12. Tales of the Bizarro World, ADVENTURE COMICS #285, June 1961- #299, August 1962


Jerry Siegel, writer, John Forte, penciler (Wayne Boring, penciler issue 285), George Klein, inker

Spun off from Superman and Action Comics via Superboy #68, October 1958

Collected in SUPERMAN: TALES OF THE BIZARRO WORLD:



I’ve had an idea to create a party game called “Opposites”, that would revolve around naming the “opposite” of things that don’t really have opposites, but that we’d still have an answer to (i.e. “pepper” is the “opposite” of “salt”, “cat” is the “opposite” of “dog”).

Jerry Siegel was playing that game 60 years ago with this spin-off from the Superman Family, featuring an entire (square) planet of imperfect duplicates of Superman, Lois Lane, and other Superman Family members, but focusing on Bizarro #1. Jerry Siegel would derive absurdist humor by having Bizarro pick some specific aspect of any action, phrase, emotion and act out its “opposite”—the opposite of round is square, aided by the wooden art of John Forte, which lent an appropriately unnatural yet appealing tone to the stories.

I call it absurdist, but it’s a goofy, silly kind of absurdism, which I prefer to the pretentious kind (for instance, I am a huge fan of the works of James Joyce, but his over-the-top absurdist chapter of Ulysses, the “Nighttown” chapter, really aggravates me). The Bizarro world is playful, surprising, ridiculous fun, indulging in Silver Age stupidity in an isolated environment where it can’t spoil the experience of a reader looking for more straightforward adventure stories, such as a FLASH reader having to deal with Mopee.

Tales of The Bizarro World is an indulgence, that frees the reader from expecting conventional action or plot—anything can happen, and you can’t complain. There simply is no “bad” Bizarro World story; what would that even be? You settle in and watch Bizarro and the white crystal-faced versions of Lois, Lana, Jimmy, Perry, Titano, etc. act out their preposterous little fantasies, where no plot twist can violate the integrity of the premise, where Bizarro’s definition of “opposite” at any given moment suggests an unstable, inconsistent version of reality. In all of fiction, throughout the history of humanity, there was simply comparable literary predecessor, that I know of. Since then, perhaps some Saturday Night Live skits and others of that ilk have untethered so severely from reality in pursuit of laughs, but no one had gone as all out as Siegel did in these delightfully weird romps. Yes, it can be hard to digest an ongoing diet of this stuff, and perhaps it’s for the best that this ran for only a year, but I’m oh so glad it ran at all!

I wasn’t reading yet when these were originally published, but I bought the collection published in 2000. It terrible, me think it so bad me not even let comic shop pay me to take it, instead, me give them $14.95!

Goodness! Is it that late already?

#12. The Smurfs



The famous blue gnomes took their first steps in a 1958 Johan & Pirlouit adventure, "La flûte à six trous" (The six hole flute), which was later retitled "La flûte à six Schtroumpfs". A movie inspired by the comic would be produced in 1975 and I can't believe that it's almost been fifty years. (Cripes, I just realized that I still consider that film a "kinda new one", but it preceded Star Wars by two years! I'm old).

"Schtroumpf", the Smurfs' name in the original French stories, is actually the phonetic rendering of the German word Strumpf, which means "sock". Creator Peyo found the word amusing, according to certain reports.

The Smurfs were at first just a plot device; they lived in the Accursed Land, in which the medieval heroes Johan and Pirlouit found themselves during the course of one of their adventures. The Smurfs proved so popular that they made an encore appearance in a later book and graduated to their own series, with "Les Schtroumpfs noirs", the Smurf version of a zombie plague. Johan & Pirlouit would see their star wane (which is a pity as I really liked the series) but the Smurfs would grow in popularity, getting more albums, t-shirts and latex figurines, until they became true superstars thanks to American cartoons.

Peyo and his studio published over a dozen Smurfs volumes over the next few decades. The first ones were really good, before the whole concept became a franchise. After that, well... we got the usual made-by-committee kind of stuff, interspersed with a few good ideas when some old fan would get their hands on the creative reins. (Peyo died in the early '90s). The early Smurfs stories ranged from straight humorous fantasy adventure in the Bone vein to slightly disguised sociological or political metaphors; another example of European comics made for kids but suitable for adults for different reasons. 

The concept was hard not to like, due to its simplicity and potential. The Smurfs live in a village with houses shaped like big mushrooms (they're real houses, not emptied mushrooms), a village that nobody can find even after having visited it. They speak a language in which names, verbs and adjectives can be replaced by the word "smurf" apparently at random (and one story describes the linguistic cleavage that brought two parts of the village to blows: should one say "a smurdriver" or a screwsmurfer"?) Their medieval world has wizards, dragons, ogres and the like.

There were 99 Smurfs when the series began, and that actually caused a problem when time came for the once-in-a-century dance of the moon, which requires 100. A new Smurf was magically brought into existence by a process involving a mirror, leading to a good story about a Smurf who was the enantiomer of another. All the Smurfs are males, which led their arch-foe, Gargamel, to create a female Smurf in the hope of having them all fight to gain her attention. (That's where the Smurfette came from).

Smurfs mostly all look alike, except for a few: Papa Smurf, their father figure and leader, looks older (he wears a white beard) and is dressed in red. Papa Smurf is also an alchemist of no small talent. The moralizing Smurf, meanwhile, wears spectacles and keeps annoying people with his preaching. All the other Smurfs have the same look despite having different personalities. (The cartoons introduced different designs that eventually made it into the comics but I don't view them as canonical).

The series was attacked by representatives of the perpetually-offended crowd on a few occasions. For example, some thought that Gargamel, the evil wizard with a Rabelaisian name, was an anti-semitic caricature. Considering that there is nothing whatsoever linking Gargamel to Judaism, any such claims are ridiculous and say more about the accused than about the character. People see evil everywhere, it seems, even in innocuous stories about little forest gnomes!

The first few Smurf adventures are definitely worth reading. And they were but a spin-off to begin with!

12. Howard the Duck

[Sorry for the b&w images, I only have the original Howard stories in the Essential volume]

This may be the first time Howard appears in this event but I’m sure this won’t be the last; in my case, he was a late-phase substitution as the rules for this year’s event precluded some of my other choices.
Even though the first Howard solo series appeared about a year after I first discovered comics and I do recall seeing it on the spinner racks, I never picked it up back then, because a funny animal in the ‘real’ Marvel Universe world of super-heroes just did not compute for me. And I only got around to reading them once I picked up the Essentials volume sometime in the late ‘00s, so my impressions aren’t colored by nostalgia – which may be why this isn’t a higher-ranking pick.
I’m generally a fan of Gerber’s writing, and I generally like what he was doing with Howard. As he chronicled the titular duck’s travails in dealing with the absurdity of the world in which he found himself, i.e., one populated by large, mostly hairless apes, some of whom had superpowers, Gerber was also commenting on and skewering aspects of American society and politics – as well as mocking the conventions of superhero comics and certain fellow comics writers. Even so, I have to admit that a lot of the humor and satire didn’t age well for me (although there are some instances of *very* dated references – like his spoofing of Anita Bryant – that I still find amusing). Nonetheless, I think this is still a series that’s well worth reading, because it was ahead of its time in so many ways.
Also, I have to give a shout-out to the 6-issue Howard the Duck MAX series that came out in 2002, wherein was Gerber reunited with his creation and again used Howard to comment on comics, society, politics and philosophy. Among other things, it’s quite memorable that Howard gets transformed into a rat in the first issue and stays that way for most of the series:

(Art by Phil Winslade)

First Day of Christmas: Never Split the Party

The Forgotten Realms Comic spinning off from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons comics with the character of Priam Agrivar

Priam Agrivar was once a noble paladin, who had fallen and languished under the effects of a curse that withered his arms and made him unable to wield a weapon, and he had descended into depression and drunkenness, becoming a poor beggar in the streets of Waterdeep. In the AD&D comic, he was recognized by another adventurer who helped him remove the curse and start an arc of redemption. Once he helped those adventurers on their quest, he set out on his own to further his quest for redemption in the pages of the Forgotten Realms comic, working with a different set of adventurers to form a different party of protagonists. He essentially graduated form NPC status inthe AD&D comic to PC status in the Forgotten Realms book. Priam follows the archetypal hero's journey in his arc of redemption and became a favorite of mine among all the characters in DC’s D&D comics.


He started as a supporting character/NPC in the AD&D comic (that's him on the right)


and spun off to a feature/PC role in the Forgotten Realms comic (that's him fighting the dragon)



-M

Day One (#12)
Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders

As future picks on this list will demonstrate, I ‘ve always been drawn to team books and the “motley crew” sub-genre. Captain Savage premiered in late 1967, in the wake of movies like “The Professionals,” “The Dirty Dozen,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “Topkapi,”and “The Seven Samurai;” and comic book teams like the Blackhawks, the JSA and JLA, the Fightin’ Five, M.A.R.S. Patrol, and ad infinitum; and the teams of operatives led by pulp heroes like the Shadow, Doc Savage and the Avenger.

This genre probably goes back to the Iliad and the saga of Jason and the Argonauts; my guess (and hope) is that it will never go out of style. (See any number of contemporary film franchises like “Mission: Impossible,” “The Expendables” and the Oceans trilogy.

Marvel was supposedly testing the water to see if another war book would sell, but as it turned out, two Sgt. Fury-style books was one too many. Had marvel tried a different take on the war genre, well, they might have had something. After all, DC and Charlton, too, had and would continue to have great success with war comics right through the various phases of the Silver and Bronze Ages, from the “Pop Art” and Batmania years to the rise of super-heroes and the horror explosion.

Anyway, the classic batch-of-misfits genre was the pull for me when Captain Savage was spun off from Sgt. Fury. I hadn’t recalled seeing any of the Sgt. Fury issues in which he appeared as the Skipper, a sub commander, but as I was a sucker for teams of mismatched specialists, I fell for this one hard. I particularly enjoyed the introductions of the various team members in stories like this, and the first issue did not disappoint. For the record, the six raiders whom Savage led included an Australian (tough guy in a bush hat), a Frenchman a lo-vair), a sailor (nice Irish kid who worships Savage) and three Marines (teacher in a poor neighborhood; a Mohawk-coiffed Native American former pro wrestler who of course uses a bow and arrow in combat; and a career gyrene sergeant). The entire group was straight out of central typecasting, but, when it's done well, that can be part of the fun.



However, almost immediately, CSAHLR was running on fumes and all attempts to make it more appealing, like having other Marvel combat vets drop in (Baron Strucker, Hydra and the Samurai Squadron in the second issue! Really? Rescuing Izzy Cohen and Ben Grimm from Japanese prison camps in consecutive issues? Yikes!) seemed like the preliminary rounds of shark-jumping. As of #9, the title became Captain Savage and his Battlefield Raiders, with Savage losing his beard and exchanging his Navy togs for a a generic Army uniform, because, as so often happens his evil gunrunner doppelgänger was running all over the South Pacific causing oodles of trouble.

I bailed out pretty early, with the occasional drop-in on a series that seemed to shift and lose focus regularly. In essence the title became a clone of Sgt. Fury, and really, why did readers need another one?

Of course, since Marvel’s only other foray into war comics back then was Sgt. Fury, which itself only sporadically brushed up against even the kind of reality that DC’s war books offered, I wasn’t expecting Blazing Combat or even Our Fighting Forces. Still, I gave CSAHLR points for trying for a while and being enjoyably goofy, as opposed to stupidly goofy, for a bit.

Ah, so he's not really from the planet Korugar!

Darn comic-book colouring!!!