|
I started reading comic books in 1959, when I was eight years old, with an issue of World's Finest Comics with "The Caveman from Krypton" splashed on the cover. The first story, about super-powered people battling each other (with Batman in the middle) was fun. The second story was about Tommy Tomorrow. That name appealed to me and I enjoyed that story too. I soon checked out other titles. One of my favorites was "Challengers of the Unknown" by Jack Kirby. (Little did I know!)
In the late fifties, the world of Superman and Batman seemed colorful and exciting. I wanted to read more. But by the early 1960's these same characters seemed under-developed, repetitive, and sometimes downright boring. I was looking for something better.
The Golden Ages
I believe there have been three Golden Ages of comics. Ages are only established in retrospect - nobody knew at the time it was a Golden Age. So dates are easily retrospectively assigned to the beginning. While it's usually easy to agree when an era has begun, people often quibble about when it ends.
A "Golden Age" needs these three qualifications:
- Critical or public recognition
- An increase in sales
- Something new that makes it stand out
The first Golden Age of Comics began in June 1938 with the first issue of Action Comics # 1, featuring Superman. It ended on VJ day in 1945. After the war, the originality began to fade and the quality suffered. But what an era this was. With America in the grip of a depression, many creative people, who would in later years be attracted to more lucrative pursuits, were creating comics. If you go to a comic book store today and look at the DC titles on sale, you will see that 95% are based on characters and concepts from 1938-1945. Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, even the Teen Titans are made up of characters created more than a half century ago.
I didn't know much about the comics from the 1940's until Jules Feiffer's "Great Comic Book Heroes" was published. Along with a brilliant essay, there were a dozen stories from the forties. Superman, Batman (with a murderous Joker no less) were reprinted. There were also the origins of The Flash, Green Lantern, and Plastic Man, a one page Captain Marvel tale and another character I'd never heard of: The Spirit. These stories were original, fresh, clever, and different.
Mr. Feiffer was a fan and an artist, and could write about being both. As a matter of fact, Feiffer wrote that "all comics were junk." He said it in an affectionate way, and he was right. I was to learn that much of everything is junk: movies, television, books, ice cream, and talk radio. But comics could be fun and exciting and had no pretense of being anything else.
The second Golden Age does not really have a name because it involves just one company: EC. People seem not to want to call it the "EC Golden Age" and tend to include it in the original Golden Age. I disagree. As the popularity of comics began to decline and super-heroes began to fade from the newsstands, the EC era emerged. William Gaines, Al Feldstein, and Harvey Kurtzman were out in front of a great movement in comics. Gaines treated his creators better than most, and had an instinct for something new. Most noted for horror and suspense titles such as Tales from the Crypt, EC also produced the most interesting line of war and science fiction titles in the history of comics. Oh yes, they also created Mad.
But in 1955 along came Dr. Fredrick Wertheim and Senator Kefauver. They ushered in a wave of censorship from which the industry has never recovered. Comic books were not just for young children before 1955, but this changed almost overnight. Any reference to anything real or important was removed. Superman, who fought corrupt car manufacturers for making unsafe cars (or politicians for stealing money) would have to look to the stars for his enemies now. Batman would suffer the most - gone was his obsession with finding criminals at night, now he was just another super-hero in tights. Many titles just disappeared, and the end seemed near.
The man who saved comics was Julius Schwartz. With the decline in comic sales, Schwartz revitalized and reintroduced the super-heroes of the 1940's. First came the revamped Flash, then Green Lantern, followed by the Atom and Hawkman. When he had enough characters, he introduced what perhaps became the most influential comic of all time, The Justice League of America. Joining the marquee characters were Green Arrow and Aquaman. They fought colorful characters, often super-powerered aliens with remarkable inventions and a desire to take over the Earth. You'd be surprised how many aliens wanted to take over the Earth during this time! The creatures from outer space even infiltrated the Batman strip, monthly taking him on new science fiction adventures. To many, this was another golden era, The Silver Age of Comics, but not so to me. There was great potential, but the originality soon faded.
The Flash started off well; Carmine Infantino drew the speedster with great style. New villains were introduced and, for 15 or so issues it was great fun to read and even more fun to look at. Similarly, Green Lantern, especially with Green Lantern Corps and Sinestro, enjoyed a terrific run for about a year. Then the great ideas seemed to dry up, the stories became shorter, there was no character development, and very few new ideas were offered. If there was a Golden Age at DC, it was a comparatively short period at the end of the 1950's.
DC did have moments of Comic Book Brilliance. The introduction of "Imaginary Stories" in Superman was interesting, at times compelling. The first offering was a three part story showing what might have happened if Krypton had not exploded and Superman had grown up there, instead of on Earth. Carmine Infantino did a series of Science Fiction Sport stories that were quite unique. The Flash of Two Worlds and the stories it begot in The Flash and JLA were some of the best of that era. Gil Kane on Green Lantern, especially in the beginning, was exciting.
But then, as with all DC comics, it became formula. Bad guy breaks out of jail, good guy fights bad guy three times and loses the first two. Good guy introduces a new invention on the first page and defeats bad guy with it on the last, but never uses it again. Similarly, bad guy develops secret weapon to break out of prison, uses it for that issue then never uses it again. Story lines could not be developed because DC's policy was to fit at least two stories in most books.
But more than the plots, the characters and their illustrations were static. Barry Allen and Hal Jordan had little personality and never developed from issue to issue. There was no continuity. A story written in 1960 could be left on a shelf for five years and published without confusing readers, because rarely did one issue have any connection to the one before or after. At the JLA meetings, there was nothing to imply that the characters had any personality. This quickly became boring. DC also mixed up silly science with dumb science. Superman is launched to Earth by a scientist who had never launched anything before. He comes straight to Earth with no food, no water, and no diaper changes. This is silly science and can be a lot a fun. But when The Mirror Master says he can escape prison by pointing mirrors in such a way that it will shrink him and enable him to walk out of prison, this is dumb science that any 12 year old would have trouble accepting! So DC started losing its readers when they reached 13. At age 12 I was growing, but DC was not growing with me.
Meanwhile, Superman suffered badly from overexposure. He appeared in Action, Superman, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, JLA, and World's Finest. He also appeared as a boy, using recycled stories, in Superboy and Adventure Comics. But the character was devoid of emotion or personality. There were a few bizarre events that really made me wonder about Superman. One that stands out: A young girl, Kara lands on Earth, not only as a survivor from Krypton, but Superman's cousin. Superman immediately places her in an orphanage! You'd think as her last surviving family member, he might consider adopting her! This is just short of abandonment. I must have been ten years old when I read this and it really bothered me that a cousin would not take her in. But this would have changed the continuity of the major character. God Forbid that DC would ever do such a thing.
Superman never seemed, in the late fifties and early sixties, to be too enthralled with Lois Lane. But how many recall that he did fall in love with, and wanted to marry, other women? First was Lori Lemeris, a mermaid. Then Superman once traveled back in time to Krypton and fell in love with a girl there. In another story, Superman told Supergirl that he wanted to marry her, but couldn't. They were from the planet Krypton, where cousins were forbidden to marry. (Superman obviously didn't realize that he was living in America!) But if he did not have this great love for Lois, I wished he'd move on.
And then we discovered that Krypto, the super-dog, had come to Earth in Kal-El's rocket ship. So ... the planet is exploding, there are minutes left to live, and Jor-El tries to put his wife and child into the rocket ship. She refuses, saying "My place is with you, Jor-El!" I'd always hoped that Jor-El would say "OK, you stay, I'll go!" but instead he puts the dog in. Soon there were Super-cats, Super-monkeys, even a Super-horse. The animals developed thought balloons. They mixed up their pronouns, but thought in human terms. Soon they were talking with each other. Streaky the Super-cat began to read. He passed by a milk truck and wanted milk. They could have written that his super nose detected milk. Instead, he read the sign on the truck. It didn't say MILK, it said DAIRY. But he knew...
And I knew too. I knew it was time to move on.
© Barry Pearl, Dec 2002
continued in The Rise and Fall of The Marvel Age of Comics
Part II - The Marvel Age
|