Comics About Cartoonists!

Comics About Cartoonists - The World's Oddest Profession is a collection of stories which point back to their very real-world creation by referencing in some way the men (exclusively men in this collection by the way) who actually spilled the ink and fashioned them. The kind of fourth wall breaking stuff is always a hoot and has always been a feature of comics, an artistic form which has a really resilient quality for this kind of thing.

See above for a catalog of the talents contained in the pages within the tome. Besides a horde of public domain comics there are few which might surprise, such as a Will Eisner Spirit tale, a handful of strips from Elzie Segar's Popeye, and some stuff from Al Capp. Throw in great talents like Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, Sheldon Mayer, Basil Wolverton, Joe Shuster, Jack Briefer, Jack Cole and so many more and you have a broad overview of different kinds of comics. There are funny animal tales, science fiction yarns, mystery tales, and simple gag comics. All kinds of weird stuff to tickle the comic book fan's inner self.

Here is a gallery of comic book covers which are featured inside the book, including the Punch Comics cover which serves as the decidedly memorable cover of the entire tome. These will give you a good sense of the wide array of different kinds of comics contained within.  Craig Yoe and his associates have done us all a favor.

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The Good, The Bad, And The Brightly Clad!

This vintage Fred Hembeck cover from those long ago days of 1980 is a crack up of the highest order. Three brilliantly and blindingly hued heroes joined to create a crisis of color in the Hembeckian world at large. It's genius!

Jack Kirby and Mort Meskin

Captain 3-D, created for Harvey Comics during the Atomic Age by the Joe Simon and Jack Kirby duo is the oldest of this trio of colorful protagonists. Created to take advantage of a fad which seems to reappear every several years, Captain 3-D is a surprisingly serious character with echoes of Fawcett's Captain Marvel bonded with the more surreal elements of later comics. Here's a glimpse.

The Prankster is from the final throes of the Silver Age, a one-shot hero created by Denny O'Neil in his guise as "Sergius O'Shaugnessy" and top flight artist Jim Aparo.

Created for Charlton Comics, this futuristic gadfly battles an oppressive and humorless government in the distant future city of Ultropolis.

Pat Boyette

Never cover-featured, the Prankster made his one and only appearance in the tenth and final issue of Thunderbolt, the original Charlton run.

 And perhaps most obscure of all is Steve Ditko's Odd Man. The Odd Man was a truly bizarre creation.

Scheduled to debut in the pages of the ninth issue of Ditko's Shade the Changing Man, the exotically hued hero made his first actual appearance in the dubious offset rarity Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, a victim like so many of the infamous " DC Implosion" of the late Bronze Age.

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Thankfully though he did get a colorful presentation when that story was dusted off, revised and presented to a broader reading public in the pages of Detective Comics.

As you can see, Odd Man is perhaps the biggest eyesore among these disparate brothers-of-the-brightly-clad, his whole look seemingly designed to create a clash.

Only Fred Hembeck would think it a good enough joke to dig out these most obscure heroes (remember it was in those halcyon pre-internet days) for his devoted audience. Good show Fred on a true classic gag!

This Hembeck classic is reprinted in the awesome The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus, though I fear the color might be missing. I hope not.

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Charlton Premiere Presents Trio - It's...The Shape!

The Shape by Roy Thomas and the late Richard "Grass" Green in Charlton Premiere #1 is one of the strangest features ever. Created in the tradition of successful stretchy and shape-shifting heroes like

Plastic Man,

Mister Fantastic,

and Elongated Man,
the Shape was something different still.

Charlton Premiere is The Shape's sole appearance, but it's not too much to say that his wacky nature and shape-shifting ways might indeed have inspired a certain Energy Man who appeared in the Charlton line-up a few years later.

They have much in common, especially a truly wacky sense of humor.

Here from 1967 is "It's The Shape!" by Thomas and Green. Enjoy!

Now that was different. We now return your blog watching to you. We control the vertical; we control the horizontal; we control...Ah forget it! Have a nice day. 

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Charlton Premiere Presents Trio - The Spookman!

The Spookman by Pat Boyette was apparently originally to be called "Sandman", but alas that name was taken. His presence brings a little heft to a comic which had real diversity. I'd have loved to see some more Spookman stories but I can't imagine anyone but Boyette drawing them. (Some relatively recent efforts to revive the hero have proved to me that Boyette is a hard act to follow.)

Now that's a hoot! And a face only a mother could love. We wrap all this up tomorrow with The Shape. 

We wrap all this up tomorrow with The Shape. 

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