Foreign Favorites: Torpedo

Josep Toutain loved the classic Warner Brothers gangster movies of his youth, so in the early eighties he conceived the idea of a similar antihero and the brutal tales of Torpedo were born. Enrique Sanchez Abuli claimed the writing credits while America illustrator Alex Toth did the drawings for Torpedo's first appearance in a Spanish edition of Warren's Creepy magazine in 1982. The story begins with an orphan boy from southern Italy, Luca Torelli, who grew up in the mean streets of 1936 America, turning to a life of crime for survival. Petty theft and extortion lead to robbery and murder as he moved up the ranks as a top hitman for the mob. After setting the look of the feature, and only two episodes, Toth decided to leave the project in protest over the comic's excessive violence. Fortunately, Toth's successor, Jordi Burnet, quickly made the series his own with his lush moody panels of stylized violence and 1930s period authenticity. An instant international success, the black-and-white stories eventually got the full color treatment, which was somewhat distracting from the earlier moody dark tone of the feature, but could not overshadow the power, cynicism and despair of these dynamic mobster tales.

Comic Art Legend: Bill Everett

Born on May 18, 1917, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bill Everett studied at the Vesper George School of Art, soon working on various commercial art jobs before finally landing at the Lloyd Jacquet Comic Shop in 1939. Drawing under his own name and a handful of pseudonyms the artist created some forgotten superheroes (White Streak, Amazing Man, Chameleon) for Centaur, Novelty, and others. But Everett's big break came when he created the Sub-Mariner which made his first appearance in Marvel Comics #1. As a foil to Carl Burgo's Human Torch which also came from the Jacquet shop, Bill's undersea antihero was a major overnight success with his distinct stylized look of triangular head and arched eyebrows. During the early forties, Everett created other underwater heroes and super beings (Hydroman, The Patriot, Music Master) for Eastern Color, Timely, Hillman, and Eastern, before a stint in the armed forces, but all these paled in comparison to his historic Prince Namor character.

After the war, he returned to Timely to work on Sub-Mariner and his companion book Namorita, before switching to produce a large number of horror tales for Atlas in the 1950s. After a short return to Sub-Mariner, Bill left comics for the more lucrative field of commercial art until 1964. He returned to Marvel Comics to work on a new crop of superhero titles and got the chance to once again to work on his creation and revitalize the series for a new generation. Just when Everett was making a name for himself with new readers the artist took suddenly ill and passed away on February 27, 1973. But so liked was the man by his peers, the Academy of Comic Book Arts set up a fund for indigent artists in his name to help the less fortunate.

National Cartoonist Society Profile: Gus Arriola

Born in Florence, Arizona 1917, after high school in Los Angeles, one year animation for Screen Gems. Four years MGM Cartoon Department in story sketch. Sold "Gordo" in 1941, enlisted 1942, wed Mary Frances Sevierin 1943. Resumed daily and Sunday in 1946 after three and a half years animation for Army Air Force film unit. Awards, San Francisco Artists Club 1957, National Cartoonist Society Best Humor strip in 1957 & 1965, San Diego Comic Con Inkpot 1981, Sunday page tribute to Rachel Carlson in the Smithsonian. Retired in 1985, after forty four years of deadlines. We keep very busy searching for ambergris, misguiding tourists to Clint Eastwood's Hog Breath Inn and smelling the roses, if they trot them by our hammocks in lovely, cool Carmel by the Sea.

My Greatest Adventure: Kamandi

Jack Kirby's "Last Boy on Earth" debuted in his own title, Kamandi #1, November 1972, in which a Great Disaster in the near future had turned an alternate Earth into a wasteland ruled by all types of savage beast-men. After his grandfather was murdered by scavenging rat-men, Kamandi left his protective bunker (called Command D) to search for other intelligent humans in what was left of a destroyed North America. While Great Caesar and his tiger-men governed all the eastern province, monstrous gorillas under Czar Simian controlled most of the west, with Kamandi the strange "talking animal" caught in the middle of their feud. Eventually our hero meets astronaut Ben Boxer, and the faithful dog-faced Dr. Canus, who help Kamandi in his quest to survive capture from the many terrors of this post apocalypse future and try to restore humanity to its once former glory.