I was puzzled by the sudden change of tone in this book. The Mad Hatter in the Giunta "Man-Ape" story is a different guy than the Hatter in the two Mort Leav stories. There are little differences, like how the Hatter recites rhymes while fighting in the Giunta version but not in the Leav stories; or the way Giunta draws the Hatter with fuzzy cape, gloves and shorts and Leav doesn't. More significant is that the Giunta story is so much darker in tone than the Leav tales.
Curious, I turned to the previous (and only other) issue and got a surprise. The Giunta man-ape story was supposed to have been in issue #1--or so I gather from the fact that it's featured on #1's cover! What's more the lead story, "Date with the Hatter," has the same dark tone and unusual character bits as the man-ape story. The two stories would have fit together perfectly.
Looking at it that way we get the impression that The Mad Hatter was almost completely re-thought between its first and second issues. The first issue might even have been written by someone other than Bill Woolfolk. But Woolfolk was co-publisher; he probably just changed his mind about the character's direction. Or maybe the entire project was troubled. Details like missing logos and sloppy editing suggest either behind-the-scenes struggles or half-assed production.
All that aside, I agree with the others that The Mad Hatter is a generic character with a dumb name. Yes, he should at least wear a hat! However I like the attempts in the Giunta stories to give secondary characters a bit of depth. For that reason I prefer the man-ape story to the Golden City and Humpty Dumpty stories. The Golden City story did have some interesting ideas. The Humpty Dumpty story reminded me of those wartime non-Eisner Spirit stories where the writers never quite got the character right. Hasty and Tardy was forgettable. Fuddy and Bustle are two of the worst comic-relief characters ever! Even in comic books there's a limit to how stupid a character can be. Their filler story is plain awful.
My late friend Manny Stallman greatly admired John Giunta. At the time I couldn't understand why. I'd only seen Giunta's work for Tower and I didn't like it. Later when I saw Giunta's 1950s work I understood where Manny was coming from. They did a number of weird stories and romances, Manny pencilling and "Johnny" inking. They were a terrific team. In Giunta's solo work there were flashes of brilliance, especially in moody scenes. We see that side of him in the man-ape story. Unfortunately most of his art suffers from the traits I'd disliked in the sixties: tiny stiff characters lost in enormous background-free panels.
I have a similar love-hate thing with Mort Leav. He obviously can draw well when he wants to. He can pack a lot of action and movement into a panel. But he's wildly inconsistent. A great panel is followed by a panel dashed off between bites of a sandwich. Something about Leav's faces, particularly their noses, irritates me. The shtick that really drives me crazy, though, is how he'll draw people's heads and hands floating in space.
The Mad Hatter isn't much of a comic, but I'll bet its "inside story" would be fascinating.
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Topic: Week 86 - The Mad Hatter #2 (Read 3248 times)
