MichaelDoran
11-05-2002, 04:23 PM
<center><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Thousand_Flowers_index.htm"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/flowers_banner.jpg" width="475" height="75" border="0"></a></center>
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A THOUSAND FLOWERS
Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside
Installment 3
by Stuart Moore</div>
3. Bringing the Readers Back Home: Comics and WWII
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/capmhitler.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/capmhitler_t.jpg" width="150" height="213" border="0" alt="A example of comics' simplistic, 'patrriotic' message" align="right"></a>There’s no misty-eyed comics fan like a Golden Age misty-eyed comics fan. In an industry obsessed with nostalgia, nothing provokes that warm, tingly feeling like comics from the ‘40s. It’s not just octogenarians, either, rheumatic hands shaking as they staple the pages of their latest apa mailing. Comics fans in their 30s and 40s feel a similar connection to these stories, which DC in particular reprinted heavily in their 100-Page Super-Spectaculars of the early ‘70s. Why?
It’s not the craft - most of these stories are incredibly crude. Yes, there are the obvious exceptions: Will Eisner, Lou Fine, etc. When DC released the first Plastic Man Archives (a few years before the Spirit Archives), it was kind of a shock; it was unusual to see material in these volumes that actually held up on its own terms. I mean, the first meetings of the Justice Society were ground-breaking, colorful, and different -- but they’re not the easiest things in the world to actually sit down and read, especially as an adult. Same goes for 90% of the comics published at that time.
No, there’s something else about those comics. They were vital, energetic, and new, and a lot of that energy came across on the page. The first years of many of these strips are the strongest, before formula and the studio mentality set in, and strips like Superman and Captain Marvel began to be pumped out by the yard. There were some real, genuine oddities, like the nihilistic Sub-Mariner and the sexually perverse Wonder Woman.
(A digression: DC has tried many times over the years to revamp and update Wonder Woman, largely because of the character’s long-standing licensing power. There’s been some nice material published along the way by talented and enthusiastic creators, but it’s never completely gelled. The reason: You cannot go “back to basics” on Wonder Woman without acknowledging the S&M/male-lesbian-fantasy aspects of the original - and, even trickier, the fact that in creator William Moulton Marston’s mind, these elements were not at all in conflict with the character’s unquestioned status as a strong, moral woman. This is rich, rich source material, brimming with Freudian implications and possibilities for villains, and titillating as hell. But it doesn’t exactly produce comics we feel comfortable selling to children.)
So part of the answer is energy, yes, the kind of energy brought to an emerging artform by young writers and artists who were essentially making it up as they went along. But there’s still something else going on…
It’s obvious that the comics industry, like various other fringe elements of the U.S. economy, got a boost from World War II. G.I.s were a huge, somewhat captive audience, and comics found a larger adult market through them. And the comics of the ‘40s were extremely gung-ho, very supportive of the U.S. involvement in the war, to the point of stereotyping enemies in a way that sometimes seems distasteful now.
But whatever their excesses, the comics of the time were sure to appeal to our fighting men overseas, as well as to the children they were originally aimed at - children who took comfort in the simple view of good vs. evil presented in their pages. An early issue of Captain America featured a “Message from Captain America,” apparently to explain a delay in sending out badges for the character’s Sentinels of Liberty club. It read in part:
“Bucky and I wish to thank each of you for your swell response to our call for your help in ridding the U.S.A. of the traitors who wish to destroy it…your good friend and fellow patriot, Captain America.”
A message any child could understand, and reassuring to the average G.I. But why did comics benefit so much from the war, while their close cousins, the equally-patriotic pulp magazines, did not? One possibility: Comics are easier to read. (These comics, anyway.) Soldiers were recruited from all walks of life, but many were from poor families. And while leisure-reading was much more common among the upper classes in pre-television days, literacy was not as highly valued as a universal goal among the lower classes. You didn’t have to be able to read to dig a ditch or strip a rifle - and you didn’t have to be able to read much to understand The Human Torch (or Don Winslow Of The Navy, for that matter).
I should emphasize that this is only a theory, and one that’s hard to prove now that so much time has gone by. But it is possible that the new medium got a boost by virtue of its simplicity - and the fact that it was aimed at children in the first place, an audience whose reading skills were still developing. In that, whether by luck or design, comics found a place in the culture around them, and a fledgling industry forged a base that would serve it for decades to come.
In the late sixties/early seventies, comics made a sharp left turn and suddenly started reflecting counterculture values, including an ambivalence toward the Vietnam War. In this, as with many things, they were reflecting the rest of the culture - though with a bit of a lag time, and for reasons peculiar to the business. But we’ll get to that a few Flowers down the road.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/boycoms.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/boycoms_t.jpg" width="150" height="136" border="0" align="left" alt="The Boy Commandos"></a>For now, let’s just close with these stirring words from Simon and Kirby’s first Boy Commandos story in 1942 (and thanks to Tom Fagan’s article in All In Color For A Dime for the pointer to it):
“What is this strip doing in Detective Comics, you say? The super-criminals who hold an entire continent in shackles can tell you! From the cauldron of war have risen new agents of justice, striking swiftly… silently! …from across the channel comes a new challenge! The Nazi brute cringes in fear…for the day of liberation is on its way…nothing can stop it! The Commandos are coming!”
And the comics were already on the beach, raising the flag.
**
Next [11/5]: The family reunion that’ll make you cringe. Comics’ Drunken Uncle: Science Fiction!
Last Installment : <a href=http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=000004>Open Your Eyes, Baby Bird: Comics’ Early Years</a>
<blockquote>[Stuart Moore’s A THOUSAND FLOWERS is co-sponsored by <a href=http://www.crossgen.com target=”_blank”>CrossGen Comics</a> , <a href=http://www.ait-planetlar.com/ target=”_blank”>AiT/Planet Lar</a> & <a href=http://www.pfpress.com/ target=”_blank”>Penny Farthing Press</a> . Click on the links to visit their websites. To inquire about future sponsorship opportunities with this column, please email <a href=mailto:newsarama@aol.com>newsarama@aol.com</a> ]</blockquote>
**
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Creators/stuartwizphoto_f.jpg" width="110" height="113" align="right" alt="Stuart Moore">Stuart Moore has been a writer, a comics editor for Vertigo and Marvel Knights, a kitchen worker, a book editor, and the nighttime manager of the Lawrenceville, NJ Woolworth's curtain department. He has won the Will Eisner award for Best Editor 1996 and the Don Thompson Award for Favorite Editor 1999.
Currently Stuart freelances as a writer of comic books and nonfiction; he’d like you all to go out and buy ZENDRA, his epic science fiction series from Penny-Farthing Press. Issue #4 of the second series, ZENDRA: HEART OF FIRE, is on sale now, and the trade paperback ZENDRA 1.0: COLLOCATION collects the first series. Then you can go to Stuart’s message board at <a href="http://www.joequesada.com" target="_blank">http://www.joequesada.com</a> and discuss ZENDRA, this column, or anything else on you like. Go Allies!
<font face="Arial, Verdana"><div align="center">
A THOUSAND FLOWERS
Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside
Installment 3
by Stuart Moore</div>
3. Bringing the Readers Back Home: Comics and WWII
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/capmhitler.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/capmhitler_t.jpg" width="150" height="213" border="0" alt="A example of comics' simplistic, 'patrriotic' message" align="right"></a>There’s no misty-eyed comics fan like a Golden Age misty-eyed comics fan. In an industry obsessed with nostalgia, nothing provokes that warm, tingly feeling like comics from the ‘40s. It’s not just octogenarians, either, rheumatic hands shaking as they staple the pages of their latest apa mailing. Comics fans in their 30s and 40s feel a similar connection to these stories, which DC in particular reprinted heavily in their 100-Page Super-Spectaculars of the early ‘70s. Why?
It’s not the craft - most of these stories are incredibly crude. Yes, there are the obvious exceptions: Will Eisner, Lou Fine, etc. When DC released the first Plastic Man Archives (a few years before the Spirit Archives), it was kind of a shock; it was unusual to see material in these volumes that actually held up on its own terms. I mean, the first meetings of the Justice Society were ground-breaking, colorful, and different -- but they’re not the easiest things in the world to actually sit down and read, especially as an adult. Same goes for 90% of the comics published at that time.
No, there’s something else about those comics. They were vital, energetic, and new, and a lot of that energy came across on the page. The first years of many of these strips are the strongest, before formula and the studio mentality set in, and strips like Superman and Captain Marvel began to be pumped out by the yard. There were some real, genuine oddities, like the nihilistic Sub-Mariner and the sexually perverse Wonder Woman.
(A digression: DC has tried many times over the years to revamp and update Wonder Woman, largely because of the character’s long-standing licensing power. There’s been some nice material published along the way by talented and enthusiastic creators, but it’s never completely gelled. The reason: You cannot go “back to basics” on Wonder Woman without acknowledging the S&M/male-lesbian-fantasy aspects of the original - and, even trickier, the fact that in creator William Moulton Marston’s mind, these elements were not at all in conflict with the character’s unquestioned status as a strong, moral woman. This is rich, rich source material, brimming with Freudian implications and possibilities for villains, and titillating as hell. But it doesn’t exactly produce comics we feel comfortable selling to children.)
So part of the answer is energy, yes, the kind of energy brought to an emerging artform by young writers and artists who were essentially making it up as they went along. But there’s still something else going on…
It’s obvious that the comics industry, like various other fringe elements of the U.S. economy, got a boost from World War II. G.I.s were a huge, somewhat captive audience, and comics found a larger adult market through them. And the comics of the ‘40s were extremely gung-ho, very supportive of the U.S. involvement in the war, to the point of stereotyping enemies in a way that sometimes seems distasteful now.
But whatever their excesses, the comics of the time were sure to appeal to our fighting men overseas, as well as to the children they were originally aimed at - children who took comfort in the simple view of good vs. evil presented in their pages. An early issue of Captain America featured a “Message from Captain America,” apparently to explain a delay in sending out badges for the character’s Sentinels of Liberty club. It read in part:
“Bucky and I wish to thank each of you for your swell response to our call for your help in ridding the U.S.A. of the traitors who wish to destroy it…your good friend and fellow patriot, Captain America.”
A message any child could understand, and reassuring to the average G.I. But why did comics benefit so much from the war, while their close cousins, the equally-patriotic pulp magazines, did not? One possibility: Comics are easier to read. (These comics, anyway.) Soldiers were recruited from all walks of life, but many were from poor families. And while leisure-reading was much more common among the upper classes in pre-television days, literacy was not as highly valued as a universal goal among the lower classes. You didn’t have to be able to read to dig a ditch or strip a rifle - and you didn’t have to be able to read much to understand The Human Torch (or Don Winslow Of The Navy, for that matter).
I should emphasize that this is only a theory, and one that’s hard to prove now that so much time has gone by. But it is possible that the new medium got a boost by virtue of its simplicity - and the fact that it was aimed at children in the first place, an audience whose reading skills were still developing. In that, whether by luck or design, comics found a place in the culture around them, and a fledgling industry forged a base that would serve it for decades to come.
In the late sixties/early seventies, comics made a sharp left turn and suddenly started reflecting counterculture values, including an ambivalence toward the Vietnam War. In this, as with many things, they were reflecting the rest of the culture - though with a bit of a lag time, and for reasons peculiar to the business. But we’ll get to that a few Flowers down the road.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/boycoms.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/boycoms_t.jpg" width="150" height="136" border="0" align="left" alt="The Boy Commandos"></a>For now, let’s just close with these stirring words from Simon and Kirby’s first Boy Commandos story in 1942 (and thanks to Tom Fagan’s article in All In Color For A Dime for the pointer to it):
“What is this strip doing in Detective Comics, you say? The super-criminals who hold an entire continent in shackles can tell you! From the cauldron of war have risen new agents of justice, striking swiftly… silently! …from across the channel comes a new challenge! The Nazi brute cringes in fear…for the day of liberation is on its way…nothing can stop it! The Commandos are coming!”
And the comics were already on the beach, raising the flag.
**
Next [11/5]: The family reunion that’ll make you cringe. Comics’ Drunken Uncle: Science Fiction!
Last Installment : <a href=http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=000004>Open Your Eyes, Baby Bird: Comics’ Early Years</a>
<blockquote>[Stuart Moore’s A THOUSAND FLOWERS is co-sponsored by <a href=http://www.crossgen.com target=”_blank”>CrossGen Comics</a> , <a href=http://www.ait-planetlar.com/ target=”_blank”>AiT/Planet Lar</a> & <a href=http://www.pfpress.com/ target=”_blank”>Penny Farthing Press</a> . Click on the links to visit their websites. To inquire about future sponsorship opportunities with this column, please email <a href=mailto:newsarama@aol.com>newsarama@aol.com</a> ]</blockquote>
**
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Creators/stuartwizphoto_f.jpg" width="110" height="113" align="right" alt="Stuart Moore">Stuart Moore has been a writer, a comics editor for Vertigo and Marvel Knights, a kitchen worker, a book editor, and the nighttime manager of the Lawrenceville, NJ Woolworth's curtain department. He has won the Will Eisner award for Best Editor 1996 and the Don Thompson Award for Favorite Editor 1999.
Currently Stuart freelances as a writer of comic books and nonfiction; he’d like you all to go out and buy ZENDRA, his epic science fiction series from Penny-Farthing Press. Issue #4 of the second series, ZENDRA: HEART OF FIRE, is on sale now, and the trade paperback ZENDRA 1.0: COLLOCATION collects the first series. Then you can go to Stuart’s message board at <a href="http://www.joequesada.com" target="_blank">http://www.joequesada.com</a> and discuss ZENDRA, this column, or anything else on you like. Go Allies!