The King influenced everyone,
Today I recieved and email from Rob Martin of The Hooded Utilitarian. I can't quite claim that I totally forgot about this survey but I think it is fair to say I sent in my list on May and didn't think much about it again.
The survey question was: “What are the ten comics works you consider your favorites, the best, or the most significant?” The official tabulations that include my votes are published here The order I wrote down has been altered to reflect the greater survey methodology blah blah blah.
Below is how I listed 'em on my actual "ballot."
Superman #162
Superman Red and Superman Blue
This comic came out in 1963. I was 12 years old. 1963 was one of the all time best years in the history of the emerging Marvel Comics. On the cover this issue of Superman was billed as the "Greatest Imaginary Story of All Time!" And for me it was.
I'm not sure that I've ever read it except for that one time, probably at camp. But it has stuck with me ever since. It was sappy, overly Utopian and had a wonderful cornball triple wedding ending.
Superman Red/Superman Blue served up a heaping helping of happiness. It tied up all the loose ends of my childhood comic reading and I suspect that this issue was my jumping off point for DC. Long after it ceased to satisfy me anymore, I was finally able to let go of the Mort Weisinger lines of "kid stuff." I wouldn't give DC the time of day again until the start of the next decade.
Grieving Lincoln
Editorial cartoon by Bill Mauldin
Chicago Sun-Times
November 22, 1963
The way the legend goes, Bill Mauldin heard the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated and went right to his drawing board and this is what came out. I believe it.
November 22, 1963 was everything that everyone has ever written about it and more. There are so many movies and TV shows about that day and even Mad Men used it as an opportunity for a season cliffhanger.
I was at school in the 7th grade. Messengers started coming into the classroom and either whisper or hand notes to our teachers. Our teachers started crying. I had never seen a teacher cry before. We were whisked off to the auditorium for an assembly and the principal tried to explain the inexplicable to a bunch of children. He cried too. The Principal, who everyone was scared to death of, was crying. I'm not sure if I truly understood the gravity of the moment beyond the fact that adults were weeping. That was scary enough. Something disappeared that day. Some kind of childhood's end.
I don't remember very much after that. Went home. Plopped myself down in front of the TV watching with the rest of the shocked nation. I really didn't know what to think until the next morning when the paper came. Bill Mauldin's Grieving Lincoln said it all, on so many resonating levels, in one incredible snapshot. I saved that newspaper. That means I still own the first printing of this cartoon.
Then in the summer of 1970, while I was doing a stint as a camp counselor, a kid in my cabin had copy of Jimmy Olsen and it was drawn by Jack Kirby. Huh? Jack "King" Kirby was drawing and writing possibly the most lame DC title of all time?
I read it. I was hooked. I read both DC and Marvel comics from then until around 1988 or so.
Jimmy Olsen, New Gods, Forever People, and Mister Miracle were one seamless epic that lasted for 2 years before DC freaked out and pulled the plug. The ideas were huge. The artwork powerful. The dialogue not so much. So what? It was Kirby unleashed. Kirby's Fourth World is work that I spend a lot of time with when to when feel myself wandering off course and needing a tune-up.
Zap Comix stories of Robert Crumb.
The discovery R Crumb, serious sex, and LSD happened so simultaneously and are so entangled in my psyche that I can't really try to unravel it all. The proverbial doors of perception both opened and shut. I was never quite the same after the winter-spring of 1969. Perfect frame of mind to be leaving the comforts of home and starting art school. Crumb's work remains to this day an energy source to plug into when I recognize I need a recharging.
Bone
Jeff Smith
Jeff is probably the best all-round cartoonist of my generation.
He has influenced me in so many ways on a personal, artistic, and business level.
I'm proud to call him my friend.
Nick Fury Agent of S.H.E.I.L.D.
Jim Sterenko
Marvel Comics
Sterenko's body of work is pretty small.
But it was published when I was 16 & 17 and it blew my mind. Sterenko took Kack Kirby's essentials swirled in other stuff like the language of film, surrealism pop art and op art effects. His layouts were different than anything being done by anyone else. I learned a lot about design from Sterenko. (In college I sent in my money for Sterenko's History of the Comics #3 and I'm still waiting for its delivery. I don't tink it's coming.)
Conan
Fantastic Four
8" x 10" black & white drawing in 11' x 14" hand decorated frame.
For the third year in a row, I answered the call from Things From Another World aka TFAW to participate in their CBLDF Auction Fundraiser. It's a lot of fun and for a good cause.
But, me being me, I like to take a simple idea and make it even more fun!
Check out these accounts of what I did with my 500 TFAW cards in years past: 2009 and 2o10.
In a nutshell, I submit artwork that is "incomplete."
TFAW turns it into a card and gives me a boatload to use however I like.
I use these cards all year 'round everywhere I go--show appearances, signings, and other things in between.
A "finished" TFAW card is something more than a signing card but also something less than an original drawing.
At my Dark Horse Comics signing at Comic-Con on Sunday, the PR & marketing gang on site-at the moment figured out a great way to use TFAW cards to their full potential.
Under the guidance of Melissa Richardson, Amy Huey, and an incredibly enthusiastic intern who I was introduced to as (I think) Noel, who was out braving the traffic in the aisles hawking and handing out TFAW cards to the passing hordes. He artfully convinced them to stand in a very long rope line to get their sketch card from someone who most of them had never heard of.
I, of course, failed to take any pictures, but I could see the folks in line, looking at their cards, wondering what was going to happen to it when finally they reached me.
The table was elevated so the little kids could barely see over it as they handed me their card.
I'd take a good look at each individual by making solid eye contact for a second or two and right then and there I'd sketch the additions to the card that I felt like this stranger might appreciate the most.
I got a lot of smiles. so I think my batting average was pretty good. I drew on so many cards that my hand hurt afterwards and that hardly ever happens to me. I can usually sketch all day long.
I'm very appreciative that the DH crew assigned to oversee my signing understood me and the Beanworld so well and was able to make something so memorable for all involved happen on the spur of the moment.
I often get asked,"I wasn't at Comic-Con--how can I score myself a TFAW card?"
At all other cons I generally I have my trusty CBLDF can on the table and for a let-your-conscience-be-your-guide donation to the Fund you can walk away with your very own "Almost Original Piece of Art." Same with signings on behalf of CBLDF. Only at Dark Horse signings can you get one for free!
It's a grand tradition that TFAW started!
You can take a gander at the TFAW cards I drew and made their way home with me starting here.
And, hey, if you have a personalized TFAW card of your own that you'd like to see added the galleries--send a scan along to me at larrymarder (at) gmail (dot) com.
The last artist on earth to join deviantart.com?
That would be me.
