Dinosaur Gardens » Comics

Basil Wolverton’s Culture Corner

sluggo — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:24:13 +0000

Here are some helpful instructions on how to perform everyday tasks in a cultured manner, courtesy comic book master Basil Wolverton. This feature ran in Whiz Comics from 1945 to 1952, and I believe they have never been reprinted.

Too much of Wolverton’s work has yet to be reprinted, including many of his Powerhouse Pepper stories and his classic sci-fi series Spacehawk. Fantagraphics Books is reprinting his illustrated bible this year, though, so that’s a good start.

You can view each strip separately, or scroll to the bottom for the combined strips in Comic Book Archive or PDF format.

Although this is the bulk of the “Culture Corner strips”, there are a few I’ve not been able to find, so unfortunately you’ll have to wait to learn how to cut your own hair, how to mat your hair down flat, and how to open a sticky window in the cultured fashion.

Steve Ditko: Avenging World

sluggo — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 03:08:35 +0000

Steve Ditko is, of course, best known for being the co-creator and original artist of Spider-Man. What most people don’t know, however (except serious comic-book nerds like Brakhage and me), is that in the early 1970s he went on a tear and produced a series of insane Objectivist independent comics/rants that are unlike any comics produced then or now.

The series of self-published comics featured an array of forgettable one-shot superheroes and one continuing series with his favorite character, Mr. A, loosely based on The Question, a superhero he had worked on for Charlton Comics a few years earlier. Mr. A was the Randian hero moved to a superhero setting; like Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, he was the uncompromising perfect man, set upon by the cowardly, mediocrity-loving elites, including a newspaper publisher (J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man was also right out of Rand; at one point in the early series he admitted he hated Spider-Man because he made him seem ordinary by comparison — the mediocre dragging down the perfect). Alan Moore would later base the character of Rorschach in his series Watchmen on The Question/Mr. A; Moore lacked the political empathy and understanding, however, to truly parody someone whose beliefs were so far from his own, and Rorschach became simply a fascist psychotic, albeit a memorable and oddly charismatic one.

My favorite of these, though, was Avenging World. Not a superhero comic, or indeed even really a narrative comic at all, it was more of a diagrammatic tract outlining all the movements he hated (Christianity, Communism, welfare, post-modernism, equivocation) and explaining what was wrong with the world. This style was perfect for Ditko; while his lecturing diatribes would often sound ridiculous in the mouth of Mr. A (who would frequently be seen saying something like “Why did you deny what truth you did know as true?… How did you expect your dishonesty to lead to an honest gain… a worthy end?” while pummeling a miscreant), they worked very well in the context of his more abstract, tract-like diagrams.

His art, too worked better in this format. When he needed to draw a club representing coercion, he drew a club; I submit to you that there isn’t an artist in the comic-book world that could draw a more evil club than Ditko. Not only is it twisted and knobbing in a menacing fashion, it literally is oozing evil. This is the most hideous, scary, abstract-concept–representing club you will ever see.

I picked a bunch of his comics up because I’m generally a fan of bizarre propaganda and ramblings, and from what I knew of this I was sure I find it terribly amusing. And I did, but…

Uh, heh, well.. (cough, cough)… I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but when I read Avenging World, I realized that I pretty much agreed with what he had to say (I probably would have made this discovery had I ever read any Ayn Rand, but I never had the attention span for that). I recognized the lunacy behind it, and yet… I dunno, I just couldnt find much to argue with. Quibble, yes. But since everyone knows Ditko is just this right-wing lunatic, what does that make me? (Don’t answer that.) Oh well. I hope we can still be friends.

In honor of Ditko’s 80th birthday last Friday, here’s the long-out-of-print Avenging World; take your pick of PDF or Comic Book Archive format.

Nanonuts

sluggo — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 17:23:45 +0000

Nanonuts is a rather odd comic I found several years ago at Quimby’s book/zine store in Chicago. It was all very mysterious, with no credits or contact information (there were a couple URLs, but they were for straightforward sites about nanotechnology and apparently had nothing to do with the book’s creators). And it was bound with yarn. Of course I had to have it — it combined two of my greatest loves, nightmarish surrealist deformities and Peanuts.

Luckily for me, I loved it so much that not only did I buy a copy, but I made at least two friends also buy copies. So when I lost my copy, I told Brakhage and he sent me a scan of his copy and saved me. And now I can post it here.

Nanonuts