Eccentric Comics
Image by Terry McCombs
It didn’t really take long for comics fall into a set of forms and presentations that became achingly familiar, this superhero punching that supervillain in the face, one more gimlet clear-eyed stalwart Western gunslinger striking a pose, yet another group of those daffy teens larking about etc…
Any yet there have also been some that did their own thing, quite a few, here are just a few of them.
1. From the people that brought the world Captain Marvel came this comic, perhaps the first that featured only one story for the whole of its length. Radar the World Police Man, a telepath going after dictators for the U.N., did not make much of an impression, at least not one worthy of a second issue as this was the one and only outing for this experiment.
2 & 8. From 1947 to the 1990s the Philippines had a very busy comic book industry, with some great artists, and as can be seen from these two, some pretty unconventional stories as well.
3. A telling of Mozart’s The Magic Flute in three issues of a comic called Night Music. Only in the independents and only in the 80s.
4. Elsie the Cow, a commercial comic put out by Borden’s Milk and given away by milkmen in the 40s to promote milk? Nope, a regular comic from a regular company for sell where the other comics were sold. Didn’t even push milk all that much.
5. Bill Battle, that’s the trouble with comics today… they don’t know how to take the subtle approach that Fawcett did with this short lived Korean War themed comic. I mean really Bill, what are your real feelings on the subject?
6. This is the cover of volume 4 of Saint Young Men, a Japanese manga that accounts the adventures of Jesus and the Buddha who have taking some time off from Paradise and gotten an apartment together just west of Tokyo (even together they can’t afford one in downtown Tokyo) Buddha gets a job drawing manga, while Jesus mostly plays video games. Four volumes so far.
7. Space Western, sure why not? Spur Jackson and this Space Vigilantes was set in the 50s when the comic came out, but worked in space, and were…. Cowboys… or something like that. Seemed like a good idea at the time. And hey! Is this the first use of the term “Moon Bat?”