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Following last Thursday’s post, my friend and colleague “Jolly” Jeet Heer graciously sent me the following letter, written by Charles Schulz to Walt Kelly in 1954. I’m not sure how much light it shines on what Schulz thought about how his strips would be read when collected (at least unless we read between the lines, as I invite you all to do), but it is definitely a fascinating glimpse into his mindset at the beginning of his career, and displays well his trademark humility and understated humor.

A transcription of the letter can be found after the jump:

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Well, one of my initial impetuses for the way [Wilson] was told was that I was reading the collected Peanuts editions […] And to read them in sequence, it felt like a new way to tell a story, in a way. I mean, that wasn’t Charles Schulz’s goal was for you to read them all at once, that you’re supposed to read them every day. But to read them in sequence, it really felt like it was replicating the way that you remember the passage of time in memory. It – you know, you remember just these sort of high moments, emotional highs and lows or certain resonating moments of a given year.

—Dan Clowes, interviewed for NPR’s Talk of the Nation

I wonder if Clowes is right that Charles Schulz did not intend for his strips to be read all at once. When Schulz first began Peanuts, of course, the idea that the entire strip would eventually be collected in its entirety would have been beyond imagining, but at a certain point in his career, it must have become obvious that the vast bulk of his strips would, in fact, be collected into books. That must have influenced the way he created them on some level, right? Even if he was primarily concerned with the strips as standalone, daily reads (and he presumably was), it could not have escaped his notice that they would eventually be read together, and that after their initial publication, that would be more or less the only way they would be read. One of my co-bloggers (or our readers) might know more definitively what Schulz thought of all this, if he ever said anything about it publicly. (more…)

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Since just about all the best of 2008 lists have been presented now I thought I’d rip off follow in Dan’s footsteps, and share the “outstanding graphic stories” of forty years ago, as presented in Graphic Story Magazine 11:

“Who is Scorpio?”
Written, told and drawn by Jim Steranko
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 1, June 1968

“Mind Blast”
Written, told and drawn by George Metzger
Graphic Story Magazine 9, 1968

“Whatever Happened to Scorpio?”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with John Tartaglione
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 5, October 1968

Honorable Mentions:

Equal Time for Pogo
Written, told and drawn by Walt Kelly
Simon & Schuster, 1968

“The Pipsqueak Papers”
Written, told and drawn by Wallace Wood
Witzend 5, 1968

“Dark Moon Rose, Hell Hound Kill”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with Dan Adkins
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3, August 1968

“Today Earth Died”
Written and told by Jim Steranko
Drawn by Jim Steranko, with Joe Sinnott
Strange Tales 168, May 1968

“The Junkwaffel Invasion of Kruppenny Island”
Written, told and drawn by Vaughn Bode
Witzend 5, 1968

“The Adventures of Fritz”
Written, told and drawn by Robert Crumb
Cavalier, February through October, 1968

Another big year for Steranko, obviously. It’s kind of fun to see the undergrounds start to sneak their way onto the list…

Graphic Story 11 is a terrific issue otherwise, too, by the way, with a great Will Gould interview, and even a fan letter from the infamous Dr. Wertham himself, congratulating the fanzine on its recent interview with Alex Toth, and attempting to claim the artist as a fellow spirit:

The point that interests me most, of course, is what he says about the artist not showing the realistic details of horror in a story, but having it take place offstage, as it were, as far as the picture is concerned. I agree with him entirely on that … because I have found out through long clinical studies that it may have adverse effects on the immature mind. For that I have been blamed often, and I’m glad to read the technical opinion of Alex Toth.

This didn’t prevent the editors from publishing a lengthy, vehement denunciation of Wertham on the preceding pages, of course.

Which is awesome, and one reason I like reading old magazines.

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Kick-ass Tom Sutton cover. Santoro, take notes.

It appears to be “year’s best” time, when people begin soliciting for one’s “top ten” comics of the year. In honor of that tradition, I give you:

The Outstanding Graphic Stories of 1967, as printed in Graphic Story Magazine #9, Summer 1968.

“Barbering”
Will Eisner
The Spirit 2

“Master Time and Mobius Tripp”
George Metzger
Fantasy Illustrated 7

“Kaleidasmith”
George Metzger
Graphic Story Magazine 8

“HIM”
Lee and Kirby
Fantastic Four 66 and 67

“The Aliens”
Russ Manning
Magnus, Robot Fighter 17-20

“Luck of the North”
Carl Barks [Heidi must be relieved–ed.]
The Best of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge 2

“The Gifted Cockroach”
Will Eisner
The Spirit 2

“Showdown on Hydra Island”
Jim Steranko
Strange Tales 156-158

“Project: Blackout”
Jim Steranko
Strange Tales 160-161

Prehysterical Pogo
Walt Kelly

“Who Has Been Lying in My Grave?”
Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino
Strange Tales 205

“Mr. A”
Steve Ditko
Witzend 3

Gee, times haven’t changed that much. Funny how most of this stuff is still considered classic– I gotta check out that Arnold Drake story. And, whatever else anyone says, that Steranko period is full of fantastic, retardo Kirby and Op-Art pastiches….man, I knew I shouldn’t keep my “collection” in the office. Ok, back to work. Honest.

Post Comment

With all the talk about how some people think comics are too influenced by literature, it may be worth remembering that there are people in the literary world who think contemporary fiction is becoming too influenced by comics. No big point here — just that these things get kind of complicated. Personally speaking, as long as the comics work as comics and the prose works as prose, I don’t care what influences whom.

Recently, I’ve read two pretty terrific comics-inflected novels that I thought might be worth pointing out to those interested in such things.

First, Junot Díaz of Drown fame just published his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It’s been getting tons of great press, but I’ve been surprised that it hasn’t come up for discussion more in comics circles, because it’s probably the most comics-friendly novel I’ve ever read. There are constant references to comics past, from Clowes (one character is described as looking like he walked straight out of the pages of Eightball) to Kirby (the novel’s epigraph is right from Fantastic Four 49: “Of what import are brief, nameless lives … to Galactus??” [bold case and double-punctuation in the original!]).

Díaz has been fairly vocal about his regard for Gilbert Hernandez, recently saying in a Los Angeles Times profile of Hernandez, “For those of us who are writing across or on borders, I honestly think he was, for me, more important than anyone else.” That becomes readily apparent on reading the book, as allusions to Love & Rockets recur at a steady clip. The title character’s Dominican mother is repeatedly compared to Luba, both in terms of physique and personality, and her storyline (complete with gangster boyfriend and political terrorism) is obviously an extended homage to Poison River, among other Beto tales.

But it’s not just in his references that Díaz demonstrates his influence, but in the very structure of his novel, which meanders and jumps in time and circles back to fill in backstory in almost exactly the same way that the Hernandez brothers have done for so long in their Palomor and Locas sagas. Some day, a grad student’s going to have a very easy time writing a thesis about all of this.

It’s also a great, tremendously funny (and sad) novel, and Díaz runs rings around most of his contemporaries with his prose style. Anyone who loves Love & Rockets (actually anyone period) should really read this book.

The other comics-saturated novel I read this summer, Jack Womack‘s Ambient, probably doesn’t possess quite as wide an appeal, though I liked it a lot. It’s a cartoonishly violent, satirical capitalism-run-amok dystopia, sort of like Mad Max-meets-the-corporate-boardroom; Long Island has become the location of a decades-long Vietnam-style military quagmire, and lower Manhattan is filled with a punkish underclass, many of whom have mutilated themselves in a kind of impotent social protest.

Much of the imagery and tone reminds me of Gary Panter, though Womack never refers to him directly. The cartoonists Womack admits to following are Chester Gould (one of the main bad guys has a framed Dick Tracy panel on his wall), George Herriman, and Walt Kelly (the aforementioned “ambient” underclass has developed a patois-like language nearly Elizabethan in its complexity that Womack has said was inspired by the dialogue in Krazy Kat and Pogo).

Some of the elements of this novel feel a little dated now, such as a religion that worships Elvis Presley, though they undoubtedly seemed fresher when the novel was first published twenty years ago. Still I enjoyed it, and plan on checking out the rest of the series. You can probably tell based on the description whether or not this is your cup of tea moonshine.