At a simplistic level, the reason why we don't see more diversity in comics characters is because there's little diversity in comics creators. A lot of privileged white folks are making comics, and so they follow the old "write what you know" saw and fill their stories with white people like themselves. But here's an easy way to shake things up.

The next time you want to introduce a new character, start by going to MapCrunch.com. It taps into Google's street view and pulls up shot of a random location. That's where your new character and/or their ancestors are from. Maybe not that exact spot (I just called up the middle of a forest in Poland) but that general area. Sure, sometimes, you're going to get a nice neighborhood in New England where all the rich, white folks live but you're sometimes going to get a slum in Thailand. Or a military base in Singapore. Or a small village in Hungary. Or a few houses overlooking a fjord in Norway. (All of which are locations I just randomly called up using MapCrunch.)

Bam. Instant diversity. You've immediately given this new character texture and background completely separate and unique from the rest of your cast without having to do anything more than click a link.

"But what if I need this character to be a certain type of character?"

Why does that matter? I mean, why does your character need to be from a certain location? If you just need to show your character's boss, why couldn't she or he be from Spain? If you need to introduce a love interest, what's wrong with their coming from Iceland? That new antagonist to spur your hero onto greatness can be from Estonia just as readily as Chile.

Plus, I'm not suggesting that these characters need to have just stepped off the metaphoric boat either. Maybe it was their parents or grandparents who emigrated to wherever your story takes place. Like I said, I'm just talking about texture and background here.

Now, sure, you could easily come up with some country you know nothing about. But how difficult is it to look that up on Wikipedia anymore? I'm not suggesting your new character needs to start spouting off the GDP and principle exports of Andorra, so you don't need to become an expert. Again, I'm just talking texture and background.

So with with a single click for each new character, you can broaden your comic's scope and diversity. It will instantly seem more inclusionary than everybody else's because their characters all look and act the same. And you didn't even have to rack your brain trying to figure out what nationality or race would make for a cool new character!

There has been some form of conflict between Israel and Palestine as long as I can remember. It kind of started filtering into my brain at a distinctly more conscious level when I was probably around 12 or 13. I obviously didn't remotely understand it at the time, but the message I began getting from social studies teachers and the news was variations of, "It's very complicated; you wouldn't understand. Don't think about it and let the politicians worry about it."

However valid that may have been when I was 12, it was repeated in some form every time things would escalate over there again. Before the current war, but far later than I'd care to admit, I finally took it upon myself to look things up and try to get a better handle on things. And you know what? It's not really all that complicated. Go look it up; there are plenty of explainer videos out there.

The current war -- in case you've forgotten since it's largely fallen out of the news cycle here in the US -- began when Hamas (notably not a part of the Palestinian government) led an attack against Israel that killed 1,195 Israelis and captured 251 as hostages. Israel then retaliated by bombing the ever-loving-shit out Palestine, routinely targeting hospitals and schools. The Israelis have so far killed over 70,000 people, 80% of which were civilians and 30% of which were children. Numerous groups -- including the International Court of Justice, Amnesty Internationa, Human Rights Watch, and the UN Human Rights Council among others have formally declared this a genocide. Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu has absolutely decimated the entire region without regard for anyone's life.

But, hey, Donald Trump likes him, so... 👍

(Let me emphasize for the terminally obtuse that thumbs up is nothing but sarcasm.)

That brings me to 30 Seconds from Gaza. Because we're a quarter of the way through the 21st century, most residents of Gaza have access to cell phones and social media, and have been recording and posting their stories. However, because most social media is controlled by the same type of people who support the likes of Netanyahu and Trump, those videos are frequently 'removed,' often under the guise of 'community standards' or some other bullshit. At the risk of sounding like stereotypical conspiracy theorist, the reality is that the videos removed because they speak too strongly or too directly to the attrocities Israel has been carrying out. The war is being white-washed. (Which is further evidenced by it largely falling out of the news cycle entirely!)

To try to counter this, Mohammad Sabaaneh began trying to capture the essence of these videos in pen and ink before they got taken down. 30 Seconds from Gaza is his collection of those illustrations over the past two years. They're not strict realistic copies of what was on the screen, but rather they portray the events more impressionistically with something of a Cubist style.

The images are powerful. Mothers cradling "martyred" children. People franctically searching for loved ones among hospital corridors. Residents lying trapped under the rubble that was once their house. Eahc image is accompanied by the date the video was posted and a brief description offering smome additional clarification; most also have a line of dialogue taken from the original video. "I do not want to take her to the mortuary fridge!" "They did not even have dinner. My children died starving!" "Keep him on my lap... Do not take him away; keep him here."

Even though the images are just black and white drawings, and heavily abstracted ones at that, it's absolutely heartbreaking.

Perhaps the most powerful piece is a 50-ish page sequence towards the end, focusing on the last moments of Hind Rijab, a five-year old girl who found herself trapped in a car with six family members who'd already been killed. She spent the last three hours of her life on the phone pleading with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society for someone to save her, and to just stay on the phone with her until they arrived. While an ambulance was dispatched, it was blown up before it reached her. Hind was later found dead with 335 bullet wounds.

This is what Netanyahu is doing. Has been doing for years now. He's needlessly murdering men, women, and children indiscriminantly. Atrocious is too small a word for this. I don't know that 30 Seconds from Gaza fully captures everything, but I don't think anything could. Hell, we've had three-quarters of a century since the Holcaust and I don't think anyone's effectively captured that either. But what this book does is ensure that at least some of these people don't get forgotten.

I've heard it said that you never truly die until your name is spoken for the last time. And while most of the people here aren't named, I think reading and remembering them through this book will keep their spirit alive that much longer. Take some time to give them that courtesy.

30 Seconds from Gaza came out last year from Interlink Publishing, so it should be available through your favorite bookshop. It retails for $22.00 US.

In 1981, Elson's Gift and News paid DC to repackage some of their comics into Elson's Presents Super Heroes Comics. There were six issues, each featuring the same cover (with just a change in background color). The interiors were pulled from existing DC books, including the original ads. The only new material for any of the issues was the Elson's comic style ad on the back covers with art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.

DC had a similar deal with Lionel Playworld and produced a similar five-issue series with them. Again, using this same cover (with the Playworld logo dropped in where the Elson's one appears here). The interiors, while different, were also pulled from various DC comics from early 1981.

There's curious debate about the interiors. Because the original ads are included, and nearly all of the material comes from January 1981 issues, many people believe these were not in fact reprints at all. Rather, they were returned/remaindered copies of the originals which were literally pulled apart and glued back together with a new cover. A few years back, I talked about how Russ Cochran did something similar with his EC reprints.

In DC's case, I suspect they were looking to deal with massive overages that came from the rise of the direct market. Newsstand sales, you'll recall, were returnable whereas direct market sales were not. But since the two markets worked side by side for several years, I expect there was a point where direct market sales outstripped newsstand ones and the printing overages were no longer necessary. But in that transition period, DC could well have ended up with thousands more returned comics than they used to see. And while they used to pulp those returned issues, I don't doubt there was a clever DC executive who struck upon this repackaging idea.

That these comics were set up with a generic cover, and a small retailer logo dropped in place, I'm pretty confident it was DC who packaged these up and went to retailers with this set up. Possibly as a variation on those three-comics-in-a-sealed-bag deals you used to find at convenience stores. Given that the whole experiment with both the Elson's and Lionel versions started and ended in 1981 -- and used 1981 issues as their contents -- I suspect it didn't go over very well. Either they were far too costly for the retailers, or for DC itself.

The predominance of the direct market today (at least in terms of DC sales) almost inherently precludes an experiment like this from taking place again. Thanks to the non-returnable nature of direct market sales, publishers simply don't print the huge overruns that they used to. They print exactly what is ordered and no more, so there aren't any extra copies that need to be dealt with at all; never mind having to decide whether to pulp or repackage them.

But I think it's fascinating little nugget of comics history that essentially only could have occurred in a small window when the direct market was really starting to gain traction over newsstands.

One of the first books I had that discussed comics in anything resembling a historical context was The Encyclopedia of Collectibles, Children's Books to Comics. It was part of a Time-Life series from the late 1970s; I've seen a couple other volumes but this was the only one that held any interest for me. It only had 13 pages devoted to comics, and most of those were filled with imagery, but it was still the only thing I had back in the day that looked at comics comprehensively, talking about them as a medium specifically and noting both comic strips and comic books in equal measure.

It was, for a long time, the most significant source I had about comic strips. I came to learn of other, more detailed books' existences, but my interest back then was in comic books, particularly superheroes, particularly Marvel, particularly the Fantastic Four. I put my resources towards learning about those in order of narrowest interest to widest, so I didn't really start looking at comic strips with a serious eye until I was well into my 20s, if not early 30s.

But one piece from The Encyclopedia that stood out for me was a photo of "Al Capp's Dogpatch Band" in the sidebar on toys based on comic properties. The gadget was a wind-up toy from the mid-1940s featuring characters from Capp's strip, Li'l Abner. The image struck me for two reasons. First, I had never actually seen Li'l Abner anywhere before. It wasn't carried in our local newspapers at the time, and the book didn't show any instances of the strip itself anywhere. I was largely at a loss for what the strip was about. While I was familiar with the Shmoo via some Saturday morning cartoons, that had almost no relation to the strip where the character originated.

The second thing that stood out for me was the complexity of the mechanics. Even though I only had a still picture to look at, it wasn't hard to figure out what the basic movements of the figures were. I realized, even as a kid, that the engineering to tie all of that movement to a single gear was an impressive feat. It was only recently that it occurred to me that someone might have posted a video of the toy in action, and I could finally see how it operated. It turned out to be even more impressive than I imagined, with some clever use of deliberately loose joints to facilitate even more movement. And seeing (in the above photo) that it came partially disassembled makes it even more impressive still! I can't find out who designed this, but it's a brilliant piece of mechanical engineering and I can't imagine Capp not being absolutely delighted with it!

There's an old adage that says, "Do what you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life." It gets brought up, in some form, with regards to comics pretty regularly with the thought being that comic creators love their work so much and put so much of themselves into it, that it can't seem like work.

That's a load of crap, of course, though.

Generally, yes, comic creators love what they do. They have to because, by and large, anything resembling financial rewards are hardly guaranteed and even basic external validation ("Hey, I like your comic!") is very hit or miss. So in order to do comics without those guarantees, to come back day after day after day... yes, you need to love what you do.

Problem 1: Regardless of how amazingly talented a creator you are, it doesn't always come easy. Every creator struggles at some level with certain things and has to put in some hard work to do them. You ever hear of an artist who hates drawing cars? Or coming up with new costume designs? What about writers who have a tin ear for dialogue? Or have trouble juggling a story with more than 3-4 main characters? Sometimes, even for those people who make it look effortless, they do put in a lot of work.

Problem 2: You can't just do that one thing you love. Let's say you're a comics creator. You have this brilliant story written out, and you're talented enough to draw it yourself. So you spend months working on it and you absolutely love every second of it. But then what? That, by itself, doesn't make you any money. You've got something you can sell, but now you have to go out and sell it. Maybe that's tabling at conventions. Maybe that's running a Kickstarter. Maybe that's running it as a webcomic and selling POD t-shirts online. The point is that, while the story creation itself might not seem like work, there are other aspects that will seem like it. Even if you're working for a company that does the selling for you (Marvel or DC or something) you then have to deal with editors and the general bureaucracy of those organizations. There is bound to be some aspect that you're not as good at, and requires additional effort. Work.

Will Eisner was an amazing talent who could write, draw, promote, sell, publish... He could seemingly do everything. But did he love every aspect of that? Did he love talking with newspaper lawyers and arguing about why he wanted to hold onto the Spirit copyright even though pretty much no other comics creator did that? Did he love having to give grand jury testimony about projects he worked on for other publishers? Did he love having his studio shaken down by what was essentially a mob? I think I can pretty safely guess "no" for all of those. However much he enjoyed making comics, there were aspects of it that he almost certainly did not like in the least.

Don't get me wrong -- if you love making comics, it's a fantastic job to have. Just like if you love making music, being in a rock band is awesome. But making comics is not just making comics. It's hustling to get the word out about your work; it's driving to strange cities and sleeping in a crap hotel (or on a friend's sofa) so you can sell a few hundred dollars worth of books at each of your "local" cons; it's cold-calling comic shops and asking if they'll stock some of your books; it's sending digital review copies to anyone you might think would review it; it's making sure the online sales you get are shipped out on time; it's developing your elevator pitch and practicing it until you're blue in the face; it's dealing with whoever is hosting your website; it's...

It's more than doing what you love.

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

Kleefeld on Comics: Seriously -- Can We Get a Wellness Check for Tatsuya Ishida
https://ift.tt/gow7FM6

Kleefeld on Comics: Allied's Komic Kamera
https://ift.tt/sSYTiW0

Kleefeld on Comics: Allied MFG Co
https://ift.tt/mcgd518

Kleefeld on Comics: FF Covers Credit
https://ift.tt/cTmhOfS

Kleefeld on Comics: The History of Mr. Tuberculus
https://ift.tt/z1xKRVl

Today I'm looking at The History of Mr. Tuberculus by Lobrichon. I think it's worth noting primarily because so many comic fans think the history of comic books starts with Famous Funnies in 1933 with perhaps an occasional nod to the first appearance of the Yellow Kid in 1894. But this book dates to 1856, and bears most of the hallmarks commonly attributed to comics. (Perhaps the only one missing, in fact, is the word balloon which certainly isn't a requirement to be considered comics.)

Anyway, several years ago, Robert Beerbohm posted a few images from the 68-page book he was selling, which I'm reproducing below with rough translations.

The History of Mr. Tuberculus by Lobrichon

He was named a corresponding member of the Clysomanie Company. And he had a brilliant marriage.

But he falls into the water; fortunately nature has provided for everything. He contracted the bad habit of poking his nose into everything.

He started to worry about the consequences of his stupidity. He makes a resolution to change his life and adopt the latest fashion.

He gives up and goes in search of a new world. But he is stopped by the rain.

However, to be careful, he returned to change down. And pick up a handkerchief.

The young Tuberculus indulges in the pleasure of the hunt, but he feels bored to some embarrassment. The fishing seems to him most advantageous.

And it shows the path of your glory. But the young Tuberculus discovers that it is easier to descend than to ascend.

Moral: He who puts a stop to the fury of sparrows, also knows how parents entertain kids.

There is record of a Timoléon Marie Lobrichon being born in Cornod, France on April 26, 1831. He received his formal training at the Beaux-Arts Academie with François Edouard Picot (1786-1868) and his gallery debut was at the Paris Salon of 1859.

Lobrichon became one of the most sought after and celebrated painters for portraits of children. He was able to capture the character and personality of each child. This gift carried over to all his portraiture; rather than being just a portrait, Lobrichon created a story which involved the character’s personality. In 1884, he illustrated the very popular book The Song of A Child by Jean Aicard. With the 1856 publication date for Mr. Tuberculus, that would've made Lobrichon 25 at the time.

The Mr. Tuberculus comic is a wonderful treasure and I would love to see the full thing scanned and placed online for the historical record. Because I know I sure as heck can't afford to buy it myself!