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Underground > Comic Books >

Books about comics; meta-comic-book commentary.

17:30 / 21.04.03

A friend of mine just loaned me a copy of Art Spiegelman & Chip Kidd's Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits, and I'm blown away by it.

I'd read the DC Archives: Plastic Man (borrowed from another friend), which was enough to pique my interest in a character I used to think was a jokey novelty act (I remembered the cartoon in the early 80s) whose power (I mistakenly assumed) was ripped off the Fantastic Four's Mr. Fantastic.

Reading the old strips was enough to get me to re-evaluate the stories, but Spiegelman's book is brilliant. It reprints whole stories on matte paper (scans from the original comics) to show the art off as it was originally read. And it covers Cole's whole career
...from his first piece in Boy's Life magazine (about bicycling across the country from Pennsylvania to LA and back)
... through the absurdly inventive Plastic Man strips (which have increased my appreciation for cartoon art in general)
... and then through his True Crime Comics, which were instrumental in bringing a close to the Golden Age (the book reprints a story which has a frame in it showing a junkie threatening to stab a woman in the eye with a syringe - a frame used by Estes Kefauver during the infamous morality hearings)
...and then through his career as Playboy's first house cartoonist, where he invented that distinctive, totally not-Plastic-Man style of Playboy cartoons (the watercolor images of large-eyed, voluptuous women that you still see in the magazine to this day).

Besides the comic reprints, the book also features lots of eye-catching visuals, and ends with a not-quite-explanation of Cole's suicide in the form of a surrealist collage.

So that's one book I'd recommend for anyone interested in comics.

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I'd also recommend Jim Steranko's The Steranko History of Comics, if you can find a copy.

Great look at the pulps that became the comics, and at the working conditions behind some of the odd and wonderful creations in the Golden Age. Volume Two taught me everything I know about Captain Marvel.

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Anybody else got favorites? Or anything to add about these two?

18:12 / 21.04.03

Part of your post seems to have been chopped, grant.

I remember reading a fascinating piece by a couple of art critics, who claimed Steranko had invented something like 72 new forms of visual storytelling.

For all my love of comics, I'm generally disinclined to read books about them; I've got Les Edwards history of Marvel, which I bought when I wa about 13, and is quite interesting. Also read his DC one fairly recently. Had a look at Roger Sabin's book, too, but found it generally snotty and overpriced.

23:31 / 21.04.03

It must be my birthday. First Canadian comics, now this.

I was going to respond with a whole bunch of samples, pictures and links for comics concerning comics, but it got a little out of hand. Instead I'm going to do a full write up for my blog. It's pretty much completely out of control at this point. I'll post a link when I'm done.

In the meantime, if you're interested in Jack Cole's work you may want to check out the page devoted to him on Shane Glines site. While you're there, scoot around for other great cartooning legends.

The recent issue of Comic Art Magazine had a cover feature on Cole's gag cartoons.

All in Color for a Dime, a book written way back before such things were commonplace and knowledge was scarce, has a section on Plastic Man. It's worth picking up for a number of essays, including ones on Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse strip and the origin of The Heap.

Gary Chaloner, one of the artists involved with that Adventurestrips.com venture, is working on a series of short stories about Cole. He had one of them up not long ago, but it appears to have vanished from his site, probably due to the impending publication of these stories.

Whenever my friends would imagine visiting the Playboy mansion (it comes up more often then you'd think), I always agree, and add that I'd love to talk comics with Hugh. That man loves comics. Did you know that Little Orphan Fanny was, and probably still is, the most expensive and labour intensive comic per page in history?

You know, I think I've reached a point in my life where I read more about comics then actually reading the comics themselves. If I think of any good books, I'll let you know.

23:35 / 21.04.03

Oh, yeah. I noticed that they cut out some parts from Spiegelman's original essay from the New Yorker. They may have added a few new things, but the section where he complains about the DC Archives handling of the reproduction of Plastic Man is gone. That may be why the Forms Stretched To Their Limits book is copied straight from yellowed comics. Chip Kidd loves to do that. If you see it, take a glance at his Peanuts book, where almost all the strips are shot from Chris Ware's newspaper clippings or the originals. It's like reading a scrapbook.

23:53 / 21.04.03

Jules Feiffer has a wonderful, nigh-famous book called THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES. It features several essays and recollections by him of the early 40s comic boom. The original oversize book reprints several priceless Golden Age stories. The book was recently reprinted in smaller format sans comics but is still a worthwhile read to learn about the 40s and 50s. Oh, and he has some elegant comments about Dr. Wertham's Seduction of the Innocents.

Mike Benton has a slight if nice looking reference called THE COMIC BOOK IN AMERICA. It is essentially an overview of the medium, its publishers and genres. Infinitely better is his 5 volumes of THE TAYLOR HISTORY OF COMICS, which chronicles a genre in depth. IMHO, the best volumes are v1 Horror comics, v3 Sci-Fi comics, and v5 Crime comics, my favorite. v2&4 dealt with superheroes. The books feature plenty of qualiy reproductions and well-researched text. Great books if you can find them.

The University of Mississippi Press has been publishing scholary books on comics through the 90s. You can access their catalog via the web but I don't have their address handy.

The comic anthology BLAB, published by the dearly departed Kitchen Sink Comix, used to run extensive articles on comic history and may be worth your time to find them. Issue 5 has a history of the crime comic in America that offers a nice compliment to Benton's history in the Taylor line. The article only reprints covers but Ray Zone, the author, uses some of the best, including the infamous EC cover that the Senate subcommittee used to grill Bill Gaines. It also has a nifty story by Spain about criminals from Buffalo, NY; which might be of interest to moriarty.

I realize that this may be off the topic abstract so, for good show, allow me to reference Seth's Palookaville, which investigates the fate of an old-time comic artist, and Blvd. of Broken Dreams by Kim Deitch that chronicles the rise and fall of early animators, with a cameo by Winsor McCay.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

23:59 / 21.04.03

Blab still comes out once a year from Fantagraphics, but it's become more of an anthology...

Hmm...good book about comics? I would say that the recent "Tales From The Crypt" hardcover does a good job of going through the history of EC comics with a minimum of hype. If you can get your hands on a E. Gerber Photojournal Guide it's worth it. It's got very little in the way of articles, but it has comic covers from thousands of Golden and Atomic age comics that tell you more about how comics used to be marketed than any article could.

Mark Evanier's books on comic are good too, but they are written as a series of anecdotes rather than a coherant history of comics.

00:11 / 22.04.03

Oh, I quite enjoyed Will Brooker's Batman Unmasked, too. Bit of fun.

00:22 / 22.04.03

Jules Ffeifer's The Great Comic Book Heroes was also reprinted (without pictures) in The Comics Journal #200, which also contained two large interviews with Charles Schulz and Chris Ware, as well as a grab bag of other goodies. It's very sought after and a little hard to find.

I know it gets a bad rap around here, but most of what I've learned about Comic history was directly from or because of The Comics Journal. My taste or sense of history wouldn't be nearly so varied without them. Also worth picking up is Nemo, a short lived publication devoted to comic strips in the style of The Comics Journal. I only have one issue, but it's the Little Orphan Annie special, so that's all that I need.

I'm too poor to have bought it myself, but I have only heard good things about Kriegstein Vol. 1. I want to get it now, especially after finding out in Life Drawing class that I draw in his style when mocking people.

When it comes right down to it, I have more interest in very specific books on certain creators than I do the general history books, so I'm probably no help at all. The biography of George Herriman (of Krazy Kat fame) is nice. His life was the sedate, romantic, whimsical counterpoint to Jack Cole's hypersexuality, and it shows in their respective work. Another cartoonist whose personal history shaped their comics is Charles Schulz. Seriously, reading one of his biographies will convince you that he was obsessive enough to be a genius.

03:48 / 22.04.03

Hey, long-time lurker here.

I was always wondering if the Plastic Man Archives were worth it or not. I think I'll be making a sizeable purchase at the store soon.

How about Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. They're not really about the history of comics but more about the comics form itself. Really great reading for anyone interested in the arts in general, actually.

04:20 / 22.04.03

Hey, long-time lurker.

Just to make sure, Grant is talking about Jack Cole and Plastic Man : Forms Stretched To Their Limits by Art Spiegelman and Chip Kidd, not the Plastic Man Archives. The Spiegelman book is a good sampler, but if you're going to dive right into the Plastic Man archives, I would suggest that you start with one of the more recent ones. That's when Cole really starts to pick up steam.

I've hyped this before, but another book with a few Plastic Man stories is the excellent Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics. The link is to an ebay auction for this out of print tome. That's where I got mine for a buck. Be warned, the stories chosen are early Cole. Most of the comics in the book were chosen for historical purposes, so we have the first appearance of Plas and the first appearance of Woozy. You'll also find the first appearances of Superman, Batman, and the Golden Age Red Tornado (in Scribbly, which I will mention in my metacomics blog entry), stories by C.C. Beck, Basil Wolverton, John Stanley, and Carl Barks, as well as Walt Kelly's Pogo comic book work, three top notch Spirit stories, and a few EC and Mad tales, including Kriegstein's most famous story, Master Race.

Even more highly recommended is the massive companion to that book, the Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. It's huge in every dimension, in a size that does the Sunday pages justice. You've got a little bit of it all, Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, Mutt and Jeff, the Kin-Der-Kids, Polly and Her Pals, Bringing Up Father, Gasoline Alley (one of my favourites, the collected dailies are supposed to be coming out soon), Skippy, Wash Tubbs, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, Alley Oop, Little Joe, Thimble Theatre (y'know, Popeye), Barnaby (!), Lil' Abner, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse, Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the Pirates, Pogo, and many, many more. I've just listed the highlights.

They're two great samplers, both with historical essays and biographies on each strip and their creative teams, and are among the two most indispensible books in my collection.

16:54 / 02.05.03

This is rank and blatant self-promotion, but...my book, Heroes and Monsters, which will be appearing in June, is commentary and annotations on and about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And I think it's pretty good.

18:19 / 02.05.03

Heheh. A book about a comic about books.

Hehehehh.

Anyway, I've borrowed a copy of Eddie Campbell's Alec: How to be an artist, and I'm enjoying it a bit. I don't entirely get it, but when it clicks, it's fun. Sort of an autobiographical sketch, done in the future tense, that turns into a history of the "graphic novel," from the art-comix scene in the 70s & early 80s up through the "hey, comics are art!" thing in the mid- to late-80s. I'm not done with it yet -- I'm right after the point where Frank Miller's Dark Knight is getting lumped together with Maus and Watchmen as defining what graphic novels are. Campbell - he's not much for superheroes.

It's not as engaging as the Jack Cole book, but it's still pretty good.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

17:21 / 04.05.03

The Plastic Man Archives are great books and show that Cole's work is some of the very few Golden Age stories that don't seem dated. Very very little historical info, tho.

Hmmm...

I would suggest Will Eisner's GN The Dreamer for a thinly veiled set of stories from the early days of comics, the magazines "Comic Book Marketplace", "Comic Book Artist" and "Alter Ego" for more stuff on the early days of comics, but be warned that they are very much "fanboy" publications and don't have a critical eye for the difference between a great comic and one that they liked when they were 12.