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:

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 Strip Club

I've loved comic strips since I was a little kid. While my primary panel allegiance is to comic books, there's never really been a time when I didn't peruse at least the Sunday funnies. My earliest specific memory of reading newspaper comics goes back to 1966, when I was six years old and fallin' hard for superheroes (thanks to the Batman TV series). One week, there was a Sunday Beetle Bailey strip where Sgt. Snorkel dreams that he and Beetle have become their own Dynamic Duo Fatman and Slobber, and high-camp hijinks ensue. There's no way that was my first exposure to Beetle Bailey and the rest of the popular features found in Syracuse's Sunday Herald American, but that one certainly resonated with me. And for weeks thereafter, I kept waiting for Fatman and Slobber to reappear in Beetle Bailey, but alas, it was their only appearance. I betcha they were probably erased from continuity in Crisis On Infinite Earths anyway.



In addition to Beetle Bailey, my early favorites included The Family Circus, Dennis The Menace, Blondie, Archie, Pogo, and (I think) Peanuts. I probably read Li'l Abner, too. We received the daily newspapers as well, The Post Standard in the morning and The Herald Journal in the afternoon, so I started scannin' those black-and-white strips during the week. Although I was (as noted) big into superhero comic books, I didn't really follow any syndicated adventure or dramatic strips. If memory serves, the non-comical comic strips the Syracuse papers offered at the time would have included Dick Tracy, Steve Canyon, Prince Valiant, Dondi, and The Phantom. The Phantom was the only costumed hero of the bunch--the Syracuse papers did not carry Superman or Batman--but I didn't start following the exploits of The Ghost Who Walks until later (after The Phantom [and Steve Canyon] were included as accessory identities for the Captain Action superhero doll in 1967).




In the late '60s and into the '70s, the adventure strips began to seem more attractive to me, especially The Phantom, Steve Canyon, and Rip Kirby. Aside from reprints in Peanuts paperback collections, the first older newspaper strips I ever read were the 1940s Batman and the 1929/1930s Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, both of which I discovered in the early '70s. The Batman strips had been reprinted in a few of DC Comics' 80-Page Giants in the '60s, comic books which I encountered as back issues circa...'72, or so? And a Christmas or birthday around that time brought me the hardcover volume The Collected Works Of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. Reading the adventures of the intrepid Buck Rogers influenced my own eighth-grade art project, a comic strip called Jack Mystery.



(The allure of older newspaper strips was strong, but I didn't have much opportunity [or funds] to indulge it in the '70s. I coveted a publication called The Menomonee Falls Gazette, which published a variety of comic strips, but I don't think I ever bought an issue. I started clipping and saving The Phantom strip from the Syracuse papers, I read paperback novelizations of 1930s Phantom and Flash Gordon strip continuities, and I immersed myself in a fantastic tabloid Dick Tracy one-shot published by DC Comics. I never got around to buying or reading any other vintage newspaper strip collections.)



As time wore on, there were fewer adventure or drama options to be found on the funnies pages in the Syracuse newspapers. The Phantom hung on (and it's still there today), but Rip Kirby and Steve Canyon faded away, and Dick Tracy eventually disappeared locally, too. I never developed any interest in Mark Trail or Mary Worth, though I did at least flirt with Brenda Starr, Reporter. On the humor front, of course, I was completely taken by Doonesbury, and later by Bloom County, Calvin And Hobbes and The Far Side, too. The late '70s also brought a number of new strips based on comic books--The Amazing Spider-Man, World's Greatest Superheroes, The Incredible Hulk, Conan The Barbarian, and Howard The Duck--but the ones I saw didn't grab me, and the ones I didn't see, I...um, didn't see.

Fast-forward through the '80s (something I wish I could have done in real life). When I lived in an apartment in Buffalo in the '80s, I subscribed to home delivery of The Buffalo News and continued to get my daily comic-strip fix. I cancelled when I moved back to Syracuse in '87. In 1989, I bought a house in the Syracuse suburbs. The blockbuster success of the 1989 Batman movie spawned a new syndicated Batman comic strip, ghost-written by my favorite mystery novelist Max Allan Collins and illustrated by my all-time favorite Bat-artist Marshall Rogers. The new strip would be carried in the Syracuse newspapers, and that was sufficient motivation for me to start getting home delivery of the paper again.



I thought the new Batman strip was just wonderful, but it didn't last long in the Syracuse papers. I was able to continue following it in a promo publication given away at participating comic book shops, but the strip ended entirely not long thereafter. It also appeared in a magazine called Comics Revue, which contained a great mix of new, old, comical, and straight comics. I had already been buying Comics Revue regularly (and was hooked by its reprints of the great British spy strip Modesty Blaise), but I eventually stopped getting it because issues were accumulating faster than I ever got around to reading them.



The newspaper game has changed, not for the better. There is no daily newspaper in Syracuse anymore; the Herald is long gone, and the Post now publishes a mere three days a week, with daily content posted online. I still receive home delivery on Thursdays and Sundays, but I read my comics online. Writer/artist/musician Dan Pavelich began a humor comic strip called Just Say Uncle, and it was (and remains) available on the Go Comics site. Go Comics carries a number of comic strips, including my other current favorites Dick Tracy, Pearls Before Swine, Luann, Carol Lay's essential weekly Lay Lines, Non Sequitur, Doonesbury, Fox Trot, and Jump Start, classic Tarzan, and much more. Go Comics has become my daily comics resource. It's not the same as getting a new Batman newspaper strip delivered to my home every day, but it's going to have to suffice.

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Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.

(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)

Get MORE Carl! Check out the fourth and latest issue of the mighty Big Stir magazine at bigstirrecords.com/magazine

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, 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).

Dick Tracy Meets The Green Hornet!

Lemme tell ya: this was a surprise, and I couldn't be more enthused.

I wasn't aware of the teaser art you see above, so I stumbled into this with no advance warning. The daily Dick Tracy is one of my current favorite comic strips. This past Tuesday's installment thrilled me to the depths of my nerdy soul:



YES...!

Plainclothes Tracy is no stranger to characters from other media properties. Tracy recently worked a case alongside the legendary Will Eisner's hero The Spirit (a case which also brought them into contact with The Dragon Lady from Terry And The Pirates), and he's encountered characters from Little Orphan Annie on several occasions. A previous dream sequence even depicted Tracy alongside his doppelganger (and Li'l Abner's "ideel") Fearless Fosdick. These were all officially licensed crossovers. In addition, there have been winking references to characters like Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane and The Shadow's companion Margo Lane, and appearances by a Mr. Walker, who is clearly (if unofficially) The Ghost Who Walks, The Phantom.

The Chicago Tribune, which owns Dick Tracy, hasn't always been so open to crossovers with other companies. Some time in the '80s or '90s, the Tribune nixed a proposed comic book bringing Tracy together with Batman, a project which would have been written by acclaimed mystery novelist Max Allan Collins (who was already writing the Dick Tracy strip at the time) and illustrated by comics veteran Joe Staton, who now does the current Tracy strip with Mike Curtis.

But The Green Hornet...! The 1966 Green Hornet TV series with Van Williams and Bruce Lee is a prevailing and beloved reference point for me. I've written previously of how the TV show introduced me to the character, and I've written a tease of The Beat And The Sting, a Green Hornet '66 rock 'n' roll adventure story I'd love to write, inspired by the murder of Bobby Fuller and the mob-run record company described by Tommy James in his autobiography, Me, The Mob, And The Music. Suffice it to say I love The Green Hornet, particularly the '66 version. That would seem to be the version we'll be seeing in this Dick Tracy adventure, and I can't wait to see it all unfold each day. Another case for Dick Tracy. Another challenge for The Green Hornet.

If your local newspaper doesn't carry Dick Tracy, don't despair! Dick Tracy is one of many fine comic strips you can still follow for free at Go Comics. Go! COMICS!



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Our new compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4 is now available from Kool Kat Musik! 29 tracks of irresistible rockin' pop, starring Pop Co-Op, Ray Paul, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith, Vegas With Randolph Featuring Lannie Flowers, The Slapbacks, P. Hux, Irene Peña, Michael Oliver & the Sacred Band Featuring Dave Merritt, The Rubinoos, Stepford Knives, The Grip Weeds, Popdudes, Ronnie Dark, The Flashcubes,Chris von Sneidern, The Bottle Kids, 1.4.5., The Smithereens, Paul Collins' Beat, The Hit Squad, The Rulers, The Legal Matters, Maura & the Bright Lights, Lisa Mychols, and Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers. You gotta have it, so order it here.