Not too many people know, or bother to know, what Matt Groening was up to before The Simpsons. While media stats argue that The Simpsons, being America's longest running sit-com, is his greatest work, a true comic buff would never agree. As early as 1980, nine years before The Simpsons became a household phenomenon, Matt's cartoon 'Life in Hell' was syndicated by the Los Angeles Reader, and is still carried regularly in 250 weekly newspapers.
While it can be a wee bit hard to get your hands on US dailies in India, the good news is that all these cartoons can be found anthologized in a series of comic books including 'Work is Hell' (which fellow cartoonist Nicole Hollander hailed as the Kama Sutra of employment), 'School is Hell', 'Childhood is Hell', 'The Big Book of Hell', and 'The Huge Book of Hell'. Matt himself is so attached to the series, he said he would "never give up the comic strip. It's my foundation."
One of my friends recently lent me 'Childhood is Hell' and 'Work is Hell', and I can tell you that you can't pay too much for them. So, if you've got a friend or relative coming down from the US, you know exactly what to ask them for.
Matt Groening before The Simpsons
The Ghost Who Walks is back!
Remember the masked man from the Deep Woods who lived in a tree-house, had offices in the Skull Cave, and sought out evil-doers? Well, Euro Books has re-launched Lee Falk's 'Phantom' in India.
Over the past 3 decades, the Phantom has been re-introduced by publishers several times. In terms of format, first, it was the Rs. 2 comic book (remember those good old days when comics would only cost that?); then, it came as a A5-size digest of stories, and then, it disappeared from the scene for a long time. You could only find a dusty copy or two in some corner of the book store, and of course the vendors at train stations always had a few.
With the recent import of superheroes, like X-Men, Spiderman etc. from the likes of Gotham and DC Comics, its hardly surprising that kids today have little respect for mere humans. I'm hoping this latest avatar of Phantom comics changes that a bit. Each of these hard-cover magazine-sized digests has 2 full-length stories. Priced at Rs. 199, the digests come with special sections like 'Legends', which give the reader a peep into some of the Phantom's secrets (the one I bought presented Excalibur, the sword of King Arthur, as one of the Skull Cave's treasures) and articles on various objects associated with the Phantom. The stories, too, seem to be stuff that's not been released earlier in the market. I, for one, had never read 'The Ghost who Died Twice' or 'The Assassination of President Lincoln' earlier. As of now, there are a total of 15 such digests available in the market.
While there seems to have been an effort to modernize the product, I'm sorry to say that there's still a long way to go if it has to keep up with the quality that today's readers have come to expect. The paper and printing quality can easily be better, as can the quality of lamination on the cover. I'm guessing this is a test phase, and if the market laps it up, hopefully there'll be several more titles in the offing.
