COMIC BOOKS
AND I

I feel uncomfortable admitting that I have a comic book collection at all. Shouldn't I be more grown up? Why do I have 52 or more boxes of comic books, each over 30 inches long? Aren't I 50 years old? Aren't comic books strictly for kids?

Well, yes and no.

First Experiences

I started reading comic books when I first learned to read -- about 1954, when I was five. At this time nearly all comic books in Canada were American. Those who know the history of comic books will realize that this was the period just after the infamous comic-book hearings of the American Congress, during which comic books were investigated as possible sources of juvenile delinquency. As a result of these hearings the comic-book companies agreed -- under duress -- to set up a Comic Books Code censoring future comic books, and to abolish the sex and crime comics that were the focus of Congress's inquiries. This led to the demise of by far the most interesting comic books of the time, the EC line of teenage- and adult-oriented horror, war, and crime classics edited by William Gaines. It also led to a family-oriented trend in comic books that lasted for decades.

But of this I knew nothing.

Nor did I know of the so-called Golden Age of Comics that lasted from their creation in the mid-1930s to shortly after World War II. There had been comic strips in newspapers since the 1890s. But in the mid-1930s some genius got the idea of packaging them in magazine format. In a trice they were selling zillions of copies. Publishers looked frantically for material. Legions of titles appeared and disappeared. Superheroes were invented, notably Superman in 1938 and Batman in 1939. For more than twenty years comic books sold for a dime, and were entirely oriented towards children.

For some reason, perhaps for my older brother, my family had accumulated five or six of the new self-censored comic books with the Approved by the Comics Code Authority stamp on the upper right corner. So the first comics I saw were Code-approved Walt Disney titles like Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, and National Comics's Superman and Batman. I can remember to this day a 1953 Uncle Scrooge cover where Scrooge is trying to pull coins out of a wishing well with a fishing rod and a horseshoe magnet. That was probably the first comic book, indeed, perhaps the first print I ever read.

I delighted in reading these comics. Uncle Scrooge, in particular was a classic. In each issue the billionaire miser Scrooge McDuck (he owned three cubic acres of money, which he kept in enormous cubical buildings called money bins that he used to swim around in) inveigled his lazy nephew Donald and Donald's three enterprising nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie into accompanying him on a fantastic adventure. It usually involved a long lost treasure. Among the most memorable adventures were the ducks' quests for the Philosopher's Stone and the Seven Lost Cities of Cibola, the adventure with the Terries and Firmies under Duckburg, and the Race to the Moon. Carl Barks, the artist and writer, was a genius and a comic book pioneer. (He pioneered the first use of large focus panels, that took up a half- or whole page.)

Besides the Disney Comics, there were competing lines as well.

The most prominent was Dell Comics, the publishers of many titles. Notably, they published comic books relating to the Western shows that then were prominent on American TV, shows like Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Annie Oakley. I did not see many of these comics, and did not really enjoy them as much as either the funny animal or superhero titles. I wonder if I was put off by the more realistic art. I remember wondering why the Lone Ranger's costume was white on television and pale blue in his comic book.

From enjoying whatever comics happened to come my way, I proceeded, as soon as I had money, to buying my own comic books.

It Was All My Mother's Fault

My mother had the idea that her children should learn to play musical instruments. So she bought an upright piano and ordered us to take lessons. I took piano lessons for three years. Each Saturday I bicycled two miles from our orchard to the edge of town into an area just beyond the end of our road called the "wartime housing". There Mrs. Luke gave me a lesson for what seems now a pathetic sum: one or two dollars.

After the lesson I would cycle down the highway a short distance toward the downtown. Paris, Ontario, sits low down in a picturesque river valley where the Nith River flows into the Grand. I would bicycle to a place immediately above the town, and leave my bicycle by the side of the highway, leaning against a fence. (This was the 1950s; you didn't have to worry about someone stealing your bike.) Then I would walk down a path several hundred metres into the town and buy my comic books at a drugstore called The Palms. One day I was nearly killed when I ran out of the drugstore and started across the street without looking.

The Silver Age Begins

About the time that I was cycling into town to buy comics, the so-called Silver Age began. Superhero titles had gradually become less popular in the the late 1940s and early 1950s. DC Comics (then officially called National Comics) had discontinued most of its Golden Age heroes. So had most of its competition. Among the 1940s DC heroes only Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman remained.

But in the late 1950s someone at DC decided to try some new heroes. He invented John Jones, the Manhunter from Mars, which introduced a bald green-skinned Martian superman brought to Earth by a scientist's machine. J'onn J'onnz, the displaced Martian Manhunter, began to fill out each issue of Detective Comics. In the same issue as the Martian Manhunter was the first Aquaman story.

Soon DC introduced two new comics, to try out new heroes in, Showcase and The Brave and the Bold. Showcase introduced revamped 1940s characters like the Flash and Green Lantern, who went on, in new costumes and with new secret identities, to their own titles. Heroes in The Brave and the Bold, for some reason, usually weren't so lucky. Hawkman was revived here, drawn wonderfully by Joe Kubert, but he wasn't very successful. Another semi-interesting character was the Viking Prince.

To fill out a science fiction title called Mystery in Space DC's Gardner Fox (the best comics writer of the time) invented Adam Strange, an Earth archeologist occasionally transported by purple Zeta-beam to the planet Rann. Strange, a rip-off of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars, was a particular favorite of mine. He had no powers, only a raygun and his brain, but he was the Champion of Rann, defending the entire super-scientific planet from monthly alien invasions. Over and over again he thought his way to the successful solution of impossible dilemmas.

A brief digression.

Comic books in the 1950s were about 32 pages long, and sold for ten cents. I collected as many as I could, for the sheer pleasure of reading.

After a while I had accumulated enough comics to fill a bottom dresser drawer. But one day my mother sold the dresser! Feeling that the comics in the bottom drawer were worthless, she gave them to the purchaser. Of course, these days those comics of the late 1950s would be worth a lot of money, at least twenty to fifty dollars apiece.

DC in the Silver Age

When I was eleven, my family moved to Milton, Ontario. It must have been there that I bought my first DC team-up title, Justice League of America, although, frankly I don't remember where I did buy it.

After the United States Congress had stupidly forced out of existence the best comics being published, EC Comics, the best remaining were the Disney comics published by Dell and, a bit behind, DC's superhero and science-fiction titles. In the late 1950s the Disney comics began to decline in quality. Therefore until 1961 the best American comic books were undoubtedly those produced by National Comics, universally known as DC. Their best writer was Gardner Fox, a veteran who had created several characters in the 1940s. Fox wrote DC's best title, Justice League of America. It was a team-up comic featuring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the other DC superheroes. The first issue of this title I remember buying was #4, "Doom of the Star Diamond", featuring the introduction of Green Arrow into the League. On the cover he was releasing a diamond-tipped arrow at a huge diamond imprisoning the rest of the Justice League.

I admired Gardner Fox. He could handle multii-part plots that showed off the various heroes. He was obviously interested in and knowledgable about mythology, heroism, and history. If only I had realized it, he was obviously deeply interested in the adventurous pulp romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs, a writer I would discover and enjoy within a couple of years. "Doom of the Star Diamond" had a hero, Carthan, whose name I have lately realized was based on both of Burroughs's famous heroes, John Carter and Tarzan.

I had several happy years reading and accumulating Superman, Batman, and Superboy comic books. These were the years when Mort Weisinger was editor. He believed in what marketers these days call "line extension". Having a huge success in Superman and Batman (each of the eight yearly issues of Superman sold about one million copies), he attempted to add extra titles relating to these characters, "spinoffs" as we would say today. He added Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen and Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane. He teamed up Superman and Batman in World's Finest Comics. He invented Superboy, the Adventures of Superman as a Boy. And he invented Krypto, Superboy's dog, and a super-cat and even a super-horse.

For the hero Batman, Jack Schiff, the Batman editor, invented Batwoman, Bathound, and Bat-Mite.

The Marvel Age of Comics Begins

In Milton I may have seen a copy of Fantastic Four #1. Alas, I didn't buy it. At the variety store near our cottage in Haliburton I saw the issue of Journey into Mystery that first featured The Mighty Thor. I read it in the store, marvelling at what a good story it was, but didn't buy it.

Why? Too weird-looking. Marvel Comics looked different from DC comics. They used strange combinations of brown and purple and green on their covers. They often looked faded. They just plain looked different, and it took my childish mind some time to get used to them.

In Milton, however, I did buy my first Marvel comic books at Elsley's Pharmacy. They were Amazing Spider-man #18 and Avengers #9. Written by Stan Lee, drawn by Steve Ditko and Don Heck, these particular issues are still among the most thrilling experiences in my life. I recognized the quality of these comic books at once. They had a great many more words in them than DC comics. They were more adult somehow (they were teen-oriented). The characters seemed more real and human, with ordinary but serious problems. Until then, I had bought mostly the DC brand. From that moment on, I avidly sought out Marvel comic books.

Stan Lee was the editor-in-chief at Marvel, and the operations boss. He had been writing comic books since the early 1940s. He had decided, he now says, at this time to try to write the best comic books he could. For several years he wrote every Marvel title. A sentimental writer, he was also a great humanist. One sensed that he believed in his characters, that he could imagine what it would be like to be a puny teenager who discovered he had great strength and great responsibility. He understood what it would be like to be a freak among ordinary persons, and the duty that ability imposes on those who have it.

Drawing many of Lee's comics, and with a huge hand in their plotting and dialogue, was the amazing artist Jack (the King) Kirby -- a titan, an original, a pioneer and genius of the superhero art form. The team of Lee and Kirby rocketed the little world of comic books into a new age.

Marvel was very fan-oriented. The Marvel editors gave the impression they really cared what fans thought, that they were really trying to entertain and please and excite the readers. They pioneered fannish letter pages. In every way they tried to make their books exciting and challenging.

I was hooked. I still am.

My first Marvel comic book, Spider-Man #18, was the story of Spidey's titanic fight with the Scorpion, a monstrously dangerous villain who defeated him and grievously pounded him to pulp. It led into a several-issue epic in which Spider-Man had to summon up all his courage and strength, to go into a rampage and survive. To my 13 or so years old mind this sequence was extraordinary. (Comic fans agree with me.)

Avengers # 9 was the story of Wonder Man, a failed inventor (I can still remember his name was Simon Williams) who, lacking money, agreed to become a superhero and get vengeance on the Avengers. As Wonder Man, he lured them into a trap and caused all of them to be defeated and pounded unconscious. But when he learned that the evil Baron Zemo, the Executioner, and the Enchantress intended to kill the Avengers, he mused "Is life worth so much that I would do anything to survive?" And he heroically gave his life to save theirs. (It still brings tears to my eyes. Sentimental fool . . .)

Into the 1970s Marvel Comics were the best on the market. In their best title, Fantastic Four, Lee and Kirby presented extraordinary epics of children's and teenage literature, masterworks of their kind. Science fictions fans say (or used to say) It Is A Proud And Lonely Thing To Be A Fan. Well, this is even more true of comics fandom. I am not ashamed to admit that the Lee-Kirby epics are part of my mental furniture; I would not willingly be without these memories.

Among the finest issues of FF was the one, often reprinted, where someone impersonates Ben Grimm, the Thing, and lures the FF into the Phantom Zone to be destroyed. But the imposter's moral nature reasserts itself at the last moment. He saves them at the last moment, going to death himself.

Another was the huge epic beginning about issue #36 with the Frightful Four (including Medusa). It led immediately to the coming of Gorgon and the discovery of the Inhumans and Black Bolt. This in turn leads to the huge Galactus and Silver Surfer epic.

Well, I know this must sound silly. Actually . . . it's not. These are wonderful tales, and people should read them. Everyone who has read them agrees they are the very best of Marvel Comics.

Lee quickly created more and more superheroes and more and more superteams. As at DC, Marvel had several characters who had been successful in the 1940s, but had then been discontinued. These they brought back. Captain America was discovered floating in a block of ice. Namor the Sub-Mariner once again attacked New York City. The Human Torch reappeared as a superhero member of the Fantastic Four. And The Mighty Thor and Iron Man were invented and became stalwarts of the Avengers.

One Marvel superhero team which must be mentioned is the X-Men, a team of mutants hunted by humanity as they strive to protect the world. Unpopular at first, the X-Men, like a Microsoft program, eventually improved until they became successful. Today they are comicdom's most valuable franchise, a whole line of comics which have supported Marvel Comics through recent gross mismanagement. They even spawned an excellent movie.

Stan Lee eventually left Marvel Comics headquarters in New York, and moved to Hollywood to be in charge of Marvel's efforts at animation and movie franchising. Several mediocre Captain America films were made in the 1970s and a Fantastic Four movie that must have been awful; it was scarcely released and, I think, suppressed. (I don't think it's even available on video.)

But Marvel also was involved with some semi-animated versions of its chief heroes which remain on sale even today. These are moderately entertaining.

In the 1980s Marvel was involved with a semi-successful Fantastic Four cartoon series.

American Comic Books Go Adult

As their audience and writers aged, American comic books gradually grew more adult. Sales seemed to increase. The demographic of their audience increased in age.

Comic books had begun in the 1930s as an entertainment for children and slow readers. In the 1960s they expanded their reach to intelligent teenagers. In the 1980s they became adult.

Chief among these adult comics were the Frank Miller titles. Miller was a Batman fan. He had written a version of Daredevil in which he introduced the assassin character Elektra. From Marvel he moved to DC and wrote the Batman, the Dark Knight version of Batman. Set in a dark future Gotham City, a 55-ish Batman took on crime, murderously. He even took on a dark Superman, a toady of the Federal Government, and beat him! To put it mildly, this was extraordinary.

At about the same time Alan Moore arrived. An English comic book writer, he had a very dark vision of the world and of the future. In England he had already written V for Vendetta, a multi-part graphic novel about a lone avenger in a clownish Restoration costume in a post-Thatcherite Britain. Now he wrote the 12-part graphic novel Watchmen, perhaps the most important comic book of the 1980s.

Watchmen concerned a small team of superheroes in an alternate Earth. Aged and retired, they are dysfunctional people. The atmosphere is macabre, grotesque, and naturalistic at once. Your skin can crawl reading this "comic" book.

Boom and Bust

In the late 1980s comic books became an impressive industry. Teenagers and adults increasingly bought comic books, not for their stories, but for their art or for speculation. A multitude of titles were brought out. New companies were created, like First Comics, Eclipse Comics, and eventually, Image Comics. Some of these comics, and many of their titles were interesting.

But more and more comics of little appeal were produced. These, often aimed at adults, often appealed to no-one.

The amount of comic books produced at high prices increased. Many of these had variant covers. Fans were urged to buy them all.

More and more comics were perfunctory. Conglomerators bought up the comic book companies to "leverage their brands." More and more spinoff toys and action figures were produced. Posters of the characters became big business.

Over time less and less focus was on the characters, more and more on the merchandising.

In 1992 came the inevitable collapse. Overnight the market for comic books was reduced, as well as for trading cards, the cards that formerly had come in certain packages of chewing gum but, later, had been sold separately or in packages of five or so.

I am pleased that many of the conglomerators lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the collapse of the "comic book" market, but I am distressed at the damage the collapse did to the comic book companies. Eventually, Marvel even went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Comic Book Industry Continues

After the 1992 collapse many comic book stores closed. Many comic book companies failed. Many individual comic titles stopped. The industry continued, but with fewer pages per book, fewer titles, an older audience, and a feeling of decline and exhaustion.

One of the few things the industry had going for it was collections of previously issued comics which, as large-format paperback books, brought in a great deal of money. A new style of superhero comic book art, pioneered by such artists as Todd McFarlane and publicized in Image Comics, swept the comic book industry.

Marvel Comics decided to retell freshly its early Spider-Man stories in a series of Ultimate Spider-Man titles.

[To Be Continued]

Sources

Feiffer, Jules. The Great Comic Book Heroes. New York: Dial Press, 1965.

Lee, Stan. Origins of Marvel Comics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.

-------. Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.

-------. Bring on the Bad Guys. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.

-------. The Superhero Women. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.

-------, and George Mair. Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee. New York: Fireside      (Simon & Schuster Inc., 2002.

Lupoff, Richard. All in Color For a Dime. New York: Ace Books, 1960s.

Schwartz, Julius, with Brian M. Thomsen. Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction      and Comics. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2000.

Steranko.

Wertham, Frederic. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart, 1954.

Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America.      Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Last modified: 1:59 PM 21/01/2004