Governments sometimes produce comic books for propaganda or educational purposes. "Confidencias de un Senderista" is an example of this genre. (According to Google Translate, that means "Confessions of a Hiker"). It was a 37-page comic book produced by the Peruvian government in 1989 and handed out in shantytowns around Lima in order to inform people about the violent tactics of the
Shining Path. Reportedly the comic book met with "mixed reactions."
If you read Spanish, you can check out the entire comic book over at
scribd.com.
The image above is the first cover from one of the more oddball comics firms of the 1970s,
Skywald Publications.
You can read the whole of issue number one of
Nightmare here, at the Internet Archive, which also features several other full comics from Skywald.
In the mid-1960s, when I was in elementary school, I had a subscription to
HUMPTY DUMPTY MAGAZINE. A very weird comic strip therein was titled "Twinkle, The Star That Came Down From Heaven." (Seen above, drawn by Jerry Smath, and courtesy of the
Flickr stream of Glen Mullaly.) Even as a kid, I knew it was strange. A living, sentient star who manifested on Earth in a bipolar costume and kept his face-equipped iconic star head? And did he come from the celestial heaven or the Christian Heaven? Far out!
Little did I know until recently that "Twink" had earlier adventures in the 1940s, in the pages of CALLING ALL KIDS, that were even more bizarre in their fashion. Unfortunately, no information remains about the writer and/or artist who was crazed enough to invent Twinkle.
You can read
several issues here.
This issue appears to be Twink's
origin story.
I love those giant railroad engineer/welder's gloves he wears in his 1940s incarnation.
Yesterday, Saturday April 6, I was privileged to interview Bill Griffith, longtime weirdo and creator of Zippy the Pinhead (along with so many other great comics) at the MOCCA Fest in NYC. Here's Bill at the Fantagraphics table at MOCCA, showing off the newest Zippy collection, now available thru the link at the sidebar here.
And here we are onstage. (Photo by Phil Merkel.)
Category: Slavery, Bondage and Indenture, Comics, Fetishes, 1950's