#them not getting the power and the glory was lampooning THEM

[diet-cokette]

you know i really shouldnt be surprised that some of the worst literature takes ive seen in my life came from deeply fundametalist christians/catholics but god damn yall cant fucking read

[skin-slave]

Me: *eating popcorn* I got an idea. A lampoon of gender panic that clearly shows how ridiculous it is. I'm gonna keep it nonviolent and self-contained, even tho irl ppl who hold those beliefs are a threat to their partner's safety. It'll highlight how irrational it is without deep emotional investment. Trevor's Lover, you stand here. Trevor, you're here. I'll put a note in the tags clarifying that you can eliminate the problem completely via communication. You just act out the bizarre stuff. Aaaaand action!

Trevor's Lover: *is literally just standing there, fully clothed, without a hint of aggression, coercion, force, or manipulation*

Trevor: Omg what if they have a foofoo instead of a feefee? *starts sobbing hysterically* Why is this happening to me? I cannot handle not knowing, and I cannot handle finding out. I swear to cripes, if I choose to look at these genitals and they are not exactly what I assumed they would be, I am gonna call the cops. Where's my pepper spray?

Me: *still eating* See? It's obv not normal or healthy, even when it's a controlled fictional circumstance that's written in a funny way.

TrEvoR's FanS: OP is CANCELLED for a THOUSAND yEARS!!!! But not you, Trevor. You're doing great sweatie. Totally normal. If you have those foofoo vibes, don't even look. Def don't ask. That's unreasonable. Be proactive. Just shoot them directly in the face. Existing near you, potentially with a foofoo, is literally assault. Esp if they forced you to find them attractive, voluntarily ask them for sex, and meet up for the purpose of sex. Hatecrime that rapist. Mutilate the body. Mail the tongue to their mom. If you get caught, go with the gay/trans panic defense. Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss! 💖 This tableau is a demonstration of lesbian power and the glory of womanhood!!!

Me: *calling out as I leave to make more popcorn* Trevor is not a lesbian or a woman! Try again!

I love when monosexuals freak out about the possibility of getting into bed with someone and finding those body parts. I imagine them sloooooowly unzipping a new lover's jeans like they're diffusing a bomb. Relax, Trevor. It's gonna be genitals, not a bear trap.

[justcallmepoppy-blog]

The Path

What is it that we seek within? How do we seek? What will we find there? Is there a road map? Fortunately, there are several such maps. Every world religion and philosophical ideology provides a path for self-inquiry. Let's look at five points upon which virtually all can agree:. 1. First, the path must be universal. Regardless of the religion you choose or which has been chosen for you, the path to the discovery of your essence must not violate or contradict its basic tenets. 2. Second, the path must be experiential. That is, you must be able to find what you seek. We are not interested in blind faith here. We are looking for a method for learning to experience yourself differently, in all your glory, and your learning can't be based on something that someone else tells you. You must feel that your tools are working. Otherwise, you'll either stop using them or you'll collapse into dogmatic reiteration of someone else's beliefs. 3. Third, the path must be alive. Each day, each moment you should derive sustenance from touching the divine within you. It's what Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the famous Buddhist teacher and author called "fresh baked bread." Yesterday's truth isn't enough to sustain you, any more than last year's bread will nourish you today. 4. Fourth, the path must be practical. While cloistering yourself in a monastery is certainly an option if that's what you choose, it's more likely that you'll need to find ways of attaining liberation while simultaneously doing homework, holding a job, raising a family, taking vacations, making dinner, and all the other mundane aspects of existence. 5. Finally, the path must be understandable to your conscious mind. This is not because your conscious mind needs to be involved in the final attainment, but because your mind can be a strong and persistent adversary when it is not comfortable with your choices. If your intellect doesn't view the path as worthy, logical, or practical, you will find it very difficult to get quiet, which is the crux of your work. We find our essence in the space between our thoughts. It's what naturally arises when we cease to uphold our previously erroneous view of who we thought we were. It can't be found in the future, and it can't be found in the past because neither of these exists right now. It's found in the relinquishing of all sense of time, all thought, all identification with our minds. There are many, many ways of reaching this state of mind, some more reliable than others. Understanding that the goal is creating a spacious, quiet mind, you might begin to imagine some possibilities for yourself: perhaps a long walk along a deserted beach or down a wooded trail, or deep absorption in a labor of love like an artistic project, or allowing yourself to get lost in the sound of a rainstorm. Each of these activities has the quality of demanding that we become present, that we have our attention on what's happening in that moment, as opposed to being lost in thought or preoccupation with some past or future event. If we're walking down a path and we find that our mind is engaged in an event not currently happening, we must remind ourselves that we are, in fact, outdoors at that moment. The indoor world we've escaped is not present and must not be allowed to steal our focus from what is. Because our minds are so adept at taking us out of the moment, and since this moment is all there is, and since no true peace, contentment, or liberation can manifest any time but now, we must take advantage of the tools at our disposal for remaining present. Notice the beauty. One of these tools is noticing the beauty around us. Try to give your surroundings more than a passing glance. Drink them in as if they were your nourishment, as indeed they are. Resist the temptation to jump back into your head, and let your senses revel in the enoughness of the moment. Many of us suffer from what I call the "Clark Griswold Syndrome." If you've seen National Lampoon's Vacation, you'll remember Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold, arriving at the Grand Canyon after a series of unfortunate events. He gets out of the car, looks into the abyss, bobs his head up and down for about three seconds, nods and says, "OK kids, let's go!" And off they go. They got nothing from the experience, but, at least they could say they "saw the Grand Canyon!". Extreme weather. Another tool which may help you remain vigilant is to spend time outdoors in extreme, inclement weather. This does two things. First, it forces you to remain present, as you have no choice but to be aware of the sensations acting upon you. Second, it helps you discover the truth of your early childhood programming. When I started hiking onto the frozen lake behind my home at the prompting of a meditation friend, I encountered enormous resistance. A voice in my head kept telling me to go inside or I 'd catch my death of cold. It wasn't long before I realized that it was the voice of my mother disguised as an important rule. As I challenged that rule, I discovered that if I were properly dressed, the cold had no power over me, that I became healthier and hardier rather than sick, and that I was able to develop tremendous equanimity, even joy, in experiencing the cold air on my exercised warm body. Nothing up to that point in my life had ever offered me such a startling, beautiful sense of being absolutely present. Meditation. An important component to seeking our essence is meditation. The practice of mindfulness or Vipassana meditation fits all the criteria we've discussed. You may, like many people, myself included, have a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of meditation. You may be thinking, "I can't meditate. I've tried it before, and I just didn't have the patience." If that's true for you, you're probably expecting meditation to be something other than what it really is. Many people start out thinking that the goal of meditation is to enter an altered state. If they don't enter that state, they feel they've failed in their task of meditation. Their impatience is towards the elusive state they imagine they're supposed to achieve. They get bored and discouraged waiting for it to show up. But, meditation has nothing to do with altered states. There's nothing to wait for, so how can you be impatient? Meditation is simply observing the truth of the moment. Whatever you feel is part of your meditation. There are many meditation techniques, and different ones appeal to different people. They all have one thing in common: the goal of a quiet, focused mind with a connection to a deeper part of ourselves. In a subsequent article, I'll explore meditation in greater detail. For now, make a commitment to seek a form of meditation or mindfulness practice  that suits you, and begin using that tool to bring you closer to your essence.

[libidomechanica]

While yet smell, the higher

And his own Importal roar; while to  gold from the Subject  high? “I am,” quoth her heavy tufts  of Place, he cried, “the wood crossd, had  been he handsome would scarce eventury  window her the saw Menalcas  converse: what Loues in a little, ‘ In Heaven he now almost in  vain, hed wriggle, dissipate the soliloquize  beyond that spoke  not I thing but I forgive! Alas!’ It 

is left Adonis thy cense; myrrh, upon  the was his is ‘ twixt the shade, and still,’ that fond  virgins the orchard-favour with  listend wing casualty,  or from side of Bether  they dancing bushes. O wretch say, fair as  on the Southey, a Dutch made of  Pope and winds bloomiest and they  were to have and the new  Glory of the topic die. 

Yet let this slay, that I have been  me,— Vapors and love report of  her stilence of the spoil  and meat, and for pity and  cold neer our fallyt on it,  yet know it stands the blossoms which  I cannot to tell. and  burn this I lovers Ends. ‘Witness of  courtesy who has die. but little her  of the jetty opera-scene, With  his pedlars,’ Made youth, Lusts eye. 

repairs, another fingers, to  lifts the Storm” grace, and Moment, but  now admiring whats the most fall  appears, to her; to  get, you likely tributary gloomy mother  white liaison of desired  his Mists are not killed on so  little, and leave me patriarch of  which hath a mere Christly ends of a  Courtiers Progress one  of thine and too claspëd hand; even 

and have the fast all make the  Glass gleam; there in one on disdain.  They soul surges the Almight  the scarce to woo thy power  on each murmuring balm, earth oer us?  Go with youth, who had be  the ground his Prayrs, too merry, the  Guard of Wyoming still for  one longed her Lampoons. One that part.  The passions give and all were  are things are like a taste, till I waketh 

down fa with assume the  like them, and one see this festive  Trumps, and with him lint  and my first, when Woman; no foot  roe or Assignation pursue, let early  melancholy see and tree; she could be  asleep but burst heart upon there, pink with  Samian wave light. D without  and clearer to myself is  left his thy mountains no believe, which grows  in his face; let her life nor needs 

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Beast Master, Time Travel, Grey Hawk

Fiction (Easily Distracted): Year’s Best Horror Stories 1976

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV Edited by Gerald W. Page (1976 DAW)

Lifeguard by Arthur Byron Cover:A sharp diamond of a story told in the first-person and saying what needs to be said about youth’s expiring ambitions, the narrow horizon of small town life, summertime, pot, and an uncanny will-o-the-wisp.

Anime (Walker’s Retreat): Where have I seen this before? Oh, only with the Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Marvel, DC, Biohazard/Resident Evil, The Last of Us, and so many other Western corporate properties. There are two key differences between what’s going on with anime and what’s going on with Western entertainment. The first is that the Death Cult doesn’t run Japan’s culture industry, not the way it is in the West. The second is that the entertainment corporations don’t outright hate their customers. So, instead of esoteric Molech worship we have the (by comparison) easier problem of a Brand Fan problem.

Comic Books (Dark Worlds Quarterly): 1975 was the new Golden Age of dinosaur comics with Joe Kubert leading the pack. By some strange coincidence all the dinosaur/jungle guys had names that started with a T (Tarzan, Turok, Tragg) or a K (Korg and Kong). So Tragg and the Sky-Gods, Korg 70,000 BC and Kong the Untamed made their dino comic cover debuts. Skull the Slayer had dinos but not for long. It got weirder with more UFO stuff. Valley of the Dinosaurs was based on a Hanna-Barbera cartoon and like The Land of the Lost (1974-1976) (which didn’t have a comic) was Saturday Morning pandering to the dino lovers.

D&D (Tao DND): The Higher Path of D&D, the one beyond merely killing things and taking away their treasure, is the human experience of pitting Self against that which we do not think should be.  Not my self.  The Player’s Self.  The players are entitled to fight for those causes they want to fight for.  I won’t tell them how to do that; I won’t shame them into fighting for causes I think are right and noble; I won’t clear the road for them.  I won’t judge them for their choices.  I won’t encourage them to believe what I believe and I won’t punish them when they don’t.

Fiction (DMR Books): When you think of literary thieves, who do you think of? Maurice Le Blanc’s sly gentleman thief Arsene Lupin? Richard Stark’s harden, professional Parker? Yet, aside from the crime genre, thievery as an occupation appears most often in sword and sorcery. Thieves as protagonists have a long history in sword and sorcery. This trope probably began in mythology and legend. Prometheus stole fire from the gods. Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. In High Fantasy, Bilbo Baggins was recruited to burgle a dragon. So let’s look at their fictional heritage.

Writing (John C. Wright): For every C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Cordwainer Smith, Gene Wolfe, Walter M. Miller, or Orson Scott Card writing from a Christian perspective, one can list ten men of heathen or secular perspective lauded with the greatest fame our genre can bestow. Instead of Gene Roddenberry making stories to say men cannot be free in utopia or George Lucas saying men must fight their dark side, we now have Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson making stories to say free men are toxic, and that the fight is pointless, for the light offers no more answers than the darkness.

Interview (Superversive SF): Today, we have a treat! An interview with Brian Niemeier, author of Don’t Give Money to People Who Hate You in which he talks about how he came to write this surprise breakout book. 1. How did you come to write this book?

I almost didn’t. My dispositions have always run toward writing fiction, so I initially resisted tackling nonfiction. It was only when several friends, family members, and readers urged me to collect my thoughts on the culture war in a book that I relented.

Pulp Magazines (Don Herron): In Chapter 2 of the 1943 serial Batman — “The Bat’s Cave” — Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred wiles away the time reading the October 1940 issue of Spicy Detective. The “spicy” element should be obvious from the cover art—and from the prim Alfred’s startled expression. The content of the stories lived up to the lascivious suggestion of the cover. But only just.

Horror (Too Much Horror Fiction): When it comes to pulp horror fiction, I don’t think there’s any doubt that “Slime” is one of the perfect gems of the style. Originally published in a 1953 issue of the venerated magazine “Weird Tales,” Joseph Payne Brennan’s 30-odd page tale is rife with all the weaknesses and all the glories of pulp horror in full flower. Brennan overuses words and phrases (“hood of horror” and “black mantle”), utilizes some weak analogies (alien as… some wild planet in a distant galaxy), and his country dialogue makes “Hee-Haw” sound like Olivier reciting the Bard.

Westerns (Western Fiction Review): This time, the author behind the pseudonym of Tabor Evans is James Reasoner and he provides us with a cracking tale. The action comes thick and fast as Longarm searches for the long missing army payroll. From the word go someone is out to stop Longarm getting to Sweetwater Canyon but he battles through. Once there Longarm finds himself in a range war and the canyon is part of the land being fought for.

Cinema (New Iron Age Blogspot): Released in 1982, this movie was a complete flop and only became well-known, and something of a cult classic, when it became ubiquitous on cable throughout the 80s. To kids of my generation, this was one of their early experiences with Sword & Sorcery, and maybe the very first. It established in a lot of kid’s minds what the genre was supposed to be, and it still inspires a lot of affection to this day.

D&D (Dungeon Fantastic): What I like about the systems I’d consider: AD&D – Power level. I like the HP levels. I have a strong dislike for d4 HP thieves and I like d10 fighters better than d8 fighters. – Cleric spells. I like clerics getting spells at level 1, and bonuses for Wisdom are fine with me. I get why from a world-building standpoint the vast majority of clerics being level 1 and not getting spells makes PCs quickly become special . . . but I’d rather have them start with a spell. – I like AC starting at 10, not 9 (but see below.)

Hugos (Emperor Ponders): Some particular trends in genre literature have become obvious during the past few years. One of them is the use of Brobdingnagian titles, a compulsion to write paragraph-long titles, some of whom even give away the plot. I suspect this may have started as a quirky, ironic thing to do, but I don’t think it’s funny unless you are lampooning or referencing some stuffy style like academic papers or writing comedy. And, to be fair, that’s to some extent what this story is doing—referencing, not the comedy.

Anthology (Science fiction fantasy blogspot): Beyond Time: Classic Tales of Time Unwound, edited by Mike Ashley This is one of a number of anthologies in the Science Fiction Classics series published by the British Library, this one (as you may have guessed) dealing with time travel. As usual in this series, there is a long introduction by the editor, supplemented by biographical notes on the authors at the start of each story.

RPG (Grey Hawk Grognard): The thing to remember first in a Greyhawk-setting mass combat is that the AD&D rules are geared towards small, skirmish-level actions. In other words, melee with a small party of adventurers and a relatively small group of enemies and/or monsters. This scale is reflected in the spells, such as animate dead (there’s really no way to have a literal army of skeletons unless you have hundreds of 5th level clerics or 9th level magic-users) and even mass invisibility requires a 14th level magic-user, and such are exceedingly rare in the World of Greyhawk.

History (Didact’s Reach): Legends were forged on that day, such as that of “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc”. Heroes fought to the bitter end, on both sides. Germans opened the gates of Hell itself upon the Allied infantrymen wading ashore through the pounding surf of Omaha Beach, raining shot and shell down on them. Americans and Canadians and British and New Zealanders and many others bayoneted, grenaded, shot, clubbed, and mauled their German opponents to their gruesome deaths.

Pulp Fiction (Rough Edges): Of the many, many series written for the pulps by H. Bedford-Jones, his longest-running featured a fat little Cockney named John Solomon, which ran from 1914 to 1936 and encompassed more than twenty novels and novellas. John Solomon may not seem very impressive at first glance, but he actually runs a far-flung intelligence network and makes a specialty of thwarting all sorts of criminal and espionage schemes around the world. I’ve been aware of this series for years but hadn’t read any of them until recently, when I started at the most logical place, the novel THE GATE OF FAREWELL, which was published originally as a serial in ARGOSY in 1914 and is Solomon’s first appearance.

Sensor Sweep: Beast Master, Time Travel, Grey Hawk published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[therightnewsnetwork]

The Fleeting Glory of Trump Magazine

TRUMP: The Complete Collection, edited by Denis Kitchen, Dark Horse Books, 184 pages, $29.99

Trump—the title of which, I feel compelled to point out, has nothing to do with the current POTUS—was an illustrated satirical magazine edited by Mad founder Harvey Kurtzman and published by Playboy‘s Hugh Hefner. Both men were young, very ambitious, and perhaps a little too idealistic. Thanks partly to a storm of unforeseen business woes that almost destroyed the Playboy empire and partly to Kurtzman and Hefner’s generosity toward their contributors, the publication lasted for only two issues, one released in 1956 and the other in 1957. The result, on display in a new collection edited and annotated by Denis Kitchen, was a tragic might-have-been.

Kurtzman is best known for founding Mad, which started out as a full-color comic book satirizing other comics. As one of only two staff editors at the EC Comics company, Kurtzman was expected to write every word of the titles he edited; prior to Mad he ran the imprint’s war titles, which often featured anti–war messages. Thanks to his obsessive determination to get all his facts straight, he routinely fell into “research holes.” Mad was supposed to be a relatively easy job for him, but he soon started obsessing over it too, especially as he started to run out of comic characters to spoof and began to expand his targets into the worlds of film, TV, advertising, and literature.

Mad was a surprise hit, and it soon attracted attention from outside the marginalized, lowbrow comics world, with Kurtzman becoming a cause célèbre among humorists of all kinds. This, combined with a new industry-wide self-censorship policy (known as the Comics Code) that was threatening EC Comics’ very existence, convinced Kurtzman to ask his publisher, William Gaines, to convert Mad from a kiddie comic to an adult humor magazine. Gaines agreed, and Mad became not just more popular than ever but, eventually, a cultural institution. All this sudden and unexpected attention went to Kurtzman’s head, and he soon began making outrageous demands that the publisher wouldn’t have agreed to under any circumstances, such as 51 percent ownership of Gaines’ own company. But Kurtzman thought he had an ace in the hole: Hugh Hefner.

Like most men of that era, Kurtzman was fascinated by Playboy, with its unprecedented mixture of pornography, high-end production values, and intellectual aspirations (or pretensions, take your pick). And Hefner, who had been an unsuccessful cartoonist, was equally fascinated by what Kurtzman was doing with Mad, specifically in the way he would deconstruct—in a very pre-postmodernist fashion—his targets. Kurtzman’s commercial purpose was simply to mine humor from his subjects, but if in so doing he also revealed some heaping doses of hypocrisy and greed behind the mass media’s messages, then so much the better. (It should be noted here that Kurtzman’s parents were Communists. While he never shared their political beliefs, he certainly was raised to view American culture with a cynical eye.)

This approach appealed to Hefner’s own self-image as an observant Hip Outsider, and the two men were soon conspiring with each other to create a satirical publication that would put all others to shame, sparing no expense in the process.

Content-wise, Trump wasn’t much different than the early “adult” version of Mad that Kurtzman had only just started at EC. Kurtzman also took the cream of EC’s stable of artists with him, primarily the incomparable threesome of Will Elder, Jack Davis, and Wally Wood, as well as a young Al Jaffee. (Wood quickly returned to Mad when he learned he wasn’t allowed to work for both publications, while Davis and Jaffee were welcomed back after Trump folded. Jaffee still works there 60 years later.) What separated Trump from Mad was the former’s determination to be a demonstrably “adult” publication, which meant it included (possibly at Hefner’s insistence) a lot of semi-clad young women in the art; the only nod to modesty was a rule against exposed nipples. Mad, meanwhile, slipped back into appealing to a more adolescent audience. This noticeable difference in the sexual maturity of the respective magazines’ intended readerships was recreated 15 years later with the arrival of National Lampoon.

One highly ambitious feature from the first issue was an elaborate take-off of Life magazine’s illustrated panoramas of various stages of human development over specific time periods. Trump‘s version imagined what archeologists would make of our own culture, a million years in the future, as they study such “art objects” as fire hydrants and coke bottles and marvel over such “fertility goddesses” as Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. Being a fold-out feature, it also teased readers into thinking they were opening a Playboy centerfold by inserting a partial photo of a nude model just as you begin to turn the page.

This feature in particular represents the noticeable difference between Trump and Mad in terms of production. The former was printed on slick magazine paper rather than cheap newsprint, and it featured a lot of full-color art in its interiors—hand-colored art at that, which was unheard-of in comic books up until then. So while Kurtzman was generous with his artists, he also was quite demanding, expecting them to turn in the very best quality work they were capable of. Thus, the otherwise slapdashy (but always excellent) Jack Davis employed a far more time-consuming cross-hatching technique instead of his usual water-color approach, with stunning results.

Even more stunning are the incredibly detailed painted illustrations by Kurtzman’s childhood friend and lifelong collaborator, Will Elder. Their collaborations in the early Mads still stand out as that publication’s most remarkable achievements, and with Trump it was obvious that both men saw this as a golden opportunity to strut their stuff. There’s something almost harrowing in the way they would employ a Sistine Chapel–like effort simply to make fun of, say, Howdy Doody or Coca-Cola, and their work in this collection is worth the cover price alone. But Kurtzman and Elder’s obsessive, laborious approach was also why Trump (like the Kurtzman-era Mad) was rarely completed by deadline time. You have to wonder how two artists with such an it’s-done-when-it’s-done-and-damn-the-distributors attitude wound up working in the world of periodicals to begin with. Such prima donnas are more likely to be fine artists—though it’s unlikely that these two would have been welcomed in that world either.

Kitchen’s collection includes not just the complete run of Trump but also (mostly) unfinished work on what would have been the third issue of the magazine. And there are examples of work in progress from the two existing issues, which serves as a window into Harvey Kurtzman’s perfectionist mind. As was the case with the early Mads, he not only wrote and edited almost every feature but also roughed out and/or laid out each piece in great detail. The artists were expected to remain faithful to these blueprints. His sense of timing and composition is flawless, and has served as a go-to model of sorts for visual satirists ever since. The only shame in all of this is the relative lack of Kurtzman’s own finished art, since he was convinced the public didn’t care for it. (His stock response to anyone who complimented his art was “yeah, you and my mother.”) His drawing style was highly expressive and energetic, and he employed it to great effect in dramatic stories as well as humorous ones.

In a sense, Kurtzman’s entry into the world of Hefner was both the best and the worst thing that ever happened to him. Yes, it resulted in Trump, but the ultimate differences between the two men—one an unflinching realist, the other a peddler of fantasies—were bound to come to a head at some point. Still, they liked and respected each other, and they continued to work together for decades afterward on the long-running Playboy comic Little Annie Fanny. But that aforementioned conflict of sensibilities always hung over this feature, with one man attempting to enlighten the reader while the other was primarily interested in titillating him.

Kurtzman’s later career consisted mainly of various failed or aborted projects. But this never diminished the impact his early work—including Trump—has had on almost everyone in the comedy world ever since, whether they know it or not. He sure has inspired the hell out of me. He is one of America’s all-time greatest artists, and he deserves to be a household name.

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from http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/the-fleeting-glory-of-trump-magazine/

[patriotnewsblogger-blog]

The Fleeting Glory of <em>Trump</em> Magazine

New Post has been published on http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/the-fleeting-glory-of-trump-magazine/

The Fleeting Glory of Trump Magazine

TRUMP: The Complete Collection, edited by Denis Kitchen, Dark Horse Books, 184 pages, $29.99

Trump—the title of which, I feel compelled to point out, has nothing to do with the current POTUS—was an illustrated satirical magazine edited by Mad founder Harvey Kurtzman and published by Playboy‘s Hugh Hefner. Both men were young, very ambitious, and perhaps a little too idealistic. Thanks partly to a storm of unforeseen business woes that almost destroyed the Playboy empire and partly to Kurtzman and Hefner’s generosity toward their contributors, the publication lasted for only two issues, one released in 1956 and the other in 1957. The result, on display in a new collection edited and annotated by Denis Kitchen, was a tragic might-have-been.

Kurtzman is best known for founding Mad, which started out as a full-color comic book satirizing other comics. As one of only two staff editors at the EC Comics company, Kurtzman was expected to write every word of the titles he edited; prior to Mad he ran the imprint’s war titles, which often featured anti–war messages. Thanks to his obsessive determination to get all his facts straight, he routinely fell into “research holes.” Mad was supposed to be a relatively easy job for him, but he soon started obsessing over it too, especially as he started to run out of comic characters to spoof and began to expand his targets into the worlds of film, TV, advertising, and literature.

Mad was a surprise hit, and it soon attracted attention from outside the marginalized, lowbrow comics world, with Kurtzman becoming a cause célèbre among humorists of all kinds. This, combined with a new industry-wide self-censorship policy (known as the Comics Code) that was threatening EC Comics’ very existence, convinced Kurtzman to ask his publisher, William Gaines, to convert Mad from a kiddie comic to an adult humor magazine. Gaines agreed, and Mad became not just more popular than ever but, eventually, a cultural institution. All this sudden and unexpected attention went to Kurtzman’s head, and he soon began making outrageous demands that the publisher wouldn’t have agreed to under any circumstances, such as 51 percent ownership of Gaines’ own company. But Kurtzman thought he had an ace in the hole: Hugh Hefner.

Like most men of that era, Kurtzman was fascinated by Playboy, with its unprecedented mixture of pornography, high-end production values, and intellectual aspirations (or pretensions, take your pick). And Hefner, who had been an unsuccessful cartoonist, was equally fascinated by what Kurtzman was doing with Mad, specifically in the way he would deconstruct—in a very pre-postmodernist fashion—his targets. Kurtzman’s commercial purpose was simply to mine humor from his subjects, but if in so doing he also revealed some heaping doses of hypocrisy and greed behind the mass media’s messages, then so much the better. (It should be noted here that Kurtzman’s parents were Communists. While he never shared their political beliefs, he certainly was raised to view American culture with a cynical eye.)

This approach appealed to Hefner’s own self-image as an observant Hip Outsider, and the two men were soon conspiring with each other to create a satirical publication that would put all others to shame, sparing no expense in the process.

Content-wise, Trump wasn’t much different than the early “adult” version of Mad that Kurtzman had only just started at EC. Kurtzman also took the cream of EC’s stable of artists with him, primarily the incomparable threesome of Will Elder, Jack Davis, and Wally Wood, as well as a young Al Jaffee. (Wood quickly returned to Mad when he learned he wasn’t allowed to work for both publications, while Davis and Jaffee were welcomed back after Trump folded. Jaffee still works there 60 years later.) What separated Trump from Mad was the former’s determination to be a demonstrably “adult” publication, which meant it included (possibly at Hefner’s insistence) a lot of semi-clad young women in the art; the only nod to modesty was a rule against exposed nipples. Mad, meanwhile, slipped back into appealing to a more adolescent audience. This noticeable difference in the sexual maturity of the respective magazines’ intended readerships was recreated 15 years later with the arrival of National Lampoon.

One highly ambitious feature from the first issue was an elaborate take-off of Life magazine’s illustrated panoramas of various stages of human development over specific time periods. Trump‘s version imagined what archeologists would make of our own culture, a million years in the future, as they study such “art objects” as fire hydrants and coke bottles and marvel over such “fertility goddesses” as Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. Being a fold-out feature, it also teased readers into thinking they were opening a Playboy centerfold by inserting a partial photo of a nude model just as you begin to turn the page.

This feature in particular represents the noticeable difference between Trump and Mad in terms of production. The former was printed on slick magazine paper rather than cheap newsprint, and it featured a lot of full-color art in its interiors—hand-colored art at that, which was unheard-of in comic books up until then. So while Kurtzman was generous with his artists, he also was quite demanding, expecting them to turn in the very best quality work they were capable of. Thus, the otherwise slapdashy (but always excellent) Jack Davis employed a far more time-consuming cross-hatching technique instead of his usual water-color approach, with stunning results.

Even more stunning are the incredibly detailed painted illustrations by Kurtzman’s childhood friend and lifelong collaborator, Will Elder. Their collaborations in the early Mads still stand out as that publication’s most remarkable achievements, and with Trump it was obvious that both men saw this as a golden opportunity to strut their stuff. There’s something almost harrowing in the way they would employ a Sistine Chapel–like effort simply to make fun of, say, Howdy Doody or Coca-Cola, and their work in this collection is worth the cover price alone. But Kurtzman and Elder’s obsessive, laborious approach was also why Trump (like the Kurtzman-era Mad) was rarely completed by deadline time. You have to wonder how two artists with such an it’s-done-when-it’s-done-and-damn-the-distributors attitude wound up working in the world of periodicals to begin with. Such prima donnas are more likely to be fine artists—though it’s unlikely that these two would have been welcomed in that world either.

Kitchen’s collection includes not just the complete run of Trump but also (mostly) unfinished work on what would have been the third issue of the magazine. And there are examples of work in progress from the two existing issues, which serves as a window into Harvey Kurtzman’s perfectionist mind. As was the case with the early Mads, he not only wrote and edited almost every feature but also roughed out and/or laid out each piece in great detail. The artists were expected to remain faithful to these blueprints. His sense of timing and composition is flawless, and has served as a go-to model of sorts for visual satirists ever since. The only shame in all of this is the relative lack of Kurtzman’s own finished art, since he was convinced the public didn’t care for it. (His stock response to anyone who complimented his art was “yeah, you and my mother.”) His drawing style was highly expressive and energetic, and he employed it to great effect in dramatic stories as well as humorous ones.

In a sense, Kurtzman’s entry into the world of Hefner was both the best and the worst thing that ever happened to him. Yes, it resulted in Trump, but the ultimate differences between the two men—one an unflinching realist, the other a peddler of fantasies—were bound to come to a head at some point. Still, they liked and respected each other, and they continued to work together for decades afterward on the long-running Playboy comic Little Annie Fanny. But that aforementioned conflict of sensibilities always hung over this feature, with one man attempting to enlighten the reader while the other was primarily interested in titillating him.

Kurtzman’s later career consisted mainly of various failed or aborted projects. But this never diminished the impact his early work—including Trump—has had on almost everyone in the comedy world ever since, whether they know it or not. He sure has inspired the hell out of me. He is one of America’s all-time greatest artists, and he deserves to be a household name.

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MAD DOGS AND EXPLORERS

There have been explorers throughout history — but for some reason when we think of restless, obsessive, sweat-drenched souls wandering exotic lands in search of something that’s lost deep inside themselves, we always think first of Englishmen. 

British explorer Percy Fawcett traveled to the Amazon in search of a lost civilization, as chronicled in this week’s release The Lost City of Z.  Although we could have easily focused solely on Brits, we decided it would be fun to change it up this week by throwing in a few foreign nationals.     

    THE LOST CITY OF Z (2017)

New York-centric director James Gray ventured far beyond the five boroughs with this film based on the book by New Yorker writer David Grann.   It’s loosely based on the astonishing true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), who journeys into the Amazon at the dawn of the 20th century and discovers evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilization that may have once inhabited the region.

Despite being ridiculed by the scientific establishment, who regard the indigenous peoples as “savages,” the determined Fawcett – supported by his devoted wife (Sienna Miller), son (Tom Holland) and aide de camp (Robert Pattinson) – returns time and again to his beloved jungle in an attempt to prove his case, until finally disappearing with his son in 1925.

Fawcett received one of the Royal Geographical Society’s highest medals for his work charting and exploring unknown territory in South America – but his fervent belief in a lost civilization somewhere in the Amazonian jungle was still regarded with extreme skepticism by many members.

      LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)

David Lean’s epic follows the the true-life experiences of Arabist adventurer T.E. Lawrence, better known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia.

A young, idealistic British officer in WWI, Lawrence (Peter O’Toole in his break out role) is assigned to the camp of Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), an Arab tribal chieftain and leader in a revolt against the Turks.

In a series of brilliant tactical maneuvers, Lawrence leads fifty of Feisal’s men in a tortured three-week crossing of the Nefud Desert to attack the strategic Turkish-held port of Aqaba. And following his successful raids against Turkish troops and trains, Lawrence’s triumphant leadership and unyielding courage gain him god-like status among his Arab comrades.

Screenwriters Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson used T. E. Lawrence’s own self-published memoir The Seven Pillars of Wisdom as a source.

    SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC (1948)

Charles Frend directed this 1950’s Technicolor hit.  Robert Falcon Scott (John Mills) was determined be the first man to reach the South Pole.  His journey starts off well, with three alternative modes of transportation — dogs, ponies and snow tractors.

Scott becomes increasingly concerned about the health of two of his men—Evans, who has a deep cut on his hand, and Oates, whose foot is frostbitten.  Evans dies and is buried under the snow.  Then realizing that his condition is slowing the team down, Oates sacrifices himself by walking out of the tent into a blizzard to his death, leaving with a  casual “I’m just going outside and may be away some time.”

The rest of the team are eventually trapped in their tent by a blizzard and die just 11 miles short of a supply depot.  Scott leaves behind the famous “I do not regret this journey…” entry in his diary.  The film is based on the true story and inspired by footage the expedition shot on the actual journey.

If all the firm-jawed heroism here is getting too much to bear, check out Monty Python’s lampoon “Scott of the Sahara” –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=152tLmGkgZY

    THE ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO (1938)

 John Ford directed this lavish adventure classic chronicling the exploits of the 13th-century explorer, played here by Gary Cooper. Accompanied by  his assistant, Binguccio (Ernest Truex) Marco endures shipwrecks, terrible sandstorms, and other natural disasters as he makes his way to China.

Once there, he is taken to the exotic court of Kublai Khan where Marco falls in love with the beautiful Princess Kukachin (played by Norwegian actress Sigrid Gurie).  The emperor’s adviser has other plans for the princess; plotting to overthrow the emperor, he banishes Marco.

Marco meets a bandit and talks the thief into helping him invade Peking to save Khan. A massive cavalry attack is launched against the great walled city and Polo vanquishes the defenders using his new invention — gun powder — and freeing the captured Princess. A young Lana Turner played one of the princess’ handmaidens.

Fantastical and absurdly racist by today’s standards (all actors are white, and even their accents are all over the map), the movie is worth watching as a swash-buckler in the Robin Hood vein and a monumental testament to the subjectivity of historical fiction .

    MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON (1990)

Director Bob Rafelson fulfilled a lifelong dream when he finally received backing to complete Mountains of the Moon. The film recreates the adventures of 19th century visionaries Sir Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin) and John Henning Speke (Iain Glen).

The heart of the film is the effort by Burton and Speke to discover the true source of the Nile river. This occurs well into the film, after several torturous scenes involving the injuries sustained by the protagonists during other expeditions — and the growing friendship that results.

Here at The Thread we’re admirers of both Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces) and Burton (who successfully impersonated a Muslim to circumambulate the Kaaba).  While the ultimate Burton film is yet to be made, Mountains is worthwhile for the rapport between its stars and the brilliant, sweeping cinematography of Roger Deakins.

    AGUIRRE – THE WRATH OF GOD (1972)

 As we researched this post, many sources agreed on one thing – if you’re going to get anywhere in the explorer business, it helps to be at least a little crazy.  The same may be true of the filmmakers who chronicle them.

The most famed and well-regarded collaboration between New German Cinema director Werner Herzog and his frequent leading man, Klaus Kinski, this epic historical drama was legendary for the difficulty of its on-location filming and the zealous obsession of Kinski in the title role.

Exhausted and near failure in its quest for riches, the 1650-51 expedition of Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repulles) bogs down in the impenetrable jungles of Peru. As a last-ditch effort to locate treasure, Pizarro orders a party to scout ahead for signs of El Dorado, the fabled seven cities of gold.

Traveling by river raft, the explorers are besieged by hostile natives, disease, starvation and treacherous waters. Crazed with greed and power, Aguirre takes over the enterprise, slaughtering anyone that opposes him. Nature and Aguirre’s own unquenchable thirst for glory render him insane, in charge of nothing but a raft of corpses and chattering monkeys.

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes  (German title) was based on the real-life journals of a priest, Brother Gaspar de Carvajal (played in the film by Spanish actor Del Negro), who accompanied Pizarro on his ill-fated mission.

            “Jungles and deserts are at the extreme ends of the landscapes this planet has to offer, and both have enormous visual force. They also both hit back at idiots like me who challenge them by wanting to make films there.”    -Werner Herzog in A Guide For The Perplexed.

MAD DOGS AND EXPLORERS was originally published on FollowTheThread