About a month ago, blogger Jeff Trexler broke the story that a few of us have been sitting on for years, the story of Jerry Siegel and Russell Keaton’s aborted collaboration on a Superman newspaper strip in 1936.

The sample strips drawn by Keaton which were posted with that report were extremely muddy and faded, and Trexler noted in a follow-up comment that some intrepid folks were hoping to clean them up and restore them to their original glory.

No need. There are already lovely clean versions of these strips in the possession of Keaton’s widow, Virginia. (Yes, the same lady who was immortalized in her husband’s long-running strip Flyin’ Jenny.)

The images that begin and end this post are quick scans of second-generation photocopies that I’ve had in a box for over a decade. It’s taken me the last month just to dig them out of the garage, where they weren’t exactly kept in archival conditions; so you can imagine how nice the originals are. The folks who are laboring to clean this stuff up can relax and devote their energies to something that really needs the work.

As he noted in another comment to Trexler’s story, Denis Kitchen discovered this material in the Keaton archives back in the ‘90s, and had hoped to publish a book on the long birthing process of the Man of Tomorrow which would have included all of the Keaton art and several weeks of scripts.

I remember all of this pretty vividly, because Denis had asked me to write that book. I was already in the process of writing the intros to the three volumes of Superman dailies, and hadn’t had Metropolis’ favorite son on my mind so much since the days when I used to bound around the neighborhood wearing a red cape that my mother had whipped up for me.

(It had a cool yellow S on the back, just like George Reeves’. Even in those long-ago days when I was five, continuity was king. But I regress.)

Like others who recently read the excerpt from Siegel’s correspondence that accompanied the Keaton art samples, I was struck by the angle of Superman having been sent back from a doomed future Earth instead of an alien planet. Before the book was killed by the Siegel family’s lawyers, who were in the process of filing their lawsuit against DC, I spent some time thinking about how differently we might be looking at the Superman concept if that 1936 version had gone forward.

Even in these post-Watchmen days when heroes are kiddie fodder unless they’re edgy and eat their young, it’s pretty hard to swallow a major syndicate accepting such a downbeat backstory. The Superman mythos we know is founded on salvation and optimism; some writers may have fun playing with the notion of Earth people being primitive hairless apes in comparison to the citizens of Krypton, but the bottom line is always the same. The kid is rocketed to Earth, where he has a chance to survive. Krypton is the past, and he can’t go back there again.

But in the 1936 version, his past is everyone’s future, and that doomed Earth is where we’re all going whether we like it or not. It’s a huge sword dangling over the entire concept, and would be pretty depressing stuff even today. In the days when adventure comics were exemplified by the can-do likes of Flash Gordon and Terry and the Pirates, it’s hard to picture a syndicate giving the thumbs-up to a strip predicated on the notion that we’re all gathered together today because we’re all going to die.

Of course, it’s impossible to say what Siegel would have done if this earlier version of the concept had been given a green light. In his letters to Keaton his plans for the future of the strip are sketchy and a far cry from the happy Smallville days that would eventually see print:

“Early, he will find that his great strength, instead of making friends for him, cause(s) people to fear him. Mothers will not permit their children to associate with him, he will be hated in school sports because he never loses, etc.”

Once Superman reaches maturity, though, the hints of “his adventures in helping those in need” become increasingly recognizable, with descriptions of our hero “tossing his opponents about like nine-pens” while tommy gun bullets bounce off his hide like ping pong balls. If the man-from-the-future angle was intended to figure in the ongoing storylines, there’s no indication of it in Siegel’s letters from that time.

On the other hand, he was ready to bring Krypton back into the continuity – not to mention making dramatic changes in the Clark Kent/Lois Lane dynamic – just two years after the publication of Action Comics #1. Only the publisher’s refusal to fool with the profitable status quo kept Siegel’s nervy story “The K-Metal from Krypton” from seeing the light of day. (It would be another nine years before Krypton was allowed to figure in the continuity in any meaningful way, and by then Siegel was persona non grata at DC.)

So who knows what elements of the doomed-future background Siegel eventually might have worked into the adventures of the 1936 model Man of Tomorrow? He was a better and more adventurous writer than he’s often given credit for these days, and clearly not one who would have preferred to crank out the same old stuff forever.

(Curious readers can look here for that “lost” story, by the way, featuring a combination of reconstructed pages by current artists and a few of the original pages by members of the 1940 Siegel & Shuster studio.)

In August, 1936, Siegel wrote to Keaton: “Make him – and his costume – distinctive, for some day his distinctive appearance may mean royalties, from commercial enterprises, such as clothes, toys, gum, weapons, etc. I believe I mentioned already that he might wear some colorful costume. Perhaps a cape, a sash, an S-shaped mask…”

Admittedly, “an S-shaped mask” is a pretty goofy notion, but otherwise Siegel was right on the mark when it came to envisioning the potential of his brainchild.

And that wasn’t all he envisioned. In the same letter, he added:

“For the scene showing him performing some act of superhuman strength, you might show him holding an auto above his head – which contains frenzied occupants who are discharging weapons at him – and preparing to smash it against the side of a cliff.”

In 1936, Jerry Siegel still had a few bugs to work out in his concept, but he clearly knew what he was doing – long before comic books and long before Krypton.

I dunno, this looks more and more like a big pile of insert middle-aged white guy’s simplistic idea of “street talk” here; the black bars will cover it up anyway fan fiction…

But I suppose we really ought to give Frank the benefit of the doubt just a little longer.

Oh.

Holy fucking shit.

I don’t know who else has already linked to this, but ignorance has rarely stopped me yet.

“Kyle Piccolo: Comic Shop Therapist” is a web series that was produced over the past few months, and it’s so on-target that some comics fans may take umbrage. But the humor is genuine, the performances are entertaining and – though the nerd factor is laid on with a trowel here and there – it’s clearly written by people who know whereof they geek. If most of the wannabe snarkmeisters on the Net were half as smart and funny as these webisodes are, they might be worth reading.

The episode linked above (“Stevie Thursday”) is perhaps the epitome of what the series is aiming for; if it works for you, check out the other half dozen available on the site.

Someone has surely linked to this coverage by the Telegraph of a museum exhibit of cartoon character skeletons, but I couldn’t resist sharing this image of the essential Huey, Dewey and Louie.

I predict a serious rewrite of the section on Liposuction in the Junior Woodchucks Manual.

Just a note that Will Eisner’s Expressive Anatomy For Comics and Narrative, the book he was working on at the time of his death, has been released by W.W. Norton.

Will didn’t live long enough to see this one completely finished – there are a few brief bits that were fleshed out by other contributors based on Will’s outline – but it’s still a valuable contribution and quintessential Eisner-as-teacher: chatty, didactic and charming, often all at the same time.

One of my freelance gigs over the past few years has been as copy editor of Norton’s Eisner library, a gig that’s been simultaneously an honor and occasionally just a bit terrifying.

Most of the work that’s been reprinted by Norton was originally published by Kitchen Sink Press (and therefore edited by the near-infallible Dave Schreiner), so the books were already in damned good shape. And I’d gotten a thumbs-up from Will back when I worked on the editing of the original edition of Dropsie Avenue – including a thank-you in the book’s introductory material (and believe me: Will was a gentleman, but he didn’t weasel around with overt gestures if he didn’t mean them) – so I didn’t feel like a complete horse’s ass when it came time to take a red pencil to his stuff. Still, it was Eisner…

My mandate in most cases has been to make sure that spellings were, if not always stiffly correct, at least consistent within the books in each omnibus volume. (If Norton had sent me the final indicia page for the new edition of Comics and Sequential Art, Denis Kitchen’s name wouldn’t have been misspelled. Ahem…) I was also tasked with making sure there weren’t any inconsistencies in the art which the production people could fix – but other than pointing out the odd minor glitch, minutiae like a logo that kept appearing and vanishing on a character’s baseball cap, I kept my grubby fingers off Will’s drawings.

The Norton staff were dedicated to turning these volumes into the ultimate versions of Will’s work, and I sometimes had to attach notes explaining why it was better to leave certain dialogue unpunctuated as originally written, even though their professional instincts called for a correction. But though it was sometimes frustrating trying to explain the intangible aesthetic reason for some of Will’s idiosyncrasies, it was heartening to see how seriously they took the material and the responsibility of giving Will the permanent showcase he deserved.

Struggling with whether or not I should correct Eisner at all was occasionally a headache, but I knew from experience that Will appreciated being edited with a firm hand, and I had more than a few conversations with my memory of the man during the process. My biggest headache was the assignment of making sure all the Yiddish in the Contract with God Trilogy was spelled consistently. Gevalt…

But the reward was being allowed to pore over decades’ worth of Eisner work, concentrating on it as never before, and learning all over again just what a terrific craftsman he was. Even the pieces which I’d dismissed as lesser work revealed lovely little nuggets of compassion in the characterizations, brilliance in construction and masterful shorthand in the staging. Old school or not, at its best Will’s stuff is still among the few examples in the graphic storytelling field that’s truly for grownups.

Reading through the Expressive Anatomy manuscript, there were moments when I wished I could have called him up and tried to convince him to drop this bit or shorten that one…but I can’t complain about the final product. It’s a sturdy companion piece to Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative. And if most of the book wasn’t written for the non-drawing likes of me, I suspect that it just might prove to be the nuts-and-bolts source of inspiration for more than one future master of the form.

A brief note of thanks to writer Danny Fingeroth for his recent article in the prestigious U.K. newspaper The Guardian citing Kings in Disguise as one of the top 10, “crème de la crème,” graphic novels.

Kings may be, in Fingeroth’s words, “one of the saddest graphic novels ever produced,” but its author is happy and flattered to find those scruffy hobos keeping such prestigious company, and grateful as always that Dan Burr brought them to such vivid life that their travels are still being noticed.

Dear Editor:
1) Where have you been?
2) Who are you, again?

Sgt. Saturn

RR1, Phobos

Sarge, thanks for asking, and for kicking off the lettercol this ish.
1) There’s been some serious blog burnout lately at Casa Dispatches. Since I’m – mostly invisibly – working in comics again these days, I spend a fair amount of time keeping up with the related blogosphere. Frankly, the preponderance of poorly expressed opinions and faux-edgy reviews by folks who can’t distinguish snotty from snarky…not to mention snarky from intelligent…has gotten me down. Eddie Campbell wrote back in mid-June, “I gave up blogging…on account of I feel demoralized” – and he hasn’t posted a word since. I don’t presume to analyze Eddie’s motivations, but I share the feeling. For the last month or so, I just haven’t had the heart to add to the noise.
2) Damned if I can remember, either.

Dear Editor:
I’ve been reading your blog since post #1, and I think you could get a lot more hits if you’d write like all the really popular guys who all say things the same way. Here’s a short starter list of words and phrases to spice up your posts. If you like these, I got lots more.

I LOVES ME SOME (essential for today’s blogger)
KICK-ASS (aka KICK-A$$, indispensable for the thinking reviewer)
THREW UP IN MY MOUTH A LITTLE (you just can’t overdo this one)
SHOULD OF and BORED OF (just a friendly writing tip: “of” goes with everything)
PUT. PERIODS. AFTER. EVERY. WORD. (this is the shit if you got the tude to use it)

Don’t be a hater! Show us your not too good to be one with the blogger group mind.

Normal Bean
Bergeron Heights, Barsoom

Norm, much obliged. Those suggestions are the shit, indeed.

Dear Editor,
Dude, you promised forever ago you were going to read up on some current superhero writers and tell us what you thought of them. I’ve put up with your lame broken-glass-in-the-garbage-disposal posts and other filler ever since, but I’m running out of patience. What are you, like Joss Whedon’s slower brother or what?

Range Boss
Wizard Mesa, Skrull Galaxy

Boss, I have to admit that I painted myself into a corner with that one.
A couple of the writers I had in mind are involved in some high-profile series right now, so they’re already walking the gauntlet between ludicrous praise and outright character assassination. Rather than jump onto the dogpile, I’m going to come back to that idea sometime in the future after the majority of bloggers have had their naps and settled down.
(Looking back at my post about the upcoming Spirit movie, I’m wondering if all the childish snark out there hadn’t already started to imbed itself in my subconscious when I wrote that. I stand by what I said, but I think I could have done a better job of making it clear that my criticisms of Frank Miller’s work have nothing to do with my opinion of him as a human being. You’d think that would go without saying, but this is the blogosphere…and I think this is where we came in.)

Dear Editor:
Why no comments? Are you too good to care what everybody else thinks?

Grant Stockbridge
Solipsis, Uranus

Sure, I care. But I’m not giving space to people who just want to say “First!” or “Me, too,” or those who flit from blog to blog inserting nutball religious and political messages into comments, regardless of how inappropriate they are to the subject at hand. Some of my favorite bloggers have similar no-dross policies, and it works fine for them, too.
If you have something to say, clicking the Comments/Contact link at the top of the page will get it to me just as quickly as any conventional comments link can. If what you have to say is interesting, I’ll be happy to share.

Dear Editor:
You’ve got a lot of nerve comparing blogging to old school crap like fanzines. Blogs are now and universal and democratic. Are there any bloggers you do like that you don’t see when you look in the mirror?

Don A. Stuart
Navel, Gaza

Don! Ouch!
But to answer your question, just off the top of my head – and restricting it to comics only – I can name Jog, for absorbing essays, and Brian Cronin for his goofy “Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed.” There are highly creative bloggers of the potpourri style, like Neil Gaiman, Mark Evanier and Tom Spurgeon (each of whom has been known to craft a lovely essay from time to time, as well). Steven Grant’s well-thought-out columns are frequently strong, and Lea Hernandez writes an engaging personal journal. There’s almost always something entertaining or interesting going on at the ComicMix consortium, too.
Yes, most of the folks cited above are professional writers. And those who aren’t, still write like pros.
But most blogs, particularly in this neck of the Net, are like fanzines. They’re produced by amateurs, and they’re painful to read. I don’t care how many professionals came out of the fan press. It wasn’t their post-adolescent attitudinizing that made them good writers – it was what they learned as they weaned themselves off the onanistic pleasures of being banal little twits. I don’t begrudge them the platform, but I hope I have better luck avoiding them in the future.
Artistic (or even journalistic) quality has nothing to do with democracy, anyway. Former comedy writer and TV horror host Jim Millaway said it as well as anyone can, relayed via our mutual friend John Wooley’s website: “There’s a reason you have a radio receiver and not a radio transmitter in your car.” To anyone who remembers the mind numbing blather that characterized the CB craze, far too much of the blogosphere is depressingly familiar.

Thanks, all, for so many remarkably on-point letters. Join us next issue as we begin a pulse-pounding multi-part shake of the head over my brilliant career at Tekno Comix.
10-4, good cyberbuddies.

March 16, 1958-June 6, 2004

This is what she looked like when I first met her in Chicago, almost 20 years ago. God, she knocked me out.

This is where people can look who remember her or want to know more. This is the official website for her and Reed Waller’s wonderful Omaha the Cat Dancer.

And this is what I wrote for the Comics Buyers Guide just after her death. Four years later, nothing has changed…

When word got out recently about Kate’s cancer, we received a flood of notes from friends and fans. Some offered financial support – certainly a welcome gesture after two hard years of radiation treatments, chemotherapy and consultations – while many others took time to express their devotion to her and her work. It was an astonishing outpouring of respect and affection: gifts of love tendered, in the words of one fan, “because she’s a national treasure.” That she was, and more. The condolences from fans in other countries are just beginning to come in.

Kate wrote a number of things, and she wrote them well. But it was for her work in collaboration with Reed Waller that she’ll be remembered, for they were as perfect a writer/artist combo as could be imagined. With Reed’s gorgeous visuals to inspire her, she transformed Omaha into one of the most important comics of its time … and, in turn, the freedom Omaha gave her allowed Kate to transform herself into one of the most important and necessary writers to emerge during the amazing creative renaissance which the medium experienced during the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Her work was deceptively simple, but those who really know the craft recognize just how difficult it is to do what she did better than anyone. The seemingly off-the-cuff – yet marvelously polished – chitchat of her characters, the casually brilliant evocation of the rhythms of everyday life, the transmutation of soap opera into social drama, the revelation of character contained in the book’s notorious naughty bits … made Omaha a remarkable one-of-a-kind achievement. Neil Gaiman once wrote that “it could be used as a manual in the craft of creating comics in serial form,” and I wouldn’t be surprised if someday that came to pass. When people look back at those heady creative decades, I believe Omaha will stand alongside Neil’s Sandman and the work of Alan Moore at the apex of individuality and sheer craftsmanship. Neil and Alan made readers understand comics in a new way, while Kate and Reed created comics that made the readers understand themselves. That’s why those readers love them to this day.

It’s still inconceivable to me that she’s gone. Those who encountered her at conventions will remember her gleaming star power and take-no-prisoners intelligence, the big heart she wore on her sleeve, her ability to make strangers feel instantly befriended, the trademark burgundy hair and that broad killer smile. In our years together I knew her as a loyal and supportive partner, a warm and endlessly inventive parent, the lover who made late night smalltalk a remarkable journey, the bravest person I’ve ever known. Having her as my wife truly made me a better person. She was my treasure and my miracle.

She was diagnosed with lung cancer and related brain lesions two years ago, and under the care of a terrific team of doctors she actually managed to beat the disease. But only a few months after she was declared cancer-free, a pair of new tumors were detected in an area of her spine that was nearly impossible to treat. From that point on she knew her time was short – but she never lost her positive approach to the life she had left. She hated to hear anyone call her brave; she insisted that she was just being pragmatic. But she knew that she was living under a deferred death sentence, and though it was frightening, she refused to let that fear paralyze her or drag down the people she loved. I’m astonished by her courage, and immeasurably grateful for the time we had.

Kate passed away unexpectedly the afternoon of June 6. Until that day, she had been busy working on a new script, dealing with the kids, listening to music, making plans. I sat with her as she slept, keeping her company while she murmured gently as though in response to a dream. When the time came, she left us quietly and easily, at home in her own bed with the sound of her children playing in the next room, secure in the knowledge that she was loved.

I can only hope she knew just how many people did love her, and with such devotion.

What will haunt and comfort me forever – even more than the brilliance of her smile or the warmth of her voice – was a brief moment about halfway through that final day. Sometime during those dream-state hours, there was a point when she stopped murmuring to the unseen. Her eyes cleared, she looked directly at me and said, “You’ve done everything you can. Thank you.” And she drifted off again, as though her final task was complete. She died big-hearted and generous, just the way she’d lived her life.

Thank you, baby, for enriching so many lives on your way through the world. You did everything you could, too, and you did it beautifully.

I’m still speechless at the thought of Will Elder’s passing this week. There have been some intelligent and heartfelt obituaries, but the only way to truly appreciate him is to look at his work. Wild, gutsy and yet utterly in control; no one ever worked so exactingly to achieve anarchy. Harvey Kurtzman, of course, was the brains of their long collaboration – but Elder was its soul. Trying to summarize his achievement in words is as useless as reviewing a natural phenomenon.

Great news that Drawn & Quarterly is planning to issue a multi-volume John Stanley collection. (Thanks to Tom Spurgeon for providing the link.)

The vintage comics reprints that are coming out right now are naturally welcome, but so inevitable – Popeye, Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, Terry & the Pirates – that it’s even more gratifying to see a talent like Stanley getting the nod. Except for his amazing Little Lulu run, his other slick and funny work – sometimes featuring his own artwork but always made wonderful by his first-class writing – has been often referred to but rarely seen. It’s important that stuff like this, which is every bit as accomplished as the better known comic strips and books, not be allowed to turn into dust and fade from memory.

I can remember reading his various teen series for Dell when I was several years short of being a teen myself. A suburban kid, I was fascinated by the glimpses of inner-city life that they provided, brief flashes of a bigger (if louder and grimier) world that would briefly figure in a story or, unremarked, make up the background of his tightly constructed little comedies. My favorite was the odd-couple sitcom Dunc and Loo, which introduced me to the concept of being “barred for life” from something or other. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant at the time, but I was damned sure that I didn’t want it to happen to me.

You can put me down for that volume right now. A talent like Stanley’s still has a lot to teach us, and I look forward to picking up a few tips from the pen of that half-forgotten master.