Mr. Civil Defense Talks About Natural Disasters

Something tells me this isn't drawn by Al Capp. I dunno, just a hunch.

Bert the Turtle

Probably everyone's seen the Bert the Turtle civil service cartoon, that epitome of fifties camp. There was also a comic to go along with it. I remember there being civil defense drills as late as 1980.







additional PSA from BLUE BEETLE #34.

Please Don't Cry, Johnny

My friend Marc and I used to laugh at these two comics for some reason. We thought of including them in a compilation called "The Best Comics Ever Made".

This is from HOUSE OF SECRETS #91 in 1971. DC was trying to do horror comics in the spirit of EC comics but were neutered so much by the code this was typical of the horror stories they did. Isn't it scary?



If I didn't know any better, I'd think they were making fun of cancer. Unlike the way they made fun of the mentally retarded in this PSA from various comics in the 60s

You're Hired!

Will Eisner has always left me cold. Sacrilege, I know. He's always one of the first to be mentioned in the canon of comics, and it's certainly well deserved, but his work has never done much for me. It's, as Johnny Ryan calls it, the broccoli of comics. Actually, he's never said it specifically about Eisner, but it's his term. The theory is basically that as a cartoonist or fan, there are things you are supposed to like and accept under any terms. Actually, I shouldn't say I dislike Eisner. I do like the Spirit comics of the 40s and 50s, but after that, I don't care much for it.

In between the time he did the Spirit and his comeback in the 70s, he did all sorts of instructional pamphlets. Or authorized them at least. There is much contempt for cartoonists having a shop or using assistants, but anyone prolific enough does it, and I consider it their work if the finished product bears their stamp. Think of them as auteurs.

Here is one such instructional pamphlet from 1969, reissued in 1973.