Wonders by Maroto

Wonders
by Esteban Maroto
Eurotica, 2002

Spaniard Esteban Maroto (b.1942) is one of the most talented artists in comics and commercial sci-fi and fantasy art during the last 50 years. Disappointingly, there is no English-language overview of the artwork he has produced during that time.

I had some hopes that 'Wonders', an oversize trade paperback published by Eurotica in 2002, might be an effort towards rectifying that defect. Unfortunately, the book is not very good. Its 64 pages mostly are taken up with recent (i..e, around the time of the book's publication) graytone and color pictures Maroto has done for the pinup collector market; most of these have a softcore porn emphasis that is super-cheesy.

There are some images that are PG-rated, and I've gone and posted those below, although they really don't represent his best works. Sadly, the definitive overview of Maroto's art remains to be written.

Lovely Day by Bill Withers

'Lovely Day' by Bill Withers
January 1978

January 21, 1978, and amidst a Top 40 Singles chart crowded with major releases from artists such as the BeeGees, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, the Electric Light Orchestra, and Queen, at position 35 and rising is a single from West Virginia-born singer Bill Withers, called 'Lovely Day'.

Withers by that time was a well-known chart presence, thanks to previous hits such as 'Ain't No Sunshine' (1971) and 'Lean on Me' (1972). 'Lovely Day', taken from his 1977 album 'Menagerie', features an amazing vocal performance: Withers sustained one note for 18 seconds, one of the longest ever recorded on a major record release. What makes Withers' performance even more impressive is that this note came after a series of sustained notes beginning around the 2:53 mark. 

In the modern era, in which Auto-Tune and other software packages routinely are used to correct the vocals of major recording stars, Withers' performance is all the more impressive.

When I wake up in the morning, love And the sunlight hurts my eyes And something without warning, love Bears heavy on my mind Then I look at you And the world's alright with me Just one look at you And I know it's gonna be A lovely day ... lovely day, lovely day, lovely day ... When the day that lies ahead of me Seems impossible to face When someone else instead of me Always seems to know the way Then I look at you And the world's alright with me Just one look at you And I know it's gonna be A lovely day..... When the day that lies ahead of me Seems impossible to face When someone else instead of me Always seems to know the way Then I look at you And the world's alright with me Just one look at you And I know it's gonna be A lovely day...

Ghost Rider 2099 issue one

Ghost Rider 2099
Len Kaminski (writer)
Chris Bachalo and Mark Buckingham (art)
Marvel Comics, May 1994

According to Ronin Ro in his book Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution (2004), in the early 1990s Stan Lee was increasingly disillusioned with the failure of Hollywood executives to greenlight production of a large-budget film featuring Marvel characters. Lee decided to return to scripting comic books, and one of his ideas was to create a new series of Marvel titles that were set a century into the future.

Marvel's editor at the time, Tom DeFalco, endorsed Lee's idea, and the Marvel 2099 imprint began in 1992 with the publication of Spider-Man 2099. Despite the advent of the Great Comic Book Crash of 1993, additional 2099 titles were rolled out in succeeding years, including Doom 2099, Hulk 2099, Punisher 2099, and X-Men 2099.

Ghost Rider 2099 kicked off in May 1994, and eventually ran for 25 issues until May 1996. That year most of the 2099 lineup was cancelled due to declining sales, and in December, Marvel declared bankruptcy.

The 2099 books were set in a shared dystopian, near-future world devoid of 'traditional' superheroes. There was a decided emphasis on incorporating the Cyberpunk aesthetic into all of the titles, and into Ghost Rider 2099 in particular.

Writer Len Kaminski took the inclusion of Cyberpunk elements to heart in this first issue of Ghost Rider 2099........perhaps a little to earnestly. Practically every panel has some message designed to remind the reader just how well Kaminski knows the genre. 

Here's a panel where the speech balloon references the lead characters from William Gibson's Neuromancer and John Shirley's A Song Called Youth:

These kinds of cutesy callouts tend to give the book a gimmicky character. Things aren't helped by the artwork, which tries to simultaneously channel the artistic styles of Simon Bisley, Frank MIller, and Walt Simonson......and predictably winds up an incoherent mess, for the most part.

That said, Ghost Rider 2099 retains merit for taking all sorts of 80s tropes, like the dystopian cityscapes of the Judge Dredd comics, 'virtual reality', and Robocop-style urban policing and working them all together into a comic that, while flawed, continues to represent one of the better Cyberpunk-themed titles of the past 25 years.

Posted below is the entire first issue of Ghost Rider 2099. I've included scans of some of the advertisements appearing in the comic. By the start of '94 the trading card market was oversaturated, but Marvel and other major companies continued to churn out set after set............ 

Book Review: Quasar by Jamil Nasir

Book Review: 'Quasar' by Jamil Nasir

2 / 5 Stars

'Quasar' (207 pp) was issued by Bantam Spectra in November, 1995. The cover art is by Bruce Jensen.

‘Quasar’ was author Nasir’s first novel, and represents a third-generation cyberpunk tale.

The story is set in a near-future earth where, in the aftermath of global war, much of the surface is an uninhabited wasteland, poisoned by biowarfare pathogens and toxins. Humanity has retreated to the confines of an enormous city, where they lived crammed into tiny apartments, breathing filtered air.

The lower levels of the city are decrepit slums, inhabited by mutants and outcasts, permanently forbidden to ascend to the city resting above their warrens.

Protagonist Ted Karmade is a ‘psychiatric technician’, who uses modified headsets to electronically jack in to the minds of the afflicted and deliver necessary counseling.

Ted’s life is humdrum and mundane, until he gets a summons to the Sentrex Complex, the highest, largest, edifice in the city, and the home of the unimaginably wealthy ZantCorp. There he is tasked to treat the psychological traumas of one Quasar Zant, the beautiful heiress to the ZantCorp fortune.

As Karmade settles into his job as psychiatric counselor to Quasar Zant, he discovers that, far from being a deranged party girl, Zant is a genuinely troubled soul whose life is stealthily manipulated by her trustee and aunt, Nelda Cloud.

Quasar is adamant that the solution to her psychic turmoil somehow lies in the Warrens under the city. When Quasar slips away from her minders and flees to the forbidden zones, it’s up to Ted Karmade to find her and bring her back before ZantCorp’s executives realize they have lost control of their future CEO.

But as Karmade learns more of Quasar’s childhood, it becomes clear that what is taking place within the confines of the Sentrex Complex is not just a struggle over the future of the corporation. Rather, what happened to the young Quasar Zant, and her since-vanished parents, will have implications for the survival of the city and the entire human race……

‘Qausar’ is a middling first novel. It starts off on an intriguing note, as we follow Karmade into the Sentrex Complex and its warped atmosphere marked by the presence of the decadent rich, and their mercenary staff.

But the middle chapters are overly preoccupied with the burgeoning psychodrama between Quasar and Karmade, and the narrative tends to drag.

Things liven up in the novel’s last chapters, although some plot developments struck me as a little too contrived – the ‘cosmic’ revelations come so thick and fast they tend strain the novel’s structure as a tale centered on the emotional interactions of doctor and patient.

Nasir would revisit the theme of a man who (against his better judgment) is gradually caught up in the political and social turmoil surrounding a beautiful, but flawed, young woman in his 1999 novel Tower of Dreams, which much improved over ‘Quasar’.

Cyberpunk fans may want to give ‘Quasar’ a try, but I would recommend ‘Tower’ as a better entry to Nasir’s writings.

Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink: photographs by Bill Yates

Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink
photographs by Bill Yates
Six Mile Creek, Hillsborough County, Tampa, Florida 1972 - 1973

"It was all rock and roll and muscle cars out in the orange groves.”

This is a fascinating series of black-and-white photographs taken of the young patrons of a Florida roller skating rink in 1972 - 1973.

This is an era when the Sun Belt was just beginning to take shape. Central air conditioning in individual homes and businesses still was relatively rare. This is the South that you see in 70s Burt Reynolds movies like White Lightning and Gator : two-lane blacktop roads; small towns roasting in the heat; soda in bottles, not aluminum cans; people driving cars with the windows down (because there is no A/C); and people sweating..........constantly.

And at the roller rink, plenty of people, even 'tweener' -aged kids, smoke............!

Many of these kids are behaving much older than they are; they aspire to adulthood. They want to be independent. This is a time when the concepts of the 'helicopter parent', or 'My Mom is My Best Friend', didn't really exist. 

An interesting look at American culture, particularly when comparing kids back then, with those of today.

As writer Jean M. Twenge observes in her September, 2017 article in The Atlantic:

The rink was a place where kids could get away from their parents and inhabit a world of their own, a world where they could drink, smoke, and make out in the backs of their cars. In stark black-and-white, the adolescent Boomers gaze at Yates’s camera with the self-confidence born of making your own choices—even if, perhaps especially if, your parents wouldn’t think they were the right ones. 

Dax the Damned The Paradise Tree

Dax the Damned
'The Paradise Tree'
by Esteban Maroto
from Eerie Issue 59 (August 1974)

'Dax the Damned' was the English-language adaptation of Esteban Maroto's strip Manly el Guerrero ('Manly the Warrior'), that originally was published in the early 70s in the comics section of the Spanish paper Pueblo.

The first episode of 'Dax' apeared in Eerie 39 (April 1972). Additional episodes ran until issue 52 (November 1973).

Never one to spoil a chance to repackage previously published material and foist it on the buying public, James Warren took all the Dax episodes and made them the content of Eerie issue 59, which billed itself as a 'Super Special Summer Giant !' 

Unfortunately, Eerie writer Budd Lewis couldn't help meddling with the speech balloons in these reprinted stories, making extensive changes to Maroto's original wording.

Maroto's exceptional draftsmanship was unlike anything yet seen in American comic art at the time. In 'Dax', he would craft myriad tiny details (like using a small piece of Zip-A-Tone to cast a shadow over one half of a female character's face) to give each page a highly ornate styling.

As for Maroto's plotting, he instilled the Dax adventures with a downbeat, existential tenor that contrasted sharply with the more ebullient atmosphere of Marvel's Conan the Barbarian comics.

Maroto also seems to have modeled the female leads of his 'Dax' strips on the beautiful Spanish actress Soledad Miranda (1943 - 1970), who looked really good in a metal bikini:

Posted below is the episode titled 'The Paradise Tree', scanned at 300 pdi from the original Eerie issue 59.