The Question redux

 

As it was the subject of one of the earliest series of posts on this weblog, and one of the few I actually finished, I'm pretty thrilled that DC has finally got a reprint of the old O'Neil/Cowan QUESTION series on the schedule. THE QUESTION VOL. 1 TP Writer: Dennis O'Neil Artists: Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar Collects: THE QUESTION #1-6 $19.99 U.S., 176 pages Of course, the book has been on schedules before, so we'll see. I wonder if they've considered using the promo poster (seen here) as the cover or a frontispiece or pinup? I'd love to have an actual print copy of that image.

EC - Horror House (Craig)

Horror House
by Johnny Craig
Vault of Horror #15[#4] (1950)

As part of this seemingly never ending series of posts on EC stories, one of the things I get reminded of is that they aren't all gems. Case in point...

This early little bit by Craig has a writer who, for some reason, finds his house the party destination for all his friends, keeping him from making his deadlines. So he takes off for the country and buys an old house that is rumoured to be haunted. His writing goes great, until his friends track him down, hoping to lure him back to the city. Their logical plan is to convince him his house is haunted by rigging various gimmicks. After he's scared off, his friends encounter the real ghosts, and are either killed or driven crazy. Yeah, definitely not a gem, and Craig's earlier art never knocks me out either.

Linkistan

Why didn't I know Stan Sakai has a journal?

Steve Bissette's blog has moved, update your maps accordingly. And go and read his post that starts off being about the recent WAR THAT TIME FORGOT book, and then rather appropriately goes through time and space to other dinosaur comics, the early days of art team Andru and Esposito, his days at the Kubert school and more.

Spunky the Monkey.

Got POGO art or quality proofs? Help make the upcoming reprints definitive.

Eddie Campbell's been looking at some of his painted covers and variations on the same.

EC - Custer's Last Stand (Wood)

Custer's Last Stand
art by Wallace Wood, story by Harvey Kurtzman
Two-Fisted Tales #27[#10] (1952)

Kurtzman and Wood present a story from the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, popularly known by the title of the story. The tale is told from the perspective of one of Custer's men, and except for some narration and a word balloon on both the first and last pages it's entirely told in thought balloons presenting the soldier's view of what's happening and why as the story progresses.

Kurtzman does a great job of capturing the frustration of the common soldier swept up in what he knows is a lost cause for sake of the glory of others, doing a great job with the words. Wood meanwhile really seemed to get into the subject matter, and does some of the most lush and detailed illustrations of his early career. When the soldier has to look down at an attack from "all the Indians in North America", that's near to what Wood actually drew. This kind of makes me wish that New Trend era EC had a dedicated western title, instead of scattered stories like this, just so we'd have seen a lot more tales of this kind.

The Lone Ranger #1 [1993] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

The Lone Ranger #1 [1993]

I believe this was the only issue of the series published by Pure Imagination, collecting a run of the comic strip adventures of the Lone Ranger by Russ Heath and Cary Bates that, according to a search on the prestigious internets, ran from 1981 to either 1984 or 1986 (possibly not with Heath and Bates through the entire run). This comic book doesn't give too much information about the contents, but has 49 pages of those adventures (seems to be dailies and Sundays, so about 20 weeks worth), comprising two stories, all under a painted cover by Heath and Greg Theakston.

The first story is the better of the two, pretty much a by-the-book western, where a young man enlists the aid of the Lone Ranger and Tonto to find the father he never knew, an old gunfighter who the Ranger had helped disappear some years earlier. Of course, things aren't as they seem, and there are multiple pursuits, ambushes and gunfights before everything gets sorted out. There's a bit of a twist that kind of comes out of nowhere, and could have been established better with a clue early in the story, but that shouldn't be news for those familiar with Cary "Mr. Surprise" Bates from his super-hero comic book writing.

The second story is quite a bit odder, as our intrepid duo are contacted by Mark Twain to help him on a riverboat journey starting in New Orleans, because he's had a premonition of his own death.

It's hinted that there's some sort of past between the Ranger and Twain that isn't explained, as well. The story then goes on even stranger tangents involving an ex-Confederate general who's looking to steal some gold to finance the rise of the New South. Decent enough story, but not really a Lone Ranger story.

The artwork, though, is pretty excellent in both stories. Heath with his slick and precise style really looks good on a western (I know he did a lot of them in the 1950s, but I haven't seen those, the only substantial western I can remember seeing him on is the brilliantly twisted final Jonah Hex story), and the book is well worth having just for that glimpse into another aspect of his career.

EC - Child of Tomorrow (Feldstein)

Child of Tomorrow
by Al Feldstein
Weird Fantasy #17[#5] (1951)

Post-nuclear funnies provided by Feldstein this time, as Jerry has the luck of spending some time exploring an underground mine as the US faces a saturation attack of nukes (but manage to completely wipe out the enemy). His girl Linda was also among the survivors, but he has to leave her behind, pregnant, when he's sent on job to find uranium in South America. Unfortunately, everyone else quickly starts dying from delayed effects of the nukes, leaving Jerry to make his way back to the US alone, where he finds the city full of strange mutants, where he's the only "pre-Atomic: left alive, and is warned about crazy violent two-headed mutants.

One of those two-headed mutants turns out to be... well, you can figure it out from there, I'm sure. Very clear, straightforward work from Feldstein that gets really creepy in the last few pages.

GRIMJACK - KILLER INSTINCT by Ostrander/Truman

GRIMJACK - KILLER INSTINCT collects the 6-issue miniseries from 2005 featuring the return of the creators of the character, John Ostrander and Tim Truman, back with his first new adventure since the demise of First Comics in 1991.

I'm fairly familiar with the original series, having most of Truman's original run and scattered issues after that (I never did feel any of the later artists worked out quite as well as Truman, although I thought Tom Mandrake did okay). From what I could piece together, the story seemed to get pretty convoluted in the second half of the original series, with clones, time travel, re-incarnation and who knows what else. So it's probably for the best that for this return they've opted to go back in time and tell a story from some years before the original series, which explores some backstory that had been mentioned before, including the origin of Grimjack's ownership of Munden's Bar.

The book opens with the end of the Dancer Rebellion, at a time when John Gaunt / Grimjack is a member of the Trans-Dimensional Police in the multi-dimensional city of Cynosure, partnered up with Roscoe. Following the requisite bloodshed, we find out how Grimjack got from there to a member of the secret police Cadre, then jumps to his final mission for them, which forms the rest of this book.

Truman's art is excellent as always. Still very much in the style of the original work, but he's gotten much more polished and detailed in the two decades since. The whole "multi-dimensional" thing is obviously a convenient excuse for him to draw whatever interests him, so there's always a great mix of sci-fi, fantasy, historical and modern elements.

Ostrander gets back into the old rhythm as well. It's the old mix of pulp adventure in a fantastic setting. I'm not sure how it'll read to someone not familiar with the original series, but it seems that enough of the backstory is given early on to get people up to speed, and for the most part this story doesn't depend on the earlier stuff. He's also free to put in a lot more adult elements now, in terms of language, sex and violence, and he seems quite happy to use this new liberty. It's a nicely dense story compared to a lot of modern comics, with some interesting concepts open to explore, and a lot of surprises while still feeling comfortably familiar to those who read the original series.

Ostrander and Truman are apparently still at work on the next chapter in the Grimjack saga, whatever form that will take. I look forward to it.