A Brief History in American Comics: Part 8: The Growth of Fandoms in the 1980s

The 1980’s comic sales reached a new market, due at least in part to the new specialty “fan shop” comic stores that began arising for collectors and readers alike. Although comic sales never quite reached pre-Comic Code levels, the new shown interest allowed the market to somewhat recover [3]. 

Even adventure comics began to hit a snag when comics about World War II seemed far enough in the past to seem irrelevant to many readers.  But where war comics were on the decline, superhero comics were on a substantial rise. Through the 1970s and 80s, sales for superhero titles went up, as did the general fan-base for superheroes [3].  

Although the superhero genre was “in decline since the late sixties,” the next couple of decades would ignite the genre and the comic industry in general. “The slow maturation that American mainstream comics had been experiencing over the previous decade took a dramatic leap forward [6].”

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1970s anthology, Star Reach, “lacked the inhibitions of the Comics Code, freeing creators to pursue more sophisticated themes. “Paired with the American trend towards longer, more involved stories, this led to a new focus on the craft of writing for the comics medium as a literary pursuit in itself, rather than simply a frame on which to hang the art [6].” 

In 1975, Len Wein and Dave Cockrum “reinvigorate[ed]” the X-men franchise, opening up “a major shift” in American comic stories. Chris Claremont later took over for Wein on The Uncanny X-Men, and, focusing on the teen-centered market, developed more complex plots and individualization of characters in lieu of an issue’s “self-contained stories”. Claremont also helped develop the “’family’ theme” of X-Men, “in a direct appeal to the outsider’s desire for a place of belonging—a theme many young superhero comic fans could relate to and become deeply invested in [6].” 

 

 As the stories of serials grew longer, publishers began to release “mini-series” and “maxi-series” starting from 1979. The end of episodic comics also aided to their “collectability” since several issues were needed to keep track of full stories and events. However, this also resulted in hampering the ability for new readers to keep track of previous events, thus gave rise to the “comics’ fandom as an insular subculture [6]”.  

Greater, more in-depth stories allowed for more political and “adult-focused content” for the more “mature-reader” of the 1980’s. The feminism wave of the 1960s brought awareness to popular sexist stereotypes, calling for “the complete reassessment of the industry’s treatment of women characters.” However, it wasn’t until the 1980s when publishers began to include this transformation [3].

By the end of the 1970s, comic book sales (including superhero titles) were low. Still sold at newspaper stands (and viewed as similar product), comic books were sold merely as a buffer profit or “bonus” by vendors, rather than as a valuable merchandise. However, the venues of underground comix proved that comics could be sold in separate or different venues from newspapers and still sell, such as specialty stores. Some of these stores evolved and grew their markets into general comic stores, where readers could purchase and collectors could sell or trade their old comic books. Comics also began to be ordered beforehand by consumers, rather than vendors purchasing them wholesale, thus cutting down on vendor returns and profit risk. This direct market approach allowed store owners to not only cut down on the stock received from publishers, but to customize their stores according to what they wanted to provide, allowing the stores themselves to help regulate title distributions. This newfound profitability “saved the comic book, but by doing so… changed the comic book’s appearance [4].” “By the mid-1990s, over ninety percent of all comics were being sold through this channel. In the space of a few short years, the fan market had gone from being a parallel outlet of little commercial importance, to becoming the new mainstream [3].”  

“It was these ‘veteran fans’ that dictated the creative evolution of the comics, and increasingly, it was other veteran fans like them who would produce the comics they read. In short, in order to survive in the direct market, publishers were forced to attend to the needs of their most enthusiastic supporters, isolating themselves more and more from the outside world… [4]” 

In 1984, Marvel’s Secret Wars became the “first large crossover ‘event’”, which covered a single storyline across several comic titles (think Marvels’ current film series). DC attempted a similar event with Crisis on Infinite Earths [6].  

The downturn of comic sales in the 70s and 80s is often shown to correspond to the rise of TV and video games. However, this factor may have also helped spread popularity of certain serials, such as Star Wars (1982) and Indiana Jones (1984), based on their film counterparts [3]. 

The Rise of the Graphic Novel  

“In the latter half of the 1970s, comics like Sabre (1978), by Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy, a sci-fi thriller with nudity, announced the arrival of a new age in which a non-children’s audience could access comics that broke with the limitations of the Comics Code, but not with those of the traditional genres [4]. 

 

Comics “not subject to Comics Code censorship” and often included more ‘mature’ content compared to major publishers, “ground-level” comics were a newfound middle ground. Star Reach was one popular comic of this type, and one of the few comics “where mainstream and Underground met.” Star Reach also included the first printing of an English-translated Japanese comic, although the pieces did not insight any greater interest in importing manga.Star Reach was one of “the earliest concerted attempts by mainstream creators to enter the world of alternative publishing [6]”.  

Gil Kane released His Name is Savage (1968) but it didn’t sell well, despite its magazine format and higher “abundance of text” to appear more literary-conscious [4]. Blackmark (1971) was Kane’s second attempt and proclaimed it as “the next step forward in pictorial fiction”. Although Blackmark was visually impressive, it was in essence reminiscent of pulp magazines of the 1950’s rather than an overall new look [6]. 

 

There were some other attempts to further the comic medium through the 1970s, including Jack Katz’s First Kingdom[4], but none quite popularized it until Will Eisner’s Contract with God in 1978, released as what he called a “graphic novel”,used in attempt for more literate-serious attention [8]. Released at a time when comics were still viewed as material for children or less mature readers, this collection of four related stories, as well as others by Eisner and several others, would only later help to project the medium into a field of higher criticism.

Next time in A Scroll in Time…
  Thank you all for your part in keeping this blog going. This entry marks the end of Season One, and thus the start of a new turning point. I will be taking a several-month hiatus from posting, during which I will be catching up on a bunch of research materials and writing a bunch of new, more in-depth accounts and entries. I apologize for the sometimes uncertain posting schedule that has occurred in the last year, but by preparing my entries earlier, I hope to eliminate that for the years to come. I am having so much fun doing this blog, and hope to bring a vast new interest in learning and understanding the ways culture and history shape our comics today. 

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STAY TUNED….

[1] Couperie, Pierre, Maurice Horn, Proto Destefanis, Edouard François, Claude Moliterni, Gérald Gassiot-Talabot, and Eileen Hennessy. A History of the Comic Strip. New York: Crown, 1968. Print.
[2] Steranko, James. The Steranko History of Comics. Reading, PA. 1970. Print.
[3] Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels. Hong Kong. 1996. Print.
[4] Garcia, Santiago. On the Graphic Novel. University Press of Mississippi. 2015. Print.
[5] Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. New York. 2008. Print.
[6] Mazur, Dan, and Alexander Danner. Comics: A Global History, 1968 to the Present. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014. Print.
[7] Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation. Baltimore, MD. 2003. Print.
[8] Andelman, Bob. Will Eisner: A Spirited Life. M Press. 2005. Print.

A Brief History in American Comics: Part 6- The Comic Rebirth of the 1960s

“The 1950s backlash that resulted in the Comics Code mainly affected adventure comics… in the 1960s, criticism was focused on the humor comics for being violent, sexist, and racist. In the US, humor comics were similarly attacked, and were additionally prone to criticism from the Left for being conveyors of capitalist propaganda…” especially of the Disney titles (ex. Uncle Scrooge) ^[3]. 

As soon as the Comic Code was implemented, the world of comics transformed. Sales slumped almost immediately as lines of comics were cancelled. Whole genres virtually destroyed, and entire publishing companies sunk.  “For parents and educators, the Code meant peace of mind, but for kids, it signified little except insipidly ‘safe’ entertainment ^[3].”

As one of the leading comic companies of the 50’s, EC Comics (short for “Entertaining Comics”) went near-bankrupt (if not for their MAD comic-turned-magazine), the comic market became available for other publishers to fall in place, and thus was done so by DC Comics and Marvel (previously known as ‘Atlas’ and ‘Timely’), and smaller companies, like Gilberton. At the same time, as horror and crime comics were pushed down and out of the magazine stands, the adventure story and romance tales were pushed into the forefront ^[3].

Various genres took over the spotlight as media venues were constantly grabbing for any content that would stick.  Although this was met with a multitude of new content, not all content was seen as high quality. As described by Blackbeard, “By the 1960s, the newspapers’ need for quantity of strips had triumphed almost entirely over any series interest in quality of storyline or art.” 

ROMANCE

“Crime was going out. Sex was in” said Morisi. Although crime titles were still being published, “many had disappeared since 1948”. “Meanwhile, romance was blooming in the stands.” Crime publishers switched to romance titles, recognizing an “appeal of comic books across gender lines ^[5].” 

According to Hajdu, “The first comic book devoted to love stories, Crestwood’s Young Romance, had not appeared until the summer of 1947… In 1948, there were only three new love titles: Sweethearts, My Romance, and My Life,” creating a slow start for the genre. However, “by the end of 1949, there were some 125 romance comics, and, a year later, 148 from 26 publishers ^[5].” Romance may not have been new to the stands by the 1960s, but by then the titles had exploded with interest and popularity. 

Part of the reason romance titles became so popular was that they were adapted to approach another new audience: adolescents. With older teenage characters, romance stories attempted to reach their like-minded readers. For comics, this would be a new, conscious attempt for an older audience than previously generated ^[5]. 

 Social politics also held as a topic in romance titles, with stories of “free-spirited, willful girls who thought and acted independently, challenging not only their parents, but their boyfriends,” romances provided a unique model placement in a young woman’s eyes.  Being most probably the only venue of young womanly independence at the time, “no other genre of comic books was as overt in its depiction of youthful rebellion as romance comics ^[5]. “

ADVENTURE

Although it usually required a greater sense of artistic detail, the adventure genre is said be one of the (if not the) most diversely flexible comic genres.  It is probably this flexibility which has allowed the adventure genre to uphold its longevity and resiliency in the post-Comic Code era. It was not long until sub-genres took hold, including war anthologies (briefly spoken about before) and sports ^[3]. 

IPC (International Publishing Corporation) was an initial leader in the adventure genre just as they had been early on in humor comics. However, the comic industry shift in the 1960s brought in new comic company giants, Marvel and DC comics. Marvel and DC worked within the Code with their Superhero comics. Marvel’s continued success “had the effect of kick-starting the entire industry back into life.” Superman and Batman became DC Comics’ main stars, but the diverse crew allowed the Superhero genre to thrive until the end of the 60s ^[3].

THE INTELLECTUAL COMIC

Post-Code years also brought about the intellectual comic, which covered an array of subjects, from social topics to physiological, and would include subjects not yet portrayed in American comic strips. From the late 50s through the 1960s, the intellectual comic would continue to grasp a greater hold of the reader’s world, even incorporating politics. 

Illustrative “stereotypes of blacks as criminals and ‘social problems’ were common” within comics throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and derogatory representatives rampant. “Arabs were ‘shifty’, conniving and treacherous; Orientals were ‘inscrutable’ sadists; and Native Americans were monosyllabic savages.” As one could expect, “both in Britain and America, there were only a handful of creators from ethnic backgrounds working in the industry” creating an obvious imbalance of insight in the comics released ^[3].  

 “Sexism was seen as an even bigger problem…” and was dealt with much quicker.  Women were usually only portrayed in three different ways; as ‘helpers’ (nurses, housewives), ‘victims’ (to be rescued), or sex objects (plunging necklines and long legs). In response to this, “Wonder Woman was revolutionary in a psychological sense” and served as a self-imposed high-calling to all women that they should “realize their potential, should fight for equal rights, and that a feminized society would be more caring than the prevailing patriarchy ^[3].” 

Walt Kelly’s beloved strip, POGO, made its debut in 1949. Through Albert the alligator and his cast of animal characters, he “was the first to deal with the great moral, social, and political questions” within the lines of a comic. The characters at times fall under a political sphere of conversation, and are each endowed with their own “highly individual personalities.” It is this beginning which Couperie points out as “contributing to the rehabilitation of the comic strip ^[1].” 

Perhaps Kelly’s intellectual “kindred spirit”, Charles Schulz arrived on the scene soon afterwards in 1950. Schulz continued Kelly’s portrayal of intellectual comics by “penetrated still deeper into intellectual analysis with his Peanuts”. Between the both of them, “Schultz and Kelly endowed the comics with their patent of nobility, and assured the birth and development of the intellectual comic strip ^[1].” 

The 1950s intellectual comic brought about the first antihero by Bernard Mergendeiler, Feiffer comic strip (“anti-comic strip”) in 1956, dubbed the “blackest and most depressing ever depicted by the comic strip.” and B.C. in 1958. They continued in the 1960s with the Wizard of Id. Other intellectual comics of the time included The Strange World of Mr. Mum by Irving Phillips, Short Ribs by Frank O’Neal, and Still Life by Jerry Robinson, which portrayed only inanimate objects ^[1]. 

These ‘intellectual strips’ “present a remarkable esthetic unity. Their creators’ affinities lie not with the easy models of the novel and the cinema, but with the most exacting of all methods of artistic expression: the theatre... the characters are presented in full view, at eye level... and the only space we are permitted to see is that defined within the rectangle of the picture… ^[1]”

UNDERGROUND

Perhaps the biggest dynamic of comics that wasn’t regulated by the Comic Code (and rather, was inspired by its effects), was the underground movement established within the United States. As San Francisco attracted musicians in the 1960s, it also intrigued some artists in a new “comix” movement, influenced by MAD, “the hippie generation”, and other surrounding culture developments ^[4]. 

Many aspiring artists and writers founded and sought out University humor magazines and other unorthodox publishing means in order to publish their own works. According to Garcia, the comic Help! is seen as the first underground comic book due to the various artists who worked on the project. As the decade continued, various titles, including Zap and Wonder Wart-Hog, the pig parody of superhero comics ^[4].

 

NEXT TIME ON A SCROLL IN TIME…

Although the Comic Code changed the comic world forever, the medium itself showed to be more resilient and transformative as some may have earlier predicted. The devastation of the 50s and resurrection of the 60s within the comic domain was, although crude, perhaps necessary to prepare it for the development and progressive period of the 1970s, as American society was soon to see...

CATCH UP WITH ME IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT!

[1] Couperie, Pierre, Maurice Horn, Proto Destefanis, EdouardFrançois, Claude Moliterni, GéraldGassiot-Talabot, and Eileen Hennessy. A History of the Comic Strip. New York: Crown, 1968. Print.
[2] Steranko, James. The Steranko History of Comics. Reading, PA. 1970. Print.
[3] Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels. Hong Kong. 1996. Print.
[4] Garcia, Santiago. On the Graphic Novel. University Press of Mississippi. 2015. Print.
[5] Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. New York. 2008. Print.

A Brief History of American Comics: Part 4- Post-War Comics

Newspaper Comics

The end of WWII “precipitated the decline of the American comic strip ^[3].”  After 1946, “humorous strips were no longer so amusing, the adventure strips seemed to have lost their spirit. It is understandable that after a conflict that had cost 30 million human lives, humorists found it a bit difficult to be funny”. Adventure strip heroes now seemed “contemptible, futile, and almost unseemly” compared to the actions of real-life soldiers and combatants ^[3].

For cartoonists and comic writers, the end of battle meant bringing home the nation’s most famous war heroes. As discussed previously, many readers “tuned in” to comic pages to root on Superman, Joe B, and others in their fight against Nazis and the Japanese. Now that these fights were no longer relevant, what would writers bring to the table? What new spectacles could possibly best the latest real-life adventures ^[3]?

Ironically, it was about this time that “true” stories are exactly what became relevant to the times. However, instead of evolving from the adventure strip, more genres awoke from the staleness in the comic stands. By the mid-1950s, detective, romance, and horror comics would each take root and grow in their own rights, each with their own paths.

Although few creators found success when deviating from the tried-and-true methods, (their audience merely seeking a mental escape rather than unfamiliar territory), their attempts did generate interest in cartoonists to opening the adventure genre to wider possibilities ^[3].

Titles like Kerry Drake, Rip Kirby, Steve Roper (continuation of pre-war series, Big Chief Wahoo) exemplified the crime-action genre. As all were “strong and effective strip narrations^”, they each did well to hold captive audiences. A comic strip version of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer “proved to be a genuinely gutsy reflection of the long-lasting novel series and way too tough for the majority of newspapers ^[1].” In this way, it stood apart from most other strips out there.

Specifically, post-war military adventure stories became “a genre all its own”. Strips like Terry and the Pirates and Captain Easy were abandoned by authors to pursue serials more generated towards Air Force and Navy-topics/interests, like Steve Canyon and Buz Sawyer, respectively ^[1]. 

Sci-fi (then called pseudo-science) also became a popular topic, which became “very well served’ with strips like Space Cadet, Twin Earths, Flash Gordon, Planeteer, and even time-traveling adventures like Alley Oop and Beyond Mars. Eventually even sci-fi serials would develop the common problem of needing more and more content to stay relevant and to merely continue the story-line. These same needs were what would cause them to be “eventually strangled by the same space limitations that brought all serious continuity strips to their finish or a lingering impotence.” Outside of the action and sci-fi type stories, comedy also flourished again during the 1950s. Pogo and Peanuts made their comic strip debuts during this time-frame ^[1].

Pogo was an unusual example between the two mediums, as a character who transitioned from comic books to newspapers. Pogo first appeared in comic books through Animal Comics (1941) and Pogo Comics (1946). However, he would develop its international audience once incorporating politics in its own newspaper strip, acting as “defenders of civil rights and the environment, and opponents of censorship ^[5].”

Comic Books

Meanwhile, comic books continued to pick up steam with the development of their own audience, namely comics generated towards children and teenagers.  Children comics came lightly early in the decade, through Disney (1940), Looney Tunes (1941), and Bugs Bunny (1942).  In the 1950s, “kid comics” hit widely, with various titles like Little Audrey (1952), Little Dot (1955), Little Lotta (1955), and Richie Rich (1960). Children comics also dabbed into the sci-fi and supernatural with Casper (1955), and Wendy the Good Witch (1960) ^[5].

Teenager comics were still a bit of a novelty around the 1940s, as “adolescents had only recently been discovered to be a separate tribe”. Still, with Archie (1942) hitting its chart-topping popularity, imitating titles like Andy (1948), Ernie (1948), and Dudly (1949) allowed teen titles to pick up steam. The 1950s took this genre and ran, looking more like comedic and oddity comics we might recognize today. With MAD meeting with great sales when it was published in 1952, several more, entitled things like Crazy (1953), Wild (1954), and Help! (1960) followed suit ^[5].

In the 1930s, pulp magazines flooded the stands, with titles like The Ghost Super Detective, Captain Satan, King of Detectives, and Secret Agent X. They continued through the 1940s and 50s with several more denoting detectives, mysteries, and the supernatural. With titles/topics like these, it was clear that if comic demographics weren’t changing, its content was ^[4]. These new materials opened comics and other graphic materials to a larger, more mature scope of content, which at once created a larger audience base and a higher rate of critique backlash.

Pulps became popular with tales of adventure, oddities, and other out worldly happenings. “Air-war magazines” became a topic with titles like Robert Jasper Hogan’s G-8 saga. Supernatural and oddities grew with stories inspired from HP Lovecraft stories and Weird Tales.  “Pseudo-science” genres (which predated the term ‘sci-fi’) covered topics from fantasy to space tales with Planet Stories and Captain Future: Wizard of Science. Horror tales also became popular with their graphic and dark-themed stories ^[4].

These new comic and pulp genres brought about its own growing pains in the comic world, with parents and various religious and community leaders continuously questioning the validity of what their youth were reading. Although not a new topic of conversation (as we will discuss further), the developing comic content (and other social changes) allowed these various outlets to boost their argument. As we will see in our upcoming segments, “Comics thus became a discussion topic in newspaper opinion columns and on radio chat shows: the question was, where they ‘a good thing’ or not ^[5]?”

Pulps and comic books, as most entertainment and art forms do, took influence from each other ^[4]. Pulps would continue to influence comic books for years. In fact, several staff (writers and illustrators) of DC and Marvel began their careers in pulps, either as writers or book cover illustrators. “Thus, the adventure comics developed a different aesthetic ^[5].”

The aesthetic wasn’t the only thing pulps and comic books shared. In 1934, a short run detective series called Black Bat Detective stayed a “mysterious detective” called the Black Bat. In 1939, the character known as The Black Bat appeared in Black Book Detective. Comic book star Batman also arrived in 1939, and attributed more than just the name and genre from his pulp magazine counterpart.  Batman wasn’t the first cross-media character (see our previous mention of Superman and Doc Savage), and certainly was not the last ^[4].

While pulps and comic books took plenty of suggestions from each other, the history of one seemed to diminish almost as soon as the other began. Pulp magazines, named after the recycled paper it was printed on, was literally built off of the ability to write and print as much as possible as cheaply as possible, granting it the nickname ‘dime novels’ ^[4]. Once comic books began hitting their popularity streak, both pulp publishers and readers saw the significance. Writers could “tell a story faster” with comic books, and readers were hit with “less intellectual drag”. As the decade continued, pulp magazines like Timely Comics and those from Fiction House practically began to transform into comic books. Despite the medium change, familiar characters could still be seen in alternate forms, being found “in paperbacks from time to time ^[4].”

Superhero comics “were essentially aimed at children, but derived from a pulp tradition, and thus often contained political and social overtones.” The “bold, figurative art with strong colors” (which pulp artists help bring to the medium) became iconically separate from the “abstract poetic fantasies that distinguished the more artsy newspaper strips.” Action comics also made their own impression on comics by being one of the genres that included cinematic qualities like close-ups, panoramas, and exciting ‘cuts’ ^[5]. These cinematic qualities helped change story-telling techniques and transform comics into its more updated or modern form.

Between the 1940s and 1960s, comic book stands would see several comic companies attempt great popularity, with many having to quit due to various reasons. The two major comic book companies around was DC & International Publication Corporation (IPC). These two became large enough that they did not receive much competition until the 1960s. Smaller companies were either unable to stay afloat or would become absorbed by either of the two larger names. Ironically, once competition did hit, the comic giants, then DC and Marvel, practically outshined all other comic company and businesses, “which corresponded with the overall decline in comic circulation ^[5].”

CASUALTY OF WAR- CAPTAIN AMERICA

“Captain America’s popularity varied in direct proportion to the intensity of the war.” When war events were high, Captain American flourished. When they looked poorly, so did he ^[4]. Finally, after the war was over, what was his life to be?

In 1944, Cap began his life of chasing crime, after “bizarre criminals who perpetrated strange crimes” and seemingly, running out of time. His costume, set for American patriotism rather than chasing criminals, according to Steranko: 

“In Issue 58, Steve Rogers had switched from army khakis to civilian clothes. By number 60, he had enigmatically became a teacher at Lee High School complete with briar pipe and school --- spectacles.”

Betsy Ross, Roger’s new love interest, was introduced in 1948. She was groomed as his assistant, Golden Girl ^[4].

Captain America’s Weird Tales took shelves in October 1949, in attempt to keep the hero relevant in recent sales. However, by the next issue, Red Skull had taken center stage and Cap was officially replaced, with “no other recognition or mention ^[4]. “

In the end, the majority of comic superheroes had reached the end of the line. They each served their time, but once the air had cleared and the war settled, their retirement was in sight. The few that did make it past the 1940’s, like their soldier counterparts, lived very different lives than what they had left behind. They had served their purpose but the world had to move on…

But what was that world to be? Time could only tell.

Next time on A Scroll in Time: Comics are about to take a drastic change! Next time, we take a look back throughout the decades to see the development in critique and hostility against American comics, which led to a massive shift in the censorship of comic books throughout the United States, ultimately changing how we know comics today!

[1] Marschall, Richard. America’s Great Comic-Strip Artists. New York, NY. 1989. Print.
[2] Blackbeard, Bill and Crain, Dale. The Comic Strip Century: Celebrating 100 Years of an American Art Form. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1995. Print.
[3] Couperie, Pierre, Maurice Horn, Proto Destefanis, Edouard François, Claude Moliterni, Gérald Gassiot-Talabot, and Eileen Hennessy. A History of the Comic Strip. New York: Crown, 1968. Print.
[4] Steranko, James. The Steranko History of Comics. Reading, PA. 1970. Print.
[5] Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels. Hong Kong. 1996. Print.
[6] Garcia, Santiago. On the Graphic Novel. University Press of Mississippi. 2015. Print.