Paul Di Filippo and others have been bitten by the Pogo bug recently, sharing this animated cartoon and this Claymation version adapted from Walt Kelly’s classic comic strip.

For those who aren’t old enough or whose memories aren’t long enough, Pogo was yesterday’s Bloom County, though I’m not sure that’s truly a sufficient comparison as far as Pogo’s whimsy and satire are concerned. I guess Pogo truly stands alone.

Back when I was attending Brooklyn’s South Shore High School, I became friendly with artist Bill Kresse, thanks to a school trip to the New York Daily News. He introduced me to other staff cartoonists at the paper, and ended up inviting me to a few National Cartoonist Society banquets, which was Valhalla to a young fan.

One of the many cartoonists I met thanks to Kresse was George Ward, who was Walt Kelly’s assistant on Pogo.

When I headed off to college, some of those cartoonists drew going-away illustrations for me, including Ward, who certainly proved with this image why Kelly trusted him to draw many of the strip’s Sunday pages entirely on his own.

I sure miss Pogo. It would have been great to have seen what Walt Kelly would have made of the current administration. “We have met the enemy and he is us,” indeed!

Comic-book artist Dave Cockrum, who is most well known for his reinvigoration of two supergroups—DC Comics’ Legion of Super-Heroes and Marvel Comics’ X-Men—passed away far too soon on November 26, 2006.

Dave co-created such characters as as Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Storm, and redesigned the costumes for countless other heroes.

I have fond memories of sitting with him in the Marvel Bullpen and watching as he designed the costume for the Captain Marvel villain Deathgrip back when I was writing that book and dinosaurs still walked the Earth. Even though Dave wasn’t the artist on that title, he helped out because he was one of the greatest costume generators ever.

In addition to his prodigious talent, Dave was also one of the good guys, two qualities which aren’t always found together in the same human being. He was a gentle man who was liked by all.

Clifford Meth recently began helping Paty Cockrum liquidate the estate by selling off Dave’s personal comic-book collection. Each comic will be delivered bagged, boarded, and sealed with a “Dave Cockrum Estate” seal of authenticity.

There are even some rarities, such as a few remaining copies of The Uncanny Dave Cockrum Tribute, each containing original sketches by Dave, plus a classic copy of X-Men signed by both artist Jim Steranko and writer Arnold Drake.

If you’ve appreciated Dave’s work over the years and ever wanted to own something to remember him by, then head over to Clifford Meth’s site and check out this list for a small sample of available collectibles. And keeping checking back for updates as further items are added.

It was revealed in this week’s online chat with Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten that the paper refused to publish the January 19 installment of the comic strip Candorville.

Here it is for those of you in the DC area who had to settle for a replacement that day. (Click to see the strip at a more readable size.) I have no idea whether any other newspapers took the same action.

Participants in the chat took both sides, with a few mentioning that different versions of the joke had been made previously by comedians Dick Gregory and Dave Chapelle.

The latest installment of Scott Shaw’s Oddball Comics focuses on the May, 1960 issue of My Greatest Adventure, one of DC’s anthology comic books of science-fiction shorts.

Included in the issue are such stories as “We Were Ruled By The Emperor-Beast,” “I Fought The Sonar Creatures,” “I Became A Human Space Ship,” and more, featuring bizarre invading aliens, an atomic transmutator that converts sounds into colors and force, and a tunnel through the center of the Earth that manages to ignore the existence of the planet’s molten core.

In other words, really bad science fiction. And yet also somehow quite lovable. In fact, much of yesterday’s bad science fiction has become strangely lovable. (more…)

It’s a good thing when you look back at old writing and shudder—isn’t it? At least I hope it is, because I’ve been given many opportunities to shudder lately.

More than thirty years ago, back when I was working at Marvel Comics, I created a character called the Scarecrow, who debuted in Dead of Night #11 (August 1975), continued his adventures in Marvel Spotlight #26 (February 1976), and then faded away as the horror explosion imploded, popping up only occasionally thereafter handled by other writers. I haven’t done any work for either Marvel or DC since the early ’80s.

Marvel has recently begun packaging some of my old stories as a minor part of its compilation volumes, and the latest of these is the hardcover book Legion of Monsters, which stars Morbius the Living Vampire, Werewolf by Night, Man-Thing and others on the cover, and relegates the Scarecrow only to the two tales inside. This is the fourth reprint volume I’ve been a part of lately, and they bring about mixed emotions. (more…)