The Olden Days

 

Heidi's Punch (illustration for a story; watercolour, 2010)

Amongst my earliest childhood memories are glimpses of comic books.  1968: a coverless Thor comic, lying near the ditch behind the backstop at what passed for a baseball field in my little town in Northern Ontario.  A smattering of kids, running around, climbing, screaming.  The Thor comic was in terrible shape, as if smote by the mystic mallet Mjolnir itself.  Perhaps it had been lying there all winter, the slush melting on it in the spring, the April showers soaking it, the summer sun bleaching it, children stomping on it.  I picked it up, studied a panel or two, then tossed it aside, leaving it to the ravages of its environment.  I couldn't read yet, anyways.

A couple of years later me an' my friend Benny investigated a Volkswagen Beetle parked at the Woodland hotel, way off to the side, in the dirt and weeds, away from prying eyes.  Judging by the contents strewn about the back seat, we figured the car was owned by hippies.  But what interested me was the small pile of comics on the floor by the back seat.  Fortunately, a window was open, just enough to allow passage for a six-year-old kid.  Benny was a year older than me, so he helped me scramble through the aperture.  I handed him the comics, then made my exit.  We split the pile in half.  I can't remember what my take was, except that I grabbed the Giant Superman Annual, sans cover.  We never did get caught.  That must have been the summer of 1970, because I never saw Benny much after that.  We didn't go to the same school, and he moved away a year later, I think.

Lisette La Bete (watercolour; 2010)

Obviously, I liked comic books.  So much so, I started drawing them.  I've been drawing since I can remember.  When I was in Grade 2, I'd amuse the other kids by drawing on the blackboard just before school started.  I liked Gold Key's PINK PANTHER comics, which they'd just started publishing, and I knew how to draw the Pink Panther and the Inspector by heart -- and we had pink chalk -- so I depicted those two characters.  The teacher didn't mind, as long as I wasn't drawing monsters or anything objectionable.

One evening I was sitting in the living room reading (as well as my level of literacy permitted) THE INCREDIBLE HULK #115 (May, 1969), a year or two after it had been published.  At the end of the story, the Leader, a green-skinned villain with a 1930s movie star moustache and an elongated cranium to house his superior brain, had imprisoned the Hulk in a giant mound of "indestructible, pliable plastithene".  There's no way I could have pronounced any of those words, but I could see that the Hulk was in a rubber cell, with walls that looked like chewing gum, and, try as he might, he couldn't get out.  He was trapped -- forever!  The story was to be continued (or "Hulk-inued", as writer Stan Lee put it).  Except I didn't have the next issue, so I set about writing and drawing my own conclusion.  I didn't get far, a few pages, but it was the earliest attempt at drawing a comic book that I can remember.

I still have that copy of INCREDIBLE HULK #115.  The cover is long gone, though.  In fact, I still have a few thousand comics from my youth.  Some of the covers of the earlier issues have my name scrawled on them, printed in upper case letters, sometimes incorporated in the logo.  On a few occasions I spelled my own name wrong.  My signature hasn't changed, except that it might be a little more refined.

Metal (brush and ink; 1982)

I would draw many comics over the years.  Hundreds.  Most drawn in pencil, some in pen and ink, felt tip pen, ball point pen, watercolour, etc.  Some were drawn on blank paper from writing pads, some on perforated paper, ruled paper, newsprint, and even the backs of mimeographed classroom handouts -- whatever I could get my hands on.  In high school I acquired a seemingly unlimited source, when a confederate helped me steal what was supposed to be one ream of blank paper from the shelf at the back of the math and science classroom.  He tossed it out the window to me -- then another, and another, until I had 5 or 6.  He got carried away, no doubt encouraged by the laughter of the other students.  I stored the paper in my locker, and brought it home, a little at a time.

I was 8 or 9 when I started my own comic book company: Super Comix.  The June 14, 1972 issue of the bi-weekly MONSTER TIMES tabloid featured a 2-page article on Robert Crumb's Fritz the Cat (to coincide with the release of the movie), and amongst the illustrations was the cover of Crumb's HEAD COMIX (1968).  I thought the spelling of "comix" was clever, so I copied it.  It wasn't long, though, before I switched to the more conventional spelling.  Still, it was a woefully unimaginative name for a comic book company.  Eventually I started populating Super Comics with fictitious staff, including Robert "Babe" Bolte (pronounced bol-tay), the publisher.  I usually used my own name as artist, but credited others with the writing, inking, lettering, colouring and editing.  (This, despite the fact that my comics were neither inked nor coloured.)

Poe (high school project; 22" x 28"; pen, brush and ink, watercolour; 1981)

The superheroes started piling up: Seagul [sic], Bulky (whose sidekick was a little Cairn Terrier named Fluffy, Iron Silver (whose alter ego was Ron Silver, but nobody could figure that out), Mosquito (a Spider-Man rip-off), Thor-Axe (inspired by an entry on ants that I came across in a school book), Vampire Kid (an anti-hero; the "kid" came from Two-Gun Kid, but it wasn't a Western), Captain Oppo (short for "opponent"; Captain America without the stars and stripes); Black Hero (my answer to Luke Cage, Marvel's latest character), Doctor Turmight [sic], Weapon-Man (a Golden Age hero), The Choker (oddly, he had no hands!), and others, even more ridiculous, not worth mentioning.

I would draw anything that popped into my head, but when it came to comics I limited myself mostly to two genres: superhero and horror.  The local newsstand, a mile away, carried only mainstream comics, of course: Marvel (my preference), DC, Archie, Harvey, Gold Key, Charlton, Dell.  That was the extent of my experience.

Heather and Beast (drawing pen, brush and ink, ink wash, watercolour; 2009)

But then I discovered HEAVY METAL magazine, with the September, 1978 issue.  It opened my eyes.  I'd never seen anything like it.  I had no idea that comics could be done this way.  I was immediately struck by Richard Corben and Philippe Druillet.  Corben's "New Tales of the Arabian Nights" seemed three dimensional, the artwork leapt off the page.  Druillet's "Gail", featuring Lone Sloane, astounded me.  The borders of the panels were elaborate, artistic designs, mini-masterpieces unto themselves.  The detail was incredible.  I knew the original pages must have been gigantic!  Druillet's colour scheme was whimsical: sometimes Sloane's hair was green, the top half of his face red, the bottom half blue, and it changed from panel to panel.  The text was surreal.  I realised comics could be anything I wanted them to be.  There were no rules.

Within a year I'd abandoned Marvel comics and its conventions, its restrictions.  Besides, comics had just gone up to 40 cents.  HEAVY METAL was all I needed: magazine size; slick paper; 100 pages, with only a few house ads.  I replaced the entire Marvel line with one mag that sold for $1.50.  In 1982 I gave up on HEAVY METAL.  It was nothing like it had been in the '70s.

Monster Storm (21" x 28"; pen, brush and ink, watercolour; October 1982)

The novelty of European comics eventually wore off.  I was in limbo.  Then, a few years later, I discovered early comic strips.  When I was a kid I read the "Sunday" funnies every Saturday (that's when they were published, in my neck of the woods).  I would sit on the couch reading Peanuts, Blondie, Hi and Lois, Miss Peach, Nancy, Henry, etc.  It was proper amusement for a child, but I wasn't terribly interested in the funny pages.  But as an adult I discovered Little Nemo in Slumberland, Little Orphan Annie, Little Annie Rooney, Dick Tracy, Bringing Up Father, The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown, to name just a few, and I realised there was a time when comic strips were truly great, full of imagination and thrills.

Tomboy (obscure 1950s preteen vigilante; watercolour; 2015)

In one way, too awful to contemplate, that appreciation came too late.  One summer evening, while I was still in high school, I went for a stroll with three friends, to the last street in town on the edge of the forest, and to a shack past the last house on that street.  It was a wooden shack, the boards grey and weathered, not unlike the dilapidated barns you see teetering over in unkept fields.  It belonged to the eccentric old man who owned that last house.  One of our party was under the impression that the old goat had died recently, so we figured there was no harm in taking a peek inside.  It was filled from floor to ceiling with stacks of newspapers, some of them toppled over.  Thousands and thousands of newspapers.  They ran into the 1950s and '60s, but most were from the '30s and '40s.  The most remarkable thing was that, despite being stored in this ramshackle shack, left to the hand of Fate, the papers were in pristine condition, the dry, cool, dark environment, ideal for preservation, the only thing that could account for this anomaly.  (The town was founded circa 1950, so the old man must have kept his collection somewhere else before that.)

I went through the oldest newspapers, pulling out the Sunday funnies, until I'd amassed a pile at least a foot high, something I could carry home.  This archaeological find was of no significance to my pals, but it was a potential treasure trove for me.  I had no interest in the funnies at the time, remember?

Cover Stock (pen and ink, ink wash; early 1990s)

I really liked old comics, and DC started reprinting them a lot in the early 1970s.  I bought WANTED, starting with the first issue (August, 1972).  WANTED contained nothing but reprints, mostly from the 1940s and '50s.  Jack Kirby's 52-page DC comics had back up features, like his Newsboy Legion and Boy Commandos comics from the early 1940s, which I enjoyed immensely.  (I was a fan of the Bowery Boys.)  I liked DC's 100-page specials, which were loaded with stories that went as far back as the 1930s.  And their Famous First Editions series were tabloid-sized reprints of the first appearances of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash and Captain Marvel.  Those comics, which seemed practically ancient to an 8-year-old, were fun.  Some were so crudely written and drawn, that I parodied them, just for a lark.  Some of my comics had covers with dates going back to the 1920s, before comic books even existed.

Captain Hit (drawing pen; late 1990s)

Mary Marvel (re-imagining of MARY MARVEL #14, July 1947; original cover by Jack Binder; drawing pen, watercolour; 2010)

But somehow, I just didn't care for newspaper strips.  And so, after reading a few of them, I took the whole pile of rare, perfectly preserved vintage collectors' items that would be worth a mint today, and plopped it down by the hearth, to kindle many a fire.  That pile was only a tiny fraction of the Sunday funnies still stored in that shack, not to mention the countless dailies.  I imagine someone eventually hauled them off, one load at a time, to the town dump in the middle of the woods.  I've been kicking myself ever since.

My high school binder is intact, and loaded with irreverent goodies.  We were on the semester system, four classes per semester, 72 minutes each.  I wasn't exactly an overachiever, and every semester I had a spare, and if that spare occurred before or after lunch, which was also 72 minutes, I'd have 144 minutes to kill.  I did a lot of drawing, including the creation of a futuristic comic book antihero named Robert Johnson, who lives in a huge, technologically-advanced, dystopic city called Sunspot, impossible to get to on foot, being surrounded by swamp and radioactive wasteland full of monsters.  "Robert Johnson" is an assumed name; he's actually Cosmo, a barbarian from the village of Niflheim, in the distant northern country of Ginnungagap, who manages to slash and hack his way through the monsters and scavengers and sneak into Sunspot.  He successfully integrates himself into this curious new world, while retaining his barbarian heritage.

Robert Johnson/Cosmo (pen and ink; 1981)

In 1994 I published the first issue of my small press comic, PLOGG, starring May the Hyperborean.  Hyperborea, like Conan's Cimmeria, is never depicted, but, like Ginnungagap, it may as well be Northern Ontario.  May is a little barbarian girl, tough as they come, but with a big heart.  She's a cross between Little Orphan Annie and Conan.  Each adventure takes May and her dog, Digger, to a new town, and each town has its own particular setting: the 1940s, where she joins the Roughing It Girls (a Girl Guide or Girl Scouts-type group), and gets into trouble with a pirate named Cap'n Sane; the 1860s, where she roams the streets of a thinly-disguised Dickensian London at Christmas time, and battles Krampus.  There are prose stories, too: a fairy tale, in which May is trapped between a werewolf and metal-faced twin witches, and another in which May becomes a pirate and has a dozen weird adventures at sea.  The May comics and stories are meant for children, or the young at heart.

May versus Frosty (cover for PLOGG #6; drawing pen, watercolour; November 2010)

Like I said, PLOGG is a small press comic...very small press...electron microscope small press.  There's only 50 or so copies of each issue, and so far only 6 issues in the past 27 years.  I probably hold some kind of record.  A few more are prepared, sitting on shelves.  "Plogg" is the earliest instance I know of in which I signed a drawing using a pseudonym, around 1973.  I was making fun of Mike Ploog's name.  Ploog drew two of my favourite comics in the early 1970s: WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and THE MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN.

The cover of DUM COMIX No. 9,295 (No. 1 crossed out), published by Tarzee Comic's [sic].  This bit of nonsense was most likely drawn late summer of 1973, around the time I turned 9 years old.  Note the "PLOGG" signature in the corner.

Frankenstein (14" x 22"; ink wash; September 23, 1998)

 

I still have tons of my childhood drawings and comics, going back to 1972.  10,000 pages is a rough estimate.  I ain't gonna count it.  There's also a lot that I remember doing, but which is no longer extant.  I have a few ancient lists of stuff I did, but don't have, and don't remember doing.

I've never considered myself an "artist" -- I'm still just that kid for whom drawing was playtime.  The only difference is that I don't draw or colour at the kitchen table, anymore -- I have an easel and a desk in the living room; I use a much better eraser than the one I had at the end of my orange school pencil; the watercolour set is the cheapest I can get, but it's almost professional grade; and the paper is an improvement over the liner paper found at the bottom of grocery boxes.

In this post I've included a few samples of my artwork from over the years.  This is what I do when I'm not breaking into cars or stealing mass quantities of school supplies.

Jane's Laboratory (illustration for a story; watercolour; 2011)