Finished reading this one last night: “Manga in Libraries: A Guide for Teen Librarians” by Jillian Rudes (ALA Editions, 2023). This one checks off duaFinished reading this one last night: “Manga in Libraries: A Guide for Teen Librarians” by Jillian Rudes (ALA Editions, 2023). This one checks off dual boxes, both “work related” and “personal interest”.
A nice brief overview—only 136 pages, and I didn’t even read the two appendices in the back, the longer of which is a guide to conducting webinars on manga in libraries, the shorter being additional manga book lists—of the Japanese form of graphic literature (or comics) called “manga” (pronounced as mahn-gah, not main-gah, although I must admit I still have trouble with that sometimes) specifically in relation to its place in library collections and library programming.
Me giving here the table of contents chapter names is probably the best way of summarizing it: Chapter 1 “Manga 101”, Chapter 2 “Manga Collection Development”, Chapter 3 “Representation in Manga”, Chapter 4 “Social-Emotional Learning and Manga”, Chapter 5 “Manga Programming”, Chapter 6 “Teaching With Manga”, and the two aforementioned Appendices (both under the heading, “Manga Sparks Joy”), “Manga in Libraries Webinars” and “Manga Book Lists”.
As a high school media specialist who is also a life long comic book reader, I have put a lot of emphasis on building and maintaining a large comics/graphic novels and manga section ever since I started at my current school twelve years ago. My background is in the American comic books (superheroes, media tie-ins like Star Wars and Star Trek comics, and general fiction and nonfiction graphic novels). My personal knowledge and experience with manga was (and still is) virtually nil. However, it was immediately apparent that the manga volumes already in the library collection when I arrived were pretty much the most popular books in the place. Some kids would come in multiple times in the same day to swap them out.
Not being knowledgeable of that various titles beyond what we already had (and cognizant that there are manga titles for all ages, including ones for adults that are not appropriate for a public high school library media center; one of the things this book goes into are manga publisher generated suggested audience age and content ratings and where to find those), I have generally taken a pretty conservative approach by mostly just replacing lost copies and buying the next newer volumes of the titles we already have. Occasionally I would order one or two volumes of a title we didn’t already have upon requests from students.
However, beyond the really good explanations given in “Manga in Libraries” of *why* so many young people enjoy reading manga (especially young girls but boys too), how manga characters are written and drawn so that boys and girls can empathize with those characters, their emotions, situations, etc., the next most valuable thing to me is its section on the very wide range of fictional genres available in manga, including samples of each. This is something that I will definitely look into doing better with resources like this, to try to diversify my school library media center’s manga collection to be more than the mostly boys and girls fantasy warrior/superhero type of stories that currently make up the bulk of what we have.
There are chapters that give detailed descriptions of manga programming the author has done with the students at her school, including manga related clubs, classes, volunteers/assistants groups, and even how to put on a manga comics convention. (Her school is in or nearby New York City so she also has field trip suggestions but obviously not all of those would be available or practical in all locations.)
She also spends an entire chapter, as can be seen in the listing of chapters, on social-emotional learning and how manga is a good place for young people to be able to identify positive traits in relation to one’s own social-emotional health and well being. And she also goes into the natural side interest in Japanese culture in general that oftentimes also becomes appealing to readers of manga.
While I can’t promise that I will personally use every suggestion the author makes in her book, I do value the wealth of examples she gives and will indeed be checking this book out again a bit later, after the start of the school year, to be able to at the very least review her book title and genre suggestions, and her additional resources lists.
Which brings me to one other thing I should probably mention. I already had this book last year on buying lists I’d put together but kept moving it to a “buy later” list because of its price. It’s actually a pretty expensive book (generally $50 or higher). I assume this is because it is published by ALA (American Library Association) Editions, and is therefore considered to be a professional/scholarly publication.
I could never justify spending that much on a professional development book that only I would read instead of using the money on more books for the students. But then one day when I was in my local public library branch of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library (Florida), there it was. A copy of “Manga in Libraries: A Guide for Teen Librarians” sitting on their “NEW BOOKS” shelf. (And for once I hadn’t even been the person to request for them to buy a copy!)
So, I immediately checked it out. The moment I saw it and how small a book it is, page count wise and also just physically small, I was glad that I’d never bought a copy. But I highly recommend this book to any and all librarians interested in providing manga as part of their library’s books collection and programming, to try to do as I did and check out a copy from somewhere. After reading it, they might decide to buy their own copy if funds allow.
I gave “Manga in Libraries: A Guide for Teen Librarians” a four out of five stars on GoodReads....more
Wonderful book! “Direct Conversations: Talks With Fellow DC Comics Bronze Age Creators” by Paul Kupperberg (Crazy 8 Press, 2023). A sort of follow up Wonderful book! “Direct Conversations: Talks With Fellow DC Comics Bronze Age Creators” by Paul Kupperberg (Crazy 8 Press, 2023). A sort of follow up to his “Directs Comments: Comic Book Creators in Their Own Words” book also self-published by the author through Crazy 8 Press in 2021).
Kupperberg joined DC Comics in 1975 as a freelance writer and then went on staff there (the first of a couple times) two years later in 1977. But he was already a familiar name and face for many working at DC’s New York City offices because of his many visits there for the DC weekly office tours open to the public, his activity in the very active comics “fandom” (those who not only read the comic books but also created amateur “fanzines” and who attended the early comic book conventions), and because of his older brother, Alan Kupperberg, who was hired onto DC’s production staff in 1971 straight out of high school.
“Direct Conversations” is a book of ten newly conducted interviews by Kupperberg with his fellow comics creators (writers, artists, letterers, colorists, and editors) who were not only all but one co-workers with him at one point or another at DC, but who all were part of that first great influx of new comic book creators and editors to come in at the start of the 1970s who had all started out as comic book readers and collectors. The older artists, writers, and editors already there at DC that they would be joining (and learning from) had basically been the same ones from the start of the American comic book industry in the late 1930s and 1940s on up to the beginning of the 1970s. There were a few exceptions, like artist Neal Adams, and writer, Roy Thomas, but for the most part DC Comics was a “closed shop” (very difficult for anyone new to come into it) throughout the 1950s and 1960s. But the changing nature of the industry—including the drying up of the traditional newsstand distribution system in favor of what would become the direct market system selling most comic books through dedicated comic book shops, which resulted in expanded line ups and the short term return of anthology type titles requiring as many as four to six additional “back-up stories” per issue—as well as the inevitable aging out of the older generation opened the doors to many young new faces like Kupperberg and those he interviews here.
His interview subject’s (following an introduction by Robert Greenberger, who also came to work at DC but just a bit too late to qualify as one of the ten subjects interviewed) are, in the order they appear, Paul Levitz, Anthony Tollin, Steve Mitchell, Joe Staton, Bob Rozakis, Jack C. Harris, Howard V. Chaykin, Bob Toomey, Tony Isabella, and Michael Uslan. I’m not going to go into who all of these people are here but for anyone who regularly read DC Comics in the 1970s and 1980s, many if not most of these names are very familiar. As are the legendary figures they reminisce about working with and for back in those early years: Julius Schwartz, Sol Harrison, Carmine Infantino, Jack Adler, Murray Boltinoff, Joe Kubert, plus many many less familiar names and those that only they who worked there would have any reason to know, like the various secretaries, proofreaders, reprints editors, etc.
Some of the ones interviewed here were unofficially known at the time as “the Junior Woodchucks” (after Disney’s Huey, Dewey, and Louie comic books). Others, including Kupperberg, escaped that particular label, but they all share a very interesting bond in the shared experiences at DC during what later became known as comics “Bronze Age”.
(I was born in 1972 and was reading comic books by the end of the 1970s, so this was my own personal entry point into comic books, the later part of the Bronze Age, late 1970s/early 1980s. And at that time, older issues from the early 1970s were still quite plentiful and easy to acquire.)
I give “Direct Conversations: Talks With Fellow DC Comics Bronze Age Creators” my highest recommendation for all of the Bronze Age DC Comics fans out there, plus anyone in general who likes to read about comic books “behind the scenes”/history. I gave it five out of five stars on GoodReads. (Checked out from my local public library, Tampa/Hillsborough Public Library, which added it to their collection upon my request.)...more
Finished reading Michael Eury's "The Team-Up Companion" (TwoMorrows, 2022) around a week ago. I absolutely loved this book.
Now, this is another one ofFinished reading Michael Eury's "The Team-Up Companion" (TwoMorrows, 2022) around a week ago. I absolutely loved this book.
Now, this is another one of those types of books that I call an "If you like X, then you will really like this book about X" type of book.
If you love the "team-up" comic books of the 1960s, 1970s, and/or 1980s, then you will most enjoy this issue-by-issue breakdown of those wonderful late Silver Age and Bronze Age comics. If those types of comic books weren't among your favorites (or if you have no idea what I'm talking about), then this book is probably not for you.
Eury begins with clearly differentiating a "team-up" comic book (or comic book series) from a "crossover" comic, a "buddy book", and a "super-team" book. For the purposes of this companion, a team-up book is whenever you have an issue (or an entire series) which features "two different heroes join[ing] forces, with their logos appearing together on the cover". (A crossover is when a hero guest-stars in another hero's series, such as the Flash or Batman guest-starring in an issue of "Superman". A buddy book is similar to a team-up but the two lead characters don't ever change, such as the Superman and Batman that appeared in just about every issue of "World's Finest Comics", or when "Captain America" became "Captain America and the Falcon" for a stretch of issues, same with "Green Lantern" becoming "Green Lantern/Green Arrow" and "Daredevil" temporarily becoming "Daredevil and Black Widow". A super-team book/series is "a collective, a club of heroes that gathers routinely to tackle dangers generally too intimidating for a single superhero".
The Team-Up Companion is broken up into the following chapters: "The Brave and the Bold" (begun in 1955, the series that became comics' very first regular team-up comic with issue #50 (1963); at first featured two different characters each issue but became a "Batman and another character" team-up series with #59 (1965) and remained a Batman team-up book throughout the rest of its 200 issue run which ended in 1983), "World's Finest Comics" (focusing on the brief period from 1970 to 1972 when it became a "Superman-and-someone-not-necessarily-Batman team-up series), "Marvel Team-Up" (the long-running Spider-Man team-up series (except for a few issue headlined by the Human Torch or the Hulk instead of Spidey) that ran for 150 issues from 1972 to 1985), "The New Scooby-Doo Movies" (the 1972-1973 season of "Scooby-Doo" Saturday morning cartoons that featured guest-stars like Batman and Robin, Don Knotts, Josie and the Pussycats, the Three Stooges, Sonny and Cher, and the Harlem Globetrotters), "Marvel Two-In-One" (the long-running Ben Grimm/"The Thing" team-up series that ran for 100 issues from 1974 to 1983), "Western Team-Up" (1973), "Super-Villain Team-Up" (1975-1980), "Super-Team Family" (1975-1978), "DC-Marvel Team-Ups' (covering "Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man" (1976), "Superman/Spider-Man" (1981), "Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk" (1981), and "The Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans" (1982)), "Harvey Team-Ups" (various Harvey Comics character team-ups like Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost), "DC Super-Stars" (1976-1978), "DC Comics Presents" (the long-running Superman team-up series that ran for 97 issues from 1978 to 1986), and "The 'Superman vs.' Team-Ups" (covering the "Superman vs. Wonder Woman", "Superman vs. Muhammad Ali", and "Superman vs. Shazam!" specials, all in 1978), followed by an extensive "Team-Up Companion Index".
In addition, Eury also features "Creator Spotlights" on "Brave and the Bold" writer Bob Haney, artist Jim Aparo, and writer Charlie Boatner, "Marvel Team-Up" writer Mike W. Barr and cover designer Eliot R. Brown, and a "Fan Spotlight" on "DC Comics Presents" fan contest winner Mark Teichman, whose prize was to be an actual guest-star in an issue of "DC Comics Presents". And also loads of cool little sidebar blurbs of notable team-ups from both comics and also various other mediums besides comic books, like the "Six Million Dollar Man" and "Bionic Woman" team-up episodes, "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", Saturday morning's "Shazam!" and "The Secrets of Isis" team-ups, "Godzilla vs. Megalon", and Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny meeting in "Who Framed Roger Rabbitt?".
Much of the interview quotes throughout "The Team-Up Companion" are taken from the long run of "Back Issue Magazine", a comics nostalgia magazine that Eury edits that has been published since 2003 and that is now at issue #140 as of the time I'm writing this review plus other magazines published by TwoMorrows like "Alter Ego" and the first "Comic Book Artist" magazine series. But Eury did also conduct new interviews via phone and email specially for this book, too.
Again, I highly recommend "The Team-Up Companion" to anyone who, like me, grew up reading and loving the team-up comic books of the 1960s through 1980s. I gave this five out of five stars on GoodReads....more
“All the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told” by Douglas Wolk (2021). Wolk read over 27,000 Marvel comic books (the bulk of “All the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told” by Douglas Wolk (2021). Wolk read over 27,000 Marvel comic books (the bulk of which were originally released between 1961 (Fantastic Four #1) and 2017 (Marvel Legacy #1), what by his criteria (explain in the first chapters of the book) represents the entire interconnected Marvel Comics/Universe “canon” (using 2017 as his end point; he does discuss some Marvel comics that came out prior to 1961 and others after 2017 but his “gotta read them all” only applied to 1961-2017).
This was a very enjoyable read for someone with my level of knowledge of Marvel Comics. Just about everything up to around 2006 I had either read or was already familiar with. As Wolk got into the twenty-teens (2010-2019) I started learning about story developments that I wasn’t familiar with.
Wolk is super knowledgeable about the entire length and breadth of Marvel’s publishing history (he’d kind of have to be after reading them all, but he went into the project with a deep history of reading comics as a child to draw upon).
His first few chapters are on why he decided to take in this massive reading project, how he worked it out (he strongly advised anyone who might be thinking of attempting it to fight the inclination to start at Fantastic Four #1 and then try to go entirely in the original publishing order as he says most will get bogged down in uninteresting and/or repetitive early stories and give up; his approach was to jump around the publishing timeline, first reading things that one find interesting and then, eventually, one will find connections to what to read next as he or she goes), and frequently asked questions by those not very familiar with Marvel’s comic books or the comic book industry in general.
He also goes into “what this book isn’t” (or specifically doesn’t include in its scope* or try seek out to accomplish**). (* Not included: most of the comics Marvel has published over the decades featuring characters they didn’t own, such as Star Wars, Conan, or G.I. Joe. Yes, Disney now owns both Marvel and Star Wars, which is why Marvel now published Star Wars comics again after decades of them being at Dark Horse Comics, but Marvel still has never made any real moves to tie the Marvel and Star Wars continuities together, thankfully. ** For instance, he says this book is not an argument that all of the comic books are good. He considers many of them bad. But, by the same token, he finds many of them to be very good.) He also emphasizes that he is not advocating anyone else to try to read everything, nor to seek to follow his specific reading “path”.
He speaks of “the three chronologies”: 1) the order in which the comics were created and published in, 2) the internal chronology (in which order stories and events take place in the flow of the overall story, including the stories released years later that retroactively add new material to the first chronology), and 3) the order in which the reader experiences events (every reader must choose to start somewhere along the line and by far most readers were not around to experience them from the very beginning; there is no “wrong” order or path to take in experiencing the Marvel Universe (a common refrain of his)).
He also emphasizes that it’s “okay to be confused” at times. Not to allow not knowing who all the characters are or what all has happened in the past to frustrate you but instead to embrace that momentary confusion of coming into a story part way through the narrative and that, in most cases, unknown events will eventually be explained or made clear (although not always).
He then leaps into a mini “tour” of the humongous sixty year long saga that is the Marvel Universe.
His chapters go: “Chapter 4: The Juncture to Everywhere” (a broad survey of the Fantastic Four comics), “Chapter 5: Interlude: Monsters” (the pre-Fantastic Four Marvel monster comics), “Chapter 6: Spinning in Circles” (Spider-Man), “Chapter 7: Interlude: Lee, Kirby, Ditko”, “Chapter 8: Rising and Advancing” (Shang-Chi/Master of Kung Fu), “Chapter 9: Interlude: The Vietnam Years”, “Chapter 10: The Mutant Metaphor” (the X-Men), “Chapter 11: Interlude: Diamonds Made of Sound” (Dazzler and popular music in Marvel Comics), “Chapter 12: Thunder and Lies” (Thor and Loki), “Chapter 13: Interlude: Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe” (a timeline of movie attempts and released projects up to the release of the first Iron Man movie), “Chapter 14: What Kings Do” (Black Panther), “Chapter 15: Interlude: Presidents”, “Chapter 16: The Iron Patriot Acts” (how large cross title “events” like “House of M”, “Civil War”, etc. became to predominant driving force in overall Marvel narrative over the past fifteen plus years), “Chapter 17: Interlude, March 1965” (how that particular month seemed to trigger the oftentimes tightly interwoven connections between the various Marvel titles, with characters referencing things happening in other titles appearing on the stands at the same time), “Chapter 18: The Great Destroyer” (writer Jonathan Hickman’s massive 2012-2106 story arc that Wolk describes as “effectively the climax of everything Marvel had published up to that point and a gateway to everything after”), “Chapter 19: Interlude: Linda Carter” (an interesting jump back to the “working women” light romance comics of the early 1960–pre Fantastic Four #1–like “Linda Carter, Student Nurse”, “Patsy and Hedy”, and “Millie the Model”, and how their later integration into the overall Marvel superhero narrative can be said to make *them* the actual earliest stories in it), “Chapter 20: Good Is a Thing You Do” (the development of new young, female, and persons of color superheroes—often written and illustrated by creators of the same—like the Kamala Khan “Ms. Marvel” and “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” and how they philosophically differ from the traditional (mostly) white, male superheroes that make up most of Marvel’s six decades, and “Chapter 21: Passing it Along” (bringing things back to a personal level for the author in which he details how he and his son came to share reading Marvel comics together).
There is also an Appendix in the back he titles “Marvel Comics: A Plot Summary”, in which he breaks down the entire narrative into six periods: 1) 1961-1968, 2) 1968-1980, 3) 1981-1989, 4) 1990-2004, 5) 2005-2015, and 6) 2015- . He gives broad summaries of key events and story points within each period and why he chooses to break them down in this manner. (He states that only the last period was an intentional shift made by Marvel in which they literally restarted all of their titles over again. However, unlike DC which has restarted/rebooted its continuity several times over the decades, everything that ever happens in Marvel comics still builds upon everything that has come before, one massively long (convoluted, confusing, at times contradictory, yes) single narrative told over sixty plus years and by hundreds of writers and artists.
This is a very engaging read, made even more so by the writer’s choices in what to cover and when.
I will say that he’s bound to tick off most people at least once or twice in this book, whether it be his put downs of some specific stories (he calls the Galactus trilogy story from Fantastic Four #48-50 “corny and overwrought, and its pacing bizarre”, although he does then admit that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby still manage to pull off “the feeling of plummeting toward the void and being miraculously spared”). And entire broad swaths (long runs) of issues on some titles where he says they fall into “directionless”, repetitive (constantly repeating the established “template”), and “tediousness” between points along the way that he considers to be major shifts.
And at a few points his decision to get political. The “interlude” about how actual real world Presidents of the United States appeared in various Marvel comics over time is understandable.
I’ll just say, though, that any strong Donald Trump supporters might want to skip the first few pages of Chapter 16: The Iron Patriot Acts, in which he makes direct parallels (in his eyes) between the 2009 “Dark Reign” story arc (in which longtime Spider-Man villain Norman Osborn becomes President and the over arching villain of most Marvel comics that year) and the years of the Trump administration (despite “Dark Reign” actually coming out in the first year of the Barack Obama administration).
However, I encourage anyone interested in Marvel Comics (enough to want to learn more about the actual “source material” for the mega popular Marvel movies and television shows of today) to push past the occasional remark they might not agree with and appreciate the monumental task the author took on and accomplished. He not only read 27,000+ comic books in a relatively short amount of time (a bit over two years, I think he says), he found so many common threads from across that large body of work, tying stories told years and decades apart together (some intentionally and some most likely not), interesting call backs that most readers probably missed, and pivotal underlying themes that run through many of the characters long histories.
I highly recommend “All the Marvels” by Douglas Wolk....more
I finished reading “Direct Comments: Comic Book Creators in Their Own Words” (2020) by Paul Kupperberg last night.
A fun read for those familiar with cI finished reading “Direct Comments: Comic Book Creators in Their Own Words” (2020) by Paul Kupperberg last night.
A fun read for those familiar with comic books and the writers, artists, editors, and publishers of the 1970s and 1980s mostly.
Kupperberg (a comic book writer himself since 1975 and also the authors several books including the DC Comics tie-in novel, “JSA: Ragnarok”) from 1988 to 1995 while on staff at DC had the duty of writing their monthly promotional newspaper, “Direct Currents”.
In addition to blurbs about then upcoming issues and special projects, Kupperberg included an interview with a fellow comics professional conducted by himself in each issue (although in one issue he “interviewed” himself).
Only part of each interview actually saw print in “Direct Currents”. Here in this book are the twenty-two edited and annotated full interview transcripts that still survive plus two bonus interviews done earlier by Kupperberg for other projects: an interview with Warren Publishing founder and publisher James (Jim) Warren that Kupperberg and Paul Levitz interviewed Warren for an issue of their fanzine “Etcetera” #4 (June 1971), and another interview Kupperberg and DC color artist Carl Gafford had with veteran comic book and newspaper comic strip artist Al Williamson in either 1972 or 1973 also for “Etcetera” but did not see print until July 1981 in “Comics Feature” #10. (Note: These two interviews are worth the price of the book all by themselves, especially the interview with Jim Warren! Not much information about what was then happening at Warren Publishing can be found in the interview but you can definitely know what the never afraid to speak his mind Warren really thought about Kupperberg and Levitz!)
The “People at Work” Direct Currents interview subjects in this book are as follows (in the order they are presented in the book which is also the order they originally ran in the promo newsletter): Denny O’Neil, Kyle Baker, Kurt Schaffenberger, Paul Kupperberg, Mike Grell, Jerry Ordway, Walter Simonson, Keith Giffen, Ed Hannigan, Julie Schwartz, Adam Hughes, Brian Bolland, Pepe Moreno, Klaus Janson, John Costanza, Jerry Robinson, Tom Lyle, Chuck Dixon, Carmine Infantino, Jim Aparo, John Byrne, Lee Mars, and Dick Giordano.
Again, these names may not be familiar to non comic book readers of the 1970s (some of them as early as the 1940s) through 1990s. However those who did read comics regularly during those decades should know who most if not all of these people are.
Kupperberg also has an interesting introduction going over the various incarnations of DC’s promotional newsletters over the years, including before and after his time on “Direct Currents”.
The profile interviews are fun light reads (most between five and ten pages long). For more in depth interviews I recommend hunting down the magazines and books published by TwoMorrows, which has become the gold standard of comics history publications. (This “Direct Comments” book is published by Buffalo Avenue Books.)...more
I finished reading “American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1940s: 1940-1944” (2019) by Kurt F. Mitchell with Roy Thomas (the latter credited as “ConsultaI finished reading “American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1940s: 1940-1944” (2019) by Kurt F. Mitchell with Roy Thomas (the latter credited as “Consultant”).
The American Comic Book Chronicles series is published by TwoMorrows Publishing and is their in depth year-by-year survey of the entire publishing history of American comic books. Released out of order, the first volume out was the 1960-1964 volume in 2012, followed by the 1980s (2013), 1950s (2013), 1965-1969 (2014), 1970s (2014), 1990s (2018), and 1940-1944 (2019).
The second half of the 1940s (which has been delayed several times due to various reasons) should be out in 2022 hopefully. And there are also plans for volumes on the 1930s and 2000s.
This volume is broken down into the following chapters: Chapter One: 1940 - Rise of the Supermen, Chapter Two: 1941 - Countdown to Cataclysm, Chapter Three: 1942 - Comic Books Go To War, Chapter Four: 1943 - Relax: Read Comics, and Chapter Five: 1944 - The Paper Chase.
For those not into comics history, this book probably would come across as an overwhelming amount of unfamiliar names (both of individuals and of publishing companies), unheard of comics characters and titles, and dates.
For comics history buffs like myself, however, this is a real “must have” reference work. The author (Mitchell) breaks down each year by publisher in business at the time, detailing the titles they released and the individual character features running in those titles and who wrote and drew them (where known). He also goes into the behind the scenes goings ons at the various publishing houses: how they started, how certain key artists and writers ended up there, and how the more popular characters were created. And he also reports how external factors like World War II, paper rationing, and early anti-comics opinion among some influential circles impacted the comics industry. (For example: With the war dragging on, the U.S. government put paper quotas on publishers of magazines, driving nearly all of the comic book publishers to lower their individual issue page counts from 68 pages (the average length in 1940) to 52 pages in 1944, and forcing many monthly titled to have to skip a month here and there as well as the dropping of many lesser back up features.)
Of course, the big publishers (Detective Comics (DC), All-American Comics, Timely Publications (Marvel), Fawcett Publications (the makers of Captain Marvel comics), Dell/Western (publishers of many licensed titles like Disney and Warner Bros), M.L.J. Magazines (the makers of Archie comics as well as its own range of superheroes), Gilberton Company (Classics Illustrated), and Quality Comics Group) are given a lot of attention. But so are mostly forgotten (today) lesser publishers like Ace Magazines, Better Publications/Standard Magazines/Nedor Publications, Centaur Publications, Charlton Publishing (just starting out), Columbia Comic Corporation, Comic House/Magazine House, Crestwood Publications, David McKay Company, Dynamic Publications, Eastern Color Printing Company, Fiction House, Fox Publications, Funnies, Inc. (one of several packaging shops creating comics stories for other publishers to release), Great Comics Publishing, Harvey Comics, Helnit Publishing/Et-Es-Go Mgazines/Continental Magazines, King Features Syndicate, Magazine Enterprises, Majestic Studios, Novelty Press, Parents’ Magazine Press, Register and Tribune Syndicate, Roche & Iger, S.M. Iger Studio, Spark Publications, Street & Smith Publications, United Features Syndicate, Wm. H. Wise & Co., and Worth Publishing.
Way too many names of individuals (comic book publishers, editors, writers, artists, etc.) for me to list them here. Suffice it to say that even the most obscure are reported on here, as are the many comic book characters that appeared in print from 1940 to 1944 (which has to literally be hundreds if not thousands thanks to the then standard format of six to eight short features per standard comic book issue plus the tendency for publishers to copy the success of their peers. Thus, endless Captain America, Tarzan, Sheena Queen of the Jungle, and masked “mystery men” knock offs, as well as the still popular in 1940-1942 or so non superhero adventure strips featuring fighter pilots, jungle adventurers, detectives, cowboys, etc.
And then you have the increase in popularity of humor titles (both teen humor like “Archie” and funny animal humor titles) around 1943 and 1944, to the point where you start to see some formerly superhero centric titles either being dropped for humor ones or converted into them (a foreshadowing of the disappearance for the most part of superhero comics in the late 1940s and early to mid 1950s).
It took me four months of off and on reading to make my way through “American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1940s: 1940-1944” because every chapter is just crammed full of information. It’s not the most “readable” of material but it’s still very interesting for those into the subject matter.
I look forward to moving on to the next volume (which, as I mentioned above, is the 1950s volume since the 1945-1949 volume isn’t out yet). I’ll probably have to take a bit if a break before jumping into that one, though, as I’m sure it will also be a long (yet interesting) read....more
(Copy of review posted on my Facebook page on 5/7/20.) I just finished "The Collected Jack Kirby Collector Volume Two" (1998) from TwoMorrows Publishi(Copy of review posted on my Facebook page on 5/7/20.) I just finished "The Collected Jack Kirby Collector Volume Two" (1998) from TwoMorrows Publishing (at that time still called TwoMorrows Advertising), reprinting and collecting issues #10-12 of "The Jack Kirby Collector" magazine.
By theme, these issues were #10 (April 1996), a "humor" themed issue, with articles on the more intentionally humorous comics projects Jack Kirby worked on, plus interviews with his wife Roz Kirby and "Destroyer Duck" creator Steve Gerber.
Issue #11 (July 1996), a "Jack Kirby in Hollywood" themed issue, with articles on projects of Kirby's done for the movies and tv, including some that were never actually made, and the Hollywood centered superhero Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created in the 1950s, Stuntman. Also, there is an article looking at the similarities between Star Wars and Kirby's "Fourth World"/"New Gods", and reviews of Kirby's work on the newspaper comic strip adaptation of the Disney "The Black Hole" movie, and work Kirby did on a comic book adaptation of "The Prisoner" tv series (which ended up not being published).
Issue #12 (October 1996), was an "International" themed issue, with reprints of interviews with Jack Kirby discussing a visit he made to Italy and the impact of his works overseas, articles written by Kirby fans from around the world describing how Kirby's comics have been published over the years in their native countries and translated into their home languages, an interview with John Byrne ("a controversial Canadian", as billed on the cover), regarding Jack Kirby and working on characters created by Kirby over the years), and the biggest highlight of the issue (and probably the entire collected edition, aside from the wonderful Roz Kirby interview already mentioned above), a transcript of the third annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel at the San Diego Comic-Con International on July 6, 1996, with Mark Evanier (moderator), Marv Wolfman, Roger Stern, and J. David Spurlock (and a few comments also from Roz Kirby, Robert Katz (Jack Kirby's nephew), and Scott Shaw, who were all in the audience).
The first thirty-four pages of the collected edition contains material original to the book, a long article titled "The House That Jack Built: A British Fan's Visit to the Kirby Home" by Glenn B. Fleming of Manchester, England", compete, as always, with loads of Jack Kirby artwork.
At the point when issues #10-12 were originally coming out, the magazine had come a long way from the "slickly produced fanzine" of its first few issues and had developed into a respectable, professionally produced commercial magazine sold in comic book stores as well as via subscription direct from the publisher.
However, at this point, the mix of retrospective/review and personal testimonial pieces versus interviews with comics professionals and people who knew Kirby (and archival interviews with Jack Kirby himself), and "behind the scenes" pieces going into the creation of Kirby's works is still a bit inconsistent. Some issues still rely quite a bit on pieces contributed by readers of the magazine on how they first came to discover the works of Kirby, what their favorites were, how Kirby was either what got them into reading comic books or became their favorite artist far above all others, etc, etc.
Which is fine, but my favorite pieces in all of the TwoMorrows magazines are almost always the one on one interviews, group discussions (including the comic book convention panel discussion transcripts), and behind the scenes/"making of" style articles.
These three still early issues of “The Jack Kirby Collector” have a few really good ones of those (again, the best being the interview with Roz Kirby from issue #10, the San Diego Kirby Tribute panel at discussion transcript in issue #12, and the older interviews with Kirby all three issues), spaced out with a lot of okay "fluff" pieces. (The letters columns are also fun to read, showing the reader response to the immediately preceding issues, and publisher John Morrow's responses to them.)
Over the years, “The Jack Kirby Collector” will add several regularly appearing columns which will give it a more consistent format and feel, issue to issue. That was still a ways away at the time these three issues came out (as were companion TwoMorrows magazines; the first, Jon Cooke's "Comic Book Artist", would not begin until Spring of 1998).
For those who love Jack Kirby comics, “The Jack Kirby Collector” is an obvious recommendation. However, ones not already familiar with the magazine should probably sample some current issues first before seeking out the early issues as today’s JKC is quite a bit different in tone and content from the early years. But for those like me who love just about all of the various TwoMorrows magazines and books on the subject of comic books over the decades, I think most would enjoy going back to the very beginning and making their way from “The Jack Kirby Collector” #1 onwards (at least the first twenty something issues available in these trades paperback book collections), as I am.
I give this particularly collection (based on the magazines reprinted within it), three stars out of five on GoodReads....more
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