This topic follows on the heels of discussions of Seduction of the Innocent, All in Color for a Dime (along with The Great Comic Book Heroes) and A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics. As with the previous discussions, I plan to proceed at the rate of one chapter per day. I'll be back in a bit with chapter one.
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The Rehabilitation of Eel O'Brian by Don Thompson
The future editor of the Comics Buyer's Guide provides a thorough examination not only of Plastic Man, but of Police Comics (the anthology in which Plastic Man appeared) as well, including Firebrand, No. 711, Chic Carter, Phantom Lady, Ther Mouthpiece, Flatfoot Burns, Manhunter and the Human Bomb. "Except for The Spirit," he concludes, "the book's only real strip of merit was Plastic Man."
Thompson goes on to detail how the CCA sucked the joie de vivre out of the feature by detailing the changes forced upon the pre-Code story from Plastic Man #24 (1950) when it was reprinted in #63 (1956). "Plastic Man could survive bullets and beatings and meltings but he couldn't survive the nit-pickers," says Thompson. "He quit after one more issue." Thompson continues to the ill-fated revival attempts in the '60s and mentions several knock-offs (the Elongated Man, Elastic Lad, Mr. Fantastic). He ends with the hope that "maybe DC will find someone good enough to follow Jack Cole and revive Plastic Man," He didn't live long enough to see it, but Kyle Baker would eventually do exactly that in 2004.
For my own part, I appreciated the humor of Jack Cole's work immediately but, ironically, lost interest when he introduced the comic sidekick Woozy Winks. I never gave Kyle Baker's version a try. Regarding reprints, a "Millennium Edition" of Police Comics #1 was published in 2000, a faux "80-Page Giant" (as it might have appeared in the late '60s) appeared in 2003 and, most importantly, beginning in 1998, DC published eight volumes of Plastic Man Archives reprinting Police Comics through #77 and Plastic Man through #10.
Mickey Mouse and the Phantom Artist by Bill Blackbeard
This chapter about Floyd Gottfredson has unearthed some "old memories" (from 2011). Blackbeard refers to Gottfredson as "the Phantom Artist" because, like Carl Barks, he was required to work without recognition throughout most of his career. It is Disney's policy not to identify individual artists so as not to elevate one artist above another, or above the studio, or (heaven forbid) Walt Disney himself. The studio even refused permission to reprint any Gottfredson panels or strips to illustrate this chapter.
Blackbeard makes one assertion early on that I'm not sure I agree with. He maintains that many adults did not read the srip (although their kids did) simply because it was about a funny animal. I'm not sure how he could know that. Mickey began in the cartoons and quickly made the transition to the printed page. After a time, the cartoon Mickey was tamed down a bit in comparison to his comic strip counterpart. I was pleased to learn that, "This alteration in Mickey's film character was a sharp blow to the kids who were following the Gottfredson strip, of course," according to Blackbeard. "I can recall how a number of us fans of those days, catching one of the new, bland Mickey Mouse cartoons at a Saturday matinee, liked to pretend that our Mickey, the Mickey of the strip, was only an actor in these films, playing roles quite apart from his real character. We would joke a bit after the show about how Mickey had better start complaining too his agent about these stuffy character parts that Disney kept giving him, a make-believe attitude which took some of the immediate edge off our irritation. (We wanted Mickey exchanging potshots with Arabs from desert oases on the screen--a la Victor McLaglen in The Lost Patrol--not minding obnoxious twin nephews or acting as twittery straight man to a duck.)"
He goes on to describe some of the mouse's comic strip antics. ""It was in the fierce business of facing and defeating these schemers and killers that Mickey learned how to pilot a plane, skipper a ship, ride a camel, run a newspaper, race a horse, an ostrich, and a dog, match a kangaroo against a gorilla, deep-sea dive, hunt whales, manage a prize-fighter, play a saloon piano, parachute jump, train an elephant, fly a blimp, rule a country, make a movie, control a genie, adopt a cannibal, capture a dinosaur and generally qualify as a mouse of all conceivable trades."
In praise of the unknown artist, Blackbeard said: "It wasn't the plots or storylines of Mickey Mouse... that kindled and maintained this deep affection and fascination we felt for the srtip artist and his creations; it was, rather, the panel-by-panel manner in which Gottfredson's inspired pen picked out the characteristic responses of his figures to each fresh situation in graphic delineation." Most of the time, whenever a Gottfredson story was transferred to the Walt Disney's Comics and Stories comic book, it was (for whatever reason) given to another artist to redraw, "The second artist's work lay dead on the page from the outset," according to Blackbeard, "imbecile and unbelievable, where Gottfredson's had moved like lightning and shone like day from start to finish."
After describing a particular Sunday sequence, Blackbeard remarks that it "deserves full-color reproduction in book form, together with a dozen or so other Sunday narratives spread over the run of the strip into the mid-1940s." It took another 40 years, but Fantagraphic Books did reprint 14 volumes of Gottfredson's work, twelve editions of the dalies in b&w (reprinting stories from 1930 through 1955 and beyond), and two editions of the Sundays in color (reprinting stories from 1932 through 1938 and beyond), beginning in 2011.
I own a couple of the early volumes of the Fantagraphic series and yes, the comic strip Mickey is far different from the one we are most familiar with from the Disney cartoons. Gottfredson made his Mickey a much more complete character.
Gottfredson and Barks proved to me that in the right hands so called funny animals can be adventure heroes as interesting as any costumed super hero.
The Propwash Patrol by Dick Lupoff
Lupoff spends the first four and a half pages of this rather lengthy chapter before getting to the point: "But the three great aviation comics that flourished during the war (and for some years after) were Fiction House's Wings Comics, Hillman Publications' Air Fighters Comics (later Airboy Comics), and Quality Comics' Military (later Modern) Comics, whose bellwether feature, Blackhawk, survived in the comic books until (relatively speaking) just yesterday.
I, myself, have never been a big fan a war comics (with the exception of those edited by Harvey Kurtzman at EC). Of the three Lupoff mentions, Wings is the one with which I am least familiar. Even he admits, "There was little characterization, almost no motivation (hell, there was a war going on, it was just us against them, that's all!), very little background, and hardly even a plot. Just action!" but that doesn't stop him from describing each feature in detail, before ending with his favorite, Ghost Squadron.
"Wings Comics struggled on until 1954," says Lupoff, wrapping things up, "its aviators switching from old prop-driven craft to jets, switching as the times changed from the foes of Worl War II to criminals and spies, to Communist agents and Korean, Chinese, and Soviet enemies, but somehow the fun had gone out of war. There was no more glamour to it, no more excitement. It had become a dirty, ugly, and depressing business, and even the brightest colors, the square-jawed heroes, the leggy and busty heroines of Wings Comics couldn't make it fun again."
Then he realizes that, of the three comics he mentioned, he has discussed only one and promises to discuss the others in a later chapter.
Frankenstein Meets the Comics by Donald F. Glut
If you've been reading my occasional "PS Artbooks Roundup" posts to the the "This Week in Comics" threads you know how much I have been looking forward to the release of the final two (but first two in a series of eight) slip-cased volumes of Dick Briefer's Frankenstein. Glut steps us through the development of Briefer's version ("He took an established character, adapted it to the tastes of contemporary comic0book readers, and eventually evolved that character from a hideous monstrosity to a patriotic citizen to a bumbling dumbbell, and finally to a misunderstood misanthrope in a world of prejudiced human beings"), but also traces the development of every comic book version between 1939 and 1973, and finally concludes, "Of all the Frankenstein comic-book stories published since 1939, Dick Briefer's efforts remain the most memorable even though they were far from the most literate or artistic. There was something compelling in that flat head, those sunken cheeks, that impossible nose set between the eyes."
According the the CCA: "Vampires, ghouls and werewolves shall be permitted to be used when handled in the classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula and other high caliber literary works written by Edgar Allan Poe, Saki, Conan Doyle and other respected authors whose works are read in schools through out the world." Simce neither Poe, Saki (H.H. Munro), nor Doyle wrote about vampires or werewolves, one wonders how their works can be used as a source of the "classic tradition" but, if there were any comic which might have survived via this loophole, I would have thought Dick Briefer's Frankenstein was it. Sadly, the Monster was killed by the CCA.
".....but somehow the fun had gone out of war."
I'm sorry, Richard. Please allow me to back up and give that remark a little context. Here is how Dick Lupoff began his chapter...
"We were air-minded ion those days. Those days were the days and years of World War II, the last war, I think, that ever got a 'good press' in this country. Korea got a mixed press; at first it was a clear-cut and generous response to aggression but, as the fighting dragged on inconclusively, casualty reports poured in weekly, political wrangling arose over so-called no-win policies, Truman fired MacArthur, truce talks went on and on and on at Panmunjom... we got tired of Korea. And Viet Nam, of course, has been an unmitigated disaster from anyone's viewpoint.
"But World War II...
"Maybe it was just because I was a small boy at the time, or maybe it was at least in part because we had something pretty close to a controlled press, with the OWI--the Office of War Information--feeding coverage to the media and military cameramen providing 'official' footage to the newsreels.
"But mainly I think it was because the American people really believed in the war effort, we believed that the world was divided into two great warring forces, one good and one evil, and of course our side was the side of good. The 'gray areas' that make it so hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore were... well, not quite absent 30 years ago, so much as conveniently Brushed aside, overlooked.
"The good guys were America, Britain, France, China, Russia. The bad guys were Germany, Japan, and their agents, dupes, and collaborators. About the only country to receive equivocal treatment was was Italy--somehow we felt that the Italians had been led into war on the wrong side by a vain and foolish dictator, and would gladly have opted out of the Axis cause at the first opportunity (which of course they did).
"This world-view was both reflected and reinforced by movies, press, radio, and--for us kids--the comics. We thrilled equally to the news and to fictionalized narrations. Our heads were filled with exhilarating visions of heroic marines storming ashore on lush, sandy, rocky islets in the Pacific, rooting out fanatical subhuman Japanese defenders with bomb, bullet, flamethrower, and bare fists.
"We imagined ourselves, faces and hands darkened with lampblack, dogtags taped together to avoid sound, parachuting silently into occupied France to make clandestine contact with daring maquis and assist them in sabotaging Nazi installations, preparing for the great day of liberation that lay ahead."
And so on.
"Of course I was a small boy."
When Lupoff said that "somehow the fun had gone out of war" at the end of the chapter, it was a callback to the beginning. Sorry for the confusion.
Blue Suit, Blue Mask, Blue Gloves--and No Socks by Maggie Thompson
In her chapter, the future co-editor of the Comics Buyer's Guide provides an historic backdrop of the era in which The Spirit appeared, an overview of the feature itself, and a summary of individual stories and particular storylines. "It was not, however, any of these who made The Spirit the incredible memory it was," she asserts. "Other strips had gorgeous girls. Other strips had great villains. Other strips had developing characters. But The Spirit had concepts, plot-lines, story ideas like no other strip... there were stories of power and suspense. there was an extended sequence in which the Octopus blinded the Spirit (in which much use was made of all-black panels). there was one in which the Spirit was wounded in the left leg--and weeks later faced the threat of amputation as the doctor's recommended treatment. there was almost always a lot of action in a Spirit story--and quite frequently a good dollop of violence. The Spirit was bashed and clouted and shot and submerged and kicked and clawed and starved and tortured and choked. that mess of chemicals, which put him in rigor mortis in the first place, must have had some life-preserving properties to bring him out of all that intact."
She also cites Walt Kelly's Our Gang and discusses the stereotype of Ebony in The Spirit to some degree, but I think I'll save that for the concurrent "Walt Kelly's Our Gang" discussion.
To conclude, I have criticized today's "decompressed" style of storytelling ad nauseum. Many of today's crop of comic book artists could learn a thing or two from Eisner's ability to tell a complete and compelling story in a mere eight pages... every week.
It's Magic by Dick O'Donnell
The sixth chapter is about magicians, but dick O'Donnell (described as "practic[ing] magic in his native Hawaii) wrote about Mandrake... period. When the editors informed him of their intention to extend his chapter (by 14 pages, as it turned out) to include such latter-day comic book magicians as Ibis, Zatara, Dr. Fate and the Spectre, O'Donnell replied: "All right, if that's your real opinion. But please make sure that you don't tell your readers that it's mine."
"Telling the youth of today that Mandrake was a great feature, I have found, is an exercise in futility," says O'Donnell. "They know of that master of mystical adventure only through the modern newspaper strip--drawn since [Phil] Davis's death by Fred Fredricks--or through latter day comic book revivals. Both are weak, purile things, with tame and simplified plots, no pace, crude and characterless drawing. certainly a reading of this Mandrake leaves one with no impression of anything very worthwhile." Indeed, King Comic's Mandrake the Magician #5 was among my very earliest comics (the other two, bought in a three-pack, being Flash Gordon #5 and The Phantom #22), and I must admit Mandrake was my least favorite of the three.
O'Donnell has accurately identified the appeal Sunday collections such as Hal Foster's Prince Valiant and Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon have for me: "Mandrake and other newspaper comics were drawn in rather large size, intended to be presented on either full-size newspaper pages or (as with Mandrake) at least tabloid size. Each panel was fairly large, and the artists--phil Davis, Alex Raymond, Hal foster, Burne Hogarth--were able to lay out a scene and put into it a number of figures and an amount of graphic detail and technique appropriate to its size.
"Even today I can look at a Mandrake page from a 1935 [Sunday] Examiner and see that each panel is a work or art.
"When the Mandrake strips were collected by the King features Syndicate and republished in King Comics, Magic Comics, and the David McKay Feature Books from 1936 onward, they were reduced in size by approximately 65%. The reader can follow the storyline well enough, but the beauty of the drawings is almost totally lost. There remains, perhaps, enough of a suggestion of Phil Davis's delicate brushwork and line to permit one to imagine what the page should look like, if one has seen full-size pages, but for the reader who knows Mandrake only through reductions such as these, there is simply no way of understanding the art and detail that went into the strip."
As I mentioned earlier, in their editortial capacity, Don Thompson and Dick Lupoff went on to mention dozens of other magicians from comic books, including Zatara, Dr. fate, the Spectre, Dr. Strange, Magicman, Sargon and Zatanna. Some of them they discussed in more depth than others.
On Zatara: "Many artists worked on Zatara; Joseph Sulman was one of the most prolific, and was rather good; even Joe Kubert got his artistic hands on the master magician at least once. the main obstacle in the strip was not the art, which was no worse than the comic-book norm, but the writing, which was unfortunately no better than the comic-book norm."
On Dr, Fate and the Spectre: "All of the magicians I have mentioned so far were essentially mortal men gifted with supernormal powers. there was yet another class of magicians in the comics, heroes whose might so far exceeded that of a mere Mandrake, Zatar or Ibis , that they truly transcended the category of 'mere' magicians and became--sometning more. these were the mind-bogglers, the farthest fetched heroes in all the history of the comics: Doctor Fate and the Spectre.
"There are many comic book heroes whom I remember more for their potential--alas, all too often never really tapped--than for the actual stories. Chief among these were Doctor Fate and the Spectre. Both had concepts that stretched the mind, but both had too many adventures that were, despite the supernatural elements shoveled into them, prosaic."
They go on to describe several adventures in detail, but in this New Golden age in which we now live that is no longer necessary. Dr. Fate's Golden Age adventures are collected in a single archive edition and, whereas the one Spectre archive doesn't contain all of his Golden Age adventures, a Silver Age omnibus edition extends the character's revival far past the date when The Comic-Book Book was published.
In the 21st century, Titan Comics has published by far the most collections of Mandrake comic strips, including two editions of dailies (1934-1936 and 1965-1967) and a black & white collection of Sundays (1965-1969). Also, Hermes Press has published two hardcover volumes comprising the entire run of King's 1960s comic book series. But by far the best collection is the tabloid-size color Sundays from 1935-1937.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
To conclude, I have criticized today's "decompressed" style of storytelling ad nauseum. Many of today's crop of comic book artists could learn a thing or two from Eisner's ability to tell a complete and compelling story in a mere eight pages... every week.
If they can have people buy six issues at $3.95 or $4.95 each (and a collected edition) with the same story that would fit in one or two issues, why should they not decompress?
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