A Week (Three Weeks?) of Wonderful Comics 5

Jim Engel and Chuck Fiala, Fandom Confidential (Kitchen Sink, 1982).

The above scan is from my copy of Fandom Confidential, and it's beat up and worn out. That's because I've re-read it over and over again, at least once a year for the last twenty-six years. I love it. FC always makes me laugh.   

Fandom Confidential was a series of single-page fumetti comics that originally appeared in the now-defunct fanzine The Comics Reader from 1979-1981. (The Reader was the first fanzine I read on a regular basis; I remember seeing several CF pages in the Reader.) The masterminds behind FC, Jim Engel and Chuck Fiala, were two young, energetic fans so dedicated to bringing humor to comics fandom that they performed comedy routines at the San Diego and Chicago Comicons. The FC set-up is that Engel and Fiala are two newscasters that bring us, in their own words, "the latest news and interviews of interest to comic fandom." All of it false, naturally, and all of it built for maximum silliness and laughs.

The CF comic is a collection of the Reader strips, plus an 8-page epic titled "The Obligatory New Pages," where Engel and Fiala get out from behind their news desk--"A sheet over a table, up against a wall at Jim's house!"--and drive over to chez John Byrne, in an amusing attempt to interview the popular artist. (In 1982, Byrne had just left The X-Men and begun his multi-year run on the Fantastic Four.) One of the grand joys of FC is that several comics pros--Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Alan Light, Scott Shaw!--appear in the fumetti and join the fun, and Byrne himself is a howl as a megalomaniacal king of the comics (click to enlarge):

Embedded in Byrne's dialogue are obscure references to early-'80s comics culture. His mention of the "cog in the machine bonus," for instance, refers to his infamous defense of work-for-hire practices (Byrne wrote, "I am a cog in the machine which is Marvel Comics and I rejoice in that") in an article in Comic Scene #2 (March 1982). Maybe we need an annotated version of FC, since some of the funniest gags riff on funnybook controversies are bound to be lost on younger fans. One such tempest-in-a-teapot from the period involved a story penned by then Editor-In-Chief Jim Shooter for Marvel's black-and-white Hulk Magazine #23 (October, 1980), where Bruce Banner is attacked by two gay rapists in a YMCA shower room. Engel, FC's writer, combines several elements--the Hulk/YMCA story, a joyous parody of Stan Lee's pulse-pounding prose style, and his own physical impersonation of Lee--in the strip "Stan's Soapbox!" (click!):

Poor Stan the Man is ruthlessly mocked by Engel and Fiala. In the panels above, you'll see that "Lee" is standing in front of a wall of we might reasonably assume are Marvel Comics, until we look closely and see DC titles like Batman, Blackhawk, Isis, etc. The implication is that Lee is so disinterested in Marvel's day-to-day operations that he doesn't even know what the company publishes any more (which is a pretty accurate description of Lee's career post-1972). The theme of Lee's cluelessness resurfaces in another strip, as Fiala brings up the fact that the real Stan Lee didn't recognize who Howard the Duck was when asked a question about the fowl during a college speech.

To be sure, there's some obscure humor here, and I'm reluctant to recommend FC to anyone who doesn't  remember (or isn't willing to research) ancient comic book topics like the rape of Ms. Marvel and the cloning of Gwen Stacy. I find Engel and Fiala so irreverent and energetic, though, that I chuckle even when I don't know what they're talking about. I never read a single issue of the Alan Light tabloid The Comics Buyer's Guide, but that doesn't prevent me from (ahem) appreciating the following catfight (click for some hot Engel-on-Fiala action!):   

FC is a riotous time machine that perfectly satirizes the comics business circa 1980, and I wish Engle and Fiala were still doing their fumetti today, taking shots at, say, the hubbub over the cost of Kramers Ergot #7. (Engle in a bushy beard would make a bitchin' Alan Moore.) But maybe us Thought Balloonists  should pick up the baton? Maybe I can convince Charles to swear like a Teamster, put on a Batgirl costume, and call himself a "fabulous femme"...?      

Note: I haven't been able to find websites for either Engel or Fiala. The closest I've come is this photo  of Fiala in Alan Light's Flickr account, and messages from "Jim Engel" and "Jungle Jim Engel" on various comics message boards. ("Jim Engel" isn't that uncommon a name, so I wonder: is it our man Jim who speaks out so strongly against pornography on this Comicon thread from 2000?) 

Runners-Up: For more esoteric humor based on comics fandom--and for some glorious cartooning too--read Mark Martin's 20 Nude Dancers 20 Year One Posterbook (Tundra, 1991) and 20 Nude Dancers 20 Year Two (Tundra, 1992).

Comments

[Brad Brooks]

Fandom Confidential was great. Jim Engel and Chuck Fiala used to draw really good funny animal comics too, if I recall correctly. Thanks for reminding us of this great book. Off now to dig it out myself...

[Tim Broderick]

I've known Chuck for many years. He's recently got back into cartooning and can be found here: http://www.swordandsarcasm.com/

[Jim Engel]

Hey, Craig----thanks for the swell piece on FANDOM CONFIDENTIAL! I re-read it once a year myself, and I TOO still find it funny. Those days on TCR with Chuck, doing F.C., "DICK DUCK, DUCK DICK" and "BULLET CROW" for our friends Mike Tiefenbacher & Jerry Sinkovec (in the company of friends like Alan Jim Hanley & Don Rosa) were some of the best times I've ever had. High points were being accused of "bad taste" in a letter from Bill Gaines after we did the return of Graham Ingles, a letter from Stan on the "soapbox" strip (and the April "Stan Is Dead" cover I did), and being defended in print by Alex Toth after some guy complained that the pages Chuck & I were using up would be better used on old Superman newspaper strip reprints.

I loved doing Fandom Confidential, and miss doing it (I had some pencilled up that we never got to)...it's nice to have the book collecting it (although there WERE a few pages done after the Kitchen Sink book came out. There was also a pretty funny 2-pager shot at a CBG picnic that ran in..CBG...most obscure are the special ad strips we shot to advertise the Kitchen collection that ran in THE COMICS JOURNAL, CBG, TCR, and THE SPIRIT...).

Anyway---thanks for--sniff---remembering.

Confidentially Yours,
Jim Engel

PS--thanks to Tim B. for the link to Chuck's strip. I'd never seen it.

PSS---Yes, that WAS me on the COMICON.COM thread.