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COMICS 101

By Scott Tipton

March 5, 2003

“I’LL TAKE POTPOURRI FOR $100, ALEX.”

No unifying theme this week, kids. Instead, we’ll be all over the place, taking on some of the questions I’ve been posed recently in my role as resident office Geekmaster General. Everybody ready? Good, ‘cause this material may be on the test…

“You mentioned trade paperbacks in your DAREDEVIL column last week. What exactly is a trade paperback?”

Whoops! My bad. Got a little ahead of myself there. A trade paperback is a softcover book, nothing more, nothing less. Most of the publishing world is content to call a softcover book a softcover book, but that’s comics for you. To be more precise, in comics publishing, collections of comic books are usually marketed in one of two ways: either in hardcover collections, traditionally for work that’s felt to have historical or artistic significance, like DC Comics’ Archives series, which collects much of the earliest adventures of their characters from the 1930s and 1940s, or the aforementioned trade paperbacks, which most often collect complete storylines from recently published monthly periodicals. However, in recent years, this dichotomy has become blurred as comics publishers wisely reach out for new audiences in bookstores. Marvel Comics, for example, has recently republished much of their recent monthly series in hardcover collections, while at the same time providing low-cost black-and-white softcover collections of some of the earliest Marvel comics, material previously found only in hardcover. The best thing about the recent expansion in publishing of both hardcover and softcover collections is that it provides the new reader access to over six decades’ worth of comics, material which might otherwise be long forgotten.

There’s also plenty of original material published for the first time in both the hardcover and trade paperback formats, naturally, thanks to the good folks at publishing houses like Top Shelf, Oni Press and a whole passel of others. Much of this material is most deftly covered in Breakdowns, by fellow Poop Shooter Chris Allen, so make sure to read it if you haven’t been already.

“I’ve been seeing references to the ‘Golden Age’ and ‘Silver Age’ in some of the comics coverage. What’s the difference?”

Comic-book writer and editor Roy Thomas is always fond of saying “The Golden Age of comics is eight,” meaning that was the age at which he (and many others) discovered and fell in love with the funnybooks. Probably not what you meant, though …

In essence, the Golden and Silver ages are somewhat arbitrary divisions in the history of mainstream American comic-book publishing, divisions first fostered and defined by the folks who began publishing comic-book price guides. Most comics folk are in agreement as to where the divisions begin and end, at least early on, anyway.

The Golden Age of comics begins, for most, in June 1938, with National Comics’ (the progenitor of today’s DC Comics) publication of ACTION COMICS #1, the first appearance of Superman. While comics were being published before then, the arrival of Superman set off a superhero craze, and to a larger extent, a comic-book craze, that went on for over two decades. At its height, there were numerous mainstream comic-book publishers, all doing extremely good business. When compared to today’s market, in which a circulation of 100,000 copies is considered wildly successful, it’s staggering to look back at a time when Fawcett’s Captain Marvel comics (you know, SHAZAM!) were regularly seeing sales numbers in the millions. That, my friends, is the Golden Age. Even after superheroes fell out of fashion in the late 40s, the comic-book machine stayed in full gear, with romance, western, horror, crime and “funny-animal” comics all seeing varying levels of success at the newsstands.

Most people set the beginning of the Silver Age at October 1956, with DC’s publication of SHOWCASE #4, which featured the debut of the Flash, a revamp of one of National’s more popular superheroes from the 1940s. The success of the Flash led to similar resurrections of such characters as Green Lantern, Hawkman and the Atom. Once these characters were teamed up with superhero perennials Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (who had never gone away) in the pages of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, a full superhero renaissance was in bloom, with a spike in sales that caught the eye of National’s downtown rivals at Atlas Comics, who would soon take on the much more familiar moniker of Marvel.

Inspired by the success of the Justice League, Marvel editor-in-chief Stan Lee turned his attention to superheroes in a big way. In partnership with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, two of the most creative artists and storytellers ever to work in comics, Lee, Kirby and Ditko produced nearly every character that Marvel would come to be famous for: the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, Dr. Strange, the Silver Surfer, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Avengers … the list seems endless. Moreover, aside from the characters and stories, Stan, Jack and Steve created a house style, combining realism and an almost soap-opera-like emphasis on the personal lives of their heroes with an editorial voice that respected the reader and refused to condescend. Throw in Lee’s insistence on frequent guest appearances throughout the publishing line, and the reader had a genuine sense that anything could happen in this new Marvel Universe, and it made missing out on issues unthinkable. The Marvel style soon revolutionized comics. DC’s Flash may have kicked off the Silver Age, but Marvel owned it.

However, here’s where it gets tricky. No one is really in agreement as to when the Silver Age ended, nor what to call the time period that follows. Some comic historians (and mock if you must, but there are those who consider themselves such) like to peg the ending at AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #121 in 1973, with the murder of longtime supporting character and Spidey’s love interest Gwen Stacy, citing it as the moment they lost their innocence regarding comic books. A bit sappy, true, but as good a definition as any, as it also is a good marker for the time period when Stan Lee quit writing, and even editing, most of the Marvel titles. (In fact, to this day, Stan swears he wasn’t even in town when the decision to off poor Gwen was made, and only found out when he saw the published book for the first time.) Others like to place the end of the Silver Age at 1978, when the “DC Implosion” resulted in the cancellation of an armload of DC titles. Still others stretch the Silver Age all the way until the 1980s, when Marvel was revitalized by Frank Miller’s DAREDEVIL work, Chris Claremont’s X-MEN was firing on all cylinders, and John Byrne was doing the best work of his career on FANTASTIC FOUR.

Some comics-types call the 1970s and ‘80s the Bronze Age, slavishly following the Gold-Silver pattern. I’ve heard some people refer to the ‘80s as the “Mylar Age,” since that was when bagging your comics in Mylar plastic bags to protect them first became wildly popular among collectors. For a while in the ‘90s, some zealous fans even started declaring it the “Image Age,” when comics like Todd McFarlane’s SPAWN and Jim Lee’s WILDC.A.T.S. were breaking sales records left and right. If you ask me, there’s the Golden Age and the Silver Age, and then there’s everything else.

“So I just watched SPIDER-MAN on DVD with a friend who’s into comics, and he wouldn’t stop complaining about the Goblin’s ‘Power Ranger’ armor, as he repeatedly called it. What am I missing? What’s the Goblin supposed to look like?”

Yes, the Mighty Morphin Goblin Ranger was the source of much geek alarm in the weeks and months before the release of Sam Raimi’s mammoth blockbuster last summer. People who never read the original Goblin appearances by writer Stan Lee and artists Steve Ditko and John Romita might not understand the reason why. Here’s the thing: as a kid reading Spidey comics, the Goblin was genuinely scary. If I try and describe the look, you certainly wouldn’t think so: a fuchsia and green suit with a green fright mask and pointy-toed boots, all topped off with a floppy stocking cap. But I’m telling you, the Goblin stories always freaked me out.

Part of the reason was the subtext: the Goblin knew who Spider-Man was, so he always felt the most dangerous. Also, he was the father of Spidey’s best friend, which kind of tapped into that whole adolescent resenting-your-parents vibe. But mostly it was the image. Wearing one of those full-face masks that still allow full facial expressions (a device that only works in comics), the Goblin’s visage was at the same time inhuman, cartoonish and just downright creepy. (Even his 1970s action figure was creepy. Check it out.) And this, I think, was the core of most fans’ complaint about the Goblin suit in the movie.

Since the heart of what made the Green Goblin so scary was the expression on his face, I think it baffled most fans that the filmmakers were going with a full helmet that allowed for no expression whatsoever. I would have rather seen the mask simulated with prosthetics and makeup, to really allow the actor to get in there and turn the creep factor up to 11. As good as Willem Dafoe was as Norman Osborn, we never really get to see him truly act as the Goblin, and the single scene where he plays against his evil self in the mirror gives us just a taste of the Goblin we could have had.

“If Uncle Scrooge McDuck is so rich, why doesn’t he put all that money in more sound investments rather than just keeping it all in a gigantic vault in the middle of town?”

Ah, but Scrooge does have investments all over the world, from the Yukon to the Amazon. He’s just so fantastically rich that he also has enough to keep massive amounts of cash on hand. After all, Uncle Scrooge doesn’t particularly love being rich as much as he loves money, and that means being able to swim around in huge piles of currency like a dolphin, and letting nickels bounce off his head like drops of water.

Now, you could certainly fault his logic in keeping all that cash in an enormous building with a dollar sign carved into it. Just seems like a magnet for thieving Beagle Boys, if you ask me.

Comics 101 is in session every Wednesday. Feel free to send along any questions to stipton99x@moviepoopshoot.com.

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