As a fan of comics, I already know which books I’m likely to come across in a thrift store, either due to popularity of the comic or the noteriety of the cartoonist. Although I stress emphatically I am no academic when it comes to comics, I generally know what to expect. For example, I will find a lot of Family Circus comic paperbacks, because they are inoffensive and many children buy them, read them, and their parents donate them after they’re grown up. A Family Circus paperback is easy to anticipate.

That’s the long way around saying I was pleasantly shocked when I found this book.

Office Lover Boy by Stan and Jan Berenstein, published in 1962 by Dell Publishing.

I am sure the majority of you immediately recognize the names of the authors of this book.

Stan and Jan Berenstein are prolific cartoonists and authors, most famously known to children all over the world for their series of books featuring The Berenstein Bears. I read the Bears’ series of picture books like crazy when I was a young’un. Their colorful mix of pro-social values and gentle good humor was a favorite in my house growing up. In fact, Office Lover Boy was published the same year as the very first Berenstein Bears picture book, The Big Honey Hunt.

…which is part of the reason I was so shocked to find that Stan & Jan spent the early part of their career drawing comics about oversexed men and women with gigantic tits! I don’t expect that children’s book authors ONLY write for young tykes, but I frankly had not considered the Berensteins doing any work outside of the Bears’ series.

Office Lover Boy seems to be the third part of the Lover Boy series, Some light Googling shows two other books released in the series; Lover Boy, published in 1958, and Bedside Lover Boy in 1960.

The majority of the comics collected in this volume are one panel gag strips. I can’t find any evidence that these Lover Boy strips were published anywhere before being collected in this volume, although the tone and tenor of the majority of these strips makes me think they wouldn’t have been out of place in a men’s magazine like Playboy. Case in point:

Interestingly, most of these gags go on for pages and pages, so the “girls stuck in elevator/guys look up their skirts” gag gets extended into the next couple of comic strips. I’ve never seen that concept done before in a comic paperback collection like this. If this really was an original collection rather than a reprint book, it makes sense that the Berenstains would have that kind of freedom to expand into their gags a little bit.

That isn’t to say that the comics collected here are lewd, even by the standards of the Sixties- the tone of Office Lover Boy is more of a tittering, snickering teenager than an out-and-out horndog. In other words: these aren’t porn comics, they’re just comics where the authors are slightly bemused about the prospect of drawing big ol’ boobies and butts on women.

Office Lover Boy deals in the politics and stereotypes of the office environment of the 1960′s- the voluptuous secretary, the adulterous businessman, the killjoy wife. For sure, these stock characters have real and legitimate basis in reality; the television show Mad Men is basically build upon them!  Looking at Office Lover Boy from 2011, and some of the strips and punchlines seem a little rote to me. Like the authors didn’t want to go in for the kill and instead decided to play with their food for awhile.

I thought this section of the book was pretty successful- in “Patterns” the word balloons are characteristic of the unspoken intent of the character’s words. It’s an easy gag, but it’s plenty clever. I’m surprised I haven’t seen reused too often.

Again, what’s most fascinating about this book is not the actual content of the strips, but the inherent weirdness of them. Seeing two beloved children’s authors go dirty was something of a headtrip!

All these books cost me less than $7 dollars. I bought them from Hastings, a regional merchant of new and used books, movies, video games, and all sorts of other things. I’ve made some really fun purchases from Hastings before (see my Halloween decorations post for more on that) but this past week they had a 30% off Used Books sale… and since Hastings always has free shipping for books, I indulged $7 bucks worth.

The Buffy: Panel to Panel book is usually $15 to $20 dollars in stores… I got it and three of these other books for like a buck and a quarter. Ditto all the other books save for the Aliens Omnibus. I believe that one set me back like $2 dollars… but we all know how much I love the Aliens franchise.

Most of these are books I’ve been wanting to check out for awhile but haven’t had the money or the time to give a shot… Jon Sable: Freelance being at the top of that list. In fact, the only dud of the bunch was the NewUniversal trade, which I bought on the strength of Warren Ellis’ writing. Still, at $1.25 or so, I don’t exactly feel cheated about not liking the book.

I mention Hastings here because I had a really good experience with the company and highly recommend them. The books came in like-new condition and they were shipped to me in like a day and a half. Hastings does  sales all the time so it might be worth bookmarking them and/or checking back from time to time.

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Besides my Hastings orders, I’m also making my way through the addictive I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum.

This is an “oral history” book very much like the seminal Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Music, or the more recent Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. Marks and Tannenbaum interviewed hundreds of personalities, executives, and talent involved with the golden age (1981 to 1992) of MTV. The results are engrossing, especially if you remember the channel from its’ music-playing heyday.

I watched MTV regularly during the early 1990′s (early enough to appreciate the book’s later coverage of Nirvana and Pearl Jam) but I also remember being a kid and scouring the channel during their  “all music, all the time” period. My tastes back then were limited to Michael Jackson, any video employing animation (Take on Me, Sledgehammer, You Might Think), and Weird Al cuts… but there was something to be said for the format, where the randomness of what videos played and when demanded you sit down and watch for hours at a time.

One of the book’s virtues is that it doesn’t seek out many of the big names you associate with MTV; you won’t find candid sit-down interviews with Madonna or Bruce Springstein here. Instead, you’ll find those superstars’ stories being told by the rank and file who surrounded them and I think that’s a pretty apt way to look at those folks. The secondhand nature of the stories shared here extends the air of mystique those performers carried with them then and now.

At any rate, it’s a good read. It will make you think about Alan Hunter for the first time in decades… but it will also make you think of Kennedy for the first time in decades as well, so I don’t know why where I’m going with this.

A couple of things:

1. I’m sorry for overusing the word “always” in this comic. It happened. I saw it. I didn’t fix it. My apologies.

2. Our discussion of “word of mouth” was made unexpectedly interesting this past week with the passing of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. His death was falsely reported on Twitter and spread like wildfire on this Saturday past. Paterno’s family made public statements that Paterno was still fighting. He did  succumb to lung cancer on Sunday, but it was an interesting lesson on the nature of news reporting on social networking services.

Seriously, folks… newspapers are DEAD after my generation. It breaks my heart… growing up, I lived in a “three newspapers a day” household (The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and our local paper). I would by the Daily News with my own money because I wanted to know what was going on in NYC. By and large, my students have no need or interest in picking up a traditional newspaper.

I guess I’ll talk about this a little bit more as we go further with these journalism class comics, but man oh man… goodbye print media.

So far, it’s been interesting to teach a class where most of the students chose to be there, rather than be required to participate. Add onto that many of my former students coming in for another go-around and it’s a nice combination.

Eagle eyed among you will recognize some students from this comic, all the way back in September.

…and I’m not slagging off ice breaker games here, don’t get that idea! I’ve done plenty of comics in the past about the different activities I use to get the ball rolling in my 9th grade classes. It’s just, a 12th grade class? At least in my school, most of those kids know one another already. You could argue that an ice breaker could, in some ways, bring the class together even if they DID know one another already. That’s a fair point, but with a half-year class, it’s hard to give up time for something like that. You hope the culture of the classroom will form regardless.

Wow, that probably could have been a comic in and of itself.

That being said, I went with the movie interpretations of the characters because they are the best known. Also, John O’Neill is WAY too good an artist for me to try and imitate. He’s incredible.

The Tin Woodsman was always my favorite. I dressed at him for Halloween when I was like four years old.

The Cowardly Lion however, was always my least favorite… which explains why his chalkboard drawing is the weakest.

The Wizard was weirdly fun to draw.

I went with a flying monkey because the rest of the Oz characters were women. I have no problem drawing myself in Dorothy drag, with all the baggage that entails… but I thought it might be a strange drawing to sit on the chalkboard all Friday.

I could write 10,000 words on what George Lucas’ movies meant to me growing up and how deluded I’ve found him to be in regards with his perplexing choices regarding the Star Wars franchise… but I’m not going to. Instead, for today’s Thrift Store Find, I’d like to talk about the first time I remember been truly disappointed by George Lucas and why it doesn’t really matter.

I will talk about this by using a coloring/activity book I bought for fifty cents.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles premiered on ABC in the spring of 1992, three years after Indy’s last theatrical outing. The show was designed to focus on the youthful exploits of the character, both as a child and a teenager. I’m guessing Golden Books published this coloring/activity book around the same time. The book I found was in pristine condition and still has the price sticker on the cover.

Imagine being eleven years old and hearing that premise. The idea you were going to see INDIANA JONES, one of the greatest cinematic heroes of all time, as he was when he was YOUR age? Incredible! Appointment television! I tuned in with bated breath, waiting to see Indy fight loathsome bad guys and adventure through exciting set pieces. Hell, hadn’t we had already had a taste of what to expect from a “young Indy Jones” TV series? The opening of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with Indy running across the top of the circus train? That was awesome! Surely this TV show would be awesome too, right?

Wrong. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was laboriously dull in my recollection. Any excitement I could muster over seeing an Indiana Jones similarly aged to myself were crushed by how boring those episodes of the show were. As should have been immediately obvious to anyone but eluded me at the time, the creators of the show couldn’t risk placing a ten year old kid in perilous danger week in and week out.

As such, those sections of the show were tempered to the point of boredom. I mean, look at some of the coloring pages from this book.

If adventure has a name, surely is is NOT this kid wearing a stupid looking bow tie.

Oh look, Indiana Jones and the Adventure of the Pretty Pink Bonnet! That’s MUCH better than The Holy Grail or The Ark of the Covenant. Da da da DAAAA… DA DA DA!

Although I’m being a bit facetious, I think you see my point. If these are the best escapades mustered together for a freakin’ coloring book, imagine what watching the show was like!

The eleven year old me was infinitely disappointed in the tepid adventures of the 10 year old Indiana Jones… and the later episodes where Indy appeared as a 16 year old teenager fared only slightly better. I suppose the problem had everything to do with my expectations for the show versus the reality of what the show actually was.

I expected a rollicking good adventure series with humor and action.

The reality was, The Indiana Jones Chronicles was designed as an educational series focusing on world history. Indy would, at different points during the show, run into major characters and events from the late 19th and early 20th century, like a less brain-damaged Forest Gump.

For example, the one of the episodes had 10 year old Indy meeting Teddy Roosevelt in Africa, admittedly a cool idea.

My reaction to this show is precisely why George Lucas wants to quit making blockbuster movies. Our expectations for him and his work do not meet the reality of what he can deliver for us… or what he WANTS to deliver. Just because we built the Star Wars movies up in our minds to be kick-ass doesn’t mean the new prequels could ever meet or exceed twenty years of pent-up expectation. Even though I don’t think any of Lucas’ later movies are very strong, I’m hard-pressed to think of a way that he could have possibly delivered an experience as great as the one I had spent years building up in my mind.

The coloring book is fine. It’s a coloring book. There are some puzzle pages and whatnot. I’ m sure my sons will enjoy this one rainy afternoon when I give it to ‘em.

I’ve tooted my horn about my enjoyment of the HCC series of books here and I will continue to do so because I find them to be fun, quick reads. I’m especially a fan of these Quarry books- Collins has crafted a weirdly appealing blue collar antihero in his midwestern hitman. Oddly enough, Collins ended the series with The Last Quarry before dipping into his past with the next few HCC novels.

Quarry’s Ex takes place in the 1980′s and directly references previously established continuity by brining the guy’s former wife into the fold while he investigates a film director on whom a hit has been taken. I really enjoyed the movie-making setting of Quarry’s Ex as a change, but I missed some of the bleaker Midwestern settings from the previous books. In all honesty, Quarry’s Ex is probably the least of the newer Quarry novels, although I enjoyed it a hell of a lot. I wonder if Collins boxed himself into a corner by giving his working stiff hitman a happy ending in The Last Quarry.

That aside, I’m on the hook for any new stories Collins chooses to tell with the character.

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I suppose I’m late in this, but IFC recently released the first season of their sketch comedy series Portlandia to Netflix and I’ve been really enjoying the first season. Starring Saturday Night Live‘s Fred Arminsen and Carrie Brownstein, Portlandia is sort of a send up of youth culture based in and around the eclectic West Coast city. Armisen and Brownstein do the heavy lifting in the series, although there is a nice stable of guest stars in the first season’s six episodes.

One of the things I really like about Portlandia is that, on the surface, it seems like Armisen, Brownstein and Company are mining an ultra-specific topic for their comedy… but as you watch a few episodes, you begin to realize that the hipster trappings are just window-dressing for the quirky humor. One of my favorite sketches in the series so far involves two artistic go-getters pimping their genius aesthetic strategy of taking things and “putting a bird on it!” While there is a hipster veneer to that sketch, the concept quickly degenerates into easy-to-appreciate goofiness.

When I was a teenager in the 1990′s, there were half a dozen sketch comedy series percolating on the upper dials of cable television. Reruns of SNL and The Kids in the Hall were ubiquitous on Comedy Central… and I remember watching shows like The State, Exit 57, The Vacant Lot, and Friday nights on HBO, Mr. Show with Bob and David.  Even the networks would occasionally take a run at sketch comedy with things like The Dana Carvey Show and The Edge, although I think the only real success on that front was In Living Color.

I’m probably forgetting half a dozen shows which didn’t make it beyond their first few episodes. Sketch seems to be a television show format which has died down in recent years. Every once and awhile it will show signs of life but I’m surprised there aren’t more cable channels actively developing and supporting more shows like Portlandia.

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Last week, The Onion’s AV Club (my go-to source for intelligently written pop culture articles and barely comprehensible message board discourse) has published a helpful article detailing what exactly makes a good all-ages comic. Author Oliver Sava give a nice run-down of the subject and also provides a list of comic books that would be great to share with young readers. He hits the big ones (Bone, Owly) while making some nice arguments for newer books like DC Comics’ O.M.A.C. and Marvel’s Mystic.As it happens, I have copies of both O.M.A.C. and Mystic in my lending library thanks to a generous donation from a friend of mine and although no one’s yet picked up Mystic, the first issues of O.M.A.C. has been a pretty big hit with my students.

Written by Dan Didio with art from superhero comics’ mainstay Keith Giffen, O.M.A.C. IS sort of an Incredible Hulk type story with lots of fighting and a really appealing lead character. The book was easily accessible with beautiful pencils by Giffen, sporting a heavy Jack Kirby influence. I was looking forward to picking up more issues… but sadly, the title was cancelled last week.

I don’t agree with Sava that Good as Lily is the best title of DC’s now defunct MINX line of books (I’d tip my hat to The Plain Janes on that one) but besides my own personal preferences I give the article a recommendation.

There was a bit more to the decision to start this class. I’d been campaigning for it ever since I was hired… but our English classes aren’t for the most part structured around electives. I guess I’ll say more about this the next few weeks.

Support your local cartoonist’s classroom time again: I’ve got a DonorsChoose project, just itching to be funded. We’re a little shy of $300 dollars toward receiving a whole bunch of new graphic novels for my classroom. If you use the matching code CHASE when you check out, your donation will be matched up to $50 bucks. 

If you donate $5… my classroom will get $10. If you donate $50… we get $100. Remember to use the code CHASE when you check out. Every little bit helps.

If you would like to help my class and you e-mail me after you donate, I’d be happy to draw something for you! I have many happy donors who walked away with a doodle of their choice after helping my school get new books.

If you’re not comfortable with DC and you’d like to help in any other way… e-mail me too! 80% of my students are on free or reduced lunch and I’m always looking for ways to expand their horizons.