Hello!
Page 100, already?
I just returned from upriver, a few days unplugged. I remember Salty Aire commenting about the Albany riverfront—now I know what you meant. From the Hudson, even beyond the Hudson Railway, Albany has been pretty much defaced with highway overpasses. It’s strange how for a long time, the waterfront along the Hudson was the least desirable, the most neglected, the most crime-ridden part of town. But that is changing in many river towns. Perhaps somewhere a little reverence for the river itself is returning. For anyone caught up in a love affair with the Hudson, it’s hard to imagine not feeling that in its sight.
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“COMSTOCKERY”
or
The Less Appealing 19th Century We Wish Would Stay Buried in the Past
Who is this friendly face, you ask?
That, Fellow Twainers, is Anthony Comstock.
Although Comstock’s deeds don’t have anything to do with the above page or the present chapter, what he made his life’s mission will occasionally weave itself into our Hudson River yarn. Once again, here’s an excerpt from Luc Sante’s excellent Low Life, with links and images added in for our onboard enjoyment and discussions
“. . . Anthony Comstock (1844–1915), incarnated the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Comstock was, in the name of moral reform and the advancement of purity, a punitive monster who boasted that he had hounded sixteen people to their death by suicide and misadventure. His absolutism and terrier-like fixation with rooting out anything remotely objectionable eventually earned him a word, “comstockery,” use of which is only now dying out. Comstock grew up in Connecticut and began his career at eighteen, by opening the spigots of kegs in a New Canaan liquor store, and went on to enter the employ of the YMCA. He began the Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1873, got it recognized as a quasi-official body during Republican and reform administrations, and under its aegis arrested at least three thousand persons for obscenity and destroyed some 160 tons of literature under various pretexts.
He was best known for his entanglements with famous people of his day. Some credit him with having pressured the Department of the Interior to fire Walt Whitman; he brought legal proceedings against George Bernard Shaw for Mrs. Warren’s Profession (it was Shaw who subsequently coined “comstockery”) and against Paul Chabas for his painting September Morn, a sentimental, hardly salacious tableau that is perhaps the most famous barroom nude of all time; he got the city to ban Margaret Sanger‘s works on family planning.”
Hello, first time commenting
I really love this comic, for reasons that have been already stated by many others.
Oh no Mr. Twain! He’s falling under the mermaid’s spell XP
Hi Cathy! Very nice to hear from you!
Congratulations Mark, here’s to a few more hundred!
The reading panels are so charming, it’s just a shame we know it can’t last…
Thank you Rich. Still many bends ahead on this river.
And Cathy: he is. But more importantly, are you?
Congratulations on page 100!! Still an avid and loyal follower
Love the bit with the seagulls.
All the best and please keep this up!
I love Twain’s smile in the fifth panel, it’s so sweet. (:
“Comstockery”. Huh. The nineteenth century’s version of McCarthyism, it would seem. It’s just wonderful how cyclic history seems to be.
I’ve no doubt that the page we’re looking at right here would be one of the works trashed under Comstock’s hobnail-boot-shod foot. I’m also sure he would have been an early supporter of Hitler, falling under the spell of “decency” and “uprightness” that so often tends to mask the most vile of corruptions.
So was Comstock a cross-dresser a la Hoover, or did he have a Craigish “wide stance” whilst in the jakes? Perhaps a less-than-wholesome interest in boys’ choirs? Or merely a string of baby-mamas in his wake? Given his lifelong urge to purge prurience, I’m guessing he had a few stray bones lurking in the odd wardrobe.
And kudos on the odometer tick!
Agreed, Beth!
Love this comic.
So charming and mysterious. I am definitely falling under the mermaid’s spell as well. 
I don’t doubt it, and yes I’ll answer for Cathy, I sure am falling under that spell, I thought she’d have bolted at the first chance, but she’s just sooo… bewitching. And it’s not because of, you know what… the less she says the more entrancing she becomes.
“She liked stories.” That is so sweet! But the last time I gave a man a look like hers, I was only half listening to his stories (I think they were about rescuing puppies or lifesaving or firefighting, I can’t recall).
I do love the way our Captain seems to delude himself by calling her “The creature.” Mmmm hmmm.
And I must ask: Please, please please will there be a Beaverton book available for us Twainers?
My mother has a print of “September Morn” in her bathroom at present!
Opens the door with that big Ralph Kramden, “Honey, I’m home” smile and then goes all Edward Scissorhands with that lost puppy look in his eyes. Our Cap’ has gone aft over teakettle for the flounder as if we didn’t know it already.
“Our Cap’ has gone aft over teakettle for the flounder”
One for the annals of this journey, Sir!
Anne: Hello! The Beaverton book could be gathered and printed, possibly. Chunks of it will be coming to you though, in various media…
Mark, I will look forward to that!
Nice use of the seagull on the second tier, and the fake gutter (actually a beam).
With the silence of the first two tiers, I did not notice the text below the third tier. I “read” the images without words, then re-read them with the text below.
I don’t know if that was deliberate, but it does emphasize the images.
The seagulls amde me laugh, and that last row of panels is so sweet.