Tag Archives: Wally Wood

10/07/2017 · 7:33 pm

The Orphanage at Dreary Knolls

Ralph Reese is a brilliant illustrator whose art I first discovered in Choose Your Own Adventure books; he was my personal favorite. His work leapt off the page more than the others, owing to his apprenticeship under the great Wally Wood. In my teens, I found reprints of Ralph’s collaboration with Byron Preiss for National Lampoon, “One Year Affair”. I dreamed of being able to draw like Ralph Reese.

When Ralph did a feature in CRAZY magazine, it was a cause for celebration. Because Ralph wasn’t just a master illustrator.

Ralph was also a master of making you crap your pants.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions, O'Shloktoberfest

Tagged as 1970s, 1980s, 1982, Byron Preiss, Choose Your Own Adventure, comix, CRAZY magazine, Edward Gorey, Joan Jett, Marie Severin, National Lampoon, New Jersey, Ralph Reese, Soul Asylum, Steve Skeates, The Who, Wally Wood

08/23/2016 · 2:54 pm

I Forgot Altergott

Mea culpa. You know what? In all my apple polishing of cartoonists I admire, I’ve never mentioned Rick Altergott. What the fuck.

I even saw Altergott in person, at a MOCCA Festival years ago. I didn’t approach him, because his abilities as a cartoonist scare the bejeezus out of me. He’s got the touch that the old MAD guys had. He’s not only a caricaturist on par with Mort Drucker, he’s an inker like Wally Wood, with the gift for rendering faces and objects as though they exist in actual space. Continue reading →

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Magazine Rack

Tagged as 1990s, Ariel Bordeaux, Chris Ware, comedy, comix, Cracked magazine, Daniel Clowes, F. Murray Abraham, Harvey Kurtzman, Jim Blanchard, laughter, MAD magazine, Mort Drucker, National Lampoon, Peter Bagge, Rick Altergott, strips, Tom Hulce, Tony Millionaire, underground, Wally Wood, Zip-A-Tone

06/06/2016 · 2:56 pm

Pure Evel

I don’t know why people are sad about the Great Deathwave of 2016. It’s a remarkable opportunity to make a stranger’s life all about yourself.

Muhammad Ali, The Greatest, 1942-2016. A multifarious and complex personality that's tough to categorize, not a prop for your opinions.

Muhammad Ali, The Greatest, 1942-2016. A multifarious and complex personality that’s tough to categorize (especially for a pugilist), not a prop for your opinions.

When a celebrity dies, you now own them. You can take the life’s work of someone you never encountered and reduce it to a personal inspiration. You can interpret their efforts as empowerment for your own agendas. Oh, and you can cherry-pick the qualities of their persona that you agree with, and ignore everything else. A corpse will never call your bluff. Continue reading →