The Maltese Falcon, comic book version

Evan Lewis has been posting chapters of the comic book version of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon on his blog. Check them out here.

Friday's Forgotten Book: It Rhymes with Lust

Possibly a first edition,
based on the defects on the cover.

One of the stablemates in any genre is to discuss what was the first artifact produced in the particular genre. Hence there are many first graphic novels. I don't know what the first graphic novel really is, but I do know that there were many before It Rhymes with Lust was published in 1950 by a small outfit called Picture Novels, a subsidiary of St. John Publications.

It Rhymes with Lust was written by Leslie Waller and Arnold Drake and illustrated by Matt Baker. Drake and Baker had been doing regular comics for some time, mainly for DC, Waller had published a crime novel or two. Later on he did lots of movie novelizations. There have been two reprints, one in Comics Journal ten years ago and one by Dark Horse in 2007. It's been sold out for some time now, but I managed to pick up a copy.

It Rhymes with Lust (a great title, by the way!) is a slightly noirish exposé story of a cynical journalist who's called to a town called Copper City to run a newspaper published by the big man of Copper City, Buck Masson. Masson has passed away just before the story starts, but our man doesn't know it entering Copper City. It's soon revealed to him that Copper City is a corrupt place and eventually he has to stop the corruption. He has to face some thugs run by the deceased Buck Masson's lusty widow, Rust ("it rhymes with lust"), but he also falls in love with Buck Masson's daughter.

It Rhymes with Lust wouldn't be great literature if if were a prose novel, but now it's interesting, at least as a curiosity. It might work also as a movie, but even then it would be cliched. The active woman, Rust, is a bad femme fatale, and the passive one, Buck Masson's daughter, is a good girl. You've seen this a thousand times. Matt Baker draws well (beautiful women especially), his line is fluid, and the continuity is pretty good - this stuff reads fluently -, but as a story this would require some extra twists.

Picture Novels published another graphic novel, The Case of the Winking Buddha, by pulp novelist Manning Lee Stokes and illustrator Charles Raab -, but that's never been reprinted, so I'm not very likely to be able to read it. It has a great cover, though. Stokes wrote some crime novels from the thirties on and later he did a dozen Nick Carter paperbacks.

I noticed while reading this that a new small publisher Automat.Press has just launched a new Kindle edition of another early graphic novel, also in paperback format, i.e. Joseph Millard's Mansion of Evil. It was originally published by no less than Fawcett Gold Medal! Millard was an interesting character in his own right, making comics in the 1940's and 1950's and then moving to paperback originals. He wrote as Joe Millard some The Man With No Name westerns in the early seventies (though everyone knows Clint Eastwood has a name in all the Sergio Leone movies he's in). There are some free pages of Mansion of Evil in Amazon, and from those it seems that Mansion of Evil is purer noir, with its doppelgangers and all that stuff. Graphicwise, it doesn't seem as solid as It Rhymes with Lust.

Possibly British comic needs ID

Friend was asking whether anyone knows the artist behind this possibly British series of comics. It was published in Finnish in the 1950s as Esa and Eenokki, so possibly it was something like Eazy and Enoch (but most possibly not). Can anyone help my friend here?

And now for something completely different: a Swiss kids' comic book

I found this comic book aimed for children of say 5-10 years in a book shop in the small town of Savonlinna last summer. I'd never heard of it, so I bought it without a blink of an eye. When I got back home (okay, I did it already in the car with my phone), I checked from the web what this was all about. Jopi, globally known as Globi, was a creation of Swiss comic artist Robert Lips, for whom there's a Wikipedia article in German and an entry in Lambiek.net in English. There are three other Jopi books published in Finnish and I've never seen any of them (unless as a kid and completely forgotten them). This one, called "Globi Travels All Over the World", was published by the now defunct Weilin + Göös in 1982. There were three others: Eläköön Jopi, lasten ystävä! ("Long Live Globi, the Friend of Children!"), Jopi sirkuksessa ("Globi in Circus") and Jopi maanviljelijänä ("Globi the Farmer"). I showed this to a friend of mine, who's a writer and critic specializing in the comic book history, and he'd never seen any of these.

This is funny stuff, with naïve and heart-warming humour, with a touch of absurd on the side. Jopi reminds me a lot of my all-time favourite, Rasmus Nalle (aka Rasmus Klump, as he's known in his origin country, Denmark). Oh, here's another site about Rasmus in English.

Where's Lucky Luke?

The Official Blog of the Western Fictioneers, Professional Authors of Traditional Western Novels and Short Stories lists Top Ten Western comics. See the list here. Seems pretty nostalgic to me, but what's missing almost completely are the European comics. There are Blueberry (on 10) and Ken Parker (tie on 21), but where's Lucky Luke, where's Tex Willer, where's Cocco Bill, where's Yakari, Buddy Longway, Jerry Spring, Oumpah-pah... I know, I know, not many of these have been available in English, but here's hoping they will be!

Edit: a friend of mine pointed out there are more European comics included: Alejandro Jodorowsky's Bouncer on 19, Victor de la Fuente's Amargo on 20, Hermann and Greg's much-praised Comanche (tie on 25) and Giraud's and Charlier's (known for Blueberry) Jim Cutlass (tie on 32). 

Logicomix

The Logicomix graphic novel (which I believe is available in English) has been getting high praise from just about everyone here in Finland. The premise is interesting: it's a metatextual rendering of the history of mathematical, exact logic. It's told from many perspectives: the artists discussing the book under construction and Bertrand Russell telling about his life in a public speech, with the story moving forwards and backwards in time. The examples of logic Russell gives in his speech are also played out in the present time, with the artists discussing them. 

Logicomix is a fluent read, but I got the feeling it's also overhyped. The art is a bit stale (the artists are said to have collaborated earlier on the Babar animated TV show...) and while there's a lot of stuff going on all the time, with many important mathematical thinkers and philosophers popping in and popping out, I didn't realize what the fuss was about. (Plus I didn't understand many of the dilemmas presented, which may explain why I wasn't as fascinated as some others.) The stuff with Ludwig Wittgenstein was probably the most powerful. But I'd say if you're interested at all in the mathematics or the history of philosophical logic, you should try Logicomix. I just wish it would've been more original, more courageous. As a graphic novel, it's way behind Spiegelman's Maus, anything by Will Eisner, Alan Moore's and Eddie Campbell's From Hell etc. 

An obscure René Goscinny cartoon

This is more of interest to the Finnish readers, but I'm sure some othesr will find it interesting as well. I bought some old children's magazines from a thrift store dealer yesterday, one mainly because there was an old cartoon written by the French René Goscinny in it. The strip, drawn by Berck (known for his humorous Sammy Day gangster graphic novels), was called T.A.X. Suhari and Gorilla (the "TAX Suhari" is a bad pun meaning a taxi driver). It's called Strapontin in French, and I'm sure it was never published anywhere else in Finnish. The magazine I found this in was called Nasta - it was a magazine for the young, published from 1957 to 1965.

Here's a sample of the cartoon. It's about a gorilla that's been captured and given some treatment to become more human-like. The bad guy (in the right frame) tries to set up a trap for the gorilla, who's now too intelligent to be captured again. (Here's another link to Goscinny. I seriously everyone knows Goscinny's masterworks, Lucky Luke, Asterix and especially Iznogoud.)

Frank Miller's and Zack Snyder's 300

Last Friday night we were out having fun with my friends from our victorious movie pub quiz team. Between hopping from one bar to another, we were at one of my team mate's place and watched the Blu-Ray edition of the movie 300. Someone might think that I'd go for a movie about sword-yielding Spartans, but I thought - and all of my friends - the movie sucked big time. There were several points in the movie that I really disliked.

First. There's no plot. The movie is basically one long battle scene. There is some intrigue behind the lines, but not enough to merit a mention. I think the same marred Ridley Scott's Gladiator for me: the plot wasn't just interesting enough.

Second. The movie is full of empty posturing. The dialogue is silly and full of meaningless one-liners. The movie is directed with a bent toward empty posturing. Some of the battle scenes are not very exciting, since Snyder likes to stop the action by showing blood flow in slow motion or some such nonsense. Everything looks nice on a photo, but the drama just doesn't move along.

Third. The movie is politically so appalling that you feel like John Milius is a Commie pinko. It's not very hard to understand that Sparta is the USA, the ugly, hideous and back-stabbing witches are the UN and the Persians are - well, Persians (or Iraqis). Miller and Snyder like to show everyone else but Spartans are ugly or weak (the other Greeks that come to help the Spartans; they are presumably the British). Or a homosexual and a pervert - when Xerxes, the King of the Persians, came on the scene I burst out laughing and started to sing Sylvester's disco classic "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real". The movie also shows that the conflict between Persia and Sparta is one-sided, that the Persians just move in on Sparta - oh poor, poor Sparta!

Aside from the political overtones (they really not undertones) of 300, it's possible to see the plotlessness and the slow-motion being good examples of the new Hollywood cinema that's more based on videogames and their aesthetique, and not on old-fashioned drama, like Spartacus or Ben-Hur. It's more about the cinema of attraction rather than drama. It's also possible to see that these new historical films take the genre back to the its older roots, the ancient myths, Greek myths, Beowulf, etc., where the plot is not the crucial matter. However, I can't stop thinking that both Gladiator and 300 are just utter bores.

Comic anthology NOIR

Quickly before Ellroy: Dark Horse's new crime story anthology, called simply Noir, which looks very interesting. Here's a story from the book, Jeff Lemire's "The Old Silo".

Comixology on The Hunter

Interim here's a link to Comixology's post about the new graphic novel adaptation of Richard Stark's The Hunter.

Manchette in comics

Jacques Tardi's rendering of a Jean-Patrick Manchette novel coming out in English.

Hat tip to Duane Swierczynski!

Flemish 3D western

The most popular Flemish cartoon series ever, Suske en Wiske (Anu ja Antti in Finnish), has been made into a 3D animated film and it's a western! The characters look ugly, as they seem to always do in computer animation, but interesting nevertheless.

Parker graphic novel

The guy's no Lee Marvin, but still these previews of forth-coming Parker graphic novel look very neat.

Late additions to the best of 2008

Some books I've left unintentionally out from my best of 2008 list or books that appeared in 2008, but which I managed to read only in 2009:

Yasmina Khadra: Attentaatti (in English as The Attack), originally 2006, translated in Finnish in 2008: very gripping tale of a successful Arab doctor living and practicing in Israel: his life goes in turmoil, when his beautiful wife makes a suicide bomb attack in a Jerusalem café

Denis Johnson: Jesus' Son (originally in 1992, translated in Finnish just last year, and I think the book came out only in December): a combination between Raymond Carver and William S. Burroughs, short meaningless stories about drug addicts in the early 1970's America trying to live their lives with no much success, hardboiled style merged with hallucinatory similes, Bukowski without Bukowski's machismo

Paul Gravett (ed.): The Mammoth Book of the Best Crime Comics: huge package of mostly hardboiled and noir comics from the 1930's on to this day, from Dashiell Hammett's and Alex Raymond's X-9 to Alex Toth's and Bernie Krigstein's stylish noir and to Neil Gaiman's and Oscar Zarate's very, very chilling story about one of the wealthiest man in the world and his liking for beautiful boys, but all in all, lots and lots of great stuff, the book you don't want to be without (should probably write a longer piece on this, but I don't think I'll manage, since I've been sick and am behind my work and still don't feel like starting today) - but let me add since this stuff'll interest many people reading this blog: included are also Mickey Spillane's one and only Mike Lancer story and a long newspaper story featuring Mike Hammer (which wasn't bad, interesting that Hammer was drawn to look exactly like Mickey Spillane himself)

Mustang Gray

The Finnish pulp mag, Seikkailujen Maailma, also published some comics. They had one or two Finnish-origin comics, but all the others were imported. Here's the last one to appear in the magazine, Mustang Gray.

Mustang Gray was done by Italian artists, but it was published in the UK mag, Western Picture Library. One of the artists was Camillo Zuffi (1912-2002). The main artist, however, was Armando Bonato who later on turned into fumetti, via Diabolik. From a quick glance, Mustang Gray seems similar to Tex Willer, the best known of the Italian Western comics.

This is the opening page of the comic series, from the Seikkailujen Maailma issue November, 1960.

Another Western comic

Here's another one from the Seikkailujen Maailma mag. I don't know the original source, but it's called "In the Trails of Incomparable Arrow". This one is earlier - it was published in 1955.

Garfield without Garfield

I hate the Garfield comic strip with vehemence. However, if you take out Garfield, the strip becomes great. Check it out for yourself.

The talking snowflakes again

You may remember my graphic short story (sic) about Kauto and Ottilia and the case of the talking snowflakes. Well, here's more. These I drew in a bus during one of our Christmas trips, when it seemed that Kauto was falling asleep when he shouldn't have and Ottilia was getting too bored. So it's totally improvised and the last frames I drew when the bus was already approaching the place we were getting off. I already ended the story (it says "loppu/the end" already after the first six frames), but it seemed that the bus trip wasn't going to stop for a while, so I decided to continue.

It goes something like this:

It's winter.

Ottilia: Snow!

Kauto [who's apparently out in the yard]: Ottilia, come on out!

Ottilia: No, I won't! The talking snowflake is out there!

The snowflakes: No, he's not! Come on out!

Ottilia [who doesn't have a clue]: Well, okay, I'll come then!

Ottilia: Yippee! It's fun to be out!

Kauto: Let's make a snowman!

The snowflakes: Don't do that!

Ottilia: Shucks! These again!

Kauto: Ottilia, do splat splat!

Ottilia goes splat splat.

The snowflakes: Aaaaah...

The end.

Another one

And here's one more in the series about Kauto's and Ottilia's adventures. I'm not sure where I made this anymore, but from the drawings it's evident that I wasn't in a moving bus. One of the frames was made by Ottilia and I used it - that's why it seems so off-place.

It's summer.

Ottilia's out. Ottilia: Fun!

Suddenly...

Ottilia: Snow! It's Summer!

Ottilia gets confused. Ottilia: It shouldn't be snowing now...

And suddenly it dawns on her. Ottilia: It's them again!

The snowflakes: Who? The talking snowflakes, huh?

Kauto comes. Splat, splat, splat!

The snowflakes: Argh...

The end.

Ossian Saarman's sex cartoon

Here's a two-page cartoon made by Finnish artist Ossian Saarman for the Uusi Aatami magazine. The story goes like this: A woman sees her husband having sex with another woman and thinks about revenge. She almost has a car-wreck and ends up having sex with the two men who are driving the car. She goes back to his husband and laughs at him in her mind.

Ossian Saarman is a legend and he published almost all of his comics in self-publications. Here's some discussion on him and some of his pictures on Kvaak.