Review by Ian Keogh
Basil Wolverton created Powerhouse Pepper in the 1940s as a form of superhero satire. He didn’t wear a costume and was hardly musclebound, but any thugs who crossed his path got what was coming to them. In common with similarly civic-minded antecedents such as Desperate Dan and Popeye, by any usual standards Powerhouse was grotesque, and memorable grotesques were Basil Wolverton’s speciality. His being a key influence on the free-spirited 1960s Underground comics is all the more surprising for Wolverton being a religious man.
Wolverton produced more stories of Powerhouse than any other character he worked on, obviously finding his strength the ideal vehicle for frenetic slapstick comedy. This collection gathers his strips published over an assortment of long defunct titles in the 1950s, the last in which he used the character.
Powerhouse navigates the world as relatively knowing, and has little patience for life’s goons, bullies and those who’d impose themselves on women. Unlike others he has the means to tackle them, and Wolverton constructs intricately choreographed battles and chases as he deals with all sorts. This isn’t restricted to human nuisances. In one strip Powerhouse might be dealing with the bullying practical joker on a construction site, and in the next flying to the moon, propelled there via dropping a boulder on the other end of a finely balanced girder he’s standing on.
The art looks simple, but few artists have the individuality to mimic the rubber faces pulled in all directions, and the gurning, gleeful expressions on others point directly to those 1960s Underground cartoonists. The sheer quantity falls shy of contemporary Will Elder, but Wolverton packs the strips with comedy signage, not just the vehicle for his active alliteration, but also for his credit, a hand appearing from hiding holding signs bearing Wolverton’s name.
It’s not only Powerhouse featured here, though. Wolverton shipped his strongman between different publications and did the same for spaceman Supersonic Sammy, who’s equally absurd, highlighted by his second and third appearances seemingly provided in the wrong order. A small Martian with an erudite vocabulary zips about in his preposterously tiny spacecraft and takes a moon maid on dates. Wolverton again rejoices in the dialogue. Check out the penultimate panel of the sample art with Sammy’s thoughts contrasted by Joe Stalin’s Russian accented English and the cop’s more usual (for Wolverton) rhyming dialogue.
Powerhouse Pepper closes with ‘Hothead Hotel’, another rarity. It’s a calamitous day for hotel clerk Beserk McJerk as everything that can go wrong does go wrong, from awkward customers to exaggerated news reports, all in Wolverton’s unique style.
Wolverton loves alliteration, rhyme and asides, all of which make for clever, but dated humour. Add his restraint in reining in his exaggerated cartooning in favour of the stories, and the expectation might be of disappointment, but something still transmits on a primal level. It’s gloriously silly and there’s a direct line from Wolverton through the 1960s to the likes of Peter Bagge in the 1990s and those Bagge in turn influenced working today.
