FFF Results Post #105—Bliss

Five For Friday #105 Results

On Friday afternoon, participating CR readers were asked to "Name Five Things In Comics That Make You Happy." Here are the results.

*****



Tom Spurgeon

1. Those scenes in 1970s and 1980s superhero comics where the heroes are on their way to a fight and have time to sit around and solemnly contemplate the adventures just ahead.
2. Whenever Gorgon talks in Barnaby
3. Arcade, world's least cost-efficient assassin (phrase TM Gil Roth)
4. Herb Trimpe's Hulk Covers
5. That Tom Toles cartoon where he kidney-punched the proposed Disney historical park by drawing Goofy into that photo of the kids running away from napalm.

*****



Richard Thompson

1. That incredibly kind introduction to the interview.
2. Whenever Albert the Alligator shows up in Pogo.
3. Hobbes turning into a poker-faced stuffed toy in the presence of adults.
4. Reading a stack of the old British Viz magazines late one night years ago and just about suffocating with laughter.
5. The way every line Herriman ever drew looks like it would go twang like a banjo string if plucked.

*****


Daniel Mata

1) A killer cloud that randomly shoots people
2) Jim Steranko's romance comics
3) 1960's and '70s Jimmy Olsen
4) Judge Dredd
5) Crazy Jean Loring

*****



Charles Hatfield

1. Bernice, the African whiffle hen
2. Coconino landscapes
3. Ditko hands
4. Lockjaw
5. "If you were really hardcore, you would have thrown a full bottle."

*****



Patrick Dean

1) The old World's Finest Comics covers from the 40's. Batman, Robin, and Superman ignoring crime and looking like they're enjoying a loopy Sunday afternoon off. I think Superman and Batman planting a "Victory Garden" is in DC continuity and should be addressed.
2) Hercules running amok and living it up in New York City in '60s Thor comics. The guy's grinning from ear to ear in practically every panel.
3) The scenes in Peanuts strips where the characters are safe and warm in bed and reflecting on the day. Charlie Brown's quilt looks like it's the coziest thing in the world.
4) Superman going out of his way to pull elaborate pranks on Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane just to teach them some lesson he could've expressed without moving planets/thinking they're turning into werewolves/faking a death/etc.
5) The cabin Rick Jones lives in out in the middle of the desert. If he ever sells that place, I want to move in.

*****



James Langdell

1. Covers where characters are interacting with the logos.
2. Obscure joke in additional headlines on a drawing of a newspaper's front page.
3. A series of silent panels with a big payoff (like the Justice League scene with the punchline "What does that cat find so interesting about a toilet bowl?").
4. Anything by Walt Kelly, including (to my surprise) Our Gang.
5. Seeing the name of someone I know in a letter column, back when that really seemed to mean something (and back when there were letter columns in comics).

*****



Eric Knisley

1. "Calculus Cat" by Hunt Emerson. Any story, any panel, any line of dialogue.
2. The first ten issues of "Love and Rockets".
3. Krazy Kat's pronunciation of "little darling".
4. Popeye's bowlegged strut
5. The way Frank Quitely draws chins.

*****



Sean Kleefeld

1. Those stupid jokes and insults Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm used to shoot back and forth regularly.
2. Any Don Martin comic.
3. Any time I hear that an older comic master (John Romita, Joe Sinnott, etc.) comes out of retirement to do a new story because they thought it would be fun to do just one more.
4. Self-deprecating cameo appearances of the Marvel Bullpen in the comic stories themselves.
5. Groo.

*****



Tony Collett

1) New comics day on Wednesday. There's nothing like seeing all the new books that came out that day.
2) Previews catalog every month. It's like getting the Sears Wish Book, but every month instead of around Christmas time. It sometimes doesn't live up to the hype, but before you first look at it, there's the anticipation.
3) Finding a book you've been looking for marked down a lot lower than the retail price you'd be more than happy to pay.
4) The online presence of comics fandom. Whether it's a news source, someone in comics, fans talking about what's on their minds, there's a few that pop up when you think about them.
5) That there's a lot of the classic stuff (Walt and Skeezix, Terry and the Pirates, etc) and newer classics (Peanuts, Grimjack, etc.) that's being collected and in such high quality.

*****



Shannon Smith

* The way John Romita (Sr.) drew the ladies. Especially their hair.
* The way Dan DeCarlo drew the ladies. Especially their hands.
* The way Carmine Infantino drew anything.
* The smell. Old newsprint smells great but a lot of newer books smell good too. The Best American Comics 2007 book smelled great. Most of D&Q's books smell really good.
* That a comic book could either be about a guy fighting cosmic threats in tights or about the Holocaust or about some mid-western kid's sexual insecurities and it would still just be a "funny book" to my dad. I take a lot of comfort in the fact that the average person has no idea what is going on in these things I'm reading.

*****



John Vest

1. The Thing's expressive face when Jack Kirby drew him.
2. Little Orphan Annie's companionship with Sandy.
3. Mr. Tawky Tawny.
4. El Borbah's slang in Hard-Boiled Defective Stories.
5. Claude Funston's conversations with Zippy and Griffy.

*****



Christopher Duffy

1. When superheroes (especially the Thing and Nick Fury) play poker.
2. When Wimpy cons anyone.
3. When the over-affectionate dog Woofy in "Mutts" pins Mooch the cat and covers him with licks.
4. When Gyro Gearloose's helper does almost anything in a Carl Barks comic.
5. There's this Quality Comics hero called the Jester who was in Smash Comics I think. He has a rubber ball with a face on it (and it might be attached to a string, and it may have a string attached to it too), and the ball's name is Quinopolis. You know this because once per story he refers to the ball by name while hurling it at some bad guy, tripping him or knocking a gun from his hand. It usualy goes something like "Quinopolis thinks you're being rude." I like that.

*****



Matthew Wave

1) The moment in Ghost World where Enid sits down on the sidewalk.
2) Superhero stories in which not a single person dies (or perhaps that is relief rather than happiness...).
3) Alex Toth's work printed in black and white (tho I'll take it in color).
4) The Golden Age Red Tornado.
5) Every damn line drawn by Francesca Ghermandi.

*****



Leif Jones

1. The lack of sound.
2. Anything drawn by Dave Cooper
3. Hand lettering.
4. Jim Woodring's Frank.
5. Word balloons that just contain a question mark or an exclamation mark.

*****



Fred Hembeck

1. Any 1964 Marvel Comic written by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, and (here's the secret key to my bliss) inked by Chic Stone.
2. Either going on vacation (especially to Mexico or Hollywood) or waking up Christmas morning with Dennis Mitchell and his family, courtesy of travel agents Fred Toole and Al Wiseman.
3. Watching Tubby Tompkins -- aka The Spider -- successfully pin the blame on Mr. Moppet (Lulu's dad) for a seemingly endless list of petty crimes and misdemeanors EVERY SINGLE TIME!!
4. Witnessing love bloom behind a desk on the floor of the Daily Bugle editorial offices between a bespeckled Peter Parker and a smitten Betty Brant, long before it all went tragically sour...
5. Jimmy Olsen discovering, after an adventure wherein the freckle-faced cub reporter went undercover dressed as a woman to nab a crime boss, that the one thing he learned from the whole crazy escapade was that he really, REALLY liked taking bubble baths!!

*****



Jeff Parker

1. All Weisenger-era DC comics, but mainly a Jimmy Olsen where he became Brainiac's pal instead of Superman's and Brainiac gave him a smiling photo of himself. This is on the first page, I may be able to find it.
2. The mere mention of "Little Iodine."
3. Strips that end with characters falling off panel, ie all Archies prior to 1968. Exception: Sad Sack, which was statistically incapable of producing humor.
4. Any time Yiddish hatred is vented at J. Wellington Wimpy in Segar's POPEYE.
5. That Kliban cartoon. You know the one.

*****



Stergios Botzakis, Ph.D

1. Yotsuba&!
2. Marvel Annuals from the 1980's where they had done-in-one, enjoyable stories (like the Art Adams X-Men ones, the Alan Davis New Mutants Annual #3, and Web of Spider-man Annual #2, with Warlock!)
3. Cromartie High School
4. The Ambush Bug History of the DC Universe
5. Jughead's hat

*****



Jason Michelitch

I might have gone to town a little bit on this one... most of my bliss comes from really specific moments, though.

1. The Julie Schwartz jokes from AMBUSH BUG NOTHING SPECIAL, including but not limited to the page on which a xeroxed photo of Schwartz rants to the reader about how the Editor is the only important person in the comic-book process, and in the process his head slowly rolls off his shoulders and away.
2. The silver-age Superman story in which Batman breaks into the Fortress of Solitude and plays terrifying mind-games with Superman for days under the guise of giving him a puzzle to solve as an anniversary-of-landing-from-Krypton present.
3. In MAGE, how worked up Edsel gets at Kevin Matchstick when he makes fun of her car, an Edsel, and how sheepish he is in response.
4. The B-plot in the Stern/Byrne Captain America run where a group of people run Cap for President without asking him and he ends up giving a speech refusing out of a sense of principle to his role as a symbol.
5. "Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures."

*****



Kristy Valenti

1. The covers for the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service series
2. Comics from the 1800s or early 20th century with jokes that are just as funny today as when they were first created
3. Anthologies with tables of contents and page numbers. Indicia with all of the copyright information, the "official" name of the book and a proper fair use blurb
4. The way that Jack Kirby drew the Hulk; Ditko's Green Goblin
5. Historical and/or cultural endnotes

*****



Scott Dunbier

1) Dan DeCarlo Betty & Veronica stories from the 50s.
2) Wally Wood EC Science Fiction covers.
3) So Many Splendid Sunday's--the greatest collection of Little Nemo pages by Winsor McCay, finally in a format worthy of the material.
4) Calvin & Hobbes
5) Tie: Fantastic Four #51 (This Man This Monster) by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Joe Sinnott/Daredevil #7 (Daredevil vs. Submariner) by Stan Lee & Wally Wood

*****



Evan Dorkin

1) Bill Elder crowd scenes
2) Whenever Segar's Popeye is shot multiple times, proclaims he's dying, and then recovers
3) Skeezix as a baby doing baby Skeezix stuff
4) Batman and Robin's nervous reaction whenever Bat-Mite appears
5) "Good lord...choke!"

*****



Don MacPherson

1. Those one-paragraph bios of the starring heroes in DC's team-up books of the 1970s and 1980s (DC Comics Presents and The Brave and the Bold). As a young, new reader, those little opening captions would tell me what I needed to know about characters who were new to me. DC has brought them back in a few titles, notably in the new Brave and the Bold.
2. Zatanna's backward spells.
3. Potentially offensive stories that can be told only in comics rather than any other pop-culture medium since comics tend to fly under the radar (Ennis and Dillon's Preacher comes to mind).
4. Ambush Bug.
5. Marvel's assistant editor's months during the 1980s.

*****



Matt Maxwell

1) The Starjammers.
2) Clark Kent as appearing in ALL-STAR SUPERMAN.
3) Guy Davis' monsters. Any of them.
4) Jack Kirby eyeball closeups.
5) Silent panels from Marvel Comics up until the mid-80s. Always a surprise.

*****



Sean T. Collins

1) Changing the color scheme of a superhero costume
2) The Hernandez Brothers' jumpcuts
3) That shot from The Dark Knight Returns when Batman pops out of his tank and he's all excited to rumble with the Mutant Leader
4) The sex scene in Hans Rickheit's Chloe
5) Teratoid Heights

*****



Matthew Springer

1. The smell. Whether it's the muskier newer stuff or the sweet sweet acidic mold growing in old newsprint.
2. Double-page spreads.
3. Phone-book sized black-and-white reprints of stuff originally printed thirty years before I was born.
4. Quarter bins.
5. Jim Aparo's Batman.

*****



Michael Nicolai

1. Stories about Golden/Silver Age superheroes that are set in their time period of origin (DC's New Frontier, The Golden Age, Martian Manhunter: American Secrets, etc)
2. Tearing the plastic off one of those giant weekly phonebooks that Japanese kids get their comics in and finding stickers, stationary and other little extras stuffed inside like a pinata.
3. The better part of an afternoon spent foraging in quarter bins.
4. Phillipe's Friday Facts.
5. Knowing that I'll never be able to read every great comic that comes out. I'll take flood over famine any day.

*****



Chris Marshall

1. The smell of a brand new DC Archive Edition
2. Trying to piece together Punisher continuity
3. The funny banter between Human Torch and Spider-Man
4. All the extras in the Absolute Sandman editions
5. Anything Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale do as a team

*****



Russell Lissau

1. Tim Sale drawing Catwoman. Or Poison Ivy. Yesssssssssss. The greeeeeeeeeeeen.
2. Cliffhanger endings that are so exciting, you can't WAIT until 30 days pass and you go to the shop and get your hands on the rest of the story.
3. The Umbrella Academy. The story, the art, the way it's disproved all the critics who slammed the book because of its famous writer even before the marvelous first issue hit.
4. Books like 100 Bullets, the Walking Dead and Criminal that are more than happy to turn the medium on its ear.
5. The Batcave. I love writing scenes in the cave. I love reading scenes in the cave. It is a character in and of itself.

*****



Frank Santoro

* Kirby machinery (all)
* Beto drawn female thighs and asses (all)
* Richard Corben ad in Price Guide 1978
* Lynn Varley colors on Ronin
* Gary Panter: Cola Madnes pool scene

*****



Rod DiManna

1. Whenever Reggie Mantle laughs 'Yok Yok Yok'
2. Anytime Charlie Brown says that his stomach hurts.
3. Buddy Bradley having a meltdown.
4. The Talking Blob stories in old Cracked Magazines.
5. Groo fight scenes.

*****



Mike Manley

* Steve Ditko's expressive hands
* Jack Kirby
* zip-a-tone
* Old Warren magazines
* Hostess Fruit Pie Ads

*****



Dustin Harbin

1. Any time -- and EVERY time -- I "turn on" to someone's work (usually years after everyone else), realizing I have to immediately RUN DON'T WALK and find everything I can by that person. Recent examples include Jonathan Bennett, Eleanor Davis, and Scott Campbell.
2. Re-reading the same stack of falling-to-pieces Richie Rich comics I owned as a kid, recently discovered by my mother in the attic, and remembering exactly how it felt to reread them over and over when I was ten.
3. Having my faith in comics, which is tested sorely each and every day, especially Wednesdays, rekindled by something good. For instance, Chris Pitzer -- what a nice guy! If only Ultimates 3 and "One More Day" could have been as good as Chris Pitzer.
4. Last year's SPX -- the best time I've ever had at a comic book convention, hands down. Not included: post-SPX hangover.
5. The recent increase in quality all over the place in comics. Especially: increased translated stuff (Ignatz/Coconino, :01, Pantheon), increased cool stuff (Beasts!, MOME, cloth-backed reprints), increased strips (Popeye!).

*****



Loris Z

1. The sense of wonder, the overall wackyness in old superhero comics. I was lucky enough that my first exposure to the genre was with the old material at a very young age, so instead of reading Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man, I was reading Lee & Ditko's.
2. Minicomics and independents.
3. The sheer insanity of authors like Francois Boucq.
4. The smell of a new comic coming out of a printer/photocopier.
5. The medium itself. For it has this vast, untapped potential.

*****



David Brothers

1. Iron Fist kicking a Hydra agent through a train
2. Discovering, or rediscovering, a talented artist
3. Jubilation "Jubilee" Lee
4. Hardcover reprints of comics
5. Every single Calvin & Hobbes strip

*****



Eric Reynolds

1. Little Orphan Annie (in Harold Gray's hands)
2. Anything drawn by Jaime Hernandez
3. Mr. O'Malley's dialogue
4. Charles Burns' feathering
5. A new Eightball

*****

Thanks to all that participated. Be on the lookout for the next Five For Friday.
 
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