For the past six months or so, I've been a subscriber to Comic Bento which sends people around $50 worth of comics/graphic novels every month for less than half that price. The catch is that you can't choose which books they send you; every month you just get a box of books. You might like them, you might not. But the hook is that you'll get a surprise every month, and what you get is considerably cheaper than if you'd purchased it at a retail outlet.

They do indeed deliver well on their promise. Every month, I got a box with four trade paperbacks in it, most of which retailed at around $10/$15 each. Each month they had a theme of some sort, which they would announce in advance, and they also sent a notice when each box shipped with the tracking information. I never had any problems where I might need to call and talk to someone in person, but their basic service at least provided clear and regular communications, which was great. Things were always packed well in a custom box, which means that even if the box itself got a little banged up on the trip, the books always came out in great condition. Some of the books were even specially printed for Comic Bento, and some of those seem to be unique collections not available anywhere else in TPB form. In short, it's an impressive set-up and seems to be run very well. Ryan Sohmer can sometimes come off as crass or abrasive when it comes to his comics, but he's set up a really great shop here. Really professional.

I was pleasantly surprised that over the six months, the boxes did include a reasonably diverse (as far as genres and publishers) set of books. A good amount of stuff I'd never heard of. I was also pleasantly surprised that I only received one book I already had. (I was concerned I might get stuff I already had with every box.) By and large, the books were all good too. Not great, mind you, but not terrible either. Everything was enjoyable enough for the five dollars and change I basically paid for any one book.

So why did I cancel my subscription?

I suppose the broad and least useful answer is, "Well, it's just not for me."

But in trying to pinpoint exactly why it's not for me, there's not really a single thing I could nail down as THE reason. Some of it is a value issue. Just over $5.00 per book is indeed a good deal, but I have stacks of books that I'm excited to read and I scarcely have time to read those. Many of the Comic Bento books aren't "top of the pile" for me, so they'll sit on the shelf for some time before I might get to them. I've read most of the ones I got, but mostly because I "forced" myself to in order to get a sense of the types of books I was getting. There was nothing I was eager to dive into. With as much as I have on my reading backlog, it didn't exactly make sense to regularly add to it knowing all of those books would get put at the bottom of the proverbial stack.

There's also the issue of storage. When we bought our house a few years ago, my wife graciously encouraged me to set up one of the spare bedrooms as my comics library. I set it up with what I thought was plenty of room to grow my collection. But then Dad generously gifted me his collection of graphic novels. And a year later, I literally found around 20 long boxes of comics on the curb. All that 'extra' space I thought I had filled up very quickly. Coupled with the new books that I'm actively excited about getting, again, I don't need to feed my bookshelves with a monthly stream of books that have little/no historical importance and aren't terribly interesting to me.

One of the aspects of Comic Bento that appealed to me was seeing new works that I might not be aware of otherwise. And while they did do that pretty regularly, the voices they represented ultimately were still ones I'd felt I'd heard before. My interests for the past several years have revolved around reading comics from people with notably different perspectives than my own. I've read plenty on the cishetero white guy in America experience; I want to see what else is out there. And while there was a bit of that in the books Comic Bento were sending, it was still overwhelmingly from the same perspective. Nothing wrong with those stories per se, but it's not what I'm looking for these days.

They've got a good model and they're doing a solid job, but it's just not for me. I have too many other priorities right now to justify the time/resources of keeping up that subscription. I'm not sure if 16-year-old me would have had the money to afford this, but he would've been excited and thrilled with the service. 44-year-old me sees the appeal, but can't generate the enthusiasm.

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

Kleefeld on Comics: On Business: SP4RX Review
http://ift.tt/2ezp1yB

FreakSugar: Fanthropology: Mascots
http://ift.tt/2eK7gvL

Kleefeld on Comics: On History: Jack Chick
http://ift.tt/2eFDc75

Kleefeld on Comics: Weekly Comics Links
http://ift.tt/2euPZcY

FreakSugar: Webcomics Wednesday: Webcomic Scholars?
http://ift.tt/2dKgwz0

Kleefeld on Comics: On -isms: No, You Move
http://ift.tt/2fay11n

Kleefeld on Comics: On Strips: Nancy Carbonaro Interview
http://ift.tt/2e5cXqA

Alright, you're probably thinking, "Who's Nancy Carbonaro? Is she some early pioneer of comics that only Trina Robbins knows about?" No, Nancy Carbonaro is Nancy. As in, Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy. Bushmiller was working on Fritzi Ritz when he introduced the character Nancy, who was based on a young girl he actually knew. He would actually take notes on what Carbonaro said and did, and those would make it into gags and stories in his strip.

In any event, "Chris T" tracked Carbonaro down and interviewed her about her relationship with Bushmiller. This was originally published, I believe, in a 1997 issue of LCD, the print magazine of WFMU radio out of New York...

LCD: How did you meet Ernie Bushmiller?

NANCY: He had an interest in my older sister. He was soft on her. She was quite attractive but not interested in him. She thought he was silly.

LCD: So he would come over the house? Did he ask her out?

NANCY: Oh no, no. Back then you didn't ask a girl out. You courted her and always in the presence of a parent or chaperone. The furthest he ever got in my house was the foyer. My father refused to have him inside.

LCD: Why was that?

NANCY: He didn't think that anyone who drew cartoons as a living could ever support himself, never mind a wife and family. He didn't want to encourage anything between my sister and Mr. Bushmiller.

LCD: How did you and Ernie come to be friends?

NANCY: He was trying to get information out of me--about my sister. Find out if any of the neighborhood boys were interested in her or if she gave a fig about him. I told him I'd tell him for an ice cream sundae so he took me to Jahn's for the Kitchen Sink.

LCD: I'm assuming Jahn's was an ice cream parlor but what was the Kitchen Sink?

NANCY: It was a huge bowl filled with every kind of ice cream, every kind of syrup, every kind of topping you can imagine. It was meant for four people but I wanted it for myself. It cost nearly three dollars! I still remember Mr. Bushmiller's face when they set it down in front of me. He said, "You can't eat that all" and I said "I can and I shall." And I did. I was a fat little girl.

LCD: What about the hairdo and the bow? Was that yours or did Ernie come up with that?

NANCY: No, that was my hair. That still is my hair. It's always been curly and unruly. The bow was my mother's attempt at making me more feminine. I was a tomboy.

LCD: Did Ernie tell you he wanted to make you a cartoon character?

NANCY: Not as such. He had a notebook with him all the time and he was always writing down things I'd say. He was writing a comic strip called "Fritzi Ritz" and it was about the romantic misadventures of a young woman and there was a character in there called "Phil Fumble"...

LCD: Wasn't "Phil Fumble" actually Ernie?

NANCY: Yes, he was. He was a suitor, and if I can recall correctly, an unsuccessful one. Then later on Nancy appeared as Fritzi's niece. I didn't like that.

LCD: Why?

NANCY: Because I felt Mr. Bushmiller was making fun of me somehow. I felt he was holding me up to public ridicule. He could've changed my name--I mean the cartoon character's name--but he didn't.

LCD: Did you ever ask him why he didn't use another name?

NANCY: Yes, I did. He said he wanted to impress my father. Show him that he was a success. It didn't work, though. My father disliked him even more and forbid me to see him. We used to go to Jahn's every Sunday and Mr. Bushmiller would ask me about my week and take notes and I could order anything I cared to.

LCD: And he would use events from your life in the comic strip?

NANCY: Yes. Constantly.

LCD: Can you recall any specific examples?

NANCY: There was one or two about Modern Art that came out many years after we were no longer speaking. That was based on a trip to the 1939 World's Fair with my parents. They had one building and the outside was designed by that Salvador Dali fellow. I hated it. It made me nauseous. I spoke to Mr. Bushmiller about it and he took some of my comments and used them.

LCD: Did he ever speak to you about compensation of any kind?

NANCY: Not to me but to my father. He tried writing a letter but my father tore it into pieces. The subject never came up again. Once when I was in college he made quite a sizeable payment on my tuition without my knowledge. I didn't know who the anonymous benefactor was for years. I suspected, though.

LCD: What about Sluggo? Was there a real Sluggo?

NANCY: No. I was far too young to be seeing anyone. I was a shy child with no friends. Sluggo was Nancy with no hair and a different nose. I think Sluggo was based on Mr. Bushmiller more than anyone else. At a certain point, after I had become a woman, he developed a crush on me, Mr. Bushmiller, not Sluggo. I think Sluggo was his way of having a relationship with me because I wasn't interested in him. He was much older than me.

LCD: When was the last time you spoke to Ernie?

NANCY: He phoned me a few months before he died in 1984. He called me his "Alice." [Alice Liddell was the young girl who inspired Lewis Carroll in writing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.] It wasn't until few years ago I realized what he meant. I thought he was talking about "Alice" the waitress on that TV show.

LCD: Thank you so much.

NANCY: Thank you. Goodbye.

Whether you caught in the movie or read it in the comic, as a comic fan you might well be familiar with this speech from Captain America... It sounds like a great sentiment, right? Stand up for what you believe in, regardless of who tells you you're wrong? It sounds noble and honorable. And coming from Captain America himself, you know it's coming from a place of deep commitment to justice.

I have a problem with the message it's sending though. Because, sometimes, you're wrong.

I don't mean wrong in the sense of an honest mistake or a slight miscalculation, but wrong in the sense that you are deeply and fundamentally wrong. You're so fundamentally wrong that you are literally destroying innocent people's lives by standing in their way. And the real problem is that you don't even know it.

Almost no one views themselves as really evil. They might know that stealing is morally wrong, but they do it anyway for whatever reason; and yet they'll still think of themselves as a fundamentally good person. Looking from the outside, we see that person as a villain -- someone who took something that wasn't theirs, thereby making them evil. But they don't see themselves that way. They can't, because they're the protagonist of their own story.

A little over a year ago, Dylann Roof walked into a church in Charleston, SC and killed nine people including a pastor and a state senator. Because of their skin color. He's facing federal charges for a hate crime. Even people I know to be racists think he did something wrong.

But he didn't. Roof thought he was working towards a greater good. As far as I can tell, he freely admits to what he's done but still doesn't think it was wrong. He's standing his ground, and telling the rest of the world, "No, you move."

Roof is a pretty extreme example. But what about the people saying transgender people have to use the restroom corresponding to their birth gender? What about the people saying they refuse to serve gays and lesbians? What about the people who are saying police should have zero oversight even though they disproportionately kill unarmed POCs? What about the people who think that rape victims are 'asking for it'? What about the people who think killing doctors who perform abortions is acceptable? All of these people are standing up for what they believe in their heart of hearts is true. All of these people think they're on the right side of history. All of these people are saying that the whole country is wrong and they're the ones who are right. All of these people are saying, "No, you move."

"No, you move" is what led to Brexit. "No, you move" is what led to government shutdowns. "No, you move" is what led to every war in the history of mankind.

"No, you move" sounds good coming from a hero, but recall that villains are heroes to somebody too.

• Jess Nevins uncovers a 1944 interview with publisher Lev Gleason.
• Doc V digs up some Atlas-era cover alterations and unpublished inventory stories.
• The NBC affiliate out of Buffalo profiles a pizzeria/comic book shop.
  
  

The infamous Jack Chick died on Sunday. As word spread, I saw primarily three types of reactions...

1. "He was still alive?"
2. "I enjoyed his comics in a weird, ironic way."
3. "WOHOO! Burn in hell, you fucking asshole!"

Chick was born in Los Angeles in 1924. He would've grown essentially alongside the birth of the comic book, although I don't see any records of him being a particular fan of the medium that early. But regardless, I expect it would've been hard for any fourteen-year-old in the US to miss at least hearing about the debut of Superman. He also could easily have witnessed the births of Prince Valiant, The Phantom, Flash Gordon, Li'l Abner, and countless other comics that are now considered great classics. Again, I can't find any record of their influence on him, if there was any at all, but certainly there's potential groundwork there.

Chick was drafted into the US Army in 1943. It was only after returned from service and meeting his wife that he "found" religion. He and his wife wed in 1948. He started drawing a single-panel cartoon, written by P. S. Clayton, in 1953 called "Times Have Changed?" which were not unlike Johnny Hart's B.C. in premise -- contemporary situations with a caveman veneer. (The Billy Ireland Museum posted several examples a few years back.)

Chick's first tract, Why No Revival?, wasn't until 1960. His second would take another two years. He didn't formalize Chick Publications until 1970, though, and it would be another two years beyond that before he actually hired an artist. (All of the writing and art prior to that was done by himself.) Over the ensuing decades, he would publish over 250 more titles with a little under half that remaining in print, each selling for sixteen cents. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations early this year and figured he probably made a decent enough living selling tracts. Potentially enough to let him live comfortably.

Which is kind of amazing considering that he only repeated one story over and over and over: "If you don't practice my specific form of religion, you're going to burn in Hell for all eternity." The stories were all poorly written -- even setting aside the wow-this-is-a-flimsy-straw-man-argument-even-as-far-as-straw-man-arguments-go exchanges -- with barely coherent plots and dated, tin-ear dialogue. Coupled with being so unapologetically preachy with a seeming naivete about just about everything -- for literally over half a century! -- it's little wonder these became booklets with high kitsch value.

But here's the thing about Chick: he spent his career espousing hate speech. Every one of his books damns some group or another, usually literally casting representatives in the pits of Hell. He attacked or demeaned, as near as I can determine, every type of person in existence except for cishertero white males who practiced his specific form of religion. He seemed to be against so many types of people, it became impossible to take him seriously.

Except people did. And do. Chick spread hate and actively fanned the flames of ignorance for over fifty years and, as insane as it sounds to most (I hope) people, there's a contingent out there who lapped it up. Who said, "Yes, Jack, you're right! These heathens deserve nothing but disdain and I shall act accordingly!" Here's a short Twitter story about exactly that...

I spent years dismissing Chick's messages because I didn't think anyone could take this crackpot seriously. And I actually kind of dug that he used comics, in the immediate wake of the anti-comics crusades of the mid-1950s, to do something beyond simple entertainment. But in seeing stories like the above, where people took his bat-shit crazy ideas to heart, I can't hold any measure of respect for him. He was a hate-monger, plain and simple.

He claimed he only wanted to see people change their ways so they could be "saved" but that's as flimsy a straw man argument as any in his tracts. He cultivated hate and fear, and earned his living encouraging nothing but negativity. I don't believe in an afterlife so it's a little hollow for me to say "rest in peace" if I even wanted him to, but I do hope that people who were negatively impacted by Chick's vile attitudes do find some measure of peace in their own lives now that he's no longer able to generate more messages of hatred.

SP4RX is a not-atypical hacker for hire. He lives in the sub-levels but regularly heads to the upper levels to break into corporate systems for the right price. On one of his jobs, he runs into another hacker named MEGA who manages to steal his stolen data away from him. This, to no surprise, causes SP4RX some problems. His brief association with MEGA is noted, and SP4RX is then targeted as the government tries to get to a so-called terrorist group named WRAITH that MEGA is a part of. This inadvertently forces SP4RX to join with them as they try to take down the government's ELPIS program that provides free cybernetic "enhancements" for people living on the lower levels. WRAITH is doing this because, under the guise of providing lower level inhabitants the means to work and earn a living, the ELPIS implants are also used to control people's actions, making them effectively slaves to the government's whims.

The plot is a little complex for a sufficient summary (I've left out some bits in my notes above) but writer/artist Wren McDonald does an excellent job of explaining things throughout the story. Not only in establishing the dystopian future he's created, but also how the different classes view and act towards one another, and all the social mores that go with each. He uses some deceptively simple-looking art to convey some potentially complicated venues that, despite looking a little bright and flat at first glance, still manage to evoke the complexity of a Blade Runner era Los Angeles.

Like any good science fiction story, the setting and plot are really a commentary on our current culture. The story reflects our concerns today. I don't think McDonald fears government-sponsored implants that act as mind control devices; that's obviously just a metaphor. But I read this as concern over technology being touted as an answer to our problems when, in fact, it's merely a more efficient way to control us. Think of the discussions that have come up regarding government back-door access to cell phones. Or the government's PRISM program (which is only known about at all thanks to Edward Snowden) that data mines Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other major technology companies. There's obviously concern that providing misleading or even false information, and blocking dissenting commentary or discussion, will skew public perception and, therefore, acceptance.

Interestingly, McDonald takes what strikes me as unusual take on dealing with this type of system. While SP4RX is himself leary of these programs at the start of the book, his approach is basically to live off-grid in the sub-levels. But ultimately, he winds up subverting the system by becoming a part of it. And it's not so much giving in to the overwhelming system but, rather, realizing that there's power in understanding how the system works.

While McDonald, I think, is primarily focused on government-level actions, there's more than a little blame he throws toward corporations as well via their complicity. And I think that bears keeping an eye on as well. Dystopian stories can be depressing; they rarely show an outcome that will lead to a the dystopia becoming something other than exactly that, and the implication is that we're all doomed. And while McDonald doesn't exactly provide an uplifting ending either, it's certainly a lot more hopeful than a lot of other dystopian stories I've read.

SP4RX is available now from Nobrow Press for $18.95.