Search Results

This chapter examines the struggles and minor successes of British comics during the period 1936–1949. In 1936, Disney set up a studio in Britain and launched Mickey Mouse Weekly, the first British comic to use the expensive, full-color photogravure printing process. A year later, DC Thomson launched The Dandy, followed by The Beano in 1938. The success of The Dandy and The Beano marked the end of the era of the boy's weeklies and the beginning of the dominance of comics. The chapter considers the very first appearance of Superman in Britain in Amalgamated Press's The Triumph in 1939 and how British and American comics fared during the war years. It also discusses comics publishing by Gerald G. Swan, A. Soloway, Denis Gifford and Bob Monkhouse, Cartoon Art Productions, Scion, Paget, and Modern Fiction Ltd. The publication of The Amazing Mr X, Britain's first homegrown superhero, is also explored.

This chapter examines major developments in British comics during the period 1950–1961. It first considers comics as one of the cornerstones of children's entertainment in the 1950s before discussing the means by which American comics came to Britain as well as the objections to American comics in the country. It then describes the rise of girl's comics in the early 1950s, the appearance of parodies of the superhero, and the (continued) rise of the small superhero publishers. It also explores British publications that were viewed as doppelgangers of Captain Marvel, including Electroman, the production of Marvelman stories by the Gower Studio, and the resurrection of DC Thomson superheroes and the creation of new ones. Finally, it looks at the publications of Fleetway and the Independent Publishing Corporation (IPC) and suggests that the late 1950s and early 1960s were very interesting times for British adventure comics.

This chapter examines Chris Ware’s rejection of realistic figure drawing in his own comics and his promotion of memoir, autobiography, and realistic fiction in his anthologies. It traces Ware’s preference for the realistic to his roots in the alternative comics movement of the 1980s and 1990s, along with the movement’s aspirations to realism as part of its pursuit of the highest artistic ambitions. The chapter also looks at how Ware recapitulates aesthetics in his anthologies, most especially in the introduction to Best American Comics 2007.

This chapter examines the development of the revisionist trend in British comics as well as the so-called British Invasion of American comics and its afermath during the period 1981–1993. It argues that revisionism was a continuation and refocusing of the satirical reaction to the superhero genre that has been in evidence in British comics for decades. The chapter first considers Captain Britain, written by Alan Moore for Marvel UK, before discussing Marvelman and V for Vendetta, also created by Moore, this time for Warrior. It then turns to Watchmen (1986) by Moore and Dave Gibbons, one of the most influential superhero comics of all time; Paradax, a character introduced in 1985 by Eclipse Comics in Strange Days #3; Zenith (1987); and the satire Marshal Law (1987). It also analyzes publications that parody the superhero genre, including How to Be a Superhero (1990) and 1963 (1993).

This book has explored the British superhero's long and complex history, even though many have now faded into obscurity. It has also highlighted the ever-shifting balance between parody and satire in British comics and comics produced for international markets by British creators such as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Furthermore, it has analyzed the changing industrial and social context of British publishing and the market forces that have shaped British comics. Finally, it has discussed the complex relationship between British and American comics not only in terms of the British Invasion of American comics in the 1980s and its aftermath that is still being felt, but also in the context of the transnational nature of comics and, in particular, the close connections between the American and British markets. In conclusion, the book describes changes in the mainstream British comics industry over the years.

This first part of the monograph introduces Umberto Eco's concept of the opera apertaand links it to the workings of comics as explained through the comics theories of Scott McCloud, Thierry Groensteen, and Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle. The potential for openness in comics is seen as being literalized by the disjointedness and gaps, which are essential to the very form of comics. Specific aspects harbouring the potential for openness are located in various formal and content-related features. The former include the manipulation of word-image relationships, page layouts, and visual styles whereas the latter focus on themes, characters, and references to other media and figuration. This part concludes with an overview of the comics analysed in Part Two.

This chapter discusses how, even if comics were traditionally regarded as entertainment for children and young adults, it was a medium consumed indiscriminately by all age groups. Comics became a literature exclusively for the young with their independence from the newspapers and the appearance of the first comic books around the mid-1930s. This step in the evolution of the medium is extremely relevant, not only because it defined an exclusive age group as readership, but by placing comics below the radar of official popular culture, it laid the groundwork for the development of adult comics some three decades later. Comics appeared in Italy toward the end of the first decade of the twentieth century exclusively as children’s entertainment. In the 1930s, American comics, along with Italian productions, opened its readership to young adults.

This chapter traces the history of the EC comics that inspired George A. Romero's Creepshow (1982). The origins of EC can be traced to the beginnings of the American comic book at the start of the 1930s. For all the EC horror titles that ran for only four years from 1950 to 1954 before finally being quashed by the establishment, their legacy, and their importance to both comic book and horror history, is undeniable. Through their political and social messages and their uncompromising images, they were an important site for subversion for American youth in a period which stressed conformity. Some of those American youth, like Stephen King and Romero, would grow up to become significant figures in American horror films and literature, and bring the influence of EC into the genre.

Steamboat, Billy Batson’s friend and valet, was a stereotypical African American character who appeared in Fawcett’s comic books until 1945, when a group of New York City middle school students visited Captain Marvel editor Will Lieberson. Those students, all part of a program called Youthbuilders, Inc., successfully argued for the character’s removal. Drawing on the work of Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and George Yancy, this chapter studies the character and his similarities to other racial caricatures in U. S. popular culture of the era. It also provides a short history of the Youthbuilders, an organization created by social worker Sabra Holbrook. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Alan Moore’s Evelyn Cream, a black character who appears in the 1980s series Miracleman. Although not directly based on Steamboat, Moore’s character was an attempt to address racial stereotypes in superhero comic books, figures that have their origins in the narratives of the 1930s and 1940s.

This chapter concludes the insights exposed by this book regarding the character and influence that fast-talking dames had on American culture and society. It explores, for one, the slowing and dumbing down of the American comic heroine, the demise of the fast-talking dame coming by the early 1950s. It looks at the still snappy but strangely dispirited comedies of the postwar era, where there is a shift in national mood. It looks at, for one, Claudette Colbert's combating of the sexual ideology of the home front in Without Reservations (1946), as well as Bette Davis's eloquent yet self-annulling “confession” in a stalled car as Margo Channing in All About Eve. Here she expresses that the reason for her disgraceful behavior is because she can never be what she wants to be—young and helpless and feminine. Thus, this chapter ends the commemoration of another kind of dialogue, one paced by the give and take of the fast-talking dame making her way into the world.

The thesis here is that the interior plot of Broadway Danny Rose, which depicts the theatrical manager’s experience with client Lou Canova and his ex-girlfriend, Tina Vitali, takes the form of a myth that comedians at New York’s Carnegie Deli are communally spinning to console themselves for how trying and disheartening their stand-up comics’ profession has become. Their Danny Rose story construes Danny as the most loyal and devoted personal manager imaginable, one who loses his client to an unscrupulous rival but who also wins Tina when he persuades her to believe in “acceptance, forgiveness, and love.” Danny’s victory in the fable is the triumph of the comedians at the Carnegie Deli, the efficacy of the myth confirmed by the fact that, for the first time, one of them picks up the check for all the others.

Hannah is treated as Allen’s most successful blending of representational filmmaking with his skepticism toward the promises of artistic rendering. Also at play in the film is its largely positive depiction of family life, epitomized in Holly’s closing announcement to Mickey that she is pregnant, juxtaposed with Allen’s lifelong conviction that “It’s no accomplishment to have or raise kids. Any fool can do it.” The film is not without familial shadows—Hannah’s parents (like Allen) were more interested in their showbiz careers than in their children, engendering some resentment, and Hannah’s husband has initiated an affair with her sister, Lee—but the closing Thanksgiving exemplifies resolution and reconciliation, surface family functionality restored with conflicts largely repressed. Mia Farrow was not describing Hannah and Her Sisters but her family in her later comment: “Everything was too nice, too beautiful. He just had to ruin it.”