Comics and DC's Golden Age

 Comic Strips: With Comi-Con, it appears a few of the strips over the last couple of weeks wanted to get in on the act. Gotta love "Fox Trot" for embracing the various ages. Where else are you going to run the gamut of Hit Girl to the Jay Garrick Flash? Even DC Comics doesn't want to do that. OK, the "Get Fuzzy" comic has nothing to do with superheroes. Sometimes a pun is its own reward.

Herogoggles: Speaking of Golden-Age DC, over at my golden-age superheroes/supervillains website, I have added pages devoted to DC's heroes and villains of the Golden-Age.. As my brother pointed out, I basically am admitting the project will NEVER be completed because there's no real way for me to read all of DC's comics of the Golden-Age. I don't have the money to buy them and that limits me to the ones they are willing to reprint. And, most of the reprint books like the Archives are devoted to characters, rarely the whole comics. Luckily with the All-Star Archives, they included the Hop Harrigan text stories for example since that wasn't part of the JSA. Marvel's output was a bit smaller with titles and characters having much smaller runs once you look past the big three of Captain America, Human Torch, and Namor. So, it's a bit easier for them to devote a hardback to Mystic Comics for example. It does mean, that certain stories tend to get reprinted a half dozen times. Such as their recent "Marvel Firsts" devoted to the Golden-Age. I was tempted, but I already had half the book in other volumes!

In putting together the lists of characters that I wanted to cover from various sources, I started also looking at the copyrights of a few of the early titles. It was interesting to discover that "New York World's Fair Comics" was not renewed. In addition to having a few Superman, Batman stories in public domain, it's also the first appearance of the Wesley Dodd Sandman! It also occurred to me that some of the public domain comics might actually be availabe. And, a few of them are, over at comics.org! Of course, the quality of the scans vary wildly. Which is sad, since stories with characters like "Wing Brady" and "Barry O'Neil" look like they'd be fun to read. The latter especially has wonderfully dense and detailed artwork, heads above much of what was being published at the time or even years later. You'd have to look at Milton Caniff, Hal Foster, or Alex Raymond for comparable work. However, this makes the strip pretty much a strain on the eyes and unreadable when it comes to low resolution or microfiche reproduction. Barry O'Neil's ongoing war with the Yellow Peril menace Fang Gow continued from the public domain comics over to Detective Comics.

What's enjoyable is to see all of the Siegel and Shuster strips: Radio Patrol, Dr. Occult, Henri Duval, etc. The artwork is open and expressive. Plus, the duo really exploded the limits of the medium, they exploited the visual sides of the medium. The heroes were men of physical action, the menaces larger than life. It's a shame there are a few holes, but how great to see Dr. Occult in action. Henri Duval was a musketeer hero whose storyline just sort of ends to be replaced by an adaptation of The Three Musketeers itself.  The duo must have liked the name as they used it again for a villain to face Dr. Occult.

Sadly, the comics they have seems to run out before getting to Captain Desmo and Nadir. Nadir is a fascinating character. In some ways, he seems to borrow a bit from Chandu, Mandrake, the Shadow... a man brings knowledge gained in the Far East to fight crime. The difference is Nadir reverses the status quo. He's a prince of India! His origin might seem a little familiar, his parents killed when he was a lad he decides to turn his back on his title and devote his life to fighting crime! He masters not only ancient knowledge of the East, he also masters the sciences of the West and now makes his home in New York City!

Then there's the Flying Fox. An aviation hero whose aviator's cap doubles as a fox mask. Sadly, he's not public domain, so the only way to see that character will be buying the original comics or hoping DC makes it available some day. DC would be smart to really gather a lot of this material for posterity and preservation. Even if not making any plans for printing, just making them available digitally for historical purposes. Although a volume of Siegel and Shuster's work would seem to be easily feasible. Most of these were b/w or one color to begin with so reprinting would be cheap enough and you'd imagine there would be some interest in seeing these stories from the creators of their flagship character.

While DC has acknowledged the Crimson Avenger as pre-dating Superman as a masked hero, it's interesting to see Dr. Occult as a brief caped hero with super-powers. Captain Desmo, who like the Flying Fox was an aviation hero whose cowl doubled as a mask, also squeaks by debuting before Superman.  Desmo had some kind of issue, he wore the cowl constantly, even when lounging in his own home. His sidekick asks him about it, but Desmo doesn't get around to sharing that information. The Flying Fox would debut just a few months later.

More Fred Guardineer

I've mentioned before I'm a big fan of Fred Guardineer. His strong, deliberate line, his use of parallel lines to define shapes, mass, and patterns and juxtapose them against other lines. And, knowing when to leave space open to define shape and dimension. With Zatara, he'd become famous for magician characters, especially the backwards speaking variety. There couldn't be too many companies for which he didn't do a magician hero or two.

Yet before that, he worked at the short-lived Centaur comics where he seemed to be their go-to artist. He did illustrations for various text stories, most notably Dan Hastings, but also other he-man adventurer types. He did sci-fi comics in the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers type. While he didn't have quite the natural feel of Alex Raymond, he was quite a bit slicker than the art found in the daily Bucks. He also did illustrations for advertising, and slice of life pieces. In this day and age where the time period seems to be one of black and white, his pieces were full of vibrant color.

During this time, his weaknesses came from his strengths. That deliberate line lent a certain artificiality to the world. He was great on patterns, but rarely captured textures and atmosphere as things were often a little too pristine, too ordered and organized. He was Art Deco when he could stand to be a little Art Nouveau, to let a little wildness and seeming arbitrariness in. Figures were often stiff and posed, as life-like as store mannequins. In ten years, he'd show that he conquered some of these shortcomings when working on Durango.

Still, looking at his artwork in the context of what would come after, what would make up the great variety of 1940s comicbook art, and his technical skill and mastery is undeniable. Admittedly, during the later years, many of the more technically proficient artists would be at War as well as being influenced by the bombastic styles of Lou Fine and Simon & Kirby. And, Guardineer was here a bit before them, showing the level of detail and clarity that was obtainable. When looking at his backgrounds and scenes, it's not hard to see echoes of it in Simon & Kirby's depictions of city life or Fine's fantastic buildings, weapons and explosions, the clarity in C.C. Beck's Captain Marvel story-telling, and Mort Meskin's own atmospheric use of lines, patterns and shapes.

These few illos are from 1938 issues of Star Comics and can be found on comicbookplus.com. With that one Dan Hastings pic from below, he came close to doing the first patriotic themed hero!

 

 

The Fox, The Beetle, and The Gray.

Archie has announced a new series based on one of their original superheroes, the Fox. Here's the first paragraph of their press release:Eisner Award winning writer Mark Waid (Daredevil, Thrillbent) and Emmy winning writer/artist Dean Haspiel (Billy Dogma, HBO’s Bored To Death) are teaming up to launch a brand new series – THE FOX. Taking place in the Red Circle universe, this exciting creative team will deliver an innovative, action-packed superhero story starring the fabled pulp hero.

AAAAARGHH!!. NOT A PULP HERO! It seems fashionable these days to call every character that comes down the pike who debuted in the 1930s and 40s, "pulp". Green Hornet: radio, movie serial and comics, not pulp. Captain Midnight: radio, comics, big little books, movie serial but not pulp. Miss Fury: comic strips and comic book reprints, not a pulp. The Fox: comic books only (and even then a back-up player in anthology books in the 1940s).

What's annoying is one of Archie's heroes did make it into the pulps, but that was the Black Hood. One of the few to start in comics and branch out into pulps and not the other way around.

Is it a big deal? Well, imagine if they said that Mark Waid was the Emmy winning writer and Haspiel was the Eisner award winner. They're both award winning writers so it doesn't matter if you got the specifics wrong, right? If you are going to talk about the history and pedigree of the character, at least get the terms right! It's funny in that they even say he's a "fabled pulp hero" as if these non-existent pulp adventures are well known! Just further drawing attention to the ignorance of the writer. 

Can you imagine any other industry not knowing their own history, apparently superhero writers, editors, publishers and fans not knowing or caring about the distinction between comic strips, comic books and pulp magazines? Would you say Peyton Manning is known as a professional Rugby or Soccer player? Would you read a newspaper or watch the news that regularly called North Korea South Vietnam or take seriously a sportscaster who didn't know the difference between referees and umpires, said that the players, cheerleaders and band members wore costumes but the mascots wore uniforms and that a "match" of football was divided by "innings"? Or a retrospective on Andy Griffith talking about his home-state of Alabama which also served as location for the fictional town of Mayberry, the movie drama where he played a police commissioner? This is not the first time. It's a recurring problem with articles, CBR, the companies and the writers, all using the term with a fairly specific meaning incorrectly. It shows a ignorance of their own history and industry terms. I expect a press release to KNOW what they are talking about and since they are advertising the character and trying to talk about his history to actually get it right.
----------------------------------------------------------
Black Beetle: No Way Out #3. Franchesco Francavilla's Black Beetle mini-series appears to be a success. Francavilla has been making a name for himself with his covers and artwork, reminding me of old-style movie posters from the 1960s and 70s but his subject matter incorporating all kinds of kitsch and love of campy horror and science-fiction television, movies and pulps. Much as Mike Mignola has done with Hellboy and his interest in giant monsters and the late Dave Stevens did with the Rocketeer, Francavilla has channeled his interests into his own character and series, the Black Beetle. The Black Beetle has his roots in pulps and pulp-styled characters, and while there's a hint of mysticism and darker going ons in the "Zero" issue, this mini is more crime oriented, with him investigating who would put the hit on several mobsters as well as having a colorful, larger than life villain lurking in the shadows. The artwork and limited color palettes that Frankavilla loves so much makes it seem both rich but full of shadows and atmosphere.

If there's a weakness, it's in that we don't really get a sense of who or why the Beetle does what he does. In this issue, he's seen without a mask though his face stays partially obscured by shadow most of the time and even then we discover, it's a mask. Now, there are several pulp heroes who we know little or next to nothing about, but in those cases it's also clear that it's a deliberate part of the character's mystique. Also, unlike the Black Beetle, those characters are surrounded by other people who we do get to know a bit about. In writing The Shadow, Maxwell Grant dubbed "proxy heroes" as a term for heroes that could investigate and drive the story while keeping the Shadow mysterious and in the background.  The Black Beetle doesn't have proxy heroes though, nor normal people such as agents, aides, or friends that he can interact with, to give us more of an idea of what kind of man he really is.

I also didn't care for the big fight scene this issue as it goes meta-fictional on us, appearing as if shot from a comic book that wasn't properly lined up so everything at an angle and panels running off the page and the proper order of reading the panels obfuscated by the bizarre layout. It takes the reader out of the world and the immediacy of the action. Interestingly, it shares this with the other pulp-like title that came out this week.

Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Gray #2. The second issue is a rocking roller-coaster ride from start to finish. Fabian and friend are captured by some odd natives and taken to be sacrificed to giant spiders at the supposed abandoned temple. They make friends with a martial artist who carries a charm that has some kind of link to Fabian's powers. And, we see where the powers can be truly dangerous, especially when one of the ghosts you call up is blood-crazed vampire.

The first several pages is an example of decompressed story-telling where it works. No words, but we see who the woman in the coma is and what she means to Fabian. It uses cinematic storytelling and widescreen panels to good effect. However, it also fails in that it goes just a little too far in being clever for clever's sake and not simply for good storytelling purposes. Because, the method is that each panel on the page is from a different point of Fabian's past. The top panel of each page tells one narrative, the second from each another and so on. However, it's more than two pages and starts on page 1. It's only when you turn the page that you see what they are doing. And, then to properly follow the sequence of events, you have to turn the pages back and forth for each narrative. This would work fine on a two page spread where you can read straight across the spread, but doesn't really work for more than two pages as it makes the reader aware of the mechanics of following the story.

Likewise, the sequence really was needed to have been in the first issue as it explains a lot of the motivations and relationships of the characters especially in terms of this specific story. Probably will read fine when read in one sitting or in the eventual trade.

Masks: It appears as if Masks is throwing the other conceit or premise the mini-series was based on out the window. The first being that this is a team-up of various pulp characters. Several are not only not pulp, but others are given new origins and back-story for the purpose of the mini, so it's not the characters at all but thin copies. The other premise was that this is supposed to be a retelling of sorts of a specific Spider novel. Thus, you expect some fidelity to that source material. However, the latest issue that I've received seems to be setting up the Clock as the main bad-guy. Now, I've not read the original Spider novel this storyline is from, but I'm reasonably sure that the Centaur/Quality hero was not behind it all. Not to mention the cliche of having it being a former hero going bad or trying to justify extreme actions through "ends justifies the means" excuse. Again, the premise works when the creators byword is "fidelity". As the series is winding down, can only wonder, what's the point of it?
 ----------------------------------------------------
 One of my favorite revivals was in the 1980s when Archie published The Mighty Crusaders. Of the many times that companies have dusted off old properties and characters, this is one of the few times that I thought a company did it right. At least in the beginning. At the time, I had no awareness of the original comics of these characters or the history of them other than what the press releases told us that these guys had been around for awhile.

See, it didn't matter that the last time most of these characters had been seen were almost two decades before. The series played it as if it was just two months ago.  The series didn't act like they had been retired or away for any extended period of time. A nod to the 1940s history of the original Shield, but no one asking where the others had been since they last appeared. The first few issues worked great at reintroducing these old characters, allowing them to have their history without bogging a new reader like myself with continuity knowledge. The fact that each of the heroes could have their whole origins explained in about six panels in the back is a testament to the power of a good concept and compressed storytelling.

Recognizing they were a little light in diversity, instead of changing the gender or race of established characters, they created a couple of all new ones! Won't say that Darkling and Malcolm Reeves were necessarily stellar creations, but they could be accepted on their own merits without sacrificing the standing of any other characters.

Every revival of the team since then has been "let's not do that". Admittedly, that revival didn't last long, but I chalk that up to the quick downturn in quality. Dull writing, lackluster villains, even the printing became cheaper. Somewhere, they forgot that Steel Sterling should be the equivalent of Superman and became just a body-builder hero with teen hanger ons and social interest storylines that felt almost like recycled plots from afternoon specials. I think if they kept up with the richness of the superhero-verse they started with: giant robots, space aliens, beings from other dimensions, magic and science-fiction, dangerous supervillains, etc. Heroes being heroic fighting villains being bad, it might've been something really good.

So, not much interest in Archie's current take. Most of the heroes are back long enough to be shown to have gotten old and then getting killed. The focus is on a diverse cast of teens taking on the predecessors' names. Right off the bat, it's more like the other attempts with these characters in that it's about people with the same names. And, despite all the death and teen angst, the artistic style is cartoony as if that's all it takes to make it "fun".

Remember when DC wanted to youthen the JSA a bit so they brought in a grown up Robin, a time-tossed Star Spangled Kid and CREATED Huntress and Powergirl. Later, Thomas would create Infiniti Inc., new characters that didn't automatically overwrite the old ones