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At 29, Hal Foster bicycled from Winnipeg to Chicago. He was in search of a new market, having already achieved the dubious title of most popular illustrator in Winnipeg. Seems like the stuff of a Guy Maddin film, but, nope, it was just Foster, one of our sportier cartoonists (there are apocryphal stories of the artist shooting wildlife out his studio window.) That was in 1921. Ten years later he became the regular artist on the Tarzan comic strip, and six years after that began publishing his masterpiece, Prince Valiant.

I came to Foster and Prince Valiant just recently via Wally Wood. Wood’s trees, the artist long maintained, were Foster’s trees, and Wood’s sense of composition and figures in motion was heavily influenced by Foster’s balanced and graceful panels. Sure I’d read Foster before, but I’d never found a way in. Fortunately, Fantagraphics recently released Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-38, and I was able to absorb the material in a wholly new way. After doing some reading I dug up a copy of The Comics Journal 102 (1985), which features a fascinating interview by Arn Saba (also look for her Caniff and Gottfredson interviews in other issues) with a then-retired Foster. He comes across as a melancholy man but confident man, as humble about his work as he was sure of his abilities. Asked about his inspirations, Foster replies, “I would say inspired by the beauty of my own work, and the loveliness of the stories that I stole from better authors. I always worked alone.” On more cartoony strips: “I don’t know why it is that some fellows can draw a little kid like, what’s his name, Charlie Brown, with just a round head, a round nose, and no particular body, and yet give the thing a personality. I still can’t understand that, and where the little things he says, and the funny little illustrations, are more real than some of the best drawn strips, the adventure strips.” Yes, that’s the master of comic strip realism talking about the virtues of a simpler approach. Or at least the virtues of Schulz. Intangible authenticity and emotional “reality” are not the first things one thinks of when approaching Foster, but as Saba so eloquently explains in her long introduction to the interview, in many ways they are the crux of what his work. In Prince Valiant, “Foster created the quintessentially American interpretations of the King Arthur legends, complete with a nuclear family, the democratic ideal, and the man-child hero whose boyish hi-jinks often lead to high adventure.” Saba tightly defines Americana here, and to that list I might add “idealism tinged with tragedy”, as the strip begins with the boy Prince losing his mother and embarking on a solo quest to find himself. Foster imbues this and all of the other strips I’ve read with a modest humanity. Where Foster’s illustration heroes N.C. Wyeth and J.C. Leyendecker tended towards grandiosity and dynamism Foster emphasizes the human scale of these adventures and keeps things relatively quiet.

I can see where readers might cringe at Foster’s idealism and, well, cleanliness. There is nary a hair out of place, no nod to the dirt, grime, and grotesqueries of the time. Even when Val skins a goose and wears its skin as a mask — a mask later swiped by Jack Kirby for his character The Demon — it’s bloodless. But Foster’s sensibility is so wonderfully innocent and immersed in depicting virtue and honor that to let anything else in would have polluted a clear, defined well of ideas. Prince Valiant is a perfect pre-angst fantasy in which rational justice wins out.

Foster’s artwork completely reinforces the ideal order. The page above is arranged with larger set-up and concluding panels sandwiching a middle section of rapid action, expertly choreographed so that readers can follow Val in and out of a room, and then savor the ultimate conclusion in the last couple panels. A demonic but playful Val, a terrified Ogre, and finally a clearly victorious hero. The figures, while well posed, are never stiff — they have an inner life and animation. Also, Foster, while a stickler for detail, knew when to leave it out: Most of the action plays out against solid colors — yellows and blues expertly rhyming with one another to create a unified page.

This page is remarkable for its wide range of approaches, settings and emotions. In the beginning Val make an emotional proclamation (swiped from a film still, perhaps?) and then Foster races him off to the forest. Look at that bottom left panel. After a couple panels of plain backgrounds, Foster immerses us in the forest (A damn straight Wally Wood forest) with great detail and then, with some flourish, exists Val onto a plateau above the “sinister castle” a skull perched just behind him. Val is on the cusp, and the weight of his adventure is made evident by the panel size and velocity of the action. Meanwhile, the yellow of Val’s shirt picks up his cloak, while the various browns of the woods and cloth are all delicately arranged for maximum readability.

Both of these pages also reveal a key part of Foster’s appeal: He shied away from the chiaroscuro and noir angularity of the Caniff-ian school of adventure comics and instead kept his spaces fairly level, colorful and enticing. These are comics that look accessible but contain a tremendous amount of quiet sophistication. Foster’s sense of place, color, and body language is just stunning. But again, he was never showy. It’s a realism that never calls itself “realistic”.

And the story itself? I thoroughly enjoyed it. Foster himself seemingly didn’t have great ambitions besides to write something that satisfied him and entertained his readers. I found this first book completely engrossing. Prince Valiant opens up a world that I wanted to stay in — a wide-eyed early 20th century approach to fantasy with a now-vanished sincerity and wholesomeness. It’s an all too rare pleasure in comics. I now understand why so many cartoonists after him sought to regain that Foster magic, despite the futility of such an anachronistic exercise: It’s a near-perfect distillation of purity (the high moral pulp sought by mid-century guys like Gil Kane and Alex Toth), skill (inarguable drawing ability), and success. Wally Wood chased it his entire career, and was asked to try out to be Foster’s replacement on the strip, but was not given the gig. But everyone from Russ Manning (who was an heir to Foster on Tarzan) to Charles Vess to Ryan Sook (his Wednesday Comics Kamandi) have tried to claim a little bit of Foster’s legacy. And of course the comic strip itself continues under different hands. But it is not so much the characters I’m attached to, but rather Foster’s masterful spell.

I confess to not having anything terribly profound to say about Foster. I suppose I’ve been surprised by and taken with the sensitivity, grace, and fluidity of his work, as well as what a fine comic strip Valiant really was. Foster understood page design and the interplay of color and form about as well as anyone I can think of in the 1930s, but recently he tends to be relegated to illustration rather than comics history. Certainly I’ve made that mistake. The recent reprint publishing activity has had all sorts of interesting effects, particularly in the way certain artists are re-contextualized. The revival and re-packaging of Valiant is particularly significant, as it no longer seems like an oddball project in the Fantagraphics catalog, but rather a prestige item that takes it place alongside other relevant books like Love and Rockets and, dare I say, Prison Pit (in terms of cartoon clarity and craft, the two have something in common. I also loved Prison Pit). This new project gives Valiant something it was long missing: currency. And I’m looking forward to exploring more of it in the years to come.

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I can’t help it, so I’m going to write about history today. Please hold your gag reflex. This is actually just a “fun” post. A simple one mostly for my own list- making enjoyment. I love books about comics history — I love the personalities behind them, I love their peculiar visions of a canon, and, of course, I love them for their information. Here’s what a I look for: Honesty; A clear purpose for the book; research distilled into solid prose; an original opinion or critical idea about the material; accuracy.

Herewith a list of my current favorite books about comics history, or older anthologies containing historically-based selections. Fuck it, these books are all on my “reference” shelf. That’s the criteria. OK? OK.

In order of current enjoyment:

1) National Lampoon Presents French Comics (The Kind Men Like). 1977.
This appeared the same year as the American Heavy Metal, from the same publisher. So, go figure. This book collects comics (many in color) from the French scene of the 70s and contains, as far as I know, the only English translations of artists like Sole, Lauzier and my personal fave, Lob! Who was Lob? I dunno. All of this work seems beamed down from another planet and, from what I can guess, was contemporary with Metal Hurlant, but more “straight” in a way. There’s no other book like it. I’d like a 300 page version of this book.

2) The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told. 1990.
Before there were magical programs to add that sense of volume that you know Alex Toth was always seeking in his color, DC put out books with simple flat color seps on uncoated paper. This one is my favorite, as it contains fantastic stories by Jimmy Thompson, Toth, Mort Meskin, even Sheldon Mayer and a wonderful Dan Barry story. There’s a great Bernard Baily Spectre story in here as well, and generally a good education on what all the old fogeys are talking about when they mention the golden age canon.

3) Confessions, Romances, Secrets & Temptations. 2007.
Shouldn’t we build a monument of some kind to John Benson? He is responsible for some of the best research, compiling and editing of comics history. Squa Tront, Panels 1 & 2, Humbug, and his two romance books. This is the prose edition, full of excellent and sometimes quite eccentric interviews with St. John romance cartoonists and writers. An indispensible peek inside the industry and its characters.

4) Masters of Comic Book Art. 1978.
A total schlock-fest of a book, but I love it for its dated version of who was a “master”. Robert Crumb AND Richard Corben AND Philippe Druillet. Oh, and Barry Smith for good measure. Seems idiosyncratic and personal to me and offers a nice period piece vision of a guy like Druillet who otherwise seems lost to North American comics. Side note: As I was getting ready to post this I noticed Warren Ellis’ post on Druillet and French SF comics. Such an intriguing topic and nice to see someone out there interested in it.

5) Les Chefs-D’Oevre de la Bande Dessinee. 1970.
A nearly 500 page brick of a book that anthologizes everyone from McCay to Angelo Torres to Franquin to Will Gould to Guy Pellaert to Don Martin to Moebius to Tenebrax and even back to Caran d’Ache. A heroic attempt to connect all the Anglo-European dots circa 1970. Awesome and inspiring.

6) Men of Tomorrow. 2004.
The best damn prose book yet written about comics. Compelling and fearless in Gerard Jones‘ willingness to tell the truth about the industry. I love his combination of culture and commerce and found it quite moving at times. Jones understands and can explain where, for example, Siegel and Shuster came from, culturally, and where they went artistically, and how, precisely, they were mistreated and, more tragically, how they sabatoged themselves, too. Tangentially: I’m amazed at how few people within comics seem to have read this book. It more or less exposes the true roots of “nerd culture” and the sad exploitation behind it all. Easier to look away, I suppose.

7) The Encyclopedia of American Comics. 1990.
Ron Goulart‘s masterpiece (and another man deserving of a monument). An indispensable guide to his sensibility and his knowledge. Goulart, like Benson, came along too early to be fully appreciated. This book, with its lengthy entries on the popular and obscure, covers a tremendous amount of comic book and comic strip ground, and seems to represent a gathering of facts from all over Goulart’s voluminous publishing career. It is sadly out of print, so someone re-issue this tome! It’s brilliant.

That’s it!

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This has probably been going around the internet for a while now, but for some reason, it didn’t really sink in for me until today.

About a year ago on this blog, Dan recommended a book by Gene Byrnes, The Complete Guide to Cartooning. The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive started posting excerpts of it this March. Whenever you have some spare time, you should definitely check it out. Lots of great stuff. Part one alone includes Byrnes, Alex Raymond, Jeff Machamer, Al Capp, and Milton Caniff, among others. (And here’s part two. Follow the links for more.)

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Today Tom Spurgeon offers an excellent explanation of the appeal of Wally Wood. I remain fascinated by the late work of Wood. His and Ogden Whitney’s work have occupied my brain for the better part of a year now. Both create such odd, tactile visual spaces and both, in some ways, are under-appreciated. The recent biography of Wood, Wally’s World, by Steve Starger and J. David Spurlock does little to remedy that. It’s a slapdash affair that at times borders on incoherence. There’s a great book to be written on Wood–it just doesn’t exist yet. In the meantime, check out Tom’s succinct take on a unique artist.

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1. Speaking of the American Comics Group, the latest issue of Alter Ego serendipitously reprints more or less the entire contents of Michael Vance’s book-length history of the publisher, Forbidden Adventures. This is the most significant magazine event of its kind since the famous New Yorker Hiroshima issue! Well, maybe not, and I have only glanced at the contents so far, but this should definitely be a good resource for any Richard Hughes or Herbie fans out there.

2. Most everyone reading this blog probably already knows about the Penguin Classics that have recently been released with new covers by cartoonists like Chris Ware, Roz Chast, Seth, and the like. (I think Charles Burns’s version of The Jungle and Anders Nilsen‘s take on Hans Christian Andersen are the best so far.) Another similar, but lower-key, republishing effort is coming out from Small Beer Press, a generally reliable imprint run by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. Their Peapod Classics line is reprinting forgotten or obscure old fantasy titles with new covers by Kevin Huizenga. (I learned about the series from a post by John Scalzi.) They just released Howard Waldrop‘s debut collection Howard Who? This isn’t strictly comics, of course, but I thought it might be of interest to any Huizenga completists out there. And Waldrop’s a pretty funny writer, judging by the two or three stories of his I have previously read. (Fun fact: His novella A Dozen Tough Jobs, which retells the story of Hercules in the deep South, is related to the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? in much the same way that Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key is related to Miller’s Crossing.)

3. I got a copy of that Tom McCarthy Tintin book I wrote about a while ago. I’ve only made it through the first chapter so far, but it really doesn’t appear to be a satirical take on overintellectual criticism at all—just an honest-to-goodness example of it. I’m not giving up on it quite yet, but it may be a while before it makes its way to the top of my reading pile. I feel like a sucker for taking the Economist review at face value. British humor is so dry, you know.

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An excerpt from Tom McCarthy’s Tintin and the Secret of Literature was published in the Guardian this weekend, and now I’m even less certain that it’s supposed to be satirical. At least in what’s printed here, it all seems to be on the up and up, though maybe a touch hyperbolic. Maybe the Economist reviewer was being sarcastic?

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Due to some perversion of my taste (and too much exposure to English literature grad students in college), I’m kind of partial to satires of tortured academic theory, like Frederick Crews’s The Pooh Perplex and its sequel Postmodern Pooh. (It’s an acquired taste, and I certainly don’t recommend it.)

Yesterday, on the Literary Saloon, I came across mention of a book that seems to be of the same kind, only tackling comics criticism instead of literary theory, at least if this review in The Economist is accurate. (It’s hard to tell for sure, since the publisher’s page doesn’t appear to indicate any satirical intent, and I’m not familiar with the author’s previous work.)

From the Economist review:

[T]he Castafiore Emerald, the author argues with sweeping confidence, is not just the oft-misplaced bauble belonging to a forceful but absent-minded opera singer: it is her clitoris. Switch on the “sexual sub-filter”, he explains, and the jewel’s real nature is clear. … Poor Captain Haddock’s plaster-covered leg, meanwhile, is “a sign of both castration and an erection”.

…

The book is sprinkled with enough pretentious jargon, factual error and illogicality to infuriate and baffle the unwary. But the result is a satire of which Hergé, himself the creator of a cast of immortal parodies, would indeed have been proud.

In any case, this book seems right up my alley, and whether genuine or parody, it’s probably a harbinger of things to come for comics. As graphic novels continue to garner attention in high-brow journals and universities institute more comics programs and departments, it’s only a matter of time before the medium gets the full Roland Barthes treatment on a regular basis.

This will inevitably lead to a lot of grumbling and hostility from longtime comics fans, who are unlikely to cut some English professor (whose familiarity with the medium begins and ends with the Fantagraphics catalog circa 2006 Spiegelman and Satrapi) any more slack than they give Scott McCloud. (This is not meant to imply that McCloud and the professors don’t deserve to be criticized.)

I, for one, though, welcome the wrong-headed, jargon-ridden, and pretentious comics scholarship of the near future with welcome arms. No matter how popular a particular work or artist may be, cultural oblivion is unavoidable without a legion of eggheads scrambling for tenure and over-examining an artwork’s every nuance in search of “subversive” intent and hidden signifiers.

Mistakes will inevitably be made, and dumb judgments will abound, but it also may keep Harvey Kurtzman in print for posterity. Comics fans won’t be able to do it alone, no matter how many variant covers they buy.

UPDATE: It’s probably worth mentioning that as far as I can tell, Tom McCarthy’s book has not been published in the United States, and I have no idea if it ever will be. FYI, for all five of you who may be interested.

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I collect and love comics history books. Each of them is as much about the author’s taste as it is about the subject itself. Despite whatever claims to the contrary, comics history has been an affair of taste above all else. Thus the emphasis on superheroes, the industry, etc., over the years and the suspicion towards anything “artsy”.

That said, here are some history books I’ve really enjoyed (and this list is inspired by Tim’s recent purchase of Maurice Horn’s Encyclopedia):

Coulton Waugh’s The Comics (1947): A wonderful, often anecdotal account of what was happening in comics at the time.

Martin Sheridan’s The Comics and their Creators (1942): This is a good one. Sheridan was around the artists and, in brief chapters on all of the major comics strip artists up to that time, gives a sometimes salty flavor of the times.

Rene Clair’s I Primi Eroi (1962): A still unmatched international survey of comics with an eye towards feats of aesthetic wonderment. This Italian volume includes comics I still haven’t seen printed anywhere else, including early manga by Haneko and Doncia, not to mention great Italian cartoonists like Gipi.

Ron Goulart’s The Encyclopedia of America (1990): Goulart’s best book and a pretty eccentric take on the medium. Here are entries on “Frankie Doodle”, Boody Rogers and other out of the way corners of comics.

And two books sneak in under a special dispensation for “How To” books that also say something about the medium:

Reg’lar Fellers cartoonist Gene Byrnes’ The Complete Guide to Cartooning (1950) includes chapters by Milton Caniff, “Jeff” Machamer, Sam Cobean, and many others. It’s practically an anthology, and an excellent snapshot of comics and illustration in 1950.

Finally, New Yorker cartoonist R. Taylor’s Introduction to Cartooning (1947) is a great volume notable for Taylor’s glass half-full conclusion: “To those who try really hard to develop, and who possess all the requirements, I wish success, and say that when next you look upon the drawings of a famous cartoonist in the pages of the press, just remember that there is the work of someone like yourself who experienced the same discouragements, when through exactly the same growing pains and, many times perhaps, wished he’d taken up plumbing instead.

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In alphabetical order:

Apocalypse Nerd #3, by Peter Bagge
I know a lot of people have been disappointed with this series, but I’m really liking it. Definitely an improvement over his last effort, Sweatshop (though I liked that, too). The first issue was a little lackluster, but that was mostly scene-setting, and so can perhaps be forgiven. With this issue, Bagge seems to have really hit his stride, and it’s interesting to see a cartoonist who’s mostly dealt with kind of “slice-of-life” social satire (for lack of a better term) change gears and deal with a more fantastic premise. If you don’t like Bagge in general, you probably won’t like this, but if you do, and gave up early, this is worth giving another chance.

The Comics Before 1945, by Brian Walker
I started reading this mostly out of a sense of obligation (what with having to find things to talk about for this blog and all), but have ended up enjoying myself a lot more than I anticipated. I’ve only gotten through the “Turn of the Century” section so far, but this is a really nice anthology and history. Even Outcault clicked with me this time, which has never happened before. After I finish this, it’s back to the Blackbeard books.

The Great Comic Book Heroes, by Jules Feiffer
I just re-read this actually—it only takes an hour or two. If you don’t know, it’s a very insightful and pointed, if too short, essay on Golden Age superhero comics. Feiffer’s take on Superman was somewhat infamously stolen by Quentin Tarantino for a David Carradine monologue in Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Which is kind of interesting, considering what Feiffer writes about the high prevalence of swiping amongst comic book artists back in the day. (I’d hate to think the practice still goes on.) Probably fodder for a blog entry of its own, even, comparing attitudes about swiping between filmmakers and cartoonists. If I felt a little sharper, I’d write it.

Tintin in America, by Hergé
This, too, I picked up as homework. I’ve read very little Hergé (just a few albums about a decade ago) and decided to try again, starting at the beginning (or at least as close to the beginning as I could get without visiting eBay for out-of-print books). The conventional rap is that Hergé didn’t really get good until a few volumes later, but I found this pretty terrific. Gangsters, cowboys, Indians: all the great American tropes of the 1930s, seen through a slick, Continental style. Somewhat reminiscent of Jacque Tati‘s films, only actually funny, instead of just theoretically so.