Drawn and Quarterly publishing is doing mankind a service with their John Stanley Library imprint. There goal seems to be to publish all of John Stanley’s non-Little Lulu work for Dell Comics in the 50s and 60s. This third volume is a gem. It’s Thirteen Going On Eighteen; Stanley’s teen comic aimed at the Archie audience.

This generous volume presents the first nine issues of the series. The first two issues are drawn by Tony Tallarico and are just fine. But with the thrid issue, Stanley takes on the art chores himself and the shift in quality is meteoric. Unlike Archie and his gang, the characters in Thirteen… are drawn from real life. Val is the lead of the book and she is self-centered, over-dramatic, boy-crazy and manipulative. In other words, a teen-aged girl. Her best friend is Judy who is the more pragmatic of the pair. Where Val is a pure girly-girl, Judy is more like one of the boys and less concerned with her appearance than in proving her strength and independence.

They both live in the same kind of con-urban or small-town environment that Lulu resides in. In fact, you half expect them to run into Tubby around one of the corners in the nameless town they live in. They both attend school but that aspect of their lives is barely presented. The stories are set more around Val’s dating life and the complications (that she created herself) of balancing one boyfriend, the picture perfect Paul Vayne, with another, next-door neighbor

The series features all of John Stanley’s trademarks of seamless plotting, deft characterization, sparkling dialogue and the ability to build a series of cascading events creating a grand farce. He came up with a winning format of a central story or theme for each issue. The short stories and vignettes would all deal with that through story usually featuring Val as the central figure.

The characters are vivid and likeable and, most of all, honestly portrayed. There’s nothing contrived about their actions or motivations. Though light and breezy the stories are grounded  in reality. When Val and her big sister Evie have conversations they ring true. Stanley perfectly creates distinct voices for each character down to phrasing and vocabulary. The dialogue is crisp and masterful and Stanley infuses his lines with varying tones of sarcasm, credulity, dismay and delight.

The failure of this series to run beyond 24 issues is probably its own sophistication. The audience for Archie, Betty, Jughead and the gang are mostly tweenie girls who enjoy reading about kids slightly older tan themselves involved in harmless infatuations and cut and paste plotting. Thirteen… presents more of the heartache while at the same time mocking teenage angst. It’s not what the intended audience was looking for. This apsect and Dell’s spotty publication schedule for the title spelt its doom.

Worth mentioning are the Judy Jr stories that appear as back-ups or half-pagers throughout Thirteen… Judy Jr seems to be Val’s best friend Judy as a child. Each story follows the same structure with Judy Jr bullying and tormenting neighbor boy Jimmy Fuzzi. Poor Jimmy does whatever he can to avoid these encounters but Judy Jr always finds a way through his defenses. The secret lives of children are very much the theme here with no one but the two main characters aware of the one-sided conflict between them. Jimmy’s mother seems unaware that he is being tormented daily by the neighbor girl and Judy Jr seems to exist without parental supervision of any kind. This is territory never explored by Lulu and Tubby.

A big thanks to D&Q for putting these books togetther. They’ve gone through the back-issue bins and picked out the forgotten plums for us. I hope they keep it up. I really want to see what Stanley did with Woody Woodpecker.

Released last year, Reynold Brown: My Life in Pictures is the second book from The Illustrated Press and a fine follow-up to their Norman Saunders book.  Like their previous book this one is an oversized hardcover crammed with large images displaying work from the full span of Brown career from pulps to movie poster work to his own fine art and landscapes. And the list price of $39.95 is an absolute steal.

Brown created what seems like an endless output of iconic movie posters from The Creature From the Black Lagoon to John Wayne’s Alamo. You may not know his name but I can promise you that you’ve seen his work. Many of the pieces in this book were either new to me or were peices I was familiar with but never realized they were done by Reynold Brown.

From the perfectly captured likenesses to the rich detail and animated figures, the work is unforgettbale and set the standard for posters throughout the 50s and early 60s. I can recall many of these images so well from standing in the lobby of the Waverly Theater and staring holes in the posters on display. In a lot of cases, the posters were better than the movies. In truth, I don’t think any movie could live up ot the promise of posters like the one for War Gods of the Deep or a turkey like this one:

This is one to be treasured and long overdue. I wish Illustreted Press the very best of luck with these ventures.

HANNIE CAULDER (1971)

This UK-produced Euro-western is pure exploitation. A barely-dressed Raquel Welch roams the west (as filmed in Almyra, Spain) searching for the saddle-tramps that killed her husband and raped her.  The bad guys in question are Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam and Strother Martin. Nuff said. She is aided along the way by master gunslinger Robert Culp and gunsmith Christopher Lee(!). Culp is cool and effective and wears a gun-fighting holster rig that is my favorite in filmdom. And Raquel Welch is, as I said before, barely-dressed.

THE LAST HUNT (1956)

Written and directed by Richard Brooks (THE PROFESSIONALS) and starring Stewart Granger, Robert Taylor and Russ Tamblyn. Taylor shows he had talent that ran deeper than his usual matinee idol roles would suggest. He plays a psychotic buffalo hunter more bent on the destruction of starving the Sioux to extinction than in selling hides. Granger and Tamblyn are the unlucky buff hunters he chooses to partner with. Dark and brooding with a tremendous rising tension. A great entry into the subgenre of 50’s psychological westerns.

THE BIG SKY (1952)

The great Howard Hawks directs this epic adventure of the early west as a group of frontiersman travel the Missouri River to its source. Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin and the always reliable Arthur Hunnicut are the intrepid travelers who battle animals, weather and pesky redskins all the way to the Rockies. Hawks was a master storyteller and here he has one hell of a story to tell.

ULZANA’S RAID (1972)

The last true cavalry western I can think of. Burt Lancaster plays a grizzled army scout at odds with arrogant young West Pointer Bruce Davison. But Apacheria is no place to be squabbling. A disastrous mounted mission to return vicious war chief Ulzana to the reservation. Robert Aldrich capably directs the bloody mess that ensues.

 A THUNDER OF DRUMS (1961)

Another great (but forgotten) cavalry western with a screenplay by James Warner Bellah based on his novel. Bellah was a best-selling author in the 40s and 50s with a series of novels about the Indian Wars of the Southwest.  John Ford’s great cavalry trilogy (RIO GRANCE, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON and FORT APACHE) are all based on Bellah stories. This one is a strong entry as well with Richard Boone as the commander who is trying to deal with troubled officer George Hamilton while in danger of an Apache uprising. Charles Bronson, Slim Pickens and Arthur O’Connell also star.

FORT DOBBS (1958)

Clint Walker became a TV star with his hit series Cheyenne. This lead to a series of starring roles in a string of solid westerns. Gordon Douglas directs (as he did in the Walker and Roger Moore western GOLD OF THE SEVEN SAINTS) this no-frills action western that moves briskly with lots of action and suspense. Virginia Mayo is the frontier femme fatale and Brian Keith is in his usual fine form as the snake-shifty and dangerous bad guy.

RIO CONCHOS (1964)

Richard Boone stars as a washed-up Us Army officer on a secret mission to Mexico to stop an insurrection led by a mad ex-Confederate colonel (played by Edmund O’Brien). Boone relishes his role as a ne’er-do-well drunk who’s still a badass. Another Gordon Douglas entry and one of the first American westerns to ride the same nihilistic trail that the Italian directors would trod.

THE BIG GUNDOWN (1966)

All of the great spaghetti westerns are available on DVD except this one.  Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian star in this Italian actioner that captures everything that makes this subgenre work. Cool heroes, a scheming but charming bandido, bleak locations and blink-and-you-miss-it gun action. The scene in the cornfield is legendary with spaghetti fans. Sergio Sollima was a talented director who stands with Leone and Corbucci (the other Sergios) to genre fans. Curiously, the sequel (RUN, MAN, RUN) is on DVD and is also a great flick.

THE LAST HARD MEN (1976)

The last mean western in a decade of mean westerns (CHATO’S LAND, LAWMAN, HUNTING PARTY). Charlton Heston and James Coburn. A group of convicts led by Coburn escape prison and abduct lawman Heston’s daughter (Barbara Hershey). Coburn and Heston have a burning hatred for one another that is fanned to an inferno in this brutally violent western set in the early 20^th Century.

WELCOME TO HARD TIMES (1967)

Henry Fonda stars in this grim western about a town virtually abandoned after a murderous raid by outlaws. This one explores Stephen Crane territory by exploring the realities of a cast of characters left to die alone and unfulfilled in an empty wilderness. A real who’s who of western character actors blows through town. Warren Oates, Royal Dano, Edgar Buchanan, Lon Chaney Jr, Aldo Ray, John Anderson and Denver Pyle. Burt Kennedy directs.

My buddy Graham has been working on this new web comic for quite some time. He brings his tremendous talent and sharp wit to this charming and infectious humor strip.  It’s funny stuff with a great cast and I’m sure he’s going to find so much success with it that he’ll no longer return my phone calls.

Check it out. And you d’versers will find the premiere strip to deal with a familiar theme.

http://sunshinestatecomics.com/