POP-A-LOOZA: Comic Strip Club

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is my reminiscence about reading newspaper comics, "Comic Strip Club."'

While a look at this blog's comics label reveals well over 200 times I've written about comic books, I've never written very much about newspaper comic strips. Other than "Comic Strip Club," some passing mention in my Everlasting First recollections of discovering Flash Gordon and Tarzan, and the history of my own creation Jack Mystery, the only other notable comic strip connection here is 2018's "Dick Tracy Meets The Green Hornet!," my enthusiastic reaction to the news that those two pop culture icons would be meeting in the Dick Tracy strip.

(As a tangent to that, it's worth noting that my prevailing interest in the Green Hornet and Kato has also manifested in an Everlasting First piece, a Greatest Record Ever Made! piece about "The Green Hornet Theme," an abortive attempt at a 1966-set Green Hornet rock 'n' roll comic book called The Beat And The Sting (represented in a teaser and in some introductory pages), and--of course!--radio commercials starring the Green Hornet and Kato and (separately) the Beatles for a fast-food taco restaurant. Another challenge for the Green Hornet!)

But right now, we talk about the serious subject of the funny pages. "Comic Strip Club" is the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

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Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
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I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.

POP-A-LOOZA: THE EVERLASTING FIRST: Tarzan

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is my Everlasting First reminiscence about how I discovered the adventures of the Lord of the jungle, Tarzan.

I haven't written much else about Lord Greystoke and company. My history of DC 100-Page Super Spectaculars includes references to my appreciation of DC's 100-page issues of Tarzan, and my teen reading of Tarzan novels is mentioned in my look back at superpulp paperbacks. The 1930s movie serial The New Adventures Of Tarzan and reprints of classic Tarzan newspaper strips play cameo roles in my odes to serials and syndicated comic strips, respectively.

But really, my brief collection of thoughts about Tarzan are all wrapped up in one place. The Everlasting First: Tarzan is the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza. 

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You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.

THE EVERLASTING FIRST: Tarzan

Continuing a look back at my first exposure to a number of rock 'n' roll acts and superheroes (or other denizens of print or periodical publication), some of which were passing fancies, and some of which I went on to kinda like. They say you never forget your first time; that may be true, but it's the subsequent visits--the second time, the fourth time, the twentieth time, the hundredth time--that define our relationships with the things we cherish. Ultimately, the first meeting is less important than what comes after that. But every story still needs to begin with that first kiss.

It all started with a scream.

Everyone knew the scream. It didn't matter if you were young or old. The fierce jungle cry of Tarzan was a shared reference in our common pop culture, as was the familiar exchange of "Me Tarzan, you Jane." Some knew the story with a greater measure of depth than that. But everyone knew the scream.

And, with that said, I confess I don't know exactly where and how I first encountered this iconic Lord of the jungle. Well, except that I'm reasonably certain that my introduction to Tarzan came via my TV screen.

I was six years old when the weekly Tarzan series debuted on NBC in September of 1966. Contrary to the collective popular conception of Tarzan as a savage warrior with limited command of the English language, actor Ron Ely played the title hero as articulate and educated. He still had the scream, of course, but he spoke in complete sentences. Years later, I would discover that this well-spoken character was the (if you will) real Tarzan, the Tarzan featured in the original novels written by the character's creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs. That "Me Tarzan" jazz mentioned above? That was just Hollywood messin' with the concept. Eff the man, man.

But, as much as I want to say that Ron Ely and his two televised seasons of protecting the jungle served as my gateway into all things Tarzan...the math isn't there. I was six years old, already a veteran viewer of TV heroes from Flash Gordon and Superman to The Cisco Kid and Batman. By the age of six, I knew about (or at least thought I knew about) Tarzan. Everyone knew Tarzan. The guy with the scream. Tarzan of the Apes.

It's quite plausible that my early knowledge of Tarzan formed via pop culture osmosis. I may or may not have seen a Tarzan movie, but the character was such an integral part of Americana that, well, he was just there. Always. A specific introduction wasn't strictly necessary. No one introduces you to running, or clouds, or snowfall, or the idea that girls can be cute. It's a fait accompli. It is because it is, was, and ever shall be. Chicken. Egg. Tarzan. 

Anyway, knowing Tarzan wasn't quite the same as being interested in Tarzan. Let's presume I caught an episode of the TV show in there somewhere. Let's further presume I'd had a glimpse of one or more of the older Tarzan movies in TV reruns. Neither of these presumptions is Gospel, but sometimes ya gotta grab that vine and take a swing of faith. I might have thumbed through one of Gold Key's Tarzan comic books at the doctor's office. But even if I did see something of the new or old adventures of Tarzan, they didn't inspire me to become a fan. Not yet.

The first Tarzan product I ever owned was a Big Little Book. I went through a Big Little Book phase in fourth grade, 1969-1970, and I snapped up as many of those little treasures as I could. The Big Little Books were licensed properties, tiny hardcover volumes featuring a page of text accompanied by a facing page of illustration. I accumulated BLBs starring Batman, The Fantastic Four, Tom and Jerry, Space Ghost, Aquaman, Dick Tracy, The Lone Ranger, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Flipper, The Flintstones, Mickey Mouse, Frankenstein Jr....man, any of 'em I could get my hands on. I even grabbed some BLBs based on TV shows I didn't really watch, like Bonanza, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and The Invaders. And my haul included the lone '60s Tarzan BLB, The Mark Of The Red Hyena.

I remember the cover. I know I owned it, and I know I read it. I have no other recollection of The Mark Of The Red Hyena.

But my interest in Tarzan was about to manifest. In 1972, the Burroughs estate terminated Gold Key's license to publish Tarzan comics, and DC Comics eagerly picked up that license. At DC, writer-artist Joe Kubert began adapting the original novels, and the result was stunning and irresistible. It would be a little bit of an exaggeration to say I was hooked, but I was intrigued, and I read the book as often I could fit it within my comics-buyin' budget.

Kubert's work was my real gateway into Tarzan's world. From there, I started watching the old movies on TV, both the '30s and '40s films starring Johnny Weissmuller as the less-loquacious hero and the '50s and early '60s action flicks starring Gordon Scott or Mike Henry. I soaked up reruns of the Ron Ely TV series when I could find it. I started reading some of the novels, and DC even published a 100-Page Super Spectacular reprinting a Tarzan newspaper strip storyline, with gorgeous art by Russ Manning.

I became dismissive of the Weissmuller movies, smugly insisting that the monosyllabic brute depicted in those pictures was a distortion of the character. Yet I enjoyed those anyway, especially Tarzan's New York Adventure. Ron Ely was my favorite Tarzan, but I came to respect the Weissmuller films, too.

In this 21st century, Tarzan isn't quite the ubiquitous figure in pop culture that he was in the '60s and '70s, when I was a mere lad and beardless youth. I've never seen the Disney animated take, and I'm sure the House Of Mouse's Tarzan provides the key contemporary reference point for today's kids, if they know Tarzan at all. When my daughter was in college, one of her fiction courses required her to read the first Tarzan novel, ERB's Tarzan Of The Apes from 1912. That was, at least, a text book she didn't have to buy, as I lent her my copy instead. She hated the book, of course, appalled by its casual, implicit racism and its imperialist POV. I'll have to ask her if the Disney version is more to her liking.

And maybe I should check out Disney's Tarzan, too. Does he still have the scream? Gotta have the scream, I say. Gotta have the scream.

WHEN THE EVERLASTING FIRST RETURNS: T is for:

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1)will contain 165 essays about 165 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1). My weekly Greatest Record Ever Made! video rants can be seen in my GREM! YouTube playlist. And I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

COMIC BOOK RETROVIEW: DC 100-Page Super Spectaculars, Part Nine

Continuing a look back at DC Comics' 100-Page Super Spectaculars in the 1970s. Begin with Part 1, move on to Part 2, then Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8. Time now for the thrilling conclusion.




100 pages. That's a bargain, right? In the early '70s, 100 pages of comics could be yours for the low, low price of just fifty cents. Even when dat ole debbil inflation pushed the cover price up to a scandalous sixty cents, it was still a bargain. Old comics and new comics, all wrapped together within a Nick Cardy cover, a lesson in comics history teaming up with the latest adventures of your favorite heroes. A bargain, for sure. And for those who love bargains, what could be better than more bargains? More 100-pagers! More titles! More books! Why settle for just a single 100-Page Super Spectacular each month, when we can have a whole line of titles in that format? More! MORE!!

It was, ultimately, too much of a good thing.

In late 1973, I was 13, nearing my fourteenth birthday coming up in January. I don't recall my precise feelings about the expansion of the Super Spectacular line, though I imagine was in favor it. I do remember being less than fully enthused with some of the resulting book themselves. Detective Comics was a 100-page treat, and so was Batman. But, for me, much of the rest of the 100-page line was more hit or miss than would have seemed likely.

If you're a comics fan, your appreciation of these books may vary significantly from mine. I wanted more Golden Age material from the '40s in the Super Specs' reprints, and I felt that there was too much humdrum (to me) Silver Age stuff where a vintage Spy Smasher, Plastic Man, or Merry, Girl Of 1,000 Gimmicks should have appeared instead. Some of the new material also presented a mixed bag for my increasingly idiosyncratic taste. Maybe I was growing up? Maybe I was outgrowing superhero comics?

No, no--let's not get crazy here.





But the increasing prevalence of fifty- and sixty-cent books stretched my comics-buyin' budget beyond its capacity. World's Finest Comics? The Brave And The Bold? I think I found ways to continue getting most of these issues (without resorting to pilferage), but they were barely holding my interest, if that. (The Brave And The Bold, which had once been one of my favorite comic books, will be the subject of an extended rant another day. For now, suffice it to say that the comic hadn't really changed so much as my taste had changed.)



Although I'd love to read them again now, I never did muster up much enthusiasm at the time for Superman Family, a new 100-page title that replaced the long-running Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen (from which Superman Family continued its numbering) and Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane, as well as the shorter-lived Supergirl title. Those three former lead features rotated the lead spot in Superman Family, backed by reprints of the other two (and other Superman-related stories). I don't even really remember the 100-page Superman books, and the sole pair of 100-page editions of Action Comics kinda left me cold. I dug the two 100-page issues of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, which offered new Legion stories drawn by artist Mike Grell (whose rendition of Lana Lang seemed a bit sexier to me than any previous depiction of Smallville's favorite daughter) and some cool LSH reprints.



     

Two of DC's licensed titles also went the 100-page route. Tarzan was an interesting experiment; the new adventures of Tarzan, Korak, and (in Tarzan # 230) Carson of Venus were simply gorgeous, with artwork by the likes of Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, Mike Kaluta, and Alex Niño, sometimes supplemented by reprints of equally-stunning Tarzan newspaper strips by Russ Manning. DC filled the rest of the book with an odd but intriguing selections of reprints from its own archives, starring characters like Detective Chimp, Congo Bill, and Rex the Wonder Dog. The first two 100-page Tarzans also included reprints of DC's mid-'60s licensed title Bomba The Jungle Boy. However, since DC no longer had the comics rights to our Bomba, he was re-named Simba The Jungle Boy. Listen: if you've seen one jungle boy, you've seen 'em all.



Another ongoing 100-page licensed title was Shazam!. Of course, no one knew at the time that it was a licensed book; virtually everyone thought that DC had purchased the rights to the original Captain Marvel, rather than entering into a licensing deal with Cap's former publisher, Fawcett Comics. But the 100-page Shazam! books nonetheless offered a bounty of Golden Age action starring The Big Red Cheese and the rest of The Marvel Family. The new Marvel Family material couldn't match the vintage stuff, and I was always disappointed that we didn't get to see reprints of the other former Fawcett heroes that we all thought DC owned outright, characters like Spy Smasher, Bulletman, Ibis the Invincible, and Mr. Scarlet.  Still, you'll never hear me complaining about an opportunity to read '40s and '50s stories starring The World's Mightiest Mortal.




Justice League Of America also switched to an ongoing Super Spectacular format, and I surely never missed an issue of that. JLA was written by Len Wein at the time, and I don't think anyone's ever really challenged Wein's status as my all-time favorite Justice League scribe. Hell, I didn't even mind the pandering cover blurb of Here Come TV's Super-Friends!, because this was rock-solid superhero storytelling. Most issues also included vintage tales of The Justice Society of America, but issues # 111 and 112 upped the ante by instead serializing a 1940s Seven Soldiers Of Victory story, giving me my first chance to read a Golden Age adventure of this lesser-known super-group. My only real complaint about the 100-page era of Justice League was that the book's bi-monthly status meant that the traditionally two-part annual JLA/JSA crossover was cut back to a single issue. And it was still worth it!

Unfortunately, the comics-buying market in 1974 apparently did not agree that these books were worth it. By the end of '74, the last 100-Page Super Spectaculars hit the stands: Batman # 261, The Flash # 232, Justice League Of America # 116, Shazam! # 17, The Unexpected # 162, World's Finest Comics # 228, and Young Romance # 204, all cover-dated March-April 1975, but all long gone from the spinner racks by the time the calendar's pages actually flipped to the spring of '75. In their place, a few more diminutive books tried to pass themselves off as Giants. Giants? At a mere 64 pages?! A giant compared to the puny books otherwise cluttering the racks, I guess, but not a true giant. Not a Super Spectacular.

Er--Super Spectacular or not, this looks pretty damned good...!

The marketplace could not sustain the glut of 100-page comic books. The format disappeared entirely, revived only for sporadic nostalgic kicks in the '90s. DC's publisher Carmine Infantino would continue to try to find a format that would entice readers and recapture market share; the dollar tabloids were another cool attempt to accomplish that goal, and they'll likely be the subject of a future reminiscence here in Comic Book Retroview. But Infantino's days at DC's helm were numbered; he was dismissed from the position in early 1976.




But my fondness of that brief flourish of 100-Page Super Spectaculars remains as strong today as it was when I was eleven years old in 1971, and my eyes widened at the sight of my first Super Spec. I occasionally toy with the idea of manipulating my digital comics files in an attempt to concoct new (well, faux new) Super Spectaculars, creating a 100-page Adventure Comics, or The Shadow, or The Sandman, or Rima The Jungle Girl, mixing the then-fresh '70s exploits of those books' stars with vintage vault-raids starring The Boy Commandos, Minute Man, Midnight, Miss America, Robotman, Kid Eternity, and The Crime Crusaders Club (the one-off 1940s Fawcett super-group with Captain Marvel Jr., Minute Man, and Bulletman and Bulletgirl). But it's too much work, and it wouldn't be real.



But those original 100-pagers? To this kid, trying to grow up in the '70s, in that vast but fleeting expanse of time between discovering Hot Wheels and discovering The Ramones, they were real. And they were Spectacular.

(A tip of the Super-Specs to TwoMorrows Publishing's Back Issue magazine, whose spotlight on DC's 100-Page Super Spectaculars in Back Issue # 81 was an invaluable resource in assembling this nine-part retrospective.)



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