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Because comic books have such a long history I’m breaking up this series into various parts. Comic books. Arguably one of the greatest industries in the world. To be competent to store each comic ever written you would need a city the size of New York and even then I think you would run out of room. No question, comic books are here to stay. So when did this multi billion dollar a year industry in truth start. Actually the origin of comic books is not actually known for certain. Up until not long ago there was one theory of what the firstborn comic book was. Then new proof suggested that this was incorrect. We may never actually recognise when comic books started but as of this writing the basi known comic book was “The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck” which was written in 1837 someplace in Europe in various languages. In 1842 an English version of this comic was printed for the United States, more specifically New York City. The comic was 40 pages long and didn’t actually resemble the comics that we are used to seeing today. There were no word balloons with dialogue. Instead there was text typed at the bottom of each panel to describe the story. A copy of this comic was not long ago came across in Oakland CA. The comic itself was done by Rudolphe Topffer who in Europe, was considered to be the creator of the picture story. He produced the comic strip in 1827 as a graphic novel. After that he developed 7 more graphic novels in galore dissimilar languages including copies for the United States. These books stayed in print until regarding 1877. This was considered to be the Victorian Age of comic books which is still not complete and still being researched even until today. Even altho numerous comics were printed after that, they have fallen into obscurity and the next known comic book was published in 1894 called “The Yellow Kid.” The Yellow Kid was actually a reputation derived from the comic “Hogan’s Alley” but the kid was so usual that the comic book became known by his name rather than by the official title of the comic book. Hogan’s Alley was formulated by a gentleman by the name of Richard Outcault who genuinely got his get started writing for “Truth Magazine”. In an issue of “Truth” he did a reputation cartoon featuring “The Yellow Kid” and it’s from that firstborn publishing that the actual comic came into being a short time later. It is believed that Outcault got his inspiration for “Hogan’s Alley” from assorted cartoonists including Michael Angelo Wolf and Charles Saalburg, both of whom employed street kids in their cartoons. It is believed that the title “Hogan’s Alley” came from the song “O’Reilly and the Four Hundred” which starts off “Down in Hogan’s Alley.” In the next of this series I will be covering what is referred to as “The Platinum Age Of Comics” which spans the years 1897 to 1938 which features the exceedingly standard “Mutt And Jeff” and “Little Orphan Annie” comics. You don’t want to miss this. Most helpful customer reviews 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. 12 of 16 people found the following review helpful. 5 of 8 people found the following review helpful. I like digital scans because they are truest to the artist’s intent. Most of the reprint books on the market, like the Marvel Masterworks, or DC Archives, are using restorations. The production crew takes a color comic and bleaches the color out, leaving the black line work. Of course the line work is not intact and requires “restoration,” or, in other words, re-drawing. The re-drawing is done by journeymen inkers who could not make it in comics so they are working in restorations instead. In other words, they are less than mediocre artists, and here they are trying to follow the line work of the greats. If the original was inked with a brush it is impossible to replicate accurately, so you can imagine how far off the line work restoration is when in the hands of a barely passable artist. In a digital scan everything that you see was drawn by the original creators. There is some clean-up and color correction involved, and the colors may not be 100% accurate, because frankly perfection isn’t possible. Digital scans, to my eye, look terrible on glossy paper. Glossy paper is less absorbent, so the colors don’t look very good, the precious line work that the digital scans are being used to preserve, is not accurately replicated on glossy paper, and in some areas looks down right muddy. I feel the gloss works against the look of the scanned comic – they clash, so to speak. Digital scans are used so that the comics look close to how the artists intended the comics to look when they created them. The artists, including the colorist, did not mean for this work to be shown on glossy paper. Compare an old four color comic on matte paper with a new glossy paper comic book, and you can see there is a great difference in the look. I am not going to keep this collection because it looks horrible to my eye. However, I can make some suggestions for anyone looking for digitally scanned comic anthologies, done on high quality matte paper. If you have never read a comic collection done with high quality scans, I suggest starting with one of these. Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s A collection of golden age horror comics from Fantagraphics. The scans are of the highest quality possible, and they are printed on an off white bond – this is book has the highest production values, and is the most accurate to the look of the original comics I’ve seen. Supermen!: The First Wave Of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 A collection of superhero comics from the very beginnings of the American comic book. Published by Fantagraphics as well, and also edited by Greg Sadowski, another high quality production. The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read! Another horror comic collection, but with a lot of text from the editor on the history of the horror comics, and scores of covers. Published by Abrams, it is a high quality production, tho it doesn’t match the best from Fantagraphics. It’s more of an art book, however, it is beautiful, tasty eye candy. The Simon and Kirby Superheroes A collection of golden age comics from the greatest art and writing team of the golden age, Joe Simon and Jack KIrby. Published by Titan, on a pure white heavy matte bond. The white paper takes away a bit from the authentic look of these scans, but the brighter look works with the tone of the stories. Titan also put out a “Best Of Simon and Kirby” which includes stories from all genres, but there is some crossover. Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives (Vol. 1) (The Steve Ditko Archives) This volume is the first in what is intended as a digitally scanned, chronological reprinting of the work of Steve Ditko, edited by Blake Bell. The scan quality is high, but the work is dicey, as it is the very beginnings of Ditko’s career, and the writing is typically mediocre-to-bad comic book writing. There is a second volume in the works: Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives (Vol. 2) (The Steve Ditko Archives) I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets! Fletcher Hanks wrote, drew, inked, and colored his comics himself, in the dawn of the American comic book superhero. Hanks’ work is crude, but oddly operatic. It’s fun, entertaining, but certainly some of the most simple minded superhero comics ever made – the plots are nearly identical. Hanks art fascinates because it’s so bizarre, as is the violently inventive fate of the villians. For some reason the alternative comic Intelligentsia thinks Hanks is a genius, and lauds him over true genius’s like Jack Kirby – why? I have no idea. They see more in this guy then is really there, that’s for sure. DC has put out some of Simon and KIrby’s early work in digital scans as well, the Golden Age Sandman and The Newsboy Legion. Unfortunately, DC did things on the cheap, using a low quality matte paper, with low quality scans that aren’t very accurately color corrected. They’re printed in a book that is much smaller than the size of the original golden age comic books. All in all, I’d say these are for Simon and Kirby diehards only. They just aren’t very well done. |
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