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. 

Rip Off

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.

Rip Off

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. 

Rip Off 

Invincible Iron Man Day!

George Tuska was born on this date in 1916. Tuska was an important artist at Marvel and many companies before that during the Golden Age of Comics. Tuska was one of the reliable workhorses that were required to keep comics on the racks. He was the mainstay artist on Iron Man in those years when I paid attention to the title. 

George Tuska is a pro's pro, one of those rock-solid talents who inform the field in a way which makes waves well beyond their time. As it turns out Tuska's time was pretty large, as he had a career which sprawled from the Golden Age well into the late Bronze Age and well beyond on the comic strip derived from the Justice League and Superman comics. And always his stuff was there, just like it had been before. I first encountered Tuska on Iron Man, and he remains to my eye the best artist the title ever had. I know there many Bob Layton lovers among us, and I pay proper heed to how Layton was able to redefine the look and bring a shiny gloss, but no single artist in my opinion ever drew armor which looked heavier or more like metal. It wasn't shiny, but it had an angularity and heft which didn't communicate fabric, but something else. Tuska drew great thugs, baddies who carried "heaters" and hung out with "dames". If I had to choose one artist to draw my adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, I'd get Tuska.

In my own imagination, when I think of Iron Man the first image was something from the long rich tapestry created by George Tuska.

Above is my first Iron Man comic and my introduction to both Tuska and writer Archie Goodwin. 

Rip Off

Arbor Day - The Monster From Planet X!

Everybody knows Groot. After his star turn in the Guardians of the Galaxy comic books and big time Hollywood movies, Groot is a household name, likely the most famous of the Kirby monsters. 

But it was not always thus. Originally the cute Groot was merely another alien invader, a monster who fell victim to the enemy of most wooden things -- termites. 

Since then, he's been revised as an ongoing character. As cute as little Groot is, I find a soft spot in my heart for the deadly original.

 Groot and his monstrous allies can be found in the outstanding volume below. What a feast! 

Rip Off

Starlost - The Novels!

Phoenix Without Ashes was Harlan Ellison's original title for the debut story of The Starlost. It was changed to "Voyage of Discovery" which is not as poetic certainly. And that seems to be Ellison's most potent complaint against this show which was birthed from his ideas, that it loses its way by consistently playing down to its audience. More recent years have proven Ellison right, that TV fans and sci-fi fans in particular might well be receptive to shows that challenge them a might, that require more of them than an hour of their time. 

The novelized version of the script was expanded by Edward Bryant, a capable science fiction writer in his own right and well capable of taking the story of an outcast Amish man who doesn't fit into his society and eventually finds that his whole world is not what anyone thought it was. The is a story about seeking the truth and the novel spends more time inside Devon's head making him a somewhat more complex and consequently more fascinating character. We get to share his doubts, something the TV show almost never does. 

And we get to see aspects of human existence which were weirdly forbidden on television in those days. Not only does Devon love Rachel, but it's evident they have a physical relationship. On the TV show his love is more ethereal, more of the twin-souls variety and in the book it's that and more. One memorable scene when Devon finally leaves his Cypress Corners habitat is that his physical needs, to eat and urinate are considered, giving the sense of a greater span of time. 

The novel shows us what the show might've been in another time and place and it does enhance our understanding of what we're seeing when we watch the show itself. 

But that's not all. 

Ben Bova was as science adviser for the ill-fated sci-fi show The Starlost. This was a series regarded as an epic fail in the genre because those in command refused to pay attention to the experts they hired and like so many TV projects worked purely from the motive of profit and not art. No begrudges the making of profit, but when that profit comes by low-balling all the costs of production as opposed to doing the best job possible then it's understandable that the work might be held in low regard. And that's the case with Bova and this show, so he worked out his angst by creating a delightful satire about the whole affair entitled The Starcrossed.

The story is set in the early twenty-first century future as seen from 1975 and it's a different world in many ways, but in detail. The obsession with fads has quickened and the world is a dirty polluted territory but made bearable by artificial images and scents. In this America is a conniving TV producer who is about to go under and in a desperate gamble contacts "Ron Gabriel", the Harlan Ellison wannabe and in this story a notorious science fiction writer and quixotic personality to create a new sci-fi show. Gabriel is down on his luck too, though always able to find a date with a lithesome beauty, and so goes for it and fashions in a whirl if energy a yarn translating Romeo and Juliet into outer space.

The narrative of The Starcrossed is told from multiple perspectives but our core tale is of a scientist and engineer who has invented a new 3-D technique which is the real selling point of this new show. His naive introduction to the manipulation and dishonesty of Hollywood shapes much of the attitude the story is attempting to communicate. There back-biting executives and a lovely girl who has secrets within secrets. Few are what they seem in this tale and that's the way the world is supposed to be. When the production heads to Canada to cut costs the shenanigans have only begun and a show which was supposed to be great is now intended to fail for the good of the company.

There are good laughs to had in this one, and I even laughed out loud a few times, a real accomplishment for text in my experience. Bova doesn't really let anyone off the hook, and neither does he rob anyone of a fundamental humanity. Even the loathsome figures are motivated in a such a way as to make us understand. Satires are always about the here and now despite the fact they almost always are set in faraway times and places. So it is with The Starcrossed.

Rip Off