Original Art Sundays No. 225: Table of Contents Designs

Wow, what a rough couple months! Working two FT jobs and preparing to move!
I have a little time to breathe now. No comic work to speak of to post (about 10 or so pages in the rough stage, too crude for public consumption). I'm working on a large work, ideally to be funded by the Faculty Support Grant at the art college where I continue to teach as an adjunct.
Meanwhile, I've been working on binds- preparing some comic books to be sent out to be turned into hardcover books. The end result can be quite satisfying. I've been designing some Tables of Contents to go along with the books, and I'd like to offer some now.

 Night Force is a book I've been wanting to collect for some time now. Very smart horror title, it had its third incarnation a couple years ago, but the original run by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan will never be eclipsed. Since the logo has that big blocky style, I opted to keep the text centered and use only a small support illustration. There will be a full page B & W illustration facing the title page.
When planning these, it's important to allow for trim. Most comic binds are trimmed by the binder (at the option of the person placing the order, of course!), which means one can lose any text or image that crowds the border. I have a clean printout of this, and I'm reasonably certain I've given it enough air.
The central character, Baron Winters, made a couple small appearances in other titles, but since this book is already 35 issues thick (about 10 over standard), I decided to omit them. Is it cheating to call it an Omnibus then? Perhaps so, but it's my book!


The Roger Rabbit Table of Contents was just fun! Here, the image was more important than the credits, so I opted for simple listing of the titles involved. Again, there were editorial decisions as to what got included. I could have scanned and reprinted the graphic novels Return of Doom and Tummy Trouble at comic book size, along with the handful of Roger Rabbit stories that ran in Disney Adventure Digest, but it seemed counterproductive. I went with what we call a "straight bind" of just the two primary titles. Taking the masthead from the letters pages in the main title, and the dancing image from one of the stories, the layout suggested itself easily.

This is a book I've been working on for years. It won't be a particularly thick book, only about 4 or 5 issues worth of material, but it's a very important book to me. The Scarecrow of 
Romney Marsh has fascinated me ever since I first saw him on Disney's Sunday night show (which aired the same day the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan!). I stumbled on the Blevins comics in Disney Adventure Digest, took about three years to find them all, and through a friend who attended a con where Blevins was appearing, commissioned a Scarecrow piece, which is used here as the primary illustration.
This will be a gilt-edged book with custom art on the cover. It will be housed in a shadow box, which will also contain a DVD case, which will hold the Disney Scarecrow films, the Hammer film Night Creatures (another take on the character) and a CD of music from the TV episodes. I have this one about 2/3 of the way ready to bind.
My mad plan is to send a bunch of these out in the next couple weeks, so the finished binds arrive at my new place, making one less box to pack. I currently have 12 books I'm almost ready to send out, including Night Force and Roger Rabbit. The ideal is that one replaces a library of difficult to file and manage floppies with a handsome library of bound editions!
Next: sketchbook work or finished pages...

Best Comics of 2012: No. 10: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century 2009

Now we begin the Top Ten, with an Alan Moore book.
Spoiler abound. Proceed accordingly.

Supposedly concluding Volume III of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (hereafter referred to as LOEG to save my fingers), Century 2009 deals with the remnants of the League enlisted by the time-wandering Norton to stop the birth of the Antichrist. Failing that, they are charged with stopping the Apocalypse itself.
When Moore began this series of serieses (serieses?), he created a charming and occasionally perverse yet witty pastiche of pop culture and literature references. Most of these were of British origin, but there was great fun to be had in decoding all his subtle (and less so) allusions and applying meaning to them, all while riding the high adventure merry go round.
The first story involved Allan Quatermain, Mina Harker, the Invisible Man, Captain Nemo and Mr. Hyde in an uneasy alliance to save England from a fiendish plot involving Moriarty and the denizens of Fu Manchu. H.G. Wells' cavorite puts in an appearance, as do Holmes and his brother. Rollicking good fun infused with wit, sex, opium addiction and smart writing.
This is the one upon which the film was ostensibly based. The film was lacking in the views of many. There are aspects of it I find enjoyable. The introduction of Dorian Gray seemed superfluous. The character of Tom Sawyer, despite being wholly out of place, is well written and acted. And the painting showing an earlier League including my childhood favorite, Dr. Syn, the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, is too cool for words. The painting appears in a different form in the original text.

Book II is my favorite of the series so far. Herein Griffin, the Invisible Man, colludes with invading Martians until the rest of the League intervenes. This affords Moore the opportunity to give the reader tastes of John Carter, Gullivar Jones, H.G. Wells' Martians, and a vicious yet extremely pragmatic sendup of Teddy Ruxpin by way of Dr. Moreau.

During this outing, two League members die, one at the hands (well, not hands really, a bit closer to home) of a teammate, the other in an orgy of brutality taking down some of the Martian adversaries.
As a transitional device, this is followed by The Black Dossier, which propels our Victorians, or what's left of them, to 1959. Here's the stuff of spies and Cold Wars, coupled with Orwell and Tijuana Bibles. Herein James Bond is shown as the insufferable twit I always thought he was in the films (though I rather liked the few Bond books I read).
In the midst of it all, our team (now a trio of Quatermain, Harker and Orlando, all immortal by now) enters the Blazing World of magic and a deeper view of reality, and suddenly the heroics and cultural pastiches are in a time share with Moore's bent for mysticism.
This is followed by the Century trilogy, of which the final (?) volume appeared in 2012. Cultural and literary references still leap about- Brecht, more Jules Verne, Brit SF comic strips, punk rock, psychedelia, and Alesteir Crowley, to run the short list.
The trilogy bogs down a bit in the 1969 volume, as the Magic gets a bit obscure (but makes sense on careful reading). But its conclusion, spotlighted by the deftly handled death of Alan Quatermain, is both noble and tragic. The Judeo-Christian God is seen as a Mary Poppins pastiche walking through the sky and dealing directly with the childlike Antichrist. The whole thing echoes and mourns the demise of a society of wonder, epitomized in the scene of a rusting Martian shell, ignored by almost everyone.

The death of Quatermain is most significant. It requires a hero to overcome his most dreaded demons, to make the decision to be alive rather than simply living, even if the price is death. Although his death by electrified mystic urine is, shall we say, less than dignified, it requires the hero to be honest about the thing that defeats most heroes- the truth of their own lives. IN the name of love, Quatermain faces evil, deciding to chance dying to finally live on the right terms- "you read about me when you were a little girl and that's who I am. I'm not this fucking mess. That's not how I want to go out. I'm somebody good."
God has a great speech too.
But we are left with shards of the League, and tentatively a new member.

Though this is supposed to conclude the trilogy, there are allusions to more stories in the text, and Alan Moore has promised some one off stories, beginning with LOEG: Nemo this March. Ostensibly this will fill in bit of the legend of the compelling Captain Nemo and his heirs. The cover implies his daughter, who assumes command of the Nautilus in Century 1910, though we may learn more of the grandson, in command in Century 2009.
O'Neill's art is much like the series itself. It varies from crude and vulgar to elegantly profound. There's a verve to it that's compelling even when illustrating crude content, which is often. There's addiction, messy sex between a great many people, distortions of the human form, and all manner of body functions accompanying the literature and culture lessons and all the daring do.
LOEG leaves me frustrated, challenged, intrigued, bemused, angered, entertained and ultimately satisfied.
Comics could do, and have done, worse.
Tomorrow: Best of 2012 number nine: if you can see it.

We'll be using yer guts fer garters, mate! (caption, panel 3)

This coming Sunday is National Talk Like A Pirate Day!
It draws many things to me beleaguered and rum-addled mind.
We'll let my old captain, Micheal Nesmith, interrupt now and again.



Arr. Now, then.
Since Pirates of the Carribean, there's been a revived interest in our bilge-soaked seafarers. Mr. Depp's over-the-top portrayal was a delight in that it made several things about pirates clear.
They're unclean.
They're dishonest with others, and not always so honest with themselves.
They're violent and greedy.
Despite that, they're really fun!



Yes. Quite right, then.
Pirates have been fixtures in comics forever. The origins of The Phantom and Tarzan are both steeped in pirate lore. Tarzan's parents were cast away from their burned ship by pirates, while pirates killed Kit Walker's parents in the 1600s, resulting in the Phantom legacy.

It's also worth mentioning that



Ahem. As we were saying.
It's also worth mentioning that many more contemporary superheroes have walked the planks under the skull and crossbones!
Benjamin J. Grimm, the Thing of Fantastic Four fame, was, in reality, Blackbeard.

One of the smartest superhero stories, James Robinson's Starman, uses pirates as a recurring theme, first as an adventure with Starman's late brother, then as a rescued damned pirate who saves Starman's bacon.

Detective Comics Annual No. 7 featured an Elseworlds story of a pirate Batman. The story, titled Leatherwing, is part of a series of unrelated stories, set outside standard DC continuity. While they often end with the central characters assuming the same roles they do in the "canon" continuities, these outings do give the creators a chance to stretch a bit.

There are also comics that are specifically about pirates, ranging from






(stop that!) er, ranging from this early Classics Illustrated, that adapts the Yul Brynner/Charlton Heston odd little quasi-historical epic The Buccaneer (one of my favorite childhood movies)

to Will Eisner's pre-Spirit strip Hawks of the Sea, represented here in its Canadian version,

to the more recent El Cadazor, from the late publisher CrossGen, whose smart, beautiful comics were hindered by an overly ambitious business plan and the vagaries of the economy.

This book, by the usually snarky/macho and slightly misogynist (but not nearly as bad as Beau Smith in that respect) Chuck Dixon, picks up on the Disney Pirates notion of a woman as captain. Not unheard of in the world of real pirates, but rather uncommon.

Another fixture of the pirate narrative: the abandonment of identity. In all these stories, there's an aspect of the character being reborn as another, a burial at sea of the land persona, if you will. This is often accompanied by a moral shift.

Following the astounding popularity of Disney's Pirates of the Carribean films, the theme began to recur in comics, including this delightful romp from Ted Naifeh, illustrator of the transgender tone poem How Loathsome, written by Tristan Crane.

Along the same lines, there's the bright (if derivative of Elfquest) comic based on the short-lived series Pirates of Dark Water. In addition to a page of the narrative, here's the cover of the last issue, with art by the delightful and elegant Charles Vess!

And thanks to the sadly demised Disney Adventures Digest, we have comics featuring Jack Sparrow and Company, illustrated by Brett Blevins, who also did the new Scarecrow of Romney Marsh comics for the same publication!
The first story was Revenge of the Pirates, from the August 2003 issue.

The final tale was The Accidental Pirate, from the Disney Super Special, Sept. 2009.

Approximately midway through the run, this tale appeared, introducing the usually land-bound pirate The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh,  who was featured in a dozen or so stories of his own throughout the run of the magazine.

And the classics.
This post-trend EC title featured some remarkable art and some innocuous stories- of necessity, as demanded by the then-powerful Comics Code.

And let us not forget the use of pirates as metaphor in the meta-comic Tales of the Black Freighter, contained in The Watchmen.

I'll be having some grisly metaphor, if you will, Captain! The true nature of pirates is much closer to the surface here, and is taken to extremes by the labyrinthine S. Clay Wilson in his classic, Captain Pissgums and His Pervert Pirates!

Despite Disney's attempts to turn them into charming rogues, pirates remain lethal, often amoral figures bound by their own code. Their stories are a sort of seafaring noir, wrapped in desperation and urgency as they sail to treasure they can never spend.
This Gentle Giant song sums up the inevitable end of most pirates.



The world of pirates is colorful, adventurous and seductive. It's also nihilist, defeating and doomed. The core conflict is Man Against Sea, and Sea always wins.


Well, maybe it's not THAT grim...

Ah, Pirates do love their treasures!