Point Pleasant on the Edge of Darkwood Forest

Point Pleasant, West Virginia, is a small city but rich in history and folklore. It is the site of what some people consider the first battle of the American Revolution, the Battle of Point Pleasant (also called the Battle of Kanahaw), which took place on October 10, 1774, between Virginia militiamen and a force of American Indians under Chief Cornstalk. The Shawnee chief and his warriors were defeated in the battle. Long after his execution by his American captors in 1777, people claimed that Cornstalk had pronounced a curse upon white men. The first sightings of Mothman in 1966 and the collapse of the Silver Bridge in 1967 are said by some to be the fulfillment of Cornstalk's Curse.

Point Pleasant has other claims to fame. Karl Probst, designer of the Jeep, was born there. Brigadier General John McCausland of the Confederate army lived and died there. Few in America know it, but Point Pleasant also lies at the edge of the la Foresta di Darkwood--in English, Darkwood Forest, a creation of an Italian writer named Sergio Bonelli and the setting of Bonelli's long-running comic book feature Zagor.

Born in Milan, Italy, on December 2, 1932, Bonelli was the son of a writer, Gian Luigi Bonelli (1908-2001). To avoid confusion, the younger Bonelli adopted a nom de plume, Guido Nolitta. He began his career as a writer of comic book stories in 1957. In 1961, he created, with artist Gallieno Ferri (b. 1929), the comic book character Zagor. As Guido Nolitta, Bonelli wrote nearly all of the Zagor scripts, from Zagor #1, dated June 15, 1961, to Zagor #187, published in 1980.

Zagor, created by writer Guido Nolitta (Sergio Bonelli) and artist Gallieno Ferri for the character's self-titled comic book, published since 1961 by Sergio Bonelli Editore.

Zagor is an adventurer on the American frontier of the early 1800s. Like James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking, he inhabits a romantic world that never was. Clad in blue pants and a red, sleeveless shirt emblazoned with a yellow and black insignia, Zagor has the look of a superhero. Agile, strong, and indefatigable, he runs, jumps, swings, paddles, shoots, and punches his way across a fantastic landscape inhabited not only by woodland Indians and white frontiersmen but also by cowboys, cavalrymen, a tribe of uomini pipistrello--Batmen--and even a Ming the Merciless-like villain named Marcus. Zagor's sidekick is Felipe Cayetano Lopez Martinez y Gonzales, nicknamed Cico (pronounced Chico), a short, round, mustachioed Mexican in a green suit, string tie, and sombrero. (He's in the second and third panels of the comic book story below.) A comic character in the mold of Sancho Panza and the Cisco Kid's sidekick, Pancho, Cico is often in need of rescuing.

In 2012, the Italian firm I Fumetti di Repubblica-L'Espresso published the first volume in the collected adventures of Zagor. The first story in that collection is called "La foresta degli agguati," or "The Forest of the Traps." The first page appears below:

And what are the first words of that story? None other than the name of the town cursed by Cornstalk and visited in the 1960s by Mothman--Point Pleasant, West Virginia! The caption, freely translated, reads:

Point Pleasant, a small cluster of huts, a necessary staging place for all shipments going upriver to Fort Henry and Fort Pitt . . .

Fort Henry and Fort Pitt were real places. Residents of and visitors to Point Pleasant can attest that it's a real place, as well. As for the forest, Signor Nolitta confessed:

No, Darkwood [the forest of the title] does not exist; I have made it up myself. And I would add that I have invented it only little by little (in fact, in the first issues, the idea was only hinted at) as it became more and more necessary to have Zagor act in a "closed" setting but at the same time "open" to all possibilities of adventure.

In 1964, Guido Nolitta gave Zagor's forest home a proper name. He called it "la Foresta di Darkwood"--Darkwood Forest--and located it in the area of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. (West Virginia did not become a state until 1863, of course, but compared to Signor Nolitta's other anachronisms, that one is pretty mild.) The artist Cortez mapped the forest:

Despite the fact that Zagor's first comic book adventure began in Point Pleasant, that "little cluster of huts," as it was described, lies beyond the bounds of the forest as mapped by Cortez. In fact, it's outside the red circle drawn on the map, in the second loop of the Ohio River below and to the left of Darkwood Forest. Never mind that, though. Point Pleasant is where we meet first Cico, then, somewhere along the Ohio River, the hero Zagor.

In later adventures, Guido Nolitta populated Darkwood Forest with mad scientists, vampires and vampiresses, medieval knights, prehistoric men, and fantastic creatures. In 1966, another fantastic creature visited Point Pleasant. I wonder if that creature--Mothman--is a remnant of the strange and mysterious Foresta di Darkwood.

Sergio Bonelli, aka Guido Nolitta, died on September 26, 2011, in Monza, Italy.

Text copyright 2016 Terence E. Hanley

Convention Schedule for 2016

Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo (S.P.A.C.E.) 
Saturday, April 9 and Sunday, April 10, 2016
Northland Performing Arts Center, Columbus, Ohio

Ratha Con
Saturday, May 7 and Sunday May 8, 2016
Athens Community Center, Athens, Ohio

Tri-State Comic Con-Tri-Con
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Big Sandy Superstore Arena, Huntington, West Virginia

River City Comic Con
Summer 2016
Marietta, Ohio
 
Mothman Festival
Saturday, September 17 and Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016
Point Pleasant, West Virginia

East Elementary PTO Holiday Shoppe (No Link)
Friday in Early December 2016
East Elementary School, Athens, Ohio

Remembering Tim Corrigan

In 2015 we lost our friend and a very funny and talented cartoonist, Tim Corrigan. We here at Five Star Comics did not have an exclusive claim to him of course. Tim touched the lives of hundreds of writers, artists, readers, and fans. They remember him, too.

This is a time of year for remembering. Arnie Fenner, an artist, editor, and publisher, has made a list of cartoonists, illustrators, and other artists we lost during the past year. Tim Corrigan's name is on that list, joining those of Murphy Anderson, Jon Arfstrom, Roger Bollen, Mel Crawford, Alan Kupperberg, Earl Norem, Leonard Starr, Herb Trimpe, and many others. The names of the five cartoonists murdered in Paris in January are on the list as well. You can read Mr. Fenner's list on a posting called "In Memoriam 2015" on the website Muddy Colors: A Fantasy Art Collection, December 28, 2015, here.

Goodbye to 2015 and to Tim Corrigan, too.

Copyright 2015 Five Star Comics

A Novelist of the Silver Bridge Disaster

The Silver Bridge came down on this date in 1967. Forty-six people died because of it, on the bridge and in the waters of the Ohio River. Even now, in the area of Point Pleasant and across the river in Gallipolis, Ohio, there are people who remember the disaster or knew or are related to someone who died there. Novelist, poet, essayist, and book collector Jack Matthews was born in Columbus, Ohio, but had roots in Gallia County, of which Gallipolis is the seat of government. (His father was born on a Gallia County farm.) I don't know that Jack Matthews knew or was related to anyone who died in the Silver Bridge disaster, but he took on the identity of a fictional survivor in his novel Beyond the Bridge, from 1970.

Beyond the Bridge is brief but dense and complex, a much different book than Matthews' first novel, Hanger Stout, Awake! (1967), which is more a song of innocence than of experience. Beyond the Bridge takes the form of a diary of a man who has put his old life behind him and assumed a new one on the other side of the river--beyond the bridge--in West Virginia. The book ends with an entry for July 18, 1968--four days before Jack Matthews' forty-third birthday--as the protagonist sets out to cross another bridge and begin another diary. Jack Matthews lived for another forty-five years and passed away on November 28, 2013.

In Beyond the Bridge, Matthews' protagonist, a dishwasher and diarist named Neil, is friends with a fallen preacher named Harlan and becomes the lover of a local woman, Billie Sue, who knows all the superstitions of Appalachia. Neil writes of himself and Billie Sue:

     Only before we went to sleep, I myself wondered why I should be so interested in these silly superstitions and Harlan's insane theology.
     I couldn't figure it out, except for the possibility that I could feel human breath in them. And I can't help feeling close to people who have long been dead, and have no other voice left. (p. 138)

I like to think that those who are gone still have a voice, even if it's one we can no longer hear. But if Jack Matthews' only remaining voice for us--whether we are vast seas or merely islands of readership--is in his books, then I must share the feeling of his diarist, that of being "close to people who have long been dead, and have no other voice left." His books speak, have the breath of life in them, and, though their author has been gone two years now, still live.

In memory of Jack Matthews and the forty-six people who died on December 15, 1967.

Original text copyright 2015 Terence E. Hanley

Last Show of the Year

Five Star creator Terence Hanley was at the East Elementary PTO Holiday Shoppe again this year, on Friday, December 11, 2015. It was his fifth Holiday Shoppe, and like the others before it, this one was a good show for him. The Holiday Shoppe gives the children at East Elementary a chance to do their own shopping, with the help of their teachers or older pupils if they need it. It also teaches them about handling money, budgeting, and making decisions. Another benefit is that they can buy things from local artists and craftspeople instead of mass-produced merchandise from a chain store. Terence's coloring books are always popular there, especially among future UFOlogists and cryptozoologists. One of the artists Terence met this year is Jessica Held, who uses poured materials to make polished, agate-like surfaces on everyday objects. Some of them look like satellite images of deserts and wastelands, too. You can see her blog at this link:

http://jessicaheld.blogspot.com/

As it turns out, Jessica has exhibited in Lafayette, Indiana, next door to where Terence went to college. As they say, it's a small world.

Copyright 2015 Five Star Comics

A Cartoonist on the Silver Bridge

Forty-six people died when the Silver Bridge collapsed on December 15, 1967. Among them was a cartoonist who was about to begin a new life. His name was Thomas Allen Cantrell, and he came into the world on November 3, 1941, in Gallipolis, Ohio. His parents were Owen and June (Hartley) Cantrell. A younger brother, William Owen Cantrell, was born on October 2, 1944.

Thomas Cantrell went to school in Gallipolis and graduated from Gallia Academy High School in 1960. He joined the U.S. Navy and served for a time at Great Lakes Naval Training Station, north of Chicago, Illinois. Cantrell worked in his hometown for the Ohio Publishing Company, publishers of the Gallipolis Tribune, and lived at 325 Fourth Avenue. He was a member of the First Baptist Church of Gallipolis.

By about rush hour on December 15, 1967, Cantrell had delivered a load of newspapers from Gallipolis to Point Pleasant and was on his way back home when the bridge fell. His vehicle went into the water with scores of others. Unlike so many who died that day, he was not found until months later, on May 12, 1968. The forty-third of forty-six bodies recovered from the disaster, his was pulled from the Ohio River at Clipper Mills, Ohio, across from Gallipolis Ferry, West Virginia.

Cantrell's delivery of a load of newspapers from Gallipolis to Point Pleasant was to be his last job of the day on the day the Silver Bridge fell. December 15, 1967, was to be his last day on the job. Not long past his twenty-sixth birthday, Thomas Cantrell was going to California to work as a cartoonist. Instead, his dream died with him, and he was buried at Mound Hill Cemetery in the city of his birth.

We as cartoonists remember him. Gary Gibeaut has dedicated the first issue of his Mothman comic book to Thomas Allen Cantrell, a fellow local cartoonist, and to Tim Corrigan.

Copyright 2015 Five Star Comics

Mothman Festival 2015

The Five Star crew had their best shows ever at the fourteenth annual Mothman Festival, which took place on Saturday, September 19 and Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015, in Point Pleasant, West Virgina. Larry Blake, Gary Gibeaut, Jay Gibeaut, Terence Hanley, and Matt Marshall had tables this year at the festival. They all had a mix of new and old merchandise, including Jay and Larry's newest collection of Mothman 'Toons. Everything we had sold well, as the crowds this year seemed bigger than last year and the weather was good both days.

For 2015, Gary Gibeaut had new poster designs and a new comic book, a single-character issue called simply Mothman. Gary's new book has two complete stories. The first, "This Mysterious Entity! This . . . Mothman," explores one possible origin of the eponymous creature. The second, "The Abridged Mothman," begins with the story of the first sighting of Mothman but then segues into the fall of the Silver Bridge and the artist's response to the events of the 1960s, in his childhood and now in adulthood. Gary dedicated Mothman to Tim Corrigan, who passed away on August 22, 2015, and to Thomas Allen Cantrell, a fellow cartoonist who perished in the cold waters of the Ohio River on December 15, 1967.

Like we said, everything we had sold well at this year's Mothman Festival. That includes Gary Gibeaut's Mothman comic book. In fact it sold out. Look for a second printing in 2016.

The cover of Gary Gibeaut's Mothman comic book, with coloring and effects by Jason Roush.

And the splash panel from the same book.

Art copyright 2015 Gary Gibeaut
Text copyright 2015 Five Star Comics