SuperBabe The Most Powerful Black Beauty in the World B.E. Riddick c. 1970 Outsider Art Colllection Jim Linderman Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Alas, an African-American Superhero before her time. Not likely ever featured in her own comic book. The artist B.F Riddick is largely unknown, but produced numerous erotic and bizarre drawings in the 1970s. SuperBabe The Most Powerful Black Beauty in the World by B. F. Riddick collection Jim Linderman

Annual I'm not at the Outsider Art Fair 2017 post. Are Cartoonists Outsider Artists? Elizabeth Stohn and Fred Johnson

These drawings were done from 1918 to 1919 by Elizabeth Stohn.  Ms Stone was a child at the time, and was something of a "cross-category" artist.  Part Schoolgirl art, part naive, part trained (as she had just completed her "art school training" by correspondence school. )  Certainly not what is generally considered "outsider" art, though that term is pretty widely applied as far as I can tell.  These are folky and charming, but not really folk art either.  Outsider Art? Nah.
 
While thousands of women studied art and (like Ms. Stohn) aspired to be an artist, even naming early woman artists is hard.  They were screwed over ever since they were here in every field.  Why should art (or comics, for that matter) be the domain of men?  Plus, here is a secret…they were often better than the men and never received the credit.  They were lost and laboring as "anonymous" in quilting, needle-point, and other acceptable near domestic arts.   

Labels appropriate to Ms. Stohn could maybe include "rebel" too.  I have written about her life and how she was one of the first women to use "thought and caption" balloons.  That post sorta went mini-viral in the comic book world, being picked up by comic historians and such.  The Comics journal linked to it as well. One day I hope to scan her entire "graphic novel"  From Poverty to Luxary (sic)

I remember respected art scholar and dealer Randall Morris saying something like "Cartoonists have their own school, they aren't outsider artists" and I don't differ with him.  Still there are many standards being applied on the walls of the outsider art fair, and each show will continue the mixed blessing of being labeled as an outsider. 

"I know it when I see it" was used to describe pornography by Justin Potter when ruling in a landmark obscenity case heard by the Supreme Court in 1964. I am pretty sure he threw his hands up when he said it.  "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..." he said.  We should avoid that esteemed opinion when evaluating outsider art.  

A wonderful group of  "comic books" were one of discoveries at the last Outsider Art Fair.  I'll guess he took some courses too, but it is a guess.  Dan Nadel would be the person to ask. I sure would love to see them, but as I say, I wasn't there. 

(There was another Johnson (real name Ferd or Ferdinand Johnson) working at the same time in Chicago, and he became quite well-known among other cartoonists.  Same fellow? I can't tell…I didn't go go cartoonist school! (joke)  It was certainly not the same fellow,  but neither of them were being "obsessive" about drawing.  They were just doing what comic book artists do.  That would be filling page after page with drawings.  Ask Gary Panter, a great artist who is not an outsider.  He published a massive book containing his sketchbooks.  Read the great essay on Frank, the outsider HERE by Dan Nadel.  There were other great cartoon artists (Basil Wolverton, Windsor McCay for example) and there were plenty of bizarre comic strip artists who were visionaries.  Mr. Nadel knows his stuff…See the magnificent volumes he put together on some HERE. Any library specializing in any art must have these two books.  Like the books displayed at the last outsider art fair, he reveals dozens of quirky and magnificently talented artists, be they self-taught or not.

Ponder on what an outsider artist is, and if the work you are appraising fits some arbitrary non-definition like Justice Steven's frustrated legal opinion of smut, ponder more. Everyone has their own concept. But can we agree, at least, that if one went to art school, he isn't an outsider?  Outsider Art...I know it when I see it.

Other articles in the I'm Not at the Outsider Art Fair series are HERE.  See also two books on Folk art Outsider art by the writer Jim Linderman HERE and HERE.

Asa "Ace" Moore African-American artist from Ohio Black Folk Art Circa 1935 Collection Jim Linderman

 

A group of the recently discovered erotic fantasy comic illustrations by Asa "Ace" Moore, African-American from Ohio, circa 1935.  First time ever shown!  Share them around the joint, Comic-Con Folks!

All Original Drawings collection Jim Linderman

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The Green Ghosts of American Comics Group Ghostbusters Logos Labels and the Rules of Green Death

There is a green ghost in Ghostbusters. Both the original, and presumably the next one. Hollywood has a clock hidden behind that sign on the hill telling when to cash in again.

A far more interesting green ghost to me is the one which appeared, in nearly every issue, shape and form, in the curious and highly entertaining series of comic books produced by almost-big publisher American Comics Group. Active during the Golden (and Silver) age of comic books, the publisher skirted Kefauver's censors but never really made the big time. They had a general line. Goofy characters, "funny" animals, romance for the girls... but the real stuff was their line of suspense and horror. Adventures into the Unknown. Forbidden Worlds. Unknown Worlds.

Virtually every issue had a transparent green ghost. It had to have been company policy. If it was alive once and dead now, it was green and you could see right through it.

I used to work near a news morgue. Files upon files of clippings about celebrities. Every archive has a system, and ours was when someone died, their file got a green tag. No one knew why, but it was the rule. So much so that we came to call any celeb who dropped like a dead weight "green." Every morning we would meet and say "A Gabor sister is green" or "Marlon Brando's kid is green'" then go to collecting credits for the obit.

It seems odd the color most associated with life could used for death. Even (literally) slime-covered conglomerate British Petroleum hijacked the color not long before ruining the Gulf Coast...a logo which bit them in the ass for a while, but I see they are using it still. Good for them. That logo will always mean "oil spill" to me, but if it works for them, fine. I'm not using their stations until they trick us with a "relaunch" and a new brand no matter how many times they run happy faces hiding desperation. I'll visit the Gulf, but I won't buy your gas OR your claims.

By the way Aflac? That's not Gilbert in there, and all the money you spend hoping I will forget you fired the funniest comic in America won't make me forget it. Drop the duck. The last ad they ran had THREE voices and they still didn't equal one Gilbert.

The other cute characteristic of American Comics Group was their little bylines with a tiny drawing of the writers and inkers. For example Lafcadio Lee, shown below as the proto-beatnik he probably was. Lafcadio didn't exist, but his secret identity was Richard E. Hughes, editor of the line for over 20 years. He wrote most of the stories too. He was so prolific he needed ten names: Pierre Alonzo, Ace Aquila, Brad Everson, Lafcadio, Lee Kermit Lundgren, Shane O'Shea, Bob Standish, Greg Olivetti, Kurato Osaki and Zev Zimmer.



Sadly, American Comic Group went green too...and it wasn't a pleasant death. Their last days were spent churning out industrial comic crap for Montomery Ward, Tupperware and the Air Force.

Promotional Comics Propaganda Pulp for the Long Haul STFU

There are several reasons for promotional comics. Some obvious, some not so. Most obvious is brainwashing of young minds. Studies show the nefarious concept of "branding" starts at a shockingly young age, and once hooked the fish is in the boat. A four-year old McDonald's fan has a good chance of being a fifty-year old McDonald's fan if blood clots and high cholesterol don't interfere.

Other uses are to sway young opinion. Nuclear power is fun and safe, Levi's are the only real rough and tough cowboy jeans, Remington BB-Guns let you kill small animals just like Dad kills big ones. but "B-B SAFE"

Also prominent is what I call the "STFU" factor. That's right, they are able to keep kids quiet on long trips. Hence crappy things like "Special Agent" above, a story which will keep junior occupied for that long rail haul through Texas (while he reads exciting tales of railroad cops tossing hobos off trains) The most common are probably Big-Boy, which are seemingly even more common than a pack of antacids on a trip across Route 66.

Shoe companies also seemed to be big users of promotional comics. I really don't know why, but there are tons of them. Crapass "Blue Bird Comics" put out this transparent rip-off of Caspar the Friendly Ghost they called Timmy the Timid Ghost. The funniest is certainly the fake "Archie" here for Taste-Freez...My God, could the blatant theft be any more apparent?. A fake Archie, a fake Reggie, a fake Bettie and a fake Jalopy! Plus a fake "extra guy" poorly rendered who probably gets killed off early in the story. Are these colorful propaganda pulps worth anything?

Nope, and they never were.

Except for THIS one. COOL!

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Black Ink Lost and Forgotten African-American Cartoonists of the Negro Pulps

Anyone out there need a doctoral project? I can't do it, my plate is full, but I do have a knack for ideas and a small pile of fairly scarce magazines aimed at the African-American market from the 1950s and 1960s.


Even the magazines are fairly hard to come by...search "Bronze Thrills" for one. A major publication which ran decades, yet it seems our major institutions and collectors have dropped the ball. Same with Copper Romance, Tan, Jive and more. Even the larger circulation magazines such as Hue and New Review are hard to come by. Ebony and Jet, both out of Chicago's Johnson Publications are far better documented, and in fact the organization recently graciously made the entire text of Jet available online (and what a resource it is.)


I started rounding up a few African-American magazines for a series I am putting together on the Vintage Sleaze site: "Afro-Antics the Black Pinup" another unfortunate neglected victim of institutional racism. Until the "Black is Beautiful" movement of the late 1960s women of color were few and far between the pulp covers, and you might enjoy the discoveries I am making for the essays.


However, as I look for dark models I could not help but to notice some wonderful, and in terms of humor and quality, "equal" cartoonists we do not know. Since cartoonists love to create indecipherable signatures and the mastheads never credited them, these Black inkers are lost in time.


There ARE some known Black cartoonists of the era. The remarkable book on Jackie Ormes by Nancy Goldstein of two years ago is wonderful. There have been exhibitions on fairly well known black cartoonists such as Ollie Harrington, E. Simms Campbell, Wilbert Holloway and Leslie Rogers. There was even an issue of "All-Negro Comics" in 1947, but there was only one issue. Ishmael Reed blamed the demise on distributors who refused to carry it. At least the comic is easily found on the web today.


But certainly someone should know of Butch Austin AKA Mr. Jive who drew strips for Hep and Jive Magazine, and the others here who I can not even identify, not being an expert. Here are but a few examples from my quite modest little pile of magazines. One day I hope someone will put together the tale better than I ever could.

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Vintage Art of the Tattoo Gag The Lost Art of the Tattoo Cartoon

(Like a third of the country, I am dealing with frozen formerly cumulus cloud...so here is a post from my other blog from a year ago, "The Lost Art of the Tattoo Gag")


You don't see too many tattoo gags anymore. At one time, the staple of the stapled joke digest, I guess the now all too familiar "tramp-stamp" on women's lower backs helped make the tattoo as a joke topic less funny somehow. I can also assure you if you DO laugh, you won't be seeing it for much longer. Either SHE will pull them up and leave in a huff, or HE will kick your ass.

I'm not quite sure the relationship between the tattoo artist and the cartoonist. Both are certainly adept at drawing babes...but did Sailor Jerry draw cartoons? (His "official" site now seems to be owned by a booze company, so instead you get a link to wiki with no pictures.) Of course tattoo decoration goes back to Caesar...but then busty women were drawn on the walls of caves. Now that I think of it, maybe those early erotic cave drawings were primitive flash and the dens actually parlors.

Tattoos of dames are closely related to the hot babe nose art painted on the cones of WW2 Bomber Planes and pinups drawn on duffel bags. Most platoons had a fellow who could draw hot ones, and they often did in trade for a few cigarettes. It is also a quite common subject category in postcard collecting...both actual photographs of them and goofy cartoon sailors.

Certainly the skill was, and is, interchangeable. Once you can draw a gal with gams, you can put it anywhere. A carny's arm, a sailor's chest or a biker's bicep in days gone by, or on the most friendly gentle person of either gender today, but for the life of me I can not think of a cartoonist who started as a body inker. Of course today there are hundreds of tattoo artists who create paintings and fine art as well.

The stigma is gone. So is the once common "joke" about getting drunk and waking with a decorated arm, the muscles which could be tensed to make a dame on your chest shimmy, and the ship design which "sinks" as a fellow ages.

If anyone out there needs a topic for a doctoral thesis, consider erotic body illustration and how it relates to girly pin-up gags of the 1950s and 1960s.

by Jim Linderman

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Hitched in Hardboiled Heaven Hollywood Hi-jinks of Bellem and Barreaux

Robert Leslie Bellem did the words. Adolphe Barreaux did the art. Decades before Harvey Pekar wrote stories for others to illustrate, Bellem did the same, but his were goofy crime tales told in the Hollywood hills. Bellem was the auteur of the pulps...this one issue of Hollywood Detective is edited by Bellem, contains four articles by Bellem AND a "Dan Turner in Pictures" cartoon done by the two. It's nuts...but it works if you care to immerse yourself in one man's odd vision of fictional crime (supported by another man's vision of the scene.)

During his time, Bellem became something of a joke for his writing. 300 of his estimated 3,000 stories were about Dan Turner. S.J. Perelman satirized his work in a hilarious essay "Somewhere a Roscoe..." for the gumshoe slang he created...and he didn't have to work too hard to make it funny.

I can't put it any better than Kevin Burton Smith does on the outstanding Thrilling Detective website HERE "...it was the high-octane use of every slang word known to man (and more than a few Bellem must have coined himself) that fueled the tales. Women were wrens or frills, and their breasts were pretty-pretties or tiddlywinks, something that Dan, "as human as the next gazabo," always took the time to notice. Cars were chariots, money was geetus and no one ever got killed in the stories, they were croaked, cooled, iced, de-lifed or had an act of killery performed upon them. Guns didn't go bang – they were roscoes and they spat, coughed and belched. Or sometimes they just sneezed, though the end result was the same -- people ended up dead."

I guess when you write 3,000 stories, you reach a bit. I'm glad he did! I could spout the slang all day long and feel tough as nails, even if I am not. It is certainly no coincidence Bellem later wrote the story lines for the stilted Superman television series.

And seldom does an illustrator merge so well with a writer. Barreaux did more than draw, and was actually editor of Trojan Publications later...the company which put out Hollywood Detective. When the comics code came in and artists of his ilk were S.O.Luck and S.O. Work..he turned to producing "art" books with naked photographs of the dames he portrayed in his drawings. He even produced Bunny Yeager's Nudes!


Dan Turner Hollywood Detective (illustrated by Adolphe Barreaux, Story by Robert Leslie Bellem) from Hollywood Detective December 1944 Collection Jim Linderman

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