Latest Posts

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

Kleefeld on Comics: On Business: Rare Marketing Bit
http://ift.tt/2fRW3ve

The Comics Alternative: Webcomics: Reviews of Hubris!, Hobo Lobo of Hamelin, and Runners
http://ift.tt/2fNVrqa

Kleefeld on Comics: On History: Comix Phantasy Forum
http://ift.tt/2fue9VA

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

FreakSugar: Webcomics Wednesday: The Importance of Feedback
http://ift.tt/2fYIpXc

Kleefeld on Comics: On -isms: Bessie Stringfield Review
http://ift.tt/2glPvs7

Kleefeld on Comics: On Strips: The Death of...
http://ift.tt/2fCPxtO
I'm wondering about the death of comic strips today. Not the industry writ large, but the death of individual strips. In particular, long running strips. I mean, there's a long line of cartoonists itching for a chance to get a syndicate deal, but there's only a small number of slots in the first place and very few new ones get in because very few old ones are retired. So how does a strip get put out to pasture?

Probably the most famous examples are the strips where the creator said, "Okay, I'm done." Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes, Far Side, Boondocks... They said what they wanted to say and decided that they wanted to move on. In Charles Schulz's case, that was after after fifty years; in Bill Watterson's case, that was after ten years. Regardless of the timing or the reasons, the creator decided they didn't want to work on the strip any more.

Then you've got strips that were given a chance, but failed to ever attract many readers after maybe a year or two. There are tons of examples of those, but you probably wouldn't recognize any of them because they came and went so quickly. Rhinocerous Boys ran for just over four months; Spendawad, the American Indian barely lasted three. (Spendawad ran in 1910, so I doubt it was canned on the offensiveness of the name and/or premise.) There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of examples like this.

Then you've got strips that ran for a number of years and basically ended with the creator's death. Billy Ireland's The Passing Show or Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon for examples. Presumably the thought is that the strip was so tied to the creator's style and ideology that it would be impossible for anyone to really recreate it.

But you ever think about something that you know ran a long time, maybe even beyond the life of the original creator, and was then cancelled? Mutt and Jeff ran from 1907 until 1983; Brenda Starr from 1940 until 2011. Why would a strip like that remain in publication for so long before finally fizzling out?

At some level, you just assume, "Yeah, it's just not popular any more." But my question is more along the lines of: why? I mean, I get that a comic that was created in/around a certain time period could fall out of favor after a while; whatever social cues it was originally meant to reflect might change. A comic created during The Depression might not make sense thematically beyond that period. One developed during World War II might be looked at disdainfully as people tried to return to their "normal" lives after the war.

But if you look at those longer-lived strips that survive over an extended period, you'll see that the have a tendency to evolve and adapt over time. Blondie Bumstead, for example, was originally a rather airheaded flapper, but that was soon discarded as that fad was already on its way out in 1930 when Blondie debuted. Over time, the characters have evolved to reflect more contemporary settings. Beyond just Dagwood getting a computer on his desk and the kids getting cell phones, Blondie herself became an entrepreneur to better reflect the changing role of women in society.
Some elements are less subtle, like the inclusion of Black characters such as Franklin and Lt. Flap in Peanuts and Beetle Bailey respectively. Regardless of the nuance applied, there's still an attempt to ensure the strips reflect contemporary culture and the strips are allowed to "grow" into something that they originally weren't.

So what happened to Little Orphan Annie or Modesty Blaise? I suppose it would require the study of each strip to find out what exactly happened, but I think it boils down to a set of creators coming to the table who, for whatever reasons, can't marry the concept, theme, and characters of the strip with the norms, styles, and mores of the times. Brenda Starr, for example, remained a newspaper reporter even as newspapers became less and less relevant to readers in the age of television and, later, the internet.

Is that the fault of the creators at the helm when the strip is finally axed? Not necessarily. Some concepts can only go so far. Annie was very much born out of the New Deal era -- that it survived as long as it had surprises me frankly. That Dick Tracy is still around surprised me as well. (Kudos to Mike Curtis and Joe Staton on that!)

One could argue that there's a danger in updating the strip so much that it is no longer representative of the original, but I don't think that's valid. After all, the people who read Nancy when it debuted, by and large, aren't around any more to read it. So why try to cater to them? Make it for the current reader base, whoever that might be. If a strip remains wedded to the original idea, it will eventually look like an aging time capsule, which most readers won't have much interest in.

So whether it's updating the visuals so you're no longer showing tube televisions, or just reflecting the thoughts and ideas of contemporary society, a creator needs to keep updating and evolving the strip if it's to remain viable beyond a decade or so.
I recently came across the Tales of the Talented Tenth series by Joel Christian Gill. He started in 2014 and each volume "focuses on the adventures of amazing African-Americans in action." The first volume looked at lawman Bass Reeves, and this second volume I picked up is about Bessie Stringfield. I expect you've heard of neither of these people. Which is all the more reason to read these books.

Stringfield was an early champion of motorcycles in the early part of the 20th century, criss-crossing the United States several times before becoming a courier for the US military. After World War II, she cycled around Europe before coming back to the States to found the Iron Horse Motorcycle Club. She became known as the Motorcycle Queen of Miami, and was later inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.

The danger that seems to come with comic biographies is that the author frequently over-relies on factual narratives. You wind up with a lot of long-winded captions that sound like they were lifted from a prose work, and just illustrated in a comic book style. Gill instead makes his work an actual comic, providing a smooth narrative of Stringfield's life and bringing in a lot of her feelings and emotions instead of basic facts and dates. Why did she love motorcycles? What prompted her to help during World War II? What was her opinion of the Freedom Ride after she herself had been taken much the same route by herself decades earlier? The reader gets a good sense of not just what Stringfield did, but who she really was.

I have to admit that I was a little put off by the illustrations at first glance. Gill's style is a little cartoony, but not super cartoony. So it occupies this strange middle-ground for me between simple cartoon drawings and a more realistic style you might find in a Marvel or DC comic. Not sure where I would've picked up my usual distaste for that style. That said, though, as I actually read it, it quickly stopping bothered me, and Gill's talents were evident. I found particularly striking is that he illustrated Stringfield at several stages of her life (as a young child, a somewhat older child, a teenager, an adult, and and old woman) and they smartly all looked like the same person, but at uniquely different stages of their life. That takes no small amount of skill, so I commend Gill for that.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. Storytelling-wise, it was one of the better comic biographies I've read and, as I said, I got a good sense of who Stringfield was, not just what she did. And given how little Black history is taught generally -- particularly when it comes to figures with any less celebrity than Martin Luther King Jr. -- I think this is a great book to take a look at. I'm eager to track down the first volume now, and I hope to see Gill work on more.
A few years ago, I posted a link to a Marie Severin interview from 1983. What I apparently didn't realize at the time was that it was only one of four interviews from a cable access show that had been posted on YouTube, the others featuring Will Eisner, Howard Chaykin, and Walt Simonson. All of them are measured and intelligent looks at the creators and their work, something that wasn't frequently found at the time, certainly not in video form. So check out all four below...
I've been actively buying back issue comics since, probably, around 1983/84. At the time, most comics were stored in simple plastic bags. The market had matured enough you could buy comic-specific bags by then, but they were fairly cheap plastic. Mylars were available, but almost prohibitively expensive (meaning that the bags themselves often cost more than the comics that were put in them). The notion of having an acid-free bag wasn't really even considered.

People eventually did start seeing their bags yellow with age, and realized it might affect the comic inside. Again, not a problem for mylars, but those weren't cheap. So the solution some people opted for -- assuming they just didn't keep the old bags around indefinitely -- was to simply replace the bags every few years. I think I recall hearing it was recommended to switch your bags every 4-5 years.

Over the past few decades, I've replaced most all of my bags. But I do have one old issue that's still in the regular plastic bag I bought it in. It was one of the first Fantastic Four back issues I bought, and I picked it up at a kind of mini-convention that was in a local shopping mall. I think there were maybe half a dozen vendors and that's it. But the reason it stands out so firmly in my mind was the, as far as I know, unique marketing gimmick the shop had taken. They'd printed up their own custom bags...
(For the record, Len Wein's signature came years later when I met him at another convention.)

In the past 30-some years, I have never seen another shop do this. Every comic you bought from Dragon's Lair came in a Dragon's Lair bag. This, I think, works better than a standard business card or flyer because not only do I have the shop's name and address, but I also know precisely which issue I bought from them. Even three decades later!

I don't know how pricey these bags were, or how many got thrown out as collectors moved to better quality materials, but it strikes me as a great piece of marketing for the time. Probably not as successful today, as the back issue market has largely fallen by the wayside in favor of trade collections, but it's a genius idea for 1984! Did any other shops ever try this?
Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: On Business: My Parents' Basement

http://ift.tt/2efcDHv



FreakSugar: Fanthropology: Us vs Them!

http://ift.tt/2efnxgj



Kleefeld on Comics: VOTE!

http://ift.tt/2fcHXpG



Kleefeld on Comics: Weekly Comics Links

http://ift.tt/2eQ48y6



FreakSugar: Webcomics Wednesday: Micropayments?

http://ift.tt/2g7Bhue



Kleefeld on Comics: On -isms: The Trump Effects

http://ift.tt/2g4BfTE



Kleefeld on Comics: On Strips: Soglow the Caricaturist

http://ift.tt/2g7Ah9l