Wigwam Bam by Jaime Hernandez (No. 13)

Wigwam Bam (1990-1993)

by Jaime Hernandez

REVIEW BY TOM SPURGEON:

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

Wigwam Bam is Jaime Hernandez's best-realised long work, an amazingly rich meditation on the power memory has over one's everyday life. In itself an affecting story, Wigwam Bam gains even more significance in the context of the artist's wider Love & Rockets run. More-over, it contains one of the best meta-fictional conceits in comics history. Characters within Wigwam Bam struggle to come to terms with an idealised view of the relationship between Hernandez's characters Hopey and Maggie - just as readers who experienced those early stories also must deal with their nostalgia for that relationship.

Underestimated as a writer, Hernandez makes use of a number of fascinating and unconventional narrative techniques in Wigwam Bam. The story begins with an ending: Maggie leaves Hopey, and does not physically appear again in the story. This development echoes Hopey's abandonment of Maggie during the stories collected in The Death of Speedy - the beginning of a larger story cycle for which Wigwam Bam is the climax - and allows Hernandez to investigate the often inscrutable Hopey without her most humanising relationship.

As was the case with Hopey in those earlier stories, Maggie's presence in Wigwam Bam is actually larger for her absence. In fact, the most emotionally satisfying conclusion is Maggie's, as Hernandez allows a discovered diary to speak to the turmoil the character experienced as the story began, giving her decision to leave a believable, emotionally laden context.

The supple, gorgeous art on display in Wigwam Bam has never been more important to the ultimate success off one of the cartoonist's stories. The world into which Hopey finds herself drifting is presented in terms attractive enough that even as odder aspects seem appealing, making the violent turn of events near story's end that much more disturbing. Hernandez's skill with character design is crucial - new characters (and there are many) make their impressions immediately, while older characters are distinct while retaining elements of the previous incarnations. Hernandez's skill in delineating characters allows him to tell stories in an extremely graceful shorthand - we derive from how the characters relate to one another, or simply by how they look and carry themselves, hundreds of text pages worth of meaning. 

The messages implicit in Wigwam Bam are neither reassuring nor trendily nihilistic. Instead, each character's story delivers a note of poignancy mixed with guarded, subtle optimism. While Maggie's diary shows how her memories of a childhood friend's death have led her to fear abandonment, reading that diary helps the character Izzy come to terms with her own feelings about the Maggie and Hopey relationship. The scenes where Hopey realises how quickly any support she's enjoyed has fallen away, leaving her exposed and alone, are rightfully devastating. But they also serve as a sign that the worst has passed, and that the events may become a lesson for a character who resists every kind of growth. All of the characters in Wigwam Bam grapple, successfully or not, with similar epiphanies of wisdom and pain. Wigwam Bam is one of the best stories in any medium about memory, adulthood and loss.

FURTHER READING:

Jaime Hernandez at Fantagraphics Books

Human Diastrophism / Blood of Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez (No. 14)

Human Diastrophism / Blood of Palomar (1986-1987, revised 1988)

by Gilbert Hernandez

REVIEW BY CHARLES HATFIELD:

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

Blood of Palomar collects Gilbert Herndez's novel Human Diastrophism, originally serialised in issues #21-26 of the Hernandez Brothers' Love & Rockets - the zenith of that series, when it pushed the comic book serial as far as it could go without stranding its audience. Those issues (which also contained brother Jaime's wonderful The Death of Speedy Ortiz) parcelled out genuine novels in comics form, trumping the already substantial stories that had come before. The serials were getting harder to follow - to read Diastrophism I had to reread every chapter as the new ones came out - but the payoff was extraordinary.

Diastrophism, especially as collected in Blood of Palomar, represents the culmination of Gilbert's series Heartbreak Soup, set in the mythical Central American village of Palomar. Echoing the first story in that series, Sopa de Gran Pena (1983), which established such characters as Luba and Heraclio, Diastrophism also distills the best of Hernandez's work in-between. The fluid sense of time and memory found in The Reticent Heart, the dizzying simultaneity of social life in Ecce Homo, the violence and social upheaval shown in Duck Feet - these elements converge in Diastrophism, as a serial murderer stalks the streets of the town, forcing a long-delayed confrontation with the outside world. 

The killer turns out to be a native son, returning to the nest; other characters, ironically, end up leaving Palomar, some never to return. When the dust is clear, even those who remain face diastrophic (ie earth-shaking) changes in their lives, and must acknowledge things about themselves that they never knew. These people seem real: the finely-tuned dialogue and loose, energetic cartooning join to achieve a rare depth of characterisation. Gilbert's repertory company, dozens strong, gives the novel a richly human texture.

Palomar emerges as a distinct if volatile community, a social arena defined by deep, multi-plane compositions and a roving, restless eye. Throughout, Gilbert expertly manipulates the formal rhythms of his storytelling to capture the town's mounting hysteria: transitions become increasingly abrupt, sequences increasingly dense, as Palomar goes to hell in a hand-basket. This trend climaxes in a tour-de-force, in which the village, dubbed "ground zero", explodes with frantic activity. In the midst of all this, familiar characters like Luba emerge more sharply etched, complicated and intriguing than ever before.

At storm centre, Hernandez positions a new character named Humberto, an aspiring young artist whose work is informed, indeed, transformed, by his complicity in a brutal act of violence. Witness to the disintegration of the town, and privy to the secret of the killer's identity, Humberto goes from eager observer to haunted recluse - confused, nauseated, eyes limned with shadow and pain. His faith in his work - his belief that his artwork will "speak" for him and bring the killer to justice - is naive, arrogant and terribly moving. The book's finale, which pits Humberto's artistic aspirations against an awful, almost incomprehensible loss, has the force of a sucker punch.

To me Human Diastrophism is the great comics novel of the direct market era. When I first read it, in Love & Rockets, I found myself shaking when I got to the end - a response which had something to do with profound pleasure, and something to do with shock. Comics were never the same for me afterwards: the wan pleasures of nostalgia became paler still, embarrassed by the recognition that comics could offer narratives of greater emotional heft, more enticing complexity, and more penetrating social argument. My faith in the form had been rewarded in ways I could not have expected, beggaring all expectations.

FURTHER READING:

Gilbert Hernandez Official Blog

Gilbert Hernandez at Fantagraphics Books

Wash Tubbs / Captain Easy by Roy Crane (No. 25)

Wash Tubbs / Captain Easy (1924-1943)

by Roy Crane

REVIEW BY TOM SPURGEON:

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

Wash Tubbs is the best adventure comic of all time for one reason and one reason only: it moved. Cartoonist Roy Crane kept the soap opera, character interaction and romance in his strip to a minimum, perhaps sacrificing a larger audience and legacy in the process, but leaving more room for the straight-ahead action he did best. And what action! Fistfights could last for days, pursuers could chase the lead characters over miles of lovingly-drawn countryside, and characters had few qualms about not only scooping up a gun if one was available but using it. Crane's style, a mix of cartoon and fine-line drawing, was perfectly suited for the task at hand.

The vehicle for all that action was slow in developing. Wash Tubbs was originally a domestic continuity about the romantic travails of its namesake lead. The strip later became a kind of adventure-comedy, as Tubbs, and soon enough, too-similar pal Gozy Gallup, practiced hijinks and farcical comedy in a number of locations across the world. Things finally fell into place with the arrival of soldier of fortune Easy (in typical Crane fashion, he made his debut by breaking down a door). With Easy providing the muscle and a sense of mystery, and Tubbs providing a combination of earnest support, comedy relief, and a second avenue for romantic entanglements, the two spent several years exploring the then wider world in a variety of fast-paced adventures.

As fodder for the stories, Crane drew on his own past as a seaman, a career he gave up to enter newspaper illustration in the early '20s. But details were only important when the story called for verisimilitude - as in the well-regarded whaling sequence in which Easy and Tubbs are forced into service on a sailing ship. More than the plain facts, Crane captured a sense of travel and freedom that is uniquely American, during perhaps the last decade when one could thrill to faraway shores, endless escapes, and the eventual victory promised two square-shooters.

ALEX TOTH:
(from an interview conducted in 1979/1980, printed in The Comics Journal #262, 2004)
My appreciation of simplicity - truth in line art and tone - eventually led me to Roy Crane's Wash Tubbs / Captain Easy and his later Buz Sawyer / Rosco Sweeney strips (and all the comic books which reprinted them). Roy was an inspiration for [Noel] Sickles as well as [Milton] Caniff, remember - and he has become my own, too. Roy kept vitality, life, action, humour, expression, expressive body attitudes and pictorial elegance, simplicity, honesty, design, interest, patterns, continuity and surprises, lovely girls and distinct, identifiable secondary characters and authentic worldwide locales and settings, props, language rhythms, customs and costumes constantly running through these strips. Never a dull moment - and always much visual and storytelling fun! He was the epitome of adventure strip cartoonists! A simple, humble man, too! I miss him. We all do.

FURTHER READING:

The Roy Crane Papers at Syracuse University

The Comics Journal #302: Roy Crane Interview Excerpt

The Editorial Cartoons of Pat Oliphant (No. 39)

The Editorial Cartoons of Pat Oliphant (1964 to present)

REVIEW BY R.C. HARVEY:

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

Pat Oliphant may be the most influential editorial cartoonist since Thomas Nast, who is, for all practical purposes, the father of American political cartooning. Arriving on these shores from his native Australia in 1964, he proceeded to revise utterly the appearance and approach of American editorial cartooning. 

Deploying his pictures in horizontal manner of the British (as did John Fischetti, a little earlier but without quite the same impact), Oliphant drew with a juicy, raggedy brushline (reminiscent at first of Ronald Searle's) - not a grease crayon, then the petard of choice among American editorial cartoonists; and he sharpened his points with a pungent sense of humour. 

At the time of his arrival on these shores, he said (with typical irreverent outspokenness), "American cartooning was a laughingstock among other cartoonists in the world. All we ever saw was the Peace Dove with the scroll in its mouth. Hope coming over the hill, and the Rocky Road to prosperity. There was a stagnation one could see. Here was an audience that was really ready for a variety of new approaches." 

Oliphant was quickly aped by nearly an entire generation of American cartoonists, who drew like him and tried to provoke their readers with comedy as well as a visual metaphor. An unanticipated by-product of this development is that more and more editorial cartoonists in the Oliphant era resort to being simply funny instead of aiming their humour at a target. Oliphant, however, never lets up: his humour hits targets with terrifying accuracy.

FURTHER READING:

Pat Oliphant at The Library of Congress

The Atlantic: The Legendary Cartoonist Pat Oliphant

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