One of the great originals of the American Silver Age, Arnold Drake, has passed away. Mark Evanier provides a both informative and touching obituary. To me, Drake is significant for the creation of a number of characters and stories that showed the obverse of the four-color universes of other superhero comics of his time. “The Doom Patrol”, a group of freaks doing their best to act the superhero bit, is a bizarrely unsettling series, as if Drake was taking the bourgeois weirdness of things like Mort Weisinger’s Superman dead serious. It is funny and entertaining, but not comforting in the same way most of the other DC stories done at the time were. And then there is of course “Deadman.” This is the original angsting “superhero”, and, again, his endless The Fugitive-like search for his faceless, prosthetic-fitted killer – a search which promises no redemption – was not your usual superhero yarn. To this eight-year old it was positively haunting. As if all bets were off.

Say hello to Boston Brand for me, Mr. Drake!

The premier French site of comics criticism has now launched an English-language version, containing selected content in translation. This means, for example, that you can now read Xavier Guilbert’s review of Shigeru Mizuki’s masterly NonNonBâ (which I also reviewed a couple of days ago), as well as interviews with Edmond Baudoin and Lorenzo Mattotti, amongst other things.

Also, and completely unrelated, the high and low-discussion continues at the TCJ message board.

It seems like everyone in the comics blogosphere by now knows about Fantagraphics’ new Defence Fund, launched to help them through the bullshit lawsuit they are facing from cranky has-been SF writer Harlan Ellison (pictured). However, I still gotta plug it here, just because. Concerning the merits of Ellison’s case, I’m sure Kim and Gary have not exactly been diplomatic in their dealings with him over the years (nor has he in his with them, I’m equally sure). In fact, they have probably been quite the pain in the ass, even probably unnecessarily so. However, this lawsuit is clearly crap, and potentially a threat to the 1st Amendment rights of publishers.

I won’t go into details, merely refer you to this news story on the Comics Journal website, from which several of the pertinent documents can be downloaded, this thread discussing the matter on their board, this thread on the Harlan Ellison board (where the man himself, amongst other things, compares Kim and Gary to “serial child molesters” – nice chap), and this repository of documents from his end.

Just learned from Thierry Capezzone that Belgian comics writer and legendary editor of Spirou magazine, Yvan Delporte passed away this morning, at the age of 78. My impression of him is that he was always something of a cantankerous, and very vocal, character on the Belgian comics scene, and his merits as editor of Spirou during what must be described as its most important period, from 1955-68, are well known: he introduced the special section for more mature readers “Le Trombone Illustré” in 1977 and collaborated with a number of the staff artists regularly, both as idea man – for example on Franquin’s “Gaston Lagaffe” whose 50th anniversay we are currently celebrating, as well as his darkly caustic swan song “Idées noires” – and as bona fide writer.

In this last capacity his most notable contribution is to Peyo’s Smurfs, and his most significant work is certainly Le Schtroumpfissime (1965) a good-natured but nevertheless pointed political allegory that tells the story of the egalitarian ur-communist society of the smurfs descends into tyranny when their benevolent patriarch leaves on a long research trip. A both funny and chilling story of the precarious nature of human civilisation, and a minor masterpiece of the Franco-Belgian tradition.

À votre santé, M. Delporte!

Delporte’s on Wiki and Lambiek. The image is from Le Schtroumpfissime, naturally.