After my Tweet about Rumiko Takahashi went viral, I got curious as to who all in the history of comics has been nominated for the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame. As there are many who were nominated more than once before induction, I also got curious as to how many nominated professionals to date are still absent from the HoF.
These are the 60 comics professionals who have been nominated (but not yet inducted) into the Eisner Hall of Fame from 1987 - present. Of the 226 total nominees (including inductees) to date, 21 have been women(including3 women of color). Women’s names are in bold.
Emmanuel Poiré (nom de plume Caran d’Ache), Les désmarches, 1902, printed in L’assiette au beurre (“The butter dish”), a pre-World War I Parisian satirical weekly that featured many bold, full-page cartoons and illustrations alongside pointed satire and commentary by some of the leading writers of the French anarchist movement.
Kind of curious what the public perception of the character would be if appearances outside of comics had the actors affecting Price’s distinctive manner of speaking, but it would have been a lot of fun in my opinion.
Beyond his art, Neal Adams is rightfully remembered as an eternal champion of creators’ rights and for the part he & his work played in the Comics Code revision of ‘71 but his contribution to John Stewart’s creation is – I think – a rather underrated aspect of his career, especially as it’s such a great reminder of the kind of person he was. Taken from an interview conducted and transcribed by Allen W. Wright over at the Green Arrow: Bold Archer fansite, here’s Neal discussing John’s beginnings (x).
Titan Talk 66 cover by George Perez. George was a contributing member of Titan Talk, (a sort of zine with very small print run, say 40 copies only, and every subscriber was also a contributor), beneath it is a full box of other old Titans APAs, I have several, just trying to give a sense of how much fanfic and art existed before the internet was even a thing. for more about this please read https://wonkeaux.tumblr.com/post/164575698322/a-little-bit-about-the-pre-internet-history-of
Archie meets Betty for the first time in the very first Archie story in PEP #22.
It’s interesting to remember the original context Archie was published in. The reason Archie’s life seems so bucolic and Little Rascals-esque is that, really, the idea of a teen-ager (an in-between state, between being a child and adult) is something of a post-1945 idea. You were either a kid or adult. Prior to that, children were considered adultsvery early on in life, and were also expected to work for the family and take large responsibilities. There was also no culture unique to them as of yet, which is why what we would call “teenagers” in movies prior to the 1950s listened to the same music and dressed the same as their parents did. This is also why, in that cultural context, superhero “kid sidekicks” were not considered as strange as they later would look (e.g. unconscionable child endangerment). In other words, Archie Comics mostly predate the cultural idea of a teenager.
Of all the major, valuable comics from the Golden Age, PEP #22 (December 1941) is the rarest as only 22 issues are believed to still be in existence. A new one has not been discovered in some time, so for that reason, it’s hard to give a real price on what one would be worth, since it doesn’t change hands too often. One of the most startling things about the golden age is that comics sold in the millions, but they were so disposable, there are issues that no longer survive today, or issues that only have a single existing copy.
It’s interesting to have a look at the cover of the first Archie comic. Interestingly, as 1941 was right in the middle of the wartime fad of patriotic superheroes, the debut of Archie did not take the cover of the comic at all, but was buried in the backup and wasn’t even mentioned on the cover, which had the Shield Interestingly, the Shield looks like a Captain America copy or rip off, but surprisingly…the Shield came first. Captain America’s shield, originally a medieval one, was changed to a round disk by the second issue, as it evoked the design of Archie’s Shield too much.
If you’ve ever read comics from the 1940s, you know that they usually had five or six stories, not all of the same genre. There was the superhero story that got the cover, but also usually a detective, or magician in tophat and tails, an aviation action strip, and usually, somewhere in the back, a strip about a friendly skunk or other cartoon animal in white gloves, and last of all, almost as forgotten as the advertisements, there was the strip about the funny kid, like Sugar n’ Spike or “Lil’ Sis.”
Later on in the decade, when Yankee GIs and soldiers started reading comics as well as kids, another standard strip in a 1940s comic would usually also be a hot girl story (like Bill Ward’s Torchy, Canteen Kate, or Katy Keene) which are essentially about a gorgeous fantasy woman who, in 8 pages, encounters an extremely mild and easily resolved life problem while standing around in pin up poses, and usually showers in the middle of the story or takes a bath. Considering the audience for this was soldiers overseas, we’ve only recently started to acquire the language to describe the appeal of the good girl comic: parasocial.
I cannot emphasize enough how surprising it is that, in that context, the “funny kid” comic in Archie not only dominated the book, but changed the name of the company, to the point that nobody even remembers that Archie Comics published superheroes or detective/aviation comics. Most comics had a “funny kid,” but nobody, not even fans, keep track of them. I once tried looking up if there was a master list of funny kid comic backups of the 40s and 50s, and I couldn’t find it, just…nobody takes an interest in this, even in the comics and collector world. The one other great unlikely survival of a funny kid comic from the 50s to the present was Sugar and Spike, who got their own comic that was published for decades.
As a collector, I always get whiplash whenever I see a Sugar n’ Spike comic from the 1970s. Like Katy Keene, they were a coelocanth-like survivor of the mass extinction of kid comics and hot girl comics.
Malibu was THE Indy comic power-player in the 1980s. Many remember their superhero Ultraverse line (with Prime and Hardcase), which started in 1993 and was mostly the brainchild of Steve Englehart, maybe the most underrated but intriguing of the “new superhero universes” of the 1990s (at least Valiant is remembered fondly; people remember Prime but not the cohesive superhero world). However, Malibu had been in existence a half decade before, publishing adventure comics like Ninja Elite. Marvel Comics eventually bought out Malibu for the most pedestrian reason imaginable: to get their computer colorization technology.
A lot of people say that Luke Cage, Power Man, Hero for Hire was the first black superhero with his own comic. This is true. However, the first black hero with his own comic was Lobo at Dell Publishing, a western adventure outlaw.
Fun fact: even at the height of the moral panic over crime comics in the 1950s, Dell was the only publisher that never joined the comics code authority, and you’ll note they don’t have a comics code seal on their covers. This was because, as a company that primarily published Disney comics, their in-house standards were even more stringent than the code.
A lot of people say that Black Panther was the first black hero at Marvel. This is not true. He was preceded by a full decade by the Atlas-era jungle action hero Waku, Prince of the Bantu, a sort of black Tarzan, with a little Conan and Umslopagaas mixed in, created by pre-Marvel Universe scribe Whitney Ogden. I guess it depends if you consider the Atlas-era comics canon (and they are, since many things showed up in them later). You know, I wonder why they never called on Waku to be in the 1950s Avengers team, Agents of Atlas…possibly because it’s not clear when his stories were set: it could be any point after the iron age and the Bantu Migrations. 19th Century, maybe? Early 20th? Heck, maybe even “modern day” (50s) in a very rural region.
After World War II ended, superheroes had a dramatic drop in popularity. They were seen as a wartime fad that would never really be a part of American culture again. Only some of the more popular characters like Superman, Sheena Queen of the Jungle, Black Terror, and Batman endured this period in continuous publication - most folded up by the early 1950s.
Captain America became the host of a horror anthology comic; Blue Beetle, who at one point was one of the three most famous superheroes, became just an introductory host for a “crimes by women” comic. Most ignominiously of all, Green Lantern was pushed out of his own comic to make way for the adventures of a hero dog.
If you read the first Fantastic Four comic, they didn’t operate in New York,but instead launched their first rocket flight from “Central City.” Though they later moved to NYC and the Baxter Building, their rocket took off from California.
Now, there is no “real” Central City - an ultra-rare example of Marvel having DC-style fake towns. However, if you look at a map of California, the place that is in the dead center of the state is Stockton. So, spurred on by an FF-loving comic geek, the Stockton chamber of commerce petitioned Marvel to make them the Birthplace of the Fantastic Four. And in later comics, Central City was explicitly identified as Stockton, California.
In this week’s episode, I talk about Underground Comix, an artistic movement spawned by the social upheaval of the 1950s and 1960s. Next week, I’ll talk about some of the artists in a little more details–in this video, I focus on history and context.
VISIT: If you happen to live near San Luis Obispo, CA; Columbia, MO; or Spokane, WA you’re in luck! Cal Poly holds the Moore Collection of Underground Comics, featuring hundreds of original comix, posters, adverts, and catalogs. The University of Missouri has Frank Stack’s papers, including letters between himself and other comix artists–as well as comix. Washington State University holds Lynn Hansen’s HUGE Underground comix collection, which also includes zines, mini comics, and micro comics.
CHECK OUT:Comix Joint has a huge collection of notes about and reviews of underground comix (the top of the page is the navigation…search by title)
PROSECUTE: Learn more about the obscenity cases I discuss (as well as newer ones), thanks to CBLDF (a program Denis Kitchen helped found)
There’s been a lot of talk about diversity and comics lately, or comics and politics. Here’s the fact: Comics have always been political.
Case in point: in this week’s Comics Crash Course, I discuss the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency and the establishment of the Comics Code Authority. I particularly tell the story of CCA Judge Charles Murphy banning “Judgment Day,” an explicitly anti-racist story from 1953.
The Code itself was a political move; the reason politics SEEMS absent from many comics in the mid-1950s is because it was purposely removed. This was, of course, a political move on the part of the CCA (and even influenced by the federal government via the Senate Subcommittee)
The Code wasn’t just about Wertham’s kooky ideas in Seduction of the Innocent, it was about making sure all comics upheld 1950s values regarding respect for government, police, and parents; “family values” in regards to sexuality and marriage; etc etc. That’s politics.
Politics in comics manifests in absence (especially when via its suppression) and presence. EC Comics and the establishment of the Comics Code only further proves comics has been a particularly political (and politically fraught) medium since the beginning.
I posted the video yesterday but am late in announcing it! In this week’s video, I discuss one of the flash points of comics history in the US: the moral panic against comics, which culminates in Frederic Wertham’s famous book, Seduction of the Innocent.
There’s a ton of information online if you’d like to dive deeper into information about the moral panic.
The Web’s Original Seduction of the Innocent Site doesn’t have the most up-to-date web design, but it has a lot of information about the specific comics Wertham discussed in the book, different editions of the book, as well as its impact, etc.
However, Bart Beatty works to address a more balanced view on Wertham’s ideas in his book,Frederic Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture. While I still fall on the anti-Wertham side, I think Beatty raises some really important points.
In this week’s episode I explore the genres outside of superhero books that helped make the Golden Age so very shiny. I spend a little extra time discussing the great forgotten genre of comic books, the romance comic.
ON THE GOLDEN AGE, GENERALLY
Collecting these books is out of the question for most of us, but there are a lot of great ways to read Golden Age material. One source I’ve frequently turned to is Comic Book Plus. Since most of the non-superhero books are now in the public domain, it’s safe to post them online…and that’s just what this site has done! The link I’ve provided goes to the “categories” page, which is a little bit of an easier way to start digging in.
Pappy’s Golden Age Comic Blogzine is less an organized archive than Comic Book Plus, but still regularly posts covers and whole stories from Golden Age books. He’ll often work in theme, so there’ll be a period of war books, a period of horror, some romance, etc. Follow the tags and you’re sure to find great stuff!
Still on time for the east coast! In this episode, we look at some of the greats of the early years of newspaper comic strips–the Pioneers of the Funnies.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff out there on these artists–some easier to find than others. Enjoy looking around!
Books Worth Checking Out There are a lot of books on the subject, but these are the ones I like the best:
The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, Bill Blackbeard
The Comics: Before 1945, Brian Walker
The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art, Jerry Robinson
The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History, Robert C. Harvey
Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White, Michael Tisserand
Links Some of these are informational, some are links to image collections.
The AV Club’s Primer on Newspaper Comics: A grand primer! This goes beyond the early days discussed in this video, but is a good primer if you’re interested in the funny pages.
Obscure US Newspaper Comics: For every one strip that thrived during the Golden Age of Newspaper Strips, many more failed. The Lambiek Comiclopedia is a great source for tons of info, but this particular page is relevant to today’s interests.
Comic Strip Library: This site has high-res images of Krazy Kat,Little Nemo, and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.
Comics Kingdom Vintage: King Features is the syndicate that’s home to Bringing Up Father, Krazy Kat, The Katzenjammer Kids, and The Little King. They have samples of each strip available to read.
ComicArtFans: This is a place for comic art collectors to show off their collections (and sometimes sell them. Search by title and/or author to check out surviving original art. Examples of art by Tad Dorgan, Bud Fisher, George Herriman, Rudolph Dirks, George McManus, Frederick Burr Opper, and Winsor McCay have been posted!
The comics have arrived! In this video we talk about the emergence of the modern comic strip in two places: Rodolphe Topffer’s “histoires en images” and the newspaper funny pages!
On a trip this week, so not too much to add right now. I’m particularly proud of this one, we’re really getting into “my” territory. Next week will be exciting, too!
In Episode Two, “BC Means ‘Before Comics,” I discuss some artistic traditions that pre-date comics but use similar techniques to represent time in space.
I discuss a few historical precedents for comics storytelling, in which space istime. There’s a ton more to see for a lot of these forms, so check out the links below.
I was first introduced to the concept of primitive animation and the beauty of the Chauvet Caves through Werner Herzog’s 2010 documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which is streaming on Netflix.
Tomb of Menna
For the budding Egyptologist or merely curious, here is a SUPER detailed outline of Menna’s tomb, including translations of the inscriptions, wall layouts, and detailed descriptions of all the paintings.
This piece, at Dartmouth, is not the original Genji Monogatari Emakimono, but one made in the mid-1700s. Still, it shows you how a typical emakimono might work.
This collection, from the Tokugawa Art Museum (the page is in Japanese), shows a 12th century version of aGenjiemaki.
The folks at the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc have scanned the four remaining pre-Columbian Mayan Codices. They’re super fascinating! Check ‘em out!
