I've Got You Covered

A major update to the last time I came across a batch of old newspaper Sunday Comics - I've just recently come across another large collection of old strips that had just been made available.  This latest batch helps greatly in filling in a majority of years that I had large gaps in, particularly 1980 and 1981.  So far, I've only got a few missing dates here and there, but my collection of old Gazette Comics is mostly complete.  I can't do much about the comics I'm missing from the second half of 1987 to 2000, when the pamphlet format stopped, unless someone as fanatical as me saved those as well.  I was offered some Edmonton Comics for sale, but was reluctant to purchase those without being aware of those contents.  I didn't want duplicate strips, not to mention my interest wanes the further back I go beyond my birth date.

The earliest Sunday strip I wasn't aware of that was cancelled early on was Corky Trinidad's Zeus!, a retelling of ancient Greek Myths.  Since this is a subject that's less well-known compared to Anachronistic Cavemen and Medieval Tyrants, it didn't catch on.  That should be easily remedied with a quick purvey into George O'Connor's Olympians, a retelling of the Greek Gods that've captured the world's imagination, though little is known about their history.  It's currently up to the 8th book, Apollo, as retold by the 9 Muses, but for context on the above strip, you need to look no further than the 3rd book, Hera, Zeus wife who makes it her life's mission to personally punish all of her husband's out-of-wedlock children, the most memorable being Hercules, also known as Heracles.

The very next week, it was replaced by For Better or For Worse.  In a competition for familiar territory, the former stood no chance.

Going through these ancient comics was a memorable trip down memory lane, but would've been only relevant to someone who'd pored over their contents and discarded them to be forgotten later.  Only, the scant images that stayed with me for years had been tickling the back of my mind without gleaming any content of their meaning.

A word of advice - daily Newspaper comics are meant to be consumed on a daily basis.  Marathonning a singular comic is hard enough, but can be made worse with the lack of theme or storyline.  Going through multiple strips gives some variety, but after awhile, a certain kind of numbness starts to seep through.  Unless you'd been heavily acquainted with these comics in your youth, you'd be hard-pressed to make a compelling argument for why these comics were so valued in the first place.

In a way, I was likely the first reader to ever open these comics since their printing.  This was confirmed when I found a comic that had it's pages stuck together due to a printing error, and no attempt was made to dislodge them apart so the interior pages could be seen.  They'd been lounging in a collector's long box for years, and never seen the light of day in that time.

What particularly surprised me about these "Comic Books" was the sheer variety given for the children's drawings on the covers.  For the most part, many of them were devoted to the contents of the Comics Page.  The most popular strips, such as Peanuts, Wizard of Id, BC, Garfield, Beetle Bailey and others were a given.  Some drawings had some... interesting view of some of the comics present.

Iterations of Snoopy had some decidedly weird results, with him looking more human than usual.


There were even drawings of cartoon characters who weren't even in the comics, such as Ziggy, The Pink Panther, Mickey Mouse and Popeye.  Such was the power of their ubiquitous appeal.  But there were the rare covers that would have fan art of comics you wouldn't think of having illustrations in the first place.

The Gazette comics briefly ran The Lockhorns on its pages before they were phased out for The Better Half.


Even the extremely British strip Andy Capp got an appearance, with Flo taking charge front and center.

There were other Muppet covers, but I included this one solely because it resembled the poster for Gone With the Wind so much.  (Which would be an appropriate role for Kermit & Miss Piggy, come to think of it)

The most impressive was the only fanart for For Better or For Worse, back in its early unremarkable days when it was still finding its voice.

As you've no doubt noticed, a high proportion of these covers have their characters wanting nothing more to do than read the funnies.  Since their livelihood depends on their audience, this shouldn't be too surprising.

For me, the most interesting drawings were those that didn't focus on specific cartoon characters, but on random, sometimes abstract childish drawings, perfectly emblematic of their target audience.

Expect to see more contents of my finds in the next couple days... when I've got the time.

Sunday Comic Covers

Let me tell you about the recent expecience I just had a few days ago.

I was looking through a random Anime video store that was going out of business, checking the shelves for anything worth taking out. There were some live-action movies that I wasn't that interested in renting, and could easily find elsewhere, so I started browsing the back shelves of the store, looking at the old-school video games that were in stock. In this case, this included N64 and PS2 games. Even though I kept thinking "why bother?" in the back of my head, when I was living in an age where emulators made hunting rare games redundant, I still couldn't help myself from looking. After all, there might be something worth looking at.

Then I pulled out a random shelf out of a random corner of the shelf and was faced with an amazing surprise. There were rows upon rows of Gazette Sunday comics in reasonably good condition, each with a typical children's drawing in front of them.


































I could've used a paper bag at that moment because I was hyperventilating like an old rusty ventilation system, and probably attracting the attentions of the other patrons there, but I was too excited to care. This was the kind of collection I'd only had dreams of finding in dusty corners of basements or garage sales. And here was a whole slew of comics from the early 80s available at my fingertips! Half of this stuff I had never seen before, which meant there was a very good chance at filling in some gaps in my collection and my memory. These were comics that hadn't seen the light of day in years and they were available at my fingertips! Not to mention that this could be additional potential material for my blog. This would put a large dent in my budget, but it would be worth it!

I took two huge stacks of comics out of the box and carried them, looking for a flat surface to lie them down on so I could sort them through and organize which piles were comics I already had, and which I didn't. I'm very good at organizing things, but I need a consistent system for it to work. Within the confines of the Anime store, it was surprisingly difficult to find a suitable clear table. The first platform I used somehow had too many loose clothes lying around, and every time I kept moving them, they just seemed to keep getting in the way. I didn't want a single fabric to disturb the underlying surface of the comics, not to mention making a mess I'd probably regret later. If the pile grew too high, there was the danger of it tipping over, and I didn't want that. There would be plenty of time looking in the insides, but I needed to separate them first.


































Then to my great horror, while cleaning up my surface area, I accidentally knocked over a pile of my comics on the floor. When I looked over the counter, amongst the boxes and bags, they'd mysteriously disappeared. A passing girl who'd seen the incident take place pointed to under the counter where they'd bounced off a backpack, but when I looked there, all that could be found were a bunch of magazines in different subjects, as well as various ads. None of my comics could be found anywhere. When I stood back up on the table where the pile of comics had previously all been meticulously organized, this pile of paper was sloppy, disheveled and random. In addition, for some perplexing reason, there were a few Reader's Digest books in the mix. I was wondering what was going on. The books had all been perfectly organized before...


































...and then I woke up.

Yeah, sorry to ruin everybody's expectations, but chances are you probably figured out what was happening long before I did. Besides, I wanted to convey the kind of frustration I constantly have over not being able to find most of the childhood comics in question. Most of the other comics have had recent archival collections, but there's still a wealth of comics from when I was growing up that I'll never be able to experience again, because they'd have to go through the early stuff first. Not to mention it won't be the same, since they'll be divided by their individual series, and not grouped together into an unique pattern in the Sunday pages.

There was one Broom Hilda comic I dimly remember that had Gaylord seeing a flying saucer, and making admirable remarks about it to the green-skinned witch. Then the UFO landed, and out popped a robot-like alien holding a mechanical device while Gaylord looked noncommittal and Broom Hilda looked surprised.

From this brief description, it's obvious that Gaylord was remarking on how we would benefit from the Alien's advances in science, technology and philosophy. Then the actual alien revealed itself to be nothing more than a salesman hucking out mediocre wares. Even though I know that's the most logical outcome, I still want to see the actual comic itself so I can determine it myself for sure.


































While readers might feel cheated in the same sense that Jason Fox was when he found a whole cache of Christmas presents under the tree that he'd missed, I've grown accustomed to this kind of thing. It was just that this dream had a larger sense of scale and build-up than previous searching dreams I had. I can take some solace in the outcome, because I remembered one of the covers that was briefly shown.

It had Snoopy looking sick on his doghouse in the pouring rain thinking, "I'm telling you, I AM innocent!" However, considering that he looked like he'd eaten too many cookies, he probably wasn't as innocent as he claimed.

When the Gazette Sunday comics were released, they were always accompanied with a children's drawing that graced the cover of the Sunday comics in a format similar to a pamphlet. There were multiple interpretations of the comic characters, which was always interesting to see, and several of them proudly displayed the kind of pleasure that could only be obtained by reading Gazette comics. They're not quite on the same level of the alternate covers from the Covered site, but they're still pretty well done.


































It was considered a great honor to see their artwork made public, and there must've been a lot of submissions. The output eventually slowed down to a crawl when they changed their format from a comic-book sized release to a half-page newspaper spread of several pages. Even two drawings at a time didn't save them, and they disappeared altogether in 1989 and never showed up again. They became even more redundant when the comics were compressed onto two-three newspaper pages, which reduced the quality somewhat.

This is how I'm able to categorize the comics I've read - by the shape, dimensions, size, and even the paper quality of the Sunday comic in question that I read, I'm able to find the relevant comic amongst dozens of hundreds of single panels and similarly-themed jokes.

I once erroneously made an attempt to try to sell some extra copies of these Sunday comics at a comic book store to value their worth. The man behind the counter politely said that they were only worth the paper they were printed on, and therefore only held value to the person who'd want to read them.


































Bill Watterson may no longer have to worry about finding Pogo collections in old dusty corners of the bookstores, but I have no physical equivalent for Sunday comics. (I sometimes still have dreams of seeing a book of collected Calvin & Hobbes sketches or unreleased strips in bookstores every now and then) Incidentally, if Lord Morpheus' library of stories that were thought up but never completed actually exists, I know I'll be headed straight to the comics section. Good old section 741.5, or whatever filing system Lucien uses.

With the passing of every year, it becomes less and less likely that I'll ever find any more copies of old Gazette Sunday comics (or any newspaper comics for that matter) from the 80s that'll jog my memory. Yet I still live in the vain hope that I'll somehow be able to find a hidden stock of treasure buried in somebody's basement somewhere...

Cooking Time

Last month, I posted some Sunday comics that reused their illustrations. At the time, I wanted something that would take my mind off doing random blog updates without too much forethought. The ironic thing is, there were several comic news announcements that I wanted to comment on, and as a result, April turned out to be one of busiest months I've ever done.

















Part of the reason I was hoping to divert my mental workload was so I could focus on a group presentation. Normally, I prefer to do such projects alone, but this time, I was assigned with a partner. Even though we lived fairly close to each other, it was still a monumental task to find workable hours when we could get together. It also didn't make things any easier when our suggested cooking theme was passed over for an Anime theme in the belief that it would be easier. However, even this turned out to be false. We couldn't agree over which Anime we wanted to cover. Finally, we decided to divide it separately - my partner would do the biography of Yagami Light from Death Note, while I would explain the military strategy from the first two episodes of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. If there ever was an Anime worthy of being shown on HBO, Legend of Galactic Heroes would be it.

However, while I'm fairly proud of my Anime presentation, I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get a chance to do our original theme, which was going to be cooking. I thought it'd be interesting to show the originality of various cooking concepts. If you think about it, cooking is basicallly an area of experimentation, a mixture of various blends of spices, foods and temperature to create something totally new. With slight variation, the simple addition or removal of an essential ingredient can either make or create the very food you're making. Like Calvin with cow's udders, I have no idea how people managed to figure out the simple combination of different substances like say, eggs and flour, into something worth eating.













Given that today's cooking output is more suited to the quick-n-fast method of microwaving fast food TV dinners, cooking can be considered something of a lost art. It can take up to 3 hours to cook a beef stew to a slow boil, making sure the vegetables are absorbed by every inch of skin for maximum softness. This is not a recommended method for impatient hungry people, which is why fast-food restaurants are so popular.











Other than Iron Chef, cooking isn't generally thought of being exciting. Most people's cooking philosophies are more likely to follow Duffy's mindset.

















I wanted to go into a history of creativity that lead to cooking breakthroughs. The stories behind the sandwich and potato chips are interesting enough in themselves, but I was wondering if there were any other foods that might've had similar backgrounds.


































For potato chips, there was a customer at a restaurant who was grumbling about the thickness of the potato "chips" being served. He complained that they were too thick for his taste, and not salty enough. The cook, being fed up with the customer, sarcastically sliced the potatoes so thinly that they resembled paper, and added enough salt to choke a horse. After serving them, the cook was surprised to find the customer was pleased with the results, and the rest is history.


































I even had the perfect person to use for an interview - the caterer for my sister's wedding. She was notorious for never quite creating the same recipe twice. She considered herself an artist, so each new foodstuff she made wasn't confined to simple factory-style output, but original creations she would be proud of. The only problem was when she made some stuff that tasted really good, and couldn't recreate it upon demand because she had no idea how she made it in the first place. As a result, her customers have learned to quickly snatch up anything she cooks after tasting her samples, because they have no idea when she'll hit lightning with a bottle again. It certainly makes shopping there interesting.

Part of the reason for her unusual dynamic may be because she's dyslexic, and doesn't like reading much. I found that a shame, because I thought she really would've liked Feifer's third story in The Long Chalkboard, since it described her perfectly. She's constantly improvising on her recipes, never quite sticking to a tried and true formula, but whatever she thinks will work.



















"That was the best batch ever," friends would say. "What did you do?"
"Oh, I couldn't find any of something, so I had to use something else, but I forget what it was," she would say.
Some people thought she was being coy, but she was not. Judy was not that interested in chili per se; she was interested in giving it to people.



















"Judy, did you put cornflakes in that chili you brought over last night?" her friends said to her. "Something in there looked sort of cornflakey."
"Oh, dear," she said. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry, honey -- it was incredible. Well, you're a riot, that's what you are."

Unfortunately, when we first went to interview her, we ran into trouble almost immediately. The smell of spices inside her small one-floor room played havoc with my nose. However, I was willing to push away my discomfort for the sake of the project. Also, it was raining, but even though I hate getting wet, at least the light outside her window wouldn't distract me more than usual. Things could've gone swimmingly from there had our camera battery not died suddenly. With no alternate recording devices around, our potential questions dried up. I could've asked for my Dad's camera for backup, but he's notoriously finicky about strangers using his tools without permission. As someone who gets panicky whenever someone violates the sanctum of privacy that's my room, I can certainly relate.


































In addition, I also hoped my partner would use various examples using clips from Yakitate! Japan, I lent him my sister's copy of the first volume, and he gave me assurance that he would torrent the Anime. However, due to personal problems, he never got around to doing either. Part of it was that he only liked to read comics on the bus, and he preferred to drive. I egged him on, encouraging him to find excuses to go downtown just so he could read any good Mangas I lent him. Unfortunately, he seemed reluctant to do so, and laughed at my bombastic suggestion. I suffer from a similar symptom to my partner - I can only read novels on the bus, since I find the vibrations to be soothing, and it keeps my mind off how boring the text is.

The last element I hoped to use was references to the legendary 50's chef, Julia Child. I rented the book and movie, Julie & Julia, about two American women in different times with very similar goals. I thought their story would be inspirational, even though they had creative differences.
















































































I have no idea what our project would've been like if we'd taken this path more seriously, but it's fun to speculate.

Le Grande Chef Pierre

One of the sad realities of the Newspaper comic strip is that for every successful strip out there, there are dozens of strips that fail to find an audience. The demise of a strip can depend on several factors: Whether it could find an audience based on it's theme; if the jokes are funny enough; if the characters are drawn well; and most importantly, if the audience likes reading it.

The cancelation of Le Grande Chef Pierre by Brian Fray was one of these. A Canadian cartoonist who used his titular character for cooking mishaps. Until I searched for his name online, I was unaware he had used his character in single-panel comics called Chef's Corner.

One of the things I found remarkable about this Sunday comic was that it used the throwaway panel to summarize the entire strip, long before Broom Hilda used it later. (Garfield doesn't really count, since the throwaway panels in the fat cat strip aren't connected to the joke. They're really just exercises in design.)

The cast is made up of three characters, Chef Pierre, the waitress Lola, and the head waiter Basil. If I hadn't seen his name spoken here, I never would've known what it was.

A hallmark of a good strip is how timeless a joke is long after the publication date. The above strip still (unfortunately) rings true today.

One thing that I didn't register for years was that the titular character, Chef Pierre, never says a word. Even in the first strip posted here, it's just cooking instructions in cursive narrative. I always enjoyed that kind of unreliable narrative, where you have to struggle with what's being said versus what's actually happening.

I may post the rest of my collection if I get the chance, but this seems like a good point to stop off at.