Summer is a mid-year breather when I can kick back and do the stuff I hope to do every day in retirement. My wife Janice and I do the pop convention circuit and promote our books (with a great one coming this fall) and it’s a wonderful opportunity to catch up on my reading. Plenty of that stuff had connections to Northeast Ohio.
A few weeks back, we stopped by the Imprint Zine and Arts Fair on the west side of Cleveland. David Helton, the guy who created that bird for that radio station, invited us out and what a treat it was to see him and his equally-talented significant other, Lyn.
The real surprise was the fair itself. There were dozens of creative types putting out fun little publications. Now, zines are nothing new. They started out more than 50 years ago with folks putting out their own fan magazines or “fanzines,” usually with very limited circulation. A lot of times they were printed on those old ditto machines, the mimeographs, banged out on a typewriter with simple drawings, but some folks took it a major step forward.
Back in 1966, the renowned artist Wallace Wood got together a few dozen of his friends including Frank Frazetta, Steve Ditko, Don Martin, Jim Steranko — you get the idea — and put out his own magazine called witzend. The zines have since been compiled in book form and I strongly suggest The Best of witzend (Fantagraphics) for a look at creativity unleashed. This amazing stuff deserved a far bigger audience, even back then.
Comic Geniuses
I was horrified when students in a class I taught had never heard of the Marx Brothers. My grandmother told me that when the brothers and W.C. Fields played the Cleveland vaudeville houses, they stayed home because their acts were insulting. Hey, that was part of their charm! The Marxes were at Playhouse Square a number of times and barely escaped with their lives when Chico got caught hustling players at a pool hall.
Artist Salvador Dali also knew about this region when he visited the museum devoted to his work years ago in Beachwood. Consider this: Dali loved “Groucho and Company” and, along with Harpo, wrote a proposed movie for the Marxes. The script was titled, “Giraffes on Horseback Salad” and Louis B. Mayer at MGM gave it a quick thumbs down.
Within the past few years, portions of the screenplay were discovered in the Dali museum in Spain and reimagined into a graphic novel of the same name by Josh Frank, Tim Heidecker and Manuela Pertega (Quirk Books).
Here’s one that Janice told me about years ago and I will now publicly state she is correct. Back in 1935, Marge Henderson Buell created a character that was a pop culture model for feminism and independence. When Cleveland Public Library did its “It Ain’t Me, Babe” symposium on the depiction of women’s liberation in the arts, they featured this character on the cover of the program.
I’m talking about (wait for it)……Little Lulu.
Try to tell us we’re wrong. Lulu Moppet was often targeted by Tubby and his girl-hating pals but she always got the upper hand. She was assertive, logical and stood up for the underdog. Plus, she wasn’t afraid to get in Tubby’s face.
John Stanley took over the strip from Buell and the reissues are being taken in a whole new and serious light. The latest, Little Lulu: Working Girl (Enfant), is a great template for very young readers. Oh, and there’s always a Northeast Ohio connection: Marge Buell spent the last 20+ years of her life in Elyria.
Boomer Trivia: Last issue, I asked the name of the Cleveland mayoral candidate whose campaign was likely derailed by a suspected DUI hit/skip accident. It was Eliot Ness. The one-time Untouchable was no teetotaler. Once hooch was legalized, he keeled over dead in his Coudersport, Pennsylvania home while mixing himself a drink.
For next time: “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” were part of our TV childhood. Their grandsons, Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, recently played the Lorain Palace Theater. Here’s a question that might even stump them: what was Ozzie’s occupation?
Mike Olszewski is a veteran award-winning radio, TV and print journalist and college instructor. Contact him at [email protected].
