Reprint This! Update on Gahan Wilson

Be careful what you wish for department: I've loved Gahan Wilson's work for many years. He's an amazing talent, and while you may never find a consensus as to precisely when Playboy was no longer really worth the effort, it's clear that the cartoons have been the best thing about the magazine for many years, and Wilson's the best of those.

Fantagraphics has pleased me greatly by releasing this fantastic collection of all of Wilson's gleefully surreal and macabre work for Playboy. It is one hell of a presentation. It's three hardback collections in a slipcase with a plexiglass backing. The back cover of each volume features a different hilarious photo of the 79 year-old artist's face and hands pressed up against glass; boxed in the slipcase, it looks like he's been crammed into the box and is praying for release. Each book has a die-cut cover and, while arranged chronologically, is divided into sections by inserted pages repeating the die-cut of the cover.

This can't have been a cheap book to produce, and the price tag confirms it: $125 is a lot to pay at retail. It's worth every penny, as, apart from the bells-n-whistles of the presentation, it does contain every single drawing that Wilson did for Playboy, along with short stories, appreciations by Hugh Hefner and Neil Gaiman, and an interview with the artist by Gary Groth. It's nearly 1000 pages long, the cartoons are printed at their original publication size (that is, mostly one to a page), and it's all done on just about the nicest paper available. It's a book that just oozes quality.

And yet... there's a part of me that wishes there was a little less to it. Don't misunderstand me; Fantagraphics has created an amazing tribute, and I'll treasure my copy, but $125 is a really tall order. The presentation and the supplements are wonderful, but I can't help but wish that Fanta made this material available in a series of inexpensive softcover volumes as well. I feel at least a little strongly that great comics should be available to as wide a range of buyers as possible. Then again, I thought that about the thematically similar complete hardcover editions of Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side and Don Martin's work for Mad and nobody's put out anything resembling mass market editions of those, so I'm not holding my breath. Thanks for realizing one Reprint This! request, Fantagraphics, but could you make sure the next one you fill is just a little more affordable?

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Read more of what little I've written about the artist at A Journal of Zarjaz Things.

Read other reviews of Gahan Wilson: Fifty Years of Playboy Cartoons:

Jeet Heer at Comics Comics
John Hogan at Graphic Novel Reporter
Laurel Maury for the San Francisco Chronicle
The Comics Panel at the Onion AV Club

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Every month, I pick out a few upcoming collected editions that sound a little neat, and pass those along to readers in what surely must be the least objective "collected editions" news around. For example, you'd do well to talk to your local comic shop about Dark Horse's April offerings. For one, they've got a hardcover collection of all of Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's Beasts of Burden stories. I've read a couple of these and they are really quite good. The series is about a menagerie of dogs and cats who defend a small community against weird supernatural grotesqueries, and I guarantee you that the last page of the second issue will send the meanest chill up your spine you've ever felt. They're also issuing a paperback edition of Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons' complete, 600-page Martha Washington series. Actually, I don't much care for this title at all, but 600 pages of Gibbons drawing anything sounds good for only thirty bucks.

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But the really, really cool thing is this: A long time ago in a market far, far away, Dark Horse had issued full reprints of Marvel's old Star Wars series, the one by Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, Carmine Infantino and Walt Simonson, among others, but it was at a disagreeable price point and I never bought them. But in June, Dark Horse is doing them in their successful omnibus line of reprints, and you'll be able to get the first 26 issues of the series in one volume for only $25. Good job; I will probably buy that!

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I will also be passing on IDW's forthcoming Li'l Abner series, but I'm glad to hear about it. The comic strip by Al Capp ran for forty years, leaving behind a downright odd film adaptation that featured both Julie Newmar and Billie Hayes, a tie-in soda called Kickapoo Joy Juice which, as Ski / Mountain Dew clones go, was just fine by me, and an amusement park called Dogpatch USA which still sits abandoned in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas, attracting explorers and Airsoft players. Some years ago, Kitchen Sink embarked on a complete reprint of the series that never finished, and, to hear my dad tell it, didn't get to the strip's really good years that started in the late 1950s. My dad probably likes Li'l Abner more than you, mind. Anyway, it's another addition to IDW's "Library of American Comics" imprint, a big line which nobody can afford but which we're glad to see available anyway.

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I don't know whether you've tried to read Marvel or DC's forthcoming solicitations, but it's been getting harder and harder to separate the gems from the dross, in part because, as an eyeball-bludgeoning glance at the graphic novel shelves at Borders will confirm, the companies are hell-bent on rereleasing everything that they publish in these flimsy, 144-page things which retail for $14.99 and which get battered all to heck on the shelves. Nevertheless, somewhere in those fields of crap, if you look through DC's summer notes - they will be offering eight separate hardcovers detailing the thousands of pages of their current "Blackest Night" storyline - you'll see that the publisher is releasing a second Showcase collection of classic Doom Patrol episodes by Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani. The first volume was easily one of the highlights of the line, and if you enjoy high-concept adventure stories, you'll probably get a kick out of these crazy sixties comics.

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Lastly this time (yeah, it's a short one), we're still waiting on confirmation about what the forthcoming two volumes of Judge Dredd Restricted Case Files will contain, but the big news from Rebellion is the formal announcement of two July books: The Stainless Steel Rat and Al's Baby, two titles drawn by Carlos Ezquerra which I have wanted to see reprinted for such a long time. Place your orders now, friends, and tell everybody you know. The Stainless Steel Rat, based on three novels by Harry Harrison, is 36 episodes of twist-filled, high-concept, con-artist sci-fi from the early eighties, and Al's Baby is 33 episodes of hilarious mob-comedy about a hitman who cannot convince his wife, the godfadda's dotta, to have a baby, so he's got to carry one himself to avoid a pair of concrete boots. Cross-dressing, getaway cars, first trimester cravings, high explosives, labor pains and sleeping with the fishes, it's all here and it's very funny. Spread the word!

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That's all for this month! See you in March!

Reprint This! Five Short Suggestions

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!

Normally, I have a full feature on the first of each month, but once a year or so, I put together a cheat-page, because there are plenty of other great comics that deserve to see the light of day as well, but for one reason or another I just don't have quite as much to say about them to fill a long entry. Here, then, are five comics which would be great to see again in collected form... comics which I'd certainly buy if only my local shop could order them from somebody, and so might you!



THE AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS

Together with its more commonly-seen counterpart, Marvel's FOOM, this professionally-assembled "fan"zine brought together interesting news features, interviews and otherwise-unseen production art, giving a fascinating look behind the scenes of the publisher in the 1970s. I only had two issues as a kid, one of them a special issue spotlighting the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman TV show, but I enjoyed the heck out of them. Back issues are both ridiculously scarce and jawdroppingly pricey, particularly the high-demand one looking at the Legion of Super-Heroes.

This is the sort of thing that, if DC doesn't really want to bother repackaging, they could certainly license it out to TwoMorrows or somebody, who have shown, with all of their archiving of classic fanzines, that they could do a great job with it.

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NERO WOLFE by John Broome and Mike Roy

For just over a year, from 1956-57, there was a daily Nero Wolfe comic strip. While credited to Wolfe's creator Rex Stout, it was actually drawn by Mike Roy and scripted by Silver Age DC Comics superstar John Broome, best known for his writing the resurrected Flash and Green Lantern adventures in the sixties.

Stout reportedly wasn't very taken with the strip, and while this sample shows that Broome correctly noted Mr. Wolfe's eccentric schedule, he otherwise got much of Wolfe's fussiness wrong. The fan group "The Wolfe Pack" assembled a PDF of many of the strips, which you can view at their website, but several of the strips are unfortunately in very poor quality. One of these days, I may have to trek up to Athens and spend the day in the UGA Library printing pages from fifty year-old papers to read 'em myself. Or somebody like IDW could just put a nice book out for me...

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ONE BIG HAPPY by Rick Detorie

Perhaps one of the least likely suggestions I've come up with for this feature. NBM released some collected editions of this popular daily feature in the late 90s, but none of them apparently sold very well, and I think this very overlooked daily has probably missed its chance to be a major breakout.

Readers know that there's a lot to it beyond the silly puns and wordplay; Ruthie and her older brother Joe are just about the most perfect little kid double-act on the modern comics page, every bit as weird and oddball as my own two children. If you're one of the many who lost touch with One Big Happy over the years, I suggest it's absolutely worth another look.

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PONYTAIL by Lee Holley

Holley worked as an assistant to Hank Ketcham in the late 1950s before starting this incredibly cute daily panel comic about a freewheeling teen girl. I have not seen very much of this comic, which ran for twenty-eight years and is well-remembered by comic aficionados both for Holley's wonderful, loopy inking style, and for its sweet, nostalgic depiction of small-town teen life, with malt shoppes, pizza joints, hot rods, lettermen's jackets and jalopies. Either IDW or Fantagraphics would do well to look into this classic.

Sherm Cohen has been posting scans from Dell's 1960s Ponytail comic book over at Cartoon SNAP for the last month or so. You can also read one of the backup strips from that comic over at my own Zarjaz Journal from last year.

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SUPER-HIP by Arnold Drake and Bob Oskner

Don't say I never gave you anything, Johnny Bacardi, because this one's for you! In 1950, when comic books were downright ridiculously weird, DC (or, more accurately, National, the company that would become DC in time) used to publish comedy titles "starring" movie stars like Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis. The Bob Hope comic was among the longest-lasting of these, but by 1965, even it had shown its age. So to keep things all groovy and relevant for the kids, Arnold Drake and Bob Oskner turned the book into a demented melange of superheroes, wacky monster comedies and with-it Carnaby Street Swingin' London cool. Enter, with issue # 95, Bob Hope's nephew Tadwallader Jutefruce, the secret identity of the flying, guitar-playing, shape-changing Sultan of Swingers, Super-Hip!

I only have one of these issues, and it's one of the nuttiest comics I own. They're actually scarce as all get-out, because Silver Age collectors, only interested in superhero continuity, never thought twice about the Bob Hope comic, and often had no idea that DC's most genuinely odd creation was fighting vampires and squares within its pages. DC long ago lost the license to reprint the Bob Hope comic, and I imagine his estate would probably charge a penny or two for reupping the license rights, but it would seem that in the last fifteen issues of The Adventures of Bob Hope, Bob only appeared as a host character.

Actually, I wonder whether the trademark on Super-Hip has lapsed. Normally, a publisher has to use a character somewhere, somehow, every few years to keep the trademark active, but Super-Hip hasn't appeared in any comic book for four decades. If so, any enterprising publisher could tweak the "Bob Hope" image and call him "Ted" or "Bill" or something and otherwise reprint these outright, couldn't they? Well, if anybody does, I hope they just remember to cut Drake's and Oskner's estates a royalty check or two. They were great talents, and their offbeat little creation should, in a just world, be earning a little money from people like me who'd love to snap this up. (Of course, if DC still owns Super-Hip, we're probably in for a long wait. They still haven't said a word about Angel and the Ape, The Inferior Five OR Sugar and Spike, the cads!)