In the days before Wikipedia, when I ran my Fantastic Four website, I put together what was then THE definitive article about the alien race known as the Skrulls. The earliest copy of it in the Internet Archive has is from 2001, but I'm sure it was at least a few years old at that point. I recall writing it in one of the apartment's my first wife and I had and, since we bought our house in 1999, the article must pre-date that.

The reason I recall writing that in an apartment is because of how I wrote it. Basically, I went through my collection and pulled out every comic I had that featured the Skrulls in any way. They sat in a stack on the floor next to the drafting table I was using as a computer desk. As I remembered other stories that included Skrulls from my collection, I had to go into the other room, sort through my long boxes to find the issue, and then bring it back to the pile I was making. It was a bit of a pain going back and forth between rooms to keep getting books for research, but it was more annoying having to reach from the relatively high stool needed for the drafting table to pick a comic up off the floor.

However, that was still a better prospect than a couple years later after we bought our house. While we now had an actual desk I could use to work from, my comics collection was on an entirely different floor and I had to trudge up and down a couple flights of stairs if there was another issue I needed to dig out. So when I wrote my article about the Negative Zone, it wound up being a bigger pain in the butt every time I needed another piece of reference.

So when I moved into the house I'm in now, I was very keen to create a room that not only housed my entire comics collection, but to make sure it included a work space where I could write. I was trying very much to build a working library. When an artist designs/builds their studio, they try to include all the tools and materials that they use on a regular basis so they don't need to interrupt their creative flow while they're working. I very much wanted to do the same thing from a comics research perspective. In my case, though, the tools I use are basically a computer and monitor; and the materials I use are comics and books/magazines about comics. Back in the 1990s, that would've been mostly limited to any Fantastic Four comics and some extended Marvel books. But these days, my areas of interest are decidedly more diverse -- from webcomics to Jack Kirby to original art to newspaper comics... with healthy doses of manga, European comics, minicomics, etc.

This week, I'm working on my next article for The Jack Kirby Collector. It's a piece on Jack's Black Hole comic. I'll not only being referencing the comic itself, but will also try to put it into context, which means I'll be pulling down various other books and magazines about Jack's life at that time and what else he was working on. And that's all pretty much within arm's reach. Tomorrow, I might switch over to something about newspaper comics and need to grab a Doonesbury collection or Holtz's American Newspaper Comics encyclopedia, also both within arm's reach. Maybe I'm working on a piece about webcomics and grab one of Brad Guigar's books on the subject, or a Girl Genius trade paperback.

The point is that I've organized and set up my collection around how I use it. If I exclusively read comics for entertainment purposes and didn't study them, my library would probably have another couple rows of bookshelves in place of a desk and work space. If I was just a huge fan of Spider-Man, I might have fewer bookshelves in favor of a large TV setup where I could watch the movies and shows, or play some of the video games.

I love seeing how other people have their collections set up and/or organized. In part it can provide some ideas for me, but more interestingly, I use it to see how get a better understanding of how they use and interact with their collection. It says a great deal about who they are as comics fans, I think; that's not a matter of judgement -- it just showcases how we all don't come to the medium with the same ideas and conceptions and understandings. A fact that many people seem to forget from time to time!

I originally reviewed Seth Tobocman's The Face of Struggle back in 2020. Given the destruction that Donald Trump has wrought over the past month and change, and in the shaodw of his speech last night, I thought it might be worth revisiting. The man is dangerous at an international level and if everyone -- notably other polticians and journalists -- doesn't treat him as such, he will absolutely decimate what's left of the United States, literally killing thousands of people in the process. I said so then, and I'm saying so now...

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I've been trying to support independent creators and publishers during this lockdown, and one of the books I picked up recently was Seth Tobocman's The Face of Struggle from AK Press. Tobocman's intent was to to relay a very contemporary allegory in the same vein as Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward had done a century earlier. I don't believe Tobocman is using actual woodcuts here, but he carries much the same design sensibility, including a lack of any words.

The story is fairly short, a mere 37 individual images. But the images are powerful, and strongly resonate. The first 30 basically relay Trump's rise to the Presidency and his first years in office. It's not a literal recounting of events, but a more impressionistic one. However, the individual allegories used to relay collections of events are both striking and unmistakable. Tobocman pulls no punches by showing Trump taking the hair and actual face of a woman whose been fighting for justice and equal rights and peace, and then using them as a mask to incite violence and fear. The last few pages turn towards a more optimistic ending as Trump is found guilty, the police turn on him, and people rejoice after stabbing him to death. I say optimistic, of course, because Tobocman clearly is showing justice being served, but given that Trump has bought his way out of justice for over seven decades, I'm skeptical it's about to be served now.

With only 37 images, none of them containing any words, The Face of Struggle is initially a very quick read. I say "initially" because if you read through it just for the superficial story, it does go by pretty quickly. But after you finish, you'll find some of the images stick with you and you flip back to look at them again. And as you're flipping through to the right page, you catch other images and those catch your attention too now. And as you start studying the individual images, you realize that, despite seeming to very simple on the surface, they all actually do an amazing job of capturing entire episodes pretty masterfully. For example, Hurricane Maria, the devastation it wracked on Puerto Rico, and Trump's response are summed up in a single image. It's deceptively simple, yet it is absolutely unmistakable what Tobocman is trying to convey there.

Tobocman's comic here is perhaps THE most openly oppositional to Trump I've come across. It's not like a political cartoon that might focus on a single thing Trump said or did, or maybe criticizing one of his policies. No, this is a more extended indictment of... well, I don't want to say everything because Trump has done a HELL OF A LOT OF AWFUL THINGS, but this does have a great deal of the evil Trump has perpetrated in office. Make no mistake, Trump is evil. He's encouraging Klansmen, he's ordering murders, he's making disasters even worse. Both in the story and in real life. Like I said, the book isn't a literal recounting of events but it's definitely one of those books that speaks the truth.

The art here is incredible in its power. The story is blunt, but necessarily so, I think. The Twitter feed for President SuperVillain puts Trump's actual words into the mouth of the Red Skull, and you frighteningly can't tell the difference. Which is kind of the joke of the whole thing, right? It's funny because it's comparing Trump's actual speech to the dialogue of an often badly written comic book villain. The tension between the two ("No one would actually say that, would they?") yields a humorous response. But that also makes it safe. What we see in The Face of Struggle is the reality of the situation. It's still taking actual events and putting them into an over-the-top comic format, but doing so as a direct allegory carries more weight to it, and says, "No, this is not something to laugh at -- this is some really mind-bogglingly terrifying shit!" And I think we need more of that.

Trump is incomprehensibly dangerous. People keep coming back surprised that he's done something even more awful than before, and I find myself saying over and over again, "There is no bottom here. Think of the most one-dimensional evil-for-evil's-sake Saturday morning cartoon villain you've ever seen, and you'll START to get a sense of Trump's motives. Nothing -- NOTHING!!! -- is beneath him." Tobocman is the first cartoonist I've seen that seems to get that. And he does so with a masterful eye on simplifying complex stories and ideas into strangely simple drawings. This won't be a book to eat up a lot of your free time while you read it in lockdown, but it will eat up a lot of your brain space as you mull things over for days on end.

I suspect that if you're familiar at all with the character of Intellectual Amos, it's through the two stories reprinted in The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics from about fifteen years ago. As far as I can tell, that was the first time any Intellectual Amos stories had been reprinted since the character's short publication history in the late 1940s. A few scans have shown up online, but there's never been much discussion about him or his creator André LeBlanc.

LeBlanc was actually born in Haiti in 1921, although his family moved to New York City while he was still a child. In 1939, LeBlanc got hired at the Eisner-Iger shop doing inking and background work. When that studio closed down, LeBlanc continued working on comics in shop-style environments, first directly for Jerry Iger's solo studio followed soon after by Jack Binder's. Shortly after moving to Cuba in 1944, he introduced Intellectual Amos, which ran as a back-up to Will Eisner's The Spirit Sunday newspaper section. The US customs wound up making sending his work from Cuba overly expensive, but he was able to get the stories into Quality Comics titles like National Comics where it ran until 1947.

LeBlanc started selling work to the Brazilian market (he left Cuba for Brazil after only a short stay) where most of his original work like Morena Flor was published. He did move back to New York in 1956, and began working with Eisner nad other comics houses again, but leaving his original creations behind to essentially ghost others' characters like The Spirit, Plastic Man, and Mandrake the Magician. He worked on adaptations of The Bible as well as some of Lee Ames' "How To Draw" books. He eventually passed away in 1998.

But that is, I think, largely why LeBlanc isn't well-known in the US. The vast majority of his work printed here was essentially uncredited, with the bulk of the fame going to the original creator(s). Most of his original work was published in Brazil; it's well-regarded enough that he was awarded the Southern Cross, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a Brazilian citizen for his illustrations of classical literature.

LeBlanc's Intellectual Amos stories are short and have minimal continuity. His sidekick Wilbur the Goblin is initially larger than Amos and has a comically pronounced lisp, but shrinks in size and eventually becomes mute with no explanation for either. Amos' own design features change from having something of a pear-shaped body and excessively full lips in his first outing, dropping down to more 'normal' child proportions after several months. His glasses are used at first, but eventually become a token accessory always resting above his brow. (Amusingly, though, LeBlanc continues to show Amos stopping to clean his glasses, only to place them back on top of his head when he's done.)

(I should point out too that the "Intellectual" part of his name does not suggest any real genius on Amos' part. It's explictly stated that he's not especially smart, but he does have a photographic memory and spent the earliest days of his youth growing up in a library. He's repeatedly shown to mentally consult books he's read, rather than utilizing any Holmes-ian deductive capabilities.)

Last month, Midcentury Comics collected all of the Intellecutal Amos stories from National Comics in a single volume. It doesn't include The Spirit backup stories and there's no additional context other than the stories themselves. The images do not have a lot by way of restoration, so they still show yellowed paper and some mis-registrations; however, the scans are still all very clean and it's emminently readable. It's not really an archival volume or anything, but it does collect most of the Intellectual Amos stories for the very first time.

The stories have a lot of imagination, and are depicted with a lot of energy. There were been more than a few times when Eisner's influence is quite evident, with incredibly limber characters and using the border panels themselves as design elements of the story. Some of the "mysteries" get solved in the last couple panels of each story as Amos reveals some critical piece of information the audience was not made privvy to, and those feel like they end a bit abruptly, but on the whole, the stories and art are whimsical and incredibly charming.

I've been itching for an Intellectual Amos collection since I first heard about the character and, while this volume have a lot of extra bells and whistles to it, it comes in relatively cheap at just over twenty bucks, so I will gladly take it! I did do some double-checking, too, before I ordered a copy and it does indeed appear that the work did pass into the public domain in the 1970s, so if you find a copy from somewhere else for even cheaper, go ahead and grab yourself a copy!

Indiginerds: Tales from Modern Indigenous Life is titled about as straight-forwardly as you can get. It's the latest anthology from Iron Circus Comics and tells several stories about indigenous people -- mostly of whom are self-described nerds -- who are trying to navigate the modern era. What does it look like to balance the traditional ways of their respective cultures with cell phones and video games and hundreds of years of having their voices supressed by coloniziers?

Despite the tone I put on the tail end of that last sentence, there is very little anger in the book. It is largely about finding joy and celebrating community. Connecting with others, both friends and the broader aspects of North American culture as a whole. (To be clear, the indigenous people represented here stretch from Canada through the US down to Mexico.) In some cases, that is in a very personal and intimate way -- finding a dating partner -- and in some cases that is in a much grander way -- helping to create an international, loosely-affiliated coalition of radio stations broadcasting news and information vital to standing up for indigenous rights. Even the story about a band whose instruments are stolen hours before a concert don't really exhibit much anger, and spend their time focusing on how they can still play at the gig and sharing the joy of their music with others.

One thing I found interesting was how many of the stories specifically involved finding some measure of comfort or solace within a 'nerd' environment. Finding a D&D group whose campaigns did not feel uncomfortably like a party of "white saviors" colonizing the local "savages." Choosing a race in World of Warcraft that was overtly inspired by Native cultures. Coming to grips with Star Trek's appropriation of Native cultures in some of the more ham-fisted episodes. That was certainly not the entirety of the stories, not even half honestly. But it's an idea that stands out to me, coming from a place of using my own nerd interests to find my own community; the idea that, even within those niche groups, a person can still feel excluded. It's not a new-to-me idea at least, but I definitely appreciate the reminder here. I suspect more than a few readers could stand to pick it up as a refresher as well.

As with any anthology, the writing and art styles vary from story to story and, not surprisingly, some were more to my tastes than others. All of them were good, though, and my only real complaint from a craft perspective was that one of the stories had a few caption boxes placed a bit awkwardly for a really smooth reading experience. But by and large, these are all some very talented individuals at work here.

The book was originally a crowd-funded project from late 2023. I do not see the book available on the Iron Circus site as of this writing, but it does appear to be available from online sellers like Bookshop.org. I just last week received my copy from the crowd-funding project, though, so I'm not sure how quickly it might get shipped from other sources. Indiginerds: Tales from Modern Indigenous Life retails for $20 US.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Space Chasers Review
https://ift.tt/L9kDjef

Kleefeld on Comics: Negro Heroes #1
https://ift.tt/crULP0z

Kleefeld on Comics: The Return of Lion Man
https://ift.tt/KxEyP9X

Kleefeld on Comics: Astonishing Tales #6-7 Review
https://ift.tt/6qoGpzE

Kleefeld on Comics: BHM Wrap-Up
https://ift.tt/HG8tMK1

Depending on how closely you've been following my blog, you may have noticed that every post I've made this month has been in honor of Black History Month. Whether I was presenting a biography or a book review or just presenting a little-seen comic, every post has been in the service of promoting Black people and their work.

I doubt many people noticed. I mean, yes, some have a pretty clear "I wrote this for Black History Month" vibe to them, but not everything, I think. Most of my posts this month, I expect, read more or less like any other set of posts I write here. A variety of comics-related topics with whatever my however-well-or-ill-informed perspective is. My same tone, my same voice. It's just been "Sean talking about comics." It did take a modicum of additional thought on my part to center topics on Blackness in/around comics, but not much. And that's coming from as-white-as-they-come me.

My point being that it's not all that difficult a subject to talk about.

Here in 2025, we're living in a time when the most powerful nation on the planet is actively encouraging racism. They're actively firing people for being Black. They're actively telling government institutions that their funding will be cut if they don't promote racism. That other people are being hurt in the process isn't even relevant to them; they're so keen to make things worse for Black people, they are willing to sacrifice literally everyone that doesn't have a net worth in the billions. They are willing to burn the entire country to the ground if it means killing more Black people.

Make no mistake, the people promoting this hatred are awful in every sense of the word. In every way possible. They are vile, disgusting excuses for human beings. And some people buy into it. Some people blame their own failings on whatever "other" is convenient and, right now, they're being told it's people of color.

I don't have their platform. I don't have anywhere near the reach or influence they do. But I'm telling you that Black people are doing some absolutely amazing and wonderful things in comics. Plenty of other industries, too, of course, but I'm a comics guy who talks about comics, and there are some incredible comics out there by Black creators, featuring Black characters, focusing on Black issues/concerns. If you're reading this, go back through this month's posts and check out some of the great comics and comics creators I've been talking about. Go back through my blog -- I've got nearly two decades' worth of posts and a not insignificant number of them highlight Blackness in comics. I've talked about the stereotypes of historical characters like Ebony White and Steamboat; I've done mini-biographies of Matt Baker and Orrin Evans; I've reviewed comics about the Buffalo Soldiers and Little Rock Nine; I've tried putting characters like Black Panther and Icon into their historical contexts... There is plenty there to dig through.

I'm no expert in Black culture or the Black experience or anything. Much of what I do know is from having deliberately sought out Black voices in comics. It has been fascinating and enlightening and, often, just downright fun. Take a moment to check out some of these pieces I'm talking. Not every one is going to be everyone's cup of tea -- hell, I don't necessarily like all the stuff I talk about here -- but there is plenty to work with and the least you can do to fight the hatred coming out of Washington DC is to trying to uplift some of the people they're trying to bootheel.

Dr. Doom has been made into something of a title character lately, with Marvel's "One World Under Doom" event. But it's hardly the first time they've set Doom up as a lead character. Back in the early 1970s, Marvel tried making Dr. Doom a protagonist by headlining him in the anthology title Astonishing Tales. He was originally given equal billing with Ka-Zar, although his cover space was reduced on #7 and reduced again on #8 before being dropped from the title altogether. But in his short stint as one of the book's headliners, he fought against none other than Black Panther for two issues.

The plot is pretty simplistic. Doom decides he requires vibranium to build his "most perfect weapons" and he digs a tunnel from Latveria to Wakanda (something in the 3,000 mile range!) to just excavate it himself. In the process, he sets off volcanoes and earthquakes in Wakanda, alerting T'Challa to his presence. The two face off, Panther is briefly captured, but eventually gains the upper handing by threatening to destroy all of the vibranium rather than let Doom steal it. Doom leaves, wondering if he might someday ally himself with T'Challa.

The story is... not good. The premise is incredibly weak to begin with, and having two different creative teams work on the front and back halves doesn't help matters. (Larry Lieber and George Tuska did the work in #6 while Gerry Conway and Gene Colan did the work on #7.)

And then we have the characterization... every bit of it is awful on so many levels. First, Doom is portrayed as basically a two-bit thief. I mean, he's the monarch of an entire country; why not just, you know, buy the vibranium he needs? And then to be so careless with his excavations that they send shockwaves through the entire country? Black Panther is nominally better, mostly by virtue of being a hero, but he still threatens to destroy all of the country's vibranium and his people to keep Doom from getting it. As the story is written, it's not an empty threat either. I'm sure it's been since retconned as such, but T'Challa's thought balloons clearly indicate he's perfectly fine sacrificing his entire nation without a moment's hesitation. He also makes reference to his people recently being released from slavery, even though historically Wakanda was never conquered. You could argue he was talking about "people of color generally" or maybe "any people who've ever experienced slavery" but the dialogue seems pretty clearly written as if he were an American referring to enslaved Black people.

But the worst offense here are the nameless Wakandans shown in some of the background pieces. As of 1971, when this book was written, Wakanda had been well established as having more and better technology than any other country on the planet. But every instance where Wakanda and/or its inhabitants are shown, we presented with stereotypical Hollywood-esque "Africans." (T'Challa even says, "The African brothers are in danger!") We see Wakandans in bare chests, grass skirts, and the like. Plus they harbor a HEAPING dose of tribal fear in the "wrath of the gods!" vein. That is literally part of the dialogue. The ostensibly most advanced nation on Earth is shown as a "Darkest Africa" backwater that makes the natives in the original King Kong look like they're the height of technological and social achievement.

I don't know who should bear the brunt of the blame here. It doesn't really matter, though; it's a far cry from the characters and culture put forth only a few years earlier during Black Panther's debut. I haven't read every issue, but I got the sense that Roy Thomas and John Buscema tried to keep that in mind when they had T'Challa over in The Avengers -- I don't get that sense at all here. And given that Stan Lee oversaw all of it, I kind of think he never really understood the character in the first place. For even as wacky as Jack Kirby's 1977 Black Panther series was, he still treated all of the characters with respect, and didn't show them as barely literate tribal stereotypes.

Not every writer or every artist is going to have the same take on any given character; that's to be expected. But writing an entire continent off as something barely above savages is a pretty ugly way to use any character, particularly those that have been expressly shown to be otherwise.

Unless you're a completist of some kind, don't bother trying to track down these two issues.