In Grant Park, No On Can Hear You Scream

This photo was posted on Facebook, but I'm not sure how many of you saw it. Every summer, on Tuesday nights, old-fashioned movies are shown in Grant Park, just south of the Loop. I do not know who took the photo, but all I can say is holy crap!

The Clock, Cosmic Carson, & Paul Karasik (Our Mystery Guest)!

After you read these words, you must all--each and every one of you--go back to my previous post. Paul Karasik, the keeper of the Fletcher Hanks Torch, commented on Sunday's post, adding some juicy info about secret stuff to be found at www.fletcherhanks.com I so miss Mystery Guests. The last one was some guy who really, really thought he would "learn something" from my blog but that I should also buy Cialas from a dead Nigerian.

Onwards! I just added the first two panels, I forgot all about Siegel & Shuster's Dr. Mystic. He'd pretty much become Dr. Occult once they got the concept going. Everyone was starting out in trench coats, as Occult was very dapper. The Clock was arguably the first costumed hero, though I doubt he spent much on the costume OR the business cards he used. But there he is, the second story in SUPERMEN after future-Superman creators had a giant walk into a huge city. And then start a fight.

Two other things posted here, Cosmic Carson was drawn by Jack Kirby, gang! And Rex Dexter was a series by Dick Briefer, of whom I'll be discussing in the near future now that I have read the Frankenstein volume. Bob mentioned the similarities in Hanks' and Wolverton's styles, and I saw it, too. Without pages in front of me, I know it is because it seems as if some of the illustrations look as if the artist kept poking his pen at the page, if that makes any sense.

Now go to the previous comment page. And read up on Paul Karasik and buy I SHALL DESTROY ALL CIVILIZED PLANETS for everyone you know for Christmas.

Fletcher Hanks, Fantomah, and Stardust

Well, I posted more panels of art than I expected here. Bob had reminded me that Fantomah was the work of Fletcher Hanks, as was Stardust. I was going to mention the latter in this post, along with a few others. I'll stick with just the two tonight. And it should be mentioned that Fantomah preceded Wonder Woman by a few months as the first female character in comics. Check out the bad luck of the guy she'd end up killing by being engulfed in a tidal wave.

Hanks was an alcoholic and a wife abuser, but he seemed, by all accounts, to have left his family behind in the 1930s. As Bob mentioned, he was found dead in NYC, frozen to a park bench in February of 1976. (Things have changed, but it was not uncommon to see the homeless found frozen here in Chicago during the blizzard years of the late 70s and early 80s.) There's no way to connect the dots between 1949 and 1976, but if it involved drink, I'm surprised he lived that long: he was born in 1889. Hanks did use several pseudonyms, perhaps he found work somewhere under a different guise, but his style is quite memorable. And he is violent, but that was the Golden Age's underbelly. You could get away with bondage and beheadings. Siegel & Shuster created The Spectre a few years after Superman, and he did all sorts of things to crooks, he melted them, cut them in half with scissors, you name it.

For all the names he used, Fletcher Hanks was using his own at the end of it all, at least that's who the cops identified on that park bench almost thirty years ago.

Vampires and Werewolves...From Pluto!

Yes, from Pluto. I sit here at a few minutes before midnight feeling like I'm on Bizarro-steroids, which is not a good thing. There were times at the printing plant where'd I be using my fingers--even on my right hand--to separate pages on a hot job, and after one long four-hour stint, the other night guy said I looked as jittery as a meth addict. He said it in a compassionate way, and thankfully I can think of only three times in those two years where I needed to do such a thing. Yep, I can lift sixty pounds chest-high, but I try and use my fingers independently and I am fucked. Today reminded me of one of those long-haul days where I broke through that invisible wall several times. Most days it is me dog-paddling and trying to keep my mouth above water, so it is a rare pleasure to be on level ground punch punch punching away. Just before I started typing this, now twenty minutes gone, I took my crazy pill and a diazapam, and Herb Alpert is helping me lose the chest pings. No need to talk of the events of the day, some things stay private when it comes to, well, anyways. Off and on, I feel like I'm in an oxygen bar with cyanide martinis at my side, if that makes sense. If anything, my little monologue is a perfect tell for why I still live in the comic geek world. I know my body is for shit, but then there are the guys who can fly.

But in the 40s, it was batshit crazy. Anything went. I found a copy of SUPERMEN, which has a lackluster cover of some guy in yellow and green beating on, I think, The Yellow Claw. Big card stock pages. I flipped through it with some interest, then I stopped at Fero. When I saw this dude was going after the aforementioned monsters from Pluto, I had to buy it. In fact, there are pages of early Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, and two pages from Siegel and Shuster three years before Superman. 1935. I think at one point, I am going to scan the entire Fero story, it is quite short.

I love the preciseness of the panels, considering some of these guys were working for Iger or Eisner in what amounted to sweat shops. Characters created on the fly. I have a few issues of PLANET and they are neat, the art is sleek and full of robots and girls with ice cream cone breasts. Fantomah is bisexual. Really. Well, you live in the jungle...

The Face is one cool cat. He pulls off the perfectly-molded mask and becomes Tom Trent, newspaper guy. I love how this chick screams upon seeing him. Comet was a guy like I was talking about, no one knew if they'd do another story with him or not. He could blind people or set them on fire with beams from his eyes--like Cyclops in X-MEN, but we wouldn't want to think Stan Lee ever stole from anyone, right?--and, to be honest, several stories were outright brutal. One hero needs to climb in a window, so he just tosses a bad guy to his doom.

And then there is Spacehawk. I am including him here for Capcom, more than anything else. Discussing a 1950s comic called Mystery Tales last summer, I tried to describe Basil Wolverton's artwork. Well, here it is. I'll be posting more from the book over the next week.

This Tijuana Brass is great. You'd think I was boozing it up again. April will be four years. Wish I could say I've saved money from not buying $4.00 Bud Lights as I sat hunched over my notebook at the Delta Lounge at 87th and Major. Curse you, recession. Damn you, unemployment. But then there are the guys and gals from the 40s, in their primary colors and square panels, keeping me happy, like a hemorrhage that gently bathes my brain...

e. e. cummings redux

I wanted to subtly move away from my last post because I'll be talking about a great collection of Golden Age comics I bought. One of my favorite pieces of writing EVER, I feel that the poems goes as much as for me as it does Pete, my doppelganger.

A Quarter-Century of Pete

I've mentioned Pete before, and what seems to be the biggest mystery in my life. At times I think I am him, an extension of myself when it seems my spasticity cannot be held inside just one body. Saturday evening, as I waited for the last bus home, I talked with Pete in a one-sided way. He literally looks like a human tree, and I'm not saying that in a snide or pitiful way. This cop named Rick gave me a bit of info, something about Pete having been beaten up as a kid. I suppose that might account for some sort of paralysis, because I would think he'd be more mobile even if he had Parkinson's. So I talked to Pete, looking at his eyes for recognition, as every sound he makes, every single one, is like hearing wind in a cave. For those not familiar with Pete, I used to see him begging for money on buses back in the 1980s. Another survivor. He let me talk with him, most times he is shy, and I gave him all the singles I had in my wallet. All of a sudden he motioned, I turned and saw a stubby little PACE bus meant for the handicapped. So I now know he does go somewhere, but I can't figure why Pete is abandoned for most of the day. Maybe he just can't stay at home in a little room. I bought a Superman action figure yesterday, its in my backpack. Next time I see Pete, its his. The universal sign of friendship.

Now, back to the shoe. Bob might be right. Hell, he likely is. I mentioned that the shoe likely was lost, it was near a Salvation Army truck, I've seen lots of what I call halfies in my time. But today I was coming back from getting my Frankenstein shots in my neck and back, plus my typing finger, dammit all. It is hard to describe unless you are a true pedestrian, but I found myself on that same stretch of curb, only a dozen feet down. I had placed my hand on a street pole to balance myself, the after effect of the shots in my neck (right behind my left ear) gets me dizzy at all the wrong times. This time, it was right. There was an odd hanging thing of paper flowers around the poles metal band. You see those for only one reason, because a kid died there. Nothing on the Burbank news, but its rare that there is a slow news day because of the Chicago feed. I have a photo of the remembrance thing on my current role of film.

Odd. I somewhat solve the story of the shoe, but I also now know, like, 85% more about Pete than I ever have in the last quarter-century. If he doesn't shy away as he often does, I might offer to read to him from the paper, or a comic or story. When I'm done here, I've always said that I'd be arm-wrestling my Creator over why I was made into this monster. In the case of Pete, I think I'll kick my Creator in the ass, just for good measure. PS See how much I can type (and quickly) when I'm full of the crazy injections. But they fade away within a week, oh fucking well.

Full Moon Pig, Empty Shoe

More from the last roll. Even though Twilight Tales is on hiatus for a few months, a few of us have still been getting together at the Bourgeois Pig, and I took advantage of the Hunter's Moon in October to take this photo, if only to see if I could actually get the full moon to show up in complete darkness. The other lights are from Burling Street, right past the hanging pig. The bottom two photos were from downtown around Washington Street. The one with the fire escape came out great, and the other is cool enough that I posted it as well. The second photo is quite a mystery, it was the last photo on my roll, from this past Saturday. This is right on 87th Street, before residential housing and near a bus stop. Most likely, it fell from a stroller. I'll never know.