Although many people are familiar with Buck Rogers generally, I suspect that few realize how pervasive a character he was. Even back in the 1930s, he was showing up in what might be considered a proto-transmedia manner. Let's take a look at his early publishing timeline...

• August 1928
  "Armageddon 2419 A.D." by Philip Francis Nowlan was published in Amazing Stories starring the character Anthony Rogers.
• January 1929
  Rogers was given the nickname "Buck" and appears for the first time in the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. comic strip. The earliest strips were based off the original story, and drawn by Dick Calkins.
• March 1929
  "The Airlords of Han" was published in Amazing Stories as a sequel to the original.
• March 1930
  A Sunday strip was added to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. The Sundays were drawn by Russell Keaton and, oddly, did not originally feature the title character at all.
• November 1932
  CBS Radio began airing Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in 15-minute installments. Matt Crowley originally provided the voice of Rogers. Early stories were lifted from the comics and credited to Calkins.
• 1933
  A Kellogg's Corn Flakes giveaway comic book was produced. I believe this was Calkins' work, but I haven't been able to confirm that.
• 1933
  The first Big Little Book featuring Buck Rogers was published. (There would be ten in total over the next decade.) The cover displayed the title as Buck Rogers, 25th Century A.D. while the title page used Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D. Both Nowlan and Calkins were credited.
  
• 1934
  A 10-minute film called Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: An Interplanetary Battle with the Tiger Men of Mars debuted at the World's Fair with John Dille Jr. in the lead role. The story was "Adapted from the GREAT NEWSPAPER FEATURE" and Calkins was not only credited but appeared on screen briefly.
• October 1934
  Buck Rogers started being run as one of the features in Famous Funnies. While Nowlan and Calkins are credited, the Grand Comics Database notes that the art was actually being ghosted by Rick Yager, who had begun drawing the Sunday comic strips the previous year.
• 1935
  The John F. Dille Co. published a pop-up book called Buck Rogers: Strange Adventures in the Spider Ship. The book was credited to "Dick Calkins with Philip Nowlan."
• 1936
  A live-action short was created to promote to department stores a growing line of Buck Rogers merchandise.
• February 1939
  The famous Buck Rogers serials began with Buster Crabbe in the title role. (Crabbe had already portrayed Flash Gordon twice by this point.) This version is "based on the cartoon strip 'Buck Rogers'" but it did not credit anyone associated with the strip itself.
• 1939
  Nowlan formally retired from writing the strip and Calkins officially took full story control.
• February 1940
  Nowlan passed away at age 51.
• Winter 1940
  Buck Rogers finally debuted as an ongoing, self-titled comic book from Eastern Printing; however, this was all newspaper reprint material. Artists for the series included Calkins, Keaton, and Stephen A. Douglas (who provided some new covers).
• November 1947
  Calkins formally retired from the comic strip, and was replaced by Murphy Anderson.
• May 1962
  Calkins passed away at age 67.

Like any collaboration, it's almost impossible to parse exactly who contributed what. We definitely know Nowlan devised the original idea for Buck Rogers, and Calkins should get the majority of the credit for defining the visual aesthetic of the character, but everything beyond that is up in the air.

That said, I get the impression that Nowlan had little to do with the direction of the strip. Perhaps some vague direction, in a manner not dissimilar to how Stan Lee used to provide Jack Kirby with an entire comic's plot in just a few sentences. That Calkins is credited so prominently in other media, despite Nowlan clearly having created the characters, suggests that he was either exceptionally humble or not nearly as involved as Calkins.

And while I don't have any real proof in this fairly short overview, I have the feeling that Calkins wound up contributing a lot more to Buck Rogers than Nowlan did, despite his originating the idea.

Superman #272 was one of DC's 100-page giants and was loosely themed around magic stories. Two stories I recall fondly were "The Other Side of the World!" (reprinted from Green Lantern #42) which was one third of the storyline from a couple years earlier where Zatanna tries to find her long-lost father. I remember it largely because of the unusualness of my actually having the other two parts to the story! At the time, it was probably the longest single story in my collection, and had some memorable imagery throughout.

The other notable story was "The Magician's Convention" reprinted from Action Comics #97. I hardly recall the plot, but it largely revolved around two buffoons, Hocus and Pocus, who thought they could perform real magic. When they would attempt something amazing, Superman would -- unbeknownst to everyone but the reader -- rush in at such an incredible speed as to be invisible and perform whatever tasks were needed to get the results Hocus and Pocus were looking for. I think what struck me was how much fun Superman was having. He was still foiling bank robbers and the like, but he was chuckling to himself the entire time. He wasn't doing anything out of spite or malice, but just provide a little confidence to these two otherwise wholly unremarkable dolts. In every other Superman story I had, the man of steel was serious about his job as a superhero. Not dark and broody, certainly, but he never really smiled. Saving the world was a job. A responsibility. A burden. But in this charming tale, he was having fun and getting his job done just the same.

I did some quick research today and found that Hocus and Pocus made, in total, four appearances, all between April 1945 and March 1947. Clearly not terribly popular characters. I'm left wondering if that whimsical side of Superman was too close to then-popular Captain Marvel. Was this fun-loving Superman a direct response to the Big Red Cheese? I know several of the same writers worked on both characters; was this just the result of that cross-pollination?

And what about Hocus and Pocus themselves? Were they based on anyone in particular? What kind of reaction did they actually receive to only warrant four appearances?

Just some idle questions about an obscure little corner of Superman trivia.

I first started reading the Fantastic Four during John Byrne's run. Lots of great material there, and that's what really got me hooked on the characters specifically, but comics more generally. Byrne worked on the book for a couple more years before he bowed out just before a couple of big anniversary issues. Much as I didn't want to see him leave the book, by the time he did, I understood that his long tenure as the writer/artist on a single book was unusual. So then there was a period of creative change-ups until Marvel found a regular creative team, but since John Buscema was doing most of the artwork, I didn't mind. They eventually landed on the team of Steve Englehart and Keith Pollard.

I didn't initially care for dropping two of the main characters and replacing them with love interests for the remaining two. But once some of that seemingly forced soap opera-y stuff got out of the way, there were some decent stories going. Even the "Inferno" stories weren't too bad for being part of an unnecessary crossover.

But then this John Harkness guy started writing the book. The Fantastic Four were captured, an evil clone version of the team replaced them, and readers got several months of nothing but dream sequences. I was thrilled when Walt Simonson finally took over with #334.

Of course, what I didn't know at the time was that Englehart and Harkness were the same man, and that he was using a pseudonym because he himself didn't like what he was being told to do with the stories. So what was being done?

Englehart was brought in under Jim Shooter's rein as editor-in-chief to shake things up with the book. In Englehart's words from his own site...

The FF was always the "real life" adventures of superheroes, but as the series atrophied many people forgot about the real life part; growth and change went out the window. I identified the hermetically-sealed group of Reed & Sue & Ben & Johnny as a main reason the book has grown stale - and Reed & Sue had been saying for years that they should pay more attention to their perpetually 6-year-old son Franklin - so I let 'em. Thus, Ben & Johnny had to find two new members and do new things.

A few months after Englehart began, however, Shooter was fired and Tom DeFalco was given the editor-in-chief role. Initially, he seemed to leave things alone, presumably as he was getting a handle on the new job. But when the next Annual came around -- which tied into the "Evolutionary War" story that ran through many of the 1988 Annuals -- DeFalco evidently started demanding changes that book editor Ralph Macchio put in place.

Changes were also being made on his West Coast Avengers title, and he tried to salvage some of the storyline he began there in FF #322-325. In an open letter Englehart wrote in 1990, he noted...

#322 through #325 were plotted as [West Coast Avengers] stories and shoehorned into FF when WCA was yanked from under Al [Milgrom] and me--that's why the FF is fighting [WCA] villains. #325 originally ended with the Surfer and Mantis getting together and leading into the shelved Surfer #23; in the end, I had to use it to kill Mantis with dignity, because she'd already been trashed behind my back...

That's when DeFalco demanded that Englehart bring Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman back into the book. Englehart then removed his name from the book and began using the Harkness pseudonym. Again, from that open letter...

As always, I did the best I could, because the fans ought not to suffer in these situations, but anyone reading them with the knowledge of what was going on will find them filled with cries of outrage--not the least of which was the entire plot. Alien freezes real FF, sticks 1962 FF in their place -- the man who raised stealing from Jack Kirby to Official Policy never got that, and if you understand that fact, you understand everything that's gone wrong at the House of Ideas. In fact, the 1962 FF was such a hit in the offices, they want to do a mini-series starring them. Almost all the 1962 FF's dialogue in the series was lifted verbatim from FF #1-3, by the way; it actually took a lot of extra time to make that work, but that's what their stunted characters required.

Englehart now recalls that period as "one of the most painful stretches of my career." He tried to do the stories he wanted during this period, but basically had to relegate them all to dream sequences...

Anyway, the dream stories at the end were bare bones versions of the stories I would have done for real if I'd been able to; the last one, how Frank made Alicia leave Ben for Johnny, was the plot that got me the FF in the first place (over the then-not-in-charge Tom DeFalco). In one of my early FFs, back when they had letter columns, I said I had a long term plan working for the book; that was the first half of it. But in the end, as the titles very clearly said: "Bad Dream--And You Can't Wake Up!"

I've never been able to find anything where DeFalco specifically talks to his view of what happened. The closest I've come across is an interview that he conducted with Macchio for Comic Creators on the Fantastic Four in 2005...

Why did Steve leave the book?

We had a parting of ways, creatively. I remember there was a storyline he embarked on and I knew right away that we were beginning to see the characters differently. There were stories he wanted to do that just didn't work for me. I liked a lot of his run, but I didn't like the way he wanted to go so I made a change.

It was an unfortunately inglorious end to what had been a very interesting take on the title. While I disagree with Englehart's initial premise -- that Reed and Sue were fundamentally problematic to the book moving forward -- I can respect some of the ideas that he was able to develop out of that. I didn't like that "John Harkness" period for years until I began hearing about some of the behind-the-scenes problems years later. I'll end with a small request from Englehart's 1990 letter...

Anyway, now you know, so when you think back on my work, as you will from time to time, don't damn me for the stories I wrote under duress. There's a lot of ignorance and aggression around these days... but I'll continue to bank on the understanding of an informed public (still sounds like Captain America, doesn't it?). Let me reiterate that I did write every word of the best stories I could produce under the circumstances, even if every word didn't make it into print...

Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberlan is often lauded as one of the earliest works of comic art genius. Justifiably, if you asked me. Consequently, any number of creators over the years have paid homage to both McCay and his strip in various ways. The most recent one I've come across is Frank Pé's Little Nemo from Magnetic Press. Pé, if you're not familiar, is a Belgian cartoonist who's been working since the mid-1980s from titles like Spirou. He's a notoriously slow artist, however, and I don't believe much, if any, of his work has been translated into English before this.

Many creators trying to honor McCay try to copy his imagination while maintaining the original strip's basic story structure. This seldom works especially well, regardless of how beautiful the illustrations are. They frequently seem to miss the spirit of McCay's characters. Pé has a slightly different approach, however. While the strips do (mostly) follow the same structure of wild events happening before they're interrupted by Nemo being jolted awake, Pé tweaks the idea by presenting Nemo's adventures as the dreams not of Nemo, but of McCay himself. In some cases, even borrowing somewhat from the idea of McCay's other famous strip, Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend, by having McCay wonder what caused such strange mental wanderings.

The comics here have no continuity whatsoever. The 70-some pages of art were created over several years and for different purposes. About a dozen, in fact, were created very deliberately as stand-alone pieces for different comic festivals. Which means they follow different formats and lengths and rhythms, and focus alternatively on the story or the art. It's almost more of an anthology and detailed sketchbook combined. The pieces range from clever to funny to whimsical to metatextual to just pretty.

And that's really the selling point here. Pé's illustrations are all gorgeous. The stories are a bit scattershot. They all certainly try to pay homage to McCay and his work, but they all do so from slightly different vantage points and in different ways. But the consistent element through all of them is Pé's wonderful art. His linework is natural and fluid, his characters detailed and expressive, his colors vibrant and engaging. Think equal parts Jack Davis, Bill Watterson, and Frank Cho.

I hope Magnetic Press is able to get more of Pé's work translated and into the American market. The brief description I read of Mémoires de l'élan sounds brilliant in addition to being, I'm sure, wonderfully illustrated. While perhaps not the most faithful or cohesive honoring of McCay's Nemo, it is an absolutely stunning book, and a sure hit for fans of the original Slumberland strips.

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

Kleefeld on Comics: Commercialization Ain't New
https://ift.tt/2VZiCHA

Kleefeld on Comics: Load Up on Bookmarks!
https://ift.tt/3u0nqZz

Kleefeld on Comics: The Bird's Eye Kids Go Shopping
https://ift.tt/3CC5OGQ

Kleefeld on Comics: Four-Fisted Tales Review
https://ift.tt/2ZgbveW

Kleefeld on Comics: Thomas Nast's Ignorant Vote
https://ift.tt/3lUA499

The headline image here is the Thomas Nast cover cartoon from an 1876 edition of Harper's Weekly. The title of the image is called "The Ignorant Vote" and ran shortly after that year's elections.

That particular election was very contentious. Without getting into a lot of details, a close modern analogy would be the Bush/Gore race from a few years back. Eventually, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the presidency; however, it's generally believed that it was on the condition of ending the Reconstruction in the South, which was a Democratic goal. While Nast was an abolistionist and often depicted Black people with a level of dignity not afforded them almost anywhere else at the time, he was also a strong supporter of Reconstruction and was upset at its ending. He blamed ignorant voters for making the election so contentious that the compromise needed to be struck. And, in his eyes, ignorant voters were recently freed slaves and Irish-Americans, both caricatured here.

Over at this wikispaces page they summarize the comic this way...

By setting the Irish and Blacks as equal on the scale, he is asserting that their votes are equally inferior. On the upper portion of the scale, “North” is inscribed on the side with the Irishmen, and “South” is inscribed on the side with the Black man. This suggests that Nast believes that North and South are equally negatively affecting United States’ politics. The controversy regarding the Election of 1876 was not just the Black man’s fault; the responsibility is equally shared by Black and White. In both instances, there are outside forces affecting their voting decision other than their personal political beliefs. For the Irish, it is the Roman Catholic Church; for the blacks, it is the white people that they depend on for their livelihood. Both the Church and the white Southerners generally supported the Democratic party; whereas Nast and Harper’s Weekly subscribed to Republican doctrine.

The Irish were racially stereotyped very poorly for generations. They were considered lazy, perpetually drunken louts, not very far removed from apes. In that respect, they were viewed similarly to Black people but, by virtue of their skin color, they just weren't quite as bad. Absurd as it seems to me, I've seen old references where someone makes the comparison, verbally or visually, of apes evolving to Africans evolving to Irish evolving to Caucasians.

Interestingly, while Nast did have a prior history depicting Blacks in America with a level of dignity, rarely resorting to even the generally accepted visual tropes of the day, he evidently had few qualms portraying the Irish in a negative light. He regularly showed them as drunken neanderthals, and here is no exeception. A German-born immigrant himself, one wonders if Nast felt more resentment against the Irish because he was in more direct competition with them. Allegedly, when he was a child in New York City, he was frequently bullied for his small size and he may have transferred that general resentment of a handful of local Irish boys to the Irish as a whole.

Despite being perhaps the most widely recognized American cartoonist at the time, Nast's career began going downhill not long afterwards. His importance diminished significantly after he left Harper's Weekly in the 1880s (and, ironically, Harper's Weekly's significance declined without Nast) and Nast lost most of his wealth in 1884. While he continued working in a variety of (mostly) artistic capacities, he experienced a number of commercial failures but was eventually given a consulship by President Teddy Roosevelt, largely due to his work from years earlier.

Four-Fisted Tales: Animals in Combat is Ben Towle's latest book, which came out last month. It's in an anthology format, telling the stories of various animals that have been used in human warfare. Some of the stories focus on a particular animal, while others look at how a species was used more broadly, and still others fall somewhere in between by providing snippets of stories of individual animals to provide a kind of overview.

One of the things that quickly stood out to me while reading this was the variety. Certainly in the animals he chose to write about (from slugs to seagulls to dolphins to elephants) but more poignently in how he told their stories. He never anthropomorphizes any of the animals, so none of the tales are expressly told from their perspective, but he still finds a number of different approaches to relay them. Some are told by the humans they helped, others from the enemies who stood against them, some are in the present tense, some are past, some relay a single incident, some cover an entire career... Towle has clearly made an effort to ensure the book doesn't get repetitive in any manner, and I suspect that helped spur him to make some very clever decisions in creating this. I thought his dual-storytelling technique on the story about rats was especially clever and well-executed, and his wordless story about Wojtek the bear, while clearly inspired by Larry Hama's famous "Silent Interlude" story in G.I.Joe, is more creatively successful than any of Marvel's "Nuff Said" event books from 2002.

Another standout element for me was that Towle's choice of subjects is surprisingly uplifting. I'm aware, for example, of how some animals have been essentially used as suicide bombers, unaware that they're sacrificing their lives for the sake of killing others and just racing into enemy areas with bombs strapped to them. But none of that is here. In fact, the vast majority of examples fall into the categories of either providing communication or detecting enemies and their equipment. So there's an emphasis on their saving lives, not taking them. In fact, none of the animals presented here are even shown at the ends of their lives -- if their deaths are mentioned, it's generally in a kind of mini-epilogue after a summary of a long and valiant career.

The book is printed with only two colors: black and a kind of beige-y green. This tends to serve Towle's art style well, showcasing some really punchy spotted blacks while still providing tone and texture with the green. It's a style he's certainly used before, and it especially suits the historical material giving it something of an air of fading, but not yet forgotten, memories. An you all know I do enjoy those history comics!

If I had to lodge a complaint, I might say that I was thrown a little by the lettering. It's not bad, by any means, and it actually took me a little while to pinpoint what stood out about it. At first, I thought he was using different font sizes between stories or, if they were the same size, the pages themselves were scaled differently. But I don't think that's what's going on. I think that he's just using different types of fonts for dialogue and captions. They're both Blambot fonts with a hand-written feel, but the dialogue is rendered in all caps as is traditional and the captions have a capital/lowercase mix. Which isn't a problem conceptually, but I think he may have been using the same font size for both -- but with one of them being all caps, it appears larger visually even if they do have the same overall heights. That would be a difficult balance, trying to get that just right, I think, and it's a fairly minor issue ultimately. But, hey, I have to call out something so this doesn't read like Towle just paid me off to write a glowing review!

(Although, Ben, I can delete that previous paragraph for a small "donation!" 😄)

I was really pleased with this. On top of being just a good book of the type of material I usually enjoy reading, the anthology format helped serve the reading/focus challenges I was talking about last week. The book retails at $24.95 and came out from Dead Reckoning last month. Worth picking up!