Monday, March 10, 2025

A Compassionate Spirit!


Here's a great image of The Spirit by Will Eisner. It's from a collection of comics produced in the late 80's as an AIDS benefit book titled Strip AIDS U.S.A. The book features a lot of interesting pages by some dandy talents like Don Simpson, Tom Yeates, Frank Miller, William Meisner Loebs, Ken Steacy, Sergio Aragones, and other names from the decade's Indy crowd. Trina Robbins is credited with coloring this Eisner drawing which served as the back cover of the black and white collection.

(British Anthology)

The late Trina Robbins was in fact the organizing force on this book from Last Gasp and she was inspired by a similar British project. So many parts of mainstream America were quite ugly during the AIDS epidemic, but it's nice to remember there were positive aspects as well. 

(Bill Seinkiewicz)

To check out the complete contents of this collection check out this GCD link

The compassion demonstrated in this time for those suffering from any disease is contrasted with the callous and cruel decrees of the current American President who has cut off both food and medical aid to faraway lands that desperately need it. He lacks the soul to see the blood on his hands that is all too evident to the entire world. 


And in other news but not really, today is Harriet Tubman Day, which celebrates the brave and compassionate woman who was responsible for saving the lives of so many slaves with her contributions to the development of the "Underground Railroad". It's courage like hers which will see us through our current dangerous times. 

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5 comments:

  1. I had forgotten all about Strip AIDS ( the UK title, I dont thibk i ever saw tge US one). It was certainly a bad time pity we havent learned how to treat those in need any better since then. Nice Eisner illo .

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    1. Tragically, all we seemed to have learned is how to isolate marginalized groups even more, at least in the land I live in.

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  2. Here in the UK there's a liberal newspaper called The Guardian and on their website yesterday they featured a political cartoon which showed Mickey Mouse, Homer Simpson and Captain America's shield (all representing the USA) next to a huge, evil-looking Russian bear and Mickey is saying to Homer "Are we the baddies now?" which is probably an accurate portrayal of how much of the world now sees Trump's America.

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    1. In less than two months time he has utterly demolished the ability of the U.S. to operate in good faith with allies of decades-long standing. One thing he has done is to unite all sane and loyal Americans in a single cause -- remove him from office and begin to rebuild the republic.

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