Joe Staton’s the new artist on the Dick Tracy comic strip. I wore a tattered “E-Man” T-shirt for decades in his honor. E-Man was part of a new breed of irreverent superheroes, and was all the more outstanding for being published by the Connecticut-based Charlton Comics. The bulk of Charlton’s output was highly derivative of the mightier comics publishers, so E-Man’s sense of self-parody really stood out.
I also dig Staton for being one of the artists who really understood the “new look” concept that Archie Comics experimented with in its digests over the past few years. This was an attempt to bring more realistic artwork and more contemporary teen-trauma situations to the Archie line. Unlike some of the other artists, who were too keen to transform the established characters, Staton realized that a middle ground was required between the Archie archetypes and these 21st century updates. His drawings were shadowy and detailed without losing their looseness, their crucial cartoonishness.
So I’m keen to see where Joe Staton (in league with writer Mike Curtis) takes Dick Tracy. Already the pace is faster, the tone lighter and the drawing style rounder than what the newly retired Dick Locher. Locher worked with the strip’s creator Chester Gould in the 1950, and has been its guiding force since the early ‘80s—even when he relinquished the drawing of Tracy to Jim Brozman a couple of years ago, Locher still steered the storylines, and Brozman aped Locher’s style in the artwork.
For me, Staton’s zipping the strip right back to the freshness it had just after Chester Gould retired, when the brilliant Max Allan Collins was writing it and Rick Fletcher was drawing its newfangled punk rock and second-generation flatter-top villains.

By Artie Capshaw

We first saw them play as the Argonauts. Turns out that name was taken, and they had to change it. Then, for one show each, they became The Rock Pirates, The Punk Pirates, The Jack Tars, The Buccaneers, The Buckos and The Infringers.

Uh, that last one? “We looked up ‘pirate’ in the thesaurus,” explains the band’s scurrilous cap’n, Jay Mason, “and once you get through all the old seafaring terms, it’s all about copyright infringements.”

But even The Infringers was taken. For an act that wants to be seen as scoundrelly thieves, this one can’t seem to lift a good moniker.

So last night at the Bullfinch, Mason and his mates simply stormed the stage unannounced. How piratical can you get?

Well, you can slash and terrorize and drive the crowd wild with swashbuckling savoir faire. Which is what these, ahem, corsair-inspired musicians (we gotta get these guys a name) did with aplomb. Buckled our swashes all right.

Never underestimate the power of an orchestrated full-band power-chord leap in the air. Even the drummer took part.

Never deny the power of a fist-pumping sing-along. These guys had one which forced loud chants from poseurs whom we’ve never before witnessed opening their mouths at the Bullfinch before.

Never question the advice to quit while one is ahead. Eight short songs and gone. Literally out the door and into the van. (Cap’n Jay skulked back later for payment, we’re told.) The air of mystery smells sweet. Since they were in disguise, we still don’t even know exactly who the rhythm section was. We’re pretty sure the guitarist is that guy from Don’t Step on That Beetle; if so, we never gave that soul act enough respect.

Another surprise—a horn section for the last song. Just the last song. Who holds back a horn section for nearly the whole set, just for the shock effect of that first blast? This band does, enlisting marching-band misfits from the college on the hill and schooling them in stomps and struts.

Finally, all hail the dinky old-school electric keyboard. From its humble casing emerged sounds that mimicked the roar of thunder, the crash of rocks, the warbles of mysterious sirens, one forceful note at a time.

In our short time at the Rock Gods desk, we have not had much time to get jaded. We are astonished at the variety and vivacity of our small city’s scene. Great new bands, we proclaim, are being created every week. We can scour the clubs, colleges, closets and law offices of this empire for eons and continue to turn up new treasures on a frequent basis. (And we are not without standards!)

But, we pause to genuflect, these rock pirates, these kings of the c-chord, these picaroon loons, these new jackies, these triumphant tars, these amiable bluejackets, these

Consider us boarded and raided. A new flag flies on our mast.

Big weekend plans: Perry and Patetics tonight at the Bullfinch, with The Kapusta Kids… World’s Strongest Ant and Public Eye at Hamilton’s, keeping the covers crowd covered… and the better-than-they-sound Rock Mississippi at D’ollaire’s, with even hotter up-and-comers J. Burlington Gearshift….

Gar(who may be hallucinating) is convinced that the mice are escaping at night and running back into the cage when they hear us coming.

Archie: The Best of Dan DeCarlo (IDW, $24.99)
Archie Firsts (Dark Horse, $24.99)
The best archivist and anthologist of old Archie comics remains Archie Comics Publications itself. The companies digests and trade paperbacks are affordable, variety-filled and plentiful. But the Archie company has also recently been granting reprint rights to some of the best coffe-table-book compilers in the comics realm.

Dark Horse and IDW not only seize on whole different eras for their 25-buck collections of Archiana, they’re distinct in how they present the comics as well. The main similarity is how loosely they play within their narrow themes.

Dark Horse offers Archie Firsts—Featuring the First Appearances of Jughead, Betty, Veronica, Reggie and Archie. Seems an easy enough dictum, until you realize that those five characters’ debuts are all covered with a mere three adventures. (Archie, Betty and Jughead are all accounted for in the very first, and oft-reprinted Archie story from Pep #22.) Rather than extend the theme into future Archie eras—digging up the debuts of Moose Mason, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Josie & the Pussycats or Veronica’s cousin Leroy, for instance—the Dark Horse compilers decide to stick in the 1940s, which means several stories each from the first issues of later titles in the Archie series: Archie’s Pal Jughead (which began in 1949 and continues to this day, though it’s changed issue-numbering schemes a few times), Archie’s Rival Reggie (also 1949; the title changed to Reggie & Me and eventually expired in the 1980) and Archie’s Girls Betty and Veronica (1950, after they’d been core members of the Archie establishment for nearly a decade).

Archie Firsts’ packaging is elegant—the crisp orange dust jacket can be removed to reveal a “Riverdale High School” insignia emblazoned on the book itself—but the pages are meant to mimic (in a sturdier, cleaner, archival-quality manner) the cheap newsprint on which these stories were originally printed.

Archie—The Best of Dan DeCarlo goes the slick route. The back cover of this 150-page Volume One states that “each of these wonderful pages has been reproduced from Dan DeCarlo’s original art and faithfully re-colored to match its look when it was originally published.” No little ink-dots here and yellowed backgrounds here—it’s all so pop-art clean, on blindingly shiny paper, that you might think you’re looking at a collection of Archie comics’ front covers rather than their insides.

Let’s hope there are several more volumes, since everything here is from a period in the late ‘50s and ‘60s when the great DeCarlo (who served Archie for half a century) didn’t change his style a whole lot. Personally, I think the covers and stories designed in the 1980s are hugely underrated in Archie fan circles, and there’s a wealth of extraordinary (and groovy) ‘70s material besides.

Volume One has a whole lot of stories where very little happens, just some well-scripted chat, and how DeCarlo delineates the mundane is what gives this book its oomph. While Betty and Veronica hold their endless debate about Archie’s inadequacies and their own needs, they change their clothes, indulge in daydreams, and move theatrically around rooms. It’s during this period that DeCarlo began to develop his signature filmic style of placing supporting characters (more often than not, nameless bystanders) in the foreground of the comics panels. The way he fluidly switches angles and horizons is mesmerizing. But DeCarlo’s peripatetic drawings complement rather than just animate the equally amazingly casual crafting of the words these dizzy teens are spouting. The scripts to all but two or three of the 26 stories here are by Frank Doyle. He was as important a figure in the cultural endurance of Archie as was DeCarlo, publishers John Goldwater and Michael Silberkleit, editor Victor Gorelick or anyone else involved in these characters during the 20th century. It would be fairer to title this series “The Best of Dan DeCarlo and Frank Doyle.”

My shelf of Archie hardcovers has expanded by several inches in just the last few months. I still buy the digest reprints and the new comics avidly, and I think that the neatest reprint packages of the past few years are the CD-Rom compendia of “Bronze Age” Archies (and Jugheads and Betty and Veronicas—a decade’s worth of each title per disk) put out a few years ago by GIT Corp. But these hardcovers are well worth the expense. It’s nice to have someone validate your tastes so lavishly and lovingly, whether the urge is nostalgic or art-restorative. As later collections should reveal (it’s a ’70s catchphrase), Everything’s Archie.

We wrote earlier about a doctor, a lawyer and an indian chief who’d started a band. OK, so it was a lawyer, a newsstand manager and a record store employee. Well, they’ve enlisted a drummer (alternate occupation unknown) and booked a gig next Thursday at Hamilton’s, under the name The Illegal Briefs. We blew this act’s cover when we overheard them rehearsing a few times in the legal offices of saxophonist “Flint” Gennessee, Esq. We didn’t think they could sue us or anything, but we didn’t know how they’d feel about being written about before they were “ready,” even in a column that was really about something else. (The spirit of community, duh.) So we didn’t tell them. Turns out they were thrilled, got a boost from folks walking into their businesses and complimenting them, and took all the attention as a sign that they should be playing out. No need to thank us. Just go see The Illegal Briefs next Thursday at Hamilton’s (Why not the Bullfinch? More lawyers drink at Hamilton’s.) Two acoustic acts open: Wye & Ott Echo and Scot Slaw…

Tonight: Godgi Goodeen and Art Mad at the Bullfinch… Fortune in My Misery at Hamilton’s… County Anselm (for the holiday) at D’ollaires. Drink green…

The mice turn out to be acrobats. We find one of them halfway squeezed through the bars of the gerbil cage.

Always happy to provide positive feedback, especially when a T-shirt is in the offing, I sent a few paragraphs of praise to the Splasm, the creators of Audiobook Builder, who were holding a contest for those who offered feedback on their array of apps.
Their blog about it all is here: http://www.splasmata.com/
My admiration for Splasm’s Audiobook Builder is sincere—the app has greatly eased the process of converting audiobook CDs (which I tend to get out of the library) and shoveling them into my iPhone in the correct order.
And now they’re sending me a Splasm T-shirt, though I didn’t get the grand prize of an iPod touch. But heck, if I didn’t already have a device like that, I wouldn’t have needed Audiobook Builder in the first place.

Speak of the devil. Just yesterday we were reporting some Blat blather, and the next we know their manager’s “just checking in.”
Scott “Sponge” Smith (or was that “Spawn”” We get confused) has continued in his quest to bring legitimacy to The Blats (aka The Blits) by bringing the band ever closer to breaking up. He’s selected a new wardrobe for the band to sport at the Lancelyn Green Renaissance Fair a couple weeks from now. The garb’s been paid for with the money the band was saving up to tour and record with. Not a princely sum, granted, but principles are at stake here.
“Sponge” begs to differ: “Stuff like that gets you noticed.” Granted, we haven’t read Women’s Wear Daily in a while, but are torn ruffle shirts and sweatpants really a trend waiting to happen? “Believe me, it’s worth it,” Smith insists. Believe us, he’s not paying for it…

Eddie Rick took Martin Gibson’s high-end wireless guitar out for a spin Friday at Hamilton’s, and spun it right into a coathook on the post near the side door. We didn’t witness the incident, but it also apparently involved a torn coat, a bruised arm and a broken neck—the guitar’s. A benefit memorial is being held next Tuesday at the Bullfinch to give the instrument a proper send-off, and raise funds to help Eddie pay back Martin….

John H. of the Hickenloopers has a drug problem. “I’m telling everyone,” he said, and implored us to put it in our column just like that. Guess what drug it is? One of the ones that makes you strip your clothes off because you’re so hot (in the uncomfortable sense). Was he taking it before his Bullfinch shows? Usually.

The only show worth mentioning tonight is a midweek hootenanny at Moyle’s Empire, the modern equivalent of a roadhouse out in the sticks. The New Waterfords are featured for the early set, but the closing jazz jam (which goes into after hours) is why everyone shows up. What’s the distinction? Unlike most of those other bar jams, this one draws suburban teens, brandishing their school-band horns and electric keyboards. We’re checking it out for a future column. See you there.

After a day in a large pickle jar, kind-hearted Mar found the mice a cage at Good Salvation for a dollar. It’s a gerbil cage, but the mice are fat and ought to fit.

[Only there are six this time, as Arnott continues to catalogue his 7-inch records.]

1. The Trashmen, Henrietta b/w Rumble.
Rare live tracks from a dance at “Proaches Popular Ballroom” in the summer 1965. Neatly remastered to reduce what must have been a teeming cloud of hiss and crowd noise. What’s notable about these two tracks from the young madmen behind the original “Surfin’ Bird” is how steadily and professionally played they seem. The Link Wray classic “Rumble” is delivered with the subtlety it demands.

2. Ben Folds, Bizarre Christmas Incident b/w Lonely Christmas Eve.
Folds is now the patron saint of collegiate a cappella ensembles, but he used to be an ironic indie Elton John, alternately sentimental and arch. This 2002 Sony single captures those two opposing forces as only a Christmas single can. “Santa he’s a big fat fuck/Down the chimney got his fat ass stuck/Oh honey call the lawyers fast/’Cause Mrs. Claus is gonna sue my ass.”

3. Willie Alexander, Burning Candles b/w In Your Car.
One of many recordings Alexander made with Erik Lindgren’s Arf Arf Records. Some of my Boston local rock hero’s tenderest, most carefully produced work is on those Arf Arf sessions. In Your Car is a poetic late-night remembrance of simpler times, its calm lyrics graced with an elegant sax solo. The A-side is a rave-up by Lindgren, to which Alexander brings his inspired vocal technique, neatly roughing up a song that would otherwise be way too cleancut.

4. Tedio Boys, Go Country!!! EP.
This was the pet management project of Tune Inn clubowner Fernando Pinto, an unhinged punk act from his homeland of Portugal. The colorful yet busy record sleeve design has country & western iconography aplenty (and two of the record’s three songs have the word “Country” in the title), but what people really noticed about it was the legend “Fuck the Beatles” over headshots of the band that vaguely resembled the Meet the Beatles album cover. “Back from the Crypt” is a crazy-fast, snarling lump of fun with an actual rockabilly beat. It upholds the glories of country while scaring off the boring traditionalists.

5. Mark Mulcahy, C.O.D. b/w Kind.
Part of Mark Mulcahy’s genius is that when he made this single, it sounds like a single ought to sound—catchy, short and complete. Yet it’s still a typically dark and warped Mark Mulcahy, sounding bright but full of doom. I still feel shivers (of joy and everything else) whenever I hear it. “C.O.D.” stands for “couple of days,” yielding this refrain: “A couple of days more, and I’m sure that I can find a cure/A couple more minutes and I’ll be fine, for a minute.”

6. Saucers, A Certain Kind of Shy b/w She’s Alright.
Before he started Miracle Legion, Mark Mulcahy was a drummer (and a fine one at that) in this band overseen by Craig Bell, who released this single on his own Gustav Records label in 1980. Bell’s importance in the nascent New Haven original music scene of the 1970s can’t properly be measured. He ran a label, led a fine band, and had come to town from the estimable Cleveland, Ohio scene, where he’d been the bassist in Rocket from the Tombs. This single has always sounded too pristine to me. The wonderful bits when the drums and the guitars come up together must’ve been amazing to experience live.