then-wife. She started work at DC in the '40s as Dick's letterer, then got work on her own, and was one of the '50s mainstays. If I recall correctly, she worked there through about 1961, and when she left, Stan Starkman was hired to letter most of the books she had worked on for Jack Schiff (Mort Weisinger hired several temporary substitutes, finally settling on production staffer Milt Snapinn as his go-to guy). Again, this is from memory, but I believe it to be an accurate encapsulation of Pat's tenure there."

Well how about that. The moral of this story, if anything, would have to be the following: The way to find out anything you want to know is to ask the person who knows the answer!

Wikipedia offers the following additional information. Dick Sprang taught his wife Laura A. Sprang to letter and color for comics; she subsequently took on the pen name of Pat Gordon and handled the lettering of most of her husband's stories (and here is a sample of their teaming from 1945). She later branched out and lettered for DC Comics apart from Mr. Sprang's stories. I found this vintage photograph of Pat Gordon Sprang.

An Improvement?

2011-10-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

This 1972 cover to Action Comics #419 is one of only a handful of times that penciller Neal Adams and inker Murphy Anderson worked together. Iconic, it was the pride of my original art collection for the twenty years that I owned it. To this day I use this Superman head as my avatar over on ebay. Here is what the printed comic book cover looked like:

That's correct, a photographic cityscape background was added, wonderfully successfully. Here is a vintage interview with former DC Comics Production Manager Jack Adler in which that gentleman makes clear that using a photographic background on this and other covers was his innovation (and did you know that the recently deceased Mr. Adler was a cousin of broadcaster Howard Stern?).

But the background was never affixed to the original artwork. Rather, a photostat of the Superman figure was pasted onto the New York City background on a separate, camera-ready production copy. A couple of years back I saw that page of production artwork in a gallery show, and it was somewhat striking to see the complete black-and-white cover image after having been so accustomed to seeing the white-background artwork that I had owned for so many years.

In 2006 I decided to downsize my art collection and I did allow this fabulous page to be grabbed out of my clenched fingers. While it was up for bid on ebay I received a very generous Buy-It-Now offer from Stephen Fishler of New York's Metropolis Comics and I even got a phone message from the son of Neal Adams, but the auction carried on to its closing seconds.

The winning bidder was a nice gent named David Mandel. Maybe you've heard of him? He was a writer and co-director of the movie Eurotrip (David receives one-third of a nickel for every copy sold of the DVD!) and he also wrote for ten episodes of Seinfeld. Just about every page of artwork I sold back then I packed for shipping myself (between two masonite boards) but this gem I left to the professionals at The UPS Store; David commented to me when he received the package that it was amazingly well packed (which it was; I think there was even a trap door in there someplace) and at that point I went back to UPS and passed the compliment on to the young man who had packed it (and gave him a little tip!).

So that was years ago, but then last week I happened to be searching online for the Action 419 image. Look at what I found:

This is in David Mandel's comicartfans Gallery Room, and in the description David thanks Gordon Christman for adding the photographic background to the artwork (PLEASE BE SURE TO READ THE UPDATE BELOW). I know that museums from time to time touch up masterpieces in their collection and David owns this page of artwork and it's his to do with as he sees fit, but I don't think I would have done this. That's just me! Maybe I might have imposed a photostat of the Superman figure onto the background while leaving the original drawing undisturbed, and then displayed the two versions side by side. What would you do?

By the way, David's collection on display at comicartfans.com is incredible. You can view it here.

UPDATE ON 15 OCTOBER 2011
If I were a proper journalist I would have thought to contact David Mandel about this matter beforehand rather than inviting him to read the article after it went live. David wrote me a note this afternoon saying that he did not permanently affix the background onto the artwork. "It is not attached, I would never do that to art," David explained to me in a gentlemanly manner. Rather, the cityscape is on an OVERLAY. I hereby apologize to David for having jumped to an incorrect conclusion.

The Turtles, Through My Lens

2011-10-06T06:18:00.000-07:00

One of my high school students asked me last week "Do people really look at your website? It's just about you."

Well, yeah.

I do try to get the tentacles to reach outwards sometimes, last week's little Mark Martin interview being an excellent case in point. But even on that front I do want to say a little more about me.

I reported in last week's article that Mark had drawn some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stories for Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. But let me tell you that I myself had an almost-run-in with the Turtles.

I started purchasing TMNT with their very first issue when it was released back in 1984. The comic was a fun send-up of Frank Miller's Ronin and I liked it.

After a couple of issues I seem to recall that Eastman and Laird started printing pin-ups of their Turtles on the (I think) inside back covers, as drawn by various other artists. I unwrapped a sheet of Craftint board and drew my version of those Turtles, and you can see the result above. I'm pretty sure I sent it in to them and I'm also fairly certain that it did not see print. If you know to the contrary that it did get published, please let me know! (And did you realize that Kevin Eastman used a few drops of his Turtle Money to purchase Heavy Metal magazine a number of years ago?)

Maybe you'd like to examine a larger image of the drawing, and you can do that here. You can read about late and lamented Craftint here and see some beautiful artwork utilizing it here and (gulp, here are two more by me) here and here.

Allow Me To Introduce. . . Mark Martin

2011-09-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

Remember back in the late 1980s when there was a "Black and White Boom" in the world of comics? A multitude of independent companies published a huge number of comic book titles. Printing on newsprint without color was relatively cheap, so why not? Some of the comics were good. Others not so much.

One of the great ones was Gnatrat, The Dark Gnat Returns. Cartoonist Mark Martin's storyline was clever and his artwork was both clean and distinctive. The comic was a parodic mash-up of Frank Miller's work on Batman and Daredevil and Ronin. It worked. The comic book was acclaimed. You can give yourself a reminder of how much fun Mark's artwork is by looking here.

One or two more Gnatrat comics made it into print but then Mark went in some other directions. He drew some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stories for Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. He became a regularly-scheduled artist-columnist for The Comics Buyer's Guide (welcome to the club!). Plus I always enjoyed stumbling upon Mark's cartoons when I was subscribing to Nickelodeon Magazine in the 1990s.

But then Mark Martin dropped off my radar for a decade or so. Last month I sold a Gnatrat on ebay and it got me wondering whatever happened to Mr. M.

One Google search later and I was watching a video of Mark on kickstarter.com pitching a Gnatrat revival! Kickstarter is a website where individuals-with-plans present their concept and invite onlookers to make monetary pledges to help make their concept a reality. When the individual's goal is met, production commences.

I very much liked Mark's hierarchical pledge-levels. For a certain amount a pledger's name would be lettered into the proposed Gnatrat story or, for a certain higher amount, the pledger's avatar would appear in the story. I was disappointed that I happened upon the Kickstarter video after the pledge deadline had passed, but I found the video entertaining in and of itself and you can watch it yourself over here.

I wrote Mr. M a note saying how much I have enjoyed his work and (what the heck) whether he would consider ruminating on a couple of questions for the widely-beloved Hayfamzone Blog. And he said yes!

I asked what his favorite comics series and
who his favorite artists of all time were.

"It's impossible to narrow it down to a manageable

list, so just off the top of my head Krazy Kat, Pogo,

Melvin Monster, WEIRDO / Arcade / RAW,

Rowland Emmett, Charles Addams..."

I asked what current comics series he follows.
"None. Sorry about the short answer, but it's honest.
The only thing I have consistently followed and bought
in the last year was the Melvin Monster hardcovers."

I asked how he makes his living between Gnatrat jobs.

"I'm a designer / illustrator at a publishing firm. I'm an

anonymous cog in a machine by day."

Anonymous cog indeed. Not around these parts! And now if you don't mind, I'll wrap up our little write-up with the sentence that launches Mark's Wikipedia entry:

Mark Martin is an American cartoonist known for his humor and satire.

Bad News in Granite City

2011-09-23T06:53:00.000-07:00

Granite City, Illinois is a suburb of St. Louis. I came across a compelling story, a tragedy really, about a Superman collector who lives in Granite City. Chances are the story did not find its way into your newspaper, so here is the online version.

But wait! There is a happy ending to this story and you can read it here.

The Hayfamzone Blog prides itself on helping its readers keep up with comics-related current events.

Archipelago, Man of a Million Islets

2011-09-17T06:05:00.000-07:00

One of the comic books I have up for bid on ebay this week is Captain Marvel #4 from M.F. Enterprises. This character is not what anybody thinks of when the phrase "Captain Marvel" is uttered; this comic is the epitome of obscure.

That's not to say it's bad, and it definitely has an excellent pedigree; the artwork is by Carl Burgos (who created The Human Torch for Marvel Comics #1 in 1939) and Carl Hubbell (whose comics credits also date back to 1939). The series lasted four issues in 1966 and here is a gallery of the covers.

This Captain Marvel's power is that he can split his body into separate pieces at the joints. This may explain why the series lasted four issues. But the comic did make an impression on me when I was a wee tyke and manifested itself in a drawing I did years later.

I came up with Archipelago, who could split his body into a million little islands, and who had a visual resemblance to Archie Andrews. I drew exactly two pages of this character. The first is a full-page pin-up that showed most of those million islands in detail (and, peeking at you from behind the wall, there is the M.F. Enterprises Captain Marvel!). The second page is a "movie-length" epic in which Archipelago offers to help a young girl in distress.

I had great fun putting it together and Alan Light published it in The Buyer's Guide 29 years ago. Honestly, I can't say if any reader realized that the peeker on the pin-up was Captain Marvel or my character's direct link back to him. The world was a lot quieter back in the days before the internet.

You can see a larger view of the pin-up here and you can view the movie-length epic here.

Jack Kirby, Great Writer

2011-09-04T14:51:00.000-07:00

The first of the new DC Universe titles has been released. Unfortunately, the 2011 Justice League #1 underwhelmed me. I'll write more about it later, but I doubt that any line of dialogue from it will still be in my head forty years from now.

On the other hand, I can cite for you lines written by Jack Kirby forty years ago that are still in my head.

In an early issue of The New Gods (it was almost certainly number seven, featuring "The Pact" (which, by the way, was my first encounter with the word "pact")), Izaya the Inheritor stood defiantly before the Source Wall and demanded "If I am Izaya the Inheritor, what is my inheritance?" First off I thought it was so cool that a chap had been going around with a nickname all along and never knew what it meant, and secondly I thought it was supercool that the answer "The Source" was written by the flaming hand on the Wall.

In a different early issue of the same comic (either number five or six, because those were the two issues featuring Slig and the rest of The Deep Six as villains), I read in awe as Slig mockingly taunted Orion with "Orion is his very own monster!"

And please don't make me tell again how Superman's uncharacteristically contemplative behavior in the last panel of Forever People number one cemented me as a comic book fan for life.

Jack Kirby is pretty much universally admired for his bold concepts and, of course, for his dynamic artwork. Well, I also admire Jack Kirby for his writing.

A Very Specialized Comic Book

2011-08-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

I've been frequenting One Stop Comics in Oak Park, Illinois since 1988. My main comic book guy from 1974 to 2002 was Chicago legend Joe Sarno, but Joe didn't carry every title I was interested in. For example, I would buy Prime Cuts (the Fantagraphics black and white anthology magazine) at One Stop.

Two years ago One Stop opened a satellite shop just one block away from my home in Chicago (while retaining the anchor store in Oak Park). I visit the One Stop in my neighborhood every couple of weeks and say hi to the guys.

A few months ago I saw a copy of an Oak Park newspaper lying on a table. I've written previously about my fondness for newspapers and I couldn't resist paging through that issue just to see what that newspaper looked like. I wasn't expecting to find anything of interest to me in the paper so imagine my surprise when I spotted an article about One Stop Comics!

"Spider-Man saves OP comic store!" The article explains that a comic book store that ordered at least 575 copies of Spider-Man #666 could get 500 of them printed in a personalized edition with a photo of their comic shop on the cover! Of course this could project could tailspin into nothing more than an exercise in vanity since the only comic buyers who would see that comic were pre-existing customers who came into the store. But One Stop owner Rick Manzella worked the system well and managed to get this article into the newspaper and possibly thereby expand his customer base. Good for him!

You can see that newspaper article for yourself here and
you can see the website of One Stop Comics over here.

Poth

2011-08-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

Many of you enjoyed the tour of the DC Comics offices presented by the Princess of the hayfamzone right here in The Hayfamzone Blog a couple of weeks ago, so you might find this update interesting.

We recently found out that the Princess of the hayfamzone (let's call her Poth for short) appears on-screen in a major Hollywood film! The image above is a frame from the movie.

Poth was interning a couple of years back at Holographic Studios in New York City and some movie-makers approached owner Jason Sapan about using his storefront for a scene in their movie. Mr. Sapan (who is better known to his coterie as Dr. Laser) said yes, as long as they would agree to include Poth in their movie!

Movie-making ensued and memories faded. Dr. Laser was in a video store a few weeks ago and discovered that the movie had been finished and released and he called up Poth to reveal the news. The name of the 2009 release is Breaking Point and, if you have a Netflix account, you can watch it instantly by looking here. It features Tom Berenger and Busta Rhymes and Poth and it seems to have earned itself 3 stars out of 5!

If you would like to learn more about Holographic Studios, just click here. The studios include a gallery of holograms and it is open to visitors on weekday afternoons. Dr. Laser has a long resume including having been a consultant on the Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky.

What's next on the plate for Poth? Let's all keep in mind that this is a comic book blog and not a movie blog! We've proposed to Poth that maybe she could honor us with a photo tour of the Marvel Comics offices and rumor has it that she is pondering the proposal. Fingers crossed!

A Comic Book Dream of Mine Came True Retroactively

2011-08-09T16:33:00.000-07:00

Wally Wood is one of the best comic book inkers of all time; you would have a difficult time finding a comics fan who would dispute this statement. I am also very fond of his pencilling but there wasn't nearly as much of that and so he's not as well remembered for it.

But his inking? Beautiful. I own a Jack Kirby Sandman page inked by Mr. Wood. And pages he inked over Steve Ditko and Walt Simonson and Gil Kane and Garcia Lopez and Bob Brown (among so many others) were some of the most beautiful artwork produced by those artists.

You remember that Gene Colan crossed the street to work for DC Comics after an editorial dispute with Marvel Comics back in the early 1980s. He was given Batman and Wonder Woman series to draw, and I started daydreaming. Wouldn't it be a fabulous teaming, I thought to myself, if Wally Wood were to ink Gene Colan? Either on Batman or Wonder Woman or anything. I just wanted to see a collaboration between the men. I waited and waited, but it never happened. We've lost both gentlemen now, and I've regretted for years that my curiosity could never be sated. But wait!

There was a discussion on the Ditkomania yahoogroup last month regarding unusual penciller and inker pairings. I learned that John Severin inked a couple of Gil Kane covers back around 1970; I hadn't known of those previously and it was interesting to look up the covers online.

I posted my wistful dream about Gene Colan and Wally Wood and, guess what? What I had been wishing for did happen! A follow-up post on the message board pointed out that the two gents got together for Captain America #127 back in 1970. It occurred a decade before I started wishing for it and I would never have known that my dream had come true if not for that internet bulletin board. I think the internet is so great!

Lickety-split I ordered Cap #127 on ebay, and paging through the comic is an interesting (if eerie) experience. I display the splash page above, and here is the great page 18, and here (while it lasts) is the original artwork to page 18 that went for a pretty penny on ebay a couple of weeks ago.

What's your comic book dream? Make sure you have one or else it won't be able to come true!

The Superhero Tour of New York

2011-08-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

Although there have been comic book companies headquartered in Chicago and even in Evanston, Illinois, New York City is pretty much undisputed as being the center of the comic book world. When I was a kid I dreamed of going to New York for the express purpose of visiting DC Comics and Marvel Comics. (Please be sure to see the footnote below!)

Well now you can take a Superhero Tour of New York for $24.99 (or for free if you're under 12 years old). The two-hour walking tour is offered every weekend and visits the building where Batman creator Bob Kane worked as well as the building where Spirit creator Will Eisner had his studios. Also you go inside the Overlook bar where numerous comics artists have added their character to the jam drawing on the walls; the photo above is from Overlook and that Spider-Man at the far left seems to be by John Romita (or would you say it's by Gil Kane?).

You can read articles about the Tour in the Chicago Sun-Times and USA Today, and here is the Tour's website so you can get even more details about the other attractions they visit.

FOOTNOTE: Although I have still never visited either of those Big Two comics companies, wouldn't you know that The Princess of the Hayfamzone managed to wrangle herself a personal tour of DC Comics last fall! She wisely had her camera with her. Let me show you the Superman statue in their lobby and the way the floors are identified inside the building's elevator and an assistant editor's office. Oh, and how's this for a wall mural!

Beware of Impostors and Accept No Substitutes

2011-07-28T20:18:00.000-07:00

There are many gentlemen named Brian Hayes, but they're not all me. For example: a few years after I graduated, the high school I attended even hired a teacher named Brian Hayes (but he was not me).

How many of these other Brian Hayes gents could also be comic book fans? You'd be surprised!

If you go over to YouTube and search for "Brian Hayes Superman" you get a video with some drunken Irish guy blathering on and on about Superman's powers or something or other. THAT IS NOT ME! Here is the link to that video but, believe me, you will not find what you see to be one bit edifying.

Although there may be many Brian Hayes characters crawling around the planet, there is only one hayfamzone and (good news) YOU ARE A MEMBER OF IT IN GOOD STANDING!

And, just for fun, here is a word cloud of the most frequently used words in The Hayfamzone Blog:

At Long Last, New Gifts from the Hayfamzone!

2011-07-09T15:38:00.000-07:00

I used to make a regular practice of sharing with you some of the wonderful comics-related websites and the like that I would find. For example, I reported a couple of years back how I had come across Fox and Crow cartoons posted on YouTube (and none of which I had previousy seen, so I figured they might be new to others also). I now have an UPDATE for you on that item!

This morning I was looking around for some cartoons on broadcast television and I found some. I came across a "syndicated network" called Antenna TV and you can find out on their website if they are available on a channel in your town. Why would you care? Well, this morning that channel was running an animation anthology show entitled Totally Tooned In and it's clear to me that once in a while this show plays Fox and Crow cartoons and even Tito and his Burrito cartoons! (And yes, in case you were wondering, I will be offering my copy of Real Screen Funnies #1 over on ebay at some point in the not-too-distant future.)

Now in case Antenna TV is not available in your neck of the woods, I still have good news for you! There is a Totally Tooned In website and you can choose from a long menu of cartoons to download and watch. I saw in the list a couple of Jill Thompson's Scary Godmother cartoons ready to download.

Keep in mind that all of the foregoing was merely the update to my old gift. I'm not through with you yet!

Maybe you're a comics news junkie like I am and maybe you check in every day like I do to see any new developments in the world of comics. Well, I've learned of a site on par with Newsarama and, every time I look there, I see an item that Newsarama has not yet told me about! I understand that the site used to be directed at retailers but these days it is perfectly accessible to fans like you and me. Please take a look at and enjoy icv2 .

Superman and Me

2011-07-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

Can you name your five favorite TV series of all time? I can, and one of mine is the 1950s Superman show. The George Reeves flesh-and-blood characterization is almost every bit as important to me as Curt Swan's interpretation of Superman in the comics.

When my butcher at the grocery store sees me he bellows, "Hello Clark Kent!" Mind you, that gentleman knows nothing about my interest in comics. He thinks I look like Superman. Maybe I also think that a little bit since my avatar over on ebay is the face of Superman from the iconic Neal Adams and Murphy Anderson cover to Action Comics #412, the original artwork of which I owned for many years.

Metropolis, Illinois is located at the southern tip of the state, about 600 miles below Chicago. In 1972 DC Comics proclaimed Metropolis as the "Hometown of Superman" and the Illinois state legislature in turn passed a resolution also declaring Metroplis as the "Hometown of Superman." The same year, as I was walking along a Chicago street, I stumbled across a brightly colored yellow book of matches touting The Amazing World of Superman (and I'm certain I have that matchbook around here someplace, but I'll save the search time by just showing you this one that I found online); I was always amazed that that matchbook swam all the way upstream to Chicago for me to find.

Every June Metropolis holds a Superman Celebration. A different gentleman is chosen to be Superman for each Celebration, and he wanders the streets in costume for the weekend as a roving ambassador. In the middle of the last decade I applied to be that year's Superman but the organizers foolishly chose someone else. I see now that one of the Special Guests at last month's 2011 Superman Celebration was Brandon Routh, star of Superman Returns.

Have you heard there's going to be a new Superman movie right around the corner? In fact they'll be doing filming for it in and around Chicago later this summer. The project is going by the name Autumn Frost but I don't know if that's a codename that will evaporate or if that will really be the movie's title.

The Chicago media did a good job alerting the masses that there would be a couple of open casting calls in the Chicago area and that the producers were looking to hire extras for the movie. One of those line-ups was held at The Chicago Academy for the Arts (which just happens to be where The Princess of the Hayfamzone attended high school) and I decided to take a bike ride over there to check out the scene on behalf of all the faithful Hayfamzone Blog readers.

The long line did wrap around the castle-like building. It moved fairly quickly but stayed at a constant length because new arrivals kept replenishing the back end. Down below is a view of that day's line for you.

Maybe you're wondering if I filled out one of those applications? Well yes I did! But I followed the advice on the Autumn Frost website and submitted my application online, which the site told me was every bit as valid as applying in person. Will I be appearing in the movie? You'll be the first ones I tell if I get that nod!

Hey Kids, Don't Try This at Home

2011-06-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

An article in yesterday's Chicago Tribune focused on whether exposure to comic books and movies and video games tends to make the youngsters have a proclivity towards violence. Interesting question.

What caught my eye was the graphic accompanying the article. It was a "Tribune Photo Illustration" and, since it doesn't appear to be available online, I will describe it to you. The upper one-third was a portion of the cover to 1938's Action Comics #1, the middle one-third was a close-up of Malcolm McDowell's despicable character from A Clockwork Orange, and the bottom one-third was video game screen capture of a pilot bombing a bridge.

Wait one minute, I said to myself. Did the Tribune Photo Illustrator really think that the Action #1 cover ever incited anybody to violence? Do kids these days make a practice of lifting cars and smashing them onto boulders like Superman was shown doing in that 73-year-old drawing? I just feel that the choice of that cover for inclusion in the Photo Illustration did not support the thesis and a better selection could have been made.

Here is the article in case you'd like to read it.

The Comic Book Theater Festival

2011-06-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows that Spider-Man is on Broadway, but are you aware that Batman is appearing off-Broadway right now? It's so far off, in fact, that it's across the river in Brooklyn, and Batz is the name of the play. It's but one facet of The Comic Book Theater Festival which is running at The Brick Theater (and this is an interesting website to visit; I found out that Marvel Comics writer Fred Van Lente and Masterpiece Comics genius R. Sikoryak are involved with The Brick).

I won't be able to attend the play but maybe you'll have a chance to catch it. Here is a review that appeared in The New York Times (and TCBTF has been extended a week beyond the date indicated in the image below!).

Another One Bites the Dust

2011-06-16T07:44:00.000-07:00

Who is your favorite comic book letterer? The process is a bit of a lost art these days and I can understand if you brush off the question like a mosquito off your nose. But not so very long ago the field of lettering was vibrant and thriving and at that time I might have chided you if you couldn't name a beloved practitioner.

Admittedly, I was ignorant of the artistry of lettering when I was younger. My awakening occurred during the late 1970s at the confluence of (1) DC Comics beginning to regularly name a story's letterer in the same credit box that identified the writer and artist and (2) the publication of the first editions of the oversized hardcover EC Comics Library. I've proclaimed any number of times that Ben Oda is my favorite comics letterer of them all. My two-pronged past-and-present fascination with his craftsmanship developed as I pored over his then-current work for DC and as I simultaneously admired his impeccable title lettering for many of the EC stories. (EC editor-in-chief Al Feldstein for some reason preferred the robotic-looking Leroy lettering for everything except the story titles, but Mr. Oda lettered entire stories for editor Harvey Kurtzman in, for example, Mad.)

Yes, Ben Oda is my favorite, but I appreciate the work of a bevy of other letterers also. John Costanza worked on the early issues of Jack Kirby's Fourth World comics. Mike Royer took over in the later Fourth World releases (and, as I now reflect on it, I probably knew Mike Royer by name before I knew Ben Oda by name since those early-1970s Kirby comics had an "Inked and Lettered by Mike Royer" credit line). Let's not forget about the excellent letterer of the early issues of Jimmy Olsen that I have lauded every time I listed a J.O. comic over on ebay (but whose identity I will not reveal until a later day). Another top flier is John Workman, whose work has adorned Marshall Rogers' Batman stories and Walt Simonson's Manhunter and Metal Men and Thor stories. In fact, I'm ready to announce to the world that John Workman is my second-favorite letterer of all time!

But I'm sorry to say that I'm here today bearing bad news about John Workman. He was one of the stalwart holdouts but now he too has thrown in the towel. It wasn't that many months ago that I can recall enjoying a comic with the beautifully jaunty rising and falling of Mr. Workman's hand-drawn letters. But it's a different situation altogether in the "Super 8" story insert in the midsection of many of this month's DC Comics releases.

The credit box of the Super 8 comic-within-a-comic says that the lettering is by John Workman, but where's the life? Where's the lilt? The lettering shows some resemblance to the style of Mr. Workman but the rigid uniformity of the heights of the rows of letters makes it woefully apparent that Mr. W has crossed over to the dark side and has computer-lettered rather than hand-lettered this story. The John Workman Wikipedia page makes mention that Mr. W is one of the last to still letter by hand. Somebody's going to have to go alter that line to read "Mr. W was one of the last to still letter by hand."

The glory days were great while they lasted. I feel a sadness as I watch the artform of comic book hand-lettering hobble toward extinction.

Computers are the worst thing that ever happened to comic book lettering.

Draw!

2011-06-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

I was at the stands and a cover caught my eye. I don't usually purchase Draw! magazine but issue 20 features a long interview with Walt Simonson and is wrapped inside this beautiful drawing of Jack Kirby's Orion. Head's up!

Here is the published version of the Draw! #20 cover and here is the original Jack Kirby version as seen on New Gods #1, for comparison.

(While you're here for a visit, how about if we dip into the legendary Hayfamzone Trivia Basket to share a little tidbit with you that you may not have heard before. In an interview many, many years ago Walt Simonson explained that he designed his artistic signature so it would look like a dinosaur!)

Jack Kirby Has Done It Again!

2011-06-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe it's been almost two decades since Jack Kirby left this plane to go create in a more expansive one. Yet, all these years later, The King is still impacting our wide world of comics.

I watched Smallville for the entire ten years it was on the WB (I mean CW) network. Some seasons were better than others and some were worse. This final year has been building to a crescendo to the drumbeat of "The Darkness is coming." Since last fall we have been introduced to Glorious Godfrey and Desaad and a quite excellent Granny Goodness (and we even found out that Lex Luthor's sister Tess (yes, you did read that correctly) was raised in Granny's orphanage). All year these minions were paving the way for the arrival of the dark lord Darkseid himself.

(When Darkseid did finally appear in the last couple of episodes, he was a shadowy and towering perfection of computer-generated imagery. And did you see that fireball of Apokolips filling the sky over Metropolis in the finale? Very nice effects.)

Not only are all these characters the brainchildren of the one and only Jack Kirby, the impending threat of Darkseid was the impetus for Clark Kent to once and for all don the Superman costume in the Smallville series finale. I thought it was a little bit cool when writer Jeph Loeb had the climax of the first season of NBC's Heroes take place in "Kirby Plaza," but here we have the writers of Smallville attributing the entire costumed mythos of Superman to a confrontation with Jack Kirby's Darkseid. I'll never stop saying it: HOORAY FOR JACK KIRBY!!!

(And maybe you'd like a closer look at that Superman splash page from Jimmy Olsen #143 that I've proudly owned for almost 30 years? Just click here.)

Batman Toys at McDonald's

2011-05-28T20:54:00.001-07:00

This is a good time to go get a Happy Meal at McDonald's. Your toy will be a package of THREE little plastic DC Comics characters looking the way they appear on the Batman/The Brave and the Bold cartoon show (which is to say they are slightly bigfoot).

On my first visit I got a sort of Batman-Robot and an Aquaman and a Black Manta. The second trip garnered a wings-akimbo Batman and a Tim Drake Robin and a quite-excellent Gorilla Grodd. It seems the pattern is to get two heroes and one villain in each three-pack.

Be sure to ask for a boy's Happy Meal though or you will get something called Madame Alexander toys in the girl's Happy Meal. (Don't they think girls like comics?) You can find a more scholarly dissertation about these toys at this link.

By the way, I came across the fun Batman and Ronald drawing above at Bat-Blog.com which you can visit by clicking here.

UPDATE on 29 May 2011:
Whoops. I went today to get another three-pack so I could report whether the pattern of one-villain-and-two-heroes-one-of-which-was-a-Batman-figure would continue. I reached into the Happy Meal box and pulled out (drum roll please) some monkey figure from Kung Fu Panda! (Can you believe this hayfamzone timing? I guess I came late to the party and the day after I tell you to go get the Bat toys they are no longer gettable.) Just about the last thing I need on this earth is a Kung Fu Panda toy so I gave it to a family at the next table and they seemed to be having quite a bit of fun with it when I left.

Let Me Tell You About David Mazzucchelli

2011-05-16T07:54:00.001-07:00

Before there was a hayfamzone, there was "Comic Art Entrepreneurs" ( and yes, as you probably figured, I'm the one that also concocted that name).

A couple of comic book buddies (Hi Rick T! Hi Mark S!) and I banded together to form an economic partnership revolving around comics. We would pay $15 to rent table space at The Old Comic Book Club of Chicago's monthly conventions held each third Sunday in the second floor ballroom at the Wabash Avenue YMCA (now shuttered). Sometimes we even sold enough to cover that $15 fee, but usually not. One month I bought the original artwork to a Flash splash page by Carmine Infantino for $10 and then, deciding I didn't like it so much, turned around and sold it the same day for $11 (Hi George H!).

Maybe you've seen one of the many movies in which Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland say "Let's put on a play in the barn!" Well, one day one of us three Entrepreneurs (yes, it was me) said "Let's publish a fanzine!"

There was no particular focus on what would comprise this fanzine other than it would showcase drawings both by comics professionals and by comics fans. I commissioned a crisp and sharp Captain Marvel pinup from the wonderful Kurt Schaffenberger, and you can view that beautiful drawing if you click right here.

I also put a classified ad in Alan Light's Buyer's Guide inviting comics fans to submit their drawings for publication in this unnamed fanzine. We received a handful of submissions. One of them was from David Mazzucchelli (and I think it featured the Silver Surfer).

Unfortunately, Comic Art Entrepreneurs dissolved and no fanzine was ever published.

Fast forward about one decade. David Mazzucchelli becomes a professional comics artist and makes quite a name for himself with his excellent work on both Daredevil and Batman (click here and here for refreshers).

Fast forward once again, this time to the year 2009. Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli is published. It's a hardcover book touted as a "graphic novel" (and we've certainly heard that phrase bandied about often enough). I kept it on my Amazon Wish List for two years but there had been no particular spark to get me to pull the trigger and actually buy it. One day out of the blue I asked my guy at Atlas Comics in Norridge Illinois (Hi John S!) what current comics he felt were remarkable. John couldn't vouch for any monthlies but he gave his highest recommendation to Asterios Polyp and that was exactly the spark I needed. I found a great deal on ebay and read it immediately. I hereby add my chant to the chorus of high praise. Here and here you can read other reviews of the book.

In comic book circles there is a lack of consensus as to whether Don McGregor's Sabre or Will Eisner's Tenement Stories was the first Graphic Novel. Both of those are excellent comic books in long form and upscale packages, but I am here today to proclaim that Asterios Polyp is the FIRST GRAPHIC NOVEL THAT HAS EVER BEEN PUBLISHED. It is so much more than a comic book! Its non-linear story masterfully weaves together strong characters and strategically placed foreshadowing and a spiraling of thematic elements and stop me now before this run-on sentence slows down the entire internet! Particularly amazing to me is the way the color palette is used to advance the story. And I was also very impressed with a lettering innovation Mr. M used to great effect in the closing pages of the book.

Twenty-some years ago when I saw Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing at the Lake Theater, I consciously thought to myself "I don't want this movie to end." Likewise when I was reading Asterios Polyp I was hoping the experience could go on and on. You can live this experience yourself if you click here.

My hayfamzone hat is off to David Mazzucchelli. I had no inkling what a mastepiece would be forthcoming from him when I opened that envelope containing his drawing 36 years ago.

The Comic Book World in 1955

2011-04-28T03:37:00.000-07:00

Do you own a copy of Dr. Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent? It's been in my collection for about twenty years and I'm hoping to find time to read it one of these decades. Moments that I have for non-periodical reading is scarce! (You'll think it comical but just yesterday evening I polished off a book that I began reading in 2003. Fabulous Small Jews has elevated Joseph Epstein to the rarefied distinction of Superb Short Story Writer already occupied in my mind by Damon Runyon and Harlan Ellison. (If you click on the link above you can read a few sample Epstein pages.) )

Well, today I have some good news for you and for me. Blogger extraordinaire Mark Evanier has unearthed a 25-minute video from 1955 that covers the same territory as Seduction of the Innocent. (I invite you to read Mark like I do at www.newsfromme.com .) His archival link does not point directly to this article (a byproduct of his posting more than one article every single day) so rather than send you there I will reprint his excellent introduction to the video. Mark wrote the following:

Here's an interesting curio — a 1955 TV exposé on the evils of comic books. The host is Paul Coates, who was an L.A. Times reporter who doubled as a TV host, usually covering pretty salacious or controversial topics. One might suggest his broadcasts exploited these subjects, putting some pretty racy stuff on the airwaves under the cover of condemning it. He was an occasional partner with L.A. TV newsman George Putnam, who did a lot of films and telecasts with a tone of outraged public scolding of "sins" that are now, for good or ill, commonplace.

The most interesting part of this 25-minute show is the conversation with Senator Estes Kefauver, who had headed up the inquiry into comic books in Washington the year before...and according to some, expected to ride that crusade right into the White House. You can judge for yourself how sincere or accurate he was...and probably guess what I think.

Coates interviews kids who read comics, as well as one comic book artist who apparently regrets the work he did. He's Ellis Eringer and his main credits were on the kinds of comics not addressed in this program. He was primarily an inker for Disney and Disney-type comics in the sixties, mainly for Western Publishing but occasionally directly for Disney Studios where comic book material was often produced for overseas publishers. He also occasionally inked Disney newspaper strips, particularly Donald Duck. He did do some romance and horror comics early in his career and the romance work he's talking about was probably when he drew a few stories for Harvey's love comics (like Hi-School Romances) between 1949 and 1951. Those were pretty tame books that did not quite match his lurid descriptions.

The other interesting thing about the show is who the director was: Irvin Kershner, then a staff TV director at KTTV...and the Associate Producer was Andrew Fenady. Just three years after this, Roger Corman would hire Fenady and Kershner to make Stakeout on Dope Street, a pretty lurid (for its day) and cheap movie about drug trafficking. Fenady and Kershner co-wrote the script, Kershner directed and Fenady produced and played a role. It was a much more respectable job than making shows like this one...

And here is the video.

Comic Book Coverage at Vanity Fair

2011-04-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

An article in the May, 2011 issue of Vanity Fair is entitled Superhero Movies: Turn Off the Projector and you can read it here. (The author of the article, James Wolcott, deservedly brags that he had a letter to the editor published in a 1967 issue of The Fantastic Four.)

Vanity Fair also has some articles in its archives that are noteworthy. Here is an interesting 2002 examination of Superman through the ages, and here is a 1986 appreciation of Frank Miller's interpretation of Batman in The Dark Knight.

Maybe you'd even like to view a slideshow presentation of the 2009 softball game between Vanity Fair and DC Comics?

The Hayfamzone Doppleganger

2011-04-15T04:08:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm all about the comic books. But I'm also all about the math class!

Since August of 1997 it has been my honor to teach the very talented students at Fasman Yeshiva High School in Skokie, Illinois. I'll also tell you that every springtime the students produce a Purim Shpiel, a play in which they lampoon their daily life (including their teachers!).

It was a treat for me that "Mr. Hayes" was the narrator of the 2000 Shpiel, whose storyline was based on The Wizard of Oz. I present to you Mr. Boruch Taub playing the role of "Mr. Hayes" and I'm told that his portrayal is (gulp) quite accurate. I hope you enjoy it as much as me when you look here to see the prologue and here to see the epilogue of the play.

The MCG in the NYT

2011-03-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

I find the current crop of Marvel Comics series to be tragically unreadable. I do purchase Namor because the Ariel Olivetti artwork is so entrancing, but there are many other books drawn by artists I admire that I will not lay down the dime (and by that I mean FORTY dimes) for because the writing and/or the status of the characters is in such a quagmire. I certainly out of principal refuse to buy Ultimate Spider-Man and its ilk because I don't want to reward the creative bankruptcy of recycling safe names rather than going to the trouble of creating new characters. The last time I was proud to buy a Marvel Comic was throughout the spectacular run on Fantastic Four by Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo (and that run that ended way back in 2005). I am always hopeful for the future, though, and look forward to trying out Daredevil when Mr. Waid puts his mark on that character.

Last week's Sunday New York Times featured a leviathan of an article about the current state of Marvel Comics (from a business-oriented perspective). The online version of the article has a rollicking fun photo of four of the Marvel bosses (and is different from the more subdued version of the photo of the same four that appeared in the print edition of the newspaper). You can read the article here.

I was interested to read in there that Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso has a son named Tito. That intrigued me because I have never met anyone named Tito and the only time I've ever even heard the name was the fun Tito and His Burrito series that backed up The Fox and the Crow in Real Screen Comics. (But I've never met anyone named Axel either. If I had been the interviewer, the unavoidable follow-up would have been to ask Axel what his wife's name is.)

Please don't think that I'm making fun of anybody's name. I would never! It's just that by now I've had (quite literally) thousands of students in my classes and any time I come across a name that is new to me I take notice. So it is with a tip of my hat that I send greetings to my current and former students with the names Boruch and Princess and Rogelio and ...

Technical Reveal

2011-03-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

The Hayfamzone Blog is pleased to present its first (and last?) guest column. Mark Plastrik sent me this message over on ebay and I was amazed to learn that he was involved with working on the beautiful opening titles of the 1978 Superman movie. He reveals something so technical about the work that went into producing those titles that I'm not even sure what he's talking about (but maybe you will be). I invite you to remind yourself how great that Superman opening was by looking here, and then off you'll go into Mark's Wonderland:

pokin' 'round yer blog-zone - noted yer 'preciation of Fleischer  'toons - well, my Grandpa Max did some Popeye and Felix  artwork back in the '30s - got both my father (Mark Sr., optical  camera) and his identical twin bro (Mort, sound editor) into film biz  in the 50's/60's - dad's been gone over quarter century, but still comes up in the IMBd data-base (believe it or not, so do I . . . see
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3079206/)
- my late Uncle Mort had a whole buncha Popeye "pencil-test" animation artwork . . . until they were stolen in the late 80's!

Yes, I worked 5 years at me ol' man's optical film lab (Computer  Opticals . . . the computer did not produce the art/effects, just ran,  with ultimate precision, the camera and projection heads of a classic  Oxberry step-printer) We became hot in the early 80s, especially after  the Superman, The Motion Picture main titles (also did titles fer Alien, Flash Gordon, a whole slew of Woody Allens and, yes, XANADU  - where I got my one-and-only screen credit (Animation Camera), ergo  the listing at IMBd (we didn't design, just hacked the elements t'gether  following someone else's "vision").

Dad was a "tech-genius" - those  ground-breaking Superman main titles required multiple runs over the  same frames to marry those "streaks" to the titles themselves, PLUS, as  each one faded away a new one waz zoomin' in at the edges - this  "overlap" meant ALL had to be produced in one flawless  string  (NO pick-ups!) - How did he do it?  . . . with a carton of Kents and a  gallon of cheap scotch whiskey as fuel, Dad unplugged the phones and  churned the furshlugginer stinker out solo in a marathon fifteen hour shoot!!

My main role was to "layout" the shoot on paper as a schematic for the camera-man to follow, unfortunately, I was, to coin a phrase, less-than-diligent - my frequent errors meant hours of wasted effort and redos - unlike today's digital/video world, we had to wait for the next morning's "dailies" to see those gaffes - like a certain barbaric buffoon, I "erred" a bit TOO much . . . in fact, Dad eventually FIRED ME!!!! (I believe his exact quote was "you're a poet, not a hack like me . . . so go find your true calling" . . . still lookin'!)

I Hate Comiclink

2011-03-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

Comiclink is an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of comic books and original comic book artwork. It sounds benign enough, doesn't it? What's not to like about that?

Well, I'm about to tell you. I hate Comiclink. For two reasons.

First of all, they more or less require that the comics listed on their site be CGC-graded. Maybe those are colloquially known as "slabbed" comics because they are dead and will never be read again and they may as well be lying on a slab in a morgue. Does anybody ever break the CGC seal to read the comic? Accumulating slabbed comics for the express purpose of investment is what I will dub anti-collecting. I have never owned and will never own a slabbed comic.

My second beef with Comiclink I feel even more strongly about than my first. Buyers and sellers there are anonymous to each other with Comiclink serving as the enabling intermediary. I despise that because those buyers and sellers are missing out on something wonderful. Many of you know that I sell a few comics over on ebay. Transactors on ebay are not anonymous to each other. It has been my utter pleasure to meet many fine collectors through my ebay selling, and I wouldn't enjoy the experience as much any other way. Phooey and ptooey to Comiclink.

In next week's Hayfamzone Blog post, one of my ebay acquaintances will share a story with you that I found very interesting when he told it to me. Hooray for ebay being non-anonymous or you and I would never have heard his fun story!

One Wolverine or Two Batmen?

2011-03-01T10:59:00.000-08:00

Look at the above drawing one way and you see one thing, but change your viewpoint and you see two other things. Isn't that fun?

This is in the same vein as another two-view drawing that made the rounds a few years ago. In that image, you would see either an old, hunched-over hag wearing a cape and hood or you would see a young society girl in a froofy get-up. If you never saw that drawing, we've spared no expense to dig it up for you.

So let's debrief. Did your visit to this blog today bowl you over with a raft of hard-hitting investigative reporting? Well, no. But did you get an eyeful of a candy-coated trifle puffed up with warm, salubrious pockets of air? Ah, yes. There truly is something different to see every time you visit The Hayfamzone Blog!

Easy Riddle

2011-02-19T21:18:00.000-08:00

QUESTION: "What comes to your mind when you look at this photo?"

ANSWER: "I have no idea what it is but it was certainly designed by Jack Kirby."

For the full story about what exactly the machine in the photo does, click here. Look here if you want me to belabor the obvious about Jack Kirby, and look here for a fun read about Kirby Machines.

By the way, my (nonexistent) secretary alerts me that this is the ONE HUNDREDTH ARTICLE posted in The Hayfamzone Blog. That was easy! This blog was initiated in the summer of 2006 and dedicated in every way to the Sense of Wonder that Jack Kirby couldn't help but create every time his pencil came down and glided along a piece of paper.
Hooray for Jack Kirby!

A New Superman Cartoon

2011-02-18T12:43:00.000-08:00

Back in the days before VCRs, I started a collection of animated cartoons on 16mm film. I still have them. Somewhere.

I own a couple of Daffy Duck reels and a couple of the UPA Dick Tracy shorts, but I especially gravitated toward the works of Max and Dave Fleischer, including their Popeye and Out of the Inkwell (featuring Koko the Clown!). But their Superman cartoons entranced me more than any of the others. The high-contrast colors in them are so memorably vibrant!

There were seventeen of the Fleischer Supermans, produced between 1941 and 1943. I collected three or four of them in the 16 mm format (or is it five or six?). I'm glad I hit the brakes before getting them all because a complete set of all seventeen on a DVD today costs less than just one of the 16 mm versions cost back then.

Now here's some great news you may not have heard. A contemporary animator named Robb Pratt has produced a new Superman cartoon. It is only one minute long and not a complete story, but it is beautiful and in the same vein as the Fleischer cartoons. I enjoyed it and you can too if you just look here.

And who can watch just one cartoon? Here is Superman in The Arctic Giant by the Fleischers, and here is a Dick Tracy, and here is a Koko the Clown. It's always a party in the hayfamzone!

My Letter in the Tribune

2011-01-12T21:31:00.000-08:00

Back in the old days, I had a few letters to editors published in comic books (dig out your 1978 The Rampaging Hulk #13 and your 1981 The Spirit #31, for example) and also in The Chicago Sun-Times (just set your microfiche reader to 21 October 1985). Now I have had one published in The Chicago Tribune.

Early last month, the Tribune put out a call for letters that paid tribute to a favorite teacher or neighbor or coach. I leapt at the opportunity to honor my favorite teacher, Mrs. Dolan, and I was elated when the editor notified me that they would be printing my letter. It was published in the newspaper on 29 December 2010. Here is what I wrote:

History was always my least favorite subject but yet the best teacher I ever had was Mrs. Dolan, my eighth-grade history teacher at Dever School back in the 1970s. She challenged me to live up to my potential, and the daily rigors of that endeavor were often tempestuous.

I kept in contact with Mrs. Dolan by mail after I graduated. I liked it when she sent me a wedding card comprising the text of Kipling's If.

Years later when I read of Mrs. Dolan's passing, I wrote a letter to her family explaining just how important that fine lady had been to me. I received an appreciative reply from Mrs. Dolan's daughter; what I wrote had been a revelation to the young ones who had known Mrs. Dolan as an excellent grandmother but had no inkling of her as a teacher.

I am now entering my thirty-first year as a math teacher. Thank you, Mrs. Dolan.

My Favorite Comic Book of 2010

2010-12-22T10:16:00.001-08:00

I love comic books. And, because of that, I am a harsh critic of comic books. Sturgeon's Law states that "Ninety percent of everything is crud," but I'll go ahead and plow right over that speed bump and guarantee you that ninety-NINE percent of the currently produced comics are crud.

Too frequently the comic book writer puffs up what might be a good one-issue story and spreads it out over six issues. I always ask myself, what if a person picked up just a single issue of a series? Would the person find the experience so entertaining that they couldn't resist sampling other series just because the artform of the comic book is so exquisite?

I go to the comic book store every week. I used to buy many more comics each week than I do now, but I drop in every week. I pick out my favorites titles, but with increasing frequency more and more of them disappoint me. Where are the Jack Kirby comics of my youth? Where is Jack Kirby?

I always look for something new in the long row of comics, something that will ignite me, something that will be irresistably beautiful. This year I found one such comic book. It was fabulous.

Daytripper was written by Gabriele Ba and drawn by Fabio Moon. It intentionally lasted exactly ten issues. There will never be another issue. The story is over. I can't wait to read it again.

I was startled and saddened about what happened to the lead character at the end of the first issue. But then it happened to him again at the end of the second issue and the third. Please pardon me for not wanting to give too much of the story away because I hope you will take this ride yourself.

So many of the comics I read center around mindless battles and I wonder if the writer realizes that he's writing something that says nothing. I'll tell you what Daytripper centers around. It's about life and death and all the dreams in between. What could be simpler? What could be more profound?

I see that they will be publishing a trade paperback collecting all ten issues of the Daytripper series. I give this collection my highest possible recommendation. Anyone who enjoys reading would find this story engaging and maybe even enriching. I did.

Hamazon.com?

2010-12-07T10:18:00.000-08:00

When I saw an article in the Chicago Tribune this morning about a website named hamazon.com, I immediately reached for the phone to speed-dial the Legal Department of the Hayfamzone. Yes, I realized that the website's spoofing was really meant to target "amazon.com," but the name still struck me as just a few millimeters too close to "hayfamzone.com" and around these parts we vigorously protect our trademark!

Imagine my relief when I kept reading and learned that the entire article was a spoof, written by Jeff Poole (a gentleman associated with Second City)! Such a pleasure not to have to head back to court to litigate another encroachment/infringement!

As you already noticed, the online Tribune article I linked to above does not show the graphics that appeared in the print edition of the newspaper so you did not get to see the "screen capture" of "hamazon.com." But, as you know, we go the Extra Mile here in the hayfamzone! Courtesy of Mr. Poole himself (whom I found on that thirty-five billion dollar trifle named Facebook), here is a digital copy of exactly what was printed in the newspaper.

Be warned, potential interlopers! All 13000 results when you do a Google search for "hayfamzone" link to something of mine, and if you try to intercept my public I will come after you!

Darkseid?

2010-11-30T10:28:00.000-08:00

When I saw this photo in the newspaper, I exclaimed "Darkseid!" Is it possible that Jack Kirby used this statue as inspiration for his classic character's design? (Maybe you'd like to read this article and this one about the Olmec stone head.)

You can view a beautiful pencil drawing of Darkseid you may not have previously seen by going here. It's from the collection of super-collector Tod Seisser and I encourage you to peruse the entirety of Mr. Seisser's comicartfans gallery rooms to see an amazing treasure trove of Kirby originals.

Wayne Manor in Illinois!

2010-10-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

We all knew Bruce Wayne was poised to return, but we didn't know he was coming to Hinsdale, Illinois! This stately Wayne Manor is just twenty miles from my house but I never knew of it until this morning. You can read more in this article and you can see a larger image of the terrain here. There's always something new to learn in the hayfamzone!

The New Superman Movie

2010-10-15T17:42:00.000-07:00

"Waiting for Superman" is in movie theaters right now, but it's not really about Superman. It is the story of some students who apply to get into a charter school, a school with a better reputation than the one that they would normally attend.

Geoffrey Canada is the well-regarded principal of a charter school in New York City. If you're a regular viewer of 60 Minutes you've seen him profiled there once or twice, and Mr. Canada has revealed that he read and enjoyed comic books in his childhood. In the following snippet from "Waiting for Superman" you can hear Mr. Canada explain the title of the new film. It is not light-hearted.

A Hayfamzone Regret

2010-09-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

A Comic Book Five StoriesTall!
That's what I wanted to use as the title for this article.

The Redmoon Theater Group is known for presenting creatively off-kilter productions here in Chicago. Through the month of September their brainchild was The Astronaut's Birthday, an outdoor performance of what amounted to a comic book projected onto the facade of The Museum of Contemporary Art. There were even silhouettes of live actors in the Museum windows at certain points and maybe even a little puppetry. Doesn't that sound interesting? I wanted to attend the performance and then tell you all about it.

But I missed it.

Longtime readers of The Hayfamzone Blog will remember that I inaugurated this site four years ago with my ruminations about The Masters of Comic Book Art show at The Milwaukee Art Museum (90 miles from Chicago) and I followed that up with a report of the same Masters of Comic Book Art show as it traveled to The Jewish Museum in New York City (700 miles from Chicago), but I somehow found myself unable ambulate over to the Museum of Contemporary Art which is a mere twelve miles from my house.

I'm hoping they will have more performances of this show in the future so I'll get another chance. For now, though, here is a very good explanation of the production which even includes some behind-the-scenes photos. Here is a video entitled "The Making of The Astronaut's Birthday" posted to YouTube by Redmoon. Here is video of some actual scenes from the production. And here and here are two glowing newspaper reviews.

(Non-Anachronistor's Note: Although this post is tinged with regret, it is simultaneously celebratory. I am writing and presenting this article on 9/30/2010 and please notice that is exactly the date indicated in the headline above. Finally! I have traveled forward in time from the past and, like Bruce Wayne himself, I have arrived back again at the present day. There will be no more anachronisms in The Hayfamzone Blog!)

"Her Mascara Blew Up!"

2010-07-29T20:00:00.001-07:00

I heard something funny in the comic book store today.

There were three of us in Atlas Comics at the time: proprietor John Stangeland and another patron and myself. The other customer started talking to John about recent goings-on in Wonder Woman. The fan exclaimed that "Themyscira blew up!" and John echoed in disbelief "Her mascara blew up?!"

I laughed.

Detecting that John may not have his finger directly on the pulse of the Wonder Woman title, I put on my Solomon mask and explained that Themyscira is the name of the island.

(Anachronistor's Note: You probably chuckled to yourself as you read of me describing something happening "today" since, undeniably, the fabric of time has been so malleable in and around the Hayfamzone lately. Forget 7/29/2010. This incident occurred on 9/29/2010.)

I'm Back at the Drawing Board!

2010-06-28T09:40:00.001-07:00

After many years of virtual artistic inactivity, I have been coaxed out of hibernation to draw again.

I've written previously about how impressed I've been with the revived Ditkomania fanzine under the auspices of editor Rob Imes. Every issue has been a home run out of the park and I decided to finally hop on board the train (and of course there's nothing like a good old mixed metaphor to jar you back to reality!).

I contributed to DM way back in the '80s when its issue numbers were still in the fledgling single digits. I was very pleased that my new drawing made it into the anniversary 75th issue (and on the inside back cover no less!).

I drew Tiger-Man, but not as the steroid-drenched muscleman that Frank Thorne and Larry Lieber and even Steve Ditko bloated the character into after his far more restrained introduction by Ernie Colon. No, I drew him as more of a rag-doll instead. Why, you ask? What can I say; I'm a fan of Calvin and Hobbes! Look here for a reminder of what the three and only three Tiger-Man covers looked like. (But there may be new ones in the future. Did you read recently about an upcoming Atlas Comics revival that would bring Tiger-Man back to the newsstand?)

Click right here if you'd like to order an issue of Ditkomania for yourself, and definitely click here and here if you'd like to learn more about Steve Ditko.

(Anachronistor's Note: Hold on tight because this rap is pretty convoluted. I'm writing and posting this article on 9/27/2010 and not on 6/28/2010, and this is in spite of the fact that Ditkomania #75 was published way back in the Fall of 2009. I've been waiting quite a while to tell you this tale!)

My Letter from Edwin Newman

2010-05-24T07:17:00.001-07:00

Though I was a math major in college, I have always also been a student of great artwork and excellent writing. A gentleman who devoted his off-air time to the pursuit of excellent writing and perfect grammar was television newsman Edwin Newman.

If you are of a certain age then you have a recollection of Mr. Newman's easy-going demeanor and his wonderfully off-kilter speaking voice. (Who would ever have thought that anyone who sounded like Edward G. Robinson would be hired to read the news?) If, however, you are younger than that unspecified certain age, here is a clip so you can see and hear a little of the man himself.

When I was but a wee tyke back in the 1970s, Mr. Newman penned a book entitled A Civil Tongue. I bought it and read it and... something bothered me about it. Not the whole book, mind you, but one sentence in the entirety of the book. There was exactly one sentence that struck me as being awkwardly constructed. I no longer remember what that exact sentence was, but I decided to write a letter to Mr. Newman to (gulp) call him on the carpet for his unconscionable grammatical lapse.

I used to write letters to very many different people that I had never met. (Where did I find the time?!) I never saved a copy of what I wrote, but of course it was great fun to receive a letter back from an individual I had written to. Most of my letters were written to comic book artists, and I'll be sure to tell you more about those at a later time. I am inaugurating this "My Letter from..." thread in The Hayfamzone Blog with Mr. Newman in honor of the gentleman's recent passing.

Here then, without further delay, is a copy of Mr. Newman's response to the letter I wrote him.

(Anachronistor's Note: Grammatical greetings to you from 9/27/2010, not from 5/24/10!)

Comics Characters go to Court

2010-04-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

The Law Library at Yale University is currently showing a display of comic books that feature stories with their characters in a courtroom. An article in The New York Times alerted me to this show and I salute the writer. He is an informed reviewer because he does more than just report what is in the show; he digs deeper to reveal what probably should have been in the show but was excluded, like any reference to lawyer Matt (Daredevil) Murdock. This show runs through December 16 and you can find out more at the Yale Law Library website.

(Anachronistor's Note: This is being written and posted on 9/22/10 and not on 4/30/10; soon I will be caught up and the anachronistor will be hasta la vistor.)

The JLA and The Black-Eyed Peas

2010-04-01T10:23:00.001-07:00

I saw an article in this morning's Chicago Tribune that gave me a chuckle and I thought I would share it with you.

The write-up in the newspaper is about the music group The Black-Eyed Peas and how its members are blank-canvas ciphers that nobody really knows anything about. Author Christopher Borrelli proposes that "their costumes and posturing suggest not a musical act but a quasi Justice League of America."

All I know about The Black-Eyed Peas is that I like their song "I Gotta Feeling" but the photo published with the article does support the costuming and posturing thesis. I got a little laugh out of it! You can see the full article online here.

(Anachronistor's Note: This ditty is being written and published on 8/12/2010 and NOT on 4/1/2010 so please don't pity the April fool!)

Eat at Blondie's

2010-02-27T12:21:00.000-08:00

If you ever wished you could dine out at a restaurant festooned with comic books, wait until you hear the great news I have for you!

It has been my pleasure to enjoy breakfast at Blondie's Diner just outside Chicago, in River Grove, Illinois. I recommend the Corned Beef Hash and Eggs with peaches. Look here and here and here to get a glimpse of the brightly-colored ambiance that will envelop you as you feast.

Of course, Blondie is more a of comic strip phenomenon than a comic book phenomenon, but still. Blondie has been appearing in daily newspapers since 1930, and it's one of only five comic strips that I read every single day. Throughout the 1940's there were the very popular radio show and movies based on on the comic strip; here is a fun movie clip of Arthur Lake as Dagwood, the role that he was most assuredly born to play.

The Blondie and Dagwood characters had a definite presence in comic books also; take a look at all these! You'll spot some of these covers on the wall when you go to eat at Blondie's. And when you do go, be sure to tell them hayfamzone sent you. (They won't know what you're talking about!)

(Anachronistor's Note: Here I am on 6/29/2010, not 2/27/2010.)

Trylon and Perisphere

2010-01-31T15:56:00.000-08:00

I think about comic books all the time. (Don't you?!) The slightest visual provocation can trigger a recollection of a memorable comic book that I may not have even viewed for decades. I have an example.

I was in the grocery store, in the fruit aisle. I saw the pineapples next to the cantaloupe melons and their juxtaposition made me think of a famous pair of comic book covers. Here, I bought those fruits and took a picture so I could show you.

(Of course the comic book scholars and the New York City historians among you already know where this is going.)

There used to be huge World's Fairs/Expositions held in large cities on an almost-annual basis, starting way back in 1851. The 1893 World's Fair in Chicago is renowned for its introduction of the Ferris Wheel; the 1933 Fair was also held in Chicago; and I remember hearing a great deal back in my youth about Expo '67 which was held in Montreal.

But wait, I skipped an important one! The New York World's Fair was held in New York City in 1939 and 1940, and the visual trademark of this Fair was a side-by-side pairing of a triangular obelisk they called a "trylon" and a large ball-shaped building they called a "perisphere." The trylon was 700 feet tall and the perisphere was 180 feet in diameter, and fair-goers entered and exited these structures. There was even a U.S. postage stamp depicting the trylon and perisphere, and here is an actual photo of them.

What's the comic book connection? For one thing, July 4 1940 was designated as Superman Day at the Fair; a superboy and a supergirl of the day were crowned and the first actor ever to portray Superman appeared in costume (keep in mind that Superman was a new quantity at this time, having first appeared just two years prior in 1938's Action Comics #1). Thanks to Wikipedia for telling me about Superman Day!

But there is a more enduring comic book connection! Of course everybody knows that for many decades the DC Comics series entitled World's Finest Comics featured tales of Superman and Batman. Not as widely recalled is that before World's Finest #1 was released there were two issues of a precursor named New York World's Fair Comics; take a look at the covers of the first issue and the second issue. 1970s reprints of these comic books were my first introduction to the trylon and perisphere. (Or maybe you now refer to them as the pineapple and the melon.)

(Anachronistor's Note: This little chuckle-fest was written NOT on 1/31/2010 nor in 1893 or 1933 or 1939-40 or '67 but on 24 May 2010.)

I Like Paper

2009-12-31T14:55:00.000-08:00

If you're a comic book fan you must appreciate paper as much as I do. I like holding the comic in my hand and reading it; viewing a page on a computer screen is absolutely not the same experience. But my fondness of paper doesn't stop there. Not by a long shot.

I also like newspapers! I have five papers delivered to my house every day. (As with comics, reading a paper online is just not the same, not as good. ) My paper delivery guy rolls by at 4:30 a.m. and once in a while I'm up and about by that time; a couple of days ago I saw him and he said to me (reverently, not with disgust) that he delivers more papers to me than he does to the library. I like the sound of that! For the record, I have received The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times and New York Times for years; last year the Lady of the Hayfamzone stated an interest in receiving The Wall Street Journal, so I said okay; and earlier this year I was offered a year of Financial Times for free, so I said okay.

But today I want to tell you about the San Francisco Panorama. You haven't heard of it? Well, I suspect most people in San Francisco haven't either! It was a one-shot experimental newspaper last year, published as McSweeney's #33. The goal was to show how great and fun a newspaper could be, and I feel the editors succeeded fabulously. In an era when the dimensions of daily papers keep shrinking each year, the pages of Panorama are monstrously large (and of a heavier stock than usual newsprint). This Panorama is like a super-sized Sunday newspaper; there's an interesting magazine and a great comics section with work by Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware and Jessica Abel and others. It all is collected safely in a heavy and resealable plastic bag.

Look here to see more details about Panorama and then look on ebay to buy a copy at a reasonable price. Hooray for paper!

(Anachronistor's note:
This article is being written and posted on 5 May 2010 and NOT on 31 December 2009.)

The Human Target (In and Out of Comics)

2009-11-30T11:30:00.000-08:00

The first appearance of Christopher Chance, The Human Target, was in a comic book. That debut was a backup story to the cover-featured Superman story in Action Comics #419, dated December 1972. Take a look here at the iconic cover of that issue as drawn by the unusual team of Neal Adams and Murphy Anderson (and as far as I know the only other page these two artists ever drew together was the cover of Jack Kirby's Jimmy Olsen #147 earlier that same year).

Please indulge me for one minute while I proudly reveal that for about twenty years
I was the proud owner of the original artwork to the cover drawing of Action #419. You can see right here what the original looked like (and, when I sold it on ebay, it was purchased by a nice chap who had been the writer of seven or eight episodes of Seinfeld).

Whoops, little digression there! No image of The Human Target (hereafter "H.T.", just like in Hollywood) appeared on that first Action Comics cover. The series debut was produced by the excellent team of Len Wein as writer and Carmine Infantino and Dick Giordano as artists. H.T. didn't exactly set the world on fire but it was a nice enough trifle that I remember enjoying reading.

Let's fast-forward to 1992, many years after Christopher Chance had stopped appearing in comics. Fox TV broadcast a 6-episode series of H.T., produced by Danny Bilson and Paul DiMeo. Wikipedia informs me that I am recalling correctly that comics pros Howard Chaykin and John Francis Moore were involved with writing for this TV series. I have no recollection of whether I watched any of the installments, but chances are that I did give it a try since I had been very fond of Bilson and DiMeo's Flash TV series one or two years prior.

A slight fast forward to 1993 and DC revived H.T. as a Vertigo Comics series that lasted twenty-one issues. I don't recall whether I read any of them.

One last fast forward to the present day of 2009,... I mean 2010. In spring of 2010 Fox TV took another stab at an H.T. series, with great success in my opinion. I enjoyed Mark Valley's lawyer character on Boston Legal but the actor always seemed like a fish out of water in that whacked-out law firm milieu; he takes the lead perfectly in H.T. as Christopher Chance. Chi McBride was excellent as the principal on Boston Public but he's even better here in his more subdued role as Chance's dispatcher. Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach was the one good thing about the Watchmen movie and he does very well here also as Chance's psychopathic legman (and this role is an apt stepping stone to his taking the reins of the Freddy Krueger character on Elm Street). Twelve episodes aired this past spring and I'm hoping the Top Fox will grant the show a renewal for next season.

Here's a subtlety that might have slipped past you while you were watching the show. I think I heard in exactly one episode that Chance called his dog by name, and that name was... Carmine! Now honestly, how many dogs named Carmine have you ever encountered? Not many! It's almost certain that giving the dog that name was the TV series' tip of the hat to the original comics series' artist, Carmine Infantino, and that's a nice touch.

Anachronistor's Note: This article was actually written on 4/30/2010 and not on 11/30/2009.

The Other Bookend, Anachronistically

2009-10-31T08:20:00.000-07:00

You've been very patient!

I've been off stepping up my comic sales on ebay and generally keeping very busy, to the detriment of this wonderful blog. I haven't forgotten about you and I will be making it up to you!

When I initiated The Hayfamzone Blog almost four years ago (!), it fit into my schedule very well to post an article practically every week. Then things settled back a bit and for a long stretch I was posting once a month like clockwork. Last summer the edges of reality frayed a little bit for me and I haven't posted anything for many months.

But now I'm back!

I have many things that I've been meaning to tell you and that's what I'll be doing. I'm very comfortable with the once-a-month schedule so that's what I'll be getting back to, eventually. But in the meantime I'll be playing catch-up and posting at an accelerated rate, because I owe you an article for each month I didn't post!

Maybe you noticed that this article is dated 31 October 2009? Well, Happy Halloween! But guess what? I'm actually typing this on 23 April 2010. All those months that I wasn't blogging I was at least thinking about blogging, and month by month I reserved one post-date for each calendar month since last October. I did that because I like the archive of articles to have something catalogued for each month of each year. (Sorry, I can't help the way I am about some things!) To avoid any confusion on anybody's part and in the spirit of full disclosure, I will include with each article the true date on which I was writing it. Don't worry, in no time at all I will be caught up and the date-of-writing and the banner date will be identical.

Things began going awry for me last summer around the time I blogged that I had just read Blackest Night #1. Since the final issue of that 8-issue series was recently published, it made sense to me to let the ending of Blackest Night correlate with an end to the silence of this blog. The time has come to re-ignite and reinvigorate. Truly it is now the beginning of the Brightest Day! (And, having read issue zero of Brightest Day, I have to say I'm looking forward to seeing how that new series plays out...)

Again, thank you for your patience. The best is yet to come.

Here's a Comic Book I Enjoyed Very Much!

2009-09-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

Did you ever stand up from the dinner table still feeling hungry? After I read a pile of new comics releases, I sometimes find myself wishing they were as good as the ones that came out when I was growing up. A few of today's comics are superb, but many of them leave me longing for the days when Jack Kirby was still in the arena.

Recently, The Brave and The Bold #27 was released by DC Comics. The story is by J. Michael Straczynski, the artwork is by Jesus Saiz, and after I finished reading it I said to myself, "Wow, that's how comics used to be!"

First off, this issue has a good story with good writing; there's even a moral. And also, instead of being chapter x in a y-chapter epic, this tale is complete with a beginning, middle, and end all right in the same issue. Let's not forget the visuals. I have admired the artwork of Mr. Saiz for years now, and it is as beautiful as ever in this book.

This is the first issue produced by Straczynski and Saiz so I'm in no position to predict whether its quality is a fluke or the beginning of a wonderful run (sort of like what began in issue 27 of Detective Comics), but I can tell you I am definitely looking forward to next month's B&B to find out!

How about that Johnny DC!

2009-08-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of items of interest that appeared in two of DC's kid-oriented Johnny DC titles recently might have slipped through under your radar.

Tiny Titans by Art Baltazar and Franco is one of my favorite currently-published comics and I've told you so previously. (Click here if you'd like another look at some Baltazar originals that I am proud to own.) But let me tell you about a subtle salute that appeared in issue #

(This article is INCOMPLETE!
Please check back again
in a week or so
for the rest of the story!)

Cosmic Irony

2009-07-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

This morning just as I was belatedly getting around to reading last week's Blackest Night #1, I received a call from the doctor that I should waste no time in transporting myself over to the hospital.

My mother was a fine and strong lady. May she rest in peace.
Jeanette Ann Hayes (26 April 1917 - 26 July 2009)

"Don't touch that dial!"

2009-06-30T12:23:00.000-07:00

I've been a fan of Old-Time Radio Shows since I was a teenager. My favorites include Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve, and one you might not be familiar with named Life with Luigi.

(This article is INCOMPLETE!
Please check back again
in a week or so
for the rest of the story!)

Yesterday I Spoke for a Duck

2009-05-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the day to pick up The Catt from school. The 5:40 a.m. embarkation had been wise; the traffic presented not a single snaggletooth all the way from Point A to Point B. About a half hour outside of Champaign I started with the wake-up calls, but to no avail. Wouldn't you think that the sarcastic barbs I kept leaving on The Catt's voicemail would jar him into awakenness by osmosis? But no.

I got off the interstate and refilled the gas tank, tick tick tick. I arrived at Ye Olde Hopkins Hall but still no answer on the phone, tick tick tick. It was a nice sunny morning and I strolled through the courtyard, tick tick tick. I meandered through the glass-encased study lobby which looks out on the courtyard, tick tick tick. And then I... but wait! Through the window I saw a beautiful brown speckled duck with two ducklings! Directly outside on the grass where I had just been minutes before! The mother duck was 1.5 feet long from head to tail and the two ducklings were each three inches long from head to tail; the babies were a much lighter hue than the mother and their coat had the appearance of fur rather than feather. The three of them were marching around in single file on the grass in the courtyard right outside the picture window while I watched from inside. Why do I never seem to have my camera with me when I want to take a picture?

As you know I was in no particular hurry, so I kept watching the parade. But the longer I watched the more peculiar the whole milieu struck me. That the duck family was even in this courtyard was unusual right off the bat; how many times have you seen ducks marching around in your back yard, for comparison's sake? And the mother duck was quacking in a non-stop and frantic manner. Also, the mother had a fairly pronounced limp in her right leg (maybe that's what all the quacking was about?). And this marching the three were doing followed a perfectly circular pattern. Around and around and around they went, circling what I then saw was a two-foot by two-foot metal grate that was right there in the middle of the grassy courtyard.

Hold on, the cast of characters is poised to grow. From stage left, a uniformed grounds-maintenance man enters the scene. He must hear the maniacal quacking out there, but he seems oblivious to the duck parade and instead is focusing on the metal grate. He steps gingerly toward the grate, seemingly on tiptoe, and apparently not wanting to disturb the circular march that I was watching. He briefly peered down into the grate and then exited the scene as gracefully as he had entered it; maybe his responsibility had been to check on the flow of water that was under that grate?

I decided it was time to try ringing The Catt's phone again. No answer, of course. I left a message about how I was communing with nature and enjoying the circular parade. As I was blathering into the phone, I watched as one of the ducklings broke formation and wandered onto the crossbar of the metal grate. The crossbar was wide enough for this little duckling to walk across it, but how steady on its feet do you expect a baby to be? I was right to be worried! As I was finishing up that latest voicemail message, I was horrified to see the duckling hop blissfully upward an inch and then FALL into the abyss! I SCREAMED! I ran through that long lobby to go back outside to the courtyard to see if there was something, anything, I could do to help that little duckling that I feared was lost to a raging current far below the grate.

Here comes the feel-good part of the story. When I reached the grate I was VERY relieved to see that there was no water under it at all! Probably at some point in the past there used to be some water-related functionality to the grate, but I was pleased to see a solid bottom about three feet below the grate. The duckling was hopping around down on the floor, and it was even lined with grass clippings that had cushioned his fall. He was fine!

Now get ready for the twist you didn't see coming. I sure didn't! On that grass-lined floor where the little duckling was hopping around, there were also five of his brothers hopping around with him! Six ducklings had fallen through that grate, one by one by one. Imagine the distress of that mother duck! Her frantic quacking (which was continuing at full volume through all this, by the way) had nothing to do with her limp but everything to do with the fact that her babies were disappearing one right after another. Oh, she knew exactly where they were and that they were unhurt, but she also knew she was helpless to save the little guys.

So I got to work with the rescue. I curled my fingers around the bars of the grate and pulled and OOF! Nothing! It must be screwed in place, I thought to myself. I tried squeezing my hand between the bars of the grate, but that wasn't going to happen. I spun my head around with three hundred sixty degrees of frustration, and then tried pulling on the grate again. This time it budged! It hadn't been screwed down, it was just very, very heavy. Slowly and deliberately, I lifted off that heavy grate. The quacking continued, of course.

I carefully put one foot down on the grass-lined bottom and was happy that it was solid and I didn't fall through. The six ducklings were scurrying around, not fully realizing that their adventure was drawing to a close and they would soon be reunited with their mother. I put my open hand under each duckling and, one at a time, boosted them up to the freedom of the grassy courtyard where their mother was (of course) quacking, about ten feet away. Each one waddled directly over to the mother duck. The instant the last one was out of the hole, she stopped her quacking. How about that! The mother duck started marching, now trailed by all seven of her ducklings. (Where is that camera when I want it?!) No longer in need of a circular parade, the group marched to a covered spot under a nearby shrub.

(Can we fast-forward for one paragraph? After The Catt eventually woke up and the duck family had marched far away, I put T.C. to work taking a few pictures. Here is the infamous grate and this is what the inside of it looked like. Most ominous of all, here is photo of a sister-grate located just twenty feet across the courtyard from the grate we've been discussing; yes, that is water you see down there!)

The uniformed grounds-maintenance man came back on the scene and had witnessed the completion of my mission. He told me he had seen the ducklings trapped under the grate and went to call somebody to help get them out. He said he had been worried that the mother duck wouldn't take the babies back if he had intervened. I told him (and I'm quoting myself here), "She knew she needed help."

I Finally Got One!

2009-04-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

It was back in 2007 that I told you I had been searching for years for any page of Batman artwork drawn by the idiosyncratically stylistic Frank Robbins. Go ahead and click here if you'd like to re-read that article.

One of the great joys of collecting, of course, is to ascertain an item that has long been elusive. It is my pleasure to announce that I am now the owner of a beautiful Robbins Batman page. You can savor it yourself right here! (And you can earn extra credit points if you observe that the beautiful lettering on the page is by the great Ben Oda, my favorite comics letterer of all time.)

Allow Me to Introduce. . . Ken Paulson

2009-03-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

I used to (and maybe I still) wish that throngs of people would discuss the current week's new comic book releases in the same way that all the sports fans rehash the week's big games. Great hay has been made of the fact that President Obama is or was a bit of a comic book fan. Did you read earlier this month how much the drummer of System of a Down paid for Action Comics #1? And with seemingly half of all theatrical releases focusing on the four-colored characters that we've been lifelong fans of, it's no longer scandalous in the western hemisphere to proclaim that you're a comics fan. It is just a little refreshingly exhilarating, however, to discover that a high-profile celebrity shares our hobby. Ken Paulson is or was a bit of a comic book fan. (And, though my journalistic training is minimal at best, I am fully aware that I just buried the lead.)

Who is Ken Paulson? For the past five years, his name was glanced over every day by millions of peoples' eyes (possibly including yours). You see, from 2004 until just last month Ken Paulson was the editor of USA Today. And how do I know he likes (or liked) comics? Because I personally bought a handful of beauties from him thirty-one years ago!

Back when I was a college freshman, I joined the University of Illinois Comic Book Club. We would congregate in a University meeting room every Thursday evening and have lively discussions about the latest comics and the goings-on in the world of comics. It was great fun, but I wanted to prosletyze beyond the boundaries of that meeting room.

I decided to join the staff of The Daily Illini to write articles about comics. The DI was a five-day-a-week (or was it six?) tabloid-sized paper that printed wire stories of world news and syndicated columns as well as student-produced features and local content and commentary. The weekly entertainment-related pull-out section was entitled Revue.

Ken Paulson was the editor of Revue. It slips my mind whether Revue was just starting up when I came around or whether they were rejuvenating an existing construct, but it was announced that a Revue cover logo was needed. I wandered off and came back to the next meeting with this. Ken liked it and selected it and this design did serve as the Revue logo for at least the next year. (Department of full disclosure: I handed in the hand-drawn design but declined when Ken asked if I wanted to draft the camera-ready technical drawing. The unnamed draftsman who drew it up did a perfect job and has my belated thanks.)

I told Ken that I wanted to write an article about comic books (not knowing yet about his interest in them). He asked what did I want to write about comics? I had been collecting original artwork for a couple of years by that time, so I picked that as the topic. Ken approved the idea and off I went.

You can see here what the article looked like in print. The New Gods artwork that accompanies the article is by the great Don Newton and Dan Adkins with crisp lettering by the always-excellent Ben Oda, but that is not the panel I would have suggested for inclusion. You can see here the original of the page of artwork, which I supplied to the DI when I handed in my article; I was probably hoping they would instead use the beautiful three-panel sequence that you can see at the top of the page. (By the way, I claim without substantiation that this was the first article about collecting original comic book artwork that was ever printed in any newspaper; there have certainly been others since then, such as this one.) To help my little article find a wider readership, I sent a clipping of it to Don and Maggie Thompson who reprinted it in their Beautiful Balloons column in The Buyer's Guide (and they rightfully questioned some of the brash and fannish claims I made in the article, by the way).

Ken Paulson was pleased enough with the piece on original art that I was given a green light to propose another. It was around this time that Superman Versus Muhammad Ali was being published by DC Comics, so I pitched doing a phone interview with artist and writer Neal Adams covering his entire career but focusing especially on the Superman/Ali book. Ken flashed the green light again and off I went. It was a bit daunting to be interviewing one of my all-time favorite artists, but Adams was very easy to get along with and the call went well. When I later handed my article to Ken, he grew frantic as he skimmed over it, paging faster and faster. Tell me there are quotes, he said. Well, there (gulp) weren't; I had paraphrased all of Adams' answers, and that wasn't what Ken had been expecting. I made a follow-up call to Continuity Studios in New York City and garnered some quotes that I interleaved into my existing manuscript. The centerspread of that issue of Revue was dedicated to my article and you can see here how it looked.

Mike Gold of DC Comics had provided me with photstats that I requested of Adams artwork and the DI's production staff hit one out of the park with their marvelous layout design. Oh, and one more thing! Ken Paulson even let me draw the cover of that issue of Revue, as you can see for yourself here.

I must have gotten busy with my studies after that because those were the only two articles I ever wrote for Ken Paulson and The Daily Illini (although I did shift gears and produce quite a few drawings for editorials and feature articles, but that's a blog story for a different day!). Somewhere along in here I did learn of Ken's own interest in comics, and when he told me he was selling some of his collection I couldn't resist seeing what there was to see! If you can imagine this coincidence, I gravitated toward and purchased his run of Neal Adams X-Men issues, which had been a gaping hole in my collection.

Now fast-forward a few decades with me and look at this article from 2004. Yes! The white hair couldn't stop me from recognizing the Ken Paulson that I had known years before, and there he was being named editor of USA Today (not one of the three newspapers I read every day, but I have a respect for every daily newspaper). I couldn't help myself from penning a little congratulatory note to Ken, and I sprinkled it with anecdotal remembrances to tickle his memory bone (such as the fact that he would sometimes invert his name on a byline into the pseudonymous Paul Kennison). Ken dashed off a note in return and he complimented my memory!

A couple of years later a nice article about Ken and USA Today appeared in The New York Times (which is one of the papers I read daily). Then at the end of last year it was announced that Ken was moving on. My first thought was to write him another little note, but my second thought was to headline him here in The Hayfamzone Blog. Hooray for second thoughts! And congratulations to Ken Paulson on his successes!

Still More Gifts!

2009-02-26T21:50:00.000-08:00

The H.I.T. (Hayfamzone Investigative Team) is out on assignment now so it's been a little quiet here in the newsroom lately. Never fear, they will return! The Team promises a provocative and informative report for next month.

In the meantime it is my pleasure to be able to share with you a few more excellently wonderful comics-related links that you may not yet have come across on your own.

I. First up, how about a website that interviews a different comics creator every day of the year? I am not kidding! Take a look here.

II. I've written numerous times about my appreciation for good comic book lettering and how the great Ben Oda is my favorite letterer of all time. I think I neglected to mention previously that I have many second-favorite letterers. Among them would definitely be Gaspar Saladino (mainstay letterer for 1960s and 1970s DC) and Ira Schnapp (designer of the impeccable logos for Action Comics and The Flash), both of whom are written up nicely over on Dial B for Blog. (Maybe you'd even like to see for yourself that I, your humble host, used to dabble in lettering? Take a gander at this little chestnut.)

III. Have you ever read a study of a comics logo? There are a couple dozen of them as written by latter-day comics letterer Todd Klein over on his blog. Not only does Mr. Klein discuss the history and aesthetics and evolution of such iconic logos as those for Batman and The Spirit, he also unveils a few unused preliminary designs for some logos he has personally toiled on (such as the one for last year's Death of the New Gods). I am particularly fond of his never-used and intricate Hangman, but my all-time favorite Todd Klein logo is his Time Warp.

This might be an appropriate moment for me to tell you that I too have designed a few logos along the way. You can click here to see one of them, but your have to promise to come back next month to read the rest of the story. It's sure to be a H.I.T.!

An Analogy Across All Entertainment Media

2009-01-31T18:17:00.000-08:00

Of course most comic book stories start with a splash page, a full-page drawing intended to capture the reader's interest. I also used to like when an artist would draw a double-page splash (most often on pages two and three of a story) whether it was to punctuate the grandeur of a setting or to have an action scene seem as large as life itself; Mike Grell regularly employed double-page splashes in his Warlord stories and Jack Kirby included them in his stories in many different comics titles (and, with a tip of the hat to original art collector supreme Tod Seisser, you can click here to see a comicartfans.com gallery room filled with TWENTY-NINE fabulous Kirby double-pagers!).

But what if an entire comic book story was comprised of full page and double-page splashes? This may have even been tried once or twice in the long history of comics, but the result would not be a good comic book story. The beauty and magic of comics lies in their panel-to-panel storytelling, which would be sacrificed if each drawing were inflated to a full page.

I've heard the new Bruce Springsteen song "Working on a Dream" on the radio a few times over the last couple of weeks. It's instantly likeable and serves nicely as background music in the car while I drive. But then one time I listened more consciously to the song, and I was shocked at the mindless repetitiveness of what I heard! The phrase "working on a dream" is first sung a few seconds after the song begins and then it is repeated NINETEEN times (yes, I counted) by the time the song ends. This is the epitome of lazy songwriting! Does Mr. Springsteen think his fans are so hopped-up on days-long video-gaming that ear-candy repetitiveness to an insane extreme is the only way he can weasel his way into their psyches?

What if every shot in a Steven Spielberg film was a close-up? What if Dr. House lobbed sarcastic barbs nonstop for the entire 52 minutes of his television show? What if a song was all chorus and no verse? What if every page of a comic book was a splash page? I'm sorry to have to report that you can have too much of a good thing.

Two Gifts for You!

2008-12-31T10:32:00.000-08:00

I like occasionally sharing with you interesting things that I find as I scale the internet, and today is your lucky day! These two items both have their roots in comic strips, but their tentacles reach outward toward comic books and video and even fine art.

First Gift

Returning readers of The Hayfamzone Blog might recall that Mutts by Patrick McDonnell is my favorite of all the current newspaper strips. And, as you might expect, Mutts has an internet presence with a site seemingly maintained by Mr. McDonnell himself. You can investigate the page here. But my gift to you goes much deeper than that! I found a feature nestled in the website in which Mr. M. explains that the title panel of Mutts on Sunday is usually an homage to a design from the world of comics or fine art. With one click you can see side-by-side the Mutts panel as printed and its inspiration, including but not limited to images related to Action Comics and Flash Comics and Dick Tracy and Popeye and Salvador Dali and even The Hulk. Yes! Just go here and start clicking!

Second Gift

One of the earliest icons of newspaper comic strips was Krazy Kat by George Herriman, dating all the way back to 1913. Here is a nice-looking website devoted to all things Krazy, but my main focus today is on KK's forays into animated cartoons. Here is a 1916 Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse cartoon and here is the better-known 1960s take on the characters. Put a comma right here. Other, less concerned blogs would pat you on the head right about now and send you on your way home, but not The Hayfamzone Blog! No, no. All of the preceding was mere prologue to what I feel is the most striking and compelling of all the adaptations of the Krazy Kat world; wait until you see this!

Gift Within a Gift

As I was wrapping your second gift, I got to thinking about the shared history I have with Krazy Kat. My earliest introduction to KK was the 1960s animated cartoons, but my first viewing of the original Herriman strips was in Golden Funnies in the mid-1970s as published by Alan Light of Comics Buyer's Guide fame. (I still have my subscription copies of Golden Funnies, of course, although I haven't looked at them for over thirty years.) Well, I started digging around on the internet and guess what? I found a YouTube video interview with Alan Light from 1982; to put a time-stamp on it for you, that's the year that Alan hired me to draw for The Buyer's Guide and this interview is about 1.5 years before Alan sold TBG to Krause Publications. As you watch the video here you probably won't be able to help wondering if this parade of gifts from me to you will ever end.

Look What I Found in the Quarter Bin!

2008-11-17T09:35:00.000-08:00

Well, it wasn't exactly in the quarter bin. But there was a half-price sale at Atlas Comics last week and I paid $1.50 instead of the $3.00 that was marked on the tag.

The Omega Men #29. The cover date is August 1985. That particular issue slips your mind, you say? For a quick reminder, you can see the cover here.

The reason I bring it up is because that issue has a drawing by ME published in it! Yes!

Back in those days of voluminous free time I would write letters to the editors of some comics, and a few of them did find their way into print. I even suggested a title for a letter column that was selected and used for a number of years (namely, "Via Pony Express" over in Weird Western Tales and/or Jonah Hex).

I don't hesitate to reveal to you that I would write letters to comics that were known to receive the fewest letters. I can guarantee you'll never find a back issue of Batman or The Legion of Super-Heroes with a letter from me because I never wrote to those best-sellers. Instead I was writing to Weird Western Tales and Weird War Tales and, yes, The Omega Men.

Machiavellian of me? No. I just figured that if I was taking the time to write letters in the hope that they would get printed, I might as well write to titles most in need of letters to print. The strategy is analogous to buying shares of stock in a company when they are at a sixty-five year low.

Mr. Alan Gold was the editor of The Omega Men in 1985, and the artist was Mr. Shawn McManus (whom I recently blogged about for having been the artist of the 2008 Ear-Fall-Off Floyd issue of The Legion). One issue, Mr. Gold put out the call for letters to the editor. That was a bright green light to me and I started composing. Here is the text of the missive I wrote, as published in The Omega Men #29:

"Dear Mr. Gold:

As quick as you are to note the dearth of mail to your letters column, may I just as quickly make a bold suggestion? Instead of begging for letters, why not let the letters page be run by those few who do see fit to write in to you? Yes, I'm talking coup d'etat here. First order of business for the new regime: lift the restriction of printing only letters on the letters page. What else, you ask? I'm glad you did!

That letters page needs color, sir, and I aim to help you splash it on. We're thinking of drawings now, colored drawings, and I have graciously enclosed a couple of scribbles with which you might inaugurate this fine new idea. Where will it all end? If only I knew. The spring breeze is scented with paths to be chosen and decisions to be made, and I will not desert you in your time of need."

And here is a photo of that printed letters page. Yes, that is Virmin Vundabar, one of the great characters from Jack Kirby's Fourth World. Maybe V.V. was appearing in a storyline in OM at the time? I don't remember, but it must have been pertinent in some way since Mr. Gold did print the drawing. You wish you could see a larger image of the drawing itself? Okay! Just look here (and sorry about that slight blur). And click here to see V.V. as drawn by J.K. himself.

Alan Gold's printed response to my letter was as follows:

"I'm all for printing readers' art occasionally, Brian, when there's room. The following specifications should be met, however, by budding artists: (1) art should be no wider than 3"; (2) it should be relatively simple (no eensy-weensy detail or cross-hatching); art will be reduced to 60% of the original size in the printed comic; (3) it must be black and white , on white paper ( we'll do the coloring at DC); the drawing must be done in black ink (no pencil, crayon, pastels, shading, wash,etc.). If you want your art back, be sure to enclose a SASE. Bear in mind, too, that a letter mailed for OM #26 won't see print till OM #30, and that's a long wait you have to settle down for.

Mr. Gold's invitation to others to send in artwork for publication fell flat and there were no other takers. I realize that this entire topic is somewhat anachronistic in that letters pages have been almost entirely absent from comics for the last ten years or so, but they used to be vital. And, by the way, I did get a handful of other drawings published on other DC Comics letters pages around this same time. I'll have to tell you more about them later since I'm fresh out of time for today!

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T04:09:00.000-07:00

Could there be any better way to celebrate Halloween than to listen to Stan Lee recite Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven? Click here.

Ditkomania is Back!

2008-10-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

Steve Ditko is one of the best artists ever to draw comics. Spider-Man and Doctor Strange are but two of his many visual creations. It makes sense that such a great artist would have a fan following, of course.

Back in the 1980s, a fanzine entitled Ditkomania was produced by and for fans of the work of Mr. Ditko. I was drawing regularly for the Comics Buyer's Guide in those heady days, and CBG would forward to me letters that had been sent to me in care of them. A gentleman named Bill Hall was the founding editor and publisher of DM, and he wrote to tell me of the existence of Ditkomania and to invite me to submit Ditko-related drawings for publication in then-future issues.

I count myself among the many fans of Mr. Ditko's stylings, and so I agreed. Over a period of (I think) a couple of years, I did have some of my drawings published in DM. You can see some of them for yourself if you look here and here and especially here (my personal favorite). But then I got busy or something, and Ditkomania continued into the 1990s without me. Somewhere in there, it ceased publication.

Fast-forward to the present day, and imagine my pleasure to find out that Ditkomania has been revived for the new millennium! Rob Imes, another fine gentleman, has been given the go-ahead by Bill Hall himself to produce new issues of DM (and Mr. Hall is a regular contributor to the new incarnation).

I'm guessing Mr. Imes has used the internet to seek out many of the erstwhile contributors to DM, and he found me over on ebay (where, of course, I operate the Hayfamzone Dynasty). Mr. Imes sent me an ebay message to tell me of the revival of Ditkomania, and that's all I needed to hear. Of course I wanted to see what was up!

And now that I have seen a couple of the new issues, I couldn't be more impressed. The professionalism of Mr. Imes' fanzine has energized me to step up to the plate. Although I haven't lifted a pencil to draw anything for publication in quite a few years, I definitely want to be part of the New Age of Ditkomania.

Click here if you'd like to order an issue of the new Ditkomania for yourself, and maybe be on the lookout for something drawn by me in a future issue!

Maybe Your Eyes Are Better Than Mine?

2008-09-27T20:31:00.000-07:00

Do you realize that The Hayfamzone Blog has now entered its third year? Yes! Hooray for us! But with an advancement in age comes a decline in acuity, and I seek your assistance.

Last week's Sunday New York Times featured a profile of French designer Jacques Grange. Maybe you saw it. The spread included a wide variety of photos, including one of Monsieur Grange's bedroom. The accompanying caption states that he "is known for his playfulness, like framing old comic strips to use as wallpaper in his bedroom." What's shown on the wall, however, are quite clearly pages of original artwork and not merely 'old comic strips.' (Maybe the caption writer didn't know any better.)

I'm far from an expert in identifying comic strip artwork. In the photo, though, I can see the logos of a Steve Canyon and a Tarzan and two Prince Valiants. I just wish I knew what the rest of the pieces were. Why? It's my goal to know everything, of course.

I believe I have altered the settings of this blog so that now anyone can leave a comment for me, and the online presentation of the Grange article is a fun collage that makes you dizzy when you move your mouse around. So please let me know if you can make out any of the other artwork when you look here. Thanks!

Miscellania and Other Words

2008-09-11T19:50:00.000-07:00

Of course, miscellania is not a word; the real word is miscellany. It's just that I feel miscellany isn't a very good word. It's off-kilter and lopsided and it ends too abruptly. "Miscellania" on the other hand is melodious and well-rounded, what with the accent being on its middle syllable. Now I'm not afraid to make up new words when I feel it's the appropriate thing to do, but I like to check that somebody hasn't beaten me to it. So I did a G**gle search on "miscellania," and guess what? Somebody did beat me to it, sort of. It turns out that Miscellania and Etceteria are the names of two cities in some game called Runescape. How about that!

As I write this on 9/11/2008, I'm thinking back to when I visited Ground Zero four years ago. I found the site to be at once somber and eerie. But now see if you don't agree with me that a minor little certain something that happened to me this week is a little coincidental. Just two days ago, my feedback number on ebay clicked forward from 910 to (I think you may have guessed it already) 911! I was looking forward to blowing the shofar that my feedback was 911 on 9/11, but then it iterated forward to 912 yesterday. Time marches on...

If you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. Probably you heard the flap in the news this week about that sentence. As soon as I heard it, I was reminded of a similarly-spirited sentence that I can remember my father saying on occasion. "That's like putting a lavalier on a pig." I have to say I'm sorry that the word lavalier isn't used much anymore because I like it as a word. You might want to peek here. You're welcome!

Ear-Fall-Off Floyd Joins the Legion?

2008-08-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

I have no control over my memory. I'm fairly certain I have forgotten a number of things that I would rather have remembered, and I know for a fact that I have remembered quite a few things that I would never have chosen to retain. Like Ear-Fall-Off Floyd.

I'll give you some details, but they're a little blurry. (I said I remembered it, but I didn't say I remembered it clearly.) Ear-Fall-Off Floyd was a superhero parody strip in which the would-be hero's "superpower" was that his ear would fall off in moments of crisis. I find two references for Floyd on the internet, and they seem to be somewhat at odds.

Over on The John Byrne Forum, webbers were asked to post who their favorite member of The Legion of Super-Heroes was. The second poster went way offcourse in naming Ear-Fall-Off Floyd, who was never in the Legion. The individual said in explanation that Floyd had been created by Mercy Van Vlack and the "great Legion fandom of the early seventies." (I learned from Ms. Van Vlack's website that, in more recent decades, she has written for Richie Rich comics!)

If you can believe it, Ear-Fall-Off Floyd even has his own Wikipedia entry. The article states that EFOF was written by Jay L. Zilber and drawn by Jim McPherson for the fanzine Fandom Funnies #3 in 1976. But notice that there's no mention of Mercy Van Vlack in that Wiki! It's possible, of course, for both of these two internet references to EFOF to be correct, but there are some chasms to be bridged. On your behalf I will try to contact the primary parties so we can get to the bottom of this.

There was a recent occurrence that triggered my memory of EFOF. I picked up last month's Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #16. I usually don't read that series but I noticed that the issue featured artwork by Shawn McManus, whose drawings I've been enjoying for about twenty-five years now. (And, by the way, I recently added to my comicartfans.com Artwork by Jack Kirby... almost Gallery a page of Demon pencils by Mr. McManus which you can admire here.) While last month's Legion story doesn't exactly feature Ear-Fall-Off Floyd, there is a character in the story named Arm-Fall-Off Boy and his name is Floyd! Just as the cover is a credited homage to the cover of Adventure Comics #247 drawn fifty years ago by the great Curt Swan, the entire issue seems to be an homage to that great Legion fandom of the early seventies.

I will try to dig deeper into the history of Ear-Fall-Off Floyd and get back to you on it. I hope I remember to!

JUMBLE Editorial Policy as a Mirror of Modern Society

2008-08-08T07:03:00.000-07:00

I like to do the JUMBLE puzzle in the newspaper, located on the comics page. JUMBLE, that scrambled word game. As time goes on there seem to be fewer and fewer comic strips I care to read ( a definite exception being Mutts by Patrick McDonnell, which I never skip), but every single day for the past twenty-some years I have taken the JUMBLE challenge.

I don't bother with the last part of the puzzle, in which you have to arrange certain highlighted letters from the first part of the puzzle in order to form some funny, punny phrase. I prefer to do the first part of the puzzle on sight and never write anything down.

The daily puzzle consists of four words to unscramble, while the Sunday puzzle is comprised of six longer words. I figure out each scambled word in about one second or less, although there are some that take longer to register and a few that stump me entirely. By the way, unscrambling a word in a second is no measure of intelligence but rather just a matter of recognition and familiarity; after twenty-blank years, I've seen all the words already!

In all my time I have seen the puzzle writer make only one mistake, but it is a recurring mistake that pops up about once each year. Here, I'll let you have a try. Go ahead and unscramble the letters CMIANA. I'll wait over here quietly.

Now if you came up with the word maniac as your solution, good for you. That's exactly what the puzzle writer was hoping you'd come up with. But what if you came up with caiman, a different but perfectly fine word? The puzzle writer says you're wrong, that's what. Look and/or listen here.

For a JUMBLE to work properly, there must be exactly one word that the given letters unscramble into, but that is not the case with CMIANA. Three separate times in three different years I wrote a letter to point out this correction, hoping that CMIANA would be taken out of rotation and JUMBLE would be perfect forever after. Well, one time I received a reply consisting of equivocal mumbo jumbo from a junior assistant editor at The Chicago Tribune, and another time I received a flier from JUMBLE, Inc. apprising me that a plethora of JUMBLE-related merchandise was available for purchase. Unfortunately, I have come to accept that my correction is unwanted and I don't write letters about it anymore. Does it speak well or ill of society when those in charge choose to ignore the indisputable corrections of their constituents?

And another thing. Through the years the solution to the daily JUMBLE puzzle has historically been printed in the following day's newspaper. Last month, though, something new was tried; the answers to the day's puzzle were printed the same day and, in fact, on the same page. It is not within my purview as to whether this was a nationwide experiment or if it was a bright idea concocted by another junior assistant editor at The Chicago Tribune.

The experiment/bright idea lumbered along for one or two weeks, but then came another change. Effective immediately, an annotation explained, the answers to that day's puzzle would be printed on a different page, a few pages away. Now what does this transition say about our society? Are we a city/nation of cheaters who can't be trusted even to think through a thoroughly inconsequential game without peeking at the answer?

The revised experiment/bright idea slammed to a screeching halt after one or two more weeks. Again effective immediately, another annotation explained, the answers to the daily JUMBLE puzzle would once again be printed the following day. The game was returned to the status quo ante bellum. The whole episode was nothing more than a tempest in a teapot, much like this blog post.

I Went to See The Dark Knight

2008-07-25T10:05:00.000-07:00

Twenty years ago I used to go to the movies every week or two. These days I go only about once or twice a year. Is it because I have less time now or because there are fewer movies I care to take the time to see? Probably both.

I don't even see every comics-related movie. I haven't seen Iron Man yet, nor even Spider-Man 2 or 3! But I do make a point of seeing every Batman movie and every Superman movie. I knew I definitely wanted to see The Dark Knight during its opening weekend.

Yes, the lines were long, but this new-fangled gimmick of buying tickets online is a good one; I know a space is reserved for me and I don't have to arrive too far in advance of the showtime. Inside the auditorium I experienced a new first: just before the lights went down, one of the ushers belted out a greeting from the front of the theater by the screen. Enjoy the movie, he told everyone, and be sure to turn off your cell phone! How eerie and prophetic those words seem now as I think back.

The lights went down and the previews went up. They had given every audience member a printed survey with golf pencil attached, asking us to appraise each of the previews of coming attractions that we would be seeing. There were about ten previews named on the survey; certainly they couldn't plan to show TEN previews! More tragic than the sheer number of previews was that each one of the movies being previewed looked bad; even in my halcyon days of ultra-regular movie attendance I would not have wasted my time or money on any of the tripe they were parading before me. Then I noticed at the end of the preview list was Watchmen and, wouldn't you know it, they didn't show that preview at my showtime.

Okay, then the movie starts. Batman! I'm ready.
Wait. What's that out the right side of my eye?

What a great opening sequence! That bank robbery, our first glimpse of LedgerJoker, excellent! But wait, what's that light flashing on my right?

The seat immediately to my right was empty, but in the seat to the right of that one was a teenager waving around his brightly-lit cellphone as purposefully as Lando Calrissian brandishing a light saber. Wide-eyed in amazement at this young ruffian's antisocial behavior, I tried to re-focus on the movie screen and was certain the youngster's fascination with his multi-colored gadget would abate and he would soon settle in to paying attention to the movie.

Ha!

In fact, every five minutes the following scenario would repeat. He would wave his bright phone around and be reading it and then wave it some more, I would physically turn my head to glare directly at him for a drumbeat of five, long, seconds, then he would pretend not to see me glaring at him but still close up the phone, then I would again attempt to re-focus on the movie.

Every. Five. minutes. The same scenario over and over for the first hour of the movie, or was it the first hour and a half? Who was the crazier one: him, for continuing to do what he was doing; or me, for continuing to more or less put up with it for so long? I simmered and I stewed. I plotted what I would blurt out at this apparent incorrigible. I was getting frantic, and the next time he did it I E X P L O D E D.

No, I didn't raise my voice. And no, I didn't squish his face like an overripe tomato. But I did swoop over toward him in a way that rendered him unable to ignore my chiding glance. Well okay, it was much more than a chiding glance. Maybe a more appropriate description would be to call it my homicidal crazyface, and you might have a difficult time believing just how widely I can prop open my eyelids. But wait, there's more. With my left hand I pointed accusingly at his trinket, and I held up my right hand in the posture that screamed HALT! Quite firmly (and more calmly than I thought I would be able to) I said, "Please put that phone away."

My heart was pounding by this time, my arteries about ready to burst, but I felt a little relief when he said "Okay, sorry." He finally put it away for the rest of the show. So that was my day at the theater.

Oh, and the movie itself? From what I saw it seemed pretty good.

The Hayfamzone Report from WizardWorld Chicago 2008

2008-06-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

It was fun to have Art Baltazar and Franco sit up on the dais for the DC Nation panel (especially when a fan asked if Lobo would be showing up anytime soon in the DC Universe and Mr. Baltazar chimed in that Mr. Lobo would be hired as the gym teacher in Tiny Titans #11!) and the Mr. Silver Age Trivia Contest is always a pleasure (and I wish Matt Hawes would put the whole hour up on YouTube every year like he did in 2006).

But I must say that one of this year's other panels at WizardWorld Chicago was one of my all-time favorites in the entire (gulp) thirty-two years I've been attending comic conventions in Chicago. But get this. The panel started twenty minutes late. Its theme wasn't what was promised. And it was great.

Billed as Brian Bendis Vs. Geoff Johns, the panel was supposed to feature these two top comics writers spout off their differing opinions on all manners of subjects related to the comics field. The audience was very patient during the long delay, and when the panel finally began it did so with a BANG.

Bendis (who has an exclusive contract writing for Marvel Comics) and Johns (exclusive to DC Comics) lunged at each other from opposite sides of the stage and proceeded to loudly tussle as if in a wrestling match, though for almost all of the audience the visual was obscured by the banquet tables on the dais. It was all in good fun (whew!) and the boys sat down, panting and puffing, at separate tables. Then Bendis announced that the two of them would then be hijacking their own panel.

He explained that he and Johns felt that the proposed point/counterpoint two-shot motif of a panel might have been mildly interesting since the two of them do have many differing opinions, but they further felt that they had a better idea. They proceeded to call up to the stage their friends and colleagues in the comics industry, a roughly half-and-half mix of DC and Marvel creators. Koi Pham. Gail Simone. David Finch. Ethan Van Sciver. C. B. Cebulski. Olivier Coipel. Brian Reed.

Bendis and Johns proclaimed it as the first-ever Marvel And DC panel. Continual comical references were made to the apocryphal upcoming companywide crossover series to be entitled Secret Crisis. At one point, Bendis got a big laugh from the audience when he said "I do like Lex Luthor, actually. I do relate to him," and if you don't get the joke just take a look at these photos of Bendis.

It was a fun and free-wheeling hour that transcended the mere hawking of company product that (unfortunately) characterizes most of the panels at WizardWorld Chicago. Yes, I said "hour." Though the panel started twenty minutes after it was scheduled to begin, it also finished twenty minutes after it was scheduled to end; in my time I've attended many panels that began late, but I can't recall any other panel that ran overtime. And yes, I said "free-wheeling." Rich Johnston reported over in his Lying in the Gutters (which I read every week and you should too) that the higher-ups at DC and/or Marvel were none too pleased with the cross-company hijinks at this particular panel.

Johnston wrapped up his item by pointing out that Bendis Vs. Johns "was regarded as the best and most buzzed about panel of the convention." I hope I've sufficiently whetted your appetite so that you'll want to read Newsarama's more-or-less verbatim transcript of the panel by clicking here.

Midnight of the New Gods, Part 2 of 2

2008-05-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

Back in November, I wrote that I had enjoyed The Death of the New Gods #1 by Jim Starlin and added that I would return to the subject for a final word after the 8-issue miniseries concluded.

I am pleased to be able to say that I found the entire series satisfying and true to the spirit of the great New Gods characters as created by Jack Kirby. From me, The Death of the New Gods earns an A.

I have to admit I was worried for the first four or five issues. It seemed that the story was being structured as a highly-suspenseful who-done-it, even though that would have rendered the entire series self-trivializing and would have reduced all eight issues to a single-sentence perfunctory plot point after the identity of the killer was made known. But in fact Starlin started teasing us and playing with the who-done-it idiom back in the very first issue when Serafin of The Forever People was "revealed" as the killer of The Black Racer. Or was the killer The Infinity Man? Or was it Himon? Or was it the "increasingly unstable" Mr. Miracle himself? Or even Orion?!

We now know that none of these red herrings was the actual villain of the story. The masterstroke of the entire series was Starlin's personification of The Source. I clearly remember when I was a youth reading "The Pact" in New Gods #7 and to the great Kirby dialogue "If I am Izaya the Inheritor, then what is my inheritance?" the flaming finger replied by writing on the wall "The Source." I was amazed by the Fourth World mythos as it was unfolding back then, and now thirty-six years later Jim Starlin has tickled my sense of wonder in the same vein. Bravo.

Here's a little tidbit of trivia I have seen mentioned nowhere else. This miniseries was originally to have been named Midnight of the New Gods, and in fact that was its established title while the first issue was being worked on. I know because it is my distinct pleasure to have obtained a page of original artwork from the first issue, and that is the series title as indicated in the upper margin of the art board. Click here to see this beautiful page, in which Metron appears to have awoken in the sanctum sanctorum of Dr. Strange!

I probably don't need to remind you that this is a reader's blog. If you'd like to read what some others have said about The Death of the New Gods, click here to view a five-page discussion board on the series.

I think we've all enjoyed our time with the Fourth World characters and I, for one, am anxious to see what the Fifth World will bring. But don't you wonder, just a little bit, what comprised the First World and the Second World and the Third World?

Your Ticket to the Golden Age

2008-04-30T03:30:00.000-07:00

Here's the one you've been waiting for, in which The Hayfamzone Blog proves once and for all that it truly is a reader's blog (and a comic book reader's blog, at that)!

I have a two-part gift for you:
1. a program to download that will allow you to become an online reader of internet-posted comic books; and
2. an archive of (copyright-expired) Golden Age comics and classic newspaper strips that are posted in the format compatible with the reading program. How about that!
There is no charge for downloading the reader and there is no charge for accessing the archive (although donations are accepted by the latter).

I myself received this two-part gift in an e-mail from the great comic book artist Jim Engel, and Jim wrote that he had received the gift from the great comic book archivist Mike Tiefenbacher. And just listen to this all-star list of recipients to whom Jim also sent the e-mail:
Scott Shaw, Chuck Fiala, Don Rosa, Fred Hembeck, Jay Lynch, Joe Sarno, Mark Evanier, Mike Gold, and Neal Sternecky. What a line-up, and I feel honored to be (virtually) shoulder-to-shoulder with these gentlemen! (Of course the Hayfamzone Spotlight has previously shone on a number of these celebrities, and in the future you can be sure it will shine on many of the others.)

Okay, now down to business. You've been very patient while I blathered on!

To get the reader program entitled CDisplay, click on the green text that says "Download version 1.8 NOW" when you go here.

To access the archive of comics to read, click on the link at the top of the screen that says "Register" when you go here.

You're then ready to delve into that archive and start reading! The CDisplay program is full-screen to maximize the size of the images, so you will need to right-click once in a while when it is running to make your options appear. As a test run, let's say you want to read a great episode of Little Nemo in Slumberland. (Good choice!) Click on "Download" at the right end of the bottom blue strip when you go here, then follow your computer's directions to Open the file which basically starts the reader program, then right-click and select "page movement control" and from the sublist select "automatic slideshow." After you have viewed the entire episode, right-click and select "exit" to leave the full-screen mode.

Isn't that great!? I hope you enjoy using CDisplay as much as I do, and please tell everyone you know to come visit the hayfamzone so they can accept their own copy of this gift. It is truly a ticket to the Golden Age, so let's not keep it a secret!

Stan Lee Has Over 10,000 Friends!

2008-03-27T20:25:00.000-07:00

It turns out that Stan Lee has a MySpace page! And, just this very week, his friendcount passed 10,000! (I know I'll take another hit for once again setting aside The Hayfamzone Blog's self-proclaimed focus of being a reader's blog and instead festooning it as something akin to a multimedia circus, but I'll never pass up the opportunity to share with you something that strikes me as interesting.) Click right here to visit Stan's page.

I offer my thanks to Mark Evanier for uncovering this little tidbit. Of course you know that Mark started out in the comics business as an editorial assistant to Jack Kirby, but did you know that Mark's is the only blog that I make a point of reading every single day? True fact. You can read it also, if you just click here.

As for getting back on track about being a reader's blog, you won't believe what I have up my sleeve for you. In my next posting I will give you a gift that will afford you HOURS upon HOURS of comics-related reading pleasure. I can hardly wait!

A Hayfamzone Salute to Dick Tracy

2008-02-29T19:11:00.000-08:00

Dick Tracy is one of the cornerstones of American comics and, though I'm not what anyone could call a big fan, I certainly respect the strip. Back when I was a teenager I bought a thick hardcover edition featuring reprints of early Chester Gould storylines because I wanted to get to really like them, but comic strips in general and Dick Tracy in specific are just not my preferred cup of tea.

Do you know there were Dick Tracy cartoons on television? I would say that these days only old-timers like me would have any recollection of them, but through the magic of YouTube I can show you what you may never have seen before. Click here to see the animated opening credits of the series; it's quite well done and the theme music is perfect. Then click here to see two episodes of the cartoon.

Do you know there is a Dick Tracy Museum? Well yes there is, but not for much longer. I've known of its existence since it opened in 1991 but, not being that big of a fan, I've never traveled the 60 miles from Chicago to Woodstock, Illinois to see the museum for myself. Click here to read a recent Chicago Tribune story about the upcoming shuttering of the brick and mortar. Then click here to visit the museum's website, planning to remain vibrant long after its building closes.

One of the people quoted in the above-linked newspaper article is Dick Locher, current artist of the syndicated Dick Tracy comic strip (which runs in just 50 papers, compared to 650 papers back in the strip's heyday). When I was in college, Mr. Locher's full-time employment was as one of the Chicago Tribune's editorial cartoonists and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his work. I spent hours upon hours back then trying to think of ways to break into the comics industry, and one day I picked up my quill and penned a letter to Mr. Locher asking whether he might possibly have need of an assistant; a perfect gentleman, Mr. Locher wrote me back and said that he unfortunately did not. I think it was only later that I learned Mr. Locher had begun his career twenty years prior by assisting Chester Gould on Dick Tracy!

Five Worlds of Batman

2008-01-26T19:02:00.000-08:00

I've written at least a couple of times that The Hayfamzone Blog is intended to be a reader's blog, and that's why I choose not to embed images in the postings. Sometimes I do massage the edges of the phrase "reader's blog" a bit by giving you links to videos, but to date only one Hayfamzone Blog reader has registered a complaint with me that I hadn't been providing him with enough to read (and, on the other hand, more than one reader wrote in thanking me for the recent links to the vintage Fox and Crow cartoons).

So you might wonder if I get in trouble when my blog post consists mainly of video links rather than my usual thought-provoking and well-reasoned treatise on some interesting aspect of the world of comics. Emphatically, the answer is NO! In fact the Board of Directors of the Hayfamzone encourage me to jettison the boundaries of the format on any occasion when I believe that doing so will be in the best interest of the blog's (ahem) readers.

What I feel the need to share with you at this time are five interrelated videos having to do with the upcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Maybe you've already seen the trailer for it in theaters, but I would ask you to devote 2 minutes and 7 seconds to watch it again because this video provides the baseline of comparison for the four that will follow. To give it a name, I'll call this video The First World of Batman.

It's nice. I like it.

Some other people with a lot of time on their hands like it also, and they altered that trailer in interesting ways to create new videos. Each of these individuals kept the exact same audio track, but paired the audio with different video images.

Creator I used clips from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film, including Jack Nicholson as The Joker. Please watch The Second World of Batman.

Creator II used clips from the 1966 Batman TV show and film, including Cesar Romero as The Joker. Please watch The Third World of Batman.

Creator III used clips from 1992's Batman The Animated Series (one of my favorite television cartoons of all time, by the way). Please watch The Fourth World of Batman.

Creator IV did something a little different, and this video is my favorite of the bunch. What could it be? Please watch and enjoy The Fifth World of Batman.

And let's see if I can't get back on the horse and give you something to READ the next time you visit!

Your New Year's Gift from the Hayfamzone!

2007-12-31T15:39:00.000-08:00

I've written before about my appreciation for the Fox and Crow comics that DC published from the middle 1940s until the middle 1960s, and I believe even at the time of that writing I lamented that I had never seen a single one of the Fox and Crow cartoons that had led to the publication of the pair's adventures in comic book form.

It's the age of YouTube, I said to myself, and surely someone must have posted a Fox and Crow cartoon for all to see. And they have! Here are links that will allow you to watch five great cartoons:

The first appearance of the Fox and the Crow was in Fox and Grapes from 1941. Click here.

Room and Bored is from 1943. Click here.

Way Down Yonder in the Corn (!) is also from 1943. Click here.

Dream Kids is from 1944. Click here.

Apparently no copy of Mysto Fox from 1947 exists in its original full-color form, but here is a black and white version that collector Lee Glover is nice enough to share with us. Click here and scroll down a little bit to see the screen.

As I was exhaustively doing this research on your behalf, I saw that quite a few individuals were clamoring for the manufacture of a DVD set. Maybe that will yet happen. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these five samples.

Happy New Year!

The Death of the New Gods, Part 1 of 2

2007-11-04T16:24:00.001-08:00

Lightray is gone. So is Big Barda. Soon, they'll all be gone. The death of the New Gods.

I watched as writer-artist Jim Starlin was asked at WizardWorld Chicago this summer whether one particular New God or another would still be standing after this mini-series concluded. His response was that the title of the series was not The Death of Some of the New Gods. Look here if you'd like to see the two versions of the cover of the first issue.

It has been my pleasure to be acquainted with these Jack Kirby characters for over 75% of my lifetime. I've blogged previously about how important Forever People #1 was to me (look here) and I even once commissioned Fred Hembeck to draw his interpretation of the cover of that comic (look here and here). I wish that this wholesale slaughter were not occurring, but I have no control over that.

At least it's being done well. Apparently John Byrne is upset that he wasn't asked to be involved with the project (look here), but I'm very pleased with the job that Jim Starlin is doing. I've read only the first issue so far; I will have more to say and be able to deliver a proper eulogy after all eight issues of the series are published.

Where Have All the Editors Gone?

2007-10-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

Remember how, back in the mid-1980s, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight influenced the comics landscape and so many popular titles from DC and Marvel became darker and grittier? It was a trend and we rode it out. Or did we?

I go to the comics store every week (insert SHOUT-OUT here to John Stangeland at Atlas Comics) and I read my comics every week. I hope you do too! But on occasions I'm finding to be far too frequent, I come across a scene in a mainstream comic that I feel is far too gruesome and/or disturbing. I'll give you a recent example.

Last month, Superman #666 was published. Click here for a reminder of what the cover looked like. In the story, Superman killed Jimmy Olsen. Wait, let's do that over. In the story, Superman killed Jimmy Olsen. One more time. In the story, SUPERMAN KILLED JIMMY OLSEN. Yes, I read the whole story and I realize that the "killing" was just a dream or a hoax or something, but the scene was very disturbingly and gruesomely executed. Kids still read Superman comics, don't they? If a youngster opened this comic book up to exactly that page without the context of the entire story, he would see Superman wantonly and recklessly killing Jimmy Olsen.

I consider the author of this story, Kurt Busiek, to be a good comic book writer. The way I look at it, everybody has a bad day every once in a while. But why wouldn't the editor yank the reins a little bit and tell Mr. Busiek to tone down the imagery somewhat? Are editors sometimes too frightened of the talent to do their job? Or maybe every story these days needs to contain at least one death to be considered passable? I, for one, don't think so. Good music doesn't have to be played loudly.

If only this were a dialogue, you might now counter with "But hasn't death been parlayed into a sensationalistic plot point in comics since long before The Dark Knight? How about Robin Dies at Dawn in 1963's Batman #156?" My response to your quick wit might be an emphatic "Touche!" if I had ever uttered that word in my life (which I have not). Here's a quick look at that classic cover, and here's a skewed view of it through a Hembeck-lens. I feel that even this cover goes deeper into morbidity than I would like it to, though I would hardly describe it as gruesome.

So it goes to show that I'm merely dancing around some matters that have been present in the comics for many decades, and nothing will be settled definitively in this article today. But apparently the gruesomeness factor in comics won't be scaling down any time soon; I just read a couple of days ago the latest issue of The Sub-Mariner, in which Namor rips out the tongue of Venom in retaliation for the latter having ripped off the ankle-wings of the former. Huh?

The Many Residences of Stan Lee

2007-09-09T08:42:00.000-07:00

Today's edition of The New York Times features a photo-history of the seven dwellings where Stan Lee has lived throughout his life. It can also be considered a photo-history of Stan Lee himself since Mr. Lee appears in most of the photos. Most interesting and previously unknown to me is that the Los Angeles home in which Mr. Lee has resided since 1980 was previously owned by Jack Benny's announcer Don Wilson.

The NYT article was written by Edward Lewine and I hope you will able to see a slide show of the photos when you click here.

Happy Jack Kirby Day to You

2007-08-28T20:28:00.000-07:00

Jack Kirby would have been ninety years old today. He is my favorite comic book artist of all time, and every word of every entry in The Hayfamzone Blog is dedicated to him.

Maybe this would be an appropriate occasion for you to take another look at the gallery of my humble collection of Jack Kirby original artwork. Just click here.

I have a separate gallery for artwork not by Jack Kirby but having some connection to him. Curious? One click right here will whisk you away to it and help to quench your inquisitiveness.

In this past Sunday's New York Times there was an appreciative article about the life and work of Jack Kirby. It was on the editorial page, of all places! Please click here if you haven't already read it.

And, as I fully anticipated, Mark Evanier wrote a wonderful piece for his News From Me blog to commemorate today's anniversary. Click here and then scroll down to see what Mark wrote about his former mentor.

The Jack Kirby Weblog has four articles posted today in honor of Jack Kirby Day, as well as links to about a dozen other sites you would want to visit. Just click here.

To cap off my celebration of the day, I'm going to wander off into a corner and re-read one of my favorite Kirby comics. I choose New Gods #7, The Pact!

Happy Birthday to Us!

2007-08-24T20:07:00.000-07:00

This month The Hayfamzone Blog quietly celebrated its first anniversary. There were no fireworks, no streamers, not even a balloon. But we're very glad to be here and very appreciative that you take a peek at what we're up to every once in a while.

Maybe you've noticed the time between posts has been lengthening a bit lately, but I don't want to post nonsense or blather just so I can say that I posted something. The Hayfamzone Blog is here for the long haul, and there are many great posts coming in both the near and the far-flung future.

If, in the meantime, you should click in and there's no new post since your last visit, I have a suggestion. Why not dig deeper into the Archive? The list begins over on the right side of this screen. In our first year there have been 43 posts. Have you read them all? There's some fine literature in them thar hills!

I did have a gift for you so we could celebrate this landmark anniversary together, but unfortunately it evaporated. I came across a website that had a dozen still images from the upcoming Dark Knight film, and they were GREAT! For example, there were full-color pictures of Heath Ledger as The Joker that I found far more interesting than the one image of him that has made all the rounds. I'll tell you the website where the images were located in case you're optimistic they might get uploaded again; just click here.

Don't fret about that missed opportunity, though. I'll have many more gifts for you in the future. Onward now, into Year 2 of The Hayfamzone Blog.

"This video is awesome!"

2007-07-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Of course I've recommended your viewing in the past of exactly one video on YouTube, and it was a video in whose creation I was directly involved. Maybe in the intervening months the big-budget production that I audaciously referred to as Hayfamzone Conquers YouTube has slipped your mind? Fear not, faithful but forgetful reader! You can re-live the 21 seconds of glory entitled "The Hayfamzone Letter" by merely clicking here.

I bring the matter up because I am now ready to recommend to you a second video selection. But wait! Don't get your hopes up! None of us in the hayfamzone had any personal involvement in the creation of this video. But I was so taken aback by the quality and inherent cleverness as I watched this entry, I knew I wanted to share it with everyone I could. Without any further introduction and with nary a hint about its subject matter, I invite you to sit back and be amazed for just over two minutes when you click here.

Feel free to pass it on! And if you come across any videos that are likewise outstandingly excellent, please write in and tell me about them.

Hooray for Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus!

2007-06-30T18:23:00.000-07:00

The first volume of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus has now been published, and it is beautiful. I was eleven years old when The Forever People, The New Gods, Mister Miracle, and Jimmy Olsen were published. Those comics were magical to me when they came out, and they still are.

In the years preceding their publication, I was what would have to be classified as a DC fan rather than a Marvel fan. Any time I took a chance and looked at a Marvel comic on the newsstand I always found one where two heroes were duking it out on the cover, and I just didn't get it. So when the tagline "Kirby's Coming" started appearing in various DC comics, it meant nothing to me. At that age I didn't know the names of any of the artists of even any of the comics I followed regularly, much less the names of artists fom that "other" company. But soon I would understand what all the fuss was about.

"KIRBY IS HERE!" is what the cover of Jimmy Olsen #133 proclaimed. Those first couple of issues were bursting with a vibrance and energy far different from the Jimmy Olsens I had been reading just months earlier. They were GREAT comics, and the best was yet to come.

With The Forever People #1, I was hooked on Jack Kirby for life! It was unlike any comic book I had read before it. Now keep in mind I was right at the age where kids start drifting away from comics, but this one comic book more than any other magnified my gravitation toward the artform. Every other comic would just been put in a pile someplace after being read one time, but not Forever People #1! I clearly remember leaving it out in the living room and re-reading it numerous times for many weeks. The scene of a contemplative Superman hunched over in thought at the end of the story is deeply ingrained in my memory! When had Superman ever done that before? When had a story ever ended like that before? Hooray for Jack Kirby!

I've had some issues with the quality of DC's Archive editions for the last few years; some of the "touch-up" artists have made too little of an attempt to match the integrity of the artwork they were allegedly archiving. I far prefer the Theakstonizing process employed in the earliest Archive editions of 20 or so years ago (click here for details) , but the work in this Omnibus before me is much better than I've seen in quite some time.

Your comic book shop is probably already sold out of the first Ominbus volume, but click here to be whisked away to Amazon.com and receive 34% off the cover price AND get free shipping( no, I don't get a penny from them, but I do want you to get the book!). While I'm at it, it's been a while since I posted the following two links of great interest:

Please click here if you'd like to view the pages of Jack Kirby original artwork that it is my privilege to own, one of them being a Jimmy Olsen Fourth World splash page. I also have a gallery room that I've seen fit to entitle "Artwork by Jack Kirby...almost" which includes a re-creation of the cover to Forever People #1 that I commissioned from comicdom's very own Fred Hembeck; click here to visit that gallery room.

Don't be alarmed when I shout it one more time. Hooray for Jack Kirby!

The Artist Party, 1983

2007-05-22T06:49:00.000-07:00

Starting in 1982, I drew a twice-monthly full-page comic book commentary strip for The Buyer's Guide for Comic Fandom as published by Alan Light. (TBG was mainly an adzine newspaper that consisted of approximately 10% editorial content surrounded by ads of comics for sale, and maybe you would call my pages commentoonies.) When the paper changed hands and became more journalistic with the new name The Comics Buyers Guide under editors Don and Maggie Thompson in 1983, I drew a commentary panel instead of a full page and continued on pretty much the same twice-monthly schedule into 1985. Click here for a reminder of what I drew for TBG and CBG.

One day in 1983, I received a phone call out of the blue (or was it a letter in the mail?) from a gentleman named Craig Yoe. Craig was also drawing for CBG at the time, producing a regular feature entitled Craig Yoe Yo Ho, but I had never met him or seen him or spoken to him. Craig was calling (or writing?) to invite me to a party for artists that he was having at his home. It was a courtesy invitation for a CBG-mate, and of course I said yes! (Click here to visit Craig's website where you can see the new Felix the Cat statue designed and produced by Yoe Studios, and click here to see an Amazon.com listing of quite a few books that Craig has written and/or drawn.)

Trepidatious, I didn't know what to expect at this Artist Party. (By the way, "trepidatious" is not a word, but I feel that there should be an adjectival form of the word "trepidation" and, also by the way, "adjectival" is a word.) I arrived at Craig's home, which I seem to recall as a stately mansion on a beautiful tree-lined boulevard. At least I'm pretty sure that I remember that there were beautiful trees, but no matter how hard I rack my brain I can't recall where in suburban Chicago this estate was located. My best guess at this time is that it was in the town of Elmhurst.

The party had already begun when I arrived, and it was quite a treat for me to see who was in attendance.

Right away I spotted Jim Engel, whom I recognized from his all-night cartoon-showing marathons with Chuck Fiala at the early Chicago Comicons. Click here to read the entry about Jim in the Who's Who in American Comic Books by Jerry Bails. To this day I can rember how hard I laughed in the 1970s when reading Jim's "Boris Tutiers" three-panel strips in which he repeatedly recycled the same three panels of artwork but each time with a different punchline. (Jim and I were both in attendance five years ago on the last day of the brick-and-mortar version of Joe Sarno's Comic Kingdom.)

Also present was Jay Lynch, one of the architects of the Underground Comics movement in the 1960s and who was at the time of the Artist Party writing Phoebe and the Pigeon People that was seeing print in the Chicago Reader. Everyone at the party was huddled around Jay like kids around their favorite uncle at a campfire as he told his fantastic stories. Or maybe they weren't, but that's at least how my memory has realigned the reality of the situation. Click here to read the entry about Jay in the Who's Who in American Comic Books. And click here to see an Amazon.com listing of some books that Jay was involved with, including one that is a collection of Phoebe and another that is interestingly miscredited to an author by the name of R. Jay Lynch Crumb.

Who else was at the party? You've got me! That's all I remember! I have a shadow of a memory that there were between six and twelve people comfortably lounging in Craig's cozy living room, but I have no recollection of who the others were. This was maybe one of the most memorable things in my 1983, yet I have only this hazy snapshot of the scene. I'm glad I've gotten this little bit into black and white (with a sea-green background) before the memory had a chance to evaporate entirely.

It Was Inevitable

2007-05-05T18:28:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time. It was bound to happen eventually, I guess. I didn't see it coming, and it gave me a funny feeling as I watched it happening.

Fans of and regular visitors to the hayfamzone know well that I sold my entire collection of original comic book artwork (except my Jack Kirby pages) in 2005 and 2006. Well, recently on ebay one of the pages I sold was up for auction anew! I would have missed it because I usually only look at the auctions for Kirby pages these days. But I just happened to be looking on ComicArtFans.com and the page was listed as one of the most-watched auctions on ebay at that time and it caught my eye. I remember clearly how my auctions were regularly being highlighted on that most-watched list back when I was selling the artwork.

The page auctioned of a couple of weeks ago was the 1976 cover to Metal Men #46 penciled and inked by Dick Giordano. Click here and you can see what the original art looked like for the 20+ years that I owned it and click here to see a copy of the printed cover as it appeared on the newsstands (because back then comics still did appear on newsstands and not just in comic book stores!). All those robots! This was one of the most detail-laden pages of art in my entire collection!

The individual who had the artwork up for auction recently thought to do something that never occurred to me. He added a photostat of the Metal Men logo in the empty space that longed to be filled (and he clearly stated in his auction listing that the statted logo was not original). My hat is off to the gentleman because the page looks 100% better with that stat in place! Click here while you can to see how the artwork looks with the logo stat added (but this ebay link will evaporate at some point in the not very distant future).

And click here if you'd like to see images of other great pages that used to be in the Hayfamzone Collection.

Cancelled Kamandi Cavalcade

2007-04-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

I have stumbled across something of great interest while puttering around the old internet, and it is my pleasure to share it with you.

Cancelled Comics Calvalcade was a two-issue EXTREMELY limited-print-run comic published by DC Comics in 1978. They had just suffered an implosion by cancelling a large percentage of their monthly titles, and for copyright-protection reasons they wanted to get into print the already-prepared issues of many of the cancelled titles. For more details about the DC Implosion, just click here or here.

Well, listen to this. Nestled inside the 23rd posted response to a Newsarama article this past week was a link to a site which has made available for online viewing the Kamandi stories that were intended for issues 60 and 61 of that Jack Kirby-created title. Yes, I know Kirby had left the title about twenty issues before that but, still, here are two comics stories you may never have read before. I know I hadn't! Just click here and you'll find the links to the two stories if you scroll down a little bit.

If you are aware of similar websites where other Cancelled Comics Cavalcade stories can be viewed, please let me know and I will share the information.