As nearly as I can determine, as of today this blog has been open for business for five years.

Considering that I don’t do reviews, rarely link to news, and absolutely refuse to run comments, there’s no easy hook here for a lot of comics blog surfers, so the number of readers who have dropped by has been gratifying. As life – both personal and professional – has been too time-consuming over the last year or so for me to have posted with any regularity, my best guess is that (at least some of) the individual posts have been deemed interesting enough to pull in occasional readers. That’s gratifying, too, even more so than if I filled this space with recurring features.

To those who have checked in here from time to time, thank you. I hope you’ll continue to do so, and with any luck, as the deadlines relax a bit in coming months, I’ll be popping up here a little more often with posts that (possibly) inform, (conceivably) entertain or (most likely) just screw around a little.

Let’s see what we can get up to as Year Six unfurls itself…

And there came a day, unlike any other, when one movie company united its mightiest heroes against a common threat…

Well, okay, it wasn’t an alien invasion, it was a passel of sidewinders aiming to muscle in on a Wild West Christmas tree business. And though a lot of these heroes did appear in comic books, none of them was created by Jack Kirby.

Even so, the matinee kids’ heads must have been exploding when Trail of Robin Hood hit the big screen in 1950. To them, these guys were earth’s mightiest heroes, and no movie had ever brought so many of them together before.

As always in the world of genre, there’s a big difference between new and now.

In the too much time on my hands department:

The R.C. Harvey essay on Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy and its legion of insane devoted followers, currently available on the Comics Journal site, is informative and entertaining, as we’ve come to expect of Harvey. We’ve also come to expect Harvey to be downright meticulous in his recitation of facts, and that’s why his stated uncertainty about a bit of trivia in the current essay practically jumped off the screen at me.

In his description of the panel above, Harvey names each of the long-gone Hollywood stars caricatured by Bushmiller; but when he comes to the monocled dandy to the left of Stan Laurel, the best he can do is “Erich von Stroheim (?)” – an uncharacteristic lapse in certainty and precision.

It isn’t von Stroheim. In the first place, other than the monocle – which he didn’t always wear, though it would always be a handy shorthand for characterizing him – it doesn’t look like him.

And even without knowing the date Bushmiller drew that panel, we can narrow down the period in which it was done with about five minutes’ work, which pretty well eliminates the “man we loved to hate” from consideration.

Mae West, who’s speaking to Groucho at the far right, didn’t become a movie star until 1933. (Her only previous film work was a supporting bit the year before.) Will Rogers, holding a rope and speaking to Fritzi, died in 1935. During the window between February ’33 (when West’s She Done Him Wrong was released) and August ’35 (when Rogers’ plane crashed in Alaska), Erich von Stroheim’s career was on a major downslide, and no one considered him a big name anymore, certainly not as big as Crawford, Barrymore, West or any of the other celebrities in the panel.

The exception, of course, is cross-eyed Ben Turpin, the silent comedian who seems to have been thrown in as more of an icon than an actual celebrity. Or maybe Bushmiller was simply a long-time fan of Turpin’s dumbed-down comedy, which shouldn’t surprise any of us.

So, yes, it’s possible that von Stroheim could have been tossed in as another Hollywood icon. But he wasn’t.

The man in Bushmiller’s panel is clearly George Arliss, the plummy British thespian who won the Best Actor Oscar (for Disraeli) in 1929, and who was still considered quite the class act during the time the panel was drawn, certainly a big enough star to welcome Fritzi to Hollywood. You know, this guy:

And that’s enough time spent on clearing up that speck of minutia. But when it comes to Ernie Bushmiller, no pile of stones should go unturned to set the record straight.

Dr. Phillip Solar, created by Paul S. Newman and Matt Murphy – transformed by a nuclear accident from a physicist into a being with godlike powers, Solar hid his secret within a bright red superhero outfit and billed himself as “The Man of the Atom” in an early ‘60s series whose stiff scripting and art didn’t prevent it and its readers from enjoying a seven-year run.

Captain Pissgums, created by S. Clay Wilson – the leader of a crew billed as the Pervert Pirates, the ultra-violence and oozing degeneracy of the captain and everyone who came within his sphere set a new standard in outrageousness for underground comix, managing to outrage readers of Zap Comix who had considered themselves outside the mainstream until they got a load of Wilson’s work and discovered just how conservative they really were.

Iron Jaw, created by Charles Biro – one of the great villains of ‘40s comic books, Iron Jaw started his career as a murderous Nazi whose steel-toothed prosthesis allowed him to bite people’s limbs off and perform other atrocities; the recurring bad guy in the “Crimebuster” strip, he eventually dropped the Nazi connections and mutilations and became a standard gangster…at least, as standard as a hulking guy with a bear trap for a mouth could ever be.

Cuing from Tom Spurgeon’s current commendable campaign to give credit where it’s due, this parallel series has linked comics creators to their creations, both well known and obscure. Spurgeon, who proves that his heart’s in the right place more often than any comics blogger, has spent the last month reminding everyone that comics characters were created by individual human beings, and represent more than just some corporation’s intellectual property. Both of us could have continued this for months with very few duplications, proof of the depth and variety of invention by so many inadequately remembered creators over the decades.

Jon, The Viking Prince, created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert – a strapping young amnesiac fished out of the sea, Jon spent much of his four-year career searching for his true identity while battling pirates, other Vikings and the odd dragon; near the end of his late-‘50s run he regained his memory and his royal family, losing some of the allure of the concept as the feature shifted to more generic adventures.

Everett True, created by A.D. Condo and J.W. Raper – debuting in newspapers in 1905 and running for 22 years, The Outbursts of Everett True was a two-panel strip with an unvarying formula: somebody would irritate the rotund True with an idiotic remark or a lapse in manners, and then Everett would whale the crap out of the hapless jerk; the only variation occurred on the occasions when Mrs. True appeared and dealt out justice to her husband for his own crimes against decent humanity.

Sylvia, created by Nicole Hollander – spinning out of the strip Feminist Funnies, Sylvia was a take-no-prisoners commentator on the current scene, speaking truth to hypocrisy, stupidity and corruption that was at once filtered through a wry grasp of gender inequality and a healthy dose of common sense. After 33 years as a daily newspaper feature, Hollander ended the strip and shifted her extensive archive to an online presence.

Cuing from Tom Spurgeon’s current commendable campaign to give credit where it’s due, here’s a parallel series that links comics creators to their creations, both well known and obscure. If every comics blogger followed Spurgeon’s example this month – yes, that’s a hint – we might come close to scratching the surface in celebrating the depth and variety of invention by so many inadequately remembered creators over the decades.

Dan Dare, created by Frank Hampson – making his debut in the British Eagle weekly in 1950, the “Pilot of the Future” (that particular future being the late 1990s) thought his way out of dire interplanetary predicaments and battled archenemy the Mekon in a popular long-running series of space opera adventures that have continued intermittently to this day.

Moon Mullins, created by Frank Willard – a wannabe boxer when he first appeared in newspapers in 1923, Moon was more likely to be found hanging out in pool halls and race tracks or loafing around his low-rent boardinghouse with kid brother Kayo than doing anything as productive as lacing up his gloves; never a huge hit, the genial lower-depths humor of Willard and assistant/successor Ferd Johnson nonetheless kept the strip running for 69 years.

Spy Smasher, created by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck – battling enemy agents and saboteurs even before U.S. entry in WWII, Spy Smasher was wealthy Virginia sportsman Alan Armstrong, smart enough to design a revolutionary submersible aircraft and tough enough to duke it out with the meanest villains the Axis could throw at him; after cessation of hostilities, he dumped the costume and eked out a couple more years of four-color existence in street clothes as “Crime Smasher” before calling it a day.

Cuing from Tom Spurgeon’s current commendable campaign to give credit where it’s due, here’s a parallel series that links comics creators to their creations, both well known and obscure. If every comics blogger followed Spurgeon’s example this month – yes, that’s a hint – we might come close to scratching the surface in celebrating the depth and variety of invention by so many inadequately remembered creators over the decades.

Big George, created by Virgil Partch – the titular blowhard of this syndicated daily panel and Sunday strip, George’s suburban antics were considerably less in-your-face than the sarcastic magazine panels with which Partch had made his reputation, but Partch’s trend-setting art and fearless approach to domestic comedy made the strip popular enough to enjoy a 30-year run.

Super-Hip, created by Arnold Drake and Bob Oskner – a supporting character in mid-‘60s installments of the long-running Bob Hope comic book, the ultra-Mod hero was really dorky high school student Tadwallader Jutefruce, who didn’t suspect that a fit of anger would transform him into a guitar-strumming superhero with more whimsical powers at his command than the assembled Justice League.

Kid Eternity, created by Otto Binder and Sheldon Moldoff – more or less killed by a Nazi U-boat attack in 1942, the Kid wasn’t slated to die for another 75 years, so his ghostly Keeper returned him to life and gave him the power to summon figures from the past (and, later, from literature) to assist him in fighting Nazis and busting criminals; greatly revamped, the character was briefly revived for a “mature readers” series in the 1990s. (Cover image by Pete Riss.)

Cuing from Tom Spurgeon’s current commendable campaign to give credit where it’s due, here’s a parallel series that links comics creators to their creations, both well known and obscure. If every comics blogger followed Spurgeon’s example this month – yes, that’s a hint – we might come close to scratching the surface in celebrating the depth and variety of invention by so many inadequately remembered creators over the decades.

Apple Mary, created by Martha Orr – the iconic Depression-era fruit vendor first appeared in newspapers in 1934, a marriage of soap opera and the “Apple Annie” character from the Frank Capra movie Lady for a Day (herself considerably polished up and renamed from the original Damon Runyon story “Madame La Gimp”); a peppery old dame with a disabled nephew, Mary’s focus shifted at the end of the decade when she dumped the nephew, stopped peddling apples and became known simply as the quintessential busybody Mary Worth.

Kookie, created by John Stanley and Bill Williams – inspired by the beatnik culture that was already fading in 1962, Kookie was a young woman from mainstream America whose job as waitress in a coffee shop immersed her in a world of goatees, rambling poetry and absurd art; though the contributions by Stanley and Williams were bright and accomplished, the concept failed to take off and lasted for only two issues before fading into Nowheresville.

Sailor Moon, created by Naoko Takeuchi – spinning off from an earlier manga series called Codename: Sailor V,  Sailor Moon was originally a young girl named Usagi Tsukino who discovered that she was one of a group of Green Lantern-type space soldiers entrusted with protecting the galaxy from would-be conquerors; incredibly popular, the series launched a series of sequels, anime and live-action TV films to an international audience.

Cuing from Tom Spurgeon’s current commendable campaign to give credit where it’s due, here’s a parallel series that links comics creators to their creations, both well known and obscure. If every comics blogger followed Spurgeon’s example this month – yes, that’s a hint – we might come close to scratching the surface in celebrating the depth and variety of invention by so many inadequately remembered creators over the decades.

Lance St. Lorne, created by Warren Tufts – an American cavalry officer in the 1840s, Lance was the hero of one of the last full-page Sunday strips, an immaculately drawn and colored adventure which Tufts self-syndicated for five years; for a time so popular that a daily version was added, the strain of maintaining quality led to the daily being abandoned and the Lance Sunday slowly shrinking until Tufts threw in the towel and retreated into work-for-hire jobs for comic books.

Spurs Jackson, created by Walter B. Gibson and John Belfi – the two-gun, ten-gallon star of the comic book Space Western, Spurs and his straight-shooting Space Vigilantes fought to protect the Earth from bad guys who hailed from the moon, Mars, Venus and points outward in a goofy series that ran for six issues before vanishing forever into the aether.

The Arrow, created by Paul Gustavson – the first of the comic book mystery-man archers, The Arrow premiered the same year as Superman and ran mostly as a back-up feature until 1941; in everyday life a government agent with even less patience for due process than Dick Tracy, the masked Arrow had no qualms about playing for keeps and kept a special black shaft on hand for administering the self-imposed death penalty to the villains who really got up his nose.

Cuing from Tom Spurgeon’s current commendable campaign to give credit where it’s due, here’s a parallel series that links comics creators to their creations, both well known and obscure. If every comics blogger followed Spurgeon’s example this month – yes, that’s a hint – we might come close to scratching the surface in celebrating the depth and variety of invention by so many inadequately remembered creators over the decades.

Fearless Fosdick, created by Al Capp – a long-running feature of Capp’s Li’l Abner, the comic-strip-within-a-comic-strip adventures of Fosdick first appeared in 1941 and resurfaced periodically for decades; a merciless parody of Dick Tracy, pure-hearted and knuckle-headed detective Fosdick typically pursued grotesque villains amid a hail of gunfire as the corpses of innocent taxpayers piled up like cordwood and both hero and bad guy ended up as full of holes as Swiss cheese.

Teena, created by Hilda Terry – one of the early bobbysoxer newspaper strips, Teena was an immaculately drawn feature that alternated between proto-feminist gags and typical ‘40s-style teenage sitcom sequences about puppy love and bemused parents; using her reputation as Teena’s creator, Terry was responsible for the National Cartoonists Society opening their membership to women and was the first female cartoonist to be admitted, in 1950.

Blue Bolt, created by Joe Simon – a pre-WWII superhero, Blue Bolt was a strapping young American athlete who was essentially Flash Gordon in an underground world instead of outer space, joining forces with a brilliant scientist to battle exotic would-be conqueror the Green Sorceress and her high-tech army; of particular interest to the history of comic books was creator Simon’s decision to take on a collaborator – Jack Kirby – with the second installment, the beginning of a beautiful friendship that would provide some of the medium’s most dynamic concepts.

Cuing from Tom Spurgeon’s current commendable campaign to give credit where it’s due, here’s a parallel series that links comics creators to their creations, both well known and obscure. If every comics blogger followed Spurgeon’s example this month – yes, that’s a hint – we might come close to scratching the surface in celebrating the depth and variety of invention by so many inadequately remembered creators over the decades.