Reprint This! 9. The Inferior Five

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One title that's been missing in action for years is a 1960s DC comedy book called INFERIOR FIVE, created by E. Nelson Bridwell and the late Joe Orlando, with additional art by Mike Esposito. It may be a little dated, and the more humorless members of the continuity crowd may not appreciate it, but it's a clever and very witty title that deserves to be seen again.



Inferior Five is basically a superhero parody strip, one of the first that DC tried. This came as the publisher was getting its market share hammered by the upstarts at Marvel Comics, who quickly labelled DC as "Brand Echh Comics," stuck in the past and writing books for little kids, as opposed to their own "Pop Art Productions" ostensibly geared towards teens. True enough, DC really did look like a bloated dinosaur. Lots of books were selling well, but it was apparent that some new blood was needed.

Bridwell and Orlando came to DC from Mad magazine and were among several new creators put to work on developing new ideas and a fresher, more contemporary style. As would be the case for years to come, the concept of "a fresh outlook" would crash into "protect viability of trademarks," and so Bridwell and Orlando, along with many other fresh faces like Bob Oskner or Nick Cardy or the recently-poached-from-Marvel Steve Ditko, weren't given assignments on the top-selling superhero trademark books, but they still created some fun and dynamic comics in the late 1960s.

The Inferior Five are ostensibly the bungling children of some mighty superheroes who were active in the 1940s, and who are so inept that they must work as a team as none of them can effectively fight crime on their own. I think you've heard that joke before, but that's just the setup. The parodies of DC's competitors are really silly, and done with the same sort of flair you'd expect from MAD veterans. Inferior Five was very well-received by the fan press of its day, and beat out the regular "best humor title" winner Herbie the Fat Fury at the old Alter-Ego Alley Awards in 1966.

So, how to handle a reprint? Since Inferior Five only lasted for three years, there is not a great deal of material to restore. It debuted in the anthology Showcase in 1966 and ran for three issues before earning its own title. That ran for ten bi-monthly issues before DC cancelled the book. That's maybe about 220 pages. A little color restoration and a short introduction by somebody familiar with the material, and I think you've got an excellent package spotlighting something many readers might enjoy. So how about it, DC?



(Originally posted August 27, 2007, 06:04 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 8. Doonesbury

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One gem which isn't actually missing but is very poorly served in bookshelf format is DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau. Almost all of the strips have been reprinted at one time or another, and are available on CD-ROMs and in the archives of the website, but much of the material is no longer available in print editions. That which can be tracked down is in a variety of formats and sizes, begging for a consistent design and approach.



Doonesbury began its run as a syndicated strip in October, 1970. Within four years, it had won a Pulitzer Prize and introduced a gigantic cast of fascinating and funny characters. Well, mostly; Doonesbury may be second only to Peanuts as my all-time favorite comic strip, but my eyes certainly glaze over whenever Zeke and Mike's damnable ex-wife show up.

I think that Doonesbury is one of those strips that you either love absolutely or you just don't get it. At the time of this writing, Uncle Duke is the central character in a story about "Berzerkistan," and it's the first thing I look at when I get to my desk at work. I've been totally taken in by the characters and their world since I discovered The Doonesbury Chronicles collection when I was in middle school. It was through Trudeau's eyes that I first started paying attention to news and politics. Frankly, I don't know how anybody can make any sense of our government in the 1970s without Doonesbury to help them out. (And more on making sense of the 70s in a forthcoming feature...)

The problem, apart from simply getting the material back in print in a good, consistent format, is that so much of Doonesbury's current events focus is hardwired to its time that future readers could use some annotations and commentary along with the old strips. Heck, even current readers looking back at the books of the 1980s may not remember what the fuss was with USA Today's graphics-heavy content, or why some of the principals stand around a desolate tree for a week waiting for Mario Cuomo to show up. Twenty years from now, will Dick Cheney's bizarre notion of government having more than three branches be as lost to time?

I don't believe that Doonesbury is nearly as impenetrable as some of its critics make out, and the incredibly reader-friendly website is full of helpful FAQs and example strips to refresh readers' memories about the continuity of the strip itself. All that's needed is a fresh approach to the bookshelf format, consistent design and annotations. Previous Doonesbury editions have been handled by Holt, Rinehart & Wilson, but these mass-market efforts have been done with such a slipshod approach that maybe somebody different should take over. Fantagraphics has done such an amazing job repackaging Peanuts, Dennis the Menace and Love & Rockets recently that everybody is confident their forthcoming collection of Pogo will be unmissable, sight unseen. If anybody should be in charge of restoring Doonesbury to bookshelves, it's Fantagraphics. Or possibly Drawn & Quarterly. Either way, thirty-five years of brilliant strip cartooning needs to be given much better treatment than it has, and there are far better options out there than the one that's been in place. So how about it, Trudeau?



(Originally posted August 17, 2007, 05:55 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 7. Doctor Who Adventures

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One missing gem is DOCTOR WHO ADVENTURES by writers including Alan Barnes, with art principally by John Ross. Well, I suppose "missing" is not the right word. This is a very new comic, and the editors may well have plans for collected editions, but for now it's disagreeably difficult and expensive to get in the US, and I'm selfish and impatient.



Doctor Who has a long history in comics. He had a strip running in the pages of TV Comic in 1964, and the Daleks were popular enough to have their own back-page series with art by Ron Turner. In the 1970s, the feature moved to Countdown for a time, and eventually the Doctor got his own Marvel magazine. Doctor Who Weekly was aimed at kids, with contests, games and pinups, and featured two or three serialized comics in each issue. The main feature was initially written by Pat Mills and John Wagner, and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Backup stories featured tales of the monsters and aliens, with early work by everyone from Steve Dillon to Alan Moore.

Many of these Doctor Who comics are available in some amazing collected editions by Panini, the current publisher of the magazine, which has long since lost its remit as a children's purchase. It's now aimed at adult readers, in part a nostalgic and very intricate study of how television shows are created and in part a celebration of the current show. The still-popular comic is the only holdover from the old days.

Seeing a gap in the market, the BBC launched Doctor Who Adventures for young readers. This biweekly magazine features larger font size for easier reading, pinups, free gifts, Moxx of Balhoun masks, Daleks and Cybermen posters, "secret facts about the Slitheen" articles, and a really, really fun comic, told in serialized six-page episodes. That's not to dismiss the comic in the Panini magazine, which is still pretty entertaining, but the one in the BBC comic is a lot more manic, in keeping with David Tennant's Doctor, and I just love John Ross's expressive, imaginative artwork, vividly colored by veteran Adrian Salmon.

The problem is that Doctor Who Adventures is practically impossible to find in the US, and the price tag when it does show up is pretty steep for a kids' magazine. It's a lot to pay for six pages of comics, which is why the BBC needs to follow Panini's lead and start collecting them on nice paper with a big, thick page count. The 35th issue of the magazine is out now, which, assuming it's appeared in each issue (The Hipster Kids and I only have five of them) totals up to 210 pages of comics. If the BBC's editorial team gets working on it now, they could have a very nice package of these great stories out in time for Christmas, and what a nice present that would make... so how about it, BBC?



(Originally posted August 09, 2007, 07:24 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)