Table Of Content

THE POWER OF COMICS This page intentionally left blank T H E P OW E R O F COMICS History, Form, and Culture Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith 2009 The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © 2009 by Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers. Index by Randall W. Scott Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents PREFACE vii INTRODUCTION BY PAUL LEVITZ ix 1 Defining Comic Books as a Medium 1 2 The History of Comic Books, Part I: Developing a Medium 20 3 The History of Comic Books, Part II: The Maturation of the Medium 50 4 The Comic Book Industry 85 5 Comic Book Creators 109 6 Creating the Story 127 7 Experiencing the Story 153 8 The Comic Book Readers 171 9 Comic Book Genres: Classifying Comics 196 10 Comic Book Genres: The Superhero Genre 221 11 Comic Books and Ideology 246 12 Researching Comic Books 269 13 Comics Culture Around the World 291 GLOSSARY 315 BIBLIOGRAPHY 321 INDEX 337 v This page intentionally left blank Preface This is a textbook about comic books. But don’t just accept our word that comic books are a medium worthy of being considered with scholarly attention. Just ask any of the growing number of scholars who, since the early 1970s, have been teaching about the social implications, artistic merits, and cultural significance of this medium. Just ask any of the creators, who, over the last two decades especially, have brought forth some of the most mature and fertile combinations of words and pictures ever printed. Just ask yourself when, perhaps, you have read a few chapters of this introduction to the field of comics arts studies and can better appreciate the power of the medium. Unlike many other books about comic books, our book is not just a history, or only focused on theory, or wholly devoted to an aspect of the culture of the medium. Ours is a synthesis of all of that, written for an audience unfamiliar with the language and customs surrounding the culture of creating and reading comic books. Our goal in authoring this textbook is to establish a coherent and comprehensive—but by no means definitive—explanation of comic books: their history, their communication techniques, the research into their meanings and effects, and the characteristics of the people who make and consume them. Our approach is borne of our backgrounds in communication and literary studies, but incorporates scholarly efforts from a host of disciplines, including art, history,sociology, economics, psychology, and many more. We freely admit that our approach is focused principally on American comic books, as one means to keep this expansive and ever-expanding field manage- able. However, we do present a chapter on comics in other cultures, as it is impossible to talk about American comic books without acknowledging the international talents and trends that have come to influence them. We also want to note our bias towards print comic books amidst the growth of online comics. Our rationale for this bias includes print’s long history, the generally held perception of what constitutes a comic book, and the fact that differences in form and techniques employed (trails rather than pages, transitional devices such as dissolves, the potential to use animation and sound, etc.) arguably make many online comics a different art form than the print comic book. vii viii PREFACE We acknowledge that this book is a product of so many more people than just its two authors, and we owe a debt of thanks to those who lent their expertise and keen eyes to the production of this edition. We are grateful to our colleagues on the Comix-Scholars Discussion List, Peter Coogan, Alec Hosterman, Charles Hatfield, and Leonard Rifas, among many other comics scholars. Our gratitude goes to David Stoddard for our cover design and art- work (which includes a Pyroman by legendary cover artist Alex Shomburg). We are also grateful for the support and assistance we received from Continuum Publishing from David Barker, Katie Gallof, Gabriella Page-Fort, Max Novick, John Mark Boling, Claire Heitlinger, Benn Linfield, Ryan Masteller and Carol Sawyer, as well as Randy Scott, indexer. Randy would like to thank Brian Camp, Deborah Sessor, Carl Miller, and Travis Langley for meticulous and insightful comments on chapters; Robert O’Nale, Tommy Cash, and all the other students in Comics as Communication classes through the years who gave feedback on those very rough and fragmen- tary handouts that were the seeds from which this project grew; and the various Henderson State University committees that supported this book with a sabbati- cal leave and research funding. And last, but certainly not least, thanks to the friends who were always willing to provide much-needed relief from work in the form of tennis and poker-like card games. Matt wishes to thank his friend and colleague Andrew F. Wood, who inspired Matt to pursue this project, and his ever-patient wife, Susan Sheridan Smith, who endured through the actual writing of it. Matt is also grateful to the students in his Fall 2005 Seminar in Media Research, who helped with the initial identification of resources: Lara Bachelder, Michael Burk, Josh Cohick, Ashley Corry, Claudia Dattilo, Susan Feuer, Jessica Fisher, Sarah Gearhart, Emily Hiscar, Laura Lachman, Steve Less, Brian McCoach, Hiedi Mowrey, Tregg Nardecchia, Jerrod Swanton, and Lauren Wilson. Additional help came from students Jocelin Baker, Jamie Daugherty, and Jeff Dern, as well as institutional support from librarian Ken Irwin and the Wittenberg University Faculty Research Fund Board. Professionals, historians, and fans from the comics community who gener- ously gave of their time and expertise include Alan Asherman, Jerry Bails, Robert Beerbohm, Karen Berger, Larry Clowers, Shel Dorf, Mike Friedrich, Kathleen Glosan, Gary Groth, Denis Kitchen, Paul Levitz, John Jackson Miller, Chuck Rozanski, Jeff Smith, Bill Spicer, Roy Thomas, Maggie Thompson, Hames Ware, Bill Williams, John Wheat, and two legends we were fortunate to know when they walked among us—Will Eisner and Julie Schwartz. Randy dedicates this volume to his two best friends, Trina Bright and Jody Duncan Burge, for encouraging him to dive in and for giving him the buoyant support to make it to the far shore. Matt’s dedication is to his twin sons, Trevor and Kent, who share with him the wonder of discovering the worlds of reading and imagination that comic books open. There was a lot more we wanted to say about comic books but couldn’t fit into this book. We invite you to visit us at www.powerofcomics.com for additional material that didn’t make our print edition. Introduction by Paul Levitz T here’s something oxymoronic about a comics textbook. If ever there was a medium characterized by its unexamined self-expression, it would be comics. For decades after the medium’s birth, it was free of organized critical analysis, its creators generally disinclined to self-analysis or formal documenta- tion. The average reader didn’t know who created the comics, or how or why, and except for a uniquely destructive period during America’s witch-hunting of the 1950s, didn’t seem to care. As the medium has matured, however, and the creativity of comics begun to touch the mainstream of popular culture in many ways, curiosity has followed, leading to journalism and eventually scholarship, and so here we are. For those of you who simply wanted to take a course about comics as a way to read more of them, my apologies and sympathies. Apologies, because in a way this text is partially my fault—apparently when I published an article enti- tled “A Call for Higher Criticism” in The Comics Journal almost thirty years ago, it caught the eye of a young communication grad student named Randy Duncan, who pursued the question in his dissertation, his teaching, his involve- ment in co-founding an academic conference on comics scholarship, and now his collaboration on this text. This is a fine example of the vitally important Law of Unintended Consequences. Another example would be the result of printing salesman Max Gaines putting 10¢ stickers on a handful of reprint flyers of newspaper comic strips, intended as premium giveaways, and then placing them on a newsstand to see if they would sell. Gaines could never have imagined, much less intended, the industry that resulted and the diverse creative art form that emerged. I offer my sympathies because, as informative and interesting as this textbook is, it’s hardly as much fun as the best of comics. But it, in turn, may have the unintended result of creating better comics. Understanding the medium you work in has always been an important step toward expanding its potential and improving your own work. When I came into the world of comics almost forty years ago, it still operated much like a medieval guild, with the form being taught to new apprentices by masters, while the young people worked alongside, starting with the simplest tasks. Virtually all of American comics were created by a couple hundred people in the New York metro area, and finding your way ix