Podcast Interview and YouTube Review

It was a great honor to be a guest on Geoff Grogan's comics podcast, which recently posted! 

We talk about Rob Hanes Adventures, how I got my start doing my own comics in junior high school, entering the small press and getting into self-publishing; as well as my influences and appreciation for the history of comics, and my work process.

Thanks to Geoff for a great conversation, as well as his appreciation and in-depth knowledge of my so-called comics career and of my series, Rob Hanes Adventures! Now available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Pandora--and geoffgrogan.com!

The direct link is https://geoffgcomics.podbean.com/e/randy-reynaldo — using this link on a web browser will take you straight to the interview; from a mobile device, you may be prompted to open or download a podcast app.

In addition, issue 22 was one of several comics featured in episode 20 of Steve Keeter and Larned Justin’s Talking Small Press Comics, released on June 7. Rob Hanes Adventures is mentioned at the 8:23 mark and is cued up in the link. 

WordPress Migration

In addition to my comics work, I’m a bit of a computer geek and, along those lines, one of the skills I’m proudest of is my web capability—launched in 1998, my WCG Comics website initially gave me a simple web presence, then evolved and grew. Not only does it enable me to sell my comics directly to users, it’s also a promotional channel, now supplemented, of course, by my social media accounts and this blog. Also like this blog, it serves as a historical record of my comics work and career, documenting and listing projects and activities like my annual photo galleries and reports of the San Diego Comic-Con, news coverage, interviews and more.

The website began as a simple HTML page in 1998. Then around 2007, I taught myself CSS and upgraded the site to html/css. In 2017, I gave the site a major design overhaul, which I've retained through the present day, also making it more mobile-responsive. This was all made possible with Adobe Dreamweaver—a WYSIWYG and html editor tool that was once an industry standard. Since then, I continued to use Dreamweaver to update manage the website.

As I mentioned in a post earlier this year, I began weaning myself from the Adobe Suite of graphics and design applications, and have already successfully migrated away from Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. However, finding a replacement and alternative for Dreamweaver was surprisingly difficult—they just don’t seem to exist. Though I thought I found an acceptable if somewhat clunky alternative in a product called BlueGriffon and even purchased it (fortunately, it wasn't very expensive), it turns out it was discontinued in 2019 and, more significantly, would not work if and when I finally upgraded my Mac OS, which was the primary reason I’ve been migrating away from Adobe. The only viable alternatives appeared to be pure coding editors or applications that only created proprietary website files—applications that would not allow me to simply open or edit my existing html/css files, so I’d have to re-create the site from scratch.

wcgcomics.com in December 2009

That all said, website development and management the last decade or so has moved to web-based CMS (Content Management Systems), the dominant player being WordPress. (I also am familiar with Weebly, where I maintain a personal family website.)

Over the years, I played with WordPress, but always found it  daunting and impenetrable. (I’m self-taught and rely on documentation—e.g., Google and YouTube—when I get stuck or need to learn how to do something.) However, finally faced with a real need to move away from Dreamweaver and html/css completely, I leaned more heavily into learning and understanding WordPress. 

In recent years, I had already taken baby steps in this direction, first creating an account at wordpress.org to "play" in. More recently, when I became a bit more determined, I asked my webhost company to create a subdomain "sandbox" within my website where they installed WordPress, which allowed me to experiment and play more with the system within my account.

After a few breakthrough moments this past week, I finally cracked WordPress. (It sounds simple, but one of the keys was understanding the difference between blog postings and web pages—WordPress was initially created as a blogging tool and remains its default setting).

Once I overcame these humps and cracked the code in my mind, I became proficient enough to begin duplicating my existing website with the help of a template theme that met my needs. After I figured out how to expand WordPress's features with plug-ins and themed templates, I was off and running. Being able to recreate my home page and my webstore—complete with PayPal purchase buttons that worked correctly—was my priority. If I could make those pages functional, the rest was gravy.

So I’m now in the process of building out the rest of the site—being able to cut and paste from the old site to the new, maintaining many of the links and coding in the process—has made it almost a breeze.

As such, I’m now on track to migrate the entire site shortly. It’s way overdue and I’m glad I can finally upgrade to a more up-to-date web-based CMS system that will no longer require me to maintain individual files on my desktop computer.

UPDATE (7/8/22):

As of July 8, 2022,  the new WordPress site became active! While it turned out to be a relatively smooth process, there were nevertheless some bumps along the way...

As I began building out the WordPress site in a subdomain, I spoke with a support person at my webhost service who initially assured me that the company would be able to transfer the new site into my main domain. However, a week later, when I contacted the webhoster again, I was informed that such work was beyond their scope of service(!). They initially provided a link with instructions that were too technical for my skill level. When I subsequently told them that this was beyond my skill level and comfort zone, and confirmed again that they could not do the work, they suggested using a plug-in application made exactly for such migrations called Duplicator that was widely used.

All things considering, the process and the application were relatively fast and simple—fortunately, I found a couple of YouTube videos that walked me through the process that I followed literally step by step. Indeed, to be sure I understood the process, I first deployed the migration into another subdomain that I created specifically for the purpose of testing the installation. I figured that if it was successful, I would then install the main site.

The test was indeed a success so I then proceeded with the installation that would overwrite the existing main domain. However, after I did so, I was unable to read the file to initialize the install of the new files(!). In a panic, I restored the original html files and found the site still worked with the old files. However, after consulting YouTube again, I found a small trick that allowed me to correctly launch the installation—with this adjustment, everything went perfectly smoothly like the earlier test. The new WordPress-powered site was now live—whew!

Below are screenshots of the wcgcomics.com website over the years—courtesy of the Wayback Machine!

---

October 2000

February 2005

January 2012 – around the time I introduced use of the sliding images

December 2016

April 2017 – this is the layout design I still use for the new
WordPress site.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Watergate!

On this date in 1972, I was a kid waiting at home for news about the delivery of my baby sister, who was born on this date.

Meanwhile, about 11 hours earlier on that very same day, five “burglars” were arrested after breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office Building.

The anniversary wasn’t initially on my radar until I stumbled across a fascinating and entertaining four-part CNN documentary, called Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal. It include fresh interviews with many of the players, including actual co-conspirators, investigators, prosecutors and journalists. This includes former Counsel to the President John Dean, former Deputy Chief of Staff Alexander Butterfield (who revealed during the hearings the existence of the audiotapes from the Oval Office), Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and television reporter Leslie Stahl, in one of her earliest assignments (she was in the courtroom that day along with Bob Woodward when the burglars first appeared in court). Also interviewed is Barry Goldwater, Jr., who was a college roommate of Dean’s and whose father, Senator Barry Goldwater, was a friend and resource for Dean at the height of the scandal—according to Dean, the elder Goldwater advised him, “Nail the son of a bitch!”)

I actually already know the Watergate story rather well. Nevertheless, the series parses out the chronology and details that led to the downfall of President Nixon and his enablers, much of it from the perspective of Dean, who of course played a pivotal insider role from both ends of the spectrum—brought in early on in the effort to cover up the break in and protect the White House, Dean soon realized he was being set up to be the fall guy. This realization, along with his ethics—and recognizing that he did not have the stomach to keep such secrets for the remainder of his life—he began cooperating with the Senate Watergate Committee as well as the Justice Department.

The documentary also makes connections to other incidents of presidential misconduct through today, including Reagan, Bush (George W.), Clinton, and You Know Who (in fact, Michael Cohen is included among the talking heads of commentators and historians who offer their perspective).

Among the most interesting observations made near the end by one or two of the commentators relates to President Ford’s pardon of Nixon. While the pardon angered and disappointed many at the time—and likely played a role in Ford’s subsequent election loss—it’s generally been accepted over time as a judicious act that allowed the country to move forward rather than get mired in additional years of scandal that might only further erode faith in government. Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein is among those who admits that while he was shocked by Ford’s action at the time, he came to see the wisdom of it. But given what’s happening today, some observers in the documentary now wonder whether it was so prudent, noting that as a result of not going through the process of prosecuting Nixon, we are experiencing difficulty in navigating and dealing with the misconduct being investigated today. Granted, they also acknowledge that it was believed such brazen misconduct would never happen again.

Of course, after I finished the series, I ended up watching All the President’s Men for the umpteenth time—and was delighted when some of the lines from one of the principals mentioned in the documentary turned up in the film.

(By the way, my sister isn’t on Facebook, so I have privately sent her my happy birthday wishes to her!)

Bonus Anecdote: By the way, perhaps one of the funniest yet most shocking details revealed in the documentary was John Dean recounting that, as the Watergate scandal worsened, G. Gordon Liddy, head of the White House Plumbers unit who ordered the break in and clearly was psychotic, told Dean, “I know what you have to do, just don’t do it at my house because I have kids at home.”

Taken aback, Dean assured Liddy that no such action would be necessary lol.

The Washington Post also looked at the making of All the President's Men here.

Review: The Mighty Return of Ric Hochet (Vols 1–3) (Kindle edition)

Ric Hochet is a Franco-Belgian comics series that debuted in 1955, created by cartoonist Tibet (pen name for Gilbert Gascard) and writer André-Paul Duchâteau. Reminiscent of Hergé’s Tintin, Ric is an investigative journalist/detective who often works with (and sometimes at odds with) the police on cases. Though it’s been translated into many languages, it’s had limited exposure in the U.S. The original series appeared to have ended with Tibet’s death in 2010. (I also didn’t miss the fact that my own Rob Hanes Adventures character bears a slight resemblance to Ric!) That said, these latest albums I’m reviewing are new adventures and a revival of the series by writer Zidrou and artist Van Liemt Simon that have been translated into English. The new stories appear to be very faithful to the look and spirit of the original series, down to the late 1960s/early 1970s setting. They are entertaining mysteries grounded in reality with a dash of humor that sometimes lightly touch on social issues. I should add that I purchased the Kindle edition of these albums. Ric is a reporter devoted to his work and solving mysteries, but fallible, good humored and relatable. Though entertaining, I found that the first volume, R.I.P. Ric, was an odd way to re-boot the series since Ric himself actually isn’t in it much since he’s been replaced by a doppleganger (that’s a bit of a spoiler, though to be fair it is revealed nearly at the very start of the story). But it turned out to be a suspenseful adventure nonetheless as Ric tries to foil his doppleganger's plans, leading to an exciting finish. The other volumes were also great fun—in the second volume, Murder in the Gardens, Ric becomes involved in a murder mystery involving a group of radical leftists of the kind that ran rampant Europe in the 1970s and '80s; and in the third volume, titled How to Commit the Perfect Murder, the series displays some cheekiness and dark humor as Ric and the police investigate a series of murders that appear to have been encouraged by a how-to book on murder planted in book markets. These are fun, rainy day reads, perfect comfort food for those who like mysteries with a dash of humor and PG-13 sex appeal, that show off the flair and solid storytelling and draftsmanship that are typical of many European comics. Though these are technically set in a prior era, I nevertheless enjoyed the authentic peak the series offered into everyday life and the lives of ordinary people suddenly caught up in a bit of danger and mystery in the city and suburbs of France.

REVIEWS: American Comics: A History

I’ve always enjoyed reading history books and scholarly work about comics—American Comics: A History by Jeremy Dauber, is the latest such entry. Though I’m pretty familiar with the history of American comics, this book offers an ambitious and very readable narrative overview of comics from its beginnings to the present day. I particularly found fascinating the quantitative information that showed that, up until the 1950s or so, adults and women still made up a significant portion of comics readers, contrary to the belief that comics have always been a “children’s” medium. 

Towards the end of the book, however, the book loses some of its narrative steam when it turns into a laundry list of comics and trends, as comics become more fragmented and diverse with the explosion of new outlets and platforms that encompass alternative comics, manga, graphic novels, and the YA and book market. With the current era of comics still evolving, no doubt it was a challenge coming up with a compelling way to cover the recent expanding comics scene in a way that made thematic and narrative sense—something for future scholars to tackle. (The book nevertheless piqued my interest in some comics I wasn’t aware of previously.) Nevertheless, the book provides a great overview of the history and breadth of comics in the U.S.

Additional Easter Eggs in Rob Hanes Adventures #25

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Though I included the usual comprehensive liner notes for Rob Hanes Adventures #25 within the issue, this post  supplements those liner notes, providing additional background and Easter eggs for the issue…

(And for anyone needing to purchase this latest issue as well as any back issues, visit the WCG Comics webstore!)

In the published liner notes, I cite the classic strips that are referenced in the issue and have been lifelong inspirations for my series. Many characters from those strips appear in the issue’s story, “Old Adventurers Never Die…,” albeit, of course, under somewhat different names and guises. Anyone familiar with these strips will immediately recognize their counterparts in the issue, but what follows is a comprehensive scorecard.

Before continuing, as reference, below is a detail of the issue's cast as they appear on the cover pictured at right.

From left to right on the plane: Sky Bannon, Medill Anderson, Sgt. Hanes. 

Left to right standing: Crash O'Brien, Rob, Malta, the Iron Tigress

Kneeling in front left to right: Percy Leigh and Cap'n Breeze.

Who’s Who

Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates' Pat Ryan, Terry Lee, Burma, and the Dragon Lady are the antecedents for Crash O’Brien, Percy Leigh, Malta, and the Iron Tigress.

Caniff created Terry in 1934 and worked on the strip through 1945 before moving to Steve Canyon.

Pictured in the promotional image at right are Terry, the Dragon Lady, Pat, and Burma.

The other character in the image is Connie, a companion and valet to Pat and Terry, who I decided not to include in my story, partly due to the character being an insensitive and racist portrayal of an Asian character that wouldn't have been appropriate for me to include or draw. But Connie is briefly referenced through a line of Percy when he says, "Not so hotsy dandy!"

Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon—Sky Bannon.

Caniff left Terry and launched Steve Canyon in 1946 when his syndicate would not grant him any ownership rights. He had ownership of Canyon and leased it back to his syndicate for distribution. The strip ran until Caniff's death in 1988.

Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs & Captain Easy—Captain Breeze.

Crane is one of the great unsung adventure cartoonists who transitioned from and was a bridge between a "bigfoot" style of cartooning to one that showcased his incredible storytelling and draftsmanship. Originally created as a daily gag strip in 1924 that featured a diminutive Harold Lloyd like lead character, it became more of an adventure strip with the introduction of the two-fisted Captain Easy in 1929, who soon dominated the strip. 

In 1943, Crane left the strip, which remained in syndication until 1988. He left the strip to launch his creator-owned Buz Sawyer—another outstanding strip that he worked on until his death in 1977, and which continued until 1989.

Noel Sickles’ Scorchy Smith—Archie Cristman. 

As I mention in the liner notes, Cristman was named for cartoonist Bert Christman who briefly followed Sickles as the artist on the strip. He left comics to become a naval pilot and later joined the Flying Tigers and was killed in action. 

The character of Hamerstein in the story was inspired by a sidekick in Scorchy named Himmelstoss, a German ace from World War I who befriends and shared adventures with Scorchy for a while in the 1930s. 

 

Right: Cartoonist Bert Christman

Alex Toth’s Bravo for Adventure—the titular character of this series, Jesse Bravo, appears in Rob Hanes Adventures #25 as Jules Tango. 

Bravo for Adventure was actually created by Toth in the 1980s, but was set in the 1930s as an obvious homage to the soldier of fortune strips of that era. So I couldn’t resist including the title character in my issue. 

Bravo also bore a likeness to actor Errol Flynn, which is a recurring motif in Toth’s work, being one of the cartoonist's favorite actors.

Hergé’s Tintin—Tintin can be seen from the back in the very first panel on page one, looking at the James Bond Aston Martin vehicle on display at the convention. 

In addition, Tintin’s sidekick, Captain Haddock, is the skipper of the Chinese junk in the opening of the story. He can be seen in the background in panel 1 of page 4, and has a couple of lines in the last two panels of that page.

Though the followers of Tintin is relatively small in the U.S., around the world he is arguably as well known and popular as Mickey Mouse. 

Hergé (pen name for cartoonist Georges Remi) produced 24 full-length albums (graphic novels) of the strip from 1929 to 1977—the artist died in 1983 (a final album was published incomplete).

Additional Inspirations

Looping back to Toth’s Bravo for Adventure: the incident used to transport Rob back to the 1930s was inspired by an untitled Bravo story where, like Rob, Jessie receives a glancing blow to the head from an airplane propeller that sends them to la-la land! 

In Toth’s story, Jesse slips into a surreal but fanciful stream of consciousness tale that similarly references classic adventure comics. (In his story, Terry and the Pirates is name-checked as "Perry and the Tyrants," and Captain Easy makes a fun one-panel cameo—my Captain Breeze character design aligns closely with Toth’s take on the character in that story.)

In addition, the scene where Rob wakes up in the hospital room at the end of the story echoes a similar moment at the end of the Bravo story.

Other characters and storylines also specifically recall sequences and characters in Terry and the Pirates. The two main villains, the Cossack and Anthony Macomber, harken back respectively to a hill bandit known as General Klang (pictured  at left) and Anthony Sandhurst.

Like the Cossack in my story, Klang in Terry was a warlord who acted as a mercenary proxy for the Japanese occupiers. In one of his storylines, he similarly tries to pull off a mass execution (in fact, in Terry, it involves a lot more people!)

As for Anthony Sandhurst, he always has been one of my favorite antagonists in Terry and the Pirates (and perhaps in all of comics), partly because he was not the usual kind of bigger-than-life colorful pulp villains like the Dragon Lady or Klang—he was a believable yet detestable individual with no redeeming qualities yet was a fully realized character who was very human in his selfishness and belief the world owed him a favor. (His looks were also based on actor Charles Laughton.)

For many years, he was a recurring thorn in the side of Terry and, particularly, Pat Ryan. When he showed up in Terry in 1936, he had recently married one of Ryan’s loves from early in the strip’s run, a spoiled rich girl named Normandie Drake who Pat tamed. But the lovers were kept apart due to her rich family’s social ambitions and snobbery. This created a love triangle that kept the lovers apart and readers in suspense for many years—indeed, the entire war. In 1942, just after the start of World War II, Caniff revealed that Sandhurst was a Japanese collaborator. Near the end of Caniff's run on the strip and in the closing days of the war, a grown up Terry encounters Sandhurst among a renegade Japanese unit that refuses to surrender. While Sandhurst would meet his comeuppance, his final fate actually occurred after Caniff left the strip in 1946, under the watch of his successor on the title, George Wunder.

Sandhurst’s character and the love triangle involving Pat Ryan and Normandie inspired me to create a parallel in Rob Hanes Adventures—their counterparts in my strip being Anthony Cromwell and Caroline Wilde. 

Like Sandhurst and Normandie, Cromwell and Caroline marry, which effectively keeps Rob’s feelings for her unrequited (like Normandie, Caroline similarly takes her marriage vows seriously and believes she can make her flawed husband a better person).

In fact, this love triangle is one of two overt connections between Rob Hanes Adventures and the Terry universe—Cromwell is intended to be Sandhurst’s great grandson, a rotten apple to the core who has not fallen very far from the tree. 

The other connection relates to Normandie Drake, the niece of a rich entrepreneur, Chauncey Drake. In my series, the multinational company Drakorp (owner of Justice International) is the modern day iteration of the Drake family’s Draco Mining concern in Terry.

One final easter egg—there is a panel (reproduced below) where Rob, the Iron Tigress and others regroup and gird themselves for a counterattack. That image was partly inspired by a concept painting for a proposed film adaptation of Terry and the Pirates by noted movie poster artist Drew Struzan (also reproduced below) that appeared in Jim Steranko’s Prevue magazine. The film, of course, never came to fruition but the Struzan piece below hangs on a wall in my studio—signed by the artist!