In past years I’ve done a list of all the comics (and comics-related stuff) I’ve read, with a short write-up for each item. This year, that’s just not feasible given the amount of material I read and the time I have available… but here’s my list for 2019 with a few comments on things here and there. 

Note that there are most certainly books I’ve forgotten to add to my list that I’ll no doubt remember after I’ve posted this, and there are for sure a ton of mini-comics in particular that I read quickly then prematurely filed in my office minicomic heap without recording them. 

Charlotte Impératrice (FR) – Matthieu Bonhomme

Bonhomme is a French cartoonist who is sadly not well-represented in English translation. This book begins a multi-volume story of Carlota of Mexico. The art style is a bit more neo-realistic than previous Bonhomme stuff I’ve read and the coloring is really interesting: it seems like an attempt to pair flat coloring of figures with limited palettes and  extensive use of gradients for backgrounds. Some of the big panels and spreads in here are mind-blowing. You see his process for one in this video.

Here – Richard McGuire

The basic conceit of the original strip this book’s an expansion of is so brilliant that it’s literally changed the formal language of comics. I enjoyed reading this, but there’s an air of of “remaking Stairway to Heaven” to the project. Still, I’ll take what I can get from McGuire, who doesn’t do actual full-on comics very often. 

The Invisibles volumes 2 & 3 – Grant Morrison

I’ve been a big fan of this series ever since it came out, but had not read the full third series until now. That third installment is a bit haphazard for sure, but the second volume–still my favorite volume–is pretty great even on a third (fourth?) read.  I’m still listening along with The King Mobcast as they go through the series. 

Born to be Posthumous – Mark Dery 
Bezoar # 3  – various artists
Beneath the Dead Oak Tree – Emily Carroll
Audubon: On the Wings of the World – Fabien Grolleau

Atomic Empire – Thierry Smolderen and Alexandre Clérisse

This book is worth checking out for its aesthetic alone. As you can see above, it’s got a late 50’s/early 60’s advertising art/UPA thing going on that’s unlike pretty much anything else you’re gonna see in comics (all done in illustrator, apparently, as you can see in this video). I was pretty surprised that this book didn’t make more of a splash… but (inexplicably) all the promotion I could find for from its North American publisher didn’t have any samples of the interior art! The story is fascinating and ambitious–and I admit I didn’t fully get the ending–but it’s definitely one of my favorites of the year.

Beyond the Windy Isles – Hugo Pratt
Celtic Tales – Hugo Pratt

Beyond the Windy Isles is absolutely great stuff–just what you want from Corto Maltese: seafaring proto-Han Solo adventures drawn in Pratt’s exquisite “about to fly off the hinges” style… Which is what makes Celtic Tales such and odd bump in the Corto road. It’s odd both story-wise and art-wise. The stories find Corto in land-locked European settings that don’t really give Pratt a chance to show off his best chops, drawing stuff like vegetation and water. And, as weird as it sounds to say, some of the drawing in this volume does kind of fly off the rails. Things are sloppy. Characters are off-looking, Don’t even get me started on the story where characters from Arthurian legend help Corto blow up a WWII sub (or something like that).  

Guirlanda (FR) – by Lorenzo Mattotti and Jerry Kramsky
Frankenstein – by Junji Ito
The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo: The Monster Mall by Drew Weing
I, Rene Tardi, Prisoner Of War In Stalag IIB Vol. 1 – Jacques Tardi
Popeye, Vol. 1: I Yam What I Yam – E.C. Segar
Popeye, Vol. 2: Well Blow me Down – E.C. Segar

Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies – Marc Singer

Arguably the most important book about comics in 2019–and for sure the one that stirred the most controversy. I wrote a post with my thoughts on it here.

Emma G. Wildford (FR) – Zidrou (Writer), Edith (Artist)
Lone Wolf and Cub Omnibus Volume 2 – Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima
Little Bird #1 & #2 – Darcy Van Poelgeest and Ian Bertram

Witch Hat Atelier vol. 1 & 2: Kamome Shirahama

My favorite manga of recent vintage. The first volume is slightly rote story-wise–it’s the classic “regular kid discovers they’re actually a super-special magic user and winds up at wizard school” bit–but, by the second volume things begin to differentiate from the standard “wizard school” narrative and get interesting. The really unique magic system outlined in the book is one of its best features, as is the gobsmackingly pretty Moebius-inflected (but still obviously manga) artwork. 

The Art of Nothing: 25 Years of MUTTS and the Art of Patrick McDonnell – Patrick McDonnell

This is a big, beautiful retrospective art book celebrating the first 25 years of the newspaper strip, Mutts. It’s filled with scans of original art, early advertising/illustration art by McDonnell, color guides for Sunday strips, and selected “best of” strips. Mutts is one of the few currently running truly great newspaper comics and it’s great to see it get such a high-caliber milestone retrospective.  

Sobek – James Stokoe

This one may be a bit difficult to track down, but it’s well worth it. It’s an abjectly ridiculous (and I mean that in the absolute best way) story about a crocodile god that begrudgingly heeds the calls of his worshipers to do battle with a rival deity. As with all things James Stokoe, the art is jaw-dropping panel after jaw-dropping panel of exquisite detail and bonkers color.   

Pope Hats #6 – Hartley Lin
Oishinbo – Izakaya: Pub Food – Tetsu Kariya and and Akira Hanasaki
Le Journal de mon Père (FR) – Jirō Taniguchi
The Columbus Scribbler #3 – various artists

Bill Blackbeard – The Collector Who Rescued Comics – Jenny E. Robb & Alec Longstreth

You’ve gotta get this one at The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum here in Columbus! If–like me–you were obsessed with the old Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics as a kid, you know who Bill Blackbeard is. This short comic, illustrated by Alec Longstreth (Basewood, Phase 7), is a quick history of his life and influence, based on research by Billy Ireland’s Jenny E. Robb. 

Ready for Pop – Hurk

Hurk is apparently a staple of the indie comics scene in the U.K., but not well known here in the U.S… which is too bad, because this book is fantastic. As you can see, it’s got a great 90’s-esque indie comics look to it that’s all but vanished here in the U.S. largely as a result of the ubiquity of color printing. The story’s set in mid-60’s London and centers on a pop singer who’s been inexplicably shrunken. Nicely drawn, fun, and funny–pick it up if you can. 

Wasted Space #1 – Michael Moreci & Hayden Sherman
Egg Cream #1 – Liz Suburbia
Meeting Comics #1 – Andrew Neal
Paul Moves Out – Michel Rabagliati
Pope Hats #1 – Ethan Rilly
Planetes Vol. 2 – Makoto Yukimura
The Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City – Brendan Leach

Canopus #1-#4 – Dave Chisholm

This series isn’t coming out until February, but Dave’s been posting bits and pieces to Twitter intermittently… and he generously let me read an advanced digital version of the series. This story ticks a lot of boxes for me: a SF story drawn in a somewhat cartoony style, great Solaris-esque premise, beautiful coloring, unconventional page layouts and storytelling. Definitely be on the lookout for this in a few months from Scout Comics.  

Tintin and the Picaros – Hergé

So, this may or may not be the end of my couple years’ long chronological read/reread of Tintin (I can’t decide if I’m gonna bother with Alph-Art). This book seems to be largely considered the worst of the late-era Tintin books, but I found it more just rote than anything. Coming not too far after the heartfelt Tintin in Tibet and then the near-meta story that is Castafiore Emerald, this seems (aside from some typical late-era weirdness like odd close-up staging and characters behaving a bit out-of-character at times) this just seems like a standard “Tintin goes somewhere” adventure from the beginning of Hergé’s career. Now the previous book, Flight 714… there’s a terrible Tintin book!

See you next year… and read more comics!

So, over Christmas I was watching A Christmas Story for the bajillionth time (as one does) and noticed, in the scene were Ralphie is decrypting the message from his Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring, a Sunday newspaper comic peeking out among the stuff on a table:

I took a picture of the strip and quickly posted it to twitter (as one does), completely ignoring the obvious title on the left and opining that this was most likely Dr. Seuss’s (AKA Theodor Geisel’s) short-lived newspaper strip, Hejji. The strip is in fact Smokey Stover by Bill Holman. Absent the title, though, it’s easy to understand why I might have mistaken the art for Seuss’s. That elephant is nearly identical style-wise to Seuss’s drawing style–and specifically to Seuss’s famous elephant character, Horton. Here, for example is a typical Seuss elephant:

And here’re a few examples by Smokey Stover artist Bill Holman:

You don’t even need to be a particularly keen observer of stylistic cartoonist quirks to see the obvious influence here. While I couldn’t track down the particular Smokey Stover strip shown in A Christmas Story, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that it predates 1954’s Horton Hears a Who significantly–especially if any attention at all was paid to keeping things in-period for the film, which seems to take place roughly in the early 40’s.  Here’s a full Smokey Stover Sunday page from, I believe, around 1940:

What I found interesting here wasn’t just the obvious stylistic homage (“stylistic homage” being the term we cartoonists use vs. the lay term “blatant swipe”) but that this obviously highly influential American comic strip is rarely discussed and not even collected in this, the “golden age” of newspaper comic strip collections where you can find full runs of everything from Prince Valiant to White Boy and even The Wiggle Much at your fingertips. And unlike strips such as White Boy or The Wiggle Much, Smokey Stover was immensely popular with the everyday public. At the strip’s height in the late 40’s, the titular lead character of the strip may have been the single most used figure for nose art on U.S. WWII bombers.

As with some other very popular newspaper strips of the time, Smoky Stover introduced a number of now-common phrases into common usage, most notably the term “foo fighter.” Smokey, a fire fighter, referred to himself as a “foo fighter” (one of the strip’s many bits of odd verbiage and wordplay) and the phrase was  adopted by WWII pilots to refer to night-time flying targets which couldn’t be identified–UFO’s. If you know the phrase these days, it’s likely because of Dave Grohl’s post-Nirvana band of the same name.

The strip’s influence on comics, though, is curiously less apparent.  Harvey Kurtzman has gone on record as having been influenced by Smokey Stover, specifically citing it as the origin of a lot of the nonsense words that peppered MAD Magazine (potrzebie!) as well as possibly the famous visual “chicken fat” scattered around the magazine’s pages. Beyond that, though, it’s hard to find much of a Smokey Stover vein of influence in other comics… at least here in the U.S.

Interestingly, a place I really do see a possible strong Bill Holman influence is in some British cartooning of roughly the same period. If you’ve ever seen early material from the British kids’ comics magazine, The Beano, you’ll note some strong stylistic similarities with Holman’s strip–both visually and in the style of humor. Visually, the most obvious example is Beano cartoonist Leo Baxendale. Here’s one of his strips:

In addition to the obvious visual similarities, Bexendale’s work–and in a general sense, a lot of early Beano strips–share Bill Holman’s screwy, madcap sense of humor. I’ve not seen any specific mention of Smokey Stover running in U.K. papers, but there were certainly many popular U.S. strips that did, so I’d consider it a reasonable supposition that Stover may have. (And if anyone can confirm this or has specifics of where/when it ran in the U.K., please comment or email!)

So, then: why isn’t Smokey Stover a strip that’s more talked about, held in higher regard? Well, to be blunt I’d say some of it is simply that Holman isn’t a cartoonist with the same level of visual chops as folks like Herriman, Segar, etc. But also, though, Smokey Stover is part a tradition of “screwball comics” whose humor is primarily goofy and gag-based–think Gus Mager, Rube Goldberg, Milt Gross. The whole “screwball” style of humor, even in films, fell solidly out of fashion in the U.S. shortly after WWII… but seems to have persisted in some form or another much longer on British shores with things like The Benny Hill Show, The Goon Show, Monte Python, etc.

Comics like Krazy Kat, Popeye/Thimble Theater, and Peanuts all broadly traffic in humor, but they each have an undercurrent of melancholy or even occasionally the macabre that lend them a more ostensibly “serious” air; Smoky Stover is pure screwball nonsense–and I mean that in the best sense of the term.

Holman’s Smokey Stover will likely never be held up with the same lofty regard as Herriman and his like, but it’s odd how such an obviously influential and hugely popular strip seems to have been swept under the cultural rug.