In 1966, at the age of 34, Bertram A. Fitzgerald jumped in to the comic book publishing business, despite having no background in writing or publishing. He had been disillusioned with biographies of writers like Dumas and Pushkin, whose African heritage had been almost completed and deliberately eschewed. So he got an old army acquaintance, Leo Carty, to draw up a comic book biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution of the late 1700s. I'll let you figure out why I'm opting now to review a comic book about Haiti's independence over a half century since it was first published.

The story actually starts with Toussaint's father being brought to San Domingo as a slave. He was soon purchased as a house slave by Count de Breda, and it was there that Toussaint was born. His father and godfather taught them as much they could, so he could rise to become a great leader. He was afforded more leniency than many other slaves, and he eventually left to join the Maroons, a group of former slaves that had run away to live in the island's hills. Toussaint was welcomed and his intelligence was almost immediately promoted to physician of the Maroons' army, and his knowledge of military strategy and tacits got him soon promoted further as one of the group's leading generals. He handily won a number of victories in battle, often without bloodshed. He managed to drive back armiers from Spain and Britain ad, six years after first joining the Maroons, the governor stepped down and offered the job to Toussaint. Toussaint's approach quickly caught the ire of Napoleon Bonaparte, who sent an overwhelming fleet to attack. Toussaint and his army held their own, and Bonaparte offered to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict. Toussaint went to France to do so, but found himself captured and thrown into a damp cell to rot where he eventually died in 1803.

The comic here is serviceable. The script relies a little over-heavily on captions, but given that this was Fitzgerald's fist comic book in any capacity, it's not bad. The illustrations are surprisingly loose but it's clear that is being done in a deliberately stylized way by artist Leo Carty. Unlike the Harriet Tubman issue I reviewed a couple years ago, the art on this one doesn't get muddy at any point. I suspect that is mostly due to the printer, but there could be some other factors at play. The only real issue I had with the craft involved with this book was the lettering. It was legible enough, certainly, but there were a number of notable spacing issues -- where the letterer seems to have re-done the lettering in places but not there's either too much or too little space on either end of a word. Or sometimes, there's a few instances where the letters get squished up against the edge of a speech balloon or panel border. If I had to guess, it was a case of "Hey, you have good handwriting! How'd you like to work on this comic?"

While it may not be the height of artistic creation in comics, it's definitely very readable and it served its purpose of educating me on the life of Toussaint and the origins of Haiti's independence. Frankly, even at a scant 24 pages, it's more than enough to showcase why racists like Trump and Vance are using stocastic terrorism to target those with Haitian heritage.

I don't know why Fitzgerald chose to launch his Golden Legacy series with a biography of Toussaint. As far as I can tell, Fitzgerald didn't have any Haitian ancestory. It could be that he chose several subjects and Carty simply happened to turn this one in first. But the whole series is worth it, in my opinion, because they cover a lot of subjects that aren't taught in schools but should be. You can still get the collected editions in hardcover or paperback today at the Golden Legacy site.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Curious Reprints
https://ift.tt/DW8Mevp

Kleefeld on Comics: The Secret Story of Marvel's Cosmic Quartet
https://ift.tt/BKQWG2M

Kleefeld on Comics: Meanwhile in Egypt
https://ift.tt/ADMFQ1H

Kleefeld on Comics: Visiting Secret Lairs
https://ift.tt/ATUDOWa

Kleefeld on Comics: Rise of the Pamphlet
https://ift.tt/bjVQziI

For many years, the term "comic book" was sufficient to describe the format in which people typically saw sequential art. The only venue besides monthly issues for seeing comics (the form of media) was in the funny pages of a newspaper. Comics were considered too "low" to warrant publication in anything resembling a premium format. Your options were comic books or comic pages in the newspaper. Even when stories started getting reprinted in small paperbacks back in the 1960s and 70s, they were still only reprint collections of what people were still simply calling "comic books" so that term was still used.

Eventually, though, people started coming up with longer form stories. (Feel free to argue about whether it was Will Eisner or Jim Steranko who got the ball rolling with this.) They, understandably, wanted to differentiate their longer works from simple collections of shorter, deadline-driven stories and the industry soon settled on the term "graphic novel" to identify these pieces. "Novel" to suggest the longer format, and "graphic" to convey the visual elements not inherent in a "regular" novel.

And here's where things start to get muddy. Because with the birth of the "graphic novel" people began to really see the storytelling options available to them, and that stories could be told in formats other than the traditional pamphlet format. So we start seeing "Treasury Editions" and "Prestige Formats" and "Mini-Comics" and who-knows-what-else. It's still all sequential art -- comics -- but they look decidedly different from one another. Not even a comic newbie is going to mistake Smile with the latest trade collection of JLA with Cynicalman with Amazing Spider-Man #167. They're just all physically very different in their production.

And so the term "comic book" essentially took on too many meanings to use in differentiating different formats. It worked well enough (and still works well, for that matter) when you're just talking about sequential art generally, but you have to start using other terms if you want to specify that you're only discussing one particular format. Since most of the newer formats were generating a new taxonomy for themselves already, we were only left with the old pamphlet comics using a phrase that was now doing double-duty.

Enter "periodical." Periodical was a good word for the pamphlet comics at the time. They came out regularly on a (generally) monthly schedule and were largely the only format who followed that. Graphic novels were one-offs, mini-comics were all over the map schedule-wise depending on the creator... with only a couple exceptions, the pamphlet comics were the only form of "comic book" that came out on a regular schedule.

Ah, but here comes the 21st century! There have been two significant changes in the comic book market that make "periodical" an imprecise term. First we have the rise of manga. These books are of a decidedly different format than pamphlets but still come out on a fairly regular (i.e. periodic) basis. Then we have a change in attitude from the major publishers towards how they approach their stories. Once upon a time, the goal was to put out a new issue of each title every month, regardless of content. It's easy to find examples in older books where ongoing storylines are completely interrupted with inventory material or reprints that are dropped in place to make a monthly deadline. These days, though, publishers tend to skew towards the continuity of the story over the deadline and it can actually be difficult these days to find a pamphlet comic that has maintained a rigorous monthly schedule. So "periodic" is hardly an apt word when your publishing schedule becomes so erratic.

Which brings us to "pamphlet." Like much of the rest of this, I can't track down it's first usage, but it seemed to start filtering out with regard to comic books around the turn of the century. I think people feel it might be considered derogatory because they associate the word with a single sheet of a paper folded a few times. However, the definition of "pamphlet" according to the Random House dictionary is: a complete publication of generally less than 80 pages stitched or stapled together and usually having a paper cover. This pretty clearly includes what would historically have been called a "comic book." It doesn't mention a publication schedule, and it's page count prevents most manga (and digest) books from making the cut.

Wikipedia notes some of the word's etymology as well: The word pamphlet... came into Middle English ca 1387 as pamphilet or panflet, generalized from a twelfth-century amatory comic poem with a satiric flavor, Pamphilus, seu de Amore... Pamphilus's name was derived from Greek, meaning "loved by all".

So is there a better word that more accurately encapsulates what I refer to as pamphlet comics? Possibly. But that's come to be a fairly understood term these days. And, yeah, maybe "loved by all" is overly optimistic when it comes to discussing the pamphlet format of comics, but it certainly doesn't strike me as derogatory by any means.

I stumbled across this post I made back in 2012 about the benefit of having a "secret lair" during a convention. Creators will often rent table space for a show and use that as a sort-of home base. A place where they can set down their coat and bag, maybe have a bag of chips and some sodas stashed away. Doing a convention in any capacity requires a fair amount of effort -- particularly for creators -- so having some dedicated space for themselves is hugely beneficial, even if it is in plain view and requires them to be "on" for long stretches. But with some extra money -- usually only amounts that larger publishers have on hand -- you can also get a more exclusive space, separted from the rest of a convention, where you not only drop your bags and rest, but do so away from the relative chaos of the show floor. It's usually only in the form of a conference or meeting room, but the exlusivity of it is what makes it a welcome respite.

In re-reading my older piece, I see I included a note towards the bottom that the REAL draw for me was just being part of an "in" crowd that had that type of access.

Yeah, it would be nice to be able to drop stuff off like that, but that real draw is to be included in an exclusive group like that. They'll let anyone into the convention with an admission fee, but only a select group is allowed in the secret lair. It's not that you have a place to drop your stuff, it's that you've been given a place to drop your stuff. That you're liked and trusted enough to be a part of a group.

That post is from twelve years ago. At the time, I had been blogging for six years and my Comic Book Fanthropology book had been out for not quite two. I was not a complete unknown at the time, but I still very much saw myself as just another rando with a dime-a-dozen blog. And while I still feel very much like an outsider in a lot of ways, in the years since that post, I have been invited into many of those more selective groups. I've dined with comic book legends, hung out in hotel rooms with noted journalists, and been invited into some of those "back door" spaces at conventions that the vast majority of attendees never see.

It's weird to shift spaces like that. I don't know that I can point to a single "You like me! You really like me!" moment or anything, although I do certainly recall all the instances where I got invited to 'special' events. But they still feel like isolated incidents because, afterwards, I would go back home and fall asleep. And the next morning, I'd just go back to whatever my regular grind was at the time. Office cubicle or my WFH space or whatever. The comfort of my own space, with the crap I didn't bother to put away still lying about. Sitting on phone calls about some project I don't really care all that much about and responding to emails about some mundane report that "needs" to be complete within too tight a timeframe. And that's the thing about life in general, isn't it? Even when you have those special and memorable moments, they're only just moments and the ongoing day-to-day business of getting through today or this week or this year remains.

I haven't been to a comic convention since 2019. COVID is very much still a thing, and I haven't seen any convention that I feel is taking anything remotely resembling adequate precautions. I have met with some industry folks in one-off get-togethers of varying capacities in the past five years (and the one time even in which more than two of us were present is the one time I caught COVID) but I haven't been willing to risk my health in a space that has always been notoriously someting of a petrie dish of germs even before COVID. But that rarity -- more rare by choice -- makes those 'secret lair' moments all the more special.

This display is sitting just to the left of my computer setup for work. (For clarity, I work from home these day; this isn't in an office cubicle or anything!) It's been built out over the past year and makes for an interesting counter-point to my similarly-sized mostly Star Wars display above my desk.

Given the overlap of comics fans and action figure collectors, there's a decent change you recognize at least a few figures you recognize here. On the left is an Apocalypse from 2004, on the far right is a Dr. Fate from 2008, and in the center are Moon Knight and Indiana Jones from 2022 and 2023 respectively. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you might also recall the Khonshu statue I generated with some help from AI. What likely is NOT familiar to anyone is the Shuma Gorath that Dr. Fate is fighting.

Believe it or not, that is little more than a fidget toy.

The basic design of the figure is from Warden Makers. The flexi-tentacles are a not-uncommon approach for making octopus, squid, dragon, and snakes figures for 3D printing: the individual pieces are designed in such a way that they can be printed already interlocked so you have a complete, flexible (but loose) armature that's ready to use right off the printer. No assembly required. It's a clever technique that is unique to 3D printing -- you physically cannot manufacture a part like that with traditional injection molding and so it's a popular style among the 3D printing community. They've applied the same idea here for the fictional but tentacled character of Shuma Gorath.

But, as I said, it's designed to be printed as-is so there's no assembly. Which means you're generally limited by the physical size of your 3D print bed. Most of Warden Maker's designs are chibi-style figures and are designed basically as small desk ornaments, so it's no surprise that a flexi-Shuma-Gorath is scaled with them. It's a clever design, though, and I wondered how it might scale up for action figures.

On my particular set-up, I could only enlarge it to around 200% and still have it fit on my printer. That gave him a full "wingspan" of about 11 inches with the eyeball itself being about 2" in diameter. Larger, certainly, but not remotely big enough to work alongside figures in a 1/12 scale given that the character is regularly shown as essentially a mystical kaiju. (If you're not familiar with the character from the comics, it's depicted -- though not named because of legal reasons -- in the Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness movie.) The particular version that I've created here is about 400% of the original design's size... which does not fit on my 3D printer. I had to figure out a way to break up the figure into consituent parts, print them individually, and re-assemble them. I was able to do very crudely and ineffeciently, but it was do-able even with my limited skills. So with some assembly and a few hits with a can of brown spray paint, I've got a Shuma Gorath to display alongside Khonshu, Bast, and Anubis.

(Honestly, the Shuma Gorath should probably be at least twice as large as how I've got it here to be something closer to an 'accurate' scale. But, if you're unaware, toy designers often have to sacrifice scale accuracy for functional purposes. The original Millennium Falcon toy from Kenner? If that were actually to scale with the action figures, it would be something like six feet long! Where would I fit a giant tentacle monster with a four foot wingspan?!)

I mention all this, partly because I enjoyed the process of making the figure, but also because I don't know that most people think to try to re-work designs in those terms. I obviously didn't design the figure from scratch -- I don't have nearly that level of skill with modeling software -- but I can repurpose another design to make something that we are exceptionally unlikely to see from any toy company. And now I can glance to my side any time while I'm working on some project I don't want to deal with and briefly transport myself to an exciting adventure with gods and monsters in Egypt!

When I was first getting into comics, reprints were almost as hard to come by as original issues. I was, therefore, thrilled when I found our local library had a few then-recent Marvel reprint books, and TWO of the six of them focused on my favorite title: Fantastic Four.

The first book was the simply titled The Fantastic Four from Fireside Press in 1979. It reprinted issue #4, #48-50, and #86. The first and last stories were stand-alone tales with Sub-Mariner and Dr. Doom, the the middle three are of course the famed Galactus Trilogy. Issue #4 was the first issue where the team had costumes for the entire story, so that kind of makes sense and the others are generally considered some of the best Lee/Kirby FF stories in general, so those makes sense to include too.

The other FF book our library had was The Fantastic Four: The Secret Story of Marvel's Cosmic Quartet. It was part of a line of four books from Ideals where each focused on a different hero; the others being Captain America, Spider-Man, and the Hulk. The FF book then reprints issues #1, #83, and #203. The first issue makes sense: it's the origin story of the team, after all. But the other two issues always struck me as odd choices. Issue #83 is the tail end of the Inhumans saga that had been running for several issues, and the Invisible Girl is largely absent, shown only in a quick aside while she's on maternity leave. So in addition to not featuring the core team, it also introduces readers to a huge cast and drops people into the middle of an entire society-wide class struggle on top of a political coup. Now, to be fair, Jack and Stan were pretty much at the top of their game here and it was originally written as a monthly issue, so everything a reader needs to follow along is there, but it never seemed to me like a good choice, relative to the hundreds of other stories that could've been chosen.

Reprinting #203 made a little more sense, in that it was at least a self-contained story. But, as much as I like Marv Wolfman and Keith Pollard, this wasn't one of their better outings. There's relatively little characterization here, instead basically being a single battle that takes up most of the issue. Then it ends with something of a deus ex machina way of zapping the bad guys, and on the very last, we're introduced to the concept of mutants and Professor X is name-dropped. The last bit of dialogue does speak to the FF as a team of superheroes doing good because that's what heroes do, and kind of works... except the FF -- when they're written well -- aren't really superheroes. They don't fight bad guys in the same way Spider-Man or Captain America might. So the issue provides a decent amount of action, but it doesn't showcase the characters very well. I had originally thought this issue might've been included because it was the most recent, but it was actually two years old by the time the book was published.

At the time, I was still very grateful to have those issues to read, and that there wasn't any overlap between the two books. I know I specifically skipped over the reprinted issues in back issue bins for years while I was filling out my collection since I already had read them. But the Secret Story book always puzzled me as to why they selected the stories they did, #83 in particular. I mentioned this to current Fantastic Four editor Tom Brevoort several months ago and he did note that Marvel at the time had a policy of (with a few exceptions) not reprinting stories that had already been reprinted. However, #83 had been reprinted just a few years earlier in 1976's Marvel's Greatest Comics #65 and a number of other (in my opinion) better choices had not seen reprints at all at that point. So I'm still a bit vexxed on how/why these were chosen out of everything that would've been available at the time.

This is the Heathcliff comic from Saturday...

I saw that over the weekend and thought, "I'm pretty sure Gallagher has used that joke before." So I did a quick search on Google for Heathcliff Kermit assuming that some Muppets fan would have had it documented. Sure enough, the Muppets Wiki has a Heathcliff page showcasing various Muppet-related cameos in the comic over the years. And right in the middle is this same drawing from September 9, 2021. (Albeit with a noteably darker color palette.)

But what struck me was that the date had been changed. It wasn't that the syndicate ran the same strip on the same day just a few years apart like they do with Peanuts; the Heathcliff strip had been re-dated. September 7, 2024 versus September 9, 2021. And more curious, as I was looking down in the area of the comic anyway, I noticed that the copyright date was 2017. A little more digging later, and I came up with the strip from July 6, 2017...

Line-for-line, the exact same strip, down to Gallagher's signature. Except for the date, which seems to have been manually changed. On two separate occasins.

I don't fault Gallagher for reusing a strip like that -- reruns are nothing new in comics and neither is "repackaging" old material. Deadlines are a bitch, especially when it's every single day for years on end. And hey, sometimes crap comes up that prevents you from working your normal schedule or your brain just isn't firing on all cylanders that day or something. But I do find it interesting that these reruns appear to be one-offs (as opposed to rerunning an entire week's worth of strips or something) and that Gallagher bothered re-dating them. I don't think he's really trying to pass them off as brand new -- on both occasions, he left the 2017 copyright date in place after all -- so why change the date? Just as a way to check that the syndicate knows they're sending out the correct strip that day? Color me curious.