Cosmic Comics

In 1954, the year I was born, Dr. Frederic Werthman published Seduction of the Innocent. The book described the serious harm comic books caused America's Youth. Ironically within a few years, comics entered their Silver Age. For non comic book fans, the Golden Age began in the mid-30s with the inception of Superman, Batman, et.al.

Silver Age writers like Stan Lee and artists like Steve Ditko at Marvel, Mark Waid and Terry Dodson at DC, created the comics with which I grew up. My age group still suffered from the small-minded antagonists who believed Werthman's drivel. Luckily, my parents did not fall into that school. They saw comics as a fun, creative outlet.

Of course comics did affect my mind, but not in the ridiculous manner the good "Doctor" thought. They opened worlds of imagination, magic, mystery and otherworldly visions. Years later when I began exploring inner space, the lurid art and wild stories took on new meanings.

This will come as no surprise to those who know me, but the less popular comics appealed to me. I liked Thor, Hulk, Superman, Batman, etc., but my main attraction went to the more bizarre. Cosmic Boy, a founder of the Legion of Super Heroes, time traveled to Earth from the 31st century with Lightening Lad and Saturn Girl to recruit Super Boy. Dr. Strange, a neurosurgeon who masters magic to defend the Earth from evil. It wasn't until my collegiate philosophical endeavors that I realized that Eastern mysticism and Jungian psychology filled the pages of his comics.

Reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, I discovered Ken Kesey's love of comic books and his connecting Captain Marvel and Nietzsche's book Thus Spoke Zarathurstra. How's that for the seduction of the innocent, Dr. Werthman?

The late 60s turned me onto the underground comix of R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Gilbert Shelton and others. These lurid, sexually-charged, obscenity and drug-ladened stories set my world on its ear. At the same time I read Kerouac's On the Road and Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels, The Strange and Terrible Saga of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. With a nod to
Shakespeare, my worm had turned.

The beauty of art can exist with the ugliness of depravity. The Chinese concept of yin and yang, or the German literary movement, Strum un drang, show that opposites comprise the core of their antithesis.

Comics have entered a new age and are now called graphic novels. Perhaps it's the old curmudgeon in me, but the term sounds grandiose. I remember in 5th grade when Sister Charles Louise found me reading The Amazing Spiderman hidden inside my geography book. I can imagine her reaction if I had stood up and said, "But Sister, it's a graphic novel!" As ever - BB

"Now I've always been puzzled by the yin and the yang
it'll come out in the wash, but it always leaves a stain
Sturm and drang, the luster and the sheen,
my baby leaving town on the 2:19" - Tom Waits, 2:19

Destivley Bonnero

I have seen this term listed as a form of Cajun/French. It's not. The phrase comes from Dr. John aka Mac Rebennack. Meaning "everything is fine", the phrase arose from the Doctor's own vocabulary created from New Orleans drug and musician underground patois. They would speak in this extemporized slang to confuse both the police and the squares. Like the Big Easy's music, the language is colorful, creative and to quote Mac mos'scocious.

I've listened to the music of New Orleans my entire life. As a child, I would sit with my father listening to Louis Armstrong, Al Hirt and Pete Fountain. I never knew it at the time, but they all came from the Crescent City making the roux that became my musical gumbo.

At 12, I was given a tenor banjo. Popular in the early part of the 20th century, this short necked,
four-string banjo was used in ragtime and traditional Dixieland music. In a few years, the guitar's siren call supplanted the tenor. But, the occasional foray into jug band music would resurrect my Vega Little Dixie.

In 1969, then Police Commissioner, Frank Rizzo, closed the original Electric Factory, Philly's rock venue. After that, Electric Factory Concerts were held at the Spectrum. One of the first was Dr. John, The Night Tripper. He was the opening act, but I cannot tell you who headlined the show. I had fallen under Mr. Rebennack's hoodoo spell and remain entranced to this day.

His psychedelic rock overtones with the underpinning of New Orleans jazz and R&B harkened back to the music I had listened to with my Dad so many years before. But it was more than the music, his feathered, buckskin costume, the Voodoo paraphernalia, the burning incense wove its spell. He had three Nubian beauties as back up singers. The show was a rockin' erotic, exotic explosion that blew away this naive 15-year-old.

Time marched on. At Siena College, I met my guitar mentor. I remember exactly the day I told him of my love of Dr. John's music. He said, "Do you know Professor Longhair?"  That simple question led to  Henry Roeland "Roy" Byrd aka Professor Longhair aka Fess who led to Allen Toussaint, the Meters and a life-long love of New Orleans music.

The musical trough of the Big Easy never goes dry. From Sidney Bechet to Dave Bartholomew to Randy Newman to John Mooney and Bluesiana, to Eric Lindell... its music gently caresses the soul like tendrils of Spanish moss across the skin on a warm Louisiana evening. As ever - BB

"Hot can be cool, and cool can be hot, and each can be both. But hot or cool, man, jazz is jazz." - Louis Armstrong