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I have to admit, even I’m a little shocked by the silliness of the MoCCA statement about this whole Archie credit issue. To wit (and I promise, this is the last time I’ll mention it, since clearly it’s like talking to a brick wall): I emailed Karl at MoCCA 3 times over the course of a month before posting my thoughts on the show. Having curated a show there and done numerous events over the years, yes, that means I can expect a response back, just as I would respond to any colleague who emailed me. No, I couldn’t make it back to the museum itself, but I didn’t need to — I was asking why there were no credits and why it was OK to ignore and perpetuate a shameful legacy. How is a phone call or email not enough to explain that? The fact that I’m somehow being blamed by Ellen in her “statement” is probably self-evidently ridiculous. But just in case: Guys, the issue isn’t whether or not I could make it back over the to museum: The issue is that you don’t act anything even remotely like an educational institution. It’s not Archie (the company’s) fault that you don’t have anyone on hand who can ID the original art–there are at least a dozen historians in the NYC area who could do that; nor is it the company’s fault that you would refuse to even acknowledge the issues at play. Nor is it my fault. Get a grip, admit that you screwed up, and move on. Every commenter (myself included) basically was giving you the benefit of the doubt. By issuing a defensive statement that somehow pulls me in and (again!) ignores the real issues at play, you’re not doing yourself any favors.

Anyhow, onto happier matters. Here are a couple of recordings by artists. Y’know, the people that draw comics! Both of these recordings have been linked to but I want to reiterate how wonderful they are. First is Jack Kirby in 1970, with Steranko chiming in occasionally. Kirby sounds like a forceful visionary let loose on a crowd, practically preaching.

Jeet kindly transcribed the following passage, which is one of the best ever statements on cartooning:

Drawing a good figure doesn’t make you a good artist. I can name you ten men, right off the bat, who draw better than I do. But I don’t think their work gets as much response as mine. I can’t think of a better man to draw Dick Tracy than Chester Gould, who certainly is no match for Leonardo Da Vinci. But Chester Gould told the story of Dick Tracy. He told the story of Dick Tracy the way it should have been told. No other guy could have done it. It’s not in the draftsmanship, it’s in the man.

Like I say, a tool is dead. A brush is a dead object. It’s in the man.

If you want to do, you do it. If you think a man draws the type of hands that you want to draw, steal ‘em. Take those hands.

The only thing I can say is: Caniff was my teacher, Alex Raymond was my teacher, even the guy who drew Toonerville Trolley was my teacher. Whatever he had stimulated me in some way. And I think that’s all you need. You need that stimulation. Stimulation to make you an individual. And the draftsmanship, hang it. If you can decently: learn to control what you can, learn to control what you have, learn to refine what you have. Damn perfection. You don’t have to be perfect. You are never going to do a Sistine Chapel, unless someone ties you to a ceiling. Damn perfection.

All a man has in this field is pressure. And I think the pressure supplies a stimulation. You have your own stresses, that will supply your own stimulation. If you want to do it, you’ll do it. And you’ll do it anyway you can.

The Crane interview from 1961 is notable for the heavy shoptalk, Crane’s unabashed patriotism, and his wonderfully intelligent awareness of both his own and his medium’s history. I’d never heard Crane’s voice before – his laconic twang fits perfectly with that plush cartooning of his. Cartoonist Verne Greene is a great and officious host. There is also a Chester Gould interview from the same series. Invaluable stuff.

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Art by Harry Lucey

About six weeks ago I strolled over to MoCCA here in New York to see The Art of Archie Comics, an exhibition devoted to “one of the oldest and most beloved family-friendly brands in the comic book industry.” There are some fine Harry Lucey pages. Gorgeous Dan DeCarlo examples. But something is missing on the walls: art credits. There are no attributions to be found except on a rather confusing handout available by request at the desk. What little information there is about the material on display is written in a kind of corporate press-release speak, filled with misinformation (or outright untruths, like the notion that John Goldwater was the sole creator of Archie) and nicely omitting (a) the notoriously shabby way the company treated its artists (artists who still don’t receive credit in the various reprints) and (b) the rather “interesting” fact that the company has retained all, or most, of its original art.

To me, this is dark, sad stuff. Archie Comics has a great artistic legacy—one worth examining. But it’s been over two decades since the Kirby v. Marvel fight, and over a decade since the nasty business over Dan DeCarlo came to light. We all understand (or should) the financial and moral issues at play and I’m not going to reprise them here. In the case of DeCarlo, a man who made Archie millions of dollars was fired in his twilight years and denied any share in the characters he created. It’s somewhat grotesque to use his work to “celebrate” the company without even acknowledging the issues at play. Was DeCarlo’s family invited to contribute to or comment on the show? Were any of the deceased artists’ families asked?

I was reluctant to even write this piece, since, in some ways, it’s barely worth addressing. Obviously the Archie show is not intended as history in any intellectually serious way, but it’s hosted and organized by MoCCA, which is, in fact, the only “museum” of comics on the East Coast. I happily curated a show at MoCCA and support its mission in the abstract. The medium needs institutional support. But it needs to be serious support. This startling lack of scholarship and disregard for the moral rights of artists was, I imagine and hope, unconscious and not malicious—I doubt anyone at MoCCA even knew about or researched the situation. But that’s not much of an excuse.

I wrote to MoCCA with questions about all of the above issue, but aside from an invitation to come to the museum and chat, which I couldn’t fit into my schedule, I wasn’t able to get a response via email or phone.

Situations like this are complicated. MoCCA is cash-strapped and I would imagine (well, I hope) that MoCCA received some kind of donation for hosting the show. Museums are hardly temples of virtue and must work with corporate sponsors to survive. The problem here, though, is that the museum is actually furthering a historically and morally dubious agenda. But look, what am I going to do about it? As a publisher, I plan to exhibit at the MoCCA Festival because it’s part of my business, despite, in some ways, my reluctance to support the program anymore. So I don’t exactly have much moral ground.

Giving MoCCA the benefit of the doubt, I’ll assume The Art of Archie Comics is part of a steep learning curve, and that the museum and its board will, in the future, look more closely at the issues at play around historical work and try a bit harder to remember men like Dan DeCarlo.

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Our own Tim talks In the Shadow of No Towers over at Comics Reporter. It’s a great read.

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I will be the “M.C.” of this fine gathering of cartoonists opening for Chip Kidd’s band artbreak. Come on out and get some early New Year’s cheer.

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Feiffer on the left, Mayer on the right…

A couple recent items have sparked my comics fancy. First, The Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly. This 350-page, full color book is a brilliant anthology by two masters of the form. I haven’t seen much about it in the comics press, so I thought it would be worth mentioning here. The book collects a few dozen stores from the 40s and 50s by well known cartoonists like Barks and Stanley as well as lesser known figures like Milt Stein and Jim Davis, not to mention complete unknowns like Frank Thomas and Andre LeBlanc. The promotional aspects of the book are pitched at children, as it should be (after all, the work is exactly what I wish I had as a kid), but the beauty of the organizing conceit is that many of the best cartoonists in the world were making “children’s” comics, so what the book really is is an anthology of masteful drawing and storytelling — the kind that informed cartoonists as diverse as the Hernandez Bros (Bob Bolling, Al Wiseman), R. Crumb (Barks and Kelly) and Seth (Stanley). And Spiegelman and Mouly don’t stint on the background material — the biographies of the artists are snappy and well-researched and the historical introduction nicely contextualizes the stories that follow.

Even for an obsessive (and fellow anthologist) like me there were stories that were near revelatory, like Walt Kelly’s “Never Give a Diving Board an Even Break” (composed entirely around a see-saw) and the aforementioned Frank Thomas’s “Billy and Bonny Bee”. Part of it is getting to read a single story at a time by someone like Barks, Stanley or Bolling. Making it bite-sized, without the weight of 10 other stories in an anthology or 3 others in a comic book, allowed me to just focus intently on what Barks was doing, as opposed to what, say, Milt Stein was doing. It’s good to see the “giants” amongst the unknowns — it feels like an accurate context.

All the different sensibilities here, most fully developed and deployed, are staggering in their diversity. And the other part of this book is simply the pleasure of looking: The production quality is ideal: the original comic book colors are intact and printed on uncoated stock against an off-white tone. Ahhh, perfection.

Anyhow, as a collection of near-flawless cartooning, this book can’t be beat. Go get it and learn from it.

The other item is less an item and more a stray idea: No one has really mentioned that Robert Williams has been chosen to participate in the 2010 Whitney Biennial (warning: obnoxious web site) It’s not the first time someone “outside” the mainstream art world has been exhibited — Chris Ware and Forcefield both exhibited in 2002 — but it nonetheless marks an important moment: Williams’ penetration into the curatorial world that Juxtapoz so despises. It may or may not have any real ramifications, but it would be nice if it meant there was some real curatorial interest in someone like Williams (and extending beyond him, in collecting and preserving other non-mainstream artists). I loved walking between his show and Mike Kelley’s a month or so ago and I think the work will kinda throw everything else into stark relief. In a good way. Context, baby. It’s all about context.

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Via Steve Bissette, Tom Spurgeon broke the news of Little Lulu artist Irving Tripp’s passing. This was all the more shocking for many of us selfish historian-types because, as Tom noted, we weren’t aware he was still around all these years. So, Jeet had the idea to reprint the one interview known to exist with Tripp, from Another Rainbow’s Little Lulu Vol. 16 (1985).

Anyhow, now CC pal Seth has graciously supplied these scans of that fascinating interview, posted here with permission. Click to enlarge each scan to reading size. Thanks to all, and thanks to Irving Tripp, a master cartoonist.

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This dog needs your money in order to live the high life.

I apologize (mostly to my fellow editors) for the following “Paid Advertisement” but this is of some slight interest to you CC faithful.

Over at PictureBox we have some fine new products in stock, including:

We have a slew of new products now in stock, including:

-A new Jimbo comic by Gary Panter
-Leif Goldberg’s great annual silkscreen calendar, Gear Worms
–City-Hunter by CF
-Anya Davidson’s new silkscreen comic Real People and poster, too

Also: Slime Freak 11 and restocks of 8-10, new work by Keith Herzik and more. Also, back in stock: King Terry’s Bad ‘n’ Nice, Real Deal #1, The Asshole, etc.

Please note that orders received by 12/17, using Priority Mail, should arrive in time for X-Mas. Media Mail is a crapshoot. We can’t guarantee anything, but Priority Mail by 12/17 should do the trick. If it doesn’t, though, don’t come a’knockin’, as we will be “gone fishin”.

Please check our “new and recommended” section for more items. PictureBox: the gift that keeps on giving. And taking. And giving. And taking some more. Etc. etc.

Now back to intelligent, civilized discourse.

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Photo by Chris Rice

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Thanks to everyone who came out on Saturday. It was an exceptional day despite the weather. I wanted to give a special thanks to Bill Kartalopoulos for running such a great slate of programming.

Anyhow, the day was great fun and even thought provoking. A couple bits of business: We will be posting the Saul/Panter talk here in a couple days, and by the end of the week PictureBox will have a bunch of new products online, including the new Jimbo mini, CF’s new zine, and Leif Goldberg’s 2010 calendar.