Innocent Bystander

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe...

I have spent the last few days totally immersed in the wonderful new book by Sean Howe, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. It's probably one of the best--and seemingly most honest--histories of comics I've ever read. To use that tired old phrase "warts and all" seems almost insulting. In some cases it's a wart that has been removed, only to be scabbed over and picked at again and again.

Don't get me wrong: the book does NOT resort to idle gossip or evil conjecture about any of the writers, artists, and editors who created Marvel Comics as we know it today (and over the past 50 years since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, et al, launched Fantastic Four #1 where this book basically begins). Everything is scrupulously documented. Howe conducted numerous interviews with the people involved. It's short of being an oral history, but its chronological format puts you into the offices of Marvel--and the fabled Marvel Bullpen, even when it was just a desk in the beginning--over the years. We go from those nothing-to-lose early days in the swinging '60s, through the Roy Thomas years of the '70s, into the contentious Jim Shooter years of the '80s. The '90s are particularly interesting, as the young turks of Image Comics stake their claim and make their fame on the Marvel characters, then take off to start their own company. Marvel almost self-immolates in that decade, caught up in the fervor of variant covers and mega-sales dwindling to almost no sales. And then in the 2000s, Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas--along with Avi Arad in Hollywood--bring Marvel back from the brink, all the while strip-mining the legacy of Lee, Kirby, Steve Ditko, and everyone else from those halcyon days of the 60s. 

There are fascinating tidbits in the book, like Stan Lee going on (in 1971) about the business of comics:

“I would say that the comic book market is the worst market that there is on the face of the earth for creative talent and the reasons are numberless and legion. I have had many talented people ask me how to get into the comic book business. If they were talented enough the first answer I would give them is, ‘Why would you want to get into the comic book business?’ Because even if you succeed, even if you reach what might be considered the pinnacle of success in comics, you will be less successful, less secure and less effective than if you are just an average practitioner of your art in television, radio, movies or what have you. It is a business in which the creator, as was mentioned before, owns nothing of his creation. The publisher owns it….”

The above quote is from Howe's excellent and exhaustive Tumblr site. His book has two small photos, one at the beginning and one at the end, because, after all, it is unauthorized (and thank god for that!). On Tumblr, Howe has assembled a treasure trove of great images from the comics and a ton of other sources. Consider it to be the official companion to the book.

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story ranks up there with the best of comics histories. It's a stunning achievement, one sure to be up for awards next year. It's also compulsively readable, like a great novel. MCTUS is about the business of comics and how one small, upstart company with nothing to lose changed the face of American comic books forever--for better or worse. That part's up to your personal point of view. Either way, Howe's book will give you all the information needed to form an opinion, all the while entertaining and enlightening you.

My latest "acquisition..."

I have been slowly gathering a nice little collection of original comic art over the past few years. It started with a Chester Gould Dick Tracy daily strip and grew from there. I currently have a Jim Holdaway Modesty Blaise, both a Sunday and daily Mary Perkins On Stage by Leonard Starr, a Johnny Hazard daily by Frank Robbins, an incredibly beautiful Roy Crane Buzz Sawyer daily (with a large panel done almost entirely in Craftint, which, sadly, has caused the paper to brown to a dirty looking tan from the chemicals involved), and one of the best Al Williamson Secret Agent Corrigan strips I've ever seen.

In addition, I have a few comic book pages: a Darwyn Cooke page from DC: The New Frontier, a Tim Sale page from Superman: Kryptonite, a cover from Local by Ryan Wood (and a page from Wood's New York Four graphic novel), and an amazing Dick Tracy Harvey Comics cover, featuring Flattop Jr. and probably drawn by Joe Simon, and a Batman pastel color sketch on black paper by Matt Wagner.

I should scan them all, but they're framed and on my wall and I'm far too lazy to take everything down and out of the frames and schlep them into work to my big scanner. But here's my latest acquisition (which I was smart enough to scan pre-framing). Rick Geary has been one of my favorite cartoonists for over 30 years. I first discovered him in the pages of National Lampoon, and fell madly in love not only with his art style, but with his quirky choice of subject matter. These days, he's mining the rich mother lode of Twentieth Century Murders in his series of graphic novels published by NBM. Rick recently started doing some commission work (search his name on eBay), so I asked him to do the Marx Brothers for me. Lo and behold, this beautiful piece appeared at my door yesterday:

My life is complete.

How I spent my holidays...

I don't blog much about what I do for a living...my career, if you will. It's one of those things that's just not cool in this modern world. I would never blog anything negative...I don't want to get "Dooce'd," even though Dooce received a whole new life by doing so. Kind of a giant Karmic make-over, I suppose. But I digress.

Occasionally I do something that I am extremely proud of, and we have one of those rare occasions right here, right now. The 2012 edition of Comic-Con Annual is out, both in its print edition and online, and I'm very happy with it. The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer: I had most of the book done, save for a couple of very important missing components (which made it a little hard to relax and enjoy the festive holiday festivities, because--let's face it--I'm a worrier), before the holiday break from Christmas through New Year's Day. But that's water under the bridge now that I get to hold it in my hot little hands and see what the last three months of work has come to. Trust me, there's nothing like holding a printed book in your hands after you've spent so much time on it. But I will confess: Spending a half hour or so talking to Emma Stone on the phone isn't a bad way to spend part of your day.

Some of you may actually get this in the mail. Others will have to enjoy it online--in a slightly different version--and you can do so by clicking here.

This is how I spend my time when I'm not walking or writing about walking. This is what I do.

On Comics: DC's The New 52...

DC Comics has taken the extraordinary step of restarting their entire line of comic books, 52 issues all beginning with #1. Even the venerable Detective Comics, which started in 1935 with #1, has a new #1.

When DC first announced this publishing initiative a few months ago, I--as a comics fan, NOT as someone who works in the comics industry--was skeptical to say the least. All publishers have restarted their "universes" from time to time. Marvel seems to do it every other week with their Ultimate Universe, a sidebar line of comics which was created to lure in new readers when the heavy weight of the regular Marvel Universe got too much for non-followers to even attempt to fathom.

DC has gotten that way in recent years, too, with one Crisis after another. The very first Crisis storyline occured in Justice League of America #s 21 and 22, way back in the sixties, when editor Julius Schwartz--along with writer Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky--introduced the Earth 1 (then present day) superheroes to their Golden Age counterparts over on Earth 2 (Flash meet Flash! Green Lantern meet Green Lantern!). That was mind-blowing enough for a 7-year-old like me. But over the years, all this continuity--augmented by retro-continuity (that never happened, THIS did)--got so weighty, so burdensome, that it seemed like the entire line of comics would collapse under its own weight. And shouldn't the joy of comics reading simply be good stories with good characters by great writers and artists?

DC announced this new start to a more than skeptical group of fans, a group that has been steadily dwindling in the past few years. As the economy worsened, comics sales sank. And as co-publisher Dan Didio mentioned recently, DC did not want to be selling a 10,000 $20 books to a that small amount of readers. Drastic times called for drastic measures. And boy, is this drastic.

The first issue of "The New 52" debuted last Wednesday, Justice League by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee. As a first chapter of a 6-part series, it was enjoyable. Not great (although the art by Lee, inker Scott Williams and colorist Alex Sinclair is nothing short of spectacular), but serviceable. It's the kind of story one is used to in this day of trade paperbacks; it's just the first chapter of a bigger storyline. I'm more looking forward to the debuts of the other books starting today (ironically, I will be away from a comic book shop all week...oh, the horror of it all!), books like Action Comics (written by Grant Morrison), Detective Comics (written and drawn by Tony Daniel), Batgirl (written by Gail Simone), and Swamp Thing (written by new wunderkind Scott Snyder), to be followed--for the remaining weeks of September and ongoing after that--with numerous other new #1 issues, finally totalling 52 in one month.

So far, The New 52 has brought--or will bring--people back into comics shops. Justice League sold more than 200,000 copies, something very few comics have done in the past 5 years. A handful of the other new titles have sold more than 100,000 copies. Books that haven't even hit the stands yet have gone back to press for second printings, sold out from the distributor (Diamond). The real test, of course, is if people keep coming back week after week, month after month, or if this is just some kind of "I'll give the first issue a try" thing that will be dropped immediately. I know I'm buying 27 out of the gate. Two of my friends are more daring than me and buying all 52 first issues, being democratic and deciding to vote with their wallets for the first round of this Iowa Caucus/Last Comic Standing type of contest. In the meantime, the skeptic in me has disappeared. I--evidently like a lot of people--am excited about The New 52, and especially excited to read these first issues and go to a comics shop each Wednesday. It's nice to feel that way again.

Exhibit FF, your honor...

Last week--in fact, the last time I blogged here (I'm sooo bad at this anymore...that may be a sad hint, dear reader)--I told you about how the Fantastic Four entered--and ultimately changed--my life, 50 years ago. I think it's rare for any one person to be able to look at one ten-cent funnybook (as our parents were wont to call them in that day and age) and be able to point out that that slim pamphlet changed their life. But I suppose I'm no one special in that regard: I'm sure there are literally thousands of comics writers and artists who can do the same thing. Each of us have what I like to refer to as our own "private Rosebuds," if I can steal a metaphor from Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz's Citizen Kane (and not mean William Randolph Hearst's pet-name for his mistress's genitalia).

Well, my brother, Rick, voiced displeasure with my "tattered and torn" comment, when I mentioned we still had that issue which he had purchased 50 years ago on a rainy day in August 1961. He dug it out and took photos of it. As you can see, it still exists, a victim of the infamous "Marvel chipping" that haunts a lot of the books of that era, in that the cover's edges have chipped away. I would kind of be afraid to read this book, without white gloves and a hermetically-sealed container, but here it is in all its glory:

A bit bent and chipped, but certainly not tattered and torn. Would I like it to be in better condition? Sure...but I wouldn't trade this for all the 9.8 CGC slabbed copies in the world. This book has its own private pedigree, and it means the world to me. It all goes back to that day in August 1961, which you can read more about here, if you haven't already.

Fifty Years Ago This Week...

I don't know how he knows this, but our friend Mark Evanier tells us that fifty years ago this week, Fantastic Four #1 was released. Cover-dated November, the first issue debuted in the supposedly hot, sticky days of mid-August. And I remember it well, if the exact date is a little fuzzy for me.

I was six years old in 1961 and gaping into the yawning mouth of first grade. In a few short weeks, I would venture into the first of my 12 years of indentured servitude in the Tamaqua Area School District. I had no idea what to expect from first grade. Kindergarten was a cake-walk: the coming years would be filled with bitter, single, old women, edging towards retirement, as teachers, and a bunch of strange--stranger than me--kids who would come and go in my life.

But one constant was my brother and my twice-weekly trips to the newsstand. As I remember it, new comics came out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and--at 10 cents a piece--there were plenty to buy each time. I remember a rainy Tuesday and my mom wouldn't let me join my brother (who was 8 1/2 years older than me--and still is) on his mad dash downtown to see what came out. I waited patiently by the door, watching a mid-August rainstorm and unseasonably cool weather whip around outside. Finally he came home, with a slim brown paper bag tucked inside his hoodie. In it was one lone comic book, something new, a first issue: Fantastic Four #1.

"What is this?!" I asked, horribly disappointed that a rainy Tuesday wasn't going to be made better by a giant stack of comics. I was hoping for a new Superman or a World's Finest or maybe even a Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen, not a dumb ol' monster book from that "other" publisher. (I didn't know what to call Marvel then; they weren't Marvel yet, although there was that little "MC" in a small box on the cover.)

In retrospect, that first issue of Fantastic Four deserved its own special showcase as it entered my life. It has had a profound effect on me over the years. It was the first comic book that made me realize--in my own Helen Keller moment--that somebody (in this case, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby) actually wrote and drew these things. Lee and Kirby's continual creativity and incredible output made growing up in the Marvel Age of Comics a beautiful, exciting thing, and led me--through a roundabout way--to where I am today, working for the country's largest comics and pop culture convention.

I had no way of knowing that that 10-cent comic book, purchased on a dismal day in August fifty years ago, would have such far-reaching consequences in my life. That each month, for the next 8 years or so, Stan and Jack would have me spellbound in front of a cheap, four-color, pamphlet. That I would haunt my two local newsstands, waiting for the next issue, buying numerous other books from numerous publishers just to tide me over, and get uncontrollably thrilled when summer came and a new Fantastic Four Annual would mystically appear.

They say your favorite comic book is always the first one you ever read. I had been exposed to plenty of comics before August 1961, but I'll always consider Fantastic Four #1 the first comic I ever really "got," on a level far beyond acquiring it. That copy still exists back with my brother in eastern Pennsylvania, tattered and torn, probably unreadable. But in the small archaelology of my life, it's my own personal Holy Grail.

This, to me, is the funniest thing in the world...

If you've read this blog for any length of time you've most likely gathered that I am a huge comics fan. And one of the great things about being a comics fan in this day and age is the wealth of great books out there--that aren't comic books, per se--about comics history and writers and artists. Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, IDW--to mention just a few--have done a stellar job of keeping comics and comic strips out there in the market.

But occasionally something comes out that the completist in me really, Really, REALLY wants to like and that's the case here. The book profiled in this video is one I own...but have never managed to read.

 

This video was part of the Reuben Awards ceremony at the National Cartoonists' Society gathering over Memorial Day weekend. I'm pretty sure that's Mell Lazarus near the end (and also exclaiming "900 PAGES!" early on) and that's definitely Jean Schulz playing the role of nutcracker. Caniff is a god and RC Harvey is a wonderful historian. But yeah...900 PAGES!!!

Genius Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth, vol. 1...

Genius Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell, is the latest art book from The Library of American Comics, published by IDW. This first volume in a series of three concentrates on Toth's early years in comics, leading up to the time in the early 1960s when he entered the animation industry. It's full of amazing artwork, much of it reproduced from Toth's original art. And it's also--for better or worse--filled with Toth's cantankerous personality.

Like many comics fans, I've admired Toth's art for many years. And like many, his art was an acquired taste, one that came later in life for me. Toth isn't a flashy artist. He's an amazing storyteller with a super-simple style. He's at his best telling adventure and war stories, especially if planes or swordplay are involved. And his work looks best in the stark black and white it's created in.

The good news is this book is absolutely beautiful, a stunning achievement as a seminal comic artist's biography and art book. The bad news is Toth's personality. It's obvious from the biography (well-written, if a bit over the top at times, by Bruce Canwell) that Toth had his problems, one of which may have been depression. I, for one, could never muster the enthusiasm to read through his hand-written letters many magazines and fanzines published as sent, as if setting his writings in more readable type would have been some kind of fan-induced blasphemy. This book--created with the guidance and blessing of Toth's third wife and their children--doesn't shy away from his foibles, which is great. 

Originally planned as a single volume, the story of Alex Toth has grown into three similarly-sized books to total about 750 pages and a pricey $150.00 total cover price. While both the art and the story of Alex Toth are fascinating, I'm not sure any artist (comics or otherwise)--with the possible exceptions of Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, and Carl Barks--actually warrants such a comprehensive remembrance. But I'll also confess I'm probably along for the whole ride.

On Comics: Stumptown, Mister Wonderful, and the "return" of Peanuts...

Here's three new books--graphic novels, if you are so inclined to use that fancy-schmancy word for good ol' American comics--that are as different as night and day and...well, night again.

First off, Greg Rucka's Stumptown is now in a beautiful hardbound graphic novel (there's that phrase again) format which collects the Oni Press 4-issue mini-series into one great-looking book. With art by Matthew Southworth that is very much in the vein of Michael Lark, Stumptown chronicles the story of Dex Parios, a private investigator operating in rainy Portland, Oregon. This story features her search for a missing girl with ties to both the local Indian casino and a crime lord. Rucka is at his best when he mixes his trademark female characters (Rene Montoya in Gotham Central, Carrie Stetko in Whiteout, Tara Chace in Queen & Country) with noir, and Portland provides the perfect setting for a damp, mysterious tale. The coloring adds a nice murky level to the story, too, and the production on this collection makes it a little objet d'art itself.

Daniel Clowes is back with his second book in two years (with a third on the way in the Fall) with Mister Wonderful, a collection of his strips from the New York Times Magazine, with new material added. This oblong little gem from Pantheon Books is a rare love story from the usually cynical--one might say bitter, but he's mellowing--Mr. Clowes. It tells the tale of Marshall and Natalie, an older pair who meet on a blind date. Both of them are a little crazy, but that doesn't stop Marshall from being immediately smitten. Mister Wonderful is a bit of a departure for Clowes, but it's nonetheless well...wonderful.

Finally, the Peanuts gang is back--not that they ever really left us--in a brand-new graphic novel published by BOOM! Studios via their Kaboom! imprint. Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown is an adaptation of the recent DVD movie and the first graphic novel to feature the characters of Charles M. Schulz. It's written by comic strip creator Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) and Schulz son Craig Schulz, with art direction by Paige Braddock and Andy Beall, and art by Bob and Vicki Scott. That art is utterly charming, too, perfectly capturing that mid-60s era of Schulz's Peanuts that is the Charlie Brown I first discovered as a kid. The story itself reads like a Peanuts "greatest hits" compilation, hitting all the proper Schulz moments, but tells its own tale of Linus's repeated efforts to get back his blanket. It's been over a decade since we've seen any real new Peanuts comics stuff and this is a welcome--and respectful--addition.

X-9: Secret Agent Corrigan, Vol. 2, by Al Williamson and Archie Goodwin...

IDW's reprinting of the last great American newspaper adventure comic strip--Secret Agent Corrigan (aka X-9)--continues with the second volume in the ongoing series, which will reprint every strip by the team of writer Archie Goodwin and artist Al Williamson. This volume--which showcases more than 800 strips, from September 1, 1969 through April 8, 1972--features a number of my all-time favorite X-9 stories, which run almost back-to-back-to-back: "The Most Dangerous Game" story (in which Corrigan and a mob witness are stalked by a hunter on a private island), "The Lost World" sequence (in which Williamson unleashes his incredible dinosaur drawing prowess while he and Goodwin ape Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's timeless story; this story arc is Williamson's finest work on the strip, I think), and the movie studio story which features noted movie serial expert Alan Barbour as R. Barcroft Baxter, a producer with mob ties and designs on taking over a studio. In the late '60s and early '70s, Barbour was a well-known writer in fan circles for his excellent books on serials, including Days of Thrills and Adventures and Cliffhanger: A Pictorial History of the Motion Picture Serial. (Williamson would use that title--Cliff Hanger--in a back-up strip he did in the Pacific Comics series, Somerset Homes, in the 1980s.)

This group of stories also includes the introduction of Phil Corrigan's mortal enemy, the evil Dr. Seven, who appears in two continuities. Best of all, this is Goodwin and Williamson at their very best in their run on the strip. Williamson's art is crisp and dynamic, and Goodwin continues his amazingly succinct but perfect writing. The strip flows like no other (with the possible exception of Leonard Starr's incredible Mary Perkins On Stage) with almost none of the stop-start recap problems of other daily strips. Goodwin and Williamson didn't have to contend with a Sunday strip, which is often a major traffic stop in other story-strips. X-9 was a six-times-a-week daily, and as such a showcase for Williamson's black-and-white virtuoso style.

There are at least two weeks in this book which are drawn by someone else, however. The week of April 26-May 1, 1971 (pages 184-185) look like Williamson, but aren't signed by him. Maybe he just provided inks, or someone else inked over him. I would guess it's George Evans, who eventually took over Corrigan from Al, but I'm no expert. Later in the book (pages 234-235), the strips for October 18-23 are also unsigned and bear some resemblance to Williamson's work, but are also by someone else. Even cartoonists take vacations.

The book also contains a wonderful introduction by Anne T. Murphy, the widow of Archie Goodwin. It's a candid and honest look at the lives of two comics industry wives, herself and Cori Williamson, Al's widow. It puts to rest a number of misconceptions about Goodwin's early career before comics, a few of them unfortunately perpetuated in the first volume of X-9.

On a personal note, I was pleasantly surprised to see myself quoted on the back cover of the dustjacket of this volume, with something I wrote on the first volume of this series (click here to read that review). "Each strip is almost a comics haiku, perfect in every way...Goodwin and Williamson were never better together, even when they journeyed to a galaxy, far, far, away." I had to go back and check to see if I actually wrote that--I did--because that "comics haiku" sure doesn't sound like me. To be quoted is an honor, but especially on this strip. I remember reading it on a daily basis in my hometown newspaper--the Tamaqua Evening Courier--before its sad demise. The paper's presses were dying--as was the paper itself--and the reproduction sometimes looked like a stick was drawn through tar, but I could read it. Now when I read these strips--and realize I was a sophomore and junior in high school when they came out--I can finally appreciate both Goodwin and Williamson's work to its fullest intent. These strips look amazing in this book and reading them in this format makes it seem like an entirely new experience. I can't wait for the next volume, even though--sadly--I know it has to end sometime.