BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: COMICS & COMIC STRIPS

ON PLASTIC MAN CREATED IN 1941

“…petty criminal Eel O’Brian fell into some acid and became, well, rubbery, then rehabilitated . He stood out thanks to creator Jack Cole’s Daliesque combination of visual dexterity and absurdist comedy, making him superherodom’s  response to Rudolph Dirks and Winsor McCay. Though he can take any shape, for example, he maintains the same colorful uniform: his powers of disguise should be somewhat limited, but people don’t seem to notice. ‘I never knew fighing for the law could be
So much fun!” O’Brian says, finishing his first adventure. Readers felt the same way.”


Jeremy Dauber. American Comics : A History (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2022)
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CHARLES SCHULTZ, PEANUTS, PIG-PEN & McCARTHYISM

“Over the course of a month in 1954, Pig-Pen’s dirtiness 
spreads to the other characters: first Schroeder, then 
Snoopy. Patty is shown talking into a telephone about the “awful” contagion; the person on the other end of the
 phone is ultimately revealed to be… Dirty Charlie Brown. (“What’s so awful about it?”) Everyone, it turns out,
 has a Dirty version of themselves: mussed, unkempt,
 scribbled over. This feels true. The contagion plotline 
ends when Schroeder and Charlie Brown, now clean, call 
Patty to tell her they followed her advice. (“You’d 
really be proud of us.”) Cut to the person at the other
 end of the phone… Dirty Patty. (“I would?”) Patty 
and Pig-Pen, the self and its shadow, have finally merged.
 The contagion series came out in September 1954, as 
Joseph McCarthy was finally being discredited after 
four years  of the Red Scare.

     It’s clear that the contagion is a social one…’

ELIF BATUMAN in ASTRA: "The Dirt on Pig-Pen "| (astra-mag.com)

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ON THE NAME TARZAN

According to Edgar Rice Burroughs, the name Tarzan means 
in the language of the mangani (ape-like hominids)--
white skin.
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QUIZ QUESTION #86543

According to Wikipedia, this Father of the American
Cartoon “ created a modern version of Santa Claus (based on the traditional German figures of Sankt Nikolaus and Weihnachtsmann) and the political symbol of the elephant for the Republican Party (GOP).” Who was he?

Answer below
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ONE OF THE FIRST SYNDICATED ADVENTURE STRIP HEROES

“On  January 7, 1929, the American release of the daily Tarzan newspaper comic strip made the Ape-Man one of the first syndicated adventure strip heroes. Hal Foster, its brilliant artist, was born in 1892 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and later created and drew the famous Prince Valiant newspaper comic strip…’

from Tarzan, Jungle King of Popular Culture by David Lemmo | 2016.

**

ON THE WORD SUPERHERO (#1179067)

"Although the word superhero predates comics by some 40 years, it rapidly became a prized commercial asset. In 1981, after decades of wrangling, Marvel and DC comics obtained a trademark (#1179067) for the term. Kryptonite is trademarked by DC Comics (toys and clothing) and Schlage Lock company (bicycle locks)."

Ben Schott in Playboy  (June 2016)
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A MEMORY OF COMICS

I was a religious reader of every comic in both The Daily News and The Daily Mirror throughout high school. So much so that when I went off to the University of Virginia, my mother would cut out the strips every day, put them in order along with the complete Sunday comic sections and mail them to me every Monday for all of my college years. I didn't detoxify from my comic addiction until I began my film career, in Greece of all places.

Nelson Breen, Emmy Award Winning Film-maker
**

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 BRENDA STARR, REPORTER

Brenda Starr was originally created as a “girl bandit” character, but creator Dale Messick was encouraged to make the Rita Hayworth-esque Starr a reporter instead so that the Chicago/New York syndicate would pick it up. Not only that, but the creator was using a pen name: Knowing that the publisher had sworn off “women cartoonists,” Dalia Messick switched to the more male-sounding name Dale Messick professionally. But even after it was accepted, Brenda Starr, Reporter still got second-class treatment, at least initially — when it first published in 1940, Brenda was relegated to the Sunday comic book supplement rather than the daily paper. Luckily, Brenda was a star, 
and the strip was a success long after Messick stopped writing it in 1982."
 
Interesting Facts (August 28, 2023)
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**
Clara Bow inspired Betty Boop

"Clara Bow was one of the women who provided Max Fleischer 
with inspiration for Betty Boop, the squeaky-voiced flapper icon. Other inspirations include singer Helen Kane, who sued Paramount for what she called Fleischer’s “deliberate caricature” of her. The court ruled against Kane, noting 
that Boop was a composite of several different women, 
including Bow."

Mental Floss
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READING ACTION COMICS 40 YRS. TOO LATE


I am ploughing my way
Thru Clark Kent's secret identity.
Great Caesar's Ghost! 

I've had  with the foreflanks
Of Lit Crit. 
Literature is meant to fly,

Splatt! Whapp!

Time to spatter Metropolis
With finer tints 
of hemoglobin.

I was meant
To leap tall bildingromans
With a single bound, meant

To bend Lois Lane 
In my bare hands.

Time to stick dynamite
Up the ass of Shakespeare.
Hamlet, with its cheap poisons,
Is not half so good
As this 10 cent comic
Falling apart 
In my hands. 


Louis Phillips
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ANSWER TO QUIZ:

THOMAS NAST 
"Called the "Father of the American Cartoon," Thomas Nast (1840-1902) was an influential caricaturist and political cartoonist. Remembered for his Civil War illustrations in Harper's Weekly, Nast's political cartoons were also instrumental in the downfall of Boss Tweed and the election of President Ulysses S. Grant. ... Google Books
Homepage

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