September 28, 2005
Night Fisher
(Click on thumbnail for enlargement)
I read an advance copy of R. Kukuo Johnson's graphic novel, Night Fisher, to be released in November by Fantagraphics. It's about a smart high school boy, Loren, who lives with his unmarried dentist dad in Maui. The slow paced, but always interesting, story focuses on Loren's involvement with a schoolmate and their increasing use of methamphetamines. They end up getting into some trouble because of the unsavory characters they hang around, but that's not the important part. The important part is the way Johnson uses dialogue and symbols to create a slice of modern island life. I got a good feeling for what it must be like to be a high schooler in Hawaii. Johnson's thick, evocative brushwork and use of silhouettes helps set the mood. Link
September 20, 2005
That's What I Call Sweet Music
Robert Crumb picks out 24 of his favorite dance orchestra songs from the 1920s for this fantastic audio CD, That's What I Call Sweet Music. The CD case is actually a small book, illustrated, written, and hand lettered by Crumb, with biographical information about the bandleaders featured on the disc. Writes Crumb: "What you hear on this CD is the good-time, social music of a vanished urban civilization, a lost world of smokestack factories, clanging trolley cars -- and everybody wore hats!"
The music itself is happy, peppy, melodic, and indeed sweet. The 20s were good times -- architecture, art, music, fashion, and industrial design were at their peak. The people of the era were blissfully unaware of the tragic events of the future: the Great Depression, WWII, and the appointment of George W. Bush as dictator of the United States. I often pine for that era. I know everything wasn't peachy keen -- racism was rampant, for example, but just imagine how wonderful New York City must have been! We'll never know for sure, but this CD will sweep you into a fantasy version of the world of the 1920s. Link
September 19, 2005
Twentieth Century Eightball
Eightball is Daniel Clowes long-running comic book, published by Fantagraphics.
Most of the pages in each issue of Eightball are taken up by a chapter from a longer running series ("Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron," "Ghost World," "David Boring") while the remainder consists of short, usually humorous stories.
Typically, these shorter pieces are caustic, hateful critiques of certain types of people Clowes abhors -- hipsters, Hollywood executives, professional sports fans, politicians, salespeople, and so on. It appears that Mr. Clowes has quite a large axe to grind, which is great news for me, because I also detest most of the odious subhumans Clowes gleefully eviscerates in his stories. I will read this book over and over until the day I die. Link
September 13, 2005
The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo
Years before developing a crush on Dejah Thoris, I was smitten by Betty and Veronica, the two gorgeous femme fatales of Riverdale High. Even though the girls were anatomically identical (and differed physically only in hair color), like Archie, I preferred the snotty and wealthy Veronica over Betty, who didn't know that playing hard-to-get was an excellent and ancient reproductive strategy. 
Dan DeCarlo (1919-2001) didn't create Betty and Veronica, or anyone else in Archie's world. That honor goes to Bob Montana. But DeCarlo was the guy who made the girls in Archie comics icons of teenage lust. (He's also the co-creator of the undeniably desirable Josie and the Pussycats and Sabrina the Teenage Witch).
It turns out that DeCarlo was also a prolific cheesecake gag cartoonist, churning out dozens of drawings of topless women that look like Betty and Veronica's slightly older and much wilder aunt. This Fantagraphics anthology is masterfully designed in two-colors by Jacob Covey, and features over 200 single panel gag cartoons from mens' magazines of the 1950s. Link
September 09, 2005
Action! Cartooning
I have lots of instructional drawing books. Most of them looked good in the store, but turned out to be duds when I brought them home. Action! Cartooning by Ben Caldwell is one of the winners. Caldwell is not only an excellent and expressive cartoonist, he's also a good teacher.
My biggest problem is that my drawings have a tendency to look stiff. Caldwell's work is dynamic, even explosive. He's good at showing how to exaggerate activities such as running, jumping, or even standing and sitting. I plan to keep his book close at hand while drawing figures.
Link
September 07, 2005
Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes
Dan Clowes is one the of greatest living cartoonists. (He's also an excellent screenwriter, having co-written Ghost World and the forthcoming Art School Confidential, both based on stories appearing in his comic book, Eight Ball.)
Clowes' latest full-length book, Ice Haven, tells the story of a senseless murder, told in the form of newspaper style comic strip vignettes. Several stories are interwoven throughout the main story, which takes place in a deceptively staid small town called Ice Haven. Clowe's melancholy color palette is terrific here, bringing to mind the faded dreams of a town that had hoped to become a sort of winter paradise, but instead ended up as a place where people's dreams freeze and die. This book is Clowes at his best. Link
September 05, 2005
Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace 1951-1952
A couple of years ago, comic book and book publisher Fantagraphics started a series to reprint every Peanuts strip ever drawn by Charles Schulz. These books are beautifully designed and are printed on high quality paper, which makes it much easier to appreciate Schulz's drawing style.
Now Fantagraphics is giving the same treatment to Hank Ketcham, creator of Dennis the Menace. As much as I like Schulz's work, I think Ketcham is better in almost every way. His deceptively loose drawing style is highly praised by all my favorite cartoonists. In fact, Ketcham is considered my many to be the cartoonist's cartoonist. As a bonus, a large percentage of the comics in this 624-page (!) book are laugh-out-loud funny.
Link
August 25, 2005
DC's Greatest Imaginary Stories
Mainstream comics in the 1940s were often wildly inventive, and this collection of old "what if" comic book stories, titled DC's Greatest Imaginary Stories : 11 Tales You Never Expected to See!, is a good example.
I imagine the writers in those days were tired of grim bad guy vs good guy stories, so they took every opportunity to concoct outlandish stories, in which superheroes either died, had their cover blown, or entered a wacky parallel universe.
Mainstream comics were a lot more fun back then. The superhero comics of today are crippled by the humorlessness and self-importance. I'm glad to see that DC is digging into its vaults to revive these treasures. Link
August 16, 2005
The R. Crumb Handbook
I'll buy any book that has anything to do with Robert Crumb, because he's in my triumvirate of cartoon gods (the other two are Carl Barks and Jack Kirby). I can't get enough of his comics or his music. I also love reading interviews with him.
I don't think this book is a good introduction to Crumb. If you're not familiar with his work, I suggest you start out with Vol 4 of The Complete Crumb Comics. But if you are a Crumb fan, you'll love this fat (440 pages!) book filled with Crumb art and text. As a bonus, the book comes with a 20-song CD of Crumb's music, which ranges from old timey novelty jazz to turn of the last century European folk music. Considering that a music CD typically costs more than this book-and-CD combo, The R. Crumb Handbook is a great deal. Link
August 08, 2005
The Cute Manifesto
The Cute Manifesto is a small-but-thick anthology (168 pages, 6" x 6") of cartoonist James Kochalka's cartoon-embellished musings on the meaning of life. My favorite is the titular story, "The Cute Manifesto," in which Kochalka defends cuteness as not being trite, but as one of the most important qualities of life to seek out.
Kochalka developed his talents in the world of self-published mini-comics, and even though he now has a publisher, he still thinks like a self-publisher. In a recent interview in The Comics Reporter, Kochalka said, "I feel like I can do anything I want. Which is the best thing about being an artist, that you can do anything you want. As soon as you start feeling you can't do whatever you want because you're afraid how the readers are going to react, then it's just a job. I don't want to have a job." Fortunately, when Kochalka does whatever he wants, it results in good stuff. Link
July 26, 2005
The Clouds Above
The Clouds Above is a beautiful 216-page, hardbound comic book for kids and grown-ups. It's about an elementary school kid who arrives late for school and winds up on a fantastic adventure in the sky. Each page is a single square panel. I finshed it in about 20 minutes then went back to savor the art, which reminds me a bit of Joe Matt's work. I see great things in Jordan Crane's future. (Here are some of Crane's self published books).
Buy from Amazon
June 08, 2004
Real Stuff by Dennis P. Eichhorn
I'm fanatical about autobiographical comics. Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar, Joe Matt, Chester Brown, Mary Fleener, Joe Sacco -- I can't get enough of them. There's something about comics and real life stories that go together; I can't quite figure it out, but it works. Denny Eichhorn, author of Real Stuff, is one of the best comic book autobiographers. Like Pekar, he doesn't draw his own cartoons -- he hires well-known ones to draw from his scripts. Dennis has led an interesting life. There's a little Kerouac in him, and a little Bukowski, too. It's a wonder he's still alive, after all he's been through.
One of my favorite episodes from his life is from his high school years. A kid he didn't know very well invited him over to his house. The mom asked him if he wanted a hambuger. He said, "Sure." When the burger was ready, the mom and her son sat down at the table and watch Denny eat the burger. They didn't eat; they just watched Denny. They had gleams in their eyes. When Denny was finished, they asked him if he liked it. He said it was OK, but a little spicy. Then the mom and soon broke out in laughter. "It was DOG FOOD!" they howled.
Denny had 20 issues of his comic, Real Stuff, published, mostly by Fantagraphics. This anthology, also titled Real Stuff, is published by a company in Los Angeles that I've never heard of, called Swifty Morales Press. They did a great job -- the book is a beaut. Buy from Amazon
April 23, 2004
Al Capp's Lil Abner: The Frazetta Years, 1960-1961
Lil Abner has always been one of my favorite newspaper comic strips. The wacky storylines, lovable hill people, and cute mountain girls appealed to me even when I was a little kid. 
This Lil Abner anthology has some of the best stories and art of the strip's entire run. The stories are funny -- the $19.95 Japanese import car, called the Nomoto (get it?) is a classic. Best of all, the girls are drawn by Frank Frazetta! Buy from Amazon
April 07, 2004
Acme Novelty Library Datebook
Chris Ware's cartoons have fascinated me for a decade. He has an extremely clean line, and his compositions are so painstakingly rendered it must take him weeks and weeks to do a single page. It's not surprising that he makes old fashioned penny arcade style contraptions -- he has the talent and the patience to create such mechanical marvels. This sketchbook of his work from the 80s and 90s is a treat, because it shows his looser, quicker studies and ideas. I am surprised he has so many different styles. The book itself is a work of Ware art.
Buy from Amazon
March 24, 2004
Amazon's New Comics and Graphic Novels store
Amazon has announced a new section that deals with comics and graphic novels. This is great news. I don't see much in the way of real comics, though. They are dealing mostly in anthologies. Link
March 12, 2004
Illustration Magazine
I like magazine, book, and ephemera illustrations from the 1920s - 1960s. The artists really had their technical chops down, and had wonderful imaginations as well. Illustration Magazine is the best place to read about these illustrators and see their work showcased in a lovingly-produced format. A few issues back, they profiled Frank Frazetta, as well as Norm Saunders, the guy who painted the lurid Mar Attacks bubblegum cards. 
(You can buy most back issues, including the one featuring Norm Saunders and Frank Frazetta, from the magazine.)
March 06, 2004
Peepshow: The Cartoon Diary of Joe Matt
Joe Matt has been writing and illustrating his cartoon biography for over a decade. I was hooked the instant I started reading his work, which was orginally published as a comic series by Drawn & Quarterly. Matt is very open about his idiosyncracies -- his love of porn videos, his habit of urinating into jars so he does't have to talk to his housemates, his love-hate relationship with fellow Canadian comic book artists Chester Brown (Yummy Fur) and Seth (Palookaville), his nearly self-destructive parsimony. 
He lives a pretty miserable life, it seems, but it makes for fascinating reading. I also like Matt's clean drawing line; he's quite an accomplished artist. This anthology, titled Peepshow: The Cartoon Diary of Joe Matt, is a fine introduction to his work.
February 25, 2004
The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol 1-16
There are three truly great comic book artists in the world. Two are dead: Carl Barks (who invented Uncle Scrooge, and did a bunch of duck comics for Disney), Jack Kirby (Captain America, Fantastic Four, Thor, Hulk, etc). The third, Robert Crumb, has been drawing comics since he was a little kid, and is still going strong. A lot of creative people get worse as they age (e.g., Charles Schulz, Elvis, Lucille Ball), but Crumb's current work is relevant, insightful, funny, and provocative. (I'm not going to defend or lambaste Robert Crumb for his depictions of women in his comics. Lots of other people already have.)
One of Crumb's strong points is his refusal to compromise. He doesn't do commercial art for anyone. (Toyota once offered him $100,000 to draw an advertisement. He said no. Toyota told him he could draw anything he wanted, anything. Crumb said, OK, I'll draw a picture of a murderer stuffing the headless corpse of a woman into the trunk of a Toyota.) His other strengths are an eye for detail, insight into human behavior, and a love of early 20th century American history, particularly musicians and craftsmen of all kinds. Crumb loves old music, old architecture, and old kitchen appliances almost as much as he hates modern American culture. (In 1995, Crumb moved with his family to a village in France.)
The Complete Crumb Comics, which is now in its 16th volume, is a chronological anthology of everything ever published by Crumb, including comics that he drew as a kid with his brother, and cards he drew for American Greetings before he created Zap (arguably the world's first underground comic). Each volume has new cover art as well as lots of interesting biographical material, occasionally pennned by Crumb himself. Even if you've seen Terry Zwigoff's Oscar winning documentary, Crumb, there's a lot more to learn about the artist in this anthology. But the best thing about The Complete Crumb Comics, of course, is the comics themselves. Crumb is a master storyteller. There are times when I've been disturbed by his work, I've never been bored, and I always come away from his work feeling like I understand a something new about human nature.
February 23, 2004
The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952, by Charles Schulz
A couple of years ago I went to an Art Spiegelman (creator of Maus) talk at UCLA. He made a comment about Peanuts that struck me. He said all the kids in Peanuts are actually adults, and that Snoopy is the only real kid in the strip. It really is true.
But it wasn't quite as true in 1950, when Schulz started Peanuts. I'd never seen his early Peanuts comics, because most of them hadn't been reprinted until this month, when Fantagraphics published The Complete Peanuts: 1950-1952.
The reason these early comics hadn't been reprinted is because the characters hardly look like the Peanuts everyone knows. Schroeder and Linus are infants who can't talk, and Snoopy is a puppy who acts like a puppy. All the characters are much more childlike. It would have been too confusing for readers used to the fully-developed characters.
But in this book we get to see that the Peanuts looked like when they were still evolving, and what a treat it is! The artwork is delicate and cheery, and the kids run around doing kidlike things – pretending to be spacemen, or cowboys and Indians. The stories are funny without resorting to gags (which has always been a strength of Schulz's).
I really think this book shows Schulz at his best. The book itself is lovingly designed by Seth (creator of the comic Palookaville), and Fantagraphics promises that it is the first of a seried of 25 Peanuts books, reprinting every strip from 1950 to 2000. I'm not sure what year Snoopy changed from a quadruped to a biped but that's when I'll stop buying the books.
February 21, 2004
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
Jimmy Corrigan was the lead story in Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library comic book series, published by Fantagraphics. Rendered in Ware's painstakingly detailed and clean-lined hand, Jimmy Corrigan is a non-linear fictional biography about a guy who lives a miserable life because his parents treated him horribly. We learn that his parents, too, were treated horribly. It's pretty depressing, but the art is truly mind-blowing, and the creative ways in which Ware unfolds the story are pure genius. I highly recommend this book, especially since you can buy a used hardcover copy on Amazon for just $10. A great deal for a 380-page, all color book. Buy from Amazon.
February 19, 2004
The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby: The First Graphic Novel
Super Diaper Baby is a spin-off of the enormously popular Captain Underpants kids' book series. While the Captain Underpants books are heavily illustrated chapter books, Super Diaper Baby is a comic book disguised as a paperback. The art is appealingly crude, and reminds me of the comics I drew in school. In fact, the premise is that The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby was written and drawn by the two kids who star in the Captain Underpants books.
Weirdly enough, The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby stars a giant piece of human excrement as the villain. In the 1960s, headshop owners were getting busted for selling underground comic books, because they had sex, violence, drugs, and scatology in them. Now, kids books (published by Scholastic, no less) have turd drawings in them and the books are sold in regular bookstores without any parental warning on them.
My six year-old-daughter enjoyed this book as much as I did.
February 17, 2004
Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art
Harvey Kurtzman may have invented Mad, but for 99% of Mad's readers, it's the work of Will Elder that comes to mind when they think of the magazine.
Elder remained on good terms with Kurtzman -- a childhood friend -- after Kurtzman left Mad, and they continued to work together on various projects, such as Playboy's Little Annie Fanny and Goodman Beaver. But despite his immense talents as an artist and humorist, Elder always worked in the shadow of the charismatic Kurtzman. Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art, published in 2003 by Fantagraphics, finally gives Elder the recognition he deserves.
Every page of this monster-sized book is filled with examples of Elder's obsessive attention to detail, which separates his work from Kurtzman's (who was a broad brush kind of guy, albeit a great one). Elder's technical chops are supreme, and the longer you look at his work, the more you are rewarded. I love his talent for imitating other cartoonists' styles (which he used to parody Archie, Li'L Abner, Alley Oop, etc.), and I love the tiny little gags he inserts into nearly every panel. Unfortunately, the worst piece of art in this book is on the cover. 
Too bad Fantagraphics didn't use something like this Norman Rockwell parody instead.
Included is a lot of Elder's stuff from Mad, as well as sketches, paintings, and gag cartoons done for other magazines. Dan Clowes (Of Eightball and Ghostworld) wrote the intoduction, and there's commentary by Hugh Hefner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee (another of Elder's childhood friends), Terry Gilliam, William Stout, and Jerry Garcia.
400 pages, 9"x12" full-color softcover.
February 16, 2004
Charles Schulz's pre-Peanuts comic anthology
This looks like it'll be great. According to Fantagraphics, in late February the Charles M. Schulz Museum "is releasing LI'L BEGINNINGS, a complete collection of Charles Schulz's LI'L FOLKS and panel gags, amply annotated and referenced. This superb 300-page softcover, which collects many panels that have not been seen for over 50 years, will not be readily available for general sale in bookstores so far as we can tell. It costs $30.00 plus $6.00 shipping and is available for pre-order right now."
Buy from Fantagraphics (go to bottom of page)
Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963–1975
Dr. Fredric Wertham nearly succeeded in killing comic books in 1954. That was the year his book Seduction of the Innocent sparked a nationwide anti-comics crusade. The psychiatrist's frenzied diatribe, illustrated with comic panels depicting gruesome and sadomasochistic scenes, painted a horrific picture of children losing their minds and morals to the lurid four-color pulps. Wertham's factually inaccurate, hysterically toned polemic was a big hit. Its wide coverage in the press led to hearings by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency to deal with the comic-book menace. Almost overnight, dozens of comic-book publishers went out of business. The survivors established a self-censoring organization called the Comics Code Authority, which issued a set of explicit guidelines on what was forbidden and what was mandatory in comic-book stories (e.g., "Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities" and "In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds"). With the exception of Mad, comics became bland and safe for kids once again.
In retrospect, Wertham probably should have gone after Mad, too. In the early chapters of Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975, by Patrick Rosenkranz, Mad's sneering contempt for the establishment is frequently cited as a source of inspiration by the pioneers of the underground-comics movement. (In fact, it was Mad creator Harvey Kurtzman who hired Robert Crumb to draw pictures of street life in unfamiliar places like Bulgaria and Harlem for his short-lived humor magazine Help! in 1964.)
Rosenkranz began working on Rebel Visions nearly 30 years ago, interviewing every major cartoonist and publisher in the underground-comics movement, resulting in the first book that definitively chronicles one of the biggest countercultural artistic and literary movements in America. It's not only authoritative, it's also great fun to read. Illustrated with art and photographs (many previously unpublished) spanning a fascinating and riotous 12 years of artistic reawakening, Rebel Visions is largely an oral history told by the surviving originators of the movement. The quotes Rosenkranz selects vividly recount the birth, explosion and decline of underground comics.
Laid out chronologically in chapters that cover two years apiece, Rebel Visions begins in 1963, four years before the publication of Crumb's seminal Zap #1. At that time, artists who didn't want to follow the rules of the Comics Code Authority worked their way into science-fiction fanzines, college humor newspapers and hot-rod magazines. In the early days, artists like Rick Griffin, a surfer from Southern California, and Gilbert Shelton, a college student in Austin, drew in isolation from the nascent hippie counterculture. The early underground cartoonists were less interested in overthrowing the status quo than they were in poking fun at it. As long as Griffin could sneak a few marijuana references into his surf-mag funnies, and Crumb could lampoon the staid office protocols in his comic strip for American Greetings' employee newsletter, that was enough.
But by 1965, it was clear that a social revolution was taking place, and cartoonists who didn't want to draw pictures of men in tight-fitting colored underwear gravitated to San Francisco and the East Village, where they instantly became absorbed into the subculture dedicated to dope, free love and rebellion for the hell of it. LSD was legal, the Vietnam War was a sham, and rock music was an antidote to the assorted poisons spewed out by the establishment. The underground artists fit right in, becoming celebrities on the level of rock stars, Eastern religion proselytizers and psychedelic gurus. New inexpensive printing processes were helping to spawn underground newspapers like the East Village Other and the San Francisco Oracle. And rock music posters, most of them being drawn by the same artists who did comic strips for the underground press, became popular as wall art, resulting in the establishment of a national distribution system. According to Rosenkranz, "It was the production and distribution of ballroom posters that created the infrastructure for San Francisco to become the center of the underground comix industry."
ARTISTICALLY, THE MOST IMPORTANT event in the genesis of underground comics can be attributed to a "fuzzy" acid trip that Crumb took in November of 1965. In the months that followed, Crumb's perception of the world around him was altered, and his sketches reflected the new twists and turns his brain was making. "He started drawing strange characters and stories set in a soft, squishy, cartoon world," Rosenkranz writes. "Big-footed, pin-headed goofballs crowded the pages of his sketchbooks . . . There were plump nudes, working stiffs, cool cats, eggheads, holy fools, and men whose heads silently exploded -- lots of those." Crumb's trip lasted nearly five months, and he credits it with the birth of his most famous characters, including Mr. Natural. "It was during that fuzzy period that I recorded in my sketchbook all the main characters I would be using in my comics for the next 10 years," said Crumb.
Crumb used the characters to populate the pages of Zap, a famously successful comic book that he sold from a baby stroller on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury district. In subsequent issues, Crumb invited his favorite artists, such as Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Robert Williams, Gilbert Shelton, Manuel "Spain" Rodriguez and S. Clay Wilson to contribute -- and share equally in the ownership -- of Zap. In short order, hundreds and hundreds of underground-comic titles were weighing down the racks of head shops and comic-book stores.
Rosenkranz pegs 1971 as the year underground comics peaked. Titles were typically selling over 40,000 copies. The cartoonists felt that they were part of something big and wonderful. Maus creator Art Spiegelman told Rosenkranz, "It did feel like this must have been what the Cubists were going through. All the magic of being in Paris for the Post-Impressionist movement did feel somehow like being in San Francisco in the early '70s."
Of course, the magic had to end sometime -- but no one expected it to vanish so soon. By 1973, underground-comics sales had nosedived. Rosenkranz cites several factors: a nationwide crackdown on head shops, the Supreme Court's ruling on community standards for obscenity, and an increasingly politicized underground press that censored what it interpreted as sexism or racism from stories. Mainstream culture had changed, too. In a 1998 interview, cartoonist Jay Kinney told Rosenkranz that underground-comic artists, once regarded as "taboo breakers and iconoclasts," lost their mojo after mass media began dishing out their own brand of extreme sex, drugs and gore. How could underground comics "out-gross slasher films, video porn, Hustler magazine and Cheech and Chong?" asks Rosenkranz rhetorically. Twenty-five years after the death of the movement, his Rebel Visions brilliantly recalls the astounding influence, giddy thrills and sense of freedom that underground comics provided during a pivotal point in American culture.
February 13, 2004
Marvel Masterworks: The Fantastic Four Vol 5
The 1960s were a wonderful time for Marvel comics. By this time, Jack Kirby had already created some of the most famous characters in pop culture, and was hitting his stride with fantastic stories and villains. (Stan Lee took the credit for the stories and characters, but it really was Kirby who wrote as well as illustrated everything. He told me so when I met him when I was 15, and I believe him.)
The lavishly produced hardcover edition of Marvel Masterworks: The Fantastic Four Vol 5, collects Fantastic Four #41-50 and the Fantastic Four Annual #3. These ten issues are arguably the zenith of Silver Age comics. The story arc introduces Galactus, one of the most awesome villains ever, and the Silver Surfer, who just exudes cool. I get shivers thinking about these comics. If you have never read Fantastic Four, I recommend you start with this book, then go back and buy Volumes 1-4, which are good, but not as good as the issues in Volume 5.
ABOUT MAD PROFESSOR
Mark Frauenfelder's Mad Professor Bizarre Science Experiments Book.
RECENT ENTRIES
Night Fisher
That's What I Call Sweet Music
Twentieth Century Eightball
The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo
Action! Cartooning
Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes
Hank Ketcham's Complete Dennis the Menace 1951-1952
DC's Greatest Imaginary Stories
The R. Crumb Handbook
The Cute Manifesto
