Rio Day!

Doug Wildey was born on this date in 1922, I don't know when I learned just who Doug Wildey was, but when I recognized his name from the old Jonny Quest cartoon, I knew he was among my artistic heroes. It would be later that I learned of The Outlaw Kid. Wildey was not an artist who dominated the shelves, in fact he hardly did any comic book work after his turn to animation. So, when he produced a new series for the independent Eclipse Monthly it was a big deal all around.

Rio was just one series among many in the debut issue of Eclipse Monthly and not even the headliner. Captain Quick and the Foozle by Marshall Rogers was the breakout from this series, if any was. Steve Ditko's Static migrated in from Charlton appearances to find a home. Trina Robbins adapted a bizarre Sax Rohmer novel titled Dope, and The Masked Man was an attempt to update the concept of The Spirit. Alongside them was a realistically drawn western about a lean tall stranger known only as Rio, a many who once was an outlaw but now wore a badge and was on a mission for President Grant.

The adventures of Rio appeared in intermittent issues of Eclipse Monthly, getting a featured cover appearance in the fifth issue.

And doing likewise in the tenth. The three stories told were installments in a larger yarn, though each episode had a relatively satisfactory beginning, middle and end. The artwork was detailed and evoked a west which was both mythic and mundane. Rio was enough of a real man to make him identifiable and enough of a classic western hero to make him admirable.

After that initial outing he disappeared until those three stories were put together for an ove-rsized album from Comico Publishing. To read these earliest Rio stories check out this link.

Then some years later, Rio would ride again in an adventure published by Marvel Comics. Doug Wildey seemed not at all in a hurry to generate these stories, all told with heart and all using to some degree actual historical western figures. Rio was a man everyone seemed to have known, or to have at least heard of. But somehow you got the sense the official history of the west had just forgotten about him. These stories were there to set the record straight.

When Rio appeared again, for the final time it was a Dark Horse Comics. Rio always rode on and each time ended up at a different publisher.  Soon enough Wildey passed away and left unpublished in the United States, two Rio adventures. One had been published in Europe, but the other was not quite finished. Both those "new" Rio adventures were combined with the earlier material produced over nearly two decades and published by yet another comic book house, this time IDW.

They approached the tome as if it were an art book and it's lovely. The techniques that Wildey used to produce his memorable art is evident and as the introduction makes clear, Wildey was an artist completely interested in the result and not the purity of technique as he mixed those at will. Doug Wildey was a master artist and this volume entitled Doug Wildey's Rio makes that clear.

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The Other Barbarians!

(The dates for 1975 and 2025 are identical.)

Barry (Not-Yet-Windsor) Smith grew by leaps and bounds stylistically as he produced the earliest issues of Marvel's surprise hit Conan the Barbarian. It was the birth of a franchise that would reap benefits for Marvel for decades. Smith left the title several times during the course of its run, sometimes by his own choice.

Norman the Barbarian is a satire with true bite. That's because frankly it's produced with such vitality and informed accuracy by the very artist whose style is being lampooned in the production. National Lampoon was an up-and-coming satire magazine at about this same time. And the confluence of events allowed for the creation of an exceedingly potent satire on all things Conan though the target is the controversial 60's and 70's writer Norman Mailer I won't comment on the story itself, save to caution one and all that National Lampoon was a magazine that held back few if any punches, especially in its early days. This is a prime example of what the magazine could do when it was operating on all cylinders. For what it's worth the Dojo presents "Norman the Barbarian".

Satire should never ask forgiveness and never beg for mercy. So whatever opinion you hold of the story above is valid. It makes its points and moves ahead. So will we.

I'm struck by the sheer craftsmanship that Smith brings to this work, right down the detailed imitation of Marvel's house style.

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Last Day In Vietnam!

Will Eisner was a master storyteller with the uncanny skill of making real people feel real, not something always well done in comics. Most of the population of the world in comics are relegated to crowd scenes, part of the mass of humanity, often speaking with one or maybe two voices in response to the activities of the heroes or villains or both. Eisner was able to pluck out especially interesting people from the background crowds and give them distinctive voices. His men had paunches or didn't and his women were sexy or not, but mostly they were real.

"Last Day in Vietnam" is told from the specific limited first-person perspective of a reporter heading into the back country of Vietnam for the first time and his guide is a soldier with a smile on his face. We find a very real man, a soldier who is heading home and feeling thrilled but especially fragile now that the relative safety of the hearth is near. He's full of bravado, naivete, and you can tell he's talking to fill the air, to keep the fear from creeping in. But that fear does creep in when real immediate danger rears up and things change for him, and his imagination meets his reality. We see all this from the safe distance of the reporter, so it's best not to be too judgmental as it might be easy to be. Eisner gives us that option.

Today is indeed the fiftieth anniversary of the last day of the Vietnam War, marked with the fall of Saigon after twenty years of relatively pointless conflict. The war ended in the nick of time for me personally as I would have been eligible for the draft in the year. 

I read this story not in its original collection, but in The Mammoth Book of War Comics.

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And The Kitchen Sink Too!

This Spirit cover by Will Eisner cracks me up. The Spirit is famous for his all-out brawls, so I guess it's only natural that he'd get this treatment eventually. 

 

Take special note of the Kitchen Sink logo for this one issue. I love this kind of attention to detail. 

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Ghost Rider Day!

Dick Ayers was born on this date in 1924. Ayers is likely most famous as an artist at Marvel and many companies before that during the Golden Age of Comics. He was the mainstay artist on Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos. 

Perhaps the character most associated with the late great Dick Ayers, which he had a hand in creating, is Ghost Rider. The character debuted for Magazine Enterprises in the pages of Tim Holt in 1949.

Soon enough he had his own title, and after the debut issue featuring this cover by Ayers, the great Frank Frazetta stepped in to do the cover art for several issues. See this for more on that.

After Frazetta departed though, Ayers was back on the task beginning with the sixth issue.

After the demise of the character and the title and the company, the Ghost Rider waited many more years before riding again. He did with a somewhat different origin and back story for Marvel. Dick Ayers had been a stalwart for the company for many moons, as an inker and penciller. He assumed the art again on his signature character and the title lasted another seven installments.

Marvel revived the name a few years later, but without the western setting and brand new talent. Ayers wasn't connected to the adventures of Johnny Blaze. This new Ghost Rider proved so durable that when the original (sort of) western version (both vintage and modern) was revived his name was changed to "Night Rider" and later to "Phantom Rider".

I've frankly lost track of what they call him now, if he even still exists in some form. AC Comics still reprint his original adventures from time to time, but he's called "Haunted Horseman" when he appears over there.

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Ev'ry Little Bug!

As I've likely said elsewhere, the Spirit has had many homes, but none which cared for the character with the intensity of feeling of Kitchen Sink. When Denis Kitchen's outfit was handed the project from Warren Magazines, they quickly worked to enhance the actual stories with gobs of background information, mostly from Cat Yronwode.

 As the years ticked by Kitchen Sink produced lots of neat non-comics products attached to Will Eisner's famous character. There were collector cards for instance. But the strangest collectable has to be Ev'ry Little Bug, a two-sided picture record album which gives life to the song "Every Little Bug". That song had appeared in bits and pieces until finally Eisner partnered with Bill Harr create a complete song which they then proceeded to get published in 1948. 

This sheet music goes for hundreds of dollars online. But it wasn't until 1987 when Kitchen Sink took the music and produced a full album. The song is produced five times in various styles and is interspersed with supposed elements of an episode of a 1948 "The Adventures of the Spirit" TV by Alan R. Cartoon Associates. I can find no evidence such a show or company ever existed, so these elements were created just as was the music in all likelihood. The Adventures of the Spirit was produced in the early 60's by Don Glut as an amateur movie. It's not connected to this record album in any way. (More on this oddball creation in a few weeks.)

I confess it's the Eisner artwork on the B side of this album that made this something I really wanted to have and to hold. But I have to say the production is interesting in its own right. There is dedicated sleeve cover for this album as far as I can learn. One offbeat detail for pop culture fans is that Bill Mumy plays guitar on certain tracks. To learn more about record check out this link. To give this amazing little album a listen check out this link. 

Now for a tale of my stupidity. I chanced upon this item for a very nice price and jumped at it. Then it dawned on me I no longer own a record player. But thanks to the internet I was able to dig one up before this gem arrived. It played nice. 

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