dick giordano, r.i.p.

(you last saw dick giordano's artwork on this blog in my november post "a great escape")

in these days where just about every press release touts everyone as an industry great, dick giordano was truly a comic book legend. while primarily known as one of the great all-time inkers (often pairing with neal adams, another legend), giordano also spent 10 years as DC comics's vice president/executive editor, a position he held from 1983-1993, arguably the most critical time frame in DC comics history. he oversaw "crisis on infinite earths" and the rebooting of the entire universe and its iconic characters, one of the more ambitious moves ever taken by a major comic book company. he was also there when DC launched their vertigo line of mature readers comics, possibly the most influential move DC comics has made in the modern age.

back in elementary school, when i was just getting hooked on comics, dick giordano, with the aid of the abovementioned neal adams and irv novick, was helping usher in the more sophisticated artwork of dc's modern age, which also moved batman out of the batcave and shipped robin off to college, as explained by bruce wayne in 1969's "one bullet too many":

from the following month's "the secret of the waiting graves":

(stories by frank robbins and denny o'neill, art by dick giordano, irv novick and neal adams)

i am the tea party people

her voice is just the icing on the cake:

doocy:	... and joining us right now is former "saturday night live" star victoria jackson joining us from los angeles. good morning to you!
jackson:	[waves] good morning!
doocy:	so, are you ready to , ah, join the tea party people?
jackson:	i am the tea party people! we're, um, beginners at this political activism and it's all new to us and it's kind of cute 'cause we're shy, we hold up our signs like this, you know, despite what they say about us, i have never done anything like this, but we have to because the president is a communist!
doocy:	now, he is not a communist. but you just pointed out that you hold up signs and stuff like that and people make fun of you. what do you think about how some on the other political side have tried to diminish or, you know, or marginalize the tea party people?
jackson:	well, i guess they're afraid of, uh, the power of our passion and our numbers and, you know, you might not say communist, but i watch glenn beck and he's taught me well. progressive is the new word for communist, but it's the same goal as government control of everything and it's very obvious that obama is trying to do that and, um, i don't want to brag, but i sort of called it before he was elected and when i was on o'reilly and i said he was a communist and, uh, i got a lot of hate mail, but i got some that said i was a "prescient", which means a "prophet."
doocy:	yeah ... and i'm sure that was his "word of the day" one day. ah, victoria, what is going on in the country politically that you feel so, uh, motivated to go out to searchlight, nevada this weekend?
jackson:	well, for one thing, i am thrilled to get to meet sarah palin, 'cause she's my hero, and, y'know, we need, um, people who are not politicians in political office, people who don't want power, people who are honest, people who don't take bribes, people who don't lie and cheat and are tax-cheats — our government is all evil right now and someone's gotta do something! and i just can't sit at home and watch tv and bite my nails, so i think that's ...
doocy:	yeah ...
jackson:	... how all the other people feel. we gotta get out there and do something!
doocy:	i have heard a lot of that, where people say "i've never been political but now is the time to act." all right — ah, victoria jackson, who's gonna be in searchlight, nevada along with governor sarah palin this weekend. thank you very much for joining us live.
jackson:	[waves enthusiastically]
doocy:	[after an awkward, silent beat, waves back]

ow.

velkomm to der ussa

well, i guess we finally found out, didn't we?

time for some whine and cheese from the usual suspects:

march 21 10:45 pm eastern time: RIP USA.

USSA

the shift from personal liberty to federal tyranny is a done deal.

c-span would not take callers!! we have been silenced!!!

i feel sick. the fact that c-span was not taking callers was telling.

WOLVERINES!

but if obama and his liberal cronies get their way america will be changed forever

what planet r u living on.

they just got their way! no if’s about it.

&*@$, @#&%, %$#@*&^ **** **** ****!!!@!!

nazi piglosi and her comrades heading off to celebrate.

from now on i work as little as possible, and skirt all taxes possible, lets bring this f*cker down.

yes, i now will do only what is "according to my ability" and absolutely no more. welcome to the USSA

we the people are reaping what we have sown in our uninvolvement in this republic. these fascist federal oligarchs (read democrap party) could not rise to such power if we the people had been paying the requisite attention to our sovereign responsibilities.

there were 34 democrats who stood with the republicans in standing up for freedom in america. we should know who they are. because all republicans and democrats who voted for our freedom, should be recognized as patriots.

none of those democrats voted against the bill, they were allowed to vote no to cover their arses. they are ALL scum! eff them all!

i want to say this before my daily prayers. we are totally fu%%ked. it is time for patriots to take charge. pay no insurance premiums (ITS FREE!!!). pay no taxes (40% don’t —why do you??? idiot!!) (file an honest return because you can’t go to jail if you just file a return. check it out!!) .
we need civil disobedience like gandhi and certainly michael king (alias martin luther— what a joke)never dreamed. go to bed . pray and then let’s raise HELL!

i fully advocate the use of civil violence at this point.

that won’t happen, but I do have a baseball bat, various metallic projectile launchers, a feather pillow and a jar of honey.

damn them all to hell!

and damn to hell every freaking idiot who put these tyrants in power!!!

i would assume that that would include every conservative that sat on the couch election day to ‘teach’ the republicans a lesson! i guess you did that all right....and took the country down with your attitude. thanks, thanks so much. my question to all of you...HAVE YOU LEARNED YOUR LESSON??????? election have consequences!

the dems must be frog hopped out of their offices and put on trial for TREASON. no excuses, anyone who voted for this must be tossed out and denied any pensions and put in prison.

in ictu oculi, sic transit gloria mundi...

but don't worry if you've heard this sturm und drang all before — this time they really mean it!

quote of the night

matt yglesias, on north korea's execution of a "top financial official":

it seems like it should be possible to find a middle ground between this sort of thing and the U.S.-style “everyone cashes in, nobody important is ever at fault for anything” approach.

the gauntlet is thrown

steny is all talk, no action. they would have passed it today if they could. stalling for time. pure 100% propaganda.

we'll know tomorrow who's all talk, won't we?

180 days ago

... but who's counting?

made to slaughter

this 1953 tale from the crypt asks: "what could be worse than dying a hundred horrible deaths?"

(story by bill gaines and al feldstein, art by joe orlando)

'come and look at him!' the brothers cried, and they each took one of alice's hands, and led her up to where the king was sleeping.

'isn't he a lovely sight?' said tweedledum.

alice couldn't say honestly that he was. he had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud — 'fit to snore his head off!' as tweedledum remarked.

'i'm afraid he'll catch cold with lying on the damp grass,' said alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl.

'he's dreaming now,' said tweedledee: 'and what do you think he's dreaming about?'

alice said 'nobody can guess that.'

'why, about you!' tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. 'and if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?'

'where i am now, of course,' said alice.

'not you!' tweedledee retorted contemptuously. 'you'd be nowhere. why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!'

'if that there king was to wake,' added tweedledum, 'you'd go out — bang! — just like a candle!'

— lewis carroll, "through the looking glass"

good answer

joe scarborough and friends do their vapid best to get tom hanks, "the nicest guy in hollywood", to pile on obama:

joe:	... and [james carville] said: "what the obama people don't understand is washington always wins."
mika:	[nodding in agreement.]
joe:	is this one more depressing example — for you 1 — of how, with the obama administration, washington always wins?
tom:	we, ah, we're in the first year of what is going to be — what is going to be one the most difficult administrations in our history. we're at a place where world history is traveling around us. we're going to be fine and i think we've elected a wise, calm man who wants to get things done. common sense will out.
mika:	i don't disagree with that. i do think there may be people out there who would say, "well it's easy for you to say, easy for us to say", but there are a lot of people out there with no job and they have been looking for months and months and months and they may feel like this president is not completely connected with their plight.
tom:	well, maybe they, maybe they can elect [invent?] a time machine and they can go back and vote for john mccain, in which case i'm sure everything would just be hunky-dory right now.
mika:	ahh ... good answer! okay ...

---

1. ... because grown-up talk like that would naturally depress someone like you, tom, a naive liberal hollywood fantasist, and not someone like me, joe scarborough, a smug and savvy washington insider who, like a real democrat like my buddy carville, knows who's really running things ...

wiped out

more from canada's chester brown, who would later give us the award-winning "ed the happy clown":

(story and art by chester brown, 1980)

gun control

the booman @ the booman tribune:

my position on gun control is that it is best regulated at the local level, even though it is impossible to establish meaningful gun control if neighboring communities are completely permissive. part of it is that i care about other issues much more and do not want to lose political power over the issue. but, having lived in dangerous urban neighborhoods, i do not support laws that would deny me the right to provide myself protection that the police are clearly incapable of providing. i think the second amendment is an anachronism, but the proper way to deal with an anachronism is to amend the constitution, not ignore it. but, the second amendment is a federal right. it says that congress can't restrict your right to bear arms. it doesn't say squat about the state or local governments. that distinction is about to change. conservatives on the supreme court are going to strike down nearly every local or state gun control law in the country. this is the price of letting bush get reelected. i dropped everything in my life and worked my heart out (for ACORN) to prevent bush from being reelected. this is why.

leaving some states at the mercy of more permissive neighbors is exactly what puts me in the opposite camp, in support of consistent regulations from the federal level.

because of the second amendment, and because i think the problem is massive oversupply, i think the focus of gun control regulations should be on manufacturing, distribution and destruction instead of focusing on ownership.

you can't reduce an excess supply by reducing the number of legitimate buyers; you actually acerbate the problem. and while you have a constitutional right to own a gun, you have no such right to sell one.

pea-shooter 1, blimp 0

the best line from friday's much anticipated and overly hyped capitol hill sudden-death cage match bipartisan health care reform summit was president obama's response to house minority whip eric cantor, with a gratuitous assist by the daily show's jon stewart:

obama: we could set up a system where food was probably cheaper than it is right now, if we just eliminated ... meat inspectors.

absolutely effortless. like taking down a blimp with a pea-shooter.

talking heads

good question ... especially after tossing in sex, blasphemy, damnation, cannibalism, vampires, ghouls and zombies — all of which were enough to drive canadian artist chester brown's kafkaesque "ed the happy clown" afoul of international customs, making it risky for the book to be shipped across the border.

this complication did not prevent brown from earning a 1990 harvey award for best cartoonist.

bizarre, pathetic, hilarious, cruel and mesmerizing, the unpredictable and unrestrained adventures of brown's completely harmless and perpetually helpless hero were some of the best comics i'd discovered in '94, second only to scott mccloud's groundbreaking "understanding comics". i got my copy at that year's san diego comicon, where vortex, brown's publisher, had a few boxes personally driven to the show.

a pint-sized reagan, his sultry wife nancy and a hoary brian mulroney

while the book is not politcal, ronald and nancy reagan play commanding roles, even if they and former canadian prime minister brian mulroney look nothing like their familiar selves. nonetheless, their obvious dissimilarities go unremarked and these odd doppelgängers are taken as granted and treated as the real mccoys. as with many a dream i've had, such distortions only come to light with the dawn.

• • •

(story and art by chester brown)

scrooge's nightmare

... during the other 364 days of the year, as told by dougj @ balloon juice:

american politics is haunted by the specter of undeserving poor and working class americans living beyond their means on someone else's dime. it's not just strapping young bucks buying t-bone steaks with food stamps, it's strapping young bucks buying flat-screen tvs with credit cards they can't pay off, strapping young bucks gorging themselves at the applebee's salad bar with their inflated union wages, strapping young bucks buying houses with CRA-mandated subprime loans, strapping young bucks suing doctors with lawyers on retainer, strapping young bucks getting elective surgery with their taxpayer-subsidized health care. it's an all-purpose paradigm — it explains why welfare and single-payer health care are bad, why we need "tort reform" rather than health care reform, why the bankruptcy bill was good, and why we had a recession even with galtian geniuses like greenspan and rubin in charge of everything.

now you'll have to excuse me ... here comes that shiftless bob cratchit and his useless whelp tiny tim. whatever could they want now?

time for another satasd*

... is there any other kind when dealing with birthers?

but [hawai'i health department spokeswoman janice okubo] adamantly disagrees with the "birthers'" interpretation of hawai'i law. "they usually say that by not giving out his birth certificate we're breaking the law," okubo said. "but we would be breaking the law by giving out a birth certificate to someone who does not have a right to it." when okubo told one writer they did not have a right to obama's birth certificate because they were not related to the president, the person wrote back saying they, indeed, had a common ancestor. "they said they have a tangible right to his birth certificate because they're descended from adam," okubo said, referring to the biblical figure. "we told them they need to provide some type of legal documentation."

---

* straight answer to a stupid demand

the last laugh

in their relentless pursuit of dramatic irony, the writers at e.c. comics churned out plots that became increasingly contrived, and this 1953 tales of the crypt story about an irrepressible prankster's one joke too far was no doubt written for the sole purpose of illustrating the gory centerpiece gag — which brings crashing down a storyline that could've been written by rube goldberg:

e.c. comic's devotion to the tradition of le théâtre du grand-guignol got them into trouble with the self-appointed moral guardians of the day, but largely because e.c. was the biggest fish, instead of the worst offender. their crimes were often purely gratuitous, like the wholly contrived ending to the previous issue's "strop! you're killing me!", the story of a fire company's ambitious new hire, who pushes out (fatally, of course) his older rival:

ouch! (or as the french say, "aïe!")

(stories by bill gaines and al feldstein; art by bill elder and jack davis)

sarah palin speaks: "i had a dream"

(photo of gaylord opryland by kbilancini via flickr)

---

* see? it's all in good fun, y'betcha!

boston tea party '76

as the teabaggers put away their signs and flags and depart nashville, heady and spent after another uplifting weekend of patriotic self-affirmation, this weekend's display of racism, birtherism and homophobia recalls for the rest of us nothing recognizable of the historic boston tea party they claim to embody but instead the infamous boston bicentennial event immortalized on film by stanley j. forman and explored in prose in louis p. masur's "the soiling of old glory: the story of a photograph that shocked america":

some two hundred white students assembled for the march to city hall plaza. they attended for every reason, and for no reason at all: they despised forced busing, they hated blacks, they feared change, they followed their parents' lead, they welcomed days off from school, they wanted to hang out with their friends, they felt like they were part of a group. "we all wanted to belong to something big," recalls one teenage protester, "and the feeling of being part of the anti-busing movement along with the rest of southie had been the best feeling in the world." southie meant more than just the geographic place south boston. it meant neighborhood and community and ethnic pride. thinking of the long day ahead, some packed a snack. some made signs that said "RESIST." one student, before leaving his third-floor south boston apartment, grabbed the family's american flag. from the start, the anti-busing movement identified itself with patriotism. the activists saw themselves as defending their liberty against the tyranny of a judge run amok. the celebration of bicentennial events in 1975 and 1976 only reinforced the idea that they were carrying on in a tradition of american resistance; one anti-busing group had as its motto "don't tread on me." at rallies and boycotts, protesters carried american flags and frequently sang "god bless america." protesters against the vietnam war had often burned Old Glory, but not here, not among the mainly working-class irish of boston.

(boston herald)

ted landsmark was late to a meeting. a lawyer for the contractors' association, he was headed to city hall for discussions on minority hiring in construction jobs. dressed well on this mild april morning, he was wearing a favorite three-piece suit, and enjoying the brisk walk.

the protesters spotted landsmark and turned on him. one went to trip him up. a couple of them yelled "get the nigger." a few of the anti-busing protesters at the front jumped him. he was being kicked and punched. another unidentified black man hurried away from the scene. the flag bearer, joseph rakes of south boston, circled around and began to swing the flag at landsmark.

(patriots turned hate-riots: this photo won forman the second of three pulitzer prizes)

age 17, rakes had loved school but had stopped going entirely a year into the protests against busing. he worked part time to help his parents pay the bills, which now included tuition to send his older siblings to a private academy formed to educate those students who refused to attend south boston or charlestown high school. rakes' anger at a situation beyond his control was never far from the surface. he attended most rallies against busing and, on this day, he rushed into the fracas. some officers of the police mobile operations patrol and some adults intervened, but too late. the incident lasted maybe fifteen or twenty seconds. landsmark's glasses were shattered and his nose broken. he was left drifting, bloodied and dazed.

(stanley forman)

(boston herald)

some of the students who did not participate, indeed who recoiled with shock at the assault, trembled with disbelief. at the time, someone said landsmark must have provoked the attack by making a gesture, but an incredulous landsmark told reporters, "i didn't have time to make an obscene gesture." several years later, lisa mcgoff, whose family was profiled by j.anthony lukas in his pulitzer-prize winning book common ground, an examination of the busing crisis told through the lives of three families, informed lukas that she imagined that landsmark instigated the incident. according to lukas, mcgoff's first thought was that "this has to be a trick, because no black guy in his right mind would walk smack into the middle of an anti-busing demonstration." but it was no trick. landsmark told a writer who wondered how this could happen to such a well-educated and well-respected person that "i couldn't put my yale degree in front of me to protect myself. the thing that is most troubling is that it happened not because i was somebody but because i was anybody. ... i was just a nigger they were trying to kill." to another reporter landsmark said, "i was just out there walking to city hall in my three-piece suit. i was anyone." and suddenly, someone tried "to kill me with the american flag."

as the "browning of america" proceeds with irresistible momentum, crystallized for the fearful by the seating of a brown man in its highest office, "patriotism" becomes their last refuge.