Still Alive and Kicking

Rob Hanes Adventures Continues to Thrive in a Shifting Environment for Small Press Comics

For Immediate Release

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This summer, issue 12 of Rob Hanes Adventures from WCG Comics is scheduled for release. By most measures, more than 16 issues and a trade paperback published since 1994—which encompasses an earlier series published under a different name—may not appear to be particularly prolific for a comic-book series. But with Rob Hanes Adventures, writer-artist Randy Reynaldo has garnered a small but loyal following for his longevity and steady commitment in a field where so many titles from small independent publishers seem to quietly fade away after only a few issues (if even that) and great fanfare.

With classic adventure strips like Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates and Will Eisner’s Spirit enjoying a resurgence of interest among comics fans through definitive collections—and with past masters of the form like Roy Crane (Wash Tubbs and Buz Sawyer) and Alex Toth (Bravo for Adventure) being rediscovered by a new generation of fans for their work in the adventure strip genre—the time seems right for comic-book readers to take a fresh look at Reynaldo’s long-running series, which comics historian and columnist R.C. Harvey has called “one of the industry’s quietest treasures.”

Initially inspired by the pioneering adventure work of Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates and Will Eisner’s Spirit, Reynaldo created Rob Hanes Adventures to bring a fresh, modern-day spin to the classic adventure serial strip. Fans and critics have described Rob Hanes Adventures as “Indiana Jones meets Jonny Quest,” and Reynaldo has been credited with helping to keep the classic adventure strip tradition alive.

Because of this, Reynaldo has gained a strong following among his fellow industry professionals. Comics veteran Kurt Busiek, a fan of the series from the very beginning, says, “Randy has done a great job of keeping alive the legacy of sophisticated high adventure that artists like Milton Caniff and Alex Toth created and perfected in comics. And he’s managed to do it by developing his own style and voice, and by keeping it fresh and modern, without making it feel or look old fashioned or out of touch.”

“When I came across reprints of classic comics like Terry and the Pirates that were set in the ‘real’ world, I wished there was something like it set in the present day,” says Reynaldo. “So I set out to do one myself. Like a lot of cartoonists, I’m doing the kind of comics I want to read myself.”

When he first began, the independent comics movement and direct market had just begun, and the black-and-white independent publishing movement was in full swing. He has weathered an industry that has experienced a bust in the black-and-white comics boom, the rise of alternative publishers like Image, the consolidation of the comics distribution network, and the emergence of the Web as an important new venue for distributing and presenting comics.

Through it all, Reynaldo has continued to publish Rob Hanes Adventures on a schedule that now averages about an issue a year. Reynaldo acknowledges that such a release schedule is not conducive to building momentum in what primarily is a periodical market where readers expect fresh material on a frequent, regular basis before moving to something else. Partly in recognition of this release schedule, every issue is self-contained so readers are never left hanging between issues. Nevertheless, Reynaldo has found an audience, as well as respect and encouragement from many quarters in the industry, including fellow professionals, for continuing the series.

Reynaldo admits that new technologies, which include print-on-demand publishing and the Web, have helped him and other small publishers remain viable. They have opened new channels of distribution and promotion; on the downside, of course, is that the competition for attention is intense.

Reynaldo’s work has evolved over time and he says he believes he’s hit a groove. Early stories in the series were much more adventure and action-oriented, and there were attempts at more serious serious drama and characterization. More recently, however, Reynaldo has begun to show a lighter touch that should serve to distinguish the series further. Issue 10, for example, was a straight action-comedy; a reviewer recently noted that “this particular issue had some nice light-hearted moments in it and the everyman side of [the character] plays well when Reynaldo uses it to comedic effect.” While Reynaldo says this is partly natural evolution, he admits it’s also by design.

“I always ultimately envisioned the series along the same lines as Will Eisner’s Spirit, where he mixed things up every week, going from straight adventure to high comedy in a heartbeat,” he says. “I've come to recognize that I'm better suited to a serio-comic approach, keeping things light and jaunty rather than to try and do straight serious ‘action-drama.’ And I’ve finally begun to tackle many of the stories that were sitting on the shelf until I felt the series was better established so that I could take it more to left field once readers were comfortable with the series.”

Issue 12, due in July, will continue in this vein, when Rob gets stranded on a desert island—but the story take a slight left turn at the end which he hopes readers will enjoy.

Due next from Reynaldo is a long-anticipated trade paperback collection that will begin to collect the series in its entirety. The project has been slightly delayed due to the decision to re-letter the early stories that were originally hand-lettered, which required made some post-production work on the art necessary. But Reynaldo is back on track to release the trade paperback later this year.

“I’m very proud of the body of work I’ve built to date,” says Reynaldo. “I have lots of fun ideas for the future direction of the series, and I’m looking forward to continuing the series for many years to come.”

For more information about the series, visit wcgcomics.com. The series is available to comic-book retailers through Haven Distributors.

ABOUT ROB HANES ADVENTURES:

Rob Hanes Adventures is an all-ages comic-book series about a modern-day globetrotting troubleshooter and soldier of fortune. Under the auspices of worldwide Justice International—a worldwide private investigations and security agency—Rob travels the world on assignment, facing adventure, intrigue and romance at every turn! Every issue is "done in one" which allows readers to jump in with any issue!

Inspired by the pioneering adventure work of Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates and Will Eisner’s Spirit, Rob Hanes Adventures brings a fresh, modern-day spin to the classic adventure serial strip genre.

Series writer-artist-creator Randy Reynaldo is a Xeric Foundation grant recipient and a Russ Manning Award for Most Promising Newcomer nominee. The series debuted as Adventure Strip Digest in 1994, running for four issues until being re-booted in 2000 as Rob Hanes Adventures. A Xeric Award supported trade paperback, the Rob Hanes Archives, compiled the series' original run as a small press zine in 1996.

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Comics at the Skirball

Though the role that Jews have played in the formation of the comic-book industry has been well documented, there has been a plethora of fresh scholarship on the subject. In just 2008, these include From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books, Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero, and Jews and American Comics: An Illustrated History of an American Art Form. (I reviewed a similar book, Men of Tomorrow, here.) These books have been driven, no doubt, by the increasing prominence of comics—particularly in mainstream entertainment—and the fact that the first and second generation of cartoonists, editors and publishers who worked in the industry are disappearing.

As part of this resurgence of interest in the subject, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles is running an exhibition called "ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938–1950" through August 9.

Anyone with an interest in comics and, particularly early comic books, will enjoy the exhibition. While the show focuses on the contributions of Jewish writers and artists to comic books, any story about the early days of the industry is inseparable from the Jewish experience—like movies, comic books in the beginning were not a "respectable" business and, hence, the only industry open for Jews to enter.

Anyone with some knowledge about comic-book history will be on familiar terrain in this show: people like Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Stan Lee, Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Otto Binder, etc., are all profiled here.

The exhibition is especially well stocked with original comic-book pages, and includes a few kid-friendly touches. (The original art to the iconic Superman image that accompanies this blog is included in the exhibit.) The show also is paired together with a related exhibition called "Lights, Camera, Action: Comic Book Heroes of Film," which also runs through August 9.

The show was curated by Jerry Robinson, who is well qualified to mount such a show. A respected comics historian, ambassador, and advocate for cartoonists' rights, Robinson is himself a first-generation comic-book artist: Robinson began as a "ghost" for Batman co-creator Bob Kane and is generally credited (along with often uncredited Batman co-creator Bill Finger) for creating the iconic Batman villain, the Joker. (As recounted in Men of Tomorrow, Robinson was also instrumental in finally getting DC Comics and Warner Brothers in the 1970s to properly credit Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for creating Superman and getting them and their families a small annual recompense.)

Located just one exit north of the Getty Center in Brentwood/Los Angeles off of the 405 freeway, I highly recommend a visit to the Skirball for this exhibit, as well as for its outstanding reputation as a Jewish cultural center that hosts movie screenings, cultural events, and exhibitions about Jewish history and the Jewish experience from earliest times to the present day. If you have children, the Center also has a permanent "Noah's Ark" exhibition geared towards families and children. The museum itself is free, but reservations and paid entry is required for "Noah's Ark." Visit the Skirball website for details.

Remembering Sparky

I recently finished reading the full-length biography of cartoonist Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts. Below is a review of the biography, as well as the first volume of a projected reprinting of the strip in its entirety.

Schulz and Peanuts
by David Michaelis

When Schulz, the recent biography of cartoonist Charles Schulz by David Michaelis, was released in 2007, members of the family were reportedly upset by the portrait of the famed Peanuts creator.

As I read it, I certainly could understand why. Schulz came from conservative German and Scandanavian stock who had settled in Minnesota, a region famed for its reserve and reticence. No doubt seeing the family's dirty laundry with past hurts, judgments and resentments aired for all to see must have been quite a upsetting.

The main complaints, however, focused on the book's portrayal of Schulz as dark, melancholy and often emotionally distant at the expense of his legacy and their happy memories of him.

Schulz clearly is an attempt to construct a psychological portrait of the cartoonist. In this regard, Michaelis has done his homework, drawing extensively from the unfettered direct access he had to family, friends and the artist's private papers, as well as to archived interviews in print and on film, and, of course, the artist's legacy of work.

Throughout the book, Michaelis tries to draw a direct connection between the cartoonist's personal life and private turmoils, and show how it was reflected in his work. While there's always a danger of overreaching in such an approach (and Michaelis perhaps does so occasionally), Michaelis convincingly portrays Schulz's inner life and how it clearly manifested in his work, often not very subtly.

It's important to note that Schulz himself at various times often referred to himself as hapless, a "nobody," a "loser," etc., forever tying him in the public's eye with his strip's main character, Charlie Brown. Of course, some of this was shrewd marketing—Schulz no doubt played up the resemblance to promote the strip, by allowing readers to identify Charlie Brown as Schulz's cartoon doppelganger. In later years, Schulz would occasionally bristle at this comparison—the truth, of course, was much more complex.

To a large extent, Schulz did seem to be solitary and somewhat disenfranchised well into adulthood. Sensitive and artistic, he rarely received the kind of encouragement and attention he craved from his parents who, by upbringing and culture, were reserved and not given to either verbal or physical displays of affection. Similarly, with a few exceptions, his extended family was not the type to encourage ambition or achievement beyond simply being able to provide for a wife and child; indeed, the family seemed to discourage such aspirations, lest they lead to disappointment. On top of this, Schulz's mother suffered her last few years in excruciating pain, dying from cancer, which the family tried its best to completely shield the young Schulz from despite the obvious. She died while he was away, shortly after he had joined the army during World War II, a devastating event that seemed to affect Schulz for the rest of his life, if for no other reason that he never had a chance to ever get her unconditional love and support, nor prove his worth to her.

Most revealingly, much of Schulz's childhood resentments and pain seemed partly of his own making. For example, though Schulz the adult often spoke about being bullied as a child, none of his childhood friends remember that. In fact, though they acknowledge that Schulz and themselves were outsiders who were not part of the "in" crowd at school, they recall Schulz occasionally being their ringleader, of being fairly cocky in his athletic abilities (particularly hockey and baseball), and even flashes of his being a bit cruel himself.

The book makes clear that Schulz was born with an innate burning ambition and a strong sense that he would make something of himself. I suspect that without any real encouragement from his parents or strong adult role models for himself—and perhaps out of guilt for his feelings of superiority—he repressed those feelings to a degree and let them stew. This combination of competitiveness and resentment (he seemed to never forget a slight), and the determination to exact "revenge" through success, drove the incredibly shy Schulz (who in later years realized his shyness was a form of narcissm and ego) to make his way to the top of the cartooning profession.

To the very end, Schulz was the quintessential tortured artist—never sure of his worth, or trusting of the fame and acclaim he earned, but always supremely confident and protective of his talent and the strip he created. But in his later years he also became more comfortable in his own skin, and found in his second marriage the unconditional love and support he always had wanted.

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The Complete Peanuts, Volume I: The Fifties (1950-52)
by Charles Schulz (Fantagraphics Books)

The Schulz biography also let me look at Peanuts with fresh eyes. It had been years since I last read the strip in the paper; though I never felt it had declined in quality in any discernible manner, it certainly became something that I took for granted and was so familiar, it just floated off my radar.

I read it as a child and, in fact, my first memories of trying to cartoon was doing my own 4-year-old version of Peanuts (no doubt inspired both by the animated specials and the pocket paperback compilations that were so popular in the 1960s). So, of course, the beauty and poetry of the writing, matched by the simple yet perfect comic timing of the cartoons, went over my head. (Terry and the Pirates creator Milton Caniff, his eye always on what was commercial, noted on more than one occasion in his later years that if he were to start a new strip, it would be something like Peanuts.) The strip hit a nerve because it was an examination of the human condition disguised as a kid strip. Schulz's strip was truly innovative and completely changed the face of comics.

In 2006, prior to the release of the biography discussed above, Fantagraphics—a comics publisher known for its indie sensibility and often accused of an "elitist" view of comics—released the first volume of a projected comprehensive reprinting of the series in its entirety. (Fantagraphics founder and publisher Gary Groth likely set the stage for this arrangement by conducting one of the lengthiest and most comprehensive introspective interviews with the cartoonist, which appeared in Fantagraphics' flagship critical magazine, the Comics Journal, in 1997.)


This is a review of the first volume, which I picked up shortly after its release.

In retrospect, one must give credit to Schulz for continuing to evolve the series throughout its run. While many lesser cartoonists have coasted once they found success, Schulz clearly remained devoted and engaged. The popularity of Snoopy perhaps came closest to completely overtaking the strip. (Schulz is one of the few cartoonists to be the only artist to work on his strip and to never use an assistant—Calvin and Hobbes' Bill Watterson was another.)

Nevertheless, while the strip was already well formed and had a distinct voice at its founding, Schulz would not hit his stride until later. As such, in this first volume, Snoopy doesn't "talk" yet and the loud and bombastic Lucy—additions to the strip that would take the strip to new levels—are not yet in place.

Perhaps most striking is the fact that Charlie Brown himself isn't yet the hapless loser that became one of the strip's hallmarks. As this first volume shows, Charlie Brown is actually quite mischievous! As mentioned above, the change would come later, primarily with the introduction of Lucy, whose strong personality became the catalyst that defined the rest of the characters of the strip.