The Archie Experiment: Spire Christian Comics.

Oooo! Take that,, uhhh... unnamed girl.

So, a few posts back I told you about the late 1980s, early 1990s Archie experiment. It wasn't, however, the first. Not by a long shot. Hell, Archie's been experimenting since the 1940s. But today I want to tell you about something that's from the 1970s (And into the 1980s), Archie's experiment into Christian comics publications.

Yup, that's right, the super-secular comic company, run by a dynasty of Jewish publishers, decided to license their characters for use in Christian comics! How the hell does that happen?

How to Read: Jack Kirby.

All the images used for this page are from
Captain Victory #1 or Silver Star #1, both
from Kirby's time with Pacific Comics.

So lately I've been chatting with my friends about Jack Kirby comics and I thought I'd write you up a five step guide to getting started reading Jack Kirby comics.

Kirby was one of the greatest artists ever to pick up a pencil. I don't just mean in comics, I mean ever. The guy was so creative it seemed to be bursting from his every pore. It's hard to think of another single creator who did more for American comics than Jack Kirby did. Everything he ever did was influential, or at least really powerful.

But some modern readers find his work hard to get into.

I can understand it. Kirby's work, while wide-ranging is also very much of a style. If you don't get into Jack's art style, it can be hard to get into reading his works. Which is really unfortunate because you're missing out on so much. So the goal of this guide is to give you the tools to be able to immerse yourself in Kirby's world. To just let yourself go.

Phantom's in the window, again!

I'm so jealous! Why couldn't I win this
uhhh... "awesome" art?

So recently I bought a pile of 25 Phantom comics from a second hand store. Out of all of them, only two had classic Phantom stories from the newspapers. Almost all of them were Team Fantomen stories. (I talk more about that in this post, if you're confused.)

So out of 25 issues only two had newspaper stories. Out of 25 issues how many had a classic image of Phantom in a window? One. One of the newspaper issues.

This is why I hate Team Fantomen stories! They just don't honour the classic Phantom iconography!!

Fortunately, Sy Barry? Sy Barry knows what he's doing!

This story is actually a really typical Phantom story. It's about secrets. Secrets are really important to the Phantom, and to the Phantom mythology. A lot of Phantom stories are about either uncovering ancient secrets (a really common theme in Team Fantomen stories) or guarding secrets against people who just wouldn't understand.

The Archie Experiment: Jughead's Diner.

Dan Parent and Bill Golliher are my heroes!

It's hard to think of Archie comics as being particularly experimental. After all, they're such incredibly formulaic comics. Believe it or not, though, Archie comics do go through some really experimental phases.

The one I'm most familiar with is the late 80s, early 90s Archie experiment. During this period there was an explosion of new, experimental, often insane titles. New aesthetics were experimented with. Character dynamics were experimented with. Some things were successful, some things weren't, but it was an exciting time to be reading Archie comics.

Don't believe me? Don't think they would have been brave enough to mess with the formula for familiar, iconic characters?

Well, my friend, during this time Jughead Jones acquired not one, not two, but three new love interests. (All of them were redheads, and one of them was actually Archie's descendant from the future in the comic Jughead's Time Police. Yeah... that's an entire other post in and of itself.)

One of my all time favourite Archie experiments, though, was Jughead's Diner. Jughead's Diner was a fantasy sci-fi comic set in a surreal 1950s diner setting, starring Jughead as basically the chosen one, meant to save the world. No... seriously.

Four of the Best: Marvel Masterworks FF #1

So lately I've been reading Marvel Masterworks Fantastic Four. The first volume, handilly numbered #1, contains the first 10 issues of Fantastic Four, in glorious remastered colour. It's the first time I've ever read these stories in colour -- well, most of them (I own issue 8, and a repro issue 1). For a huge Fantastic Four fan like me it's a joy to have an excuse to enjoy these stories again.

So I thought I'd pick out four of the very best panels from the TPB -- one for each main character -- to share with you. So let us begin, shall we?

Let's talk about Australian Kids' Magazines

All the images from this article
are from Krash #91. Krash is
known for its subtle covers.

As I pointed out in an earlier article there exists in Australia a wide range of magazines for children that celebrate and, let's be honest, shill youth pop culture. These are some of the only comics-related material produced exclusively in Australia for Australian children. They're available everywhere, and sell quite well.

Each one is filled to the brim with articles that barely hide the fact that they're actually advertisements for the most popular pop culture of the day. They're written directly to kids, they're colourful, and they're about things kids care about.

Also, they generally have comic pages as a backup in them! Actually that's probably stretching things. Most of them have a very small, teenie-tiny number of comic pages in the back of the issue, usually something like 6 pages of comics in a 100 page magazine.

The magazines are, frankly, incredibly crass. They try to write to kids on their own level, using 'young slang', and writing things in a way that sounds awesome and cool! Often using words like awsm and kewl. The result is that they're kind low on the literacy scales, and very hard to read if you're not 10.

Let's review Phantom #1607

In Australia Phantom has been published continuously since 1947 in a comic book format by Frew Publications. Frew's version of the Phantom comic is the longest running comic book based on the character in the world. Almost all the material in it is reprints of either newspaper strips or comic stories from the Scandanavian comic Fantomen.

I've be workin' on the... circus.

When buying Frew Phantoms I basically pick-and-choose, buying pretty much only the issues which have 'Phantom Classic' on the cover, because that usually means it's a reprint of a Lee Falk newspaper strip.

This comic isn't. It's a reprint of an old Team Fantomen story.