Steve Ditko did this short story for Charlton’s Unusual Tales #29 (1961), a tale of square guy in love with a beatnik girl. I don’t think we saw enough of Ditko’s sense of humor over his long career, but this is an example.
Cool Cat was from Prize Comics, and lasted all of three issues. This story is from the first issue (1962). It is written and drawn by Jack O'Brien, who also created, wrote and drew G.I. Juniors for Harvey Comics, and perhaps thousands of gag cartoons that popped up in joke books of the era. O’Brien is also known as a cartoonist whose career supposedly ended in 1970 when he was arrested and went to prison on obscenity charges. Knowing that gave something of a new meaning to the Cool Cat cover: a guy with a smirk on his face, parked in a lonely spot with two girls...
There was, of course, a “beat” culture, the participants in which were identified as “the beat generation”; but how many of these people self-identified as “beatnik”? Obviously, there were folk who frequented smoky cafés in which, if any music were played, it were avant garde jazz and, if any drink were served, it were espresso or black coffee; folk who dressed as they thought French intellectuals dressed; and folk who read or pretended to read the work of the “beat” writers and of the existentialists. But I imagine them as generally affectless or morose, rather than as goofy. The “beat” generation named itself from a sense of having been beaten-down, not in reference to bongo-drums. There is some controversy about whence the term “beatnik” came, but it seems to have been a term of derision; the caricature might be the definitive beatnik.
ReplyDeleteI've long been more interested in Ditko's thinking than in his art, though my interest doesn't constitute an endorsement. So I'm glad to have been exposed to “Way Out, Man”. But it doesn't have a lot going for it. The underlying joke is that people given to use of the expression “way out” find themselves literally way out, but that's really not very funny. Then we have the gag, delivered in the final panel with no set-up, but so familiar in formula as not to need set-up, that the Martians are keen on exactly that musical culture which these folk find tedious. Ditko, famously, took much inspiration from Ayn Rand, though he was more humanistic than was she. Rand had an extremely poor sense of humor, equating it with ridicule, as opposed to violation of expectation. I'm not stunned that Ditko's humor here does not much violate the expectation of the reader, and involves ridiculing those in a subculture for which he did not care, albeit that his ridicule wasn't at all hateful.
Cool Cat seems to represent a weird fusion of American youth cultures across four decades, and to be more hep than hip. The basic gag of the story is quite clever, but the execution is too primitive to make best use of that gag.
This is quite a story. It's a perfect storm in which two ultra-conservatives, writer Joe Gill and artist Steve Ditko, whip up a typhoon of ridicule for those crazy hippies--I mean, beatniks. Some of Ditko's symbolic panels, especially the one you use for a header, predict his "Mr A" work. I wouldn't be surprised if Ditko had a hand in the story, though the captions and dialogue have that distinctive Joe Gill rhythm. He's surely the main author. Charlton doesn't seem to have spent a lot of time on beatniks, but an essay could be written on their treatment of hippies. Especially in the art department, ranging from Pete Morisi's 50s college lads on mopeds to Sanho Kim's demented, craggy-toothed semi-humans.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, someone came up with names like "beatniks" and "hippies" which I took as derision. Some people were more apt to accept those words as describing them.
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting part of that to me is that "hippies" sometimes used the word "freak" to describe themselves. Freak is a potent word, with images that come to mind. I would never refer to myself or anyone else as a freak, but there you go.
Then there were the computer folks who call themselves "geek," a term that was used in carnivals (or so I understood, probably from my parents' vocabulary of derisive terminology) as a guy who bit the heads off chickens as a carnival sideshow.
Smurfswacker, I don't think anyone should take Joe Gill's stories for Charlton as anything serious. How many of those did he have to write a day to make a living? A derisive term for a writer who cranked 'em out would be "hack."
Pappy, you're right, of course, that Gill's Charlton scripts were the soul of hackwowrk. Gill banged out stories in every genre, year after year, at breakneck speed. That's what I find interesting. Thousands of pages of one-off writing give us a glimpse into the head of Gill the person. Certain themes keep reappearing, especially as the sixties roll on. "Crazy hippies" is one. His war scripts reflect support of the Vietnam conflict and distrust of peaceniks. His romance stories are obsessed with middle-class credentials: no matter how much of an irresponsible free spirit he seems to be, on page 8 the Right Guy always trots out a resume showing a solid bank account and a degree in Business Administration.
ReplyDeleteThe work of other super-prolific comics writers, like Paul S. Newman, doesn't reveal the writer's personality to the same extent. I think it's because writing for different companies and different editors filtered most of that out. Gill on the other hand WAS Charlton Comics for decades. It was inevitable that he'd leave a personal stamp on the company.
Smurfswacker, I apologize if my opinion of Gill was negative. In thinking about it I see Gill as a guy who was more like a newspaper reporter under constant deadlines than a fiction writer.
ReplyDeleteThe only comic book writer I ever had a chance to talk to about his work was Otto Binder. He kept carbon copies of his scripts, freelance writing and novels. I wonder if Gill did the same? I asked Otto what he did with the carbon copies and he said he looked at them occasionally to see if there was anything he could steal from himself to earn a buck. He was writing novels when I met him. He said his regimen was to go to work early in the morning and write until he had 2000 usable words. Not "great," not "good," but usable.
I am sure that all the comic book writers, paid by the page, felt much the same way.
No offence was taken. I'm not a fan of Gill's work (a nice way of saying I usually don't like it) but he does fascinate me because of his prodigious output. Somehow I get the feeling he didn't keep copies and job records like Binder. Part of this impression comes from the way he used names like "Jim Beam" and "Johnnie Walker" for pseudonyms. I'm sure Gill and Binder had one thing in common (Paul S. Newman, too). They planted their butts in the chair and WROTE. No time for writer's block or too much reflection. It's a lesson many writers (and artists--I include myself here) would do well to follow.
ReplyDelete