Since ozoneocean and Banes are going to be talking about the future of webcomics in an upcoming quackcast (contribute here), I thought I would go the other way and talk about a bit about classic comics.
I first got into comics when I was a kid because of the stacks of Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke that my grandparents had in their basement. Lucky Luke was a special favourite of mine - he was the “man who could shoot his own shadow.” He was the ultimate good-guy cowboy, typically defeating his bumbling antagonists by shooting the gun out of their hands. And my favourite character was Pat Poker, a cheating gambler who was often run out of town on a rail and tar and feathered.
It was hard to find more issues where I live, though - especially in english - and we only had a few. Recently I was in Montreal and was delighted to find a whole Lucky Luke display! I ended up bringing home about half a dozen. Reading them now as an adult I think the humour has definitely held up, but the portrayals of certain racial and ethnic groups are outdated and often pretty offensive, unfortunately. The same can be said about Tintin, though, and I still feel as though young me learned a lot about social justice from those comics. The history student in me even kind of appreciates the outdated elements of these classics because it's such a great way to gain an understanding of past perceptions.
So what are your favourite classic comics? What do you think has made them stand the test of time? And what hasn't aged so well?
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FRIDAY NEWSPOST - Classic Comics
HippieVan at 12:00AM, June 20, 2014
6 likes!
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Ozoneocean at 1:09AM, June 24, 2014
Roger Kaputnik!
Ozoneocean at 10:03PM, June 23, 2014
Yup! I started off finding that really crusty... but then it quickly became my fave part of the magazine! :D
bravo1102 at 7:25AM, June 23, 2014
Would that be Dave Berg's Lighter Side by any chance? That series did have a lot of retro fashion.
Ozoneocean at 12:04AM, June 21, 2014
'60s Mr Bravo, I said '60s ;)
bravo1102 at 6:03PM, June 20, 2014
I'm old enough to have read Pogo, Lil Abner and Steve Canyon. I always loved the work of Milton Caniff and sought out collections of Terry and the Pirates. But my biggest comic love growing up was Mad. I bought the bound collections of the classics from the 1950s as well as current issues starting around 1970 with Put*on the parody of Patton. I loved the art of Mort Drucker. He practically invented an entire style of parody caricature drawing. Fashions stuck in the 1970s? For me it was because it was the 1970s. ;-) I read classic Mad parodies with the styles stuck in the 1940s like Stuporman. Then there was the spoof of Mickey Mouse comics where things got all strange and they discovered they suddenly had five fingers on their hands. They had crossed over into the world of realistic comics!
HippieVan at 4:09PM, June 20, 2014
@meemjar: Those are the exact instances that I was thinking of when I wrote this! I remember the one with the rickshaw driver in particular making a big impact on me as a kid.
meemjar at 12:11PM, June 20, 2014
Love Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke and other comics. The fact that strong ethnic humor/portrayals were in these comics proves that North America was not the only country guilty of stereotyping. But the stories still showed human decency as Tintin stood up for oppressed people against Euro/Caucasian bigots. The best example was in the 'Blue lotus' when a vile American businessman was beating a poor rickshaw driver and Tintin intervened. He did the same in 'Prisoners of the sun' when two Latin Americans were harassing an Indian boy. In 'Tintin in America' we see a scathing satire of American racism when Tintin discovers oil on a reservation and big businessmen offer him millions for it until he explains that it belongs to the Indians. They are immediately run off the reservation and the businessmen just take the oil. I hope its not wrong to shout out here but I based much of my own book here on the duck on the European style of storytelling.
Ozoneocean at 10:07AM, June 20, 2014
I'm sure I've said it elsewhere before, but Asterix turned me off comic books as a kid- I loved them so much that I read every single on in the library... I'd read through them so fast that I wouldn't be able to spend much time relaxing and enjoying them because it'd be over too quick, So I quit comic books and started getting into long novels instead. I still have stacks of Mad Magazines somewhere... I love the older ones where everyone's fashion sense is stuck in the mid '60s. I love that!
HippieVan at 9:13AM, June 20, 2014
I also loved Archie comics, of course. I didn't really count them as "classic comics" because the oldest ones I ever had were probably from the 80s, but it's definitely been going a long time. Mad Magazine was really great back in the day - I used to love those "lighter side of..." comics!
Abt_Nihil at 7:56AM, June 20, 2014
Oh, and since Banes mentioned it: I also loved MAD magazine, but I didn't really consider it a comic book. More like illustrated satire and semi-political or satirical cartoons.
Abt_Nihil at 7:53AM, June 20, 2014
"Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke" describes my comics diet as a kid perfectly! My mom was a librarian and used to bring me comics, and since it was a good library, they had to be good comics! :) So they mostly had the Franco-Belgian comics, and some of the better Disney comics (which pretty much began and ended with Carl Barks back then, until Don Rosa arrived on the scene). However, possibly my favorite Franco-Belgian comics were "Spirou" and "Gaston". They were both a bit more adult and daring (for kids' comics, mind you); Spirou was basically an adventure comic, while Gaston was a slice-of-life comedy, and had some of the funniest strips I ever read. Oh, and speaking of strips, of course I also enjoyed the Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes tremendously (and still do).
Banes at 7:29AM, June 20, 2014
Oh, and the other day on a whim I looked up Al Jaffee, because I loved Willie Weirdie and Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions (and the Mad fold ins). I was thinking that Al must have passed away by now, but found that not only is he still with us, he's still working for Mad Magazine every month. He's 93. How awesome is that?
Banes at 7:27AM, June 20, 2014
I was a big Archie fan, too. I've even tried to read it lately (big collected stories have started turning up), but it doesn't have the powerful pull on me that it used to. It's still fun, feel-good stuff, though, and I read a bit from time to time. I'll always love those characters. MAD Magazine was another one I devoured whenever I could.
KimLuster at 4:51AM, June 20, 2014
Archie was the only 'classic' comic I read. I know the Guys from one of my fave shows, the Big Bang Theory, look upon Archie with disdain (guys tend to go for superheroes anyway haha), but honestly some of it was quite good. The humor and wittiness was consistently clever. Archie stood the test of time because its issues (teenage life) are timeless because the readership (mostly teens) constantly recycles. For many, though, passing from your teens causes it to lose some appeal (same reason you lose interest in teen tv-shows) - adult life and adult problems kick in haha. I remember Archie fondly though
Gunwallace at 1:15AM, June 20, 2014
I found the Lucky Luke cartoon was a lesser version of the comics. Sanitised. Safe.
Gunwallace at 1:14AM, June 20, 2014
I had four Lucky Luke books when I was a kid. Read them so much they fell apart. I was fortunate enough to live next door to a family that had moved from Holland, and to help teach their kids English had an entire Tintin collection, since their kids knew them almost by heart in French and Dutch. I found many excuses to go next door and spend hours reading. Asterix was another fave, and though I never owned one I managed to read many whenever I chanced upon one. Modesty Blaise was serialised in NZ in the Sunday news, a terrible right-wing rag my father liked. Modesty was sexy, but not as sexy as the page 3 girl, which seemed to be Samantha Fox every second week. 2000AD was the next major influence in my early comics upbringing, along with Battle Action (which had war stories, along with shark stories, and other stuff.) I discovered Conan, and Barry Windsor Smith's art, later on, but was instantly besotted, to both the prose and the pictures.
Ozoneocean at 12:45AM, June 20, 2014
We had the Lucky Luke cartoon on TV here when I was little and I LOVED it! It was my fave show while it was on... Then it got taken off the air because some wanker complained that it was too violent for children. Oh lord how I hated that person. :[
Ozoneocean at 12:42AM, June 20, 2014
My fave classics from youth are The Phantom, Modesty Blaise, and Torkan - which was a sword and sorcery thing, like Conan, except the hero had long blonde hair instead of black, and it was done by an Australian. I strongly identified with him! And when I was little I wanted to be able to draw as good as that... Which didn't take long actually. Then I wanted to draw as good as the art in Modesty Blaise and The Phantom, which I can now as well, when I put my mind to it. :)