art: Rick Griffin

There’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is — do you, Mr. Draper? One year later, Rolling Stone magazine will make its debut, followed soon by “Rock and Other Four Letter Words.”

“Rock,” a 250-plus-page Bantam paperback, was published in January 1968 and subtitled “Music of the Electric Generation.” It was one of the first books of its kind, chronicling a cultural revolution that was still in the midst of its own creation. Crammed with black-and-white portraits of bands and musicians, it’s part oral history, part visual LSD trip. One of its fold-out spreads has an intricate, circuitlike diagram that connects over a hundred names, from the Butterfield Blues Band, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds to Busby Berkeley, Brubeck and Bach.

The editor-designer was a writer named J Marks. The photographer for most of the images was Linda Eastman, who went on to work for Rolling Stone and — oh, yes — marry Paul McCartney.

By the sheer force of its graphic presentation, ”Rock and Other Four Letter Words” conveys the mid-1960s music scene’s spirit, vitality and relevance.

As I remember it. Every defect was a hidden treasure.

Around that same time my father came home with a present for me. It was a ream of blank newsprint paper. He was a transit worker, and he explained that someone had left it behind on the subway. For me it became a treasured gift, as the paper looked exactly like the paper of the comic books I so fervently read. With the paper as my narrative canvases, I began producing my own comics by the score: Dr. Sol, The Crusaders, The Saturator, Gas-Man! et al.

Page from The Saturator, created when I was 11. At long last, I could produce comic books that looked like comic books.

Cut forward to 2001 when I first began to go through the Woody Guthrie Archives, located in Manhattan, to explore whether it was possible to make a book of his artwork. (It was.) Peering through his drawings and journals, I had the same experience I had as a child, although this time the documents had authentically aged: The years had added a yellow patina to many of these pieces, despite the fact that they were stored in a climate-controlled environment. This was the first time I was confronted with the question of how best to reproduce this work. Does one attempt to imagine it as it was when originally created, with pristine white backgrounds and colors that have not yet faded? Or reveal it as it exists today, less vivid but with the stains of time present? Since the former was impossible to know, I came to the conclusion that only the latter made sense.

I experienced this again a few years later with Louis Armstrong’s collages, which he “laminated” with Scotch tape. With these collages there was no question about heading back in time—the dried tape was as much a part of the collages as every photo was.

Woody Guthrie’s journals gain gravitas with the patina of passing years.

In Armstrong’s collages, yellowing tape adds to the experience.

Which brings me back to comics. One of the first collections I ever purchased, in the 1980s, was Bill Blackbeard’s oversize “Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics,” first published in 1977. Within the anthology, “Hogan’s Alley,” “Little Nemo in Slumberland,” “Gasoline Alley,” “Buster Brown,” and myriad others were lovingly and photographically reproduced with great detail on a paper stock closely akin to newsprint.

Imagine my surprise when I began to explore hardcover anthologies of comic books from DC and Marvel, released in the same era. “DC Archives” and “Marvel Masterworks” could not have been more different from Blackbeard’s groundbreaking accomplishment. They were garishly colored on high-gloss white stock; I had the sensation that I would need sunglasses to read them. I soon learned that since the original comics were unavailable—as were photostats—and the original artwork had been lost, destroyed, or scattered, the reproduction involved hiring present-day artists to trace and recolor the comics. The final effect was not so much of a black-and-white MGM classic colorized by Turner but rather like Gus Van Sant’s frame-by-frame remake of “Psycho,” starring Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates.

A page from Bill Blackbeard’s seminal work on newspaper comic strips, beautifully photographed in the pre-scanning days.

A side-by-side comparison of the original Fantastic Four #4 comic and a Marvel Masterworks “recreation.” Not only are the tracings inaccurate, the coloring does not adhere to the original.

The first time I became aware that change was in the air was when DC released “Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus, Vol. 1. “Here, an off-white paper replicated the look and feel (although happily not the fragility) of newsprint, and the line art was reproduced from the original stats. Fortunately, DC has employed this technique for other releases, although Marvel has opted for the strategy of tracing and reproducing on bright paper.

Smaller publishers like Fantagraphics followed Blackbeard’s lead, and since the advent of digital scanning, many others have chosen similar tacks: Abrams, IDW, Dark Horse, Titan, and Yoe Books all beautifully reproduce from the source. Still, two schools of thought have emerged about how best to achieve an optimum reading experience, both utilizing matte paper. One approach keeps the yellowing borders intact, while the other involves removing the borders and enhancing the colors, as if the comics had originally been printed on white, higher quality stock.

The DC release Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus, Vol. 1, successfully replicates the look and feel of the original comics.

In the next month, two books of comics reprints I’ve edited will be released, showcasing both techniques. “Golden Age Western Comics,” published by powerHouse Books, reproduces the original pages whole cloth, although the blacks and colors have been enhanced to replicate how they would have appeared before fading. In addition, we made minor touch-ups. Up until this point, this generally would have been my preference, as I prefer the viewing experience to be as close to reading a 60-year-old comic as possible; these comics were never printed on white paper to begin with. However, Fantagraphics has removed the borders and all signs of aging on our Mort Meskin book of reprint stories, “Out of the Shadows.” Comparing the two releases, I’ve come to appreciate the advantages of both approaches. As a genre, Westerns are mired in nostalgia, having long since been replaced by other action tropes in modern-day entertainment. With that in mind, a book as object set in a distant time and place seems appropriate. For the Mort Meskin collection, we hoped that a contemporary audience would rediscover him; Fantagraphic’s fresh, newly minted approach goes a long way toward achieving that.

A page from Golden Age Western Comics, published by powerHouse.

A page from Out of the Shadows, released by Fantagraphics.

16 was my first magazine subscription, though I never got to send away for any of the groovy posters or luv kits. 16 and Spec were essentially the same publication, but the idea of reading a magazine called 16 made me feel older—you know, more mature.

Gloria Stavers was 16 magazine in the early 1970s. She met its owner, Jacques Chambrun, in 1958 and signed on as office staff for the nascent publication. She checked reader mail and fulfilled subscriptions, all the while studying young readers’ needs. She soon made a name for herself in the entertainment industry with her list of questions compiled from the typical queries the magazine received — “40 Intimate Questions.” By late 1958, Chambrun named Stavers editor in chief of 16. The writer Dave Marsh calls her the “first real pop journalist.”

Stavers published teen idols’ loves ’n’ hates, baby pix, and wonderfully whitewashed life stories. There was no sex to speak of, though there was an implied — and completely benign — sexiness in some of the feature titles (“What I Do After Dark!”). The stories were upbeat, and the stars didn’t have things like drug or alcohol problems. There were lots of exclamation marks and no sordid scandals. And ohhhh, the pinups that were carefully removed from the center of the book and taped to my bedroom walls …

The 16 mag (always mag, never magazine) of my childhood asked squealing preteens to choose between Donny, David, and Michael. Though I did like David Cassidy and his groovy hair, and enjoyed a little Donny from time to time, my heart ultimately belonged to Michael Jackson. He seemed like a shy guy, which was intriguing, and Michael didn’t get quite as much magazine real estate as Donny. I always rooted for the underdog, even back in 1973.

I was past my teen-mag expiration date by the time Andy and David Williams and Shaun Cassidy became fave raves. And I never quite understood the appeal of Randy Mantooth or Rick Springfield, though I always had a huge crush on Scott Jacoby.

1970s-era Spec and 16 inspired my love of publication design. Looking back, of course, they’re both pretty cheesy but also charming and unself-conscious with their rub-down type and Chartpak rules. The colors! The illustrations!

These are my teen mags, by the way, not eBay purchases—though admittedly, I’ve been seriously tempted…

Number one fan:

“I’m just very interested in cooking,” Sahin says. “Cookbooks, shopping for groceries, lists.” She likes organizing the fridge. She likes labels on Tupperware (“Nicknames for dishes, shortcuts for ingredients, bad spelling, ‘Pork Skin for Cracklings don’t touch 12/21’ ”). “I’m obsessed,” she admits. And so, in 2010, Sahin left a post-SVA stint at Number 17, where she worked on projects like VeryShortList and titles for HBO Family and “Saturday Night Live,” to go to the French Culinary Institute. Scott Stowell, with whom Sahin worked, briefly, at Open, is sure there’s a connection. “Naz works in two different areas, but her attention to detail applies to both,” he said. Take her Good magazine infographics of pragmatic, mise en place order, or her layouts for Diner Journal, which riff on those walk-in-fridge scrawls.

Opening titles for A Family Is a Family Is a Family and Saturday Night Live (designed with Emily Oberman and Bonnie Siegler at Number 17), 2009

Feasting Never Stops, personal blog, 2009-current

Feasting Never Stops, personal blog, 2009-current

Sahin—whose design education began in Turkey under “very European instructors from, like, the Czech Republic, who’d give us circles and rectangles to arrange all year”—is inclined to agree. While cooking, she says, “you’re constantly problem solving. You have some basic ingredients, and you have to combine them in the best and fastest way possible.” She likes planning elaborate meals, picking a theme and organizing dishes around it. One was a hybrid of traditional Muslim Turkish food with American sensibilities, called “What if We Ate Pork?” As for her own hybrid interests, Sahin wonders, “Am I a designer who loves to cook, or a cook who loves design?” What if she’s both?

|___ You postcard, (designed with Serifcan Ozcan), 2009

Roller Coasters, (designed with Serifcan Ozcan), 2009

Cover illustrations for Serifcan Ozcan's Homemade Mixes, 2008

See the other 2012 New Visual Artists:

• Sang Mun
• Erin Schell
• Berton Hasebe
• Drea Zlanabitnig
• Casper Heijkenskjöld
• Kelsey Dake
• Jerome Corgier
• Tracy Ma
• Olimpia Zagnoli
• Ryan Thacker
• John Passafiume
• Lisa Hedge
• Jungyeon Roh
• Dafi Kühne
• Jing Wei
• Caleb Bennett
• Naz Sahin
• Serifcan Ozcan
• Brendan Griffiths
• George Michael Brower

The affairs of the workers of Eretz Israel should be in the hands of the workers of Eretz Israel, 1935.

To experience the role of posters in the birth, growing pains, and ultimate conflict, this is perhaps the best online resource. Here’s what Walsh collects: 1) international artists and agencies; 2) Zionist and Israeli artists and agencies; 3) Palestinian nationalist artists and agencies; 4) Arab and Muslim artists and agencies. And here is what he says about his collection of over 6,700 posters:

I first began collecting Palestine posters when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco in the mid-1970s. By 1980 I had acquired about 300 Palestine posters. A small grant awarded with the support of the late Dr. Edward Said allowed me to organize them into an educational slideshow to further the “third goal” of the Peace Corps: to promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. Over the ensuing years, while running my design company, Liberation Graphics, the number of internationally published Palestine posters I acquired steadily grew. Today the archives include some 3,000 Palestine posters from myriad sources making it what many library science specialists say is the largest such archives in the world.

To fortify our home - use Hebrew cement, 1937.

Come and See the Palestine Exhibition - Vienna, 1925.

Text in logo in upper left hand corner - The Worker, 1937.

Build Industries In Palestine!, 1927