Category: Comic Books

My Favorite Martian

Original Martian Mutant Costume from Invaders From Mars

After watching Invaders from Mars recently, I looked for my post from November, 2017 about “IT’s ALIVE!”, an exhibit of horror movie posters and artifacts at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.

The blog post was nowhere to be found because, I realized, I’d never written it. Recalling what was going on five years ago, it’s an understandable oversight. Having retired (at a relatively young age) earlier that year, I was traveling to Phoenix every month to fulfill my power of attorney duties on behalf of my father.

I wasn’t able to attend “IT’s ALIVE!” until shortly before the show closed. That was just a couple of weeks after my father’s death and, upon returning home, being diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer. So, more than five years after the fact, here’s a link with more about a fun exhibit that I enjoyed very much, especially under the circumstances.

https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/08/11/its-alive-metallica-guitarist-pem

These photos aren’t very good quality, having been taken with my old LG flip-phone. A highlight of “IT’S ALIVE!” was this original Martian Mutant costume from Invaders of Mars.

The pole conveniently hides the mutant’s infamous zipper, while revealing its butt crack.

I was particularly impressed to see original paintings by Frank Frazetta. As with the Mona Lisa, they’re smaller than you’d expect.

Cover for Creepy #7 (Warren magazine)
Cover for Conan the Conqueror (Lancer paperback)

The Art Pyramind

Before the Digital Age, in the Print Age of the 20th century, there was the general view that art belonged to one of three categories. I think of it as the Art Pyramid, with the bottom level having the largest audience, and the top having the smallest.

I’ll add socio-economic labels, based on the amount of money that was required to enjoy each of the levels.

  • Art = upper class
  • Illustration = middle class
  • Cartooning = working class

Where the distinctions get muddied a bit is with an artist like Andrew Wyeth, who could be viewed as having followed in the footsteps of his illustrator father, N.C. Wyeth. Frank Frazetta was a comic book artist whose paintings were in the tradition of pulp magazine covers, and yet they had a quality that rose above the subject matter.

In Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, fictional billionaire Miles Bron decorates his Greek island estate with fine art that he has purchased. He even has the Mona Lisa on loan from the Louvre, explaining that the museum needed money during the pandemic. One of the pieces in Bron’s collection, shown in the background here, is Girl with Hair Ribbon, by Roy Lichtenstein.

This is the complete image, as appropriated by Lichtenstein.

I say appropriated because he copied it from a DC romance comic book drawing by John Romita, Sr., as revealed by fellow Westfield State alum, David Barsalou.

This video has a British upper class analysis of Girl with Hair Ribbon. The picture’s “intellectual provocation” and lack of “organic unity” are considered apart from its original context, except for a generic reference to “the comic book cartoon.”

How did Roy Lichtenstein elevate a lowly comic book drawing by John Romita from the bottom of the Art Pyramid to the top? This is the subject of a new documentary, Whaam! Blam! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation. Personally, I have come around to the view that Lichtenstein went beyond taking inspiration from comic book panels to the outright and sustained swiping of work done by others.

https://gizmodo.com/lichtenstein-comic-art-appropriation-documentary-review-1850042171

Catholic Comics

Joe Sinnott had something more in common with Georges “Hergé” Remi, the Belgian creator of Tin Tin, than both of them being cartoonists. They had their work published by the Catholic Church.

In 2014-15, my friend Jim Tournas, aka Jimmy T., ran a Kickstarter campaign to reprint Joe’s illustrated life of Pope John XXIII, scanned from Joe’s original art. The biography had originally been published as a series in the Catholic Church’s line of Treasure Chest comics.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jetta/the-story-of-pope-john-xxiii-illustrated-by-joe-si

On that Kickstarter page you can see there was a pledge level of $1500. Did anybody fund the project for that amount? Yeah, I did. In this video Joe is holding a paperback proof of the book. Being Joe’s friend meant so much to me that I keep my proof copy at my beside. The final hardcover printing is much larger.

Publication of the book received notice in The Catholic Register.

https://www.catholicregister.org/features/arts/item/19870-comic-book-reissue-of-st-john-xxiii-s-life-improves-on-the-original

A couple of months ago, The Knights of Columbus featured Joe in this piece about comics and the Church.

https://www.kofc.org/en/news-room/columbia/2022/december/the-knights-behind-a-comic-book-revival.html

Ask Me No Questions, I’ll Tell You No Lies

A couple of months ago I mentioned borrowing some images from Ken Quattro, who had posted them on Facebook.

Toth’s Angel and Ghost

Ken is one of the sources appearing in “The Lie Detector,” an excellent new American Experience documentary on PBS. The popularization of lie detectors — which are valid only as an intimidation tactic — has a comic book connection.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lie-detector/

The documentary doesn’t touch upon another device, that is also used for truth-seeking interrogation. Scientology’s E-meter.