[ DRAWN & QUARTERED ]
Cartoonist sketches
fine tale of old Texas
Jack Jackson was always an anomaly among the underground cartoonists of the 1960s. While "Jaxon" did his share of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, and poking pitiless fun at the establishment, there was always a measure of meticulous craftsmanship to his work, a fanatical devotion to detail that bordered on the obsessive. His stuff was never much fun, but it sure was interesting.
Panels were filled with tiny lines and dots. He did back-swashes of white ink to add texture. He often used three-quarter light on his faces to create a brooding, noirish quality, a very difficult thing to carry off in the pulp pages of cheaply printed comics.
"Comanche Moon"
By Jack Jackson
(Reed Press, paperback,
128 pages, $14.95)
It was the work of a guy who spent long, lonely hours at the drawing board -- a guy who had a personal relationship with his characters and the work of an artist who smoked instead of drank.
He certainly took the challenge seriously -- Jaxon was a co-founder of Rip Off Press, the first professional underground comics publisher. How "professional" was it? They're still in business.
Histories of the undergrounders generally credit Jaxon with the first real bandit comic book, the seminal "God Nose."
Every once in a while, Jaxon would slip an odd little western into his underground comics. The stories generally dealt with the Comanche Wars in West Texas and focused on the lives of Cynthia Ann and Quanah Parker, a white woman taken captive and her half-breed son who became leader of the Comanche Nation in their last battles in the 1970s.
COURTESY OF DENISKITCHEN.COM
A panel by Jack Jackson that illustrates his meticulous craftsmanship.
These are real people, their stories brilliantly limned. Jaxon's research was obviously thorough and in depth.
But these pieces were episodic and scattered. You never knew when or where they'd turn up. To those interested in the graphic novel medium, they were pushing the envelope of visual storytelling -- a highly personalized recounting of realistic Western history.
The stories of the Parkers have recently been collected together and republished, in chronological order, in "Comanche Moon." It seems like everything is here, and it was a literal flashback for me to read through the Comanche pieces.
With the benefit of hindsight, and being able to read the works at one sitting, I became aware that as an artist, Jaxon is stiff and mannered, and his narrative abilities were compromised. Some of the earlier pieces, colored by the underground market, had dialogue ambiguities. (I kind of doubt that real Comanches exclaimed: "Imagine! Throwing away neat stuff like this. White people must be crazy.")
On the other hand, Jaxon's careful research and cinematic approach to storytelling never were more impressive. The works are well printed, the better to see that beadwork on the saddles.
A lifetime fellow of the Texas State Historical Association, other Jaxon works include "Los Tejanos," "The Secret of San Saba," "Indian Lover: Sam Houston & the Cherokees" and "Lost Cause, The Story of John Wesley Hardin."
Born in 1941 in Pandora, Texas, Jaxon's roots go deep in the big state. His great-great-grandfather settled there during the Republic years (1836-1845), and the Indian blood in the family, he once wrote, is limited to "some Choctaw, very remotely. I've often wondered why I have such a strong spiritual tie with the American Indians. I think it all started when I was a kid, growing up in the country, being fascinated with the land and finding in my childhood explorations reminders that people had been there before."
Sounds like there's room for some up-and-comer to apply the same passion to Hawaiian history.
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