11. 2001: A Space Odyssey #1-10, Marvel Comics, 1976-1977.
By Jack Kirby.

I was 13 years old in 1973, when I first read Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. This was my first big clue to something I would realize much later in my life: that the kind of entertainment I most loved was what I like to call "WTFiction," literature, film, tv that blows your mind with the kind of unexplained, surprising gaps and ambiguities that require the reader to fill in the intentional holes, holes that can be filled in a different way every time one experiences it.

But at that age, I still longed to have a more substantial resolution of the mysteries that lay beyond that intriguing ending, where Dave Bowman finds himself, in the far reaches of the solar system (or is it even farther?) not in a futuristic alien world, but in a strange and elegantly human hospice, where he experiences his transformation into the next evolutionary step. I had my ideas, but I wanted someone who could confirm what "really" happened next.

And Jack Kirby soon arrived to give me some answers--or his take on those answers, anyway! To be honest, his interpretation didn't always jibe with my own, but I loved what he was doing. He was still, in my opinion, at the top of his game artistically:


Yes, the format was often repetitive: primitive civilizations in conflict encounter the Monolith, and we flash forward to a futuristic reflection of evolved man in a similar situations, but it wasn't until I began writing up this entry that I realized that Kirby's formula echoed the same premises that formed the foundation of my all-time favorite work of WTFiction, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. All of our history, all of our conflicts, on every level, from the individual to the civilization as a whole, follow the same patterns, repeated at every scale, throughout time. Our growth, whether as a person, as a kingdom, or as a species, propagates the cycle of birth, love, war, creation, death and renewal. Joyce had his hundred-letter "thunderwords", the voice of the gods ending one era and beginning another, and Kirby, courtesy of Kubrick and Clarke, has the Monolith serving the same purpose.

Alas, this is one of Kirby's few 1970's work to remain un-reprinted. But humanity is relentless, and nothing lies buried forever to us. The work calls, and inevitably we will respond to that call, and expose Kirby's 2001 once more to the light of day.

Muppet Show Annual No.3 (Grandreams, 1979)




I was 7-years-old when I received the Muppet Show Annual No. 3 from Santa on Christmas Day 1979. Of course, like most of the UK, I was already a big fan of Jim Henson's puppet variety show, and I was thrilled to receive this book. It's a magazine-sized hardcover, as most British annuals are, and was published at the height of "Muppet-mania" here in the UK. It features puzzles, jokes, games and three comic strips. The entire book is a lot of fun, but it's the three comic strips that are the reason I'm including this book in this year's Classic Comics Christmas.

The first strip is a re-telling of Cinderella called "Kermirella", with everybody's favourite frog in the lead roll; the second is a Saturday Night Fever-influenced strip called "Disco Frog"; and the third is a horror-themed adventure titled "The Muppets' Holiday Haunt". Of the three, it's the horror tale that has always been my favourite. I have no idea who wrote or drew these strips because the book features absolutely no credits at all, and a quick Google search hasn't turned up any info either. But whoever the artist is, the artwork is very good indeed, with excellent depictions of the Muppets, some dynamic panels, and lots of visual gags.





I can't tell you how many times I read this annual as a kid. It accompanied me on family holidays, was perused at bedtime, and taken to friends houses when I was staying over. It's one of those books (which I'm sure we all have) that is a cherished relic of my childhood. Needless to say, my copy is very dog-eared and worn, but it was – and still is today – much loved.

#11 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. II

America's Best Comics. 2002-2003.



Adapting... Oh, Lord, half of the late XIX and early XX century's adventure literature!!!

The Wold Newton concept is naturally tailor-made for comic-book fans and their usual attention to continuity between stories. Crossovers, before being exploited to death and losing their charm, were a lot of harmless fun and still hold a lot of potential if done right (as demonstrated by the not-so-old Anno Dracula by Kim Newman).

With The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore does not reinvent the wheel... he just uses the tried and true method of selecting a lot of characters from different works and having them interact. With Volume II, however, he goes one step further by focusing on two works I have a particular fondness for: the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Yay!!! I know would have gone absolutely bananas over it as a teenager (when I could manage a much greater enthusiasm over works of fiction). The Barsoom novels were the stuff my high school dreams were made of, and WotW was not only a great memory from those Saturday matinees at the movie theatre but also a rare case of SF not set in the future. 

So much stuff to love in there. John Carter! Gulliver Jones! Captain Nemo! Allan Quatermain! Mr. Hyde! Mycroft Holmes! The Martian tripods! Dr. Moreau! How good can things get???

The interweaving of different parallel plots is neat, the action is engaging, the twists are cool, and the social commentaries add a welcome layer of quasi-maturity that never feels heavy-handed. (Even the title emphasizes the XIX century's endemic phallocratic viewpoint, what with the League being held together solely by the strong hand of Mina Harker, who is hardly a «gentleman»).

Moore didn't always succeed with the LoEG stories; I personally enjoyed the concept of the first series but found it a little tame, and found the Century series disappointing and rather uncomfortable due to its gratuitous depiction of abuse toward women. But here, with volume II, Moore knocks it out of the ballpark.

Kevin O'Neill's art is also magnificent. Such a grand sense of design!!! His Barsoom is just endlessly fascinating. From the strange, strange depiction of John Carter's attire and living quarters to the intricacies of Gulliver Jones' flying carpet, he conjures beautiful and exotic, but also believable, alien worlds.

11. The MAD magazine TV and movie parodies (1965-67)
Art by Mort Drucker; Scripts by Dick DeBartolo; Stan Hart; Larry Siegel; Lou Silverstone

Much has been written about the importance of MAD to those of us of a certain age for whom it was the gateway drug to skepticism and sarcasm, and led to our questioning authority of all kinds, realizing that appearance never squared with realty, the belief that virtually everyone had an angle (an agenda today) and was trying to fool and fleece you somehow.

I think I speak for many when I say that MAD’s sardonic, mordant strain of naturalism was a major influence on my attitudes toward adults, religion, politics, society, advertising, and indeed every aspect of American culture and human behavior, not to mention on my sense of humor. Non-MAD types might think that imbibing MAD led to widespread cynicism, pessimism and apathy, that was 180 degrees wrong. MAD was realistic, not cynical, its artists and writers purveyors of satire worthy of Twain and Mencken. It was the perfect tonic to counteract the daily river of 1960s shite flowing down the hill with kids like me in its mephitic path.

Had MAD not been there to enable and then fortify our nascent BS detectors, this world would be a far different place, bereft of wise-asses, class clowns, contrarians, pains in the ass, question-askers, and assorted doubting Thomases (Thomi?) whose presence leavens every class, work meeting, gathering, family reunion, funeral, wedding, or cookout.

I loved it all, but given that adaptations are our subject, I will enshrine the movie and TV adaptations from my prime MAD years, 1966-67.

All my favorites were drawn by the incomparable Mort Drucker. (Hokum's Heroes was the exception n the list below, with art by Jack Davis. Hardly a step down, though I would have preferred Mort's more realistic hand on that one.)What a caricaturist, but what a draftsman and artist, too. When I first saw one of his straight comic book stories in a Sgt. Rock annual (He drew a memorable series of Mlle. Marie stories), I couldn’t believe it and had to remind myself that these were not caricatures of real-life people, but characters in a serious war story.

The scripts just never let up their assault on clichés, stupid plots, blowhards, bad actors, and Hollywood hypocrites. No one escaped alive from a MAD parody, even the reader, who was forced to rethink and re-evaluate his own opinions, pre-conceptions and biases. That's when satiric writing is at its best.

The ones I remember best and most fondly:

The Sound of Money: Schmaltz and phony sentiment taken down hard.



Fantastecch Voyage: The best final line I can remember.

The original crew returns after a trip into -- IIRC -- the guy's sinuses, and see the hang-dog expressions on the group headed in to save the next patient. One of them says,  "What's the problem with those guys? Their mission can't be as bad as ours was!"

"Oh, yeah? They're going on Operation Ex-Lax"

(I was 12, remember.)

The Amateurs: Sending up The Professionals (a movie I love), and a million other Westerns

Bats-Man: Holy Spoof of a Spoof!



Hokum’s Heroes: Scathing. The best final page in one of these parodies ever. Still packs a punch. Read it some day. I won't spoil it.

Thank you, Mort Drucker and friends. You were among my finest teachers.

Hey, folks, please try to make a point of including your entry's publisher and year(s) of publication in your write-ups. It'll make compiling stats so much easier, and I don't have time to research this stuff due to an impending deadline. Okay?

Cei-U!
Thanks!

Same here. I re-read them around the late 90s/early 2000s. And then I think I gave them away, too.

High praise indeed. Thanks, Phil.

Drucker's up there with Hirschfeld in my book.