Tag: comics

Unearthing THE STRANDED

Bounding Into Comics dives into the history of the newest Arktoons series, The Stranded.

Digital comic website, Arktoons, added a classic Chuck Dixon story to their library as the site celebrates 4 million pageviews since it launched back in April. The classic Chuck Dixon story added to the platform is The Stranded that features artwork by Argentinian artist Enrique Villagran.

The series was originally published by Apple Comics and titled The Time Jump War back in 1989. Arktoons is publishing the series under its original name before it was changed by Apple Comics. Not only has the title been reverted to its original, but Arktoons has also remastered the series. It was originally published in black and white and has now been fully colored.

As for the story it follows U.S. Space Cavalry Captain Doyle Macklinton as he pilots a troop transport full of Marines with his co-pilot Lieutenant Veronic ‘Ronnie’ Killy as they do battle against an invading alien force. However, once they engage the alien forces on Europa they travel through a time warp and find themselves stranded in prehistoric Earth. Not only are they stranded, but a number of the alien forces also made it through the warp and still have their plans of conquering Earth.

The original official description from Apple Comics stated, “When rocket jockey Capt. ‘Doy’ MacKlinton and his beautiful co-pilot, ‘Ronnie’ Killy blasted the invading aliens’ stargate, they thought they’d stopped the invasion – instead, they discovered they’d trapped themselves in the prehistoric past! Now, even though Doy and Ronnie can’t understand the language of their own ancestors, they must lead them – with only stones and spears – against the deadly high-tech alien menace!

”When the series was originally published by Apple Comics it included commentary by Chuck Dixon detailing how the series came about.

Dixon explained, “In the dark days of Winter, 1988, Enrique Villagran and his brother, Ricardo, invited me to the studio they shared in the Philadelphia suburbs. As usual on these visits, we had an animated discussion of comics and movies and guns until the early hours of the morning.”

He added, “On this particular evening, between the jokes and the stories, Enrique showed me some drawings he had done. They were in his usual crisp and attractive style and depicted male and female space warriors and a scantily-clad cavegirl.”

“He asked me what I thought of them. I told him they looked great and asked what story they went with. He replied that they went with whatever story I chose for them to go with,” he detailed.

BIC also observed the recent FOUR MILLION mark that Arktoons recently surpassed.

When the site launched it featured 16 different series. In just its first year the site now has 60 different series that run new episodes on a weekly or twice-weekly basis… Dixon, who has numerous titles on the platform also observed, “Everyone can see all the numbers right there on the site. And everyone can see that the time between each million views is becoming shorter and shorter.”

The most popular series on the platform are Hypergamouse, a romance comedy about mice, Savage Memes, a comic strip featuring “viciously biting commentary on current events,” Stonetoss, a similar comic strip in the vein of Savage Memes, and Midnight’s War, “a vampire comic with enough violent intrigue to rival A Game of Thrones.”

It’s also introduced a number of new series that are quickly gaining in popularity including How To Succeed Like A Dark Lord and My Sister Suprema.

Needless to say it doesn’t look like Arktoons is going anywhere, but up as it provides a clear alternative to Marvel, DC, and even WEBTOON.

Read the whole thing there.

How Boomers Killed Comics

From Part Five of the history of the decline of the comics industry:

“The comics business went into a steep decline in the ’50s and early ’60s. During that time a lot of companies folded, a lot of comic book professionals were unemployed, and so, if you were an editor at a surviving comic book company you never had to train anybody, you knew lots of guys who were out of work. The streets were awash with unemployed cartoonists. So what happened is we had a generation gap—relatively few new people came into this business between the mid-’50s and the early-to-mid-’60s. Around that time a few of us started to trickle in. Among the arrivals in the early to mid-‘60’s were E. Nelson Bridwell, Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, Neal Adams, a few others and me. We were pretty much the last guys who got to learn our craft from the older guys–the guys who really invented and built the comic book business.
. . .
“There was a GENERATION GAP in the comic book industry. There were some people in their 50’s and 60’s, there were a lot of people in their twenties and early 30’s, but not enough in between. Because there had been an extended period of decline when relatively few new people came in, we were missing a generation. What that meant is that young guys who should have been assistant editors to a forty-something person were instead editors or editors in chief, even though their main qualification was having read 10,000 comics.”

Jim Shooter, Marvel Editor-in-Chief, 1978

Roll this bit of information back to 1968. The Marvel staff that remained through 1978 would have been in their 40s and 50s in 1968 by Shooter’s estimation. These folks would be Greatest Generation with some very early Silents. The generation gap that Shooter speaks of would be Silents who were generally unable to break into the industry in the late 50s and the 60s due to the downturn in the industry. Greatest Generation creators hung on to the majority of remaining positions. Those new staff at Marvel would have been in their late teens and early 20s in 1968. Those individuals would be Boomers...

Boomers work to undo the Greatest Generation’s efforts

We see in these two titles the distinct generational split between the unified-vision, long-term editor in Stan Lee with Jack, Steve, Don, and the Greatest Generation Bullpen members, and the multiple-editor driven Roy Thomas/Archie Goodwin/etc and Boomer Bullpen model. The Greatest Generation creators took more from the traditional Western Historical canon — focusing on romantic pairings (Reed and Sue, Ben and Alicia, Johnny and Crystal, Peter and Gwen), family formation (marriage and children), forging strong male interpersonal relationships (Reed and Ben, Ben and Johnny, Peter and Robbie, Peter and Capt Stacy, Peter and Harry, Peter and Flash), and investigating the interpersonal relationships of these smaller elements with other family, friends, co-workers, as well as antagonists and villains.

The few Silents and majority of Boomers took the lead on aligning the content of the books with the popular zeitgeist of the current day, moving the books away from aspirational themes of their Greatest Generation predecessors toward ‘realism’. That meant divorce, no marriages, no children, and few relationships outside of the ‘hook-up culture’ varieties. Traditional values highlighted by Greatest Generation creators were ignored, avoided, and eventually derided.

And while we’re on the topic of Boomers, don’t miss Boomer Patrol’s latest, FUNKY BOOMER, which chronicles much the same phenomenon across a wider strata of society.

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Arktoons 4 Million

Arkhaven Comics launched its Arktoons site for free digital comics in April 2021. Since its debut with 16 comic series, Arktoons has continued to expand and now features more than 60 different series which run episodes on a weekly or twice-weekly basis. The site currently features 1202 episodes, and as Arkhaven’s most prolific creator, The Legend Chuck Dixon, has observed, the Arktoons site traffic has increased steadily in the seven months since its launch.

“Everyone can see all the numbers right there on the site. And everyone can see that the time between each million views is becoming shorter and shorter.”

ALT★HERO Episode 36: You Have to Go Back

THE STRANDED Episode 2: Attacking Europa

SOMETHING BIG Episode 25: Down to Gorktown

SAVAGE MEMES Episode 62: Veritas

ADOBE KROGER: DAME COMMANDER Episode 3

CLASSIC BIBLE TALES Episode 29: The Return to Nazareth

It took just seven weeks for Arktoons to go from three million to four million views. Will it take even less time for the third-ranked Toons site to reach five million? Stay tooned…

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