How cool is this?
Artist Stephan Pastis, like other comic strip artists, sometimes makes reference to Bill Watterson’s much-loved and long-gone strip “Calvin and Hobbes.”
Pastis and the notoriously private Watterson struck up an email friendship recently and that led to Watterson actually drawing a couple of days worth of Pastis’ strip, “Pearls Before Swine.”
One of those days’ strips is above.
Here’s Pastis’ blog explaining how it happened.
Richard Donner’s “Superman” movies and Tim Burton’s “Batman” movies – and their sometimes regrettable sequels – came before, of course, but Bryan Singer’s “X-Men” really kicked off the big-screen superhero genre in 2000, and the trend was solidified a couple of years later by Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man.”
But during the “lost in the wilderness” years of the the 1990s, the studios tried not once, not twice, but three times to capture the spirit of the superhero genre as typified by the great pulp magazine-style heroes, the forefathers to comics.
“The Rocketeer” came first in 1991 and was probably the most successful. “The Shadow” came in 1994 and did a pretty good job of hitting all the key elements of the most popular radio and pulp hero of them all.
Then there was “The Phantom.”
The 1996 Simon Wincer movie, starring Kristy Swanson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Treat Williams and Billy Zane as the Ghost Who Walks, was certainly faithful to Lee Falk’s original comic-strip hero.
Maybe too faithful.
If you’re not familiar with the Phantom himself, the character was born in newspaper comic strips in 1936 and continues to this day. The Phantom is Kit Walker, the 21st in a series of fathers and sons who – following the 14th-century murder of a father, prompting a son to vow vengeance and the upholding of law and order – has kept the peace around the world and battled evil accompanied by his wolf companion, Devil, and his horse, Hero.
The Phantom is notable for some cool characteristics, including his twin handguns, the skull ring – whose imprint is left on bad guys’ jaws – and the legend that has been cultivated around him: He’s known as the Ghost Who Walks because criminals – a superstitious and cowardly lot, as Batman could tell you – believe he’s immortal rather than just the latest in a long family of crimefighters.
Falk created “The Phantom” after his newspaper syndicate asked for a follow-up to his “Mandrake the Magician.” In creating the Phantom, Falk invented a couple of superhero conventions, including the skin-tight costume and pupil-less eyes behind the hero’s mask.
“The Phantom” movie had the courage of its convictions, certainly. Its tale – the Phantom tries to protect a set of magical skull carvings and keep them out of the hands of a wealthy villain (Williams) – goes through the correct motions. Switching back and forth from the remote island home of the Phantom to New York City, the hero is aided by a spunky newspaper reporter (Swanson) and everything is complicated by the femme fatale played by Zeta-Jones. And what a revelation she was here. I really wanted her to play Wonder Woman after seeing her here and in another, better superhero 1990s movie, “The Mask of Zorro.”
There are pirates and submarines and seaplanes and immense sets and some action set-pieces, some better than others.
Zane leaves a lot of people cold – including me – but he’s really pretty good here as the Phantom. He nicely underplays the role, tossing off jokes and filling out the purple outfit about as well as anyone can. I was as frustrated as anyone by the black leather “X-Men” outfits, but maybe the world just wasn’t ready for purple spandex. And striped shorts.
As much as Zane underplays his part, Williams seems to have been told to overplay every line. I guess he’s being a good sport and the “Power Rangers” villain delivery would at least come across as non–threatening to kids in the audience. While the character is amusing, a villain who’s never truly threatening is not a great villain.
I’m not sure there’s ever been a big-screen movie that so desperately wanted to be “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” (I’m not counting the low-budget knock-offs here.) From the 1930s setting to the rickety bridge crossing that ends with the heroes swinging to safety to the ancient relics that magically illuminate a spot on a map to the villains that go “boom” at the end, “The Phantom” tries to strike so many “Raiders” grace notes it’s almost bizarre. Maybe that’s not a a surprise: Screenwriter Jeffrey Boam wrote “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” a far better film.
“The Phantom” is worth seeing if you never have or if, like me, you haven’t in 18 years. It’ll seem like something of an awkward artifact because of the string of superheroes that followed it into theaters beginning just four years later, though.
Purple tights or no.
Apparently only a couple of Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes” newspaper strips make reference to Halloween, although it would seem like a natural holiday for a kid like Calvin.
Earlier this month, I posted the first Halloween-themed Calvin here.
Here, as we begin the long slow wind-down of our month of Halloween, is the other.
I’m not sure how I never saw this until now.
Every few days, I mourn the passing, in 1995, of Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes” newspaper comic strip.
I post Calvin strips every once in a while here.
But not until today did I see a reference to “Hobbes and Bacon,” a totally unofficial sequel to Watterson’s great work.
In 2011, the web-based comic “Pants Are Overrated” did a series of four “Hobbes and Bacon” strips that visits, more than two decades later, the household of grown-up Calvin and Susie, their daughter Francis Bacon and, of course, tiger Hobbes.
The strips are wonderfully clever and nostalgic and guaranteed to bring a tear or two to your eye even while they’re making you smile.
And in light of the many, many, many bootleg and offensive rip-offs of Calvin, I’m guessing the famously reclusive Watterson wouldn’t terribly mind these tributes to his characters.
Because I need some Calvin and Hobbes today.
Thank you Bill Watterson.
Here’s the home of Calvin and Hobbes on the web.
When I began reading newspapers in the 1960s, I was an exhaustive reader of newspapers. I was always the type of kid – and still am now, as an adult – who usually checked out every page of a book, every second of the credits of a TV show or movie and, yes, every story and ad and illustration in the newspaper.
It goes without saying that I studied newspaper comic books closely and was puzzled and fascinated by “They’ll Do It Every Time.”
Unlike “Peanuts” and strips from the time that felt contemporary, “They’ll Do It Every Time” felt like a holdover from an earlier day. And it was.
“They’ll Do It Every Time” was created in 1929 (!) by cartoonist Jimmy Hatlo, who first drew his complex, gag-filled strips first for William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco papers. But by the time I was seeing the panel (rather than multi-panel strips) it appeared in more than 600 papers.
Stop and think about that for a moment.
I’m a lifelong lover of newspapers, and it’s where I have made my living. But while the influence of newspapers has moved from print to online in recent years and the heyday of newspaper comic strips ended with “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side,” it’s impossible to overstate the impact of a daily comic strip in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Everybody, every member of the family, read the newspaper, or at least part of it. Â And nearly every member of the family read the comics.
Hatlo’s comic entertained and puzzled me. With its sarcastic assessment of the foibles of mankind, the strip was, as the comic strip history website Hogan’s Alley noted, an early practitioner of observational humor.
My favorite element of the strip was the Hatlo “Tip of the Hat” to a reader each time. Hatlo accepted ideas for strips, refined and expanded on them, and then thanked and credited the reader who gave him the idea.
It was unlike anything else in comics before or since and I thought it was fascinating.
Hatlo continued the strip until he died in 1963, so it’s likely the strips I saw were reruns or some done by his successors, Al Scaduto and Bob Dunn. Amazingly, the comic ran until February 2008.
I’m kind of amazed “The Lockhorns” didn’t debut until 1968. Even when I read it as a kid – when it was still new – it felt like a comics page panel that had settled into routine decades ago.
The strip was, for those not familiar with it, about a long-married couple who plainly couldn’t stand each other. I never read a panel that gave any indication these people did anything but loathe each other. Love? It was gleefully, horribly, humorously missing from this union.
Each daily panel carried an insult. Loretta Lockhorn would criticize hubby Leroy’s drinking or his wandering eye. Leroy Lockhorn would criticize his wife’s cooking, driving, spending, etc.
Maybe it’s no surprise that this caustic comic didn’t come about until the late 1960s, though. It’s like the comics page version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”
Bill Hoest created the strip. It’s continued to this day by Bunny Hoest.
And Leroy and Loretta still hate each other.
“Andy Capp” is probably the only comic strip to inspire a potato snack.
I can’t say a lot more about the strip, except that it never prompted much more than consternation from me.
Created in 1957 by cartoonist Reg Smythe, the strip ran in British papers before making its way to the U.S.
The strip follows the soused adventures of Andy Capp, a working class bloke who likes to hang out at the pub and occasionally irritate his wife, Flo.
Online sites say Andy is a wife beater, although I’m not sure I noticed that depicted in the strip. I’ve seen plenty of animosity between the two, however, which makes the former more likely – although almost certainly not in the modern era.
So how are those Andy Capp Hot Fries, anyway?
Because we’ve shamefully, woefully neglected our look at what’s funny in the funny pages for too long. So here goes!
“Classic Peanuts” finds Lucy railing at Charlie Brown and telling him to put up his dukes and fight. Chuck raises one hand and hits Lucy in the nose. He feels so guilty he goes to his psychiatrist – Lucy, of course – and when she punches him, he happily announces, “I don’t feel guilty any more. Psychiatry has cured me!” There are so many levels to this comic – criticism of psychiatry, the male/female dynamic, etc – but I think my favorite element is the simple little “BOP!” when Charlie Brown’s fist comes into contact with Lucy’s nose. That and the little stars that shoot out.
“Baby Blues” made me laugh. One of the kids reports to mom that Wren, the baby, is crying. The mom asks if she seems hungry or needs a diaper change or other issues. When those are discounted, mom asks the kid to go to the baby and “give her some encouraging words.” Those words? “Man up, Wren.”
“Garfield” offers proof the strip isn’t reprinting old strips like “Classic Peanuts.” Garfield and Odie are sitting at a table, taking turns buzzing and vibrating. “Stop texting each other,” Jon orders.
Finally, in “The Family Circus,” the kids are watching TV and mom is putting food on the table. “Yeah, okay, Mommy. We’ll be there as soon as we finish watching this commercial.” And the joke is?
Here’s our regular look at what’s funny (or not) in the funny pages. Because Cathy left us wanting more chocolate and redundant lists of things.
“Classic Peanuts” shows Lucy walking past Linus, in I’ve-got-my-blanket-and-I’ve-tuned-out-the-world mode, and hearing music. She whips the blanket away and finds … Linus listening to what’s probably a transistor radio. We remember those, right? Okay, just tell your kids it’s a Walkman. What? Okay, tell your kids it’s a Discman. What? Okay …
“Pickles” made me laugh. Grampa’s head yields a lifetime of bumps and scars and stories, like when he fell down a flight of stairs, fell out of a shopping cart and got hit in the head with a monkey wrench. “That might explain a lot about Grampa,” the kid says to the dog.
My standards must be low today. “The Wizard of Id” made me laugh. The prisoner asks for “fresh” food and the guard brings him a cooked organic chicken. The chicken came from the farm of a friend, where “it spent its days running around in the sunshine.” The prison sobs. “I just realized I’m jealous of a dead chicken,” the prisoner says from his dank cell.
Often, “Lio” is weird. Sometimes funny too. Today an old man gets a coupon for a free scoop of ice cream. Excited, he runs outside, only to see Lio, remote control in hand, setting off a nuclear explosion with resulting mushroom cloud. Hmmm.
Great “Speed Bump” today. On stage is a rock band, thrashing and shouting lyrics, with an excited crowd watching. At the back of the crowd, an older man and woman. “I hear the morning church service is less contemporary,” he says.
And finally, “The Family Circus” gives us another reason to love the Keane kids. Mom is looking exhausted as she ushers the kids out of the room. “How come when Mommy gets tired WE have to go to bed!” one of the boys complains. “It’s not even that dark outside yet,” Dolly (that’s the girl, right?) says. You know what would make this panel 100 percent better? Eliminating that second line of dialogue. The first was punchline enough.
keithroysdon 