Time Longer than Rope

Parke Wabash sent me a terrific book of WAR COMICS, and it seems quite a propos to our moment in time. There are some colour pages from a long out-of-print DELL title called COMBAT in which the featured artist is Sam Glansman. As a kid I recognised his distinctive style and knew him by his initials SJG, which he sometimes enclosed within a small cartouche. Great Stuff.

Glansman’s Pearl Harbour story is a standout, with complex composition depicting soldiers, Zero’s dive bombing ships and fireworks bursting out of the page.

One image remains especially imprinted in my memory- a drawing of General Tojo smashing an alarm clock with his Samurai’s sword beside this caption

“AMERICA NEEDED TIME…TIME TO BUILD UP ITS STRENGTH…TIME TO PREPARE…BUT GENERAL TOJO WAS DETERMINED NOT TO GIVE US ANY TIME! WHY SHOULD HE?”

The Japanese militarists squandered their time building weapons, raising armies, navies, and air forces. In these they placed their faith, and their faith betrayed them.

Weapons don’t make you strong, and armies don’t make you safe. Navies don’t make you safe, nor do surveillance satellites. Even less so, unmanned drones and space-based weaponry.

“Time longer than rope”, says Yabby You, “and Time is gonna catch up upon you.”

Time is the master of man.

Time is a Crook

“Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook.” - Peter Lorre in Beat the Devil

“I’ll bet Aline Kominsky is going to have a shit fit”, quipped my friend after I told him a single 8” x 12” Bristol pen & ink page, drawn in 1969 by her husband (presumably before they met?) sold for $77,675.00 at auction Thursday in Dallas.

Page one of All Meat Comics (from Robert Crumb’s Big Ass Comics, originally published by the Print Mint in 1969) had been in the possession of Jack “Jaxson” Jackson. Jackson, a pioneer Texas Underground Cartoonist, passed away in 2006. Along with the rest of All Meat, bidders bought all the pages from Eggs Ackley among the Vulture Demonesses (page 1-=$21,510.00; page 7 =$31,070.00). Also on the block was the entire Dale Steinberger the Jewish Cowgirl story (page 1 =$31,070.00), as well as a striking page from Lenore Goldberg and her Girl Commandos (page 10 =$13,145.00) from MOTOR CITY Comics #2.

Best guess is that all these treasures were originally a gift from Crumb to Jaxon.

MORAL: Cultivating friendship is the best investment of all.