Ray Bradbury! Annie Wu! El Santo! An action-PACKED Club this week! (Above: El Santo in the movie El Santo contra el Cerebro del Mal [Santo versus the Evil Brain], 1961.)

 

A few weeks ago, the Playhouse Comics Club posted a link to a free download of the San Diego Comic Con’s 2020 Souvenir Book—and many of the articles in the Souvenir Book focused on the career of legendary science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury on the occasion of his 100th birthday. The centenary celebrations continue this weekend with a Read-a-Thon of Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by such celebrity participants as William Shatner, Neil Gaiman, Marlon James, and Marjorie Liu. Sponsored by the Library of Congress, the Los Angeles Public Library, and other U.S. library systems, the Read-a-Thon goes live on Saturday, August 22 at 4pm Eastern Standard Time, and will remain available on the event website until Saturday, September 5. (Above: Oskar Werner as Montag the Fireman from François Truffaut’s film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, released in 1966.)


I first saw Annie Wu’s cartooning in Marvel’s acclaimed 2012-15 comic book run of Hawkeye, in several issues focused on Kate Bishop, a character who trained with the elder Avenger-archer and then began her own fledgling career as a superhero and detective in Los Angeles. Since then, Wu’s only drawn a handful of comics for Marvel and DC (for characters like Black Canary and Spider-Man Miles Morales), while working as a storyboard artist and animator for the later seasons of the Adult Swim show The Venture Brothers. Her website—featuring illustrations, comics work, and hints about her upcoming project Dead Guy Fan Club—is a fizzy blast to browse.

Last Saturday (August 15) was Small Press Day in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and hundred of creators sold their self-published comics online: search #SmallPressDay or #SmallPressDay2020 on Twitter to browse some of their work. There were also cartoonists who made generous amounts of their all-ages strips available for free online, including Christopher Hazeldine, whose witty, well-written Golf Girl comic updates with a new page every week. Golf Girl is Becky Jones, a whip-smart teenage girl who works at a golf course in the English holiday town of Shelbourne—even though she hates the game—until she makes a new, unusual friend and…no spoilers! Read the first chapter. And remember: golf is just dodgeball for people who won’t get their hands dirty.

 

 

 

Another artist involved in the UK’s Small Press Day is James Lawrence, whose Legend of La Mariposa [The Butterfly] follows a female wrestler] as she fights for justice in a fantasy landscape inspire by the folklore and culture surrounding the art of Lucha Libre [Mexican wrestling].” In The Demon Gauntlet, La Mariposa must win the masks of four supernatural wrestlers before she can join the raggedy Sons of Justice super-team. A couple of off-color words and cartoon violence make La Mariposa best for middle-school and teen readers, but fans of goofy animation will be mightily entertained.

There’s lots of connections between wrestlers and superheroes. Cultural critic Roland Barthes observed that wrestling matches typically pit one noble wrestler vs. one villainous one, to create a situation that “separates Good from Evil, and unveils the form of a Justice which is at last intelligible.” In other words, wrestling is a performance where it’s easier to tell the good guys from the bad guys than in the ambiguous real world, which is also true of superhero stories. In his first appearance in the comic book Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider and immediately becomes a wrestler to cash in on his new super-abilities. Peter only becomes Spider-Man when a tragedy at the climax of his origin story convinces him that “with great power comes great responsibility.”

Perhaps the wrestler most like a real-world superhero was El Santo (“The Saint,” Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, 1917-1984), the Mexican megastar whose popularity transcended the ring—he was the star of a long-running comic book, dozens of films, and other media tie-ins. Here’s is a good overview of El Santo’s career; here is a video introduction to both El Santo’s movies and Mexican masked wrestler movies in general (with lots of clips from wild, disreputable B-movies!). And below are a few covers and film posters from El Santo’s career. ¡Lucha Libre!

Santo vs. the She-Wolves - movie POSTER (Style A) (27" x 40 ...

This weekly blog post is written and compiled by Craig Fischer. To send along recommendations, ideas, and comments, contact Craig at [email protected] [.]

Playhouse Comics Club, Issue #16 (August 14, 2020)Playhouse Comics Club, Issue #18 (August 28, 2020)
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