Publishing things that ought to be published
These are the memoirs of Robert Mayer – journalist, columnist, novelist. It tells the tales of his wielding words, from co-writing a scandalous best-seller to digging the dirt on the local politicians. Reflective, philosophical, and intentionally quirky, this book reflects the brain of a creative man at work. Mayer has invented a new, livelier way to write a life story.
For twentieth century cartoonists, while art may have been their calling, golf was almost always their obsession. Much of the time spent away from the drawing board was spent on the links, with all the frustrations and quirky habits that come from trying to get a tiny ball into a distant hole. Little wonder that so many combined their vocation and their avocation, drawing cartoons that found the funny side of the game and the people who play it.
About Comics has just released a new book collecting golf cartoons from some of the most respected names in cartooning. Great Golf Gags by Classic Cartoonists includes cartoons by six top names of the newspaper and magazine cartooning world: “Peanuts” creator Charles M. Schulz, Playboy cartoonist Eldon Dedini, Dennis the Menace creator Hank Ketcham, “Two Little Nuns” and “Golf Fore Fun” cartoonist Bill O’Malley, “Big George” creator Virgil Partch, and Gus Arriola, creator of “Gordo.” Most of these cartoons are available nowhere else, often not having seen print in half a century.
“Most of these cartoons were created to celebrate the annual Pro-Am charity golf tournament that Bing Crosby used to host,” explains Nat Gertler, editor of the volume. “The tournament was very cartoonist-friendly, with various cartoonists being included in the lineup of celebrity amateur players. Starting before the launch of ‘Dennis the Menace; and going on for years after, Hank Ketcham handled the design and coordination of the tournament’s souvenir program. So it’s really not a surprise that the programs began including a fair number of cartoons… a tradition launched while Ketcham was handling the program in the 1950s and continued well into the 1980s.”
Golf tournament programs are not the only source for the cartoons. In additions to the cartoons that Schulz created for the Crosby “clambake” (as it was less formally known), there are also dozens of golfing cartoons that he did for “It’s Only a Game”, a feature that ran in newspapers in the late 1950s.
Eldon Dedini brings both his line-art cartooning and the lusher style he used in Playboy into the golf game. While the focus is on the golfers, the nymphs and fawns of his Playboy work are not entirely absent. The book’s wrap-around color cover is itself another Dedini work. Virgil Partch’s cartoons bring the same sense of awkwardness and absurdity that made his series “Big George” so popular. (Partch was such a dedicated cartoonist that, when he died, there were still six years worth of his daily panel ready to be run.)
As for Gus Arriola, Gertler notes “a lot of readers aren’t going to be familiar with Gus’s work. While his strip ‘Gordo’ was around for more than four decades, the last strip was in 1985 and it hasn’t been reprinted in a long while. But Gus was a cartoonist’s cartoonist – talk to folks who have been in the cartooning business for a while, and they’ll talk about his beautiful linework and his lovable characters. There’s only about half a dozen cartoons of his in the book, but I think people will like getting a taste of his work.”
The year was 1966, and the world was going crazy over the wham-socko superhero action that had leapt out from the comic books and onto the TV. With the internet yet to be invented, the fans of the day turned to their stationary pads and whipped off letters to the hero and to those who told his story, sending praise, complaints, questions and requests to the TV show and to the comic books. Best-selling book creator Bill Adler sifted through the letters and came up with the funniest, putting them out in a paperback that still draws praise to this day. Michael Eury’s new book Hero-a-Go-Go! says it’s a “brisk but deliriously engrossing read” and “the ultimate feel-good book”. Chris Sims at ComicsAlliance.com has called it “one of the single best pieces of Bat-ephemera,” and Al Bigley of Big Glee! told readers to “get ready to laugh!” But sadly, the book has been out of print for about half a century.
If this were anything but a press release, the story would end right there. But lucky for you, dear reader, this is a press release and we do not do such things just to depress you. No! We do such things to get you to spend money, and toward that end we are announcing a brand new reprinting of the same ol’ book under a bold new title: FanMail ’66. Now you can thrill to those mirthful missives and crusading correspondence of yesteryear, and we can thrill to getting a share of the $9.99 it will cost you!
Bill Adler created collections of kids’ letters to presidents (About Comics has already reprinted his Kids’ Letters to President Kennedy and Dear President Johnson), campers’ letters home, and fans letters to the objects of their adulation, whether that be the Beatles, the Monkees, or the Mets. He hit best-seller lists with books ranging from a collection to JFK’s humor (The Kennedy Wit) to the whodunnit Who Killed the Robins Family?
FanMail ’66 (ISBN-13: 978-1-936404-71-1) is a 128 page black-and-white paperback, 5″x8″, with a cover price of $9.99.
Working on comic art since the early 1980s, Bernie Mireault has created numerous short stories that are collected for the first time here and presented with notes on story provenance and art production along with various strips and illustrations.
While greatly influenced by the North American mainstream superhero comic book tradition, Mireault is also attracted to the North American underground, European and Japanese comic art, all of which are combined in his approach to storytelling. The stories presented here were all created in perfect creative freedom and free of interference. Included in this collection are the first four stories to feature Mireault’s best-known character, “The Jam,” the original comics being hard to find.
14 short tales from the off-kilter viewpoint of Nat Gertler. There’s the young growing werewolf, the hardboiled space detective, the world that’s defined by pop music, the man whose love life is dictated by his tattoos. This includes four stories that have never seen print before, as well as ten favorites previously published in publications big and small.
List Price: $5.99
by Robert MayerIt was a time of love, of struggle, of hope, of worship, of the birth of dynasties and the crushing affliction of hatred…
In the 1770s, the Jews of Frankfurt are trapped, both physically by the walls of the ghetto within which they must dwell, and in a larger sense by the rules of a society in which they are outcasts, legally debased and barely suffered to live.
And yet within those confines they find life, in all its glories and tragedies. This is the story of young Guttle, whose sweet face and curves could win her any man in her little world, but whose keen mind demands the best. It is the tale of Meyer Rothschild, who knows all the ways of the business world but discovers the ways of the heart. It is a tale of love and lust, of murder and betrayal, of holy works and unholy schemes, of bakers and brigands, of hope and of ruin. This is a novel, both amusing and sad, that will grace your bookshelf for generations – a book you will want your children to read and discuss as they reach maturity.
by Sol Weinstein
In the mid-1960s, when Playboy was serializing the adventures of the world’s most famous superspy, they interspersed them with the rollicking adventures of Israel’s most hilarious weapon, Israel Bond. After the book editions of what the Chicago Tribune called “probably the funniest secret agent parodies ever written” had sold over a million copies, they were allowed to fall out of print. Decades later, all four books in the Israel Bond series are now back in new editions!
by Sol WeinsteinThings are really smoking on the island of El Tiparillo when the Holy Land’s superest, secretest agent Israel Bond is called to wield his weaponized mezuzah to save innocent lives and formerly-innocent beautiful lasses in the midst of rebellion. Will he manage to fend off the assassins, the vicious wildlife, and the mysterious Herbie while seducing the island’s wide array of fascinating and exotic women… or will it be the other way around? With Soviet spymaster General Bolshyeeyit, the insidious Dr. Nu, Rotten Roger, and “The Man with the Golden Gums” all on his tuchis, things will not be easy for Oy-Oy-7, licensed not only to kill but also to say prayers over the body…
In the mid-1960s, when Playboy was serializing the adventures of the world’s most famous superspy, they interspersed them with the rollicking tales of Israel’s most hilarious weapon, Israel Bond. After the book editions of what the Chicago Tribune called “probably the funniest secret agent parodies ever written” had sold over a million copies, they were allowed to fall out of print. Decades later, all four books in the Israel Bond series are back in new editions!
by Sol WeinsteinIt’s dire times for Israeli intelligence agency M 33 and 1/3. Auntie Sem-Heidt and her sinister agents of TUSH have been killing off Hebrew agents, as part of a devious plan to eradicate Jewish culture at its base. And in the midst of this, turmoil, super agent Israel Bond finds himself stuck with the job of protecting Baldroi LeFagel, the half-arab and all-fabulous new King of Sahd Sakistan. Will the Star of David-lovin’ Agent Oy-Oy-7 be willing to handle all of the crosses needed for this assignment (crossing physical boundaries, moral boundaries, and even cross-dressing), or will all this mishugas leave him cross-eyed and just plain cross?
ABOUT ISRAEL BOND, AGENT OY-OY-7: In the mid-1960s, when PLAYBOY was serializing the adventures of the world’s most famous superspy, they interspersed them with the rollicking tales of Israel’s most hilarious weapon, Israel Bond. After the book editions of what the CHICAGO TRIBUNE called “probably the funniest secret agent parodies ever written” had sold over a million copies, they were allowed to fall out of print. Decades later, all four books in the Israel Bond series are back in new editions!
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