Continued from last week:

Robert Crumb and I began early in 1985 to develop a musical accompaniment for the first stage production of R. Crumb Comix at Fort Worth, Texas’ Hip Pocket Theatre. We consulted by telephone between my digs in Fort Worth and his home near Winters, California, and Robert prepared numerous reference dubs from his collection of 78-R.P.M. phonograph records. These, I augmented with musical sources from my own library, plus scattered original compositions. I recruited an orchestra from within guitarist Slim Richey’s and my jazz trio, Diddy Wah Diddy, and from our affiliated string band, the Salt Lick Foundation, with which I had recently completed a string of record albums for Slim’s Ridge Runner/Tex Grass labels.

Band rehearsals commenced in May of 1985, with all concerned forewarned to buck up for a three-hour show scored with what Crumb wanted to be “constant music – just like in those ol’ Hal Roach comedy films.” Yes, and never mind that the Roach pictures (including the Depression years’ Laurel & Hardy and Our Gang series) ran to just 20 or 30 minutes apiece in length. Well, at least there would be an intermission.

So Robert reached Texas on schedule, got settled in, and found the progress agreeable. He warmed especially to the women (consistent with Crumb’s vision) whom director Johnny Simons had cast. Robert took issue with some of the music as sounding “too modernistic – that ’forties swing stuff” (no accounting for taste) but found the score workable overall, enjoying the sound well enough to commandeer a plectrum banjo from Salt Lick’s Lee Thomas and perform as a member of the orchestra on the opening weekend that June. Crumb’s banjo-playing fit right in, evoking memories of Eddie Peabody and the Light Crust Doughboys’ Marvin “Smokey” Montgomery. I had composed one of the show’s tunes, “Save Me a Slice of That,” as a Doughboys pastiche. (more…)

He’s done it all – sword & sorcery, capes & masks and even….erotic comics. Howard Chaykin isn’t shy about his work and he joins ComicMix Radio to talk – and not talk – about what he has coming up in 2008.

Plus we cover:

• The first Steve Ditko critical retrospective is coming

• American Comics gets Doctor Who, old and new

and we enjoy a trip back to when the song mega-comics fan Gene Simmons hated the most was Kiss’ biggest hit.

Yes: she is asking you to Press The Button!

It’s not a secret that I worship Kyle Baker. Perhaps his wife, Liz, is a bigger fan, but that’s debatable. So it’s no surprise that I looked forward to his new series from Image, Special Forces. It’s even less of a surprise that I like it so much.

The surprise is the subject matter — the war in Iraq. We’re nearly five years into this war, and there have been very other few comics about it (notably Rick Veitch’s Army @ Love). I can’t think of another war in the modern media age that hasn’t inspired comics. Wars have been the springboards for some of my favorites in our medium, including Harvey Kurtzman’s Two-Fisted Tales and George Pratt’s Enemy Ace.

Special Forces is hilarious and terrifying. In the tradition of war comics (and movies), it follows a troop of lovable misfits. These are modern misfits, however. Using actual news stories as springboards, Baker casts his unit with the type of people being recruited for this war: felons, the mentally ill, the physically unfit. That’s what makes these forces “special.” And the most special is Zone.

Zone is autistic. He doesn’t look people in the eye. He doesn’t talk. He carries a small plastic toy soldier with him at all times. And he’s a perfect soldier: he follows orders precisely. Nothing stops him from doing what he’s been told to do, not teasing, not pain, not enemy fire.

Zone briefly went to high school with Felon, our narrator. Felon is a beautiful woman with anger issues. She enlisted in the army to avoid a prison term. Felon and Zone are the only two characters to survive the first issue. (more…)