At last, the truth can be told

If memory serves, this was one of the possibilities floated out by me and my buddies back in the summer of '77. (courtesy The Onion): "Burned Lower Half Of Mort's Face Revealed In 'Bazooka Joe' Stunner""

"Bazooka Joe has always been about mankind's search for meaning in a world marked by pain," said staff artist Martin Shore, who claimed that the idea for Mort first came to Gelman after he watched entire villages burn to the ground in the Philippines. "Sure, the sight of Mort's charred and blackened jaw may shock some of our readers, but maybe they should be shocked. Maybe it's time they woke up and realized the true, unrelenting nightmare that is our very existence."

Added Shore, "If they don't like it, they can buy another fruit-flavored gum."

RIP Rudy Ray (aka: Dolemite, the Avenging Disco Godfather et al.)

First, it was Mr.Blackwell. Now comes news that another pop culture icon my fast receding youth ( I turn 40 next month) has passed. I just heard that the great Rudy Ray Moore is now the late, great Rudy Ray Moore. The man behind such improbably durable movies as Dolemite, Petey Wheatstraw the Devil's Son-In-Law and Avenging Disco Godfather (my gateway drug to his bizarro oeuvre), Moore was a singular creation of the 1970s.


Equal parts sex symbol, stand-up comedian, MC, auteur, aspiring actor, anti-drug crusader and African American agitator, it's a good bet that Rudy Ray's movies seemed as strange to black audiences as they did to white. Riding the polyester coattails of Melvin Van Peebles breakout 1971 film Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song, Moore unabashedly embraced the "Blaxploitation" genre like no other before or since.

While the producers behind such blockbuster studio films as Shaft strove to duplicate some of the seriousness of Pebbles' success, Moore would have none of it. He took the basic Angry Black Man premise of the genre and exploded it in a mash-up of soft-core pornography, profanity, slapstick comedy and badly choreographed kung-fu. As you can expect, this was manna to my 17-year-old self. (He also made albums!)


I first came across RRM's films in the late 1980s in a Jumbo Video in my hometown of Ottawa. Having already watched the entire Shaft (including the under-rated Shaft in Africa) and Superfly series, my friend Glenn Sheskay and I were aching for a new fix. That's when we discovered the "Super Action" racks at the local video superstore. I'm not sure how - or why - they came into possession of them, but they had every Rudy Ray Moore film ever made. I vividly remember watching Avenging Disco Godfather for the first time. I completely lost my shit: The movie is a gonzo combination of goofball comedy, rudimentary rapping, and brutal violence (racist cops and hoodlums are killed without mercy). In quick order it melted my brain and moved my heart.

We tried our best to spread the word about Moore's legacy, but our friends were likely worn out with the results of our increasingly strange cultural excavations (or they were too busy smoking dope and having sex. "Losers"!). More than a decade later I was shocked to witness a renaissance of sorts for Mr. Moore; one that culminated in me meeting the man himself at a showcase of his work in Montreal in 1999. He was in full-on Dolemite mode, telling off-colour sex jokes in front of a crowd of university kids (many of whom left in disgust), while hawking flimsy back-scratchers with his logo on them (he had hired a flunkie to actually walk around the theater to sell them). I only wish he had been selling this great onesie at the time:



It was a moment of affirmation -- at least for me -- to see the 71-year-old Moore up there, using his moment in the sun to hype his latest film. A showman to the end.

Sure wish i would have bought one of those back-scratchers though.......

Done and gone, like dinner

Yes, I have been horribly remiss in keeping up this blog. But I have a good reason, really. It's all Doug Wright's fault, see. First, it was the 2008 Doug Wright Awards, which I am the director of and the host. When I wasn't doing that, I was busy finishing up my part of the upcoming book The Collected Doug Wright: Canada's Master Cartoonist.

The first volume of this retrospective look at the artist's life is due to hit shelves next Spring, and for much of the past year (longer if you include the months of research) most of my free time and holidays have been consumed with writing what I hope is the definitive take on Wright's life and art. Anyway, I'm happy to report that the final book is being sent to the printer later today. This piece of art from a 1950s Christmas card kind of sums up how i feel right about now:


It's been a long process, and an eye-opener for me in terms of the publishing process. It's a laborious, back-breaking job getting a 200-page plus book in shape and I'm glad it's not my . I mean, how can any right-thinking person (ie. Chris Oliveros) feel like they can do Seth's amazing design justice, not to mention Wright himself?

Luckily, he is the right man for the job. I've seen a layout for the book, and what can I say: it's eye-popping. Seth has outdone himself, with a classy (duh!) design that both honours Wright's work and frames it in a way I think newer readers will embrace. So, here's to Doug, and hopefully the beginning of a mini-renaissance for his work. (below is a sample strip that kind of sums up what was so great about the strip: that combination of anger, frustration and, well, love.)

All hail Pigskin Peters!!!

So, for those of you who were unable to attend Friday's Doug Wright Awards at the Toronto Reference Library, one of the standouts of the evening was the unveiling of our latest award category; the Pigskin Peters Annual Award for Nominally Narrative Canadian Cartooning (P.P.A.A.N.N.C.C.) or, as I like to call it (because my every breath is precious) the Pigskin Peters Award.

The great Canadian cartoonist Seth devised and designed the award itself, which honours the best in non-traditional or experimental Canadian comics. As the audience heard, the award itself is a derby hat (or bowler depending on your take on these) that is based on the hat worn by the great Canadian comic strip character Pigskin Peters. Yes, that Pigskin Peters. He of the seminal Canadian comic strip Birdseye Center which was drawn from about 1920 until 1948 by Jimmy Frise (and, for 20 years after his death, by none other than Doug Wright himself).

Anyways - Julie Morstad won the inaugural P.P.A.A.N.N.C.C. for her fine, dark little book Milk Teeth and will soon be receiving a trim derby hat fit to her head. But, Seth being Seth, there's much more to it than that.

The award comes with a custom-made pin featuring Mr. Peters himself:



As well, it comes packed in a box decorated with custom stickers:


Which, once opened, features a Birdseye Center strip inside that gives the owner an idea of what kind of a guy Peters was:


And I didn't even get to talk about the plaque which features a chrome peg that you can use to display the hat for all to see. I probably went a little overboard in my appreciation of Seth's work on this at the event itself, but goddamn! That man never misses a detail!

When he suggested the award last year, I was personally a little puzzled by it. But when I saw the final result, I was instantly won over. Here's a full set of pics for the curious.

(Ceremony pics, and party pics to come!)

Later - Brad M.