PATSY WALKER: HELLCAT

I picked up three of the five Patsy Walker: Hellcat title, mostly because I wanted to see how Patsy Walker could become a superheroine. She does it by prattling wittily throughout every combative encounter. The story is not at all complicated, so vacuous, in fact, that I don’t want to re-visit it. Something about polar bears and giant wolves in the northern clime. Mostly it’s writer Kathryn Immonen’s excuse for Hellcat to cavort around, which she does in the most pleasing visuals in any costume caper comic hereabouts: David Lafuente gives us a heroine in her fighting togs, shapely without being “naked” under the spandex. Lovely. I’d buy the missing numbers in this sequence in a minute if I could find ’em. Another big plus for the title: the first page recaps what has gone before so that those with marginally retentive brains, like me, can find our way into the ensuing adventure without stumbling around in the dark for the first six pages. Batwriters should take note.

THE EVAPORATING EDITOONIST

At the ComicsReporter, Tom Spurgeon doesn’t think talking about the evaporating newspaper editorial cartoonist is enough. “The decline of staffed editorial cartooning positions is beyond the point where a bunch of strong assertions cleverly made and presented with passion will convince newspapers that what they're doing isn't necessary. I don't see anything here that would convince me as a newspaper editor that I wouldn't be better off simply picking up a syndicated Ted Rall cartoon or taking my staff cartoonist investment and hiring a video blogger. Once again, I challenge Ted Rall and the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists [of which Rall is currently president] to come up with five models of newspaper-cartoonist relationships that work for those newspapers, specific examples and detailed reasons why they work, and how newspapers can develop that within their own publications. Having not one but two skilled cartoonists sure didn't save the Rocky Mountain News. Fair or not, that's the tenor of the conversation right now.”

Spurgeon has a point, a good one. I’m not in deep enough to speak with broad authority, but I can think of a few instances of “newspaper-cartoonist relationships that work.” The classic irrefutable instance was Herblock at the Washington Post — and today, his successor, Tom Toles. Both were/are powerful voices that lent stature to their newspaper. And Ann Telnaes with her animations on the Washington Post’s website is another instance of a cartoonist making a difference for a newspaper. At least, the Post thinks so: after trying her brand of cartooning online for a few months, they increased the number of animations to three a week, and Telnaes is now making a living wage. Spurgeon is right that a cry of anguish, however carefully couched in reasonable albeit forceful argument, will not, itself, save editorial cartooning. But Spurgeon’s expecting editorial cartoonists (like Ed Stein and Drew Litton at the Rocky Mountain News) to save their papers — to rescue them from the bad financial decisions made by management — is going too far. Spurgeon has lofted a faux weather balloon with this expectation.

BATMAN FOREVER? NOT FOR ME, KEMOSABE

We live and learn. I learned lately that it is now impossible to catch up to the Batman saga. It has passed me by. I neglected for years to buy any of the Batman titles. I like Batman (or used to), but I had only so many thousands of dollars to spend every month on funnybooks, and since my typing duties here at the Rancid Raves Intergalactic Wurlitzer demanded that I read at least a few of the newest titles that heave into view with relentless regularity, I elected to spend my allowance on inaugural issues and a few Old Favorites. Batbooks didn’t qualify. But all the atmospheric disturbance recently about Bruce Wayne retiring — or dying or being buried alive or being transported to another planetary system — soon overwhelmed my best intentions, and I bought a few Batbooks — namely, Batman Nos. 681, 683, and 686, Detective No. 851, and the Battle for the Cowl one-shot, plus No. 1 — hoping to find out what Bruce was up to and what it all meant anyhow. Alas, a vain hope.

All of these books have at least one thing in common: they are almost entirely unintelligible to a person who has not been buying and reading these titles since the Dawn of Time or soon thereafter. In Batman No. 681, for instance, I don’t know who any of the characters are. Master Lo? Pierrot? Dark Ranger, Al-Khidr, Cardinal Maggi, Black Glove? The names keep coming, raining on the page like splinters in a typhoon. Jabari, Diallo, Jacob Nkele, John Mayhew, Squire, Musketeer, Mangrove Pierce? Jolly Swagman? Or is that last one just a joke? It’s impossible to tell; there are so many fanciful names without personalities or identities. Batman No. 683 is no better; ditto Detective No. 851. No discernible plots or stories or very many familiar characters.

The continuity confusion is compounded by another tendency too often indulged by comic book writers these days: they aspire to be script writers for movies, I suspect, and so they write as if they are writing for the cinema, not comic books. Action movies these days are distinguished by non-stop action and very little plot. Everything is visual excitement. Action leaps from one battle to an explosion to another battle. Observing all this, we have only an impression of what’s going on — the impression that all is in motion, all is exploding. Action action action. Whatever plot or story lies buried in the wreckage emerges only piecemeal and occasionally, a fragment here, another fragment there. The so-called narrative moves back and forth in time, here and there in space. Fragments, impressions predominate — all adding to an overwhelming sense of excitement. In a movie theater where everything happens in a couple hours, all the fragments begin to add up eventually and make a kind of splattered sense; but when the same narrative technique is used in a static medium like the serialized comic book, none of the pieces come together in a single issue, so we stagger on, bewildered and angry, in complete ignorance of the significance of what we see exploding on every other page. Without a sense of closure, the action becomes meaningless. And frustrating to view, impossible to comprehend.

Here, employing the same cinematic impressionistic technique for criticism, is Battle for the Cowl No. 1: Robin and Squire foil robbery attempt by means not altogether clear ... gang of pigs? vs the Network? ... someone is crusading around as “Batman”; who? ... Damian—who? Wannabe Robin? Batman? He crashes Batcar (or Oracle does?) ... then Nightwing rescues him ... then faux Batman rescues Nightwing ... too many scene changes and characters.

And then there’s the actual writing, the verbiage itself, which, in the wake of Bruce Wayne/Batman’s disappearance, has become bloated and pretentious. In No. 1 of Battle for the Cowl, we read that “the citizens of Gotham are looking for a savior — someone to take back the streets. They’re looking for Batman — or a batman.” Because Batman “was much more than just a crime fighter. He was Gotham’s protector. Her guardian angel.” Savior? Guardian angel? Not even in a comic book can we stomach such misbegotten religiosity.

Often the drawings are as inferior as the stories are baffling. Too much laboriously applied shadow, copious wrinkles in clothing distort anatomy, shadows on faces disfigure and destroy recognizability, anatomy is sometimes off. Catwoman Kyle’s head in No. 686 is repeatedly drawn in a position that is an anatomical impossibility. Andy Kubert’s pencils, featured on three pages at the back of the book, are beautiful, but Scott Williams’ inks turn subtle shading into stark black splotches that add too much visual emphasis where less would be more. Perhaps Kubert’s pencils, beautiful as they stand, simply can’t be inked without destroying their visual appeal. And the coloring time after time destroys visual clarity by being too dark.

In the Batman titles, DC Comics is doubtless hoping to amp the popularity of the Batman movies into newsstand sales, but, if industry reports are to be believed, it isn’t working. Happy movie-goers ought to snap up copies of the comic book featuring their movie idol, but apparently they’re not doing it. Still, DC plunges ahead with its marketing schemes. The plan is that a hyped-up movie fan will buy a Batman comic book, then, when he/she discovers that the story is continued in another Batbook, he/she will happily buy that title, too, and so on, ad infinitum. Even if this scheme worked — if more titles were being purchased, willy nilly — it’s a short-sighted strategy because it creates a continuity that is impenetrable: no new reader can make sense of what happens in a single title, so why would he/she buy the next title in the continuity? Initially, the plan may yield greater sales from title to title (although, as I say, it doesn’t appear to be working that way), but it stunts the growth of a comic-book reading public. The continuity-clutched titles appeal only to die-hard fans, who, presumably, would buy any thing with “Bat” in the title. New readers — youngsters looking for places to spend their three bucks — are likely to be quickly turned off by such tactics. Where does that leave the funnybook factories? Twenty years from now when all the die-hard fans — who were nurtured on the characters before continuity was the be-all and end-all of comic book writing — have died off, comic book publishers will have no one to buy the books. Like newspapers, they’ll die off themselves.

P-I TAKES THE PLUNGE

Hearst’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer, one of the nation’s oldest continuously published newspapers, issued its last print edition on March 17 and began focusing its new, low-budget resources on a website version, taking only about 20 of the paper’s 175 staffers with it. David Horsey, the P-I’s two-time Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist is not one of the lucky twenty. His is a different kind of luck: Horsey is employed by Hearst, not the P-I, and his cartoons will continue to appear online as a service to the 15 other newspapers in the chain.

“I'm in an unusual situation, unlike Ed Stein, whose job ended [when Denver's Rocky Mountain News closed],” Horsey told Mike Cavna at the latter’s Washington Post blog, ComicRiffs. “For the last few years, I've been employed directly by Hearst Newspapers instead of the Seattle P-I. It looks like I will be providing my work to all of the Hearst newspapers, though I'll be based here at the [P-I] Web site. Hearst has 15 daily newspapers [at present, counting the San Francisco Chronicle]. My work will primarily go to Web sites and will be available for print versions. ... One fortunate thing for me is that Hearst had this idea to create channels within the Web site, and that pulled me out of the editorial page and created DavidHorsey.com. And I've been doing a lot more writing as well as cartoons. That created me as a separate entity that can be plugged into any Web site. I'm not sure logistically how that will happen now — I think I'll be linked to [the Hearst newspapers in] Houston, Albany, Laredo,San Francisco. I think Hearst finally decided that it's time to [push] online newspapers. ... I've been quite fortunate and the timing has been right. Part of it goes back to my first job as a reporter — now it's the other way around. [Writing columns] has helped me expand online. They're looking at me as a ‘multimedia commentator’ rather than as ‘just’ a cartoonist.”

More about Horsey’s stellar career in the Great Northwest can be unearthed at the usual place, www.RCHarvey.com, Opus 240.

AN ADMIRABLE FIRST ISSUE

An admirable first issue must, above all else, contain such matter as will compel a reader to buy the second issue. At the same time, while provoking curiosity through mysteriousness, a good first issue must avoid being too mysterious or cryptic. And, thirdly, it should introduce the title’s principals, preferably in a way that makes us care about them. Fourth, a first issue should include a complete “episode” — that is, something should happen, a crisis of some kind, which is resolved by the end of the issue, without, at the same time, detracting from the cliffhanger aspect of the effort that will compel us to buy the next issue.

Repleat with “devils, deserts and deviants,” Steven T. Seagle’s Soul Kiss No. 1 is virtually an exemplar of a first issue. We meet Lili on the first pages, and she speaks to us directly: “There are three things you should know about me,” she says, then lists them. Her manner — blunt wise-ass tough talk — tells us that she’s nobody’s fool. Next, she’s on a stretch of deserted highway in Arizona with a stalled car. An old lecher shows up, offering to help but drooling as he does. Lili tells him to buzz off, but he doesn’t, and then when she mutters to herself that she’d give anything not to be there, the Devil himself appears, whispers something to Lili, and when she answers “Yes,” she next finds herself at home in bed with the taste of moths in her mouth. She remembers, then, that back in that desert, thousands of moths descended upon the old lecher and ate him alive. The moth taste in her mouth, she realizes, is the taste of ... death. But she thinks little about the implications of that until she kisses her boyfriend, Damon, and thousands of moths descend upon him and eat him up. She knows, then, that she’s made a bargain with the Devil. On the last page, she agonizes about how to get out of the deal. Given her personality — the tough-talking broad — we suspect she’ll figure out something, and to learn what it is, we’ll buy the next issue of the book. The cliffhanger is created: we want to know what will happen next. The first issue’s complete episode begins at the stalled car in the desert and is resolved with Lili’s discovery of the implications of her bargain with the Prince of Darkness. Nicely done.

Marco Cinello renders all these devilish doings in stylish visual shorthand, sometimes deploying a bold line to limn starkly simple angular forms, sometimes resorting to a painterly manner, layering monochromatic hues over sketchy pencil-like drawings to evoke remembered episodes. He supplies backgrounds sparingly, relying, usually, on figures and faces etched against elaborate splashes of color instead of detailing furniture or landscapes. Layouts sometimes follow a patterned grid, and sometimes panels fall across a page against an expanse of unrelieved white. His drawing style and storytelling maneuvers give every page a visual intensity of dramatic impact even without the story; but then, there’s the story, expertly told.

TRUMP

Following Fantagraphics’ reprinting of all of Harvey Kurtzman’s Humbug magazine, the premiere Kurtzman satire, here comes Dark Horse with a reprinting of the “complete” Trump magazine, Kurtzman’s aborted effort for Playboy that preceded Humbug: a gorgeous magazine production (compared to the shoe-string operation at Humbug), it ran only two issues, so “complete” is much shorter than Humbug’s 11 issues.

DICK TRACY GETS NEW INK

A new signature, Jim Brozman’s, joined Dick Locher's on the strip last winter. Locher may not retire from writing the strip, but he's surely stepping back a little from drawing it all. My guess is that Brozman is inking Locher and embellishing a little as he goes along.

At its website, Tribune Media Services (TMS) acknowledges the new collaboration, reporting that Brozman has been a published comic book artist since his days at Northern Illinois University where he earned his Bachelors of Fine Arts in Illustration. Before graduation, he published his first comic called Pablo Picasso: Police Artist. TMS continues (in italic): After graduation, Brozman established his reputation as a comic book artist when he worked on the Renegade Press comic book called Strata, a black-and-white comic with talking, sword-wielding otters, Lancelot and King Arthur. This series lasted two years until his next project at another Chicago-based comic book company, Now Comics. There, he drew full-color comics, including Rust, The Terminator, Speed Racer, Racer-X, The Real Ghostbusters, Slimer and The Green Hornet. Brozman has worked for many independent comic book companies from the 1980s through the 1990s. His latest comic book he created with the help of local color artist, Josh Warner: called Naperville’s Finest, it included contributions from local sports editors to depict all the local high school mascots as superheroes battling their rival local mascots. A free comic book, it was given away with the Naperville Sun at the local high schools. For the past decade, Brozman has worked on the retail side of the comic book industry managing stores for Graham Cracker Comics in the Chicagoland area.

So, to finish with a flourish from the store’s website, is Brozman an artist who runs a comic book store or a comic book store manager who draws? When asked, Brozman said succinctly: “Yes."

In any event, my fearful speculation in December that Dick Tracy would be eased into obscurity with the retirement of Locher has been assuaged: TMS didn’t make Brozman’s participation public just to shut down the strip his name is now on.

SUPERMAN AND SECRET IDENTITY

Craig Yoe, who is a master of various kinds of cartooning and other idiotic behavior but who is also a passionate and caring student of the art forum, wrote, recently, on a List online: “I'd like to tell you about my brand spanking new book.” And then he explained: “I recently discovered incredible, previously unknown, fetish art by the creator of Superman, Joe Shuster. The artist and his writing partner, Jerry Siegel, had sold Superman for 130 dollars. When they sued to get the rights back they lost and got drummed out of the comic book industry and Shuster fell on hard times. It was unknown that to get by and/or because of a personal interest in the subject, Shuster then did S&M porn for under-the-counter booklets called Nights of Horror, sold in Times Square in the early fifties.”

As I mentioned lately in announcing a Harv’s Hindsight installment about girlie cartooning (which you can find at the usual place in the Hindsight department), the art in the Shuster book is sensational: drawings of barenekidwimmin being spanked or spanking (hence the wonder of Yoe’s double entendre), being whipped or whipping, being tied up and otherwise abused, all produced during the last heyday of suppression of all things sexual, the mid-1950s in the U.S., just as Hugh Hefner was  about to convert the national voyeurism into a personal fortune. But the scandalous part of the book erupted not so much from its drawings as from the name of their creator, whose identity as well as the fixation of the interior art was proclaimed in the book’s title: Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-creator, Joe Shuster. Craig Yoe, whose passion for the history of the comics medium led him to the discovery of this furtive art and then to the creation of the book itself.

Yoe goes on: “The back story I uncovered involves the Mob, showgirls, neo-Nazi Jewish juvenile delinquents, inspired by Shuster's art, known as the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, the famed anti-comic book crusader Dr. Frederic Wertham, Senate investigations, cops on payola, the books being banned by the Supreme Court, teenage girls being horse-whipped in the park, two murders...and dare I say more?”

You can find more in the usual place, www.RCHarvey.com — a veritable hodge-podge of information about comics, cartooning, and the controversy about Secret Identity.

NEW SIGNATURES ON STRIPS

At Adam@Home, Brian Basset, who originated the strip, has relinquished drawing and production chores (and perhaps gag-writing) to Rob Harrell, who gave up his own strip, Big Top, a year or so ago in order to undergo surgery for a cancerous eye. He has survived, thanks be, and can draw just fine, perhaps even better, or at least more copiously, than Basset. Harrell’s line is not as wispy, fragile even, as Basset’s (note the treatment of hands), and while his characters seem a little less elongated than Basset’s, Harrell often fills panels with figures drawn from head to knee, or thereabouts, which is more than Basset was doing: in recent years, talking heads predominated in Adam. Harrell’s Laura seems a bit sexier than Basset’s, too, but Harrell took a while to get Adam’s nose right. Basset brought Harrell into the Adam operation so that he, Basset, would have more time to devote to his other strip, Red and Rover, about a small boy and his dog.

Another strip that has acquired a second hand on the tiller is Grand Avenue, a neighborhood saga about an avid sports fan grandmother who is raising rambunctious twins that Steve Breen launched in 1999. Breen, who just won the Headliner Award for his editorial cartoons at the San Diego Union Tribune, fell frequently into conversation with his counterpart at the Detroit Free Press, Mike Thompson,  when the two were attending the annual meetings of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Once, Breen told Alan Gardner at DailyCartoonist.com, Thompson followed him to his room to kibitz while Breen did some work on the strip. Thompson offered some gags, and Breen was impressed, he said, “with Mike’s understanding of the characters and his talent for brainstorming and idea generation. I was looking for help with the strip because I was starting to also do children’s books ( this was around 2005 or 2006) so it worked out nicely.” The two share writing and drawing chores, and Thompson began to get his name on the strip on January 1, 2009. 

ROBERT CRUMB'S BOOK OF GENESIS

Dave Itzkoff at nytimes.com reports that Robert Crumb has completed his graphic novel adaptation of the first book in the Bible. Called Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis, it was four years in the making. Scheduled for release October 19, the volume is “very visual,” said Crumb in The Guardian: “It's lurid. Full of all kinds of crazy, weird things that will really surprise people." An 11-page preview can be found in the June 8-15 issue of The New Yorker.

MURDOCH RESPONDS TO THE COMMUNITY

At last report (thanques, John), Sean Delonas is still drawing editorial cartoons at the New York Post so we may conclude that the Sharpton Faction has not, yet, forced Rupert Murdoch to fire his vitriolic penman. Which is not to say that nothing is transpiring on that front. Joined by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who lead the charge, representatives of the National Urban League and 100 Black Men of America, and NAACP met with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. executives on May 19, urging that something be done to diminish if not eliminate the atmosphere of racism that these groups saw in the Post and elsewhere in Murdoch’s empire. In response, reported the Associated Press’ Jesse Washington, News Corp. agreed to form an external diversity council in New York City that will meet with senior company executives twice a year. It also will include a statement of commitment to diversity in its annual report. Jack Horner, a spokesman for News Corp., said similar diversity advisory boards already exist in Chicago and Los Angeles. "This is an expansion of what we've had elsewhere," Horner said. "The key is we're always responding and learning from our communities."

THREE TIDBITS

For the first time in its history, saith the Associated Press, the Cannes Film Festival opened with an animated film, “Up,” which also marked the first — and, so far, the only — time a 3-D movie has opened the famed fest. ...

Next spring, according to Walter Scott in Parade, a musical derived from Charles Addams’ famously macabre New Yorker cartoon family will open. ...

Credited at DailyCartoonist.com, Rob Tornoe reports that Jon Stewart said that his news comedy program, “The Daily Show,” is the equivalent of a 22-minute editorial cartoon.

CAN'T TOPP THIS

In yet another earth-shattering development, Topps Confectionary is changing its corporate name to Bazooka Candy Brands, according to the company’s new owner, Michael Eisner, quoted at brandfreak.com. The maneuver will shine a spotlight on the perpetrator of the worst jokes ever inflicted on humankind -- Bazooka Joe, the kid in a baseball cap and eyepatch, who has dwelled in the bubblegum wrappers since 1953. “The company plans to bring Bazooka Joe to life ‘in a variety of mediums and promotional activities,’” it sez here. “Considering that some of his classic jokes include ‘The early bird gets the worm. Some reward!’ and ‘Your homework is like a juicy steak: rarely done!,’ hopefully those activities will not include a stand-up comedy routine.”

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID

Alan Gardner at his blog, DailyCartoonist.com, alerts us to the fact that Jeff Kinney, the creator of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, has been named as one of the World’s Most Influential People by Time magazine, coming in 52^nd.  “Kinney’s upbringing and off-beat humor” helped inspire his series of Wimpy Kid children’s books, which chronicle the life of Greg Heffley, “a middle school student on the brink of adolescence who finds himself in precarious situations. Since publishing the first book in 2006, the series has sold close to 16 million copies worldwide and earned Kinney a spot on Time’s 2009 list.” Quoted by Gardner, Kinney said: “I don’t even think I’m the most influential person in my own house — I thought [hearing the news of making the list] was a joke,” said Kinney, 38, who now lives in Massachusetts. I don’t mind Kinney getting to 52^nd place with his stick-figure illustrated diaries, but if they call him a “cartoonist,” I’ll be mad enough to crush a grape.

THE IMPENDING NUPTIALS OF ARCHIE ANDREWS AND ?

You can’t, by now — given the topic’s recent worldwide ballyhoo on all sides, front and center included — be ignorant of the impending nuptials of Archie Andrews. “The eternal love triangle” that has been “the cornerstone of Archie comic books for over 65 years will, apparently — if we are to believe the publisher’s press releases (always a dubious proposition) — be dissolved sometime this summer. The management has waited for one of those Significant Numbers that all of fandom dotes on: issue No. 600, shipping August 12, will, it seems, carry a story the title of which is “Archie Gets Married, Part 1: The Proposal.” The press release fairly bubbles with seductive come-ons: “Could it be true? Has Archie finally decided to take the plunge and propose to one of comics' favorite girls? It sure looks that way!” Well, maybe. But I think there’s a subversive twist embedded in the plot.

The story, drawn by Archie veteran Stan Goldberg, was written by Michael Uslan, who took a break from his usual obsession, Batman (and all other costumed heroes of yore), to pursue his other favorite subject, Archie Comics’ defining essence, the Archie/Betty/Veronica relationship. In promoting the “Archie Story of the Century,” the press release reminds us of another story, published earlier this year, in which “readers got a chance to relive ‘Freshman Year’ with the famous teens of Riverdale High. Now,” the release goes on breathlessly, “make way for this special story that takes a look at Archie and his friends after they graduate college! [My emphases.] What careers will they seek? Will the friends stay in Riverdale or disperse? What would lead Archie to have marriage on his mind? And who would he choose, Veronica or Betty? How will Betty react? How will Veronica react? Can Archie shake off his klutzy past and hold down a steady job for more than a month?” A “special story.” Yup, it’s one of those “imaginary” stories, an “elseworld” yarn: what happens in it will have absolutely no effect on future issues of Archie titles or the fates of the Riverdale gang. Moreover, the press release is coyly silent about whether there will be a Part 2: “The Wedding.” Probably not. But it won’t matter: whatever happens in Elseworld, stays in Elseworld. In all once and future issues of Archie comics, the eternal triangle will continue, prolonged, presumably, forever, frozen in time and aspic.

But isn’t it fun to think about Archie choosing one or the other of his paramours? And it is exactly that provocation the publisher has in mind in condoning the sacrilege: our overwhelming curiosity will drag us, wild with anticipation, to the newsstand to buy No. 600 and whatever other issues cling to the marriage proposition.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING PLAYBOY

Hugh Hefner, we learn in March 27's Entertainment Weekly, is selling the mansion next door to the Playboy mansion, about which EW scribe Scott Brown quips: “It’s expected to be purchased immediately by an international consortium of 14-year-old boys.” The National Cartoonists Society held its annual awards dinner in Hollywood over Memorial Day weekend. I had hoped that the Society would be able to arrange again, as it once did for a previous Reubens celebration in Lala Land, a soiree at the Playboy Mansion. I hoped in vain: some wag said NCS has fallen Hefner’s esteem. Hef, a lifetime frustrated cartoonist, apparently misses the “old” NCS, the one that’s members included such giants as Milton Caniff, Rube Goldberg, Chester Gould, Chic Young, and so on. Hef is also poorer now than he’s been for a while: Playboy apparently feels the crunching economy too — declining circulation and advertising; all this time, I thought sex and barenekkidwimmin never went out of style no matter what economists say. In any case, Hef probably doesn’t think he can afford new girlfriends and a evening of heavily imbibing cartoonists. Well, if you had to choose, what would you pick?

And there are other signs of quiet desperation at the rabbit hutch. The last three issues of Playboy, beginning with April’s, have run 122, 116 and 126 pages, compared to the monster issues of yore when 180-240 pages was the norm. The number of cartoons in each issue is also diminishing: respectively, 5, 6, and 4 full-page color cartoons in the last three issues; 7, 6, and 8 smaller cartoons in the back of the book, plus, usually Bobby London’s Dirty Duck and that full-page stylish triumph of a strip by Juan Alvarez and Jorge G.— both of which were missing from the May issue. On average, that’s one full-page cartoon for every 24 pages in the April issue; 1:19 in May, and 1:32 in June, which means, as a purely mathematical proposition, you’d go 32 pages in June before seeing a full-page cartoon; then another 32 before encountering another. In the bygone glory days of the 1990s, the ratio was 1:23-26; last year, it was about the same, due to the diminishing total number of pages. In short, while the ratio of full-page color cartoons to the page count remains more-or-less constant, the total number of cartoons is dropping, keeping cadence with the decrease in the number of pages in each issue.

But I was right about barenekkidwimmin: Playboy’s page count may be dropping, but the number of pages devoted to the unadorned curvaceous epidermis remains about the same. Sadly, however, the magazine’s layout, once unique and distinctive, is indiscernible from any of the laddie mags on the stands. They all look alike inside.

THE 500TH ISSUE OF MAD

By mid-May, the 500th issue of Mad, the last monthly issue after 57 continuous years of monthly publication, was on the stands. Understandably perhaps, the 500th issue is more impressed with its being the 500th issue than with its being the last monthly issue: various of its content celebrates 500ths — four pages tightly packed with Sergio Aragones’ favorite 500 minuscule Mad marginals, f’instance; he’s been doing this every month since the early sixties, a record of continual presence in the pages of the manic magazine — but no mention is made of the magazine’s going quarterly with No. 501. It probably happened too fast for the Madmen to know what was happening to them. Virginia Linn at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that “the usual gang of suspects” is at fault for the change: bad economy, drop in advertising, changing demographics. “Mad’s circulation peaked at 2 million a year in the early 1970s,” she said, “but the numbers have slipped to about 200,000.”

Mad shifted its sense of humor in the last decade or so, approaching a vulgarity never dreamed of during its birth pangs. “People's taste in humor always changes and we hope Mad has reflected that," says John Ficarra, 53, who has been editor-in-chief since 1984 (he was co-editor with Nick Meglin for much of that time). "We have a lot more political humor, the language has been ramped up," he said. "We always mirror society. There's been a coarsening of society, and things that wouldn't have been printed years ago are in there now." What's really changed, he told Linn, is how people get their humor today: "It's now on the Web, where people are creating humor, 'The Daily Show,' Letterman's Top 10. There's an immediacy in humor that wasn't there when Mad first started." And the Madmaniacs are joining the webworks, working on a new website to update their acerbic satire 24/7.

THE COMICS BIZ

In the latest issue of the Comics Buyer’s Guide (No. 1655), Chuck Rozanski, owner of Mile High Comics, the “world’s largest online retail comic book store,” once again tries to assess the impact of the Great Recession on the comics biz. Invoking his experience at a couple recent comic-cons where he talked with other retailers and determined that sales were down by 20%, he goes on to say, “oddly enough,” that “the over-all market for comics is simply outperforming most other businesses during this malaise. ... Fans are still buying a huge number of comics.” And funnybooks as investment are still a good bet: “We may not have taken the ‘safe’ investment strategy of investing in stocks and bonds,” Rozanski said, “but our collectibles inventories have actually held their values far better!” But sales were still down 20% — except for retailers who drastically reduced prices, like Rozanski.