The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2088: Famous 1st Editions F-7, June-July 1975

 I can't imagine how exciting it must have been to see all of these characters gathering together in one place for early fans of the superhero. The story inside, therefore, may have been a bit disappointing. Rather than a team adventure, we basically get the guys sitting around and telling stories of their solo exploits. And while the stories are good, the Hawkman and Spectre tales in particular, it's hardly what we've come to expect from a team-up book. The closest we get to any action involving everyone is when Johnny Thunder accidentally unleashes his thunderbolt.

But...

It was a cool look at the Golden Age of superheroes, an age I don't pay a lot of attention to because I think I've only seen the mediocre stuff. There's a style we associate with the Golden Age, one that gets picked up by such titles as Big Bang or Supreme, but the variety of art styles presented in this comic show that that iconic style is only a part of what was going on. The art on the Spectre tale, in particular, with its mixture of superhero and storybook, was fabulous.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2078: Famous 1st Edition F-8, September 1975

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Where was I?

After having sold a few comics at Purple Gorilla, I picked up some nice vintage-y stuff in exchange, including a couple of Famous First Edition Golden Age reprints and some cool Silver Age superhero stuff. I thought, as I try to wade back into daily writing (the pain has gotten much better in the last little bit), I'd do a comic from each of the major "Ages," one a day, for a while.

The delineation of ages I use comes from www.keycollectorcomics.com, and breaks down thus: Golden Age - (1934-1955), Silver Age - (1956-1971), Bronze Age - (1972-1985, Copper Age - (1986-1992, and Modern Age  (1993-Present). I don't think I've ever seen the Copper Age before, but it makes sense that we need to place something in what used to be the Modern era. I think it's a pretty good breakdown, and follows some important moments, at least in the later years.

That said, we'll start with Flash Comics #1, written almost single-handedly by Gardner Fox, and giving us our first looks at both The Flash and Hawkman. I actually really love the art for the Hawkman feature. It's very different from the usual Golden Age style, much more in keeping with the illustration-influenced work of the newspaper cartoonists. I imagine at this point in the industry there was a lot of crossover from comics to newspapers (though maybe there wasn't, I really don't know), or at the very least the newspaper strips of the previous Platinum Age had a great influence on the artists of the Golden Age. I kind of see it too in this comic in the way that the stories are structured. I can absolutely see the Flash feature filmed as an early Hollywood motion picture. The dialogue and the action put me in mind of old film serials, and I'm actually kind of surprised that no Flash serial was ever made.

More to follow. 

The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 33: Psycho #7, July 1972

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There's this weird thing that a lot of the 70s horror magazines did where they told stories in the second person. That means that each caption box used the term "you" for the focal character, as if the reader were meant to be stepping into the shoes of the character in the story. I'm sure at the time it was a cool way of writing stories, and it hearkens back somewhat to the EC horror comics of the 50s, as I've noted before about some of these B&W horror magazines. But it gets a bit tired when virtually every story in this issue is doing it. Further, there's actually a story that not only uses the second person voice in its captions, but also presents all of the action from a first person point of view. It sort of works, but it sort of doesn't, though I kind of wonder if this has something to do with readers being slightly more critically savvy, and slightly more aware of ironic distance, in contemporary times. Or maybe it's just me.

There's some amazing Pablo Marcos art in this issue. He's an artist I'm coming to appreciate more and more, and I think I'll have to start going through the old horror mags I've got to see a bit more of his work. It reminds me of the old historical comics in style, just with lots more nudity and violence.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 749: Marvel Premier #6, January 1973

I've begun, this week, to delve back into the mysteries of my dissertation, though it's a slightly altered one than the one I took a break from almost a year ago. I think the comics portion of the work is going to have to be removed, as I simply can't work with the supervisor I'm working with anymore. Which means that the Lovecraft aspects of the work are coming more to the fore. So it's a nice (sort of) coincidence that I came across this comic today. I've had it for a few years now and, somehow, have never got around to reading it. The inside cover notes that it's based on ideas from Robert E. Howard, but there's a remarkable amount of HPL dripping from the sea-drenched shores and gables of the tale.

That said, I couldn't find any of the referenced creatures and deities in my Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, which makes me think it's not quite as complete as it could be. Perhaps that's another project for another time.

I like Doctor Strange and his over-the-top magicalness. His calling out each of the names of his powers is reminiscent (or maybe that's the other way around) of the tradition in anime and manga of naming and shouting an attack before it happens. What this gestures to is perhaps a culture that sees magic and the spiritual as far more a part of life than one does in the Western world. It's a worldview I appreciate a good deal, as, apparently, does Marvel's Master of the Mystic Arts. I'd love to follow along with this story, in the hopes that it continues its Howardian/Lovecraftian bent, though I imagine comics this old will be tough to track down. Thank goodness the Calgary Expo is coming up.

To be continued.