Michael Neno is a freelance cartoonist who does some fine work for national and Ohio area publishers. His versatile abilities allow him to draw a wide variety of comics. Like filmmakers John Cassavetes and John Sayles he does some work to pay the bills and allow him to do the work he truly has a passion for. In such publications as Reactionary Tales and The Signifiers Neno has created a strange yet inviting universe of characters and settings. His artwork owes much to classic cartoonists such as Milton Caniff, Frank Robbins, and Jack Kirby, but his work has a contemporary feel to it. Michael's most recent publication is a rerelease of some mini comics. micheal neno's dream and the nine issue pictures of benevolence. They have been digitally redone and look cleaner than they did when first published ten and twenty years ago.

http://www.nenoworld.com/Contents.html

Recently one of my cartoonist friends and I were having an online discussion about western comics. During the course of this conversation I mentioned the sixth issue of Bat Lash which I consider one of the most beautiful single comic stories ever printed.

Most of the time Bat Lash was reminiscent of James Garner's Maverick, but this story had a different tone. It was more serious, at times dark. It was a true collaborative effort, so much so, that it's hard to tell where one creator's contribution stopped and another's began. The script was credited to Sergio Aragones and Denny O'Neil. I'm assuming that Aragones did the plot. I've seen some of his scripts where he draws thumbnails for the artist, although I don't know if that was the case here. The dialogue and narration reads like Denny O'Neil. His prose could be poetic at times. The art was by Mike Sekowsky and Nick Cardy. Very little of Sekowsky shows through. Perhaps he just did layouts or loose pencils. Maybe it's just that Nick Cardy's lush inks disguised the usual blockiness and hard edges of Sekowsky. I don't know who the letterer or colorist were, but both of them did exemplary work as well. In the end I'd say the sum was greater than its parts, and starting with these parts, that's really saying something.

The plot is an origin story of sorts. It tells about young Bat Lash's family losing their farm, but it avoids the cliches of traditional western range war tales. Instead the farmers are swindled out of their land. When tragedy befalls his family, Bat wants justice. He isn't a brutal killing machine, but the moment where he first fires a gun in anger changes him. Bat's adult characterization as previously established in the series- his toughness, his cultured manners and taste for the finer things in life, his inability to love - are all explained in this story without overt exposition. The conclusion of the story is both powerful and moving.

I first read this story when I bought it off the newsstand in 1969. I don't know how many times I've revisited it since then, but I'm always happy when I do.

Charles Schulz taught me how to read. When I was a little kid, it was those Fawcett paperback collections that caught my eye. Mom and Dad would buy them for me and read them to me while I'd sit in their laps. I learned how to read because I had to read those books, and sometimes Mom and Dad weren't around. Pretty soon I had to learn how to draw those great characters, so Charles Schulz became my first art teacher. I'm hardly unique. I imagine that there are a lot of people out there who learned to read from Charles Schulz, and there are a lot of artists who learned to draw from him whether they know it or not.

I believe that the barber's son from Minneapolis was not only the most important cartoonist of all time, but one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Charles Schulz transformed the comic strip. He adapted his style to fit the new constraints imposed on artists by newspaper editors. He created a rhythm in his gags (four panels long with a beat in the third panel before the punchline or the punchline in the third panel with a secondary punchline afterward) that didn't exist before. His characters expanded beyond the comics page into every aspect of American pop culture. Schulz influenced every cartoonist who followed him, some of whom may not even be aware they were influenced by him.

Arguments can be made for the superiority of Windsor McKay, George Herriman, Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, Milton Caniff, Al Capp, or Walt Kelly, and I'm certainly not denying their greatness, but I am confident in stating that Charles Schulz rises above them all.

Sketch from 2001 book The Art of Charles Schulz

A few years ago Garry Trudeau published a beautiful Doonesbury 40th Anniversary collection. Even though Doonesbury is one of my all-time favorite comic strips, I couldn't quite bring myself to spend a hundred bucks for it. I was in the bookstore last week, and what do you think was on the remainder table for $19.95? You know it! To make things even better, our daughter had given me a Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas! So, thanks, Nikki for the perfect late Christmas present.

The Des Moines Register was among the first newspapers to carry the strip, so I've been a Doonesbury fan since the early 1970s. I'm in sync with Trudeau's politics, but, as this massive collection makes clear, it is the expansive cast of characters that has sustained the strip for so long. Unlike other cartoonists who set up ridiculous straw men for their stand-ins to interact with (I'm looking at you, Bruce Tinsley and Chris Muir.). Conservatives like BD and his family or Megaphone Mark's dad are treated like real people whose politics might be ridiculed, but whose humanity and decency is left intact, while liberals like Mike Doonesbury and Mark Slackmeyer have their own foibles pointed out from time to time. For the most part, political theater is kept out of this collection and the focus is on the interaction and evolution of these characters over four decades.

Garry Trudeau has cut back his current workload to Sundays only, and while he has certainly earned the right to take a break from the daily grind, I hope this doesn't indicate an intention to retire any time soon.

Another of my projects is Action Anthology. I just published the first issue of this comic book created by my cousin Chuck Todd and me. Chuck and I are old school comic book fans. We grew up during the Silver and Bronze Age of comic books. Today's comic books are quite different from the comics of our youth, and, in the immortal words of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, "Everything is not as good as it used to be!" (The previous line must be read in a thick Eastern European accent.) Anyway we put together a collection of original stories and hope to publish it on a regular basis. Here's the trailer for the comic book that appears on YouTube.

If you're interested in Action Anthology, you can order it from my website using PayPal.

http://rickbrooksbooks.com/Page_4.html

or send a check for $4.50 to Rick Brooks; PO Box 28075; San Antonio, TX 78228.

Okay, enough of the hard sell. Chuck and I drew three short stories. One is a sword and sorcery tale, the second is a western, and the third is a science fiction/super-hero story. We had a lot of fun creating them, and I like to think that people would have a lot of fun reading them. When it comes down to it, that's the big difference between comics now and when we were kids - the fun.

My name is Rick Brooks. I am a classroom teacher and a part time cartoonist. I am married to the beautiful Monica Brooks, and we have two daughters. Nikki just graduated from college, and Adi is in her final semester. We live in San Antonio.

Why do I have a blog, and what makes me think I have anything worth saying? The answer to the first question is, I've been told repeatedly that I need a blog to somehow generate publicity for my comic strip and various publications. As for the second question, I don't know. I've been reading comic books since I was a little kid, so I have lots to say on that subject. I've been teaching for over thirty years, so I have plenty of opinions about education. Every morning as I eat breakfast, I rant to Monica about various outrages in the daily newspaper. I guess I'll write about whatever pops into my cranium. It may or may not be entertaining or informative. I can guarantee that it's probably not going to be very well researched. I guess the only thing I'm sure of is, it'll be what I think.

Here is a link to the aforementioned comic strip - http://mrmorris.webcomic.ws

Mr. Morris has been running online for about three years. I update it twice per week. I also self syndicate the comic strip to four weekly newspapers. If you'd like to see it in your hometown newspaper, hound your newspaper's editorial staff mercilessly until they contact me.