Monday, June 21, 2010

Nemo #5: "The Explorigator", Fantasy in the Comics!

Continuing my scanning and posting of the great out-of-print magazine "Nemo: the Classic Comics Library with issue #5 from February 1984.

This has been a project that has served a lot of purposes for me. Selfishly it gives me kind of a break in my posting original material here and giving me time to re-evaluate and re-invent my blog. It also gives me (again selfishly) a chance to do what I've wanted to do for a decade or so, to digitize these magazines to more easily access the treasure-trove of info inside them.

From a more selfless standpoint, it gives me a chance to pass on some hard-to-find gems to the readers of this blog who've been so supportive and also to give back a little to all the hard working folks who's scans of other material that I've been able to glom onto over the years.

This issues "Table of Contents"...or what you can expect to see here over the next couple of days...

...and opinionated guest editorial. "Maw Green" was Harold Gray's topper for his "Little Orphan Annie" Sunday strip and he used her as an even more ham-handed sounding board for some of his opinions on social problems. Glorious were the days when comics could be used as more than something to chuckle at (if that) and then used to line the bird cage or wrap fish with.


Beginning with this issue, "Nemo" began a series of articles devoted to "Fantasy in the Comics".
Remember folks, pop media used to not be short-handed and tunnel-visioned as it is today. Nowadays you have to keep themes much more simplistic in order to catch the attention of the audience that wants their synopsis in sou-bite form. "Science Fiction" means space ships now and "Fantasy" means only sword & sorcery. But they both used to mean soooooooo much more.

Here's the entire run of H.G. Dart's "The Explorigator". Again it would be nice to see these in full color, but I'm happy to see these anyway.

Beautiful line-work and wonderful serialized story telling and it's all only limited by the full tabloid page.

Enjoy!















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