Sugar & Spike by Sheldon Mayer (No. 78)

Sugar & Spike (1951-1992)

by Sheldon Mayer

REVIEW BY TOM SPURGEON:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

Sugar & Spike is surely the happiest accident of all the Top 100 selections. Published by a mainstream comic book company at the nadir of its creative output - the early 1950s - and a decided attempt to capitalise on the runaway success of Hank Ketcham's Dennis The Menace, Sugar & Spike nonetheless managed a kind of grace and good humour denied creations with more auspicious beginnings.

The difference was creator Sheldon Mayer, one of the prime movers of the early days of comic books. The man who pressed National Comics to buy the Superman proposal, and one of the comics' earliest editors, Mayer as a writer/artist was more eclectic. In the 1940s his most prominent creative outlet was Scribbly, which combined a gentle, humorous take on spandex heroics with a healthy dose of autobiography and outright sentiment - the forerunner of several reworking of the superhero genre to fit more personal themes. On this list, Mayer represents any number of talented men and women who only rarely broke through the stringent and specific commercial restrictions of comic book publishing.

Sugar & Spike works because it marries a great concept to a specific strength of the medium. Mayer's major nod to Ketcham was through his process: he watched films of his own children as inspiration for the proposed feature. What he noted was a period of non-verbal communication between his son and daughter, and that "baby talk" - a language only they and their same-age peers could understand - was the hallmark of the strip. In that device, and in structuring most adventures around the discovery of the wider world, Mayer linked the special world his creations enjoyed to the space young comics readers create around themselves reading comic books. Mayer was more than clever and talented enough to provide a graceful, funny follow-through with increasingly creative adventures for his pair. Modest, charming and accessible, Sugar & Spike may be the perfectly realised American mainstream comic book series.

FURTHER READING:

TCJ Article: Sheldon Mayer (2012)

The Amphigorey Books by Edward Gorey (No. 43)

The Amphigorey Books (1972, 1975, 1983)

by Edward Gorey

REVIEW BY BART BEATY:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

The three volumes that collect more than three dozen individual books by Edward Gorey - Amphigorey, Amphigorey Too, Amphigorey Also - are such a bounty that it's difficult to imagine any comics fan finding them inessential. For close to five decades Gorey has been the dark side of the comics form to such exquisite effect that his name has become synonymous with an approach to cartooning that is both cerebral and disquieting.

Gorey's drawings, whether in the style of The Gilded Bat's relentless hatching or the sparsely adorned phrasing of The Lavender Leotard, carry with them the sense of great weight. The faux-Victorian stylings bring to the page a solemnity that Gorey can spin in a myriad of ways.

From the playfully scary (The Wuggly Ump) to the scarily perverse (The Curious Sofa), from the whimsically morbid (The Bug Book) to the morbidly whimsical (The Ghastlycrumb Tinies) Gorey catches a mood of innocence and dread better than any cartoonist before or after him.

Gorey would be a first rate illustrator if that were all that he did (and he does do that from time to time), but add on top of his drawing skills the fact that Gorey's books are undisputedly amongst the most literate comics to have found their way to the page (reread The Unstrung Harp, his first work, if you doubt me) and you end up with a most astonishing talent.

Gorey's changed publishers at a ferocious pace in the past and as a consequence most of his original books are almost impossible to find in print. But the Amphigorey collections rectify that problem admirably. Make no mistake: these books are essential reading.

FURTHER READING:

The Edward Gorey House

The New Yorker: Edward Gorey's Enigmatic World

The Editorial Cartoons of Herblock (No. 53)

The Editorial Cartoons of Herblock (1929-2001)

REVIEW BY RON EVRY:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

In the field of editorial cartooning, the 20th century belongs to one man: Herbert Block, who has been signing his cartoons since 1929 with the name "Herblock". At 20, Herblock's pointed barbs at politicians and other scallywags graced the pages of the Chicago Daily News. Even then, his drawings demonstrated a mastery of the conventions of the political cartoon. His blend of bold lines and crayon-based shading matured over the decades, but drawings from the days of Herbert Hoover and Hindenburg are still recognisably Herblock's.

The early '30s brought Herblock to Cleveland, where he drew exclusively for syndication at NEA. Curiously, as the decade wore on, Herblock grew more liberal as his syndicate's politics became increasingly conservative. By the late '30s, the syndicate shrank the size of his cartoons, and begrudgingly waited out the term of his contract. But in 1939, the cartoonist won the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes, and he became the NEA's darling again. After serving in the military during World War II, Herblock joined The Washington Post in 1946, where he has remained since. 

There are few cartoonists today who draw in anything remotely like Herblock's style. Moreover, There are even fewer cartoonists who are as effective. Like the great editorial cartoonists of the 19th century such as Nast, Davenport, McDougall and Keppler, Herblock's cartoons clarify issues to the public and earn the ire of his targets. The '50s saw Herblock crusading against the mud-slinging hate-mongers and red-baiters; he was responsible for coining the word "McCarthyism".

Herblock's power as a cartoonist made itself clear during the Nixon era, when he frequently pointed an accusing finger at the White House, earning the President's hatred and a place on the "Enemies List". Approaching 90, Herblock still chronicles the outrages of today, with a clear view of outrages that came before.

FURTHER READING:

The Herb Block Foundation
Herblock Editorial Cartoon Exhibitions

Herblock at The Library of Congress

The Lily Stories by Debbie Drechsler (No. 81)

The Lily Stories (1992 to 2002)

by Debbie Drechsler 

REVIEW BY CHARLES HATFIELD:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

There's a scene in Nowhere #4 which sums up Debbie Drechsler's gift for nuance. The scene happens in high school, as Lily, the new girl in town, joins several girls in the Art Club who are decorating the gym for a dance. Among the girls is Lily's estranged friend, Claire (at a cool distance), and Angela, who invites Lily to work with her. Also in the gym are some boys playing basketball, among them Dunham, a flirt with whom Lily has had a couple of tentative sexual encounters. Lily is acutely aware of Dunham's presence (Drechsler doesn't have to say so, she shows it), but Angela, intent on working, advises Lily to "just ignore 'em."

Emotionally and graphically, this scene is richly textured, full of feelings which remain tacit but nonetheless powerful. We know how important this activity is for Lily, socially, and how the nearness of Dunham hems her in; we also know of the tension between Claire and Lily, and how working with Angela gives Lily an out. Drechsler choreographs these relationships precisely, stressing the spaces between characters and catching the subtle give-and-take of words and silence.

The marvel of Drechsler is that this kind of attention can be found everywhere in her work, coupled with extraordinary artistic courage. The Lily Stories cover a startling range, from the harrowing disclosures of sexual abuse which haunt Drechsler's one book, Daddy's Girl (1995), to the cold melancholy of The Dead of Winter (Drawn & Quarterly Vol 2 #5, 1996), in which Lily has an abortion but cannot own up to her sense of loss. Drechsler's current series, Nowhere carefully charts the terrain of adolescence, showing us things about high school that we either never noticed or willed ourselves to forget. Armed with a great ear for dialogue, and a mesmerising style which balances contour and texture, Drechsler is already a master.

RICHARD SALA:

(from Xeroxed #4, 2004))

Daddy’s Girl as the book was eventually called - is a masterpiece of horror. And it’s all the more horrifying because it is true, and because the actions depicted, the innocence-killing, soul-destroying actions, are happening right now, everyday, all around the world. Now, the story itself is certainly nothing new. In fact, during the 1990s in the US there was so much attention to the awful facts of child abuse that it almost reached a level of hysteria.

However, what makes Debbie’s story so original and so chilling are two things: First, the structure is completely different from the way stories of child abuse are usually told. In those stories, the abuse is usually the “shocking” climax, or the “reveal” (as Hollywood types are fond of calling it these days), the buried secret, the motivation for a character’s actions or whatever. In Debbie’s story, the initial scene of abuse happens near the beginning and is depicted in an almost matter-of-fact manner. It’s an unexpected and horrifying scene, but then we follow the little protagonist through the rest of the night and into the next day. There is no sermonizing, no hysteria, no false self-righteousness. It is simply this little girl’s life - and that is dark, dark, dark.

The second factor is Debbie’s art for the story: The drawings of the characters with their big, hopeful (yet somehow doomed) eyes, and the topsy-turvy space they inhabit - floors rising to hit the reader in the eye, rooms which seem alive, not so much expressionistic as sea sick. Her drawings depict the feeling of innocence stolen, of a pure vision corrupted, of a sweetness that turns to nausea. They are heart-breaking.

BOOKS BY DEBBIE DRECHSLER:
Daddy's Girl, Fantagraphics Books, 1996
The Summer of Love, D&Q, 2002

FURTHER READING:

Debbie Drechsler at From Dusk Til Drawn

Goodman Beaver by Harvey Kurtzman & Will Elder (No. 64)

Goodman Beaver (1962)

by Harvey Kurtzman & Will Elder

REVIEW BY RON EVRY:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

The common judgement of the team of Kurtzman and Elder among comics fans is that their best work was the satire they created for the early issues of MAD. However, this perception glosses over five tales that stand out as the best satire ever conceived for the comic medium: The Goodman Beaver Stories.

These stories that appeared original in Help! Magazine offered views of modern society that work even better now than they did in 1962. While four of them dealt with subjects that were lampooned earlier in MAD (or could have been), each one tackled deeper issues that reflected the dilemma of modern man.

Goodman Meets S*perm*n explored the fact that a real superhero would give up on humanity after realising that "people are no damgood!" Goodman Goes Playboy features a look at Archie and his gang grown and striving to live the life of modern, hedonistic, swingers, and eagerly willing to sell their souls to get that life. Goodman Meets T*rz*n puts a stamp of harsh modern reality on romantic perceptions of jungle intrigue and adventure, and Goodman, Underwater grapples with the idea of actually altering dull realities to become full of intrigue and adventure. Goodman Gets A Gun is an odd story where Goodman himself tries to live out his fantasies as opposed to just observing others.

All of these stories were pointed as hell, clever and would be hysterically funny even if they were all text. But Elder's artwork is utterly masterful, done by a draftsman at the height of his prowess. Each and every panel contains incredible detail - not just in the inking technique - but in the thousands of little "throwaway" gags he delightfully squirrelled into them. Each can keep a reader occupied for hours. I've been rereading them for 37 years and haven't gotten tired of them yet.

FURTHER READING:

Harvey Kurtzman at Fantagraphics Books

TCJ Article: Harvey Kurtzman - The Man Who Created Man & Revolutionised Humour in America

The Atlantic: The Man Who Changed Humour in America Forever

Little Lulu by John Stanley (No. 59)

Little Lulu (1945-1959)

by John Stanley

REVIEW BY GARY GROTH:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

John Stanley's Little Lulu may be the best children's comic ever published. (By children, I mean, ages four through eight approximately, for whom no one apparently is capable of writing comics today.) The cast of characters - the kids Lulu, Tubby, Iggy, Willy, Annie, Gloria, Alvin, the adults McNabbem, the Moppets, the fantasy characters Witch Hazel and Little Itch, and I would include even, or especially, the ubiquitous, almost onomatopoeic exclamations YOW! and PHOOEY! - are as rich an ensemble as Schulz's better known Peanuts gang. And like Peanuts, the format of Lulu is both formally rigid but versatile enough to accommodate an infinite number of imaginative variations on a theme. 

The children are not, however, metaphors for adults or adult behaviour. Instead, Stanley's kids, much like Hal Roach's Our Gang cast, are considerably more autonomous than their real life counterparts could ever hope to be, while brilliantly maintaining their fidelity to the impulses, cruelties and nutty logic that governs childhood.

Visually, Stanley's work is a masterpiece of compositional precision and formal clarity, rivalling, in its own way, that of Shelly Mayer or Alex Toth. Stanley managed, in stories no fewer than four pages and no more than eight, to achieve a flawless graphic flow, choosing exactly the right composition and scene for each successive panel. Stanley's style is the US equivalent of Herge's clean line - the drawing is just as impeccable, but less fussed over and more histrionic, particularly the facial expressions, which are usually delineated by appropriately shaped and exaggerated black holes.

Thematically, I'm pleased to report that there was no sanctimonious, William Bennett-style goodie-two-shoes moralising, the sine qua non of children's entertainment these days. Quite the opposite, if anything: Tubby is usually cheerfully unrepentant or downright clueless when one of his idiotic schemes backfires and blows up in his face. Lulu often triumphs in the end by demonstrating even greater deviousness than her opponent, and when she tells Alvin one of her fables designed to impart a moral lesson, Alvin usually gets it exactly wrong (Alvin, Spare That [Family] Tree, September 1959, for example). Nor is the series exactly non-violent: in one story Lulu punches out Tubby and Willy, in another, she is almost cooked and eaten, and in yet a third she systematically stalks and shoots the boys with perfume from a water-pistol. None of this is offensive or exploitative. The complicated plots (reminiscent of the staples of Hollywood's screwball comedies with their mistaken identities, fake assumptions, and likably oblivious characters) combined with irony make these stories far more sophisticated than they actually look, which is practically the definition of good children's stories.

QUILLERMO DEL TORO:
(via Twitter, 6 January 2022)
The D&Q editions are superb. I own the entire John Stanley Little Lulu and these new volumes are still a must. So beautiful. Little Lulu: The Little Girl Who Could Talk to Trees – Drawn & Quarterly.

FURTHER READING:

John Stanley at D&Q

John Stanley at Fantagraphics Books

TCJ Review: Little Lulu - Working Girl

TCJ Interview: Bill Schelly - Comics Scholar & John Stanley Biographer

Alley Oop by V.T. Hamlin (No. 60)

Alley Oop (1933-1971)

by Vincent Trout Hamlin 

REVIEW BY R.C. HARVEY:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

V.T. Hamlin's Alley Oop (officially launched August 7, 1933) is unique among the century's cartooning enterprises: initially about a caveman and his pet dinosaur, the comic strip was transformed into a science fantasy romp through history and myth. Hamlin coupled dramatic storytelling to a cartoony style (albeit delicately cross-hatched in the manner of an 18th century etching) and told high-spirited adventure tales that bristled with action and suspense, not to mention comedy and genuine human interest. 

The fun began in earnest on April 6, 1939, when the caveman and his girlfriend. Oopla, are suddenly transported from their prehistoric haunts to the 20th century - specifically, to the science laboratory of Dr. Wonmug. Wonmug has perfected a Time Machine, and Alley and Oopla become forthwith his time travellers. Designing his daily strips as single works of art, not as aggregations of so many panels per day, Kamlin delighted in tinkering with legend and literature as he sent his troupe to ancient Troy, King Arthur's Camelot, Cleopatra's Egypt, Ceasar's Rome, the American West of Billy the Kid, and the decks of Captain Kidd's ship. 

When Oop and Ulysses escape the Cyclop's cave, for instance, it is Oop not Ulysses who blinds the one-eyed giant, and he does it by giving him a black-eye instead of driving a stake into the orb. Thus, mythology is left intact, but is deliciously modified to give Hamlin's hero the central role. 

Visually a cliche strongman with a barrel chest and bullet head, Oop is an obstreperous, truculent, club-wielding comedian caveman until the advent of the Time Machine, and then he becomes less comedic and more commanding, his skill as both warrior and tactician determining the outcome of most escapades. Unflappable in a crisis, Oop becomes a cool pragmatist, his temper honed to a fine belligerence: he is as peevish and cranky as ever but much less excitable than in his earliest days. But there is still comedy a-plenty in his adventures: when his favourite horse gives out during hot pursuit of a villain, Oop dismounts but continues the chase, now carrying the horse.

FURTHER READING:

TCJ Article: A Stretch in the Bone Age - The Life & Cartooning Genius of V.T. Hamlin

TCJ Article: The Precisely Rendered BLAM - Alley Oop in 1939

V.T. Hamlin at The Library of American Comics

V.T. Hamlin at The University of Missouri 

Barney Google by Billy DeBeck (No. 98)

Barney Google (1919-1942)

by Billy DeBeck

REVIEW BY R.C. HARVEY:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

Launched in June 17, 1919, Barney Google was one of the first strips to tell stories that continued from day-to-day. Initially, the strip was merely another ne'er-do-well husband and over-bearing wife domestic comedy, but on July 17, 1922, creator Billy DeBeck (1890-1942) changed all that: Barney acquired a race course named Spark Plug, and the sad-faced nag, most of whose anatomy is hidden underneath a moth-eaten, shroud-like, horse blanket, became the Snoopy of the roaring '20s. 

Barney entered the horse in a race, and DeBeck quickly discovered the potency of a continuing story for captivating readers: for most of the decade, drawing with a loose but confident line and intricately wispy shading. DeBeck kept his audience on tender-hooks by entering Spark Plug in a succession of hilarious albeit suspenseful contests, he outcomes of which were never certain (some of them, surprisingly, Spark Plug won). 

The characters were relentlessly merchandised, and Billy Rose even wrote a song about the horse and his master, Barney Google With The Goo-Goo Googly Eyes, which even the characters in the strip sang. 

DeBeck's cartooning genius was such that he seemed capable of renewing his creation again and again, each time with a more inventively comedic novelty than before, and in 1934, he sent Barney off into the hills of North Carolina, where he encountered bristly, pint-sized hillbilly named Snuffy Smith, who was so popular with readers that DeBeck stayed in the hills for the rest of the '30s, introducing into popular usage dozens of colourful expressions ("tetched in the hair", "bodacious"). 

By Word War II, the strip was called Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. Snuffy joined the army, and Barney enlisted in the Navy and almost disappeared from the strip forever. DeBeck's assistant Fred Lasswell inherited the strip, and it's still running.

FURTHER READING:
Billy DeBeck at The Library of American Comics

TCJ Article: Barney Google & Snuffy Smith - Billy DeBeck, Fred Lasswell & John Rose

Li'l Abner by Al Capp (No. 77)

Li'l Abner (1934-1977)

by Al Capp 

REVIEW BY R.C. HARVEY:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

Al Capp extended the boundaries of permissible satire in syndicated comic strips by applying the principles of burlesque to the adventure genre, which, when Li'l Abner started in August 13, 1934, was the rage. Capp's comedic effort was not so much to end his daily strips with punchlines as it was to finish with outlandish cliffhangers. Li'l Abner Yokum, a red-blooded country boy with the physique of a body-builder and the mind of an infant, is Capp's Candide, fated to wander often into a threatening outside world beyond his hillbilly home, where he encounters civilisation - politicians and plutocrats, scientist and swindlers, mountebanks, bunglers, and love-starved maidens. By this conceit, Capp contrasts Li'l Abner's country simplicity against society's sophistication - or, more precisely, his innocence against its decadence, his purity against its corruption.

Capp ridiculed humanity's follies and baser instincts - greed, bigotry, egotism, selfishness, vaulting ambition - which the satirist saw manifest in many otherwise socially acceptable guises. And he undertook to strip away the retentions that masked those follies revealing society (all civilisation perhaps) as mostly artificial, often shallow and self-serving, usually avaricious, and ultimately, inhumane. Li'l Abner is the perfect foil in this enterprise: naive and unpretentious (and, not to gloss the matter, just plain stupid), Li'l Abner believes in all the idealistic preachments of his fellowman - and is therefore the ideal victim for their practices (which invariably fall far short of their noble utterances). He is both champion and fall guy. A protean talent, Capp invented a host of memorable Dickensian characters and introduced a number of cultural epiphenomena, all grist for his satiric mill.

FURTHER READING:

Al Capp at The Library of American Comics

TCJ Review: Al Capp - A Life to The Contrary

TCJ Article: How Lil' Abner Kayo'd Joe Palooka & Both Their Creators Came to Grief
Print Mag: Lil' Aber's Al Capp - A Monstrous Creature, A Masterful Cartoonist

Caricature by Dan Clowes (No. 82)

Caricature (1995)

by Dan Clowes

REVIEW BY BART BEATY:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

At just 16 pages, Dan Clowes' Caricature is comparable to Nabokov's masterpiece Lolita for its comedic genius, psychological horror, and perfection of narrative language in a story of an older man deposed by a young girl. Published before the completion of Ghost World, Caricature officially marks Clowes' departure from a period of hilarious editorial comics and MAD-style mayhem of Eightballs past, and move into the complexity, naturalism, and depth seem in such works Gynaecology, Immoral, Invisible, and the ongoing David Boring. Though published concurrently with the fifth instalment of Ghost World, Caricature is the first complete work of the current Clowes era and defines the nature of his comics to date.

The "Humbert" of the story is Mal Rosen, the eponymous traveling caricaturist and lonely, middle-aged man who encounters young girl of indeterminate age, Theda (probably an anagram for Death, considering Clowes' penchant for wordplay), whose estranged parents are famous art world celebrities of the Jeff Koons/Damien Hirst variety. This pretentious environment marred Theda with a rebellious, post-ironic malaise that coverts lowbrow, outsider culture for its real world contact to the underclass and its humble devotion to craft. Mal seems painfully aware of a subtle degradation implicit in Theda's critical appropriation of his art, as seen in what is probably the quintessential moment in their relationship: Mal shows Theda a goofy, banal portrait of himself a fellow cartoonist had rendered of him, only to incur Theda's disdain. "He's not as good as you. He seems almost 'too' aware of what he's doing," she says, while Mal eyes her with suspicion and dismay.

It's hard to tell who's more pathetic. Mal is older and presumably more mature, yet he is deliberately at the mercy of an irresponsible, possibly insane young woman betrayed by her own overt intelligence and zeal. Dissing her mother's claim that only women can make art because of a primal 'birthing' connection, Theda argues that, "making art is more like shitting," a statement that resonates with significance when, after she disappears, Mal is left alone in his motel room staring at her day-old shit in the stopped-up toilet.

Both a powerful statement on the current role of Art (both High and Low) in society, and a haunting story of the futility of love for these two fully developed characters, Caricature realises all the themes of Clowes' comics: visceral, complex narratives that are simultaneously naturalistic and self-aware; the preoccupation with anagrams and Freudian subtext; the fetishsed pop aesthetic versus the ironic kitsch of Post-Modernism; and the sophisticated ego artfully degraded by existential dread. Caricature if the first great apotheosis of Eightball, and establishes Clowes as the American successor to, not Crumb, but Nabokov.

FURTHER READING:

Dan Clowes at Fantagraphics Books

Dan Clowes at D&Q

Dan Clowes Conversations
TCJ Interview: Dan Clowes (2020)