There are, of course, any number of instances in the anals of comic history where something was written or drawn that would be considered offensive today. Joe & Asbestos is one such strip, and it absolutely astounds me that it ran up until 1971! (You'll see why in a moment.)

Ken Kling created a strip called Joe Quince in the early 1920s. (I've seen start dates of 1923, '24 and '25.) The title character was on the hunt for a get-rich-quick scheme, and he frequently found out that there were no shortcuts. Despite that, however, he returned to gambling on horse races repeatedly, eventually befriending a stable hand known only as Asbestos. Kling evidently knew little about horse racing, though, and pulled horse names from actual races. And although Quince usually lost in the strip, the horses he bet on frequently won in the real world. Readers in the Baltimore area (the strip was never very widely distributed) started using it as a guide, believing Kling had some kind of inside information.

The Asbestos character initially became somewhat popular, and Kling changed the name of the strip to Joe & Asbestos. However, some papers continued calling it Joe Quince through 1926. Of course, the obvious problem in the strip is that Asbestos is drawn in blackface and is given stereotypically bad traits. Fortunately, Kling decided that the strip had run its course and he quit working on it in 1926, switching over to an unrelated strip called Windy Riley.(Although he does continue using blackface caricatures there as well.) Unfortunately, there was still plenty of reader interest and even demand for Joe & Asbestos so Kling returned to that title in 1932.

Kling seemed to broaden the strip's focus somewhat, although always kept horse racing as general theme. And sadly, he also kept the bad caricature that was Asbestos largely unchanged as well. Right up until his death in 1970. (That's based on the reading I've found. I haven't actually been able to find an instance of the strip after around 1945.) That this was largely left alone for so long seems to be primarily due to a very low syndication towards the end. In fact, it was only running in one paper for its last several years: The New York Daily News for most of those last years and then a brief run in The New York Mirror at the very end. Not to mention the niche focus of the strip meant a lot of people never bothered with it, even if it was in their paper.

It seems like a strange throwback. A strip so rooted in its time/place of origin that it never could outgrow that, but still managed to continue on despite that. If you look at other strips that started around the same time -- Gasoline Alley, Blondie, etc -- they made changes to reflect the society around them. Perhaps not as quickly as some readers would like (leading to complaints of retreading the same, tired jokes over and over again) but they changed nonetheless. That Joe & Asbestos didn't... honestly, I'm not sure what to make of that.

Earlier this year, Star Prichard ran a Kickstarter project to publish How to Webcomic! The Ultimate Guie to Making Online Comics. With my long-running interest in webcomics (*cough*cough* check out my Eisner-nominated book on the subject here *cough*) and the simple fact that only a handful of books have ever been written about webcomics to begin with, I of course jumped on board, eager to see what Prichard has to say. Prichard, if you're unfamiliar, has been running her current webcomic Castoff for about six years now, and had a couple of shorter ones before that. So she's definitly got some first-hand experience, but she also young enough that she's grown up with webcomics being a thing and isn't coming to the table with either baggage from print-exclusive expectations or the we're-making-this-all-up-as-we-go approach that earlier webcomikers had to forge.

One of the challenges I think anyone trying to write a "how to" book for webcomics faces is trying to establish what assumptions you need to make about your book's audience. What I mean specifically is: what do they know about making comics broadly speaking? Part of making webcomics is just the ability to make comics, so how much of that ground do you cover before getting to the elements that are unique to webcomics? How much do you go over storytelling? How much do talk about character design? How much time do you spend on lettering? That is all integral to webcomics, but not unique to it, so how much of your book do you devote to those aspects versus just telling your reader to go read one of the many books on how to make comics before starting this one?

In Prichard's case, she uses about the first two-thirds of the book to cover general comic book creation. She's coming to the table assuming her audience has a very limited understanding of making comics in any form. In the book, she makes reference to the fact that she made her first webcomic when she was a sophomore in high school, so my guess is that that's effectively her audience. She wrote the book that she wishes she would've had back then. And from that perspective, covering a lot of "how to make (not-necessarily-web)comics" makes sense. The last third of the book focuses more specifically on the more unique aspects of creating a webcomic. She talks about what should be on the site (besides the webcomic itself!), social media, how you might be able to make money, dealing with online haters that come to your site, etc.

The tone of the book is very casual and positive (with plenty of spot illustrations and cartoons by Prichard) but also realistic. Prichard goes out of her way to note that you likely won't make much money from your webcomic and, if you do, it sure ain't gonna happen quickly. But there's a definite "who cares if no one else likes it; tell the awesome story you want to tell -- you can do it!" vibe to the whole book. You can almost feel how eager she is to see some 14-year-old trying their hand at making webcomics for the first time.

As of today, the only other still-in-print books on how to make webcomics are the two written/published by Brad Guigar. Both are longer (The Webcomics Handbook is over twice as long!) and go into more depth, but I can see that being a turn-off for a certain sector of potential creators. Prichard's book is, in some respects, less intimidating and might be better suited for younger audiences with less self-confidence or those still trying to ascertain whether they really even want to try pursuing this webcomic idea. So while there is some overlap in material, I think there's easily enough differentiation between the two audiences for both.

I do have a few things I didn't care for with this book however. First is that Prichard never provides any actual sources. There are several places where she does list out different software people can use, collectives they can join -- examples of other sources people can reference -- but she never provides any URLs. Including for her own webcomic Castoff which she uses as an example repeatedly! The only URL in the entire book is her personal website on the About the Author page. While some tools are indeed unique enough that they'll pop up first with a simple Google search, that's not necessarily always the case. And even if it is, given her presumed audience, will it be obvious enough that they've gone to the right site she was talking about? I think it would've been easy to just include some URLs to save readers a bit of efffort and potential confusion.

The other issue I had was that she has a few instances where she very overtly hand-waves away some large gaps in her knowledge. In her chapter on making money for example, the entirety of her comments on not just Kickstarter but crowdfunding as a whole are: "When it comes time to print your comic, a lot of creators hold crowdfunding events to help fund the printing of their physical books! I don't have enough experience to go into detail myself, but there are plenty of resources out there to help!" That's it. Not even a broad outline of crowdfunding as a concept, or even a basic definition, much less any direction on what to even consider looking for. Although that is the most obvious example, she does basically the same thing a couple other times in the book as well. I respect not trying to bullshit your audience if you're not a complete expert in literally every aspect of making a webcomic, but I think you undermine your own credibility if you go to the trouble of listing out all the things, but only explain the ones you're familiar with. I think you should either learn enough about the ones you're not familiar with to present the same type of information as the ones you are familiar with (and we're realistically only talking about a cursory overview anyway) or speak to the topic more broadly in a fashion that covers everything more-or-less equally.

If you've already started a webcomic and are hoping to find out ways to grow your audience or start to actually make money off it, you're probably better off with one of Guigar's books. But if you're struggling with a webcomic idea and don't know how to really get started with it, or maybe you've got some pages drawn and are thinking "now what?" Prichard's How to Webcomic is probably more up your alley. She is, as of Friday, still in the process of fulfilling her Kickstarter pledges, but for $20 US, you can order it from her site and I expect she'll be able to get to those orders fairly soon.

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

Kleefeld on Comics: The Secret Stories of the Marvel Universe
https://ift.tt/2ZDqekn

Kleefeld on Comics: Who was Joe Maneely?
https://ift.tt/3CHs5mM

Kleefeld on Comics: Thomas on Kirby on Eastman/Laird
https://ift.tt/2ZSmqMF

Kleefeld on Comics: Who was the Human Fly?
https://ift.tt/3q1gvj4

In the mid-1970s, brothers Joseph and Dominic Ramacieri were running the family pepperoni business in Canada. Joe was interested in a way out, and he somehow struck upon the idea of sponsoring a daredevil stuntman in much the same vein as Evel Knievel, who had gained popularity a few years earlier. The brothers formed another company called Human Fly Spectaculars, Ltd. and hired Rick Rojatt to take the mantle of The Human Fly.

Rojatt's story was a bit dubious. He claimed to be a former Hollywood stuntman, whose wife and daughter were killed in a car crash that resulted in 60% of his skeleton replaced with steel. Joseph was skeptical, but figured that if the guy could do stunts, he didn't care. Dominic also hit on the idea that by putting Rojatt in a costume that completely covered him, they could replace him pretty easily if they ever needed to. (Either to get more precisely trained individuals for each stunt or, more cynically, if Rojatt died during one of them.) The group then set out a five year plan of different types of stunts, working hard to ensure prime media coverage.

Rojatt's first stunt, in 1976, was to strap himself on top of a DC-8 jet, which then took off for a long flight in which he endured 250 mile per hour raindrops pelting him. He passed out during the flight, and spent the following six weeks in the hospital, but he had made a name for himself.

It was after then, with The Human Fly now generating some name recognition, that Ramacieri's legal team started talking with Marvel. This would have been after a few years of office tumult at Marvel that eventually left Archie Goodwin as editor-in-chief. Bill Mantlo was given writing duties and Lee Elias initially took on the art chores. (Elias left Rojatt's real-life costume design alone, only emphasizing the musculature a bit more.) Mantlo took some of the basic backstory elements provided by Rojatt and team, and expanded on them. Which Rojatt, in turn, expanded upon in subsequent interviews.

The first issue, which came out in mid-1977, didn't sell particularly well. Though the daredevil himself was at the height of his fame, Marvel was still trying to sort out the burgeoning direct market system and hadn't figured out the best distribution for the book. The title basically got lost in the market.

Several months in the book's run, however, Rojatt attempted jumping 27 buses on a motorcycle, which would beat Evel Knievel's record of 13. Problems with the ramp's construction, though, led to Rojatt blasting off the ramp at the wrong angle. His bike stalled in mid-flight, the back end curled under the front, and Rojatt landed on his back with the bike crashing down on top of him. He survived, amazingly with only a broken ankle and various cuts and bruises.

Questions started coming up about the whole operation, though. A woman in Florida said she recognized what little people could see through The Fly's mask, and that he had walked out on her and their two kids. Some of Rojatt's safety coordinators dropped stories of possible mob ties that scared them from working with Human Fly Spectaculars again. There were claims that a million dollar life insurance policy was put on Rojatt right before his jump.

But after another hospital stay, Rojatt vanished. The comic went on for about another year. Mantlo even incorporated the disastrous jump in issue #11, which led the comic book version of the character down a journey to psychologically overcome his failure. But it eventually ended with #19, long after Rojatt himself had been out of the news cycle.

To this day, no one knows what actually happened to Rojatt. Or, for that matter, if that was even his real name! In the 1980s, a man named David Wolff (former boyfriend and manager of Cyndi Lauper) performed a concert as "The Human Fly & Red Rider" and the act was once again backed by Ramacieri, but whether they were just adopting the name or Wolff was really Rojatt is unknown. Filmmaker Tony Babinski, trying to put together a documentary about all of this -- a preview trailer of which can be seen here -- thinks he tracked Rojatt down in Ontario, but the man who answered the phone refused to talk. So the mystery remains.

Regardless, though, all of this left readers with a year and a half of Mantlo-written stories, not quite like anything before or since.

People are always looking for the next big thing in comics. Well, in everything really, but I write about comics, so I'll keep this comics-focused. You know what I think about when I think about the next big thing in comics? This part of this interview Jim Amash conducted with Roy Thomas back in 1997...

I remember this one lunch with Jack [Kirby], and probably Sol Brodsky and John Romita [Sr.] and Frank Giacoia; five or six of us. This was one of the relatively few times Jack had lunch with us, as opposed to Stan [Lee]. The only thing I remember from that lunch, besides nice anecdotes and being with an entertaining guy, was somebody asking, "What's going to be the next big thing in comics?" Superheroes had been going for years; what's next? Jack said, "I don't know more than anybody else, but the one thing I can tell you is, it's not gonna be me, and it's not gonna be Stan Lee. It's gonna be two guys in a garage somewhere, coming up with something, just like Siegel and Shuster did." I think of that from time to time, when I see something like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles come out. There's a certain amount of truth to that, that these things come out of nowhere. And it's as likely to be done by an unknown as it is by an established professional.

(The full interview, by the way, can be seen in The Jack Kirby Collector #18.)

It's not like these people spring forth with an amazing concept, fully formed, from nowehere though. Siegel and Shuster worked for years to get Superman into print and, had publishers been paying attention, many would've found a copy of the premise in their slush piles. Art Spiegleman didn't just debut with Maus -- he'd been making underground comix since the 1960s. Todd McFarlene didn't just start launch Image doing Spawn -- even his run on Spider-Man didn't just spring from nowhere; he had sent over 700 submissions into various editors before getting a single, short backup story in Steve Englehart's Coyote.

These days, you're more likely to see cartoonists you've never heard of winning major awards. Because of work they've done on webcomics that maybe only now are just getting printed and "legitimized." They're out there, grinding away every day for years before they "suddenly" become an "overnight success." But the thing is that most people aren't paying attention to that, so it only seems to them like it comes from nowhere.

All the more reason to keep your eyes and ears open -- you're less likely to be surprised by the next big thing because, while everybody is looking for it in the obvious spots, you'll see it first because you've been looking in those garages.

Joe Maneely is one of those comic book creators that I think a lot of people don't know, but still has an incredible reputation among pretty much everyone that does know him. That's undoubtedly at least partially because of his incredibly short career (he died when was only 32) but I think also partially because he died in 1958, just before comics started to take off again. In fact, nearly his entire comic career -- between 1948 and 1958 -- occurred during one of the most depressed points in the industry.

He started in comics working for Street & Smith, initially working on largely forgettable characters like Mario Nette, Roger Kilgore, and Ulysses Q. Wacky. He also did work for Hillman Periodicals and George A. Pflaum's Treasure Chest. He then started doing work for Timely/Atlas, beginning in late 1949 with a story for Black Rider that didn't see print until 1950. He quickly became friends with editor-in-chief Stan Lee, and was brought in on a staff position around 1955 where he co-created the Black Knight, the Ringo Kid, the Yellow Claw, and Jimmy Woo.

Maneely was pretty universally considered exceptionally talented. Herb Trimpe once said, "his pencils [were] almost nonexistent; they were like rough, lightly done layouts with no features on the faces ... It was just like ovals and sticks and stuff, and he inked from that. He drew when he inked. That's when he did the work, in the inking!" (You can see some of that in the photo I've included with this post.) Stan Goldberg noted, "Joe wasn't just a great craftsman; he worked so fast and he was one of the few artists who could go from drawing the Black Knight to drawing Petey the Pest, or a war story. He had an unbelievable knack..." And while admittedly known to hyperbolize, Stan Lee went so far as to say, "Joe Maneely to me would have been the next Jack Kirby. He also could draw anything, make anything look exciting, and I actually think he was even faster than Jack."

Due in part to his friendship with Lee, Maneely would almost assuredly have had a hand in crafting the Marvel Universe had he lived even just a few more years. I've seen several people suggest that he would likely have been more instrumental than Jack Kirby, as Lee would likely have given him projects like the Fantastic Four, Thor, and Hulk at the outset. They've suggested that Kirby got those gigs in large part because Maneely was no longer around.

That, of course, is speculation since Maneely died tragically in 1958. He had spent an evening dining with artists George Ward and John Severin, and got on the train from Manhattan to New Jersey to head home well after midnight. Having lost his glasses the week before, he evidentally had difficulty seeing clearly as he walked between two of the commuter cars and fell onto the tracks. He was later found still holding onto his portfolio.

It was, by all accounts, a very tragic end to a very talented, if short, career. But his talent is worth remembering, even if the characters and stories he created haven't been made into blockbuster movies.

When I was just getting into comic books in the early 1980s, my options for "research" were pretty limited. There were no comic shops nearby to pick up back issues, conventions for few and far between, the internet didn't yet exist, and my income as a 12-year-old was limited to pocket change I earned caddying at a local golf course. (Which, by the way, was nowhere NEAR as neat a job as Caddyshack led me to believe!) The reprint policies we see today were FAR from the norm, which meant that even finding reprints of old comics was difficult!

But for some reason, in 1981, Ideals produced a series of four trade paperbacks featuring a short collection of stories reprinting tales of Spider-Man, Captain America, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four housed under a "Secret Story of..." umbrella. They had original painted covers (I believe all by Bob Larkin) and all featured the same back illustration and cross-promotion (seen below at right). Each book contained an origin (though not necessarily the original telling), one stand-alone story from around 1970, and a then-recent-ish stand-alone story. I presume the intent was to show how the characters have progressed over the course of two decades. David Anthony Kraft provided introductions for each story, short character biographies, and some general background information.

And, for whatever reason, our local library had a set of these.

It was a small library; the town only had a population of about 7,000. They had a few floppies that periodically came (I only recall The Avengers but I'm sure there were a few other titles) but these Ideals books were just about the full extent of their graphic novels section. As I recall, they were shelved between the Garfield and Peanuts collections, and the how-to-draw books, mostly ones by Lee Ames. I checked these out fairly regularly, particularly the Fantastic Four volume, and until I got my hands on a set of the Marvel Handbooks around 1988/89, these were pretty much the extent of what I was able to learn about the history of the Marvel Universe.

Strange to think now of the limitations fans faced even as recently as the 1980s with regards to older stories. We knew they were out there; the current issue number indicated that there were several hundred issues that came before. If you could get to a comic shop, you could rummage through the back issue bins, but even if they did have every issue (which they never even came close to!) you couldn't afford them all. You could find the origin stories in a few places, but if you wanted to see what happened in #5, or #12, or whatever, you were largely out of luck until you could find an original copy and afford to purchase it. So in that sense, the "secret story of" wording was pretty accurate; the stories were pretty secret by virtue of their scarcity.

But even back in the day, I recognized that those Ideals books did not live up to the publisher's name. The spot illustrations used throughout the books were very badly cropped and placed. I didn't think the story selections were all that good (greatful as I was to have them available). Kraft's interstitial prose struck me as both sophomoric and condescending. But they did help to connect me with comics that were published before I was born, and provided a window to a larger tapestry of stories. And for that, I'll have to thank them.