Today's Andy Capp...

A more or less standard type of gag for the strip. Very much into character with Andy being lazy on the couch, and Flo offerring snide commentary. What occurs to me, though, is that Andy always sleeps on the couch that way. Kind of curled up a bit, with his head facing into the couch. He doesn't sleep on his back or facing out away from the couch.

That's actually pretty much par for the course with comic strip characters. Here's Blondie from Saturday...

La Cucaracha from a week ago...

The "classic" depiction of comic strip napping is: kind of curled up a bit, facing into the couch.

You ever try to actually nap that way? Personally, I find it one of the least comfortable ways to sleep on a couch. I'm sure some people find it more comfortable than others, and the level of comfort surely depends a great deal on the specific couch you're talking about too. But why that pose? Why not any of the dozens of other ways you can nap on a couch?

Well, for starters, not every time someone is depicted napping is shown in this way. Sometimes they're sitting upright with their head tilted forward. Sometimes, they're just kind of sprawled over the entire couch. It depends on the situation and, more to the point, to showcase WHY the character is napping.

If you're sitting upright on the couch with your head tilted forward while you sleep, you got that way because you sat down to read or watch TV or something and just nodded off. Perhaps a bit of exhaustion, perhaps a bit of your body forcing itself to relax. But generally, it's not your intention to fall asleep. And that sprawled out pose? That is just pure exhaustion. You collapsed on the couch, and your entire body shut down without regard to how comfortable you are.

But curled up, facing the couch? That's intentional. That's a pose that says, "I am deliberately trying to shut out the world." The Blondie strip above specifically speaks to that idea; Dagwood is NOT asleep, but he's actively trying to ignore the children. He's literally turned his back to them, and even if he opens his eyes, his field of vision would entirely consist of the back of the couch. He's curled up to make himself as physically inaccessible as possible. Andy and Ernesto above are also both not entirely asleep as Andy is talking with Flo and Ernesto is consciously considering what is going on in his subconscious. In none of these strips are the characters successful in shutting out the world, but that IS their intent.

I can't point to exactly when this became the default pose for comic strip naps. Doing a fairly quick search, I've managed to find a Blondie strip dating back to 1944 showing Dagwood on exactly that same couch, though...

I think it's a safe bet that this isn't the first time Chic Young used that visual structure; he's very clearly already comfortable drawing it here. So I'm sure there are earlier Blondie examples if nowhere else. Regardless of who started that trope, though, there is a solid reason for it. And there's a solid reason it continues to get used a century later. That single pose immediately tells the reader not only that a character is napping, but also WHY they're napping.

Speaking, as I was yesterday, about the 1960s Fantastic Four, there has been, for many years, a big debate on how much Stan Lee contributed to the early Marvel output versus Jack Kirby. Some say Lee did the bulk of the work and Jack was just a hired hand to illustrate Lee's vision; others think Kirby did everything and Lee was nothing more than a glorified proofreader. The truth likely lies in between somewhere, although it is pretty readily accepted by everyone that Kirby did all the artwork and design.

Except when he didn't.

One of the pages of original art that has survived is page 16 from Fantastic Four #3. The Thing and the Human Torch get into a fight, and the Torch leaves. More interestingly, though, we have on the back of the art board several sketches for a chest emblem. The was the issue where the FF debuted their team uniform and it would appear that there was some discussion about what the chest emblem should be. And what we can see with this page in particular was that Kirby was not the only one making illustrative contributions to the book.

The logo sketches were most likely Lee's work. Some of the other earlier FF pages indeed have rough (i.e. really bad stick figures) "layouts" that are Lee scribbled to help describe what he was envisioning to Kirby. It's possible that someone besides Lee could have done these emblem sketches, but A) it almost certainly wasn't Kirby -- those bear no resemblance to his style of sketching -- and B) not many other people would've had access to the original art.

Now, the other possibility for the logos could be Sol Brodsky. He appears to have done some elaborate re-work on the Human Torch figures throughout that issue, including on that page (at right, circled in red) to bring him more in line with the original Carl Burgos design. So Brodsky would have had access to the art boards, and he did create the "Fantastic Four" logo that shows up on the cover. That said, I'm inclined to say it was still Lee as Brodsky had a fair degree of artisic skill and most of the designs seem to have been drawn by someone with an unsure hand.

But then there's the question of the sketches showing up on page 16 instead of 7, when the costume first appears. That doesn't strike me as particularly odd. Kirby wouldn't have only turned in one or two pages at a time, he turned the art for an entire story at once. So when Lee (or Brodsky) opted to doodle some new logo ideas, he could've grabbed any page from the story at random. Brodsky, already going through the pages to re-work the Torch, would have also been able make other adjustments to the characters' costumes as the same time.

In Pure Images #2, Greg Theakston goes back to the original art and inked some of the pages onto new boards using some of Jack's original pencil lines. Jack's original FF logo was an interlocking "FF" similar to one of the middle ones on the far right of that page. (Circled in red at the left. The final is circled in blue.) Further, the costumes included masks for everyone, hence that really weird close-up on Sue's face when she first steps out in the new costume. (See below.) All that would have been "fixed" by Brodsky along with those Human Torch figures.
The extruded "4" design was eventually simplified to a more flat figure -- probably because Kirby simply forgot about the drop shadow effect somewhere around issue #16. He never rendered it consistently anyway. Had Joe Sinnott been on the book by this point, he may have added it back in for consistency, but the book still had a more-or-less rotating cast of inkers; Chic Stone is the first person to ink more than three consecutive issues starting with #29. The 3D effect on the "4" doesn't return consistently until John Byrne picked up the title many years later.

Tom Hanks first drew a lot of attention in the sitcom Bosom Buddies back in 1980 before making a very successful transition to movies with Ron Howard's directorial debut of Splash. Hanks has since had an incredible career with everything from the Academy Award winning Forest Gump to the now-three-decades-running franchise Toy Story. Some of his work has been more successful than others, of course, but even in something like Mazes and Monsters -- a made-for-TV movie which had an awful premise born out of the Satanic panic of the early 1980s -- Hanks turned in an excellent performance. But because of his long successful career, you don't need me to tell you who he is.

Not surprisingly, too, because he's been acting in such a high-profile capacity for so long, he's done more than a few interviews over the years promoting his various works. I certainly can't claim to have seen/heard all of them but, like I expect many of you, you've seen him on talk shows and heard him on podcasts and maybe even caught him speaking at a graduation ceremony or two. But in the decades of hearing him, I've never heard him mention comic books. Even when he was doing the circuits for Road to Perdition in 2002 and Here in 2024 both of which were based on graphic novels, I never heard him mention comics in any capacity.

Until I caught this interview from about a year ago, in which he describes the a-ha moment he had about how to handle his career in the wake of A League of their Own... It's only a three-minute clip in total but the comic reference goes by fast so I'll call it out. He says of this a-ha moment he had...

If you could go back now and shoot a movie about that, lightning would've flashed, the walls would've shook, and it sort of would've been like 'Black Bolt speaks!'

That's not a reference to the current Marvel Cinematic Universe. There's no great revelation about Black Bolt speaking in the shows or movies. That's a throwback to the original 1960s storyline when Black Bolt was a complete enigma. The character debuted in Fantastic Four #45 circa 1965 and little was offerred about him, other than the other Inhumans gave great deference to his power. However, a few issues later in #48, Black Bolt's brother Maximus traps the entire Inhuman civilaztion behind a Negative Barrier that no one cane break through. It became on ongoing subplot for the next year and change, and it was only destroyed in FF #59 when Black Bolt finally speaks. His voice is so powerful, it obliterates the barrier. Jack Kirby spent a page and a half showcasing all the destruction it caused, and Stan Lee used whatever space remained on the art board to fill with descriptions of how we were witnessing something "of such incalcuable power that it cannot possibly be described in merely human terms!"

This was a profound moment for fans. Dean Hill of Warrior, AL wrote in to say...

Words haven't been printed to describe F.F. #59! IThe story was like Shakespeare had written it! The artwork was like Michaelangelo had drawn it! Even the lettering was like Guttenburg had lettered it! In other words, this was a rather good mag! By the way, a certain question has been haunting me. When Black Bolt spoke (as so wonderfully shown on page 11, panel 5), what did he say?? Did he say "Sooie!"? Did he say "Four score and seven years ago..."? Or did Honest Irving slip him a few nickles (wooden, of course) to let the Inhumans hear Black Bolt say, "Make mine Marvel!"???

Doing some quick math, Hanks would've been about 11 when the issue came out. That is, the prime target demographic for those stories back in the day. That he would recall that story beat as such a pivotal and powerful moment -- casually and decades after the fact -- strongly suggests he was an avid reader at the time and was heavily invested in the story.

Tom Hanks, old school Fantastic Four fan. Who knew?

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

Kleefeld on Comics: An Evolution, or Just a Long Time to Get to Where I'd Always Been Trying to Go?
https://ift.tt/4FpMRil

Kleefeld on Comics: Lois Lane, Girl Reporter Redux
https://ift.tt/8n76KxF

Kleefeld on Comics: The Power of One
https://ift.tt/dsZxUA9

Kleefeld on Comics: The Fantastic Four #136 Cover Mysteries
https://ift.tt/iAZ4EJx

Kleefeld on Comics: Be Careful
https://ift.tt/giDKZbL

Tomorrow's comics are likely going to be heavily weighted towards themes of American patriotism and celebrating. Tomorrow is official 250th anniversary of the United States' independence as a nation. In theory, it should be a grand celebration that lasts most of the summer if not the entire year. At least if the 200th anniversary from 1976 is anything to go by. Because those celebrations were pervasive! And for those of you who might say, "Yeah, but things weren't as bad then" then I'll remind you that the US had been in a recession since 1973 and Nixon resigned from the White House due to pressure from the Watergate scandal in 1974. When Superman came out in 1978, the tag line was "you'll believe a man can fly" -- that was only partly a reference to the special effects; it was a much about showing Americans that there were still things to be optimistic about and hopeful for despite a decade of evidence to the contrary.

I scanned back through my Indepence Day related blog posts from the past twenty years, and they largely fall into two categories. First, they just collect all the Independence Day related newspaper strips from that day. Second, I talk about how I don't understand patriotism (at least as Americans express it) and how I don't feel there's really much worth celebrating here. This year, July 4 happens to fall on a Saturday, when I don't usually post anything, so guess which type of post you get here today?

You don't need me to tell you that things are bad. Statistically, you probably have things worse than I do. But I can tell you that I won't be celebrating. If you get a few moments of lightness setting off firecrackers or watching a big fireworks display at a nearby park, please do. I'm well past judging people on what brings them joy; there's too much awfulness in the world to even try to strip that from them. But Independence Day is not a holiday I get much out of.

The system has been increasingly stacked against "regular" folks (i.e. anyone who's not super-wealthy) since Ronald Reagan. I'm not about to simplistically say he's to blame for all of it, but there are generations (plural) of Americans now that have never not had a government working against them. Not just "not working for" them but actively working against them. When the studies that started coming out in the late 1980s that said Gen X would be the first generation of Americans that would probably not do better than their parents, that is why.

If you're still optimistic about the US, more power to you! I don't understand how that's possible, but again, if that brings you some joy or comfort, knock yourself out. Just do me a favor and be careful, and please return next week with the same number of fingers you have now.

I stumbled across a minor, but curious, mystery a little while ago and for some resaon started thinking of it again last night. Here are the covers for Fantastic Four #135, 136 and 137...

And here are the covers for some French-language Canadian reprints that came out about two months after the originals...

Most of the covers of the reprint series are lifted from the original comics, with just the English translated into French. But for some reason, the issue reprinting Fantastic Four #136 doesn't use the original cover art, but a panel of interior art.

Now it's certainly possible the original cover art was lost or destroyed. But here's the cover to a British reprint of the same story from about four years later...

It's been modified a bit to accomodate a slightly wider format, but there was clearly some form of reproducible art still around.

Or was there?

On closer study, The Complete Fantastic Four cover might in fact an entirely new piece of art, recreated based on the original. The more you look at the two, the more discrepancies to see: Medusa's left boot, the Torch's flame aura, the placement of Thing's left hand, the number of steps on that dais, the placement of the upper bike rider... There are more issues there than would be touched up for the size difference. Which leads one to think that the actual cover art for FF #136 was lost in the mail, and John Buscema recreated it based on a printed version.

But then again, most of the differences are either in placement or details near the edge. So was this then a heavy re-cut/paste job with a few touch-ups at the edges? It wouldn't be the first time Marvel put a fair amount of time and effort into heavily retouching some cover art for arguably inconsequential changes.

And, in doing some further research, The Complete Fantastic Four issue is an anomoly. Other foreign reprints -- some coming later still -- use the original art...

So if the original cover art was still around (or at least some version of it that could be used in production) there's a fair case to be made that The Complete Fantastic Four version was NOT a re-creation. But it still seems like a heck of a lot of production work just to get the art to fit a slightly different format. It probably would have been faster, and possibly cheaper, to just have Buscema draw a new one.

Getting back to the Canadian cover, it makes sense that if Marvel sent the art up to Canada for that reprint and the cover art was somehow lost or damaged, and they had to scrounge for something quickly. Depending on when in their printing process the cover are became unusable, it might make sense to just grab the nearest available art that would fill most of a cover -- the opening splash page. But, why the strange treatment? Why the odd angle? Why the red border? Why color some of the figures, but not the Human Torch? And why color the figures with the least intense color of the three chosen? Questions I do not have even speculative answers for. Nothing in my graphic design background can figure out how they arrived at any of their decisions here, aside from, "Hey, what's the biggest piece of art we have that we can use for a cover?"

There just seem to be a number of weird (and admittedly inconsequential) questions around this cover.

The most memorable comics to me remain the ones I read a few decades ago as a kid. The images etched into my brain and the dialogue still ringing in my head. Some of those books were indeed note-worthy. The O'Neil/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow for example. Others I kind of wish I could forget. There was a particularly bad 1976 issue of Archie that still haunts me -- especially that splash page of Archie racing down the stairs crying about his broken platform clog. But both of those types of comics, as well as all the not-great-but-not-bad ones in between, stick out more strongly in my memory than some more recent works that are particularly well-done. Why should I have better recollection of a mediocre comic I read decades ago than a stellar one I read last month?

I suppose nostalgia plays into that at some level, but a lot of the bits I remember don't hold any emotional weight with me. I can remember the stories and the art, but not that they really spoke to me in any significant way. There are some books I certainly do feel nostalgia for, but not most of them.

When I was in my early 20s, I was at a comic convention and came across a copy of Fantastic Four #76, which had been on my "want list" along with a host of other old issues from that title. I don't recall what I paid for it, but I'm assuming it must have been reasonably priced. When I got the issue home, though, I discovered that I had already bought a copy sometime previously. TWICE! I bought one, read it, forgot it, bought another copy, kicked myself for buying a second copy, forgot that, and bought a third copy! That was when I realized that I was no longer able to keep track of what I did or didn't have with an easy mental checklist. My want list had grown too large and too varied to remember.

When I was I kid, before I was really a deep fan of comics, I would only read a new comic once every few months on average. I couldn't really afford any on my own, so I basically had to rely on gifts at that point. When I first started getting into them, I got exactly one new comic a month. A year or two later, that got upped to three comics a month. It was six by the time I graduated high school.

But that one new comic a month bit? Twenty-two pages of story. I re-read books, of course, but new material (for me) was coming at a rate of less than a page a day. These days, I regularly read a minimum of 40-50 pages of new material every day (via webcomics) not to mention various manga and graphic novels when I can. In fact, I've only been able to read one 168-page graphic novel and half of a 142-page one this week on top of those regular 40-50 pages because it's been an especially busy week. I'm not saying that to try to brag -- I have no clue how that compares to others' reading habits -- but to just to point out that it's a phenomenally huge increase compared to what I was reading as a kid. In the past five days alone I've read 20 times the volume of new material that I used to read in a whole month!

So it should come as no surprise that I don't recall stuff from last week as well as from last century. I had more time to commit individual comics to memory because they weren't competing with each other. Any given issue of Superman or Action Comics that I might've gotten needed to tide me over for a couple of months, not a couple of minutes. So I'm certain I spent much more time with each book back then. The relative isolation in which each comic was read back then made them stand out more. I read through so many now that they wind up blurring together a bit more, and it's harder to remember them.

Just like it was easier to remember which Fantastic Four issues I was looking for when I was ONLY looking for Fantastic Four back issues. And how I started re-buying issues because I was also trying to look for their appearances in other titles, back issues of Avengers and the first appearances of Moon Knight and Punisher.

I do enjoy the comics I read today. I'm a little disappointed that I can't retain the memories of them more vividly, relative to those books I read as a kid, but only inasmuch as it's a failing on the part of my memory. I don't care to dwell on what's already happened, and I'd rather spend my time looking forward to new cool things. I'll enjoy the new books as they come out and move forward.

Say, how soon until the next volume of The Moon on a Rainy Night comes out anyway?