Consider His Ways: The Many Moods of Tigerman

If you follow this blog, you know I just finished looking at the complete run of the Atlas Comics series Tigerman through my occasional series Unearthed. In the course of reviewing Tigerman #1, Tigerman #2 and Tigerman #3 I found myself looking at a series which had potential but was crippled by a very poor first issue. At its best, Tigerman was an average 1970s super hero comic.

But before I carry on to a different Atlas comic, shall we consider Tigerman one last time? Rhetorical question, I suppose. Better close this browsing window now if you can't bear thinking about Tigerman again!

In Understanding Comics Scott McCloud wrote about how we perceive cartoon characters in terms of how close they approach realism, from characters who are photorealistic to the more cartoony or abstract. Quoth McCloud: "Through traditional realism, the comics artist can portray the world without -- and through the cartoon, the world within." It occurred to me that with Tigerman we have a character who wavers well between realism and cartoon. As a man wearing a mask his face is not a human face (many masked comic book characters likewise have this condition). However, his mask is supposed to be made from that of a tiger and the tiger's face is, at times, drawn to appear realistic. Let us consider the moods which are expressed through Tigerman's seemingly static features..

Mood the first: Distraught

We are about to look at the cover of Tigerman #1 again. I'm sorry too.

Art by Ernie Colon

As Colon drew it, the tiger head had no ability to contort itself according to mood. In his attempt to make Tigerman appear distraught at his sister's death he depicted him with his heading nodding forward, mouth open. Unfortunately, while these would work well on a human face, on Tigerman his blank eyes and triangular mouth cause him to appear freakish, his emotions inscrutable.

Mood the second: Angry

Art by Ernie Colon

The most common feature on Tigerman's face throughout the series is an angry look. The animal face, the sharp fangs and blank eyes give him a limited range of expressions, but as a murderous super hero the ferocious face suits him well.

Mood the third: Pensive

Art by Ernie Colon

Here's an example of Colon's strengths as an artist (when much of Tigerman displays his weaknesses). In order to show Tigerman trying to play detective and find his sister's killers, Colon grants him a pensive expression by simply draping a hand before his mouth. Tigerman's mouth is the single least-human part of his mask so this also renders him more human in appearance.

Mood the fourth: Contemplative?

Art by Ernie Colon

Then we have Tigerman standing before one of the men who killed his sister. Here, we see the mask has become truly expressionless as the mouth has been diminished down to a single line. Is he tensing up for a fight? Is he boiling over in anger? Is he staring at that cowboy's crotch? The face tells us nothing.

Mood the fifth: Determined

Art by Frank Thorne

Frank Thorne's one-and-only visual of Tigerman is somewhat different from the other artists, most notably in the fuzzy, white muzzle on the tiger face. Under Colon, Tigerman looked like a man wearing a tiger's face over his own; Thorne makes him appear as a humanoid tiger.

Mood the sixth: Fearsome

Art by Steve Ditko & Frank Giacoia

I'm very fond of this image by Ditko where Tigerman's eyes are solid colored as Colon frequently depicted them and yet under Ditko's pen he appears more animal-like rather than the "dull surprise" of Colon. What Ditko seemed to realize better than Colon was how to manipulate the expressions of the tiger face, here curling Tigerman's brown to emphasize his ferocity. Colon eschewed these sorts of expressions in favour of letting the mask appear realistic, but Ditko's is the more worthy choice in terms of suggesting to the audience what the character is feeling.

Mood the seventh: Concerned?

Art by Larry Lieber

Larry Lieber's Tigerman is a fairly stock super hero character but he makes the most of the figure's facial features, putting some detail into Tigerman's brow and his eyes to convey his mood as he leaps to the rescue of a falling man.

Mood the eighth: Impish?

Art by Steve Ditko & Al Milgrom

The downside of Al Milgrom's inking is that he bringsin distracting details which subtract from Ditko's more malleable faces. Here, the curvy lines Milgrom used to fashion Tigerman's muzzle render him a bit too cartoony to fit the role of angsty super hero who just brought a burn victim to a hospital.

Mood the ninth: Enraged

Art by Steve Ditko & Al Milgrom

When Ditko revisited the scenes from #1 where Tigerman killed his sister's murderers, Ditko came up with this very fine grimace with Tigerman sporting a very upset brow. Here too, the animal-like muzzle on Tigerman's face is used to good effect- with his mouth open the curvy line of his expression makes him seem to be smiling, in contrast to his furrowed brow. Taken together, Tigerman seems to be emotionally out-of-control with bloodlust, which fits the direction the series was going as the character explored his compulsion to kill.

Mood the tenth: Triumphant

Art by Steve Ditko & Al Milgrom

The series ends with Tigerman exhibiting relief; the villain is over and now he can have a good rest in comic book limbo until some jerk drags his back issues out and talks smack about him on the internet. With Tigerman seen from below looking up at his open mouth and eyes so thin they almost seem to be squinting, Tigerman's expression is difficult to read but helpfully his left hand is clenched into a raised fist, which we understand as a gesture of triumph or defiance.

Unearthed: Tigerman #1!

Welcome again to my occasional series of columns entitled "Unearthed," wherein I examine comic books which have not been considered eminent within the canon of comic books. Recently, I finished looking at the four-issue run of The Destructor, a 1970s Atlas Comics title created primarily by Archie Goodwin & Steve Ditko, and the one-issue run of The Hands of the Dragon. You can visit the reviews here:

The Hands of the Dragon #1

The Destructor #1

The Destructor #2

The Destructor #3

The Destructor #4

The Destructor proved to be a perfectly fine super hero comic. If it were representative of the quality found in the Atlas Comics line, I don't think the publisher would have gone down in history quite so maligned. Thus, I decided to give another Atlas series a try - another series which Steve Ditko contributed to: Tigerman! Ditko did not originate the character but Tigerman lasted for three issues in 1975.

As before, I am not reading these comics together and then blogging about them, rather blogging after I read a single issue - thus, sitting down to this, I have no idea what issue #2 holds beyond what appears on its cover. Speaking of covers, let's begin!

The cover of Tigerman#1 (called "Tiger-Man" here but not inside) depicts our hero poised over the corpse of what is identified as his sister, while two men boast of having done the deed. That they feel no fear in the presence of Tigerman can be evinced by their lackadasical stances. Tigerman himself is dressed in a blue leotard with an orange tigerskin top. Now, there's nothing wrong with this colour combination; on the right person it works just fine.

However, the mask Tigerman wears is rather unfortunate. It is meant to grant him a visage similar to that of a tiger but the elongated facial fears are off-putting, making him look less like a vicious jungle animal and more like a dope. The cover is signed by Ernie Colon; although the interior has no credits (or story title), the Grand Comics Database likewise attributes the interior art to him, and writing to Gabriel Levy (who?). I think it's very unfortunate that as Atlas was seeking to become a major player on the marketplace to compete with Marvel Comics, yet they did not standardize credits within their titles as Marvel had done. The best element of the cover is the logo, which is a very nice standard super hero logo.

Above: A super hero

We begin with a nurse entering an elevator, where two men accost her with a knife, demanding she give them her car. It is instantly noticeable that this comic is lettered using a machine; the GCD believes it to be Leroy lettering, though it looks nowhere near as good as the Leroy lettering Jim Wroten utilized at EC Comics (learn more about Leroy lettering here). The lettering in this comic is flat and bland; even with Leroy lettering, there are still opportunities to bold or italicize text but this comic did not bother. It's as unappealing as the similar machine-lettering seen in most Charlton comics of the time. At any rate, the woman is rescued by Tigerman on page 2 when he pounces upon the two attackers and tells the nurse to "Better take care working nights in this city." In this sequence it becomes clear there are some problems with this comic - most notably, there is no sense of space or environment. The nurse seems to enter an elevator on page 1, panel 1 but from there the action seem to occur within a void. Tigerman seems to leap into the elevator to fight, but man, it must be one of those heavy industrial elevators to accomodate the amount of space used in the action scene. There are ways this sequence could have been cleared up and been more interesting to look at, but one has the sense Colon was speeding towards the quickest means to complete the art. We also note here that Tigerman isn't wearing the blue bodystocking seen on the cover, leaving his arms and legs bare and making him appear like a transplanted jungle hero rather than a super hero.

Above: A tiger, in Africa.

On page 3 we begin a flashback narrated by an omniscient narrator. In Zambia, we see Dr. Hill employed as a physician in a "ramshackle clinic." Dr. Hill takes note of the many animals in Zambia to learn from them, noticing how gazelles seem to sense danger. Hill's superior suggests he study a captured tiger which the dialogue carefully notes was caught in India. Thus, we have a tiger in Africa but it seems to be justified (unlike the recent Phantom story I reviewed). Still, why not simply set this flashback in India? At any rate, Dr. Hill studies the tiger's blood and isolates "the chromosome that makes the creature so powerful!!"

Above: Tiger uppercut

But - uh, oh! - it's time for a stock African comic book plot! It seems the local witch doctor resents Dr. Hill because his patients prefer Hill. The witch doctor breaks the tiger out of its cage just as Hill is exposing himself to the chromosome. When the tiger pounces on Dr. Hill, Hill beats it to death with his bare hands. After two years of this internship, Hill returns to the USA, bringing with him the tiger skin, which the Zambians made into an outfit. Back in New York, Dr. Hill is reunited with his sister Anna (at which point we learn his full name is Lan Hill). Anna is an actress on Broadway and gives her brother a letter informing him he's been accepted at Harlem Hospital. Anna leaves Lan at a hotel then returns to her apartment, but two men break into her apartment to rob her, noting they had "seen your matinee performance."

Above: Death of the supporting cast

At the hotel, Lan is phoned by a police detective who summons him back to the apartment. Detective Raye reveals Anna has been murdered; her dying words were "bald... bald..." I think she wished this comic were drawn by Ken Bald, but never mind. A piece of clothing from one of the attackers was left behind and Lan can smell horses on the fabric. Lan takes a moment to shed a tear for Anna, then sets out to find Anna's killers on his own. Donning the tiger skin he becomes Tigerman, garbed in the blue nylons but... hold on... he was bare armed and bare legged in the opening, which is set after he'd become Tigerman. Were the tights simply in the wash that night?

Above: Detective work

No matter, Tigerman is on the prowl! His only clue is a horse scent and it leads him to places such as Central Park, a riding academy and the police stables, but finally a poster for an indoor rodeo leads him to spy upon a rodeo rider named Jake Milner who has a bald head. That's some pretty compelling circumstancial evidence! Tigerman waits outside the rodeo but notices Jake's scent doesn't match the scrap of cloth so he decides to follow Jake until he catches the scent of Jake's presumed accomplice. Sure enough, Jake heads to a bar with a friend whose scent is the right one; Tigerman is ready to strike now!

Above: Tension

Jake and his pal remark, "Let's git us ossified 'n then go find us a couple a heifers!" But before the beastiality can proceed, Tigerman enters the bar. "Is the circus in town, too?" Jake's friend wonders. At the sight of him, Jake smashes a bottle and gets ready to fight because... a fight has to break out. It's at this point that the comic develops some serious trouble. The fight between Tigerman and the bar patrons is very poorly told and largely because of how Colon laid out the page, placing a diagonal panel down the center of the page, with the top and lower portions held roughly in a triangular shape. See below for the gory details:

Above: Diagram

The upper triangle has two panels which read left-right (1, 2). The lower triangle has three panels which read left (4), up (5) and right (6). It does not work at all; the letterer tried vainly to guide the reader by placing the speech balloons of these three panels in the order which they should be read so that the panel 4's balloon is above that of panel 5, but I still read these panels 5, 3, 6 the first time because it wasn't intuitive. It was also poorly done because of the lack of continuity between panels. In panel 5, a man called Big Louie grabs Tigerman from behind. If panel 4 had suggested someone was creeping up behind Tigerman then the correct order would have been visually clear. Further, panel 6 shows Big Louie falling backwards onto what I assumed was a table. If Tigerman had been framed in the panel in some manner the image would have been less non sequitur. But non sequitur is what we have.

Above: Action scene

Turning the next page, the previous page's fight unfortunately continues as Big Louie falls to the ground. Wait, again? It seems the previous page's panel 6 was actually depicting Big Louie being thrown against the wall. What I took to be debris from a broken table was evidently intended to be cracked plaster. Motion lines could have cleared up the activity; again, depicting Tigerman in relation to Big Louie could also have cleared that up. Tigerman rants as he confronts the two killers: "Everything's gone too far! Someone must say enough! Someone must stop the mugging, the murdering, stealing! The pig behavior of swine like you! Someone must stop it all -- and I am that someone!"

Above: Death scene

So saying, Tigerman strikes both men in some manner. The two men's bodies are depicted being hurled through an empty void. Tigerman then leaves the bar. "Minutes later," the police arrive. Upon a rooftop, Tigerman wonders if he had done right. "The police would never have caught them - never!! But I feel so empty... so damned miserable!" He goes on to muse about killing Jake and his friend. Yes, that's right - he killed both men. None of this was clear from the art. Tigerman also muses about the two men in the hospital elevator from the opening sequence - no idea where that fit within the story of him killing his sister's killers. Anyway, Tigerman states "Let the criminal beware - Tigerman is here!!"

Thoughts: There is nothing in this comic to suggest why it exists, no mission statement. No credited writer, artist, colourist, letterer, editor. No editorial from the creators explaining how this comic came to be and how they envision its future will unfold. The entire comic gives off an air of a book which was not so much "created" as "manufactured."

I do not sense that scripter Gabriel Levy is to blame for the failure of Tigerman. He came up with a very generic super hero origin story but it was inoffensive. Much like the Destructor, it seems Atlas super heroes owed a bit of their inspiration to Charles Bronson in Death Wish as Tigerman's rants would fit Bronson's character perfectly well. The failings of this comic lie primarily in the hands of Ernie Colon, which is surprising to me.

Ernie Colon was hardly a novice at the time this comic was made, having spent more than a decade in comics. However, he had never been a super hero artist until he came to Atlas Comics. His other work was on the very family-friendly Harvey Comics and not-at-all-family-friendly Warren horror magazines. He knew his way around a comics page, which makes his layouts in this issue all the more baffling. Colon's best work in the super hero genre would come much later: Marvel's Damage Control, which took full advantage of his skills as a humourous cartoonist. If you'd like to see me write more complimentary words about Colon, check out my review of his Inner Sanctum graphic novel.

Casting an artist who couldn't compose action scenes into an action comic was a very poor idea; fortunately, I know things improved the following issue; they would have to: Steve Ditko became the artist in issue #2!

Next time: My next entry of Unearthed will be Tigerman #2, Steve Ditko Boogaloo!

"Oh, no! Must have been pilot error!" The 9/11 Report: a Graphic Adaptation

Growing up, the nearest thing to a "non-fiction comic book" I knew of were the various educational comics (often handed out for free at trade shows) or biographical works. When I first learned of Joe Sacco I was fascinated - the concept of comics journalism, of comics which could address the topics as other works on the non-fiction shelves - it hooked me. From Joe Kubert's Fax From Sarajevo to Emmanuel Gibert's the Photographer, I've enjoyed witnessing what the medium can achieve.

This brings me to 2006's the 9/11 Report: a Graphic Adaptation, published by Hill & Wang and adapted by Sid Jacobson & Ernie Colon from the 9/11 Commission's report. Although I've known about the book for some time I've resisted reading it because I feared it would be too-familiar, uninteresting or upsetting. All these years later, though, here it is.

The 9/11 Report is only 113 pages long and has a lot of information to relay because it's not simply a matter of depicting the events of 9/11, but to set everything in context with what came before (at one point it jumps all the way back to World War II to explain the CIA's origins!) and what followed (ie, the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq). The most effective pages are definitely those depicting the 9/11 attack - there, Colon uses fold-out sections to chart when the events on each of the four flights occurred in relation to each other.

I didn't expect to learn I didn't already know from this tome because - beginning on the day of 9/11 - my workplace began running news networks all day long, so I heard many of the facts (and various crackpot theories). It's precisely because I had been so inundated with the story of 9/11 back in 2001 that I wasn't eager to dive back in again. Reading it through, one finds failure writ large; it's a long litany of errors, miscommunications and people unprepared to respond (even including the disaster response teams, unfortunately). The only person who comes off looking well in this book is someone I don't recall hearing about back in 2001 - Richard Clarke, who had been trying to get Bin Laden for years prior to 9/11 and who throughout the book is depicted as fairly thoughtful and methodical.

Because there's so much to be told in so (relatively) few pages, there is only some (not much) panel-to-panel storytelling; most of the panels tell a story of their own, rather the accumulation of sequential art; very little back-and-forth conversation, very little action-then-reaction. Previously I'd seen Ernie Colon working on comedy or super heroes (or the two at once in Damage Control), but here his ability to render expressive faces is invaluable; he captures what must be hundreds of likenesses convincingly and imbues something of the person's character, no matter how briefly they appear in this book.

The book also offers a (very) gentle rebuke of the Iraq War, pausing to refute Iraq's supposed involvement in 9/11 (something Clarke had formally rejected a week after the attack). Reading of how the USA enhanced their security measures following the attacks brought me back to the ambivalence I felt then, concerned at how their expanded powers could be misused. Then, I reflected, nothing has actually changed since that administration - the potential for abuse is not only as high as ever, we've had repeated stories of US soldiers and officials overstepping the bounds of both theirs and international laws. *sigh* Back to fiction for me, this is getting depressing...

Review: Inner Sanctum - Tales of Mystery, Horror & Suspense

Inner Sanctum Mysteries is one of the best-remembered programs of old-time radio and definitely the most easily recalled of the horror shows. Although the series had a few memorable episodes and occasionally featured stars like Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Richard Widmark and Agnes Moorhead, it's primarily renowned for the opening of the "creaking door" at the start of each program and the subsequent narration by the host, Raymond, whose dark comedy was usually in contrast to the content of the series.

I have no idea why, but earlier this year NBM publishing released the graphic novel Inner Sanctum: Tales of Mystery, Horror & Suspense by artist Ernie Colon.

This novel features seven tales of the supernatural: "Death of a Doll," "Alive in the Grave," "the Horla," "Mentalo," "the Undead," "Lived Once -- Buried Twice" and "the Voice on the Wire," together totalling 106 pages in black & white. Most of these were adapted from the radio series. In the book's back matter, Colon talks a bit about his career and how Inner Sanctum was a favourite program of his while growing up.

I'm not sure how people without a fondness for the radio program will approach Colon's Inner Sanctum, but as a fan of the series, I can say it's an odd duck. Colon primarily uses the adaptations as a launching point for him to indulge in whatever weirdness he likes to put on the page; for instance, "the Horla" (the famed Guy de Maupassant story, which was also adapted for Inner Sanctum) he depicts the creature haunting the protagonist, even though the point of the story is that the Horla is invisible; it worked just fine for radio, but comics being a visual medium, I suppose it makes sense to render the Horla; the original story makes the audience wonder if the protagonist is haunted or simply insane, so Colon's depiction of the creature seems to suggest what the protagonist imagines is haunting him.

On the other hand, "the Death of a Doll" begins as a fairly faithful take on the radio program, opening with a reporter about to meet the Devil, then flashes back to describe how he was led to the Devil after a drowned woman was found holding a baby doll; the baby doll seemed to pronounce the Devil's name. In the radio program, "the Devil" is just a normal man, but Colon takes some creative license and makes the antagonist "a" Devil who transforms into a giant monster. The odd thing is that his adaptation has the same opening - the reporter about to meet the man thinks is the Devil at a 3 o'clock rendezvous - but in the climax of the story, no such rendezvous is established.

Similarly, take "the Undead." This story was about an actor's wife who fears her husband is a vampire. In one scene from the original story, she finds a newspaper clipping in her husband's possessions with his obituary having been printed years earlier; in the radio show, she confronts her husband and he claims he clipped the article because he thought it was a funny coincidence that a dead man had the same name - in reality, he's trying to drive his wife insane by making her think he's a vampire; in Colon's version, the wife never confronts her husband about the article and instead the twist ending is that she's a vampire but doesn't know it while the husband wants her to make him a vampire too. In which case, why is the business about the newspaper article still in Colon's version with no explanation for why it exists?

Probably the best story in the volume is "Alive in the Grave," wherein a man pickpockets a newly-deceased man on the street, but later finds a card in the wallet explaining the man suffers from cataleptic spells and isn't dead; it's a oft-used gimmick in radio mystery shows from the era and Colon's spin on the tale is pretty good.

I haven't sampled any work by NBM before; this is a slim hardcover, standing 6x9". It's nice that Colon's name is in big letters on the front, but I'm little concerned at the pages in the back of the book promoting other titles in their catalogue - they only identify the creators in 1 out of 6 products.