Month: August 2007

 

By Crockett Johnson (Del Rey/Ballantine)
ISBN: 0-345-32673-3, ISBN: 0-345-32674-1, ISBN: 0-345-32981-3,
ISBN: 0-345-32880-9, ISBN: 0-345-32881-7

The modern newspaper has few, if any, drama or adventure strips. If indeed, a paper has any cartoon strips – as opposed to single panel editorial cartoons – at all, chances are they will be of the variety typified by Charles Schulz’s Peanuts or Scott Adams’ Dilbert. You could describe these as single idea stories with a set-up, delivery and punch-line, all rendered in a sparse, pared-down-to-basics drawing style. Any continuity to the production comes from the characters themselves, and usually a building of gag-upon-gag in extended themes. The advantage to the newspaper is obvious. If you like a strip it will encourage you to buy the paper. If you miss an episode or two, you can return fresh at any time having, in real terms, missed nothing.

Such was not always the case, especially in America. Once the daily drama and adventure strip was considered a circulation builder and preserver. There were lush, lavish and magnificently rendered Fantasies and Romances rubbing shoulders with grim and gritty, moody masterpieces of crime, war and human passion.

And eventually there was Barnaby. On April 20th 1942 the liberal New York tabloid PM began running a new, and in many ways outlandish, little four panel strip by Crockett Johnson, a guy who wanted steady employment and didn’t actually like comic strips at all. As David Johnson Leisk, he’d spent years as a commercial artist, drawing department-store advertising and the all-too occasional cartoon panel to magazines such as Collier’s. Despite his reticence, within a year the strip had become the new darling of the intelligentsia, with a hard-back book collection, rave reviews in Time, Newsweek and Life and a fan-base that ranged from Rockwell Kent, William Rose Benet and Lois Untermeyer to Dorothy Parker and W. C. Fields. Not since George Herriman’s Krazy Kat had a piece of popular culture so infiltrated the halls of the mighty. During a global war with heroes and villains aplenty, where no comic page could top the daily headlines for thrills, drama and heartbreak, something as unique as Barnaby was an absolute panacea to the horrors without ever ignoring or escaping them.

Barnaby himself is a smart, ingenuous and honest pre-schooler who is “adopted” by a short, fat, mildly unsavoury and wholly unsuitable gentleman with pink wings. J.J. O’Malley, fully paid-up, card carrying-member of the Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns and Little Men’s Chowder and Marching Society is to be the boy’s Fairy Godfather, and a lazier, more self-aggrandizing, mooching old soak could not be found anywhere. His continued presence hopelessly complicates the sweet boy’s life, and that of his poor parents who fear that Barnaby is cursed with too much imagination.

This is not a strip about childhood fantasy. The theme here, beloved by both parents and children alike, is that grown-ups don’t listen to kids enough, and that they certainly don’t know everything. As Johnson expands his wonderful cast of Gremlins, Ogres, Ghosts, Policemen, Spies, Black Marketeers, Talking Dogs and Little Girls, only Barnaby’s parents are always too busy, and too certain that O’Malley and all his ilk are unwanted, juvenile fabrications. With such a simple but flexible formula he creates, however reluctantly, pure cartoon magic.

The surreal whimsy of the strip is instantly captivating, and the gentle charm of the writing is well-nigh irresistible, but the lasting legacy of this groundbreaking strip is the clean sparse line-work that reduces the images to almost technical drawings, unwavering line-weights and solid swathes of black that define space and depth by practically eliminating it. Almost every modern strip cartoon follows many of the principles laid down here by a man who purportedly disliked strips. The major difference between then and now should also be noted, however. Crockett Johnson clearly hated doing shoddy work, or short-changing his audience. On average each of his daily encounters, always self-contained, usually building on the previous episode without needing to re-reference it, contained about three or four times as much text as its contemporaries, and even more so its latter-day descendents. It’s a tribute to the man’s ability that the extra wordage was never unnecessary, and often uniquely readable.

It’s a tribute to his dedication that he managed this miracle by hand type-setting the strips himself in a highly distinctive lower case sans-serif typeface. No sticky-beaked educational vigilante can claim that Barnaby damages children’s reading abilities by confusing them with non-standard letter-forms (a charge thrown at comics as late as the turn of this century!).

Since these books were issued in the mid 1980s there have occasional re-releases and follow-ups. But never has there been the consolidated effort to preserve this little wonder in the manner of Krazy Kat, Peanuts or our own Giles. But there should be. Barnaby is, in many ways, a lost masterpiece. It is influential, groundbreaking and a shining classic of the form. You are all poorer for not knowing it, and should move mountains to change that situation. I’m not kidding.

© 1985 Random House Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith (IDW)
ISBN 0-9719-7755-3

This is the sort of book I just hate to review. Not because of a lack of quality but rather due to a stylistic dichotomy. The premise is sound and compelling for a horror movie (after which the creators pattern the tale) and details the last days of Barrow, Alaska, a town where the sun sets for an entire month at a time. So what happens when a posse of vampires come for an extended visit one sundown?

The dialogue is as realistic as any in a “slasher” flick. The narrative rattles along and the action is well-paced. But what about the art?

Ben Templesmith is obviously an accomplished illustrator and works well in an expressive, painterly manner, like a blending of Kent Williams or Jon J Muth’s watercolours with Ted McKeever’s figure work. And that’s fine for mood, but absolute anathema for those parts of the story where clarity is important. Like some of those later episodes of Angel on TV, too often I simply couldn’t make out who was doing what to whom.

Comics more than any medium depend on a willing and total suspension of belief and anything that breaks the flow must be hunted down and killed messily. This is a Good Horror Story but I can’t honestly call it a Good Comic Book.

© 2005 Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Bill Willingham & Shawn McManus (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84576-194-4

Bill Willingham is certainly on a roll these days. Not only is he doing stand-out work on Shadowpact (ISBN 1-84576-533-8), but he’s also writing one of the best adult titles in the world, namely Fables. He also seems to have the odd moment to dash off the occasional miniseries. It’s a pity he can’t draw as well. No, wait, he can do that really well too.

Thessaly, for those of you not in the know, is the last of the immortal, and extremely deadly, Thessalian Witches. She first appeared in The Doll’s House story arc from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, before eventually spinning off in to her own miniseries (also written by Willingham and collected as part of the Taller Tales graphic collection).

This second solo outing sees her reunited with Fetch, the ghostly agglomeration of the uncounted thousands of people, demons, gods and monsters Thessaly has killed over the millennia of her existence. He/it is stalking her in his perpetual – and inexplicable – quest to bed her, when he inadvertently unleashes the one thing in the universe she cannot kill, and sets it on a path to her destruction.

How they thwart this inevitable doom provides a light, fluffy blend of RomCom, road trip and macabre horror delightfully illustrated by the ever enjoyable Shawn McManus. Chilling it ain’t, but a splendid read for fantasy fans, nonetheless.

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.