Tailipoe

It's true what they say: You can't find good help these days.

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Pulse Interview; Spring Cleaning; Slim Jim

Jennifer "Hot Dog" Contino did a nice interview with me for Pulse, which is a section of www.comicon.com. It's all about my work on Jughead and the Archie newspaper strip. Thanks to Jennifer, and to Alex Segura, who set it up. Check it out:
Pulse Interview


Theoretically, I'm doing some major house cleaning. As a component of that plan, I'm looking at books and magazines stored at the innermost strata of my closets -- purchases that were supposedly essential when I bought them, but have since been gathering dust, barely glanced-at, some literally for decades. So I'm systematically going through them to see what forgotten must-reads are there, and finally sitting down and giving them their due. If at this point they don't pique my interest, I'll get rid of them.

I've had this task in the back of my mind for a while, which is why I've been using some degree of sales resistance when going to the bookstore these days -- I'm too conscious of all the unread goodies at home, and don't want to slide deeper into the hole. For one thing, it's mortifying to visit the bookstore and find volumes remaindered or marked down to clearance prices, when I know that I have the same item waiting for me at home, cover barely ever opened if at all, that I paid full price it the day they were released. It's happened over and over. Most recently with Dark Horse's Astro Boy paperback reproductions. I dutifully bought each one of Osamu Tezuka's ground-breaking series the day they showed up at the comic book store. At least I actually started reading them. I've gotten through about half of the twenty or twenty-two volumes. But now they're showing up at Half Price Books for, well, half-price.

So anyway, among the forgotten items I've finally started reading from my bookshelves is the entire run of Nemo Magazine, published by Fantagraphics Books in the mid-1980's.

"Nemo, The Classics Comics Library," was edited by comics historian Richard Marschall, and showcased vintage comic strips, often reprinting generous runs of strips that were otherwise inaccessible. I particularly enjoyed a series of reprints of "Slim Jim," a strip that grew out of its precursor/prototype, "Circus Solly." Solly and Jim inclusive, the strip ran from 1905 through 1937 under a series of creators. I find it fascinating that a strip that ran for thirty-plus years is so little-remembered today.

The premise couldn't have been more simple: Slim Jim, a hobo (and former circus acrobat), was fleeing from the law. The pursuers were three Keystone Cop-like members of the Grassville Police Force. What Jim had done to deserve the attention was never made clear, but the force certainly was determined. They chased him all over the country and even around the world! Each week was another chase, another close call, another near-capture, with Slim Jim turning the tables at the last moment and making fools of his pursuers. Like Bugs Bunny, Slim Jim always seemed to be in control and never took his adversaries seriously. The artwork, drawn at various stages by George Frink, Raymond Crawford Ewer, C.W. Kahles, and finally Stanley Armstrong, often featured scenes of great mayhem. This was humor on the run.



above: Slim Jim, by Stanley Armstrong

The Nemo article, "The Force Was With Him," was from Nemo issue #11, and written by Richard Marschall.

# posted by cboldman @ 7:39 PM