R.I.P. to John Olsen, Australian landscape artist and winner of the Archibald Prize, who has passed away at the age of 95 following a career spanning more than 60 years.

That was my gateway to both international comics and a lot of the non-DC & Marvel Golden Age material.  I had tried to find, again, the first volume of the Nostalgia Press Flash Gordon reprint, which I checked out once before and was told it was no longer available (probably stolen).  They provided other books about comics (books and strips) and related stuff and that was one of them.  I looked through that from cover to cover.  I got the paperback edition a couple of years later, then my own hardcover, in the mid-90s.  I bought the updated edition when it was published, in the late 90s.

It had some inaccurate information (the first edition had American contributors) based on either incorrect interpretations or language issues; but, was a very expansive reference.  There was one little quirk I noticed.  A few articles dismissed some art as crude or bland; but, there was one that was extremely negative.  It was the entry for Philippe Druillet, basically calling him one-note and devoid of substance.  It seemed a rather odd critique, given that even pedestrian strips were not treated that harshly.  It seemed like there was some kind of personal issue between Horn and Druillet, as he was listed as the author of that particular entry (each one had a letter code for the author).

I later had his volumes on comic strips and adult comics, which were very informative, as they were able to expand on the minimal entries of the encyclopedia.

I need that book. Off to eBay I go.

(I did have a superhero encyclopaedia at one point, bought at a jumble sale, I’m guessing it was probably published in the late 70s/early 80s)

The Jeff Rovin books are okay as snapshot references and some entries are better researched than others. At one point, I had all of them (Super Heroes, Super Villains, Monsters, Robots & Spaceships, Cartoons, Adventure Heroes). The Super Heroes one was the first he did and they improved as he went along. The Adventure Hero one was pretty good, as it covered a wide range of literary and cinematic heroes, including stuff like Travis McGee, Warren's The Rook, Fafhrd & Gray Mouser, Mike Hammer, Indiana Jones, Allen Quatermain, Lt Columbo, etc, etc. Lots of literary and tv private eyes, explorer heroes, western heroes, swashbucklers, sci-fi heroes, comic book and comic strip heroes....you name it.


The first one got rather subjective at time, as he called Justice Machine (then only the Noble Comics magazine format issues) amateurish, though it was done by comic pros and he heaped higher praise on his own work, for Atlas/Seaboard, when some of it was hardly memorable stuff.

Any reference book is going to carry its own biases, from what was included & excluded, to editorial comment on the quality of the work, to how the importance is presented. That's why I bought other reference books, over the years, to gain other perspectives. Between Horn's, Rovins, the Mike Benton-penned history books, the Will Jacobs & Gerard Jones works, and the Ron Goulart books, I had a pretty wide ranging and solid history foundation, which was then supplemented by things like the Jules Feiffer Great Comic Book Heroes, the Dick Lupoff & Don Thompson All In Color For a Dime and The Comic Book-Book, Fred Schott's Manga! Manga! Manga!, and a few others.

R. I. P. Ahmad Jamal.  Jamal was a hugely influential jazz pianist.  Miles Davis wrote of taking inspiration from Jamal's use of space and recorded his "New Rhumba" on Miles Ahead.  His 1958 album At the Pershing: But Not for Me is a stone cold classic and shows how tight a jazz trio can be.  

Grew up with Dame Edna and Madge. Absolute comic genius. Used to have my parents in hysterics.