Our March Towards the Great War (World War I) — whose official start is just over a year away — continues, this time with cartoons involving what in retrospect, can be seen as a deliberate working towards war, instead of backing away from it. All of the cartoons in this post (except where stated otherwise) are scanned from the May 1913 issue of Cartoons Magazine.

Above, Nelson Harding‘s front cover depicting Europe’s forward march of military build-up.

Beneath, from the April 1913 issue of Cartoons Magazine, artist Ryan Walker, in Coming Nation, suggests that Europe’s rulers fight their wars themselves.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their captions.

Two styles of preparing for war — above (from April 1913) by Barnett, and below (first seen in the Bystander), by E.T. Reed.

Cartoons involving sword points, by Raymond Oscar Evans (above), and Boardman Robinson (below).

Doomed dynasties, Czarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), neither of which (in an understatement) would not emerge from the war well. Art by Paul A. Plaschke (from April 1913) & K.A. Wilke.

Doug Wheeler

WWIcartoons BritBystander

No, you haven’t missed a sequel to Iron Man. The number four in the headline above refers to the fourth week of sharing Iron Man records. Did you think I’d only have a mere three songs about Iron Man? What kind of amateur comics tunes archivist do you think I am? This week we have another song about the armored avenger that I’m sure you’ll enjoy. Will this be the last one? Tune in next Tuesday to find out!

Click the links below to listen.

Iron Man - The Bad Plus

Another Golden Age character I never really “got”? Quality’s Kid Eternity. Oh I’m not blind, kids in the 1940′s must have found him chock full of wish fulfillment; he had all the advantages of being dead with none of the disadvantages, could boss around his supposed adult supervisor Mr. Keeper and by saying the word “Eternity” summon an endless supply of historical and/or mythological “big brothers” to beat the crap out of bad guys. But I did “get” that his origin was “suspiciously similar” (to be extraordinarily polite) to the 1941 movie Here Comes Mr. Jordan, the same way Plastic Man’s origin was “suspiciously similar” to the movie Brother Orchid.

But like Captain Marvel I always thought of him as being more of a fantasy type than an actual superhero at least as I understood them. I’ve read quite a few Kid Eternity stories, but this one from 1948 is fairly weird as it tries to jump on the flying saucer fad then currently sweeping America by having the Kid deal with an actual Martian invasion. Having read a decades worth of comics where the monsters/aliens would invariably turn out to be gangsters in rubber masks up on the final page I was prepared for some kind of a last minute cop out.

Much of the fun, as I’m capable of understanding it , of a Kid Eternity story is the variety of figures from history and mythology that the Kids calls upon to get him out of his current jam. Well the line-up in this story is pretty oddball. First he calls upon Padre Junipero Serra, “friend of all California Indians” (though the Indians were probably not all that crazy about him; do a Google search if you’re interested). Kid calls upon him because “he knows every Indian on the coast” which would supposedly be helpful in ferreting out the location of the Martians. The only trouble being it’s never clear whether Serra is supposed to consult with dead or living Indians, but the point is moot because instead of asking for directions he just does it himself. Next up is Louis Pasteur who proves useless as the Martians green mould isn’t bacterial in nature, but they escape from it with the help of Bucephalus “Alexander’s great war horse!” History tells us he had a black coat with a large white star on his brow, but nobody apparently told the colorist because he’s golden here. The Martians are finally defeated by someone identified only as “Steinmetz”; this appears to be Charles Proteus Steinmetz, mathematician and electrical engineer. He instantly susses out the advanced alien technology and know just how to stop it — by smashing it with a wrench. Which really seems like something the Kid might have been able to do on his own.

Next up, a “comic” adventure featuring a very strange protagonist, Her Highness. For one thing, not that many “villains” (if you want to bend over backwards to be generous; “low level con artist” would be a lot more accurate) didn’t have their own features and for another she was a spinoff; she made her first appearance of Hit Comics #27 where she faced Kid Eternity. For another, she kind of looks like a cross-dressing (she wore men’s suits) little person version of Bob Hope as an old lady, but apparently somebody at Quality saw something in her that I clearly can’t because the strip had a fairly long run. She was always accompanied in her hairbrained cons by Silk, a slinky beauty who could have made it as a Femme Fatale in The Spirit if she only had a smidge more ambition. Oddly enough she survived the Golden Age and appeared in World’s Finest #282 in 1982 in a Captain Marvel Jr. story during the period when late writer Nelson E. Bridwell decreed that having essentially the same origin somehow made Freddy Freeman and Kid Eternity brothers.

The scripts for Sir Roger were generally straight forward and not very funny (among the many things that have not aged well over the decades it’s gags about “hobo’s”), but there’s something strangely surreal and even a little disturbing about Micheal Senich’s art on the feature. Maybe it’s the sparseness of the backgrounds or the grotesque design of Sir Roger (especially his creepy milky eye) but it makes me think of Gilbert Hernandez of Love & Rockets.

And finally, Rasputin and Merwin, a standard funny animal feature, but kind of interesting, and not just because I had no idea Hit Comics ever featured funny animal material. But also because the art by Ernie Hart is quite nice.

For this year’s Memorial Day, we present a second set of extracts from the 1942 Chicago Tribune book, War Cartoons, which reprints in chronological sequence the first ten months WW II editorial cartoons by that paper.

The art shown here, is by Joseph Parrish, Carey Orr, and Carl Somdal. There are a few instances of stereotypical racist depictions in this batch, both what one would expect from WW II propaganda (Japanese), plus the casual not-giving-it-any-thought of slighting Latin American allies, with the kind of depictions cartoonists had been doing for awhile (see our posts on Latin America, Mexico’s Revolution, and Panama).

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their text.

Doug Wheeler

— Doug

E-Man fans will enjoy not only the success story in this piece but the great gallery of E-Man covers old and new.

http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-e-man-cometh.html

Fans of the late artist Jeffrey Catherine Jones can now go here to download the long awaited documentary, Better Things.

http://alivemindcinema.com/index.php

Here’s a too-brief look at a gorgeous vintage UK Star Trek strip.

http://kidr77.blogspot.com/2013/05/where-mike-noble-has-gone-before.html

And finally, a later look at Kirk and company in their leisure suit era by Dave Cockrum.

http://aparofan.blogspot.com/2013/05/dave-cockrums-star-trek.html

Above, a pair of short bios of William Kemp Starrett and Ernest E. Burtt, opens up our monthly Focus on Cartoonists, scanned from the May 1913 issue of Cartoons Magazine.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their captions.

The May 1913 Comment and Review page below, is mostly devoted to denouncing Indiana’s Anti-Cartoon Bill, while simultaneously dismissing Futurist Art and the artists who create it, as frauds or “fake“s…

Above, artist Herbert H. Perry (using art examples by Edgar F. Schilder), on “The Stages of a Cartoon”.

Beneath, an ad for bound volumes of Cartoons Magazine‘s first year.

Karl K. Knecht writes about his Chalk Talk Experiences, above.

While Henry C. Williamson, below, continues his series on cartoonists of the past, writing on the one year anniversary of the death of Homer Davenport.

Cartoonist J.H. Shonkwiler hypes promotes his cartoon character, Billy Butt-in.

And finally, below we hear stories for about visitors intruding upon cartoonists’ studios (and what the cartoonists did to them), and of cartoonists bravely not reacting to an instance of judicial oversight (unless you count telling this story).

Doug Wheeler

— Doug

Another Iron Man song? Why not? I devoted weeks and weeks to Road Runner songs. I can certainly celebrate Iron Man 3 for one more Tuesday. After all, it’s a big hit movie! This time it’s a folk-y kind of cover of the classic tune. It’s like reading comics at a Renaissance Fair.

Click the link below and enjoy!

Iron Man - Men-An-Tol

If nothing else, Victor Fox’s Weird Comics lives up to it’s name, It’s pretty much equally divided between a couple of sensationally lame superheroes and some just plain weird features. Headlining, for some reason, this issue is The Dart and of course his partner Ace the Amazing Boy. When I saw Ace on the cover wielding a baseball bat I thought, “No way does he actually do that in the story inside”, but he totally does. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being unnecessarily squeamish but it sure seems like if you’re a Golden Age comic book publisher the very last thing you need is kids reading stories where a kid goes Inglourious Bastards batshit berserk with a baseball bat. It just seems like it would be kind of bad for business. Bucky never stooped to using a bat, and he fought actual Nazi’s.

I’ve been chasing the mystery that is Kooba (apparently it’s supposed to be pronounced the way actual Cubans say the word “Cuba”; this would never have occurred to me) for a long time but all reports indicate this was just another in a series of get rich schemes of Victor Fox that crashed and burned. To me it also doesn’t seem like particularly good business to publish a bunch of ads for a nonexistent product in an attempt to drum up interest in it, but apparently that’s exactly what Victor did. All known evidence suggests that Kooba never actually existed. And the world (or at least my world) is a little sadder place because of it.

This issue says The Dart is a “reincarnation of the Roman racket buster Caius Martius” but according to the Public Domain Superhero Wikia he actually was Martius who got himself stuck in a stone block by an evil sorcerer and woke up in contemporary America. I’m not exactly sure why he was called “The Dart” seeing as how he didn’t use darts,and his principal weapon was a sword; one assumes it had something to do with the fact the publishers Quality and Ace already had characters called “The Sword”. The Dart could also supposedly fly, but you sure couldn’t prove it by this story where he remains safely on the ground.

I’ve read a lot of Golden Age comics, but I can count the times where a mystery man gets whacked in the head with a wrench by a henchman on the fingers of one hand.

Now, we get to the weird. Like The Sorceress of Zoom….

…and Dr. Mortal.

Also, pretty weird was Marga the Panther Woman, who was a pretty standard jungle girl, except for the fact that she had been”inoculated with the traits of a black panther” by her father. You would think this would lead to all sorts of Cat People type sexual shenanigans but sadly it just seemed to have given her super strength.

On the other hand, we never Sheena or Rulah pulling stunts like this.

I said there were a “couple” of lame superheroes in this issue. After The Dart there was The Eagle, accompanied by his underage protegee Buddy the Daredevil Boy. The Eagle could, by various means, fly, not that you could tell from this story where like The Dart he’s grounded. Believe it or not at one point he had a title of his own where he was seen wearing a completely different outfit, a snazzy blue and gold number with a huge eagle chest insignia and stripped cape. The Public Domain Superhero Wikia refers to his apparel here as his “alternate costume” where I’d call it “I forgot my shirt”. I tend to think the guys at Fox were just so damn busy grinding out page after page of material to meet demand that they just kind of forgot little details like what characters looked like or what they did. Either that of they were just freaking lazy.

And finally here’s Dynamo who isn’t quite as lame as his stablemates, primarily because he has an actual superpower and a pretty cool costume, which actually improved, going from an OK green outfit to a much better red with a lightning bolt insignia.

The creators actually thought to give Dynamo a weakness; he periodically had to recharge his electrical based powers. Any source would do but he seemed to prefer a handy electric chair. When it comes to sitting in an electric chair, Dynamo has got it covered.

For Victoria Day, we have some peeks at the Punch in Canada, perhaps the first Canadian comic periodical, running 1849 to 1850. All the art in this posting is by that publication’s founder, John Henry Walker. A detailed write up on the introduction of Punch in Canada, can be found here, on Canadian cartoonist John Adcock‘s blog.

Click on the above & below cartoons, to view them in greater detail.

Above, the front cover art gracing most (perhaps all??) 1849 issues of Punch in Canada. Beneath, the cover art found on the 1850 issues.

Cartoons from the December 15th, 1849 issue (above) & December 22nd, 1849 (below). In the beneath cartoon, John Henry Boulton, M.P. for Niagra, had been favored for appointment to the Judicial Bench, but was blocked chiefly through the efforts of a Toronto newspaper, the Colonist. (Information from Volume 1 of J.W. Bengough‘s Caricature History of Canadian Politics.

Above, from the December 29th, 1849 issue, “The Trappers”, in reference to the decision to make Toronto Canada’s capitol. The trappers are two representatives from Toronto, Henry Sherwood & Robert Baldwin. (Again, this information comes from Bengough’s Canadian Caricature history.)

Beneath, a smaller cartoon, from the January 19th, 1850 issue, showing a Canadian view of Americans. The “in the style of H.B.”, refers to then-popular British political cartoonist John Doyle (father of cartoonist Richard Doyle), who signed his work “H.B.”. Having seen much of John Doyle’s work, I’d describe it as uniformly dull, flat, boring — sorry, but even this little sketch by John Walker has more life in it than most John Doyle cartoons.

Doug Wheeler

Barry Pearl takes a fun and informative look at Iron Man III in context of the original Tales of Suspense stories in the comics.

http://forbushman.blogspot.com/2013/05/iron-man-iii-review-and-look-back-at.html

Here’s a nice look at the late Joe Kubert’s wraparound covers for his final DC series.

http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-books-of-joe.html

From the Wayback Machine, here’s a detailed look at the history of horror comics other than EC, written by sci-fi writer Lawrence Watt-Evans!

http://www.watt-evans.com/theotherguys.html

Finally today, here’s a modern loo at one of my favorite early Teen Titans issues featurimg the first TT appearance of Speedy.

http://bronzeagebabies.blogspot.com/2013/05/that-zany-bob-haney-teen-titans-4.html