CUCKOO FOR COMIC STRIPS

For some reason, lately I've been almost infatuated with newspaper action/adventure strips of yore. If you'll pardon several paragraphs of self-indulgence, I'm going to try to figure out exactly how I got to this point.

I think I can pinpoint the kernel of when it started, at least. At some point about five or six years ago, I was, "researching" sword-wielding barbarian gals in the mold of Red Sonja (as you do), and I came across a character named Axa, the heroine of a post-apocalyptic wasteland who starred in a strip for Britain's Sun newspaper back in the early eighties. The strip, created and illustrated by Enric Romero with scripts from Donne Avenell, had been released in the United States many years earlier, but those collections were long out of print. However I found some scans online and read nearly the entire Axa canon in short order. I really liked Romero's mostly realistic artwork in the black-and-white format, and I found the daily newspaper strip format pretty interesting. It didn't hurt that the strip was "mature" (i.e. juvenile) in nature, with the title character constantly losing her top in battle.

Somewhere around that same time, circa 2009/2010, Marvel released two volumes collecting the original Spider-Man newspaper strip run by Stan Lee and John Romita. However these books were panned by critics for their presentation of the material, so I skipped them -- but they stuck in my mind as something I might be interested in checking out someday. (And, as noted a while back, I have in fact gotten into these strips by way of IDW's more recent Library of American Comics reprints of the same material.)

MUSINGS SPURRED BY CANNON

I know we all have our ideas of what would make great TV shows. The thing is, most of mine are really good ideas. Case in point: why do we not have a TV show, something like a pulp style series from the thirties or forties, with tons of sex and violence, on a pay cable network? Doesn't this seem like a no-brainer?

In my review of Wally Wood's CANNON the other day, I said, "...maybe it's my reptilian brain at work overriding good taste, but I've always enjoyed a story about a rugged man who kills with impunity and beds women with regularity." I cited the Bond films as an example of this genre. Another would be the Cinemax series BANSHEE. BANSHEE is somewhat acclaimed, and apparently quite successful. And it overflows with hard, brutal violence and softcore sex scenes. These are things people like to watch. Look to GAME OF THRONES for another example. Or BLACK SAILS, which quickly became a personal favorite during it's first season this past winter. I'm sure there are plenty more, but I don't watch a ton of pay cable shows.

My question, then, is: Why don't we have a series like the above, catered to grown man-children who love superheroes but who are old enough to enjoy explicit material? (And I unashamedly include myself in this demographic!) I don't want to watch such a series about Batman or Spider-Man. They're all-ages characters, not meant for strong language and overt sexual situations. Putting them into these sorts of situations is wrong. But if an outright fantasy series like GAME OF THRONES can capture the imaginations of millions of mainstream viewers, why couldn't a Batman-esque series?

CANNON

I've apparently been a fan of Wally Wood for far longer than I realized. I admit that I've read very little of his output -- he did some Silver Age DAREDEVIL for Marvel, but that's probably about all I've looked at. However he was a mentor to many comic professionals I enjoy, such as Larry Hama and Bob Layton. And he co-created Power Girl with Gerry Conway over at DC, so we have him to thank for that fantastic costume. As many know, the legend goes that Wood incrementally increased the size of Power Girl's breasts from issue to issue until his editors told him to knock it off. I've never seen this story confirmed, and I've seen it disputed more than once -- plus the artwork itself does not support it -- but the simple fact that it persists and is considered something Wood might have done is enough to make me a fan.

Which brings us to CANNON. Sort of. First, an anecdote to set the stage -- I distinctly recall, when I was about eleven or twelve years old, flipping through a SALLY FORTH collection some degenerate had left lying around in easy reach at a local comic book shop. It was black and white, it appeared to be a comedy, and it featured a buxom blonde girl soldier who wound up naked or topless every other page. I thought it was awesome. But I forgot about it pretty quickly after that chance encounter. It was years later that I discovered SALLY FORTH was created by Wally Wood -- who I had learned about through the Power Girl connection in the interim. From there, I disovered CANNON.