"This is Worser Than Washin' An Elephink!" COMICS! Sometimes It's Like I'm Shouting This At You While I Run Past!

Borag Thung, Earthlets! I have been quiet of late but I rested easy in the knowledge that the delightful Messrs Khosla, McMillan, Lester and Hibbs had been satisfying all your comicy needs to the highest of standards as ever. Not that I was resting you understand. So, practically writing this one as I move towards the door...Anyway, this... David Lapham from The Strain in DARK HORSE PRESENTS  #28

POPEYE:CLASSICS #14 Written and drawn by Bud Sagendorf IDW/Yoe Books, $3.99 (2013) Popeye created by E.C. Segar

Some issues of POPEYE: CLASSICS are available from the Savage Critics Store (which you have all quite patently forgotten about. Sniff!) HERE.

Month in month out the nautically attired freak faced grammar mangler continues to pleasantly baffle me with the weirdly logical escalation of the ludicrous incidents which comprise his preposterous adventures. Since Popeye, for all his charms, is in fact a fictional construct I’m going to place the credit for this consistently entertaining package at the door of Bud Sagendorf, a real life man (now deceased) who went done drew and writed it all. Fans of the magic old men do can marvel at Sagendorf’s use of long shot silhouettes to prevent a total nervous breakdown from having to repeatedly draw a train in what are quite small panels indeed. As a special bonus Sagendorf serves up some right nice visual gaggery, the best of which are the parts where sound FX have a physical effect on the drawn environment they inhabit. Basically they hit people on the chin is what I’m saying there.

Bud Sagendorf from POPEYE CLASSICS #14

In this issue the main tale involves Popeye buying a railroad, Olive Oyl’s demanding customer, an attempted hijack and a visual stereotype of a re..native American (altho’ in the world of Popeye this might actually be a vacationing accountant in racially insensitive fancy dress). Then there’s a story where Popeye buys the world’s cheapest and laziest race horse, another story where Popeye and Olive simultaneously seek to teach Sweetpea a lesson and demonstrate their poor parenting skills by scaring the shit out of the wee tyke in an abandoned mine, and a short with Wimpy being out foxed by a cow (“a lady of the meadow”), there’s a text story as well but I skipped that. Bud Sagendorf wasn’t writing for the &*^%ing omnibus is what I’m getting at here. Popeye is printed on weirdly bloated pages, haphazardly coloured and always, always a welcome arrival in my field of vision so I’m going to say it’s VERY GOOD!

THE SHADOW ANNUAL 2013 Art by Bilquis Evely Written by Andre Parks Coloured by Daniela Miwa The Shadow created by Walter B. Gibson Dynamite, $4.99 (2013)

Man, I’m not exactly Sammy Stable at the best of times (“No shit, John!”) but the temporal shenanigans in this thing almost gave me a panic attack. It’s five minutes ago! Now it’s three hours later! No, hang on, it’s five years earlier. No, it’s been seven hours and fifteen days. And nothing compares. Nothing compares. To yaaaooooooooowwwww. Clearly the comparison being begged here is that this comic is like Brief Encounter but starring two psychopaths and set in Vegas before Elvis conquered it.

Bilquis Evely from THE SHADOW ANNUAL 2013

Even more clearly it’s not like that at all but instead is very much like having to find your train in a busy station where all the clocks show the wrong time, people keep getting stabbed and shot and you’ve found yourself in the company of some boring jabberjaw who won’t shut up about his first love. Shadow, dude, move on. This is unseemly in a man of your standing. Fucking chin up, old son. As for the art, well, it’s okay, it’s alright, but there’s a tendency for noses to look like the owner has a heavy cold. That’s Sean Murphy’s influence (influenza!) in action there. So, a nice idea, not terribly well executed at a price point I want to hit with a stick makes this EH!

DARK HORSE PRESENTS #28 Art by David Lapham, Neal Adams, Richard Corben, Steve Lieber, Patrick Alexander, Ron Randall, Menton3, Michael T. Gilbert, Aaron Conley and Geoff Darrow Written/plotted by David Lapham, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Corben, Neal Adams, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Ron Randall, Steve Niles, Michael T. Gilbert, Janet Gilbert and Damon Gentry Coloured by Lee Loughridge, Moose Baumann, Rachelle Rosenberg, Jeremy Colwell, Michael T. Gilbert, Sloane Leong Lettered by Clem Robbins, Nate Piekos of Blambot, Ken Bruzenak, Steve Lieber and Damon Gentry

Dark Horse Presents is an anthology so, you know, it’s a bit all over the shop. Mostly though it keeps its footing on the shiny tiles and rarely sends the display of stacked tins (Pork and beans! For the poor!) spinning madly about. First up, David Lapham reminds me how good he is at comics with his The Strain chapter. Even though I have no particular interest in this property and there's a bit of cultural shorthand verging on the cliched Lapham quietly did the business on every page to ensure that the final panel came as a punch to the guts and I actually wanted to read what happened next. Later in the ish Lapham resurfaces with the conclusion to his introductory Juice Squeezers tale which, with its teen focused Cronenbergyness, proves to be the kind of nuts that comics would benefit from more of and yet truculently resists embracing.

Michael T. Gilbert, Janet Gilbert and Ken Bruzenak from Mr. Monster Geoff Darrow’s spot illustrations continue to amaze with the visual conviction with which they deliver scenes at once grotesque, impossible and droll. In a similar fashion to the comics Darrow produces elsewhere, comics which chafe some SavCrits so (but, strangley, not this eminently chafeable one), Sabretooth Swordsman with its surprising Savage Pencil influences is an optically delirious but narratively slight piece.

Aaron Conley, Damon Gentry and Sloane Leong from Sabertooth Swordsman

Richard Corben chucks out another Poe adaptation which is notable primarily for the truly scintillating colour work executed therein. I am absolutely horrible at appreciating the colour in comics but even here, even I, had to stop and marvel at more than one point. Ken “The Chameleon” Bruzenak is here in several different stories and in each case serves up lettering apposite to the pieces in question; in the very traditional Trekker his work is attractive but modest while in Mr. Monster he provides an ostentatious display of madcap fonts.

Richard Corben and Nate Piekos from Edgar Allan Poe's The Assignation

As a whole Mr Monster, additionally armed as it is with Michael T Gilbert’s invigoratingly loose art, continues to cock a scruffy snook at seriousness; which I like. Mrs. Plopsworht's Kitchen by Patrick Alexander succeeds in making physical and emotional abuse funny which is an interesting type of victory. Oh, and there’s some other stuff here; Steve Niles producing his trademark pound shop horror; Alabaster continuing to not be anything I want while not actually being terrible and Blood by Neal Adams continuing to be Blood by Neal Adams. Overall though I had a good time so DHP was GOOD!

JUDGE DREDD CLASSICS#3 Art by Carlos Ezquerra Written by John Wagner & Alan Grant (as T.B. Grover) Coloured by Tom Mullin Lettered by Steve Potter Judge Dredd created by John Wagner & Carlos Ezquerra IDW, $3.99 (2013)

Look, before I start acting like a pissy arse let’s get this one thing straight: these are great comics. I know this because it isn’t the first time I’ve bought them and it certainly isn’t the last time I’ll read them. When I first read them they blew my school socks off (not a kink; I was at school). The Apocalypse War was where Carlos Ezquerra returned to the character he (co) created after an absence occasioned by unfortunate editorial decisions. Carlos Ezquerra was back and Carlos Ezquerra meant it. Carlos Ezquerra drew the cremola out of The Apocalypse War even as The Apocalypse War blew the world of Dredd to grud and back. Because The Apocalypse War was where Wagner & Grant (AKA T.B. Grover) took all the pages of world building that had gone before them and applied a match. After The Apocalypse War the world of Dredd would never be the same again. Really. In The Apocalypse War Dredd made a decision no man should ever have to make, a decision only a man who was not a man could make, and the following decades of the strip have shown the consequences and ramifications of that decision fashion Judge Joseph Dredd into a man at last. With The Apocalypse War Wagner & Grant’s breathlessly hi-octane narrative pace in tandem with Ezquerra’s consistently brutal style created an epic that looked like the end of everything but was instead the birth of the strip’s future. These are great comics.

Ezauerra, Wagner, Grant, Potter and Mullin from The Apocalypse War

Alas, when I talk about greatness I’m talking purely about the pages of comics in here. The actual physical pamphlet comic is a bit lacking. You know, these are great comics. Do I repeat myself? I repeat myself. Great comics, so how’s about a bit of care and attention; a bit of respect. That’ll have to remain purely theoretical because, oh, he’s off now…The cover’s a bit lacking for starters; look, I’m all about negative space and clear, crisp design but that looks a bit, well, I don’t think it achieved its aim. Imagine if they’d rejigged an original 2000AD cover featuring The Apocalypse War. Trust me when I say the new cover would be a poor second. Then, oh dear, the inside front cover seems to think this story is called Block Mania but it isn’t; Block Mania finished last issue. This story in this issue, (which is all reprints and cost $3.99) is called The Apocalypse War which is why I’ve called it that through all the preceding verbiage. Then between each chapter there’s a perfunctory full page graphic. Grud on a Greenie! I realise the space has to be filled due to the page counts of each episode but could you not have had a bit of fun, IDW? Got a bit creative? Maybe stuck the original covers on there instead, or blown up a portion of a panel pop art style like on those DC Kirby/Ditko/etc Omnibooks? You’ll notice, IDW, that I’m not even daring to suggest you commission some, choke, original content. I mean I realise reprinting decades old comics and charging $3.99 a pop might not allow for such largesse. Sarcasm there.

Ezauerra, Wagner, Grant, Potter and Mullin from The Apocalypse War

Then there’s that weird waste of space at the bottom of the page. Again, I appreciate you don’t want to mess with the size ratios but, drokk it all, that’s some token stuff there, IDW. And there's a page out of sequence. A page out of sequence in a comic of reprints selling for $3.99! However, I am okay with the colouring. Obviously, I’d rather they hadn’t bothered because the art was drawn for B&W (except for the opening spreads) but I understand Americans are fond of their colours. There they are America: enjoy your Colonial colours! Moan, moan, moan except this is all basic stuff. I'm hardly asking for Cher to sing live in my living room here just some vague pass at professionalism, if you please.

Ezauerra, Wagner, Grant, Potter and Mullin from The Apocalypse War

So, a confounding miscalculation on the part of IDW here; this material is readily available in a number of other formats and has been for decades so making a new iteration stand out from the crowd would, I’d think, be imperative. Making your books expensive and ill-designed is certainly a novel approach. Luckily, these are great comics so even though the crime is Fail the sentence is GOOD!

Anyway, I'm off now. With any luck I'll bump into some COMICS!!!!

"Why Is That Puppet's Bosom EXPOSED?" COMICS! Sometimes Corben Endures!

Good morrow! It is I, the man who skipped a week without notice! I'm sure your rancour and anger have abated somewhat. If indeed they ever existed. Perhaps it was a feeling more akin to relief. As when the drowning man releases that last bubble of air and watches it rise unhurriedly to the surface through clouded but resigned and unpanicked eyes. No, my American friends, I have no idea what I'm talking about as - Christmas? Getting in the way of your free content it appears.  Anyway, this...

I'm going to do some me stuff now. I don’t know if that’s because Christmas makes sentimental fools of us all or it's just the need to pad this crap out because Brian "Penelope Smallbone" Hibbs pays by the word (cannily he won't say which word hence - so many of the little bastards).Anyway, we (The MiracleKane Family) attended the local Victorian Fayre because, yes, I live in a country which fetishises the time we rounded up the poor into camps and the name of the game was institutionalised sadistic hypocrisy.   After perusing several stalls of overpriced tat, the consumption of heated offal and a couple of goes on Hook-A-Duck the evening ended ended with all souls present being entertained by a firework display set up in the football stadium over the road. And by stadium I mean a field with lines chalked on it surrounded by a wall.  I don’t exactly live in a cosmopolis, is what I’m saying there. Nonetheless the display was pretty impressive. It’s impressiveness was undoubtedly enhanced by the decision to play James Bond themes over the barking tannoy. Sure,  if you played James Bond themes over the sight of a man picking his nose while standing in a field of stale turds it would magically become entertaining beyond all reason. James Bond themes are like that. Well the John Barry ones anyway and that’s what these were. Brian “Holly Goodhead” Hibbs would have approved. Grudgingly as is his wont but still approval would occur within his beefy frame, I'm sure.

I just really like this picture.

But, y’know, fair’s fair the fireworks were pretty spectacular. MiracleKid even exclaimed "Awesome!" and he's at the age when he means "awesome" when he says it and it's not just the result of a combination of affected ennui and an impoverished vocabulary. Yet, and yet, when the almost insanely enthusiastic voice riding the tannoy suggested everyone render a round of applause in appreciation...well now I know what the sound of one Dad clapping is. Christ, people are ungrateful buggers. And on that festive note...

POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS #3 By Bud Sagendorf IDW/Yoe, $3.99 (2012) Popeye created by E.C. Segar

The adventures of everyone’s favourite arse-chinned violent maritime moron continue! But enough about Aquaman! Arf! Arf!! Yes, it’s more crumbly comics from the time when the only people who were tattooed were sailors, whores and convicts. It is truly a Golden Age of reprints when the work of Bud Sagendorf can be disinterred, dusted down and presented to an audience that never even knew it existed (well, I didn't). Because Bud Sagendorf’s Popeye comics are more golden than a dead Shirley Eaton! I don’t think I've read anything about these comics on-line which is weird given how great they are. Sagendorf’s cartooning is timeless in it’s bigfootededly bizarre brilliance as are his strangely sensical nonsensical plots which the reader is propelled through via the simple ,yet incredibly effective, method of ending each page with a “turn” (or whatever Brian “Vesper Lynd” Hibbs calls it).

Bud Sagendorf was not as other men.

In the first (and longest) story here everyone just accepts the idea that when you die in Popeye’s world you turn into a ghost and go live on Ghost Island. This equating of death with geographical relocation is not entirely dissimilar to the premise of Will Self’s How The Dead Live except Popeye is funnier and shorter. But How The Dead Live is unarguably a lot more Jewish. Hey, these are VERY GOOD! comics; each page is beautifully crafted and built to last. But then, personally speaking, the comedy of a man looking in a window while declaiming “I is looking in this window, so I is! Arf! Arf!” is inexhaustible. I don’t know why that is and I don’t want to know. It’s enough I find things funny I don’t need to know why all the time. Sometimes it is what it is and that’s all that it is! ARF! ARF!

Help Brian “Plenty O’Toole” Hibbs blush like a rose in bloom by purchasing POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS #3 from HERE!

EDGAR ALLAN POE'S THE CONQUEROR WORM Adapted by Richard Corben Lettered by Nate Piekos of Blambot Dark Horse Comics, $3.99 (2012)

Again! Again Richard Corben paws and kneads at the raw material of Poe’s poetry shaping and reworking it to his requirements. These being the provision of a showcase for his art. To belittle this because the narrative seems somewhat undernourished would, I feel, be to miss the point. It would be to judge the artwork by the frame in which it is set. Because anyone coming to this expecting all the parts to have equal weight is going to be sorely displeased. This is Corben lifting weights in his garage, but he's left the door open so you can all crowd round and peer in. Or something.

After Richard Corben's first attempt offers for panto soon dried up.

Fortuitously when you’re as great as Corben even your workouts are better than most other actual performances. Artwise, this is the real stuff. There are some brief and yet informative notes secreted in the back of the book which serve to unsettle the assuredness of my readerly assumptions. After all while I was reading this I would have said it was set in a Hammer Horror/Mad Max future limbo but in the brief but informative notes in the back I learn that Corben set it "very definitely in the 19th Century”.  (Much like the imagination of the British people! Not really worth all that set-up was it. Sigh.) This does serve to make the anachronistic dialogue ("Yeah, okay. I'll go for it.") funnier. Anyway this one's all about the art with Corbens's swollen and boiled looking figures capering around a world coloured mustardy rust and chalky grey through which sudden bursts of scarlet punch in horrid revelation. Also, he draws the titular worms to resemble nothing but independently mobile and toothy cocks. That's not something you see every day but neither is Richard Corben who, thrillingly, remains VERY GOOD!

THOR GOD OF THUNDER #1 Artist Esad Ribic Writer Jason Aaron Colour Artist Dean White Letterer VC's Joe Sabino Marvel, $3.99 (2012) Thor created by Jack Kirby, Larry Lieber and Stan Lee (and the people of Norway)

It's not a bad idea to relocate Thor as a serial killer thriller narrative. It's certainly better than the previous writer's decision to give priority to trying on trendy hats and alphabetising his coloured vinyl 7" single collection while letting his artists to do all the work. It's fine, no problems really. Aaron even seeds possible future stories with the introduction of a new pantheon of Gods here represented by The God Butcher.

"Mrs. Leeds changing. Do you see? Mrs Jacobi reborn. Do you see? Mrs. Leeds reborn. Do you see?"

Consequently later stories will no doubt focus on such dastardly deities as The God Baker and The God Candlestick Maker. The whole thing is a kind of watered down Heavy Metal strip the success is which is due mostly to Ribic and White's work which lends the whole derivative but enjoyable thing a grandeur and scale it probably doesn't really merit. At $3.99 it's GOOD! but not good enough for me to continue with. And there's the whole Jack Kirby thing of course; you can thank my LCS for sending me this unbidden.

So, apologies but Christmas will affect productivity but in the meantime you'll always have COMICS!!!

"Bleedhounds Kin Find Anythin'!" COMICS! Sometimes They Are Assorted!

So, you know how it should go: 1) Read comics 2) Think about comics  3) Write about comics 4) Post writing 5) Fret about having upset someone. Rinse and repeat.Well I did 1) and forgot to do 2) so that shivved 3), 4) and 5) right in the kidneys didn't it? So all you get is what I read last night. I'll try and do better next time.

Also: Don't forget the 100TH PODCAST BY GRAEME MCMILLAN and JEFF LESTER is due THIS WEEK! It will be MONUMENTAL! It will be ASTOUNDING! It will be the BEST THING EVER!

No pressure, guys!

SPACEMAN #9 (of 9) By Risso, Azzarello, Mulvihill, Robins, Johnson, Doyle and Dennis VERTIGO/DC Comics, $2.99 (2012) SPACEMAN created by Risso and Azzarello

In which all things come to the usually inconclusive and possibly clever but certainly unsatisfying end most of Azzarello’s work casually bellyflops into. Recasting a standard crime tale in sci-fi (S-F!) trappings turned out not to be enough. Possibly it turned out to more hobbling than helpful. Azzarello seems to actively avoid clarity in his storytelling at times, possibly confusing complication with complexity. Fair enough but then factor in his Footcha-Speek and the reader ends up trying to figure out the simplest of things while momentum and interest dissipate softly but noticeably out and away, like the sly fart of a dog under the Sunday dinner table.

The Futcha-Spik wasn’t all that good either, I’m not expecting Orwell’s Newspeak but I am at least expecting an effort on a par with Jack (Under-Rated) Womack and I’m certainly expecting it to be more than an excuse to force in more terrible puns (Real-Tee!). Also, I have a strong suspicion all this stuff just served as a distraction from the fact the end made no sense. No one went, “Actually, he didn't do it.” No one? How convenient. Luckily Risso and Mulvihill’s work remains visually sumptuous, engaging and altogether too good for the material at hand, thus raising it up to GOOD!

AMERICAN VAMPIRE: LORD OF NIGHTMARES #4 of 5 Drawn by Dustin Nguyen Written by Scott Snyder Colours by John Kalisz Letters by Steve Wands VERTIGO/DC Comics, $2.99 (2012) AMERICAN VAMPIRE created by Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque

They held off quite a while didn't they? You do have to give them that, but in the end all Vampire roads lead to Vlad. Here they've plumped for the spooky baldy Murnau version; respectful but a mistake I feel. This comic could really have done with Gary Oldman’s Jack-cool-AH! livening up its sadly lifeless pages. Sometimes this thing just makes less sense than an extraordinarily senseless thing, like a clam in a coma. After doing a load of hair pulling and garment rending about how super awful a threat Dracula is the strip then seems to suggest a train crash would finish off Dracula like he was some luckless commuter on a particularly ill-fated 6.45 to Basingstoke. It also thinks having our cast trapped on a plane bickering is of interest, yet since much of the cast is made up of spooky humanoids this just ends up being like reading about the argumentative occupants of a flying supernatural pet shop.

What happened to Dustin Nguyen? Has he had an accident? His art is usually lovely but here it looks like he did it during a bumpy bus ride and the bus was one of those with crates of livestock on it, some of which kept getting loose and flapped right up in his face while he was engaged in his act of creation. Look, this is a series in which the Big Threat is revealed to be a chair, so yeah, it was EH!

FATALE #7 Drawn by Sean Phillips Written by Ed Brubaker Colours by Dave Stewart IMAGE, $3.50 (2012) FATALE created by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

I know they don’t need any encouragement here but this would make a great TV series. Every week a special guest star could stumble over Josephine’s wall with an item of wider relevance to whichever decade the series was currently set in. So you could have Jim Belushi as Richard Nixon fall into Josephine’s bougainvilleas sweatily clutching a Watergate tape to his chest. He would find her attractive. She would wonder why she, an attractive woman, had such power over him, a clearly foolish man. It would be a real mystery. Only a supernatural solution would suffice. The gardener would get all shirty. She would help him out and find another clue to the central mystery of the story which is so ill defined I can’t even remember what it is. Richard Nixon would die and be sad. Josephine would be sad he had died. Then she would look out of her window to find Charlie Sheen as Elvis falling into her poison Ivy clutching the proof that Colonel Tom Parker was an illegal immigrant. And on and on and on. Robert DeNiro in Angel Heart has already shown up, although he’s now wearing those eggs he kept peeling as eyes.

As far as horror goes the most horrific thing about the book is when Sean Phillips draws people in the middle distance. They start to bloat and their proportions subtly shift from those of a human to something more akin to a Robert Aickman phantasm. Unfortunately he’s just drawing normal people but his skill with scenery and faces ensure the art is still the second best thing here. Dave Stewart’s colours being the first, check out the lovely felt-tippy green on that Green Door, Shakin' Stevens! I have no idea why the critical reception of this book is so orgasmic but then I didn't think CRIMINAL having flashbacks drawn like ARCHIE comics was exactly warming my face with the Promethean fire. I’m probably just a demanding prick so take my verdict of EH! With a pinch of salt.

Show me I'm just a big old partypooper by buying FATALE #7 from HERE. Remember - the more copies you buy the more you'll be showing me how wrong I am! Knock yourself out!

POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS #2 By Bud Sagendorf YOE Comics/IDW $3.99 (2012) POPEYE created by E.C. Segar

These are POPEYE comics from the ‘50s by Bud Sagendorf and if you have been paying attention to me then you know how I feel about that! If you have not been paying attention to me, why NOT? Jesus Christ, you know I only do this for the attention! Yes, only for the heat of your Love I feel through the screen do I do this thing! And the money. Anyway, these comics are mental and there are about twice as many pages as in a normal comic so that offsets the fact you’re paying 3.99, I feel. In case that was a concern. I really like the way they retain the original colouring because there’s something to be said for those halcyon days when upon reaching the age of 60 every citizen was forcibly taken to a warehouse where they were chained by the ankle to an enormous table and here, amongst ranks of equally liver spotted and doddering companions, they threw carcinogenic inks in the rough direction of where their cataract occluded eyes guessed the pictures were.

Nowadays it’s all done by computers and I think we've lost something there, something real, something human, something magical. As great as the contents are (and, yes, they are great) the cover is awesome as, if we take the Freudian view of firearms, it portrays Popeye punching a man so hard in the cock he ends up wearing his foreskin like a sleeve. Fuck you, Johnny Ryan, Bud Sagendorf rocks! It’s POPEYE by Bud Sagendorf and is, clearly, VERY GOOD!

POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS can be bought from HERE!. It's just like buying it from Bouncy Brian Hibbs! Except you don't get to go to San Francisco ("The World's Favourite City!"). But you do get a good comic instantly in your PC! Swings and roundabouts, people!

I hope you had a good weekend, y'all! I also hope you enjoyed some COMICS!!!

"I Got A Heart Like Nobody's Bizness!" COMICS! Sometimes They Are Timeless Magic!

Now I don't know about you but I needed a bit of a larf recently. And the most larfs I had lately were courtesy of these comics. So I thought I'd tell you about them and then you could go and buy them and have a larf too. It's called The Cycle of Larf! Arf! Arf! No, wait, these are good books, honest! Oh, be like that then.

POPEYE #1 Art and letters by Bruce Ozella Written by Roger Langridge Coloured by Luke McDonnell IDW, $3.99 (2012) POPEYE created by E.C. Segar

A while back I commented that the presence of this comic was awesome for anyone who missed Thimble Theatre. Forgetting I was on The Internet I think my words were misconstrued as a dig at the fact that such an old property was being dug up and dusted off once again; despite the fact that the original audience had long ago ceased to care about comics if not before, then certainly shortly after, they had ceased breathing, which they all had some time ago. That's not actually what I meant. What I actually meant was that the presence of this comic is awesome for anyone who missed Thimble Theatre. Like me. Basically I meant "missed" as in "failed to experience" rather than "felt the loss or lack of". Words are tricky, hear me now!

I was well up for this because the only time Roger Langridge has ever disappointed me was that time when he failed to bring peace to the world entire. To be fair though that expectation may only have been in my head and comics are really more his thing. After all comics are a thing Roger Langridge does rather well. Here he just dives in with a feature length tale of Popeye and all his familiar companions, together with several unfamiliar to me anyway, creations having madcap adventures of a bizarre and confounding nature while in serach of a mate for The Jeep.  Apparently this strange creature gave the WW2 US Army vehicle its name. I previously thought it was named after the onomatopoeic effect of the initials for General Purpose (G.P.) but, no, apparently it was a Popeye character. According to the Bud Sagendorf book anyway, more on that anon. Langridge and Ozella's tale is a pell mell charge into entertainment which is dense in event with something engagingly off-kilter occurring on every page. Ozella's art has a loose and scrappy quality that retains the "punkier" quality of Segar's work as opposed to the cleaner Sagendorf stuff. By basically taking the property of Popeye and changing very little (his pipe is just for show now), the book retains the central appeal of the character which is the main reason to buy the thing.  That's not cluelessness it's common sense.

People want Popeye not "street level" Popeye or "Tom Clancy-lite" Popeye. If the book doesn't sell then people just don't want Popeye. The yellow lettering on the cover of my copy indicates it is a "2nd Printing", so I guess people want Popeye alright. This is something DC could bear in mind with characters like Captain "Shazam!" Marvel. If you change it too much it isn't that character anymore and if it isn't that character anymore why should anyone care? After all making Captain Marvel a dick in a hood contributes little except a clear indication that he isn't Jewish. Anyway, this comic is about Popeye not Shazam! (Boo!) and it reads like a Popeye comic and thanks to the talents of all involved it is VERY GOOD!

Please help send Brian Hibbs to Summer Camp by purchasing this comic from HERE. Issues 2,3 and 4 are also now available, just saying. Summer Camp can be pricey these days.

POPEYE (Classic Comics) #1 By Bud Sagendorf IDW/Yoe Comics, $3.99 (2012) POPEYE created by E.C. Segar

Now, when I read the 2012 comic I had very little idea about Popeye but once I'd finished it I found my curiosity had been piqued. Luckily this comic appeared. So I bought it. Causality in action there. This is apparently the first issue in a complete reprinting of the POPEYE comics which spun up and out from the newspaper strip. There are over a hundred of these. Judging by the contents of this issue the next ten years are going to be called the Happy Popeye Fan Decade. Because although I'd never heard of Bud Sagendorf before buying this it turns out that Bud Sagendorf is all kinds of awesome. He is particularly awesome at Popeye.

His style is cleaner and more polished than that of Segar but it loses none of its anatomical daftness and retains enough of the creepiness that always underlies Popeye's comedy. Although these strips are from 1948 they are just as mentally, er, different and rich in incident as the 2012 comic. The strips seem to have been copied straight from the old comics with warts and all remaining which gives them a lovely old timey feeling, like when you maul your grandad's face. The pages are thick and the package has a heft and solidity pleasing to the purchaser. I believe Brian Hibbs calls this quality "finger". POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS has good finger. The comics within it are, truth to tell, also VERY GOOD!

Now, I don't want to come across as though I'm rattling a tin in front of your face but this comic can also be purchased from HERE.

POPEYE The Great Comic Book Tales By Bud Sagendorf By Bud Sagendorf (Natch! Arf! Arf!) IDW/Yoe Books, $29.99 (2011) POPEYE created by E.C. Segar

So I read those books and then I went looking for more. Because I am a greedy man indeed. And that's how I ended up buying this. It's a sturdy volume and like all Yoe books the design and research speak so loudly of  enthusiasm that any cavils about proofreading are soon drowned out. The contents are a selection of Sagendorf's strips across a roughly 10 year period. The reproduction, and in fact the very first strip, are exactly the same as the comic above. So if you enjoyed that you're sure to enjoy this. Heck if you enjoy Popeye or just good comics you're certain to enjoy this.

There are probably historically verifiable reasons for each of the stunningly unsettling character designs on display here. One thing I do know is the timeless quality engendered by their wonderful weirdness enables each new generation to imprint their own meaning upon them. The Sea Hag, for example, looks like nothing so much as a stroppy Grant Morrison in a hooded cloak. That’s pretty disturbing on its own but when she asks the squint-eyed one for his malformed hand in marriage whole new vistas of repellent perversity play out in the unwilling reader’s mind. Conversely when old arse-chin smacks The Sea Hag one upside her weirdly hirsute chin you do kind of want to shout, “That’s for Siegel and Shuster, you pound shop Anarchist!” Basically though why these strangely swollen and wobbly looking folks look the way they do I haven't a clue. Maybe E.C. Segar had a squint, talked like his tongue was as big as a cat and had a chin like a bum with a pipe stuck in it. I don’t know. I know he had tattoos so that’s one mystery solved right there. I could have looked it all up but frankly I want to keep the focus on these comics and when I do finally get those E.C. Segar volumes from Fantagraphics I’ll be wanting to present their well researched facts as my own won’t I now?

This volume has its own well researched facts in the form of preface by Craig Yoe which is illustrated with Sagendorf rarities and one picture of the artist with snowy white hair. I am a big fan of pictures of comic book artists with snowy white hair. To me they are like pictures of kittens are to normal people. This introduction is highly enlightening in regard to Sagendorf’s craft as it includes two pages from a correspondence course he chipped in on (above) and has the man himself explaining, via quotes, some of the process involved in the creation of the strips. He and Segar would basically fish from Segar’s boat for five days hashing ideas out before belting the strips out. The introduction isn't very long but as I say it’s informative After reading it you understand why Sagendorf was able to replicate The Master’s style after his death i.e. simpatico interests (science -fiction, which explains a lot about the strip in itself) and seemingly being a creative equal for much of their association. And yet it points at the huge mystery of why it took Kings Feature Syndicate 2o years to pass the job on to Sagendorf without offering an answer. In the end though Sagendorf got the gig and made it his own. The extent to which he succeeded can now be viewed by generations previously unaware of his very existence. I think he would have liked that and I think you will like this book as it is VERY GOOD!

Before I bought POPEYE #1 by Langridge and Ozella I knew very little about Popeye, shortly thereafter I had bought POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS #1 and POPEYE THE GREAT COMIC BOOK TALES. I don't know much about publishing or retailing but I think I might count that as a success right there for all involved and the persistent magic of the the profoundly stupid or perhaps even the stupidly profound, world of POPEYE!

Have a good weekend, y'all, and read some COMICS!!! (Maybe even buy 'em from HERE!)