American Comic Book Chronicles: 1965-69 by John Wells, TwoMorrows, 288 pages, $41.95
Fandom is a remarkable thing, as this absurdly detailed survey of the contents, business and impact of comics in the late ’60s details. It was as if a tiny minority who genuinely cared about artists, characters and continuity had somehow simulated the Internet decades before it was invented. Using fanzines, letters pages and baby boomer audacity, these fans influenced the industry, rewrote history by championing obscure creators, and obsessively documented a medium designed to churn out throwaway objects. This liberally illustrated volume seems to cover every narrative, creative and commercial development during this period.
And what a period! Though the early ’60s — when Marvel reinvented comics with angsty heroes — might seem more fascinating, developments in the wake of Marvel’s revolution, and after the campy “Batman” show-inspired Batmania, resulted in genuinely bizarre comics. Forget the morbid Warren horror magazines and filthy undergrounds; the mainstream was where you found a hero whose power was super dismemberment, a crime-fighting circus corpse, and Fruitman, the blushing banana. This volume contains no story reprints, but it offers thorough summaries, lovingly reproduced art and kooky content. It doesn’t hurt that a number of the creations championed by fans but ignored by masses have proved their worth since freaky fandom went ultra-mainstream. One of the weirdest drawings in the book is a 1969 cover introducing a ridiculous lineup of characters created by journeyman writer Arnold Drake. Drake called them “The Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck by Don Rosa, Fantagraphics, 424 pages, $49.99
Few comics artists inspired fan loyalty like Carl Barks, the illustrator/writer who, starting in the 1940s, eschewed the bland personalities of Disney’s ducks and created a series of epics combining seductive “clean line” art, charming humor and engaging adventure. I’d argue “The Good Duck Artist” surpassed Hergé by inventing Uncle Scrooge, a miserly, zillionaire hoarder who is somehow a wholly sympathetic protagonist.
Few comics fans have taken their zealotry to the lengths of Don Rosa, a Barks obsessive who honed his duck scholarship in the 1970s fan press. When a publisher began reprinting Barks comics in the 1980s, supplemented by original duck stories, Rosa’s eyes popped out when he identified the new works as “fan art.” Inspired, the middle-aged Rosa sold his lucrative family construction business and committed himself to the humble, penny-pinching life of a full-time duck artist. As these luxurious volumes of his ’80s work demonstrate, Rosa had the chops to do so. His grand “The Son of the Sun” was a Barks-ian blockbuster that captured the spirit and scope of his hero’s best work, and to my untrained eye, his duck drawings fit the Barks bill. Other species, however (like the canine-ish Beagle Boys) have a stiffer, rougher quality, which is actually glorious: It’s a reminder that this modern master is at heart a worshipful amateur — and that’s what makes Rosa’s work genuinely special.
The Understanding Monster: Book 2 by Theo Ellsworth, Secret Acres, 68 pages, $21.95
One reason comics fans found themselves on the receiving end of ridicule before their contemporary cultural takeover is that it seems absurd to devote deep thought and attention to hackish-ness involving Wonder Woman lassoing alien apes. Which is why it’s always been satisfying to come across an artist undeniably elevating the medium. Other than some traces of the Fort Thunder collective, Ellsworth’s work doesn’t invoke other comics makers, instead bringing to mind the most intriguing elements of so-called high art and outsider art (such as the maddened immoderation of Henry Darger’s work). By positioning genuinely strange, nightmarish figures against astonishingly dense, richly textured backgrounds, Ellsworth presides over a shotgun wedding between 3-D dynamism and soothing flatness.
If you missed Book One, it might not be a problem, because despite the artist’s excessively explanatory dialogue, I’m baffled by the narrative and subtext of this eerie fairy tale (mostly taking place in the mind of an immobilized mummy and involving ghosts, a laughing demon and a three-eyed house gnome). But despite my confusion, I unequivocally enjoyed the bewildering experience of navigating this visual feast, due out in early November. It brought to mind another comparable cartoonist, Chicagoan Edie Fake. I could never follow his “Gaylord Phoenix,” but I still consider it one of the greatest pieces of contemporary cartooning. Ellsworth, likewise, has cohesively combined the confounding and convincing.
Jake Austen is editor of Roctober magazine and co-author of “Playground” and “Darkest America.”
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