Ack! Did you lose Pogo?

They're not too hard to find individually. In the 80s, I was able to find a group of five for $18, so picked it up. Spent the next 12 years looking for the missing one, Howland Owl. Finally found it at a collectible toy shop in Cleveland and ended up paying $18 for that one alone to complete the collection.

Like tomorrow, maybe...

First time I'm repeating an entry of someone else on the same day, but here we go:

#2. Mike Grell

I think I first encountered (or, more acurately, first became aware of) Mike Grell's work at a time in my life when it really spoke to me and so he earned a permanent spot in my affections. His tales of individualists trying to find their way in a world where they don't entirely fit resonated with me when I had just moved out of home and was learning for the first time what it meant to be an independent adult.

Grell is a master of what I might call 'two-fisted adventure', and he has done it across a range of genres including superhero (Green Arrow), planetary romance (Warlord), space opera (Starslayer), modern adventure (Jon sable, Freelance), urban fantasy (Shaman's Tears), espionage (James Bond: Permission to Die)...

Grell's heroes are usually decent people trying to do the right, but while they are heroic, they are also human and fallible, with foibles and flaws that make them seem real and identifiable.

But Grell would have deserved a spot on my list if the only work he had produced had been Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters; a true classic that redefined Green Arrow for a new era (and whose echoes can still be seen today in Arrow).

There are very few creators out there who I can say affected me so much I can remember my first encounter with them. Frank Frazetta was one, but todays entry is the first comic book writer/artist (despite his comics roots I consider Frazetta to be a painter)that left me gobsmacked.
Now I may well have seen a cover or two, or a fill-in or so, but from the pages of Daredevil 159 I give you the glory of ...

2. Frank Miller

Now I by no means consider 159 to be the highlight of his career, and am well aware that he doesn't replace Roger McKenzie for another year or so, but I was hooked. DD had always been a second string choice for me, the book I read when I was out of new stuff. He had always seemed rather one-note to me, but I had sort of noticed the inking of that Klaus Janson fulla(and his colouring too) and was becoming a fan.


I read the hell out of this and the next 2 issues


Within 6 months or so (3-4 issues in the bi-monthly days) they gave me my favourite ever single issue Daredevil story, the encounter with the Hulk. I still consider this to be an essential read, a study in the true character of the man. I just love the "never give in" moral of the story.


As we know within months Marvel(Shooter???) gave Frank the full duties on the book, well with the increasing reliance on the afore-mentioned Mr Janson. Im of the opinion that without Klaus, Franks work would have had far less impact at this stage of his career.


What ensues is still, even by modern standards, the definitive Daredevil, one of the (if not THE) first COMICS changing runs. Miller pushed everything to the limits, not least of which Matt's life, loves, and beliefs.


...and we got Ninjas too...

Not content to show us how comics should be, he changes sides to the great enemy, and ups the ante again. Instead of the title no one wanted to buy, he now takes one of the truly iconic characters, and shows the world just how good comics can be again.



I know that its quite trendy these days to talk down some of the great works of the 80's(Watchmen, DKR, and Swamp-Thing come to mind), usually by some 20 year old expert in the art of comic book creation( who has a portfolio of his own amazing work obviously), but what they can never GET is just how ground-breaking these books were at the time. After years of "shudder" 70's Superman/Flash/Wonder Woman and the slightly better Fantastic Four/Thor/Daredevil/Iron Man, years of lowest common denominator stories and at times horrendous art(much like the 90's to come ) we had creators who were pushing the envelope to extreme. These works truly shone in a sea of darkness and need to be revered for that.

There are also the journeys through Ronin, Sin City, and 300 to name a few, though none of those had the same gutteral affect on me. I do love what I've seen of the art on Sin City, but have never read any, and as for Frank's politics or personal views on anything, well having seen none of that, nor having never benn party to said events myself, I can offer no opinion other than it doesn't alter my appreciation for some damn fine funny books.

My #2 choice is Will Eisner for...well, various stuff actually...




I say various stuff because I've never read any Will Eisner that I didn't absolutely love. For the purposes of this Classic Comics Christmas, I guess I'm nominating him on the strength of his A Contract With God, A Life Force, and Dropsie Avenue trilogy and also for things like The Building and The Big City. But really, I'm keen to include The Spirit as well because, although Eisner had various assistants helping him out, that strip was, for the most part, Eisner's. For the record, I also love his really early newspaper strip, Hawks of the Sea.

Really, I could go on and on about why I love this particular strip or what exactly it is that moves me about that certain story, but I think I'm gonna stick to generalisations that apply to pretty much all the stuff Eisner penned or drew instead. The thing is, whenever I read something Eisner's produced, I never fail to be impressed by it. Not only with the incredible artwork, but with the inventiveness of the way in which he tells a particular story with sequential art. His style is beyond cinematic in the way that it moves across the pages and it always impresses, whether I'm reading a thoughtful later work or his earliest Spirit sections.

I also love the humanity of Eisner's characters, and by that I mean that all of his work from the Spirit onward functions as acutely conjured character studies on one level or another. His characters feel three dimensional, but more importantly we can instinctively understand the motivations behind their actions, we feel for them and we all know people who are a bit like them. Eisner was just a great observer and writer of human beings in all their glory, folly and infinite complexity.

#2) Chris Ware

When I finally returned to funny books after a more than 20 year hiatus, it was to the extraordinary Chris Ware that I first looked.

Sometime in the early oughts I spotted my sister was reading a copy of one of the early issues of the Acme Novelty Library, Ware's seminal work. I was at once surprised to see my sister reading a comic book. She discovered Ware through art college and informed me it was some of that best art and writing together you will ever find. I always respected her opinion and decided to check it out for myself.

She was more than right. Ware, who with not much more than a ruler and pencil, purportedly designs and draws all his comics by hand. Nothing digital. Just look at a Ware page and you'll see how astounding this is. His eye ever to the gilded age of ornamentation and was a bit of George Mcmanus meets Victorian repression and self-delusion. It was work ever playing on a false nostalgia, and the most retro seeming foray into the bye-gone funny book, while being completely rooted in today's tears, ironies and absurdities.

Ware is one of the most formally inventive creators working in comics. You never know what you are going to get. Cut out plans for a diorama, or an old style over sized "joke and gag" book. And in which direction do you even read a Ware story? And what is with all that obsessive and claustrophobic miniaturism? Thimble theatre indeed. All those wondrous epic sequential one pagers... with every millimeter at work on the reader.

And the writing. The knock against Ware is that he is depressing. I've never found this to be the case. Extraordinarily poignant and gut bustingly funny i say. That's the arc of humanism. And Ware is no doubt one of the most fundamentally humanistic creators in comics today.

From those early issues of the saga of Jimmy Corrigan through the pathetic story of Rusty Brown or the intermittent adventures of Rocket Sam , Big Tex or Quimby mouse Ware has weaved the stories of all our lives and all our times.