I just remembered that several years ago I attended a lecture by Pulitzer-Prize-winning “comix” artist Art Spiegelman, during which he compared himself to legendary poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Speigelman said his own work was much more difficult than poetry, because a poet just has to write words, while a comics artist has to write words and draw pictures.
from Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! by Art Spiegelman, 2008
On the recommendation of my pal, the excellent illustrator and cartoonist Wayno, yesterday I read Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary by Justin Green. A groundbreaking underground comic from 1972,1 it’s the autobiographical story of Green’s “neuroses” revolving around his devotional Catholicism as a pubescent boy in the late Fifties. What Green didn’t realize at the time, and wouldn’t discover until well over a decade later, was that it’s also a vivid portrayal of someone struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Several weeks ago, I introduced you to my favorite superhero, Sadman. As luck would have it, while browsing a stack of old comics at a flea market this week I came upon a tattered copy of Sadman #146. That rare issue from July 1961 was the first to tell the complete origin of Sadman. The seller didn’t know what he had, so I bought it for a song.
I scanned the whole issue and edited it into easy-to-browse images. Click the cover to start reading. Don’t miss it. It’s a classic.
Cover | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18
“The Origin of Sadman” contains material from:
UPDATE! 8/25/11: I came upon a tattered copy of Sadman #146, the rare issue from July 1961 that tells the complete origin of Sadman. I scanned the whole comic. Click here to read it.
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Hey everybody, look at the new Superhero I just invented: Sadman!
The S is for “sad.”
