I can never get enough Alex Toth. Especially in b&w.
"I'm rewriting this for the umpteenth time, in different ways, yet saying the same thing--that the party's over, kiddies! Since I was born in 1928--and was old enough to applaud the first comic books in the early and mid 1930's, I've witnessed the best and worst of the form from then to now--I loved the medium of the comic book as I did the syndicated comic strip in its countless forms, subjects, treatments--in my time, now in the autumn or winter of my life, my eyes have seen the bad drive out the good, the terminal deterioration and all-but-lost-dead adventure strip--and the fun and magic and delicious innocence and surprises in the comic book--which, unless room is made for such again, will not, cannot, should not survive.
"The ugly, mean, vile, banal, twisted, sick, bloody celebration of torture, rape, cruelty, filth, demonic and sociopolitical psycho-babble--and death--is disgusting stuff to me--and it's out youngest writers/cartoonists/editors cranking out this garbage! Which is sub-anti-human drek, devoid of original thought or of moral, ethical values--it is hopeless fatalism, nihilism, anarchy, pointyheaded anti-everything gibberish--and most of it dares to label itself "adult--for mature readers"--etc., etc.--which is nonsense!
"Much more 'adult and mature' are the stories no one can, or will, write and illustrate about: joy, wonder, love, honor, romance, adventure, delight, ethics, morality, spirituality, humor, wit, intelligence, invention, compassion, trust, respect, duty, character, sacrifice, sentiment, family, discovery, exploration, history, the myriad people, customs, and stories abounding out there in the world--human stories!
"It's just too easy and predictable to grind out incessant repititions of the doom and gloom, post-armageddon bilge, garbage, anti- and non-heroic bumbling 'heroes,' to feed the sickness of its own making--damn how well it may be written or drawn! It's garbage! Created by the young for the younger and youngest readers--who, for 20 years of it, almost two generations now--keep buying it! It's beyond me! I fear for out future--if we're to have one?--if such is "entertainments" for out fathers and leaders of tomorrow! What might their offspring be like, then, I wonder.
"Nope, sorry--I see no future for us, for them, for comics, tv, movies, etc., unless we kick 'sick,' and give kids back their childhood years of innocence, hope, faith, joy, wonder, morals, morale, just plain good clean fun--the 'sick kick' plagues comics everywhere, east to west, from Japan to England to Europe to here--(I don't know about our southern Latin neighbors)--we've had enough of desolation of spirit and shock to our senses. The comic book is, in the hands of today's worst practicioners and prosylitizers of this mind-set, committing suicide! And murder! Of its traditions, roots!
"It cannot stand--
"As it is, it should not!
"A pox on it, and those who uglify children's minds and senses and expectations with their miasmic miserable muck and mayhem!