Ernie Bushmiller, Nancy (1938)

 

Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller (1938)

Ernie Bushmiller took over Larry Whittington's "Fritzi Ritz" comic strip in 1925 and introduced the character of Nancy, Fritz's niece, in 1933. By 1938 Nancy had taken over the strip and it was renamed simply "Nancy" as Bushmiller focused more on the surreal antics of the little girl and her working class boyfriend Sluggo.

Over the years, and until Bushmiller's death in 1982, Nancy became something like the ne plus ultra of the American newspaper comic strip; a stripped-down, elegant gag-a-day work of art that explored quotidian absurdities using the language of cartooning like few others. Deceptively simple, Nancy with form, time, and space with a supremely modernist outlook.

The critics:

"Ernie Bushmiller is my comics Kafka."

---Jerry Moriarty, 1988.

Osamu Tezuka, The Mysterious Underground Men (1948)

 

The Mysterious Underground Men by Osamu Tezuka (1948)

Tezuka's first longform "story manga" is a charming children's science fiction tale of a boy inventor and an anthropomorphic rabbit on a quest to tunnel through the earth in their rocket train. Equal parts Jules Verne, Tom Swift, and Floyd Gottfredson, the feverish plot revolves around an apocalyptic war with the titular subterranean civilization. The common Tezuka theme of what it means to be human is embodied in the highly capable Mimio, the rabbit character given intelligence by a cadre of Frankenstein-esque scientists, who must prove his worth by saving his friends and humanity. In his Pinocchio-like agonizing, Mimio anticipates later heroes in the Tezuka pantheon like Astroboy.

The critics:

Initially published in 1948, The Mysterious Underground Men is a lot of things: a straightforward adventure story, a funny-animal book, a demonstration that manga can incorporate serious drama, and, paradoxically, a fun read. The hero’s name is Young John, and the introductory pages describe him as “a science whiz kid [who] invents a rocket train and conquers the center of the earth after fighting monsters and criminals.” His sidekicks are Uncle Bill and Mimio. The latter is a humanoid rabbit whose creation stands as one of the most interesting and visually-striking sections of the book. Early in the story, Mimio’s animal nature is forced out of him through surgery and electrification, which combine to domesticate and civilize him. The progression is violent, odd, and rather Disneyfied in its execution.

On that note, some consider Tezuka the Walt Disney of Japan for his influence on pop culture there, and the imagination on view here is prodigious. Our heroes fight both a villainous group of men led by a gentleman named Ham-Egg and a legion of termite soldiers commanded by their queen. The termites aim to take back the surface after being forced underground, and their method for retribution is straight-up terrorism, with bombs setting cities afire and toppling skyscrapers. One wonders how this imagery was received at the time, a mere three years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention the firebombing of Tokyo and other major cities. Regardless of the intent, it adds a darker edge to what appears to be a children’s book.

--Hillary Brown, Paste Magazine, 2013

Work in Progress: 1963

Work in progress:

I think this is almost the full slate of 1963's best comics, give or take a few tweaks. I'm not sure exactly how I should organize this year-by-year project, especially since I've saddled myself with absurd idea of listing ten works of comic art for every year for 100 years. A strip like Peanuts is often among the best comics of any year it was published in, so in all likelihood I'll have to pick a single year which means maybe the debut year? Kind of hard for strips that have many peaks, or don't peak until years after their debut (like Kirby's Fantastic Four). While I expect certain artists to have multiple appearances over the decades, I'd like to avoid repeating titles or series too many times. This may be harder than I expect.

Anyway, here's a snapshot of 1963. In the world of U.S. children's comic books, there were many all-time great cartoonists working. John Stanley and Carl Barks were at the height of their careers, as were many of the other "Silver Age" artists and writers. Memorable debuts from that year include long-running superhero team features like The Metal Men, Doom Patrol, and The Avengers. Ditko's Amazing Spider-Man title also premiered in 1963 (the character debuted in 1962). In U.S. comic strips, giants like Milt Caniff, Roy Crane, Walt Kelly and others were also going strong. I'm trying to cast a slightly wider net here and luckily some amazing comics were being published around the world to help fill out this list!

1. Akuma-kun by Shigeru Mizuki: Groundbreaking series by the yokai horror mangaka about a little boy who can summon demons. Very similar to Mizuki's long-running Kitaro series, Akuma-kun is full of the same inventive grotesques and monsters.

2. The Castafiore Emerald by Hergé: In many ways the best Tintin album but also the least typical. In place of the usual globe-trotting adventure we get an exquisite farce with all the precision of a stage-play or classic film.

3. Nancy Collages by Joe Brainard. In 1963 poet and artist Brainard began cutting up Ernie Bushmiller's classic Nancy into new assemblages, recombining and detourning the comics into profane, looking-glass versions of themselves. Brainard was one of the first to incorporate comics and appropriation into a large part of his artistic practice. (He also adapted his friends' poetry into comics form in his C Comics magazine, but those will have to wait until 1964.)

4. The Black Smurfs aka The Purple Smurfs by Peyo. This first Smurf album includes the title story that is equal parts zombie tale and Cold War nuclear parable. The problematic colour choice was corrected in later editions.

5. The X-Men by Jack Kirby. One of a slew of properties created and co-created by Kirby during this period, the X-Men is perhaps the most influential of his superhero concepts. Incorporating many aspects of his work from the previous decade, X-Men features inventive superheroics, science fiction themes, and romance in a Camelot-era package.

6. Peanuts by Schulz. What more can I say? That cover is beautiful.

7. Feiffer's Album by Jules Feiffer. An early collection of Feiffer's groundbreaking syndicated Village Voice strip. Feiffer was really without peer in this period and also was creating early graphic novels around the same time.

8. Mort Cinder by Hector German Oesterheld and Alberto Breccia. Breccia's art is the real star of these philosophical, dreamlike tales of an immortal soldier who dies a thousand times and is reincarnated throughout history as a key participant in some of the most tragic battles and apocalyptic events.

9. Big X by Osamu Tezuka. An anti-fascist superhero epic with a premise reminiscent of Kirby's Captain America but full of Tezuka's animated storytelling and humour.

 

Aline Kominsky-Crumb, The Bunch's Power Pak Comics #1 (1979)

 

The Bunch's Power Pak Comics #1, by Aline Kominsky-Crumb (1979).

Revelatory, ground-breaking autobiographical collection of comics stories. Aline Kominksy's confessional, scrawly cartooning is made up of a great variety of agonized linework, full of contrasting hatching and stippling give a sense of real texture to her drawings. All her figures are awkwardly posed, stuffed into ill-fitting clothing, with huge noses, blubbery lips. And what these figures do and say! Oh my! The stories here chronicle Aline's early life and upbringing and depict taboo subjects like her parents having sex, Aline sitting on the toilet, her love-hate relationship with her mother ("Blabette") and Aline confessing all her most non-flattering, innermost desires and vanities, all in abject, brain-searing detail that influenced a generation of comics makers.

The critics: "Aline depicts this all with a critical eye, sometimes commenting directly even when she doesn’t need to (e.g. , a panel showing the Bunch receiving money for her report card is accompanied by a narrative tag labeling the moment her “first training in capitalist greed and opportunism”) . The approach creates a tension between Kominsky’s need to grow out of those elements of her upbringing that are offensive to her and the self-obsession implicit in her continuing autobiographical drive."

--Bill Sherman, “Underground Comix: Memories and Studebakers” (The Comics Journal #55, 1980).

Chester Brown, Yummy Fur (1986)

 

Yummy Fur by Chester Brown (1986).

One of the greatest comic book series of all time, Chester Brown's surrealistic, scatalogical, sacred-and-profane Yummy Fur debuted as a self-published mini-comic before being picked up by Toronto's Vortex Comics (the seven issues of the mini-comic were reprinted in the first 3 issues of the Vortex series).  It was in the pages of Yummy Fur that Brown first serialized his Ed the Happy Clown graphic novel and where he debuted his groundbreaking, revelatory autobiographical pieces, some of which were collected in The Playboy and I Never Liked You. Yummy Fur was also the home for Brown's quirky, personal, unvarnished Gospel adaptations.

The critics: "It’s hard to remember this now, but when Chester first started cartooning he did seem to be a late-born underground cartoonist, someone whose roots were clearly in the comics of Crumb and Justin Green. In chronological terms, Chester’s earliest work is much closer to the heyday of the undergrounds (say 1968-1974) than we are to Chester’s first published work. The sexual radicalism of Chester’s art, his enjoyment at shocking his audience, and his direct political engagement all place him still in the underground comics tradition." --Jeet Heer, "A Chester Brown Notebook" (The Comics Journal, May 19, 2011).

Tom Veitch and Greg Irons, The Legion of Charlies (1971)

The Legion of Charlies by Tom Veitch and Greg Irons (1971)

The classic Underground depicting twin horrors of the 1960s.

The Critics: "Contains long story written by Tom Veitch, older brother of Rick Veitch, drawn by the near legendary Greg Irons, comparing Charlie Company doing My Lai massacre in Viet Nam to the Charlie Manson family LA area murder rampage. Quite heavy duty graphic in the true depiction of the carnage. Both stories run unique in that one story runs along the top panels while the other story runs along all the bottom panels. Also contains Dave Sheridan art. Very EC horror & war comix inspired. Highly recommended!" --Robert Beerbohm, Facebook post, 2021

Nicole Claveloux, La Main Verte (1978)

 

La Main Verte by Nicole Claveloux (1978).

A groundbreaking psychedelic collection of existentialist stories.

The Critics: "Claveloux's pen hatching is fulsome, gathering modeled presence on the paper; her colors are bright, clashing gouache, layered in separate blotches, often defining form through a secondary, contourless outlines. Backgrounds are frequently sprayed on in gradients with airbrush. These hand-fashioned transitions lend to her horizons a kind of psychic intensity that reminds the reader of that these are internal projections." --Matthias Wivel, "The Green Hand and Other Stories," The Comics Journal, 2017.