This will come off clearly as being from someone who started reading comics in the early 1960s. And it will be 99% nostalgic and 1% as a rant.
I still go into my favorite comic shop here in the Los Angeles area, House of Secrets, to pick up Alter Ego and maybe something else. But I despair when I look at the rows of comics and seen nothing resembling the house style that DC and Marvel used to have. You could tell one company from another quite easily. And they were so wonderfully colorful! Now it seems they are so dark in color. Even the company logos we all knew and loved are gone.
I mean, what the heck is this?
True, times change, kids change. Comics have to change, too, I guess. But still, I prefer...
...this...
...over this...
Some of my favorite company styles:
You knew right away which company these were from. Nostalgia for a long-ago youth, I know. But I loved those styles.
Any thoughts? Any company styles you miss?
Replies
I'm with you on this one. I miss both the house style and the layout of the corner box, the title, the imagry, the lack of word balloons, and the duller, more muted colors, but variety of colors every month. One of my greatest pleasures was digging into that box/tray from Suits News Company when it arrived on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the local pharmacies, and flipping over one or two of the issues, seeing what new beauties had come from the House of Ideas..
It startling iconic covers, the symbolism, and and positioning of each hero with or without villian, it would always register on my brain, imprinted, even though I never really read many of the marvels...I still flipped through them, and enjoyed that I never knew where the story was going.
It seemed sometime in 1969, about the time that the X-men ended, near where the GrandMaster played Kang for the power of life and death in the Avengers, and as Galactus returned for the second time in the FF, that the luster and majesty of many of the book...Kirby's art...and the Mighty Marvel Checklist on the Bullpen page faded. Maybe I was getting older, but I think the whole line suffered when they split off the split books and launched all more.
Couldn't agree more. It was possible to stand at the spinner rack and pick out Marvel, DC, Gold Key and the other publishers solely on the style of their covers. The Gold Key photo and painted covers were a treat, although the interiors never lived up to the cover art.
Re: Kirk G's comment - the 1968 Marvel expansion was very exciting when it happened but within months it was apparent the quality of the books had been diluted. Kirby who had dominated just a few years earlier had become just another penciller in terms of output.
I miss the notion that covers gave you a scene that told you what was to happen in the story. We talk about that a bit here. That Batman cover above is beautifully rendered, but could just as well be the cover of any issue of Sgt. Rock.
Doc, agree the Gold Key covers were better than the insides...EXCEPT in the case of Russ Manning's Tarzan and Magnus. Beautiful!
The old school 1960s cover designs were based upon the assumption that most comics were displayed and marketed off spinner racks. With that arrangement, only the top quarter of a comic could be counted on being seen. And as a result, we got the company logo, the corner box, the go-go checks, the title, issue number and CCA seal all in the top fourth. that left the bottom 3/4 for an eye catching scene to pull the kids into the book.
SOME newstands clipped the comics in the upper left or top edge and let them dangle, until a kid asked for one down to buy. That's where cover design came in. Some newsstands or other stores displayed the comics standing up on a shelf, like a magazine rack, and the entire cover might be seen. But rows further back might only show the top quarter again, enticing the patron to plug it out to view or buy. ("Hey kid, this ain't no library. You gonna buy that or not?")
I recall very few covers that played with this formula. The few exceptions in my memory were X-men #56 "What is the Power" with the Living Pharaoh tearing down the X-men title. Thor #337, with Beta Ray Bill shattering the Thor logo.
X-men #44 "The End of the X-men" and the sideways FF issue that John Byrne did when they went into the Negative Zone.
I am the first to be nostalgic about comic books but I also realise that things become extinct if they fail to move forward. I also recall that I stopped reading comics regularly because they were too samey and I grew out of them. However, putting all of that aside: comic books don't even look like comic books anymore - and that DC bullet looks very 'corporate'.
As for losing the House style, I think that ended in the Bronze age when Marvel writers came over to DC and very straight-laced characters started to get stronger personalities, but that was always going to happen in time, I suppose. Marvel was always very hip, but in the 70s and DC looked suddenly old fashioned and out of touch. A stronger business approach would have shipped out a lot of DC's editorial and management staff, perhaps even it's creative staff as well. How old were Infantino, Swan, Schwartz, Kanigher, Haney, etc before they retired. Marvel, Stan aside, generally, had a much younger team.
When Swan stopped doing Superman comics, I was heartbroken. To me, he was THE Superman artist. And to then face John Byrne's total revamping of the line, including the elimination of Superboy. (Yeah, I know, he was an afterthought in the Superman mythos, but I grew up with that as part of the Superman mythos.)
ClarkKent_DC said:
And comic covers have gotten so gory now for superheroes.
Let me go on record as hating a few of the new "innovations".
#1. Frame covers. Call it what you will, they always put me off, and I consider it all wasted space. Plus, Gil Kane had more than his share of them.
#2. Thinner covers and thinner inner pages that are barely held together by stapples. There was a period where EVERY Marvel mag was at risk for the center page ripping out.
#3. Word balloons on covers. I've never liked them, all the way back to when the speech bubble was ringed in black and red, during the silver age. They cater to the youngest readers, and offend those of us who get things visually. Give me a symbolic cover any day.
#4. Covers that display scenes or confrontations that simply DO NOT OCCUR in the book.
#5. Pin up covers. One character only in a sexy pose, followed by another one next month, and the month after that. I'll even include FF#50 with the Silver Surfer in this.
I miss the way you used to be able to tell the manufacture of a car from the front grill.
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