Tagged: Alfred Bester

Ed Catto: Great Graphic Novels, Old and New               

There’s a peculiar mix of older graphic novels and new graphic novels in our home right now. The new stuff is all part of a top-secret project I’m working on with my daughter, Tess. We can’t let the cat out of the bag yet, but you can check out her showcase of street art for the sneak peek tease. (And now that I think about it, who even puts cats into bags ?!?)

I’m struck by the wide variety of engaging, superlative creative endeavors we cram under the umbrella term “graphic novel.” While there’s one line of thinking that argues Geek Culture has outgrown the phrase “graphic novel,” it’s still handy and flexible enough for hardcore fans, casual fans, librarians, and bookstore owners.

Here are a few of the so-called Old Graphic Novels floating around here:

  • Fiction Illustrated Vol. 3 featured Chandler and was originally presented as “Steranko’s first visual novel, a ground-breaking blend of pictures, words and graphic design…”. It’s a gripping noir mystery with a stylish sense of visual design. I enjoy it more every time I re-read it. There are so many instances when you could say that Jim Steranko is at his best and this is one of them.
  • Gil Kane’s Blackmark is a sci-fi/sword and sorcery thriller that was first published as a Bantam paperback in 1971. Veteran comic artist Kane told this story with illustrated panels, captions, and only the occasional word balloon. Interestingly, with eerily parallels to today’s willful ignorance of climate change, this adventure takes place in a time when “Science is abominated, its secrets buried, its last adherents scourged and cast out by the people…” And the results weren’t pretty. Even when rendered by Gil Kane.
  • The Stars My Destination was an award-winning novel by Golden Age Green Lantern writer Alfred Bester, but for many, it really came to life when Howard Chaykin and Bryon Preiss collaborated on the graphic novel version. It’s a detailed adventure that expects the reader to keep up from the get-go. Chaykin, as you probably know, has a rich history of providing topnotch comics and graphic novels. He shows no sign of slowing down as he continues with his provocative The Divided States of Hysteria, published by Image.

And just so you don’t think I’m too enamored with the past, here are a few of the Newer Graphic Novels scattered around here:

  • Emil Ferris rocked the comics world last year with her debut graphic novel, My Favorite Thing is Monsters. It’s a wild ride by an unconventional, yet monstrously (sorry, couldn’t resist) talented creator. It was instantly talked about and then difficult to get. Now it’s available everywhere. With her clever illustrations and natural storytelling ability, Ferris shows readers how to create something spectacular and incorporate some of your favorite things along the way,
  • Charles Burns isn’t really the David Lynch of comics, but I can see why you might think that. His work is often confusing, dense and just a little bit creepy. As a reader, however, you feel that he would never take the easy way out. Burns engages his audience in a complicated covenant based on a respect for intelligence and his making-it-look easy skills. His 2012 The Hive is part of the trilogy but it stands well enough on its own. Of particular note to lovers of old comics, Burns absolutely nails the zeitgeist of old DC romance comics and John Romita romance art in particular.
  • Francisco Francavilla is absurdly likable as both a person and an artist. He’s hard-working, optimistic and personable when you meet him. Artistically, he uses his creations to embrace everything he loves and then wraps it all up with innovative design and unexpected color. You may be enjoying his current work from Dynamite on Will Eisner’s The Spirit: The Corpse Makers. His latest Graphic Novel, Black Beetle: Kara Bocek is a collection of short installments, originally appearing in Dark Horse Presents, featuring Francavilla’s own pulp hero.

  • Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand, as realized by Ramon K. Perez, came out a few years ago and I got my copy as part of the swag bag at the Baltimore Comic-Con award ceremony. (As an aside, the Baltimore Comic-Con just held the first annual Ringo Awards, which will become the new awards ceremony at this well-respected comic-con. I heard it all went very well. Kudos to all!) Tale of Sand is a skillfully rendered tale full of compelling moxie.

And, for a graphic novel that’s A Little Bit Old and a Little Bit New, let me offer this one up:

  • Classic Comics Press just released Kelly Green: The Complete Collection by Stan Drake and Leonard Starr. The hardcover collects five Kelly Green graphic novels from the 80s. As a bonus, it also contains one story that was never printed in English, The Comic-Con Heist, that’s all about Geek Culture. These adventures are sexy thrillers with realistic, sexy art by Starr at top of his creative game.

So many great things to read. I’ve got to read fast in order to also get to my Fast Company and Inc. Magazine.

Dennis O’Neil: Alfred Bester’s Squinkas

Read any good squinkas lately?

If you’re a comic book editor, you’d better hope you have, though, if you did, you probably called them, these squinkas, something else. Scripts, maybe.

I was introduced to the word, squinka, by a gentleman who certainly was an editor, one of the two or three best I ever worked for in a career of something like 50 years (which just goes to show you what can be achieved if you manage to breathe regularly and often. Ooops! I just let it slip – the secret of success in the writing dodge. If the writer refuses to breathe, the rest of it is irrelevant.)

Before beginning his long and illustrious stint behind a desk at DC Comics, young Mr. Schwartz was a literary agent whose specialty was peddling science fiction stories to the pulps – fiction magazines that were garish and cheap and widely available. Even after Mr. Schwartz migrated to DC, he maintained an interest in science fiction, which was occasionally manifest in the kind of comics he produced, the kinds of stories he liked to tell, and the questions he asked, often about the folk he knew from his agenting days, when imaginative tales were tainted with disreputability. They were, you know, trash.

That calumny didn’t seem to bother SF partisans much. Writers continued writing, editors continued editing, artists continued picture-making and gradually, the taint faded and then, somehow, the aficianados began to number in the millions and the production costs of the film versions of this trash climbed into the eight-figure neighborhood.

Rewind back to comics’ youth, when the medium was week-by-week and month-by-month inventing itself and creators might not have their tool kits in order. To be specific: they might not have had industry-wide formats or even names for everything they produced.

Motion pictures had been telling stories for some 35 years and had developed a vocabulary – necessary to facilitate communication, if for no other reason. But these here funny books? They were the new kids on the block. Their ancestors were arguably the aforementioned movies, newspaper comic strips and those naughty pulps, all of which shared certain similarities with the comic books. But they weren’t the same, not by a stretch.

So, I’m guessing, somebody saw a hole and decided to fill it. Neologisms anyone?

But the new word wasn’t very healthy. It didn’t last long. I never heard anyone, in or out of comics, use it. By the time Roy Thomas brought me into the comics herd, it had come and gone. I wouldn’t know that “squinka” had ever existed if I hadn’t stumbled across it in a collection of stories, articles and essays by Alfred Bester titled redemolished. Bester was, among other things, the recipient of the first Hugo, an award given to the creator of outstanding works of sf and, believe it or not, one of Mr. Schwartz’s clients. And a comic book writer; Green Lantern comes to mind.

I don’t know if Mr. Bester ever said “squinka” in his dealings with comics editors. Now days, nodding to his television colleagues, he might just say “script” and run for the subway.

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