New Feature Every Wednesday: HUMP DAY Q&A

Beginning Wednesday, I'll be posting a new feature, HUMP DAY Q & A, a quick-and-dirty interview with a cartoonist or comics-industry professional. You can be sure that this will be a mix of alternative cartoonists, Marvel and DC veterans, and up-and-coming indy cartoonists. Speaking of which....

.....Here's a tasty morsel. It's the original art for the cover of the first issue of THE HUMAN FLY, an underrated second stringer series from Marvel's Bronze Age which lasted 19 issues and featured the freewheeling, love-it-or-hate-it style of the inimitable FRANK ROBBINS, fellow penciler LEE ELIAS and inker FRANK SPRINGER, who passed away last week (essentially, THE INVADERS crew). DON PERLIN, MIKE ESPOSITO and STEVE LEIALOHA also contributed to HUMAN FLY, which was the subject of my very first article in BACK ISSUE! magazine (issue # 20; see www.TwoMorrows.com for the 4-1-1). This art comes courtesy of its artist, AL MILGROM. Thanks, Al, it's a "dazzler" (get it, Springer fans?)!

IT'S FRIDAY! Here's Your Weekly Comic: GREENBLATT THE GREAT!

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Greatest Single Issue Ever! Yes!

QUICK TRIB: Frank Springer

A week ago today, the great artist Frank Springer died on April 2.

My introduction to Springer was at a youth in the pages of '70s Marvel Comics via the two Franks, Robbins and Springer, who tackled with gusto THE INVADERS and THE HUMAN FLY (which I wrote about at length in my first BACK ISSUE magazine article back in BACK ISSUE # 20).

The combination of Robbins and Springer is definitely a love it or hate it proposition, thanks to the crazy stylings of Robbins: I vote for love it. I loved these comics, and in more recent years, my mania for the Robbins/Springer combo only heightened thanks to the encouragement of my cartoonist buddy Rafael Navarro, cartoonist behind the great SONAMBULO and our GUMBY'S GANG STARRING POKEY book from WildCard. Raf egged me on big time with his love for the art of INVADERS and CAPTAIN AMERICA. Years later, we still geek out over all that Robbins stuff, a lot of it inked by Frank Springer. (By the way, next time you're at a convention, ask Mr. N to show you his sketch book or his special Captain America sketchbook, if you don't believe this guy is a Robbins/Springer freak!) LUKE CAGE, GHOST RIDER, LEGION OF MONSTERS: tasty stuff, brudda! Robbins and Springer: one explosive combo.

Later, Springer had a crazy run on DAZZLER, which I believe had the longest run of a female superhero book just short of SPIDER-WOMAN (or at least was up there with SHE-HULK). To be honest, I gave up with DAZZLER after # 1 but still...

I've included some imagery, including, in the spirit of the Passover, a quick glimpse of the Jacob Goldstein Golem from INVADERS # 13 (and by the way, I will have an article on Golem characters in BACK ISSUE # 36, out in September). Go, Golem, go! Gone, Frank Springer, gone.....but his art will stay with us, to be dug by future generations (I hope!). Ditto Robbins, Thanks, Franks!

Happy Would've-Turned-100 birthday, John Fante!

"Ask The Dust" is one of my all-time favorite novels and probably the quintessential book capturing pre-WWII Los Angeles. John Fante's writing is so brilliant, unfettered, and uncluttered, that when filmmaker Robert Towne (the screenwriter behind two of my favorite films, Hal Ashby's "The Last Detail" and "Chinatown") made his 2006 movie adaptation, he had no problem translating the book's plot points but totally missed Fante's heartbeat and humor (and the bad casting didn't help...not just the lead actors, but South Africa standing in for Los Angeles!)

On April 8th, 1909, John Fante came into this world, and by the time he left it in the early 1980s, he had left behind a finite but brilliant literary legacy which, thankfully, Charles Bukowski's cheerleading helped ignite a Fante revival. Thanks to Bukowski, a Santa Barbara-based small press reprinted Fante's out-of-print novels.

On the topic of John Fante, I'll have plans to craft a special article, which will be published in the Palisadian-Post in a few weeks from now. Once it's up, I'll be sure to link to it.

(By the way, as long as we're talking about bad casting, even the characters on the cover of this pulpy edition of "Ask The Dust" above is totally miscast. That waitress sure as hell ain't no rough-around-the-edges Latina!)

In the meantime, ciao for now, Arturo Bandini!

Somewhere out there, the little dog laughed....

CARTOON FLOPHOUSE FEATURING GREENBLATT THE GREAT!

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My Holy Trinity of Humor Comics: POPEYE, POWERHOUSE PEPPER, COWBOY HENK

Every humor cartoonist worth his salt has a holy trinity of humor comics.

If a humor cartoonist tells you he/she has a holy quartet of humor comics, he's a f*cking liar! If he/she comes at you with, like, I've got an octonity of humor comics, he/she's a mess, because the word "octonity" doesn't even exist.

My holy trinity of humor comics are Segar's Popeye the Sailor, Basil Wolverton's Powerhouse Pepper and Kamagurka and Seele's great humor-strip avatar Cowboy Henk.

Actually, my humor are probably more influenced by animation than humor comics, but since this posting is about the Holy Trinity of Humor Comics, that has nothing to do with this entry's topic.

Ah, mais oui it does! Because the Fleischer POPEYE cartoons probably had more of an impact on me than even the Segar strips, as brilliant as those are. I love the rhythms of Segars strips, the repetition from strip to strip, and the way Popeye evolved into a lead character. But the Fleischers fleshed him out, and added an array of entertaining song numbers into the mix, such as "We Aims to Please," "Clean Shaven Man," "Brotherly Love," "Barnacle Bill the Sailor" and many more (I'm surprised Rhino Records never compiled those songs on a CD. Indie label be asleep at the wheel?) Plus, the Fleischer cartoons amped up the Popeye/spinach relationship and the Wimpy/hamburger fetish.

POWERHOUSE PEPPER is kind of Wolverton's knock-off on Popeye, but that's OK, because in his "Powerhouse Pepper" strips, Wolverton demonstrated some of the best character designs in comics. And the whole rhyme-scheme dialogue is insane. There's a really good Fantagraphics book that collects all the Powerhouse strips.

COWBOY HENK was a slow burn, then a fast burn, then a slow burn again. See, I first read Kamagurka and Seele's gag strips, (featuring a cow-licked grown-up and demented Tintin type who is too vulgar to be mistaken with fellow Belgian Herge's boy reporter) in some of art spiegelman's RAW collections and I wasn't overly impressed. They were not the best samples of the strip. Then in 1991, while living in Paris post-college, I read the adventures of Cowboy Henk (renamed Cowboy Jean for French folks) in the pages of PSIKOPAT, a French humor anthology that I'd buy in the kiosks of my 19th arrondissement neighborhood. That was the tits! Some of the funniest gag strips I've ever read. Back in the States, I found a "Cowboy Henk" collection put out by (once again) Fantagraphics. Unfortunately, the collected and translated strips were overall lackluster. Sigh. So frustrating. Maybe Cowboy Henk is best left Cowboy Jean!

If any cartoonists out there have their holy trinity of humor comics, I'd like to hear about them. And to those punks with the holy quintet of humor comics, get out of here! Scram! Beat it!