DCML Digest Issue 36 -- Pothole & comics

[Olivier]

First, thanks to Steven & Timo for their replies & remarks on comics-- a
reasonably not-too off-topic topic, I think; and we can always tie it to the
first Disney comics; I remember an article by Bruce Hamitlon in WDC&S on the
first MM magazines.
Any advice regarding books on the subject (comics history, I mean) is
welcome! I know such names as Blackbeard & Goulart, but don't have any
book-- I only borrowed them at the library.
And I definitely will have to order "Obadiah" from Bud Plant, then. What was
the other store you referred to, Steve (please)?


Don Rosa:

>>>But the thingies that I hold dear and which have the misnomer of
>>> comic "books" are the comic periodical magazines that appeared around
the
>>> mid-30's -- that's when the promo sponsors shifted the target audience
from
>>> adults to kids with dimes. Those would be the "comic books" that I would
>>> want to have Pothole invent, but as I said, it won't work.

Of course! Sorry, part of  my brain wasn't working. I just thought of  this
"first comic book" I had seen on Bud Plant, and completely overlooked the
fact you were naturally thinking of  such "comic books" as WDC&S. Well, it
did make for an interesting little discussion.


>>> If you try to extend the creation of comic strips back any further, and
>>> insist that any sequential series of illustrations telling a story is a
>>> "comic", there's no way to stop -- you'd zip right on past the
>>> picture-stories on the Great Pyramids and arrive at the tales of an Ice
Age
>>> mammoth hunt on the walls of a cave.

Comics history books naturally evoke such pictograms, but here's a reference
to an essay by one of  the very founders of  the comic book (I'm sure Don,
Steven & Timo and many other members already know it):
"Narrative Illustration: The Story of  the Comics",
by M.C. Gaines (father of  Bill, who created the horror comics) (1942);
reprinted in  "Tales of  Terror!-- The complete compendium of  all the
incredible old EC Comics [...]",
by Fred Von Bernewitz & Grant Geissman,
published by Fantagraphics & Gemstone.



>>> Anyway, involving Pothole in the invention of comics would be so
complicated
>>> and problematic that I'm sure I won't attempt it. [...]
>>> I can easily leave it at where I ended the last Pothole appearance,
>>> with him inventing comic books in his mind. Maybe that's as much of that
>>> "gag" as needs to be.

Indeed; it's a nice suplot-gag. I hope you will eventually think of  another
story featuring Pothole.



Olivier