Potrzebie
Friday, April 15, 2011
Ralph Reese self-portrait
Successive enlargements reveal the incredible detail Ralph put into this drawing.
Ralph and Jay Lynch cleverly satirized Harvey Kurtzman in Bijou Funnies #8 (1972) with this underground comics variation of the Mad imitators page in Mad #17, which I posted on March 23. To see the Mad version, go here. I asked Jay about the creation of this page, and he responded, mentioning Art Spiegelman as a possible contributor:
Jay Lynch: I wrote it, I think. Art was staying at my pad for a while during the time I was putting the mag together, so he might have had some input. I think I did crude roughs. But it was Ralph who decided to make the character look like me, and it was Ralph who came up with the titles of the mags shown on the newsstand in the background. I wrote and did roughs for the Bodé parody in that ish; Pat Daley, a woman who did storyboards for ad agencies in Chicago did the final art on that one. Everything else in that ish was written by the cartoonists who drew their own strips.
Click on label for previous posts on Reese.
Successive enlargements reveal the incredible detail Ralph put into this drawing.
Ralph and Jay Lynch cleverly satirized Harvey Kurtzman in Bijou Funnies #8 (1972) with this underground comics variation of the Mad imitators page in Mad #17, which I posted on March 23. To see the Mad version, go here. I asked Jay about the creation of this page, and he responded, mentioning Art Spiegelman as a possible contributor:
Jay Lynch: I wrote it, I think. Art was staying at my pad for a while during the time I was putting the mag together, so he might have had some input. I think I did crude roughs. But it was Ralph who decided to make the character look like me, and it was Ralph who came up with the titles of the mags shown on the newsstand in the background. I wrote and did roughs for the Bodé parody in that ish; Pat Daley, a woman who did storyboards for ad agencies in Chicago did the final art on that one. Everything else in that ish was written by the cartoonists who drew their own strips.
Click on label for previous posts on Reese.
Labels: art spiegelman, jay lynch, kurtzman, ralph reese
¶ 3:45 PM 0 comments
Thursday, April 15, 2010
This is a drawing I did in 1970, an assignment from Jay Lynch that was published on the inside front cover of Jay's underground comic book Roxy Funnies (1972). It was originally supposed to be for Jay's Bijou Funnies, which regularly ran an illustration on the inside front cover to summarize the interior, a sort of visual contents page, but in this case, Jay held it for two years and then eventually used it in Roxy. It seems related to Jay's Roxy back cover which also shows feminist literature plus a JoBo. (Only now do I see that I misspelled "squeamish".)
The JoBo had eyes that popped out when it was squeezed. Steve Allen called it a "goo goo doll" when he used it as a prop on his 1962 television show. However, the name of the product as it appeared in novelty company ads was JoBo the Rubber Boy. Today, it's known as the Martian Popping Thing, sold by Archie McPhee.
Jay explained how he began to draw the toy into his comics: "At that time I was in touch with this guy in Texas who ran a novelty company called Elbee. The Jo-Bo toy was something that hadn't been made for the last decade or so. This guy got the rights to it or the molds for it, and he was making new ones in China. So the Jo-Bo toy appears in a lot of strips I did then, just as the propeller beanie, invented by Ray Nelson, started to appear in strips in the 1950s."
Jay recalled giving me the assignment in 1970 and seeing Avon's Robotmen of the Lost Planet (1952): "I probably just told you to draw a sexy woman with a Jo-Bo toy, and all the rest you came up with. There is a lot of stuff that I kind of plugged in the comics that caught on big. I think the first modern reference to Bettie Page was in a strip that Kim Deitch and I drew somewhere. Jeff Rund was in touch with her then and planned to do some books on her. I mentioned her in some strip to subconsciously whet the public's appetite, but the books (the Bettie Page Private Peeks series, I think it was called) didn't come out until several years after that strip was published. I used JoBo on the back cover of Conspiracy Capers and in a Nard n' Pat strip in Gothic Blimp Works. I kind of liked the old guy from Texas who ran the toy company. In the 1950s, there was that comic that has Martian JoBos attacking Earth."Was Robotmen of the Lost Planet an offbeat experiment in product placement? One has to wonder: What kind of deal led Avon to draw the toys as science fictional comic book characters? And why the change in packaging?
Jay responds, "The toy itself was around from the l930s to the l950s, when it temporarily disappeared. I take it that Archie McPhee must have been familiar with the Robotmen comic book when he started calling it the Martian Popping Thing. In the early incarnations of the toy it was a circus freak character. Now it's a Martian. It's gotta be the comic book that was responsible for the change."
For an illustrated synopsis of the Robotmen of the Lost Planet storyline, go to Clea's Cave. Here is an interview with Ray Nelson about the invention of the propellor beanie. For Jay's children's books, Mo and Jo and Otto's Orange Day, go here.
Labels: archie mcphee, avon, bettie page, bijou, elbee, goo goo, jay lynch, jobo, mars, memoir, propellor beanie, ray nelson, roxy, steve allen, toon books
¶ 3:46 PM 0 comments
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Origin of word "fanboy"
Last year the term "fanboy" was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary with 1919 given as the year of origin. Back then, it meant: a boy employed to continually keep a potentate cool by constant fanning. (One has to wonder how long a modern-day fanboy would last at such a job.) However, both Merriam-Webster and Wikipedia (as of this writing) have created confusion by incorrectly juxtaposing the 1919 date with the modern meaning.
Also in 2008, it was announced that the long-awaited movie Fanboys is scheduled to open February 6, 2009. Kevin Spacey is one of the producers. The film's storyline, set in 1998, follows a group of friends who break into Skywalker Ranch to steal a print of Star Wars Episode I prior to the premiere. During their road trip, they meet Kevin Smith and William Shatner, plus various bikers and trekkies.
We know that the word "trekkie" was coined in 1967 by science fiction editor Art Saha at the 25th World Science Fiction Convention (Nycon 3) when he saw some fans wearing pointy ears and said, "Look at the trekkies." But what is the origin of the word "fanboy"? Matthew J. Pustz, author of the scholarly study, Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers (University of Mississippi Press, 2000) incorrectly believed the word might have been launched when Bill Griffith drew the cover for Jay Kennedy's The Official Underground and Newave Comix Price Guide (Boatner Norton Press, 1982) showing shirts with "Fanboys of America" emblems. In truth, the current usage got underway a decade earlier than Griffith when the word was introduced by the writer-artist Jay Lynch in 1972. Then Robert Crumb took Lynch's word and inserted it into a 1973 "Mr. Natural" strip for the Village Voice. It spread from there into various tributaries of the mainstream.
After writing for Mad, Cracked and Playboy, humorist Lynch recently moved into the children's book field with his book Otto's Orange Day (Toon Books, 2008), illustrated by Syracuse Post-Standard political cartoonist Frank Cammuso. Lynch followed with another 2008 Toon Book, Mo and Jo Fighting Together Forever, illustrated by Dean Haspiel, who recently did "Snow Dope" for The New York Times. For other Toon Books, go here.
Below is an email Lynch wrote ten years ago explaining how "funboy" became "fanboy". The text mentions someone named Killeen. This is a reference to Bill Killeen, who was editing Charlatan magazine in Tallahassee in the early 1960s. Prior to that, Killeen was the editor in Austin of The Texas Ranger humor magazine at the University of Texas, where he wrote the first Wonder Warthog strips for Gilbert Shelton. One appeared in Kurtzman's Help!, followed by others written and drawn by Shelton. Underground comics pioneers Lynch, Shelton, Art Spiegelman, Skip Williamson and Jack Jackson (1941-2006) appeared regularly in Charlatan from 1963 to 1966. Here's Jayzey:
Back in Florida, when I was a youth—we used the disparaging term “funboy” to put down our more supercilious friends. In Charlatan mag, Killeen and I often used this term. In 1972, when Al Judson and Bill Beasley announced their plans for a new fanzine, I suggested the title Fanboy—as kind of a cross between fan and funboy.
Although I originally suggested it as a joke, Bill and Al either didn’t get the gag—or thought the title apt, as they used it as the title of their zine. Bill and Al published their fanzine on schedule—and put this new term into the lexicon.
Today I do a search for the word “fanboy” on the Internet—and get thousands of pages. Yet when I limit the search to include the names of Bill Beasley or Al Judson (plus fanboy), there are no results at all. I know all Al wanted out of life was a little piece of comix immortality. When he was lettering for Marvel (or was it Atlas at the time?), the letterer never received any credit. When Al passed on a few years ago, there was no mention of his death in The Buyer’s Guide or Comics Journal. Yet the word that he and Bill put into the lingo of comix is used daily by all comics fans. How sadly ironic and poignant.
Al never lived to see himself credited for the term “fanboy,” which appears in the current Oxford English Dictionary. Well, such is life. But Bill Beasley is still very much with us. What can we do to see that justice is done? What can we do to secure Bill Beasley his richly deserved place in comics history?
As the modern vultures descend upon Bill’s contribution to comix (inventing the term “fanboy”), by putting out dozens of books using Bill’s title as their own, and without a speck of recognition for Bill and Al, the injustice of the whole situation is a black eye on the countenance of the comic book industry. Since very few copies of the original Fanboy have survived, it well may be up to us (who have bagged these precious issues of the original Fanboy) to put things aright and see that Bill and Al get at least a “special category Harvey Award” for their contribution to this industry.
--Jay Lynch (January 7, 1999)
Last year the term "fanboy" was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary with 1919 given as the year of origin. Back then, it meant: a boy employed to continually keep a potentate cool by constant fanning. (One has to wonder how long a modern-day fanboy would last at such a job.) However, both Merriam-Webster and Wikipedia (as of this writing) have created confusion by incorrectly juxtaposing the 1919 date with the modern meaning.Also in 2008, it was announced that the long-awaited movie Fanboys is scheduled to open February 6, 2009. Kevin Spacey is one of the producers. The film's storyline, set in 1998, follows a group of friends who break into Skywalker Ranch to steal a print of Star Wars Episode I prior to the premiere. During their road trip, they meet Kevin Smith and William Shatner, plus various bikers and trekkies.
We know that the word "trekkie" was coined in 1967 by science fiction editor Art Saha at the 25th World Science Fiction Convention (Nycon 3) when he saw some fans wearing pointy ears and said, "Look at the trekkies." But what is the origin of the word "fanboy"? Matthew J. Pustz, author of the scholarly study, Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers (University of Mississippi Press, 2000) incorrectly believed the word might have been launched when Bill Griffith drew the cover for Jay Kennedy's The Official Underground and Newave Comix Price Guide (Boatner Norton Press, 1982) showing shirts with "Fanboys of America" emblems. In truth, the current usage got underway a decade earlier than Griffith when the word was introduced by the writer-artist Jay Lynch in 1972. Then Robert Crumb took Lynch's word and inserted it into a 1973 "Mr. Natural" strip for the Village Voice. It spread from there into various tributaries of the mainstream.
After writing for Mad, Cracked and Playboy, humorist Lynch recently moved into the children's book field with his book Otto's Orange Day (Toon Books, 2008), illustrated by Syracuse Post-Standard political cartoonist Frank Cammuso. Lynch followed with another 2008 Toon Book, Mo and Jo Fighting Together Forever, illustrated by Dean Haspiel, who recently did "Snow Dope" for The New York Times. For other Toon Books, go here.Below is an email Lynch wrote ten years ago explaining how "funboy" became "fanboy". The text mentions someone named Killeen. This is a reference to Bill Killeen, who was editing Charlatan magazine in Tallahassee in the early 1960s. Prior to that, Killeen was the editor in Austin of The Texas Ranger humor magazine at the University of Texas, where he wrote the first Wonder Warthog strips for Gilbert Shelton. One appeared in Kurtzman's Help!, followed by others written and drawn by Shelton. Underground comics pioneers Lynch, Shelton, Art Spiegelman, Skip Williamson and Jack Jackson (1941-2006) appeared regularly in Charlatan from 1963 to 1966. Here's Jayzey:
Back in Florida, when I was a youth—we used the disparaging term “funboy” to put down our more supercilious friends. In Charlatan mag, Killeen and I often used this term. In 1972, when Al Judson and Bill Beasley announced their plans for a new fanzine, I suggested the title Fanboy—as kind of a cross between fan and funboy.
Although I originally suggested it as a joke, Bill and Al either didn’t get the gag—or thought the title apt, as they used it as the title of their zine. Bill and Al published their fanzine on schedule—and put this new term into the lexicon.
Today I do a search for the word “fanboy” on the Internet—and get thousands of pages. Yet when I limit the search to include the names of Bill Beasley or Al Judson (plus fanboy), there are no results at all. I know all Al wanted out of life was a little piece of comix immortality. When he was lettering for Marvel (or was it Atlas at the time?), the letterer never received any credit. When Al passed on a few years ago, there was no mention of his death in The Buyer’s Guide or Comics Journal. Yet the word that he and Bill put into the lingo of comix is used daily by all comics fans. How sadly ironic and poignant.
Al never lived to see himself credited for the term “fanboy,” which appears in the current Oxford English Dictionary. Well, such is life. But Bill Beasley is still very much with us. What can we do to see that justice is done? What can we do to secure Bill Beasley his richly deserved place in comics history? 
As the modern vultures descend upon Bill’s contribution to comix (inventing the term “fanboy”), by putting out dozens of books using Bill’s title as their own, and without a speck of recognition for Bill and Al, the injustice of the whole situation is a black eye on the countenance of the comic book industry. Since very few copies of the original Fanboy have survived, it well may be up to us (who have bagged these precious issues of the original Fanboy) to put things aright and see that Bill and Al get at least a “special category Harvey Award” for their contribution to this industry.--Jay Lynch (January 7, 1999)
Labels: beasley, crumb, fanboy, griffith, jay lynch, judson, saha, shatner, trekkie
¶ 8:44 AM 3 comments
Monday, April 28, 2008
Chester Gould's The Girl Friends (1931)
Click heading to hear Helen Kane sing.
In the years before he created Dick Tracy, Chester Gould (1900-1985) drew several other strips, the movie parody Fillum Fables (1924), the interview feature Why It's a Windy City and the Siamese cats of Radio Cats (1924). Although he had been earning $100 a week at the Evening American, he dropped Fillum Fables ("I wanted to get away from that because it was not my original idea") and moved over to the Chicago Daily News (taking a salary drop to $50 a week) in order to develop his own properties. While drawing ad art and editorial cartoons at the Daily News he was offered the opportunity to do another strip, The Girl Friends (1931), as he explained:
Chester Gould! ©2008 Ed Piskor and Jay Lynch
Want to visit the Chester Gould Dick Tracy Museum in Woodstock, Illinois? Better hurry! It closes June 1 due to financial problems. Meanwhile, those deluxe IDW hardcover reprints of Dick Tracy which began in 2006 keep rolling out with the fifth volume due in August. The first volume features the Plainclothes Tracy strips which got Gould the job.
Gould eventually began to identify with his character. He and his wife once checked into a hotel as "Mr. and Mrs. Dick Tracy." And I recall seeing many decades ago a newspaper photo showing Gould in his bizarre backyard cemetery with rows of gravestones indicating where each of Dick Tracy villains were buried. Did he actually put drawings of the villains in little coffins and bury the drawings? I don't remember.
Gould could draw Dick Tracy blindfolded!
Click heading to hear Helen Kane sing.In the years before he created Dick Tracy, Chester Gould (1900-1985) drew several other strips, the movie parody Fillum Fables (1924), the interview feature Why It's a Windy City and the Siamese cats of Radio Cats (1924). Although he had been earning $100 a week at the Evening American, he dropped Fillum Fables ("I wanted to get away from that because it was not my original idea") and moved over to the Chicago Daily News (taking a salary drop to $50 a week) in order to develop his own properties. While drawing ad art and editorial cartoons at the Daily News he was offered the opportunity to do another strip, The Girl Friends (1931), as he explained:
Well, while I was drawing rugs and canned corn and stuff for the regular daily ads, I was told to come into the office of the editor of the News. I didn't know if I was going to get fired or what. He said, "I understand you have some experience with the American." I said, "Yes!" "Well, we need a girl strip in the Daily News," and he asked if I could draw a girl strip. I said, "I sure can!" So he said, "Well, let me see a couple, and we might start using them right here in the News." That was the way I got into The Girl Friends."
Chester Gould!, a visual memoir of a real-life experience that happened in 1968, was originally drawn for a planned book of autobiographical comic strips titled Ink & Anguish. Jay Lynch wrote the scripts and roughed layouts for half the book, and Ed Piskor drew the finished pages. Although Ink & Anguish was eventually abandoned, the strips have recently been running in Mineshaft. Piskor illustrates for American Splendor, Philadelphia City Paper and other publications. Just published is his new book Wizzywig about hacker Kevin Phenicle. Click here for a cornucopia of comics and illustrations by Ed Piskor.
Jay created the characters of Nard 'n Pat decades ago for his Bijou Funnies, drew many installments of the syndicated alternative weekly strip Phoebe and the Pigeon People, devised humor products for Topps Chewing Gum and contributed to Mad. His new children's book, Otto's Orange Day (illustrated by Frank Cammuso), was just published by Toon Books.
Jay created the characters of Nard 'n Pat decades ago for his Bijou Funnies, drew many installments of the syndicated alternative weekly strip Phoebe and the Pigeon People, devised humor products for Topps Chewing Gum and contributed to Mad. His new children's book, Otto's Orange Day (illustrated by Frank Cammuso), was just published by Toon Books.
Want to visit the Chester Gould Dick Tracy Museum in Woodstock, Illinois? Better hurry! It closes June 1 due to financial problems. Meanwhile, those deluxe IDW hardcover reprints of Dick Tracy which began in 2006 keep rolling out with the fifth volume due in August. The first volume features the Plainclothes Tracy strips which got Gould the job.Gould eventually began to identify with his character. He and his wife once checked into a hotel as "Mr. and Mrs. Dick Tracy." And I recall seeing many decades ago a newspaper photo showing Gould in his bizarre backyard cemetery with rows of gravestones indicating where each of Dick Tracy villains were buried. Did he actually put drawings of the villains in little coffins and bury the drawings? I don't remember.
Gould could draw Dick Tracy blindfolded! In the chaotic Cabbie (1987) the brilliant Barcelona artist Marti Riera unleashed a cast of depraved characters in a remarkable recreation of Chester Gould's art style.
Labels: chester gould, dick tracy, ed piskor, jay lynch, marti riera
¶ 8:45 AM 0 comments
