My friend Spiro interviews me about comics and Mike Kaluta

Make War No More: Sgt Rock Burma mini-epic

One of my favourite Sgt Rock mini-epics is when Rock visits the CBI (China Burma India) theatre of war in OAAW # 256 - 259 (April to August 1973). I feel that the new locale elevates the level of Kanigher's writing (and brings with it, beautiful, evocative Russ Heath art). 

Issue # 259 reads like an anti-war tale, Rock expresses attitudes most unlike a WWII US army sergeant, because he understands what the men on a hospital ship have been through, they don't want to fight anymore (Rock is picked up out to the sea by the hospital ship, whose surviving soldiers want to save people not kill them). 

Rock doesn't judge their pacifist attitudes, he knows they've earned the right to make their own decisions. It's a really powerful piece of writing. I don't know if Kanigher could have written this story in the social climate of 1963 but in 1973, with a different set of social, anti-war attitudes voiced by anti-Vietnam 60s youth influencing the way many comic readers would have seen things, perhaps the time was right for this type of story. 

I should say it ends traditionally enough but overall the story still has a deeper impact than most. Just a great issue of OAAW:). 

Replacement revolution: right on to the dark side, our way is clear and fast: Jimmy Olsen # 134

Jack Kirby flippa-dippa’s the world on its head in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen # 134 (cover dated December 1970, publication date 13 October 1970, 50 years ago today). Jimmy’s revolutionary army takes over in a way the real-world youth culture of the time could not. Superman, symbol of the corrupt power of the parent State is ‘out of the way’, not merely run over as in Jimmy Olsen # 133 but crucified and led away by hippy biker legionnaires.

The two covers are two moments in the same scene

There is no listening, no hearing, Jimmy and the surrounding culture are past caring, only judgement remains from all sides, only our voice counts and the rest of you must face ‘The Mountain of Judgement.’ You’re not one of us.

 The corporate re-draw of Superman’s head functions artistically making him other, separate

If this sounds familiar in 2020, it’s because it is. More and more the stark separation of views, the polarisation of opinion, the fear of being replaced that we see in our culture now, mirrors that of 1970. Kirby was reflecting his times, like the youth revolutionaries and freaks, he was blowing up the symbols of the old world.

It was time for the outsiders to run things and the establishment squares to be forced out, they are the dissenters, not us. Jimmy and the contemporaneous youth protest movement “….have high ideals and great fears….they see their elders trapped by materialism and competition, and prisoners of outdated social forms…They feel they must remake America in its own image…”*

It’s always an attractive and seductive thought to think You Are Right. When Jimmy and the Newsboy Legion ride the Zoomway to meet the Mountain of Judgement it’s exciting. So much time waiting for your chance, waiting for others to get out of your way and now it’s your time. Go for it!

Jimmy’s travels in the Whiz Wagon are turbulent. They are drawn into a black and white Kirbyesque kaleidoscope of confusion in the artist’s first use of collage in the Fourth World. Part black and white psychedelic Fillmore West light show and part death skull, it feels like an image of the times. So many perspectives, things breaking apart and reforming in unexpected ways. Dazzling and deadly.

Enter the Mountain of Judgement. No Moses on a hill with chaos-controlling commandments. Rather a modern mountain, a missile-carrying machine, like the Military-Industrial Complex on wheels but with an idol’s face. Baal breathing destruction on Jimmy and the boys, intent on crushing their youth insurgency under its monstrous tank tracks. 

At this point Kirby turns the tables again and simultaneously reveals the giant machine is full of Hairy hippy friends who along with a revived Superman foil a bomb plot using the Whiz Wagon, and shows the face of who has betrayed them: Morgan Edge. Jimmy and the Legion reconcile with Superman and the issue ends with a savage one panel portent, the first appearance of one of DC’s greatest villains, Darkseid.

The effect of this lesson in humility is that it causes Jimmy and the Newsboys to see the good in Superman and Superman sees Jimmy as an equal. The reader’s expectation is also subverted, we’re so ready for the fight, so energised to be justified and then it turns out that our assumptions about the Other aren’t right, that the future is together, despite our differences. Judgement is the idol. ‘Judge not, lest you be judged’ (Matthew 7:1). A comics parable for the modern age.

Kirby’s Fourth World is now gathering pace. Towards the end of the issue there is an ad for Forever People # 1, New Gods # 1, Mister Miracle # 1. On the ground floor, for a comics revolution😊.

*from the Presidential Commission on the causes of campus disruption, as quoted in Time magazine, October 5, 1970, pg. 14.

Research this article: 

-Time Magazine, October 5, 1970, Ón Campus: Blame Enough For All, pg 14-15

-The indispensable Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows)

-There’s A Riot Going On (Peter Doggett, Canongate, 2007)

-Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website.   

 

Michael Mead is a 54 year old New Zealand comic book collector, who likes to think he can do "contextual" commentary reviews of old comics, asking: "where does this story come from?", looking at the social, political, cultural times it came from, the state of the comics industry, the personal and creative journey of the writer or artist, the personal journey of the reader as a child and as an adult. 

As part of this, he is vain enough to think he can bring new insights into Kirby's Fourth World comics and so, on the 50th anniversary of publication of each issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle, he will publish a contextual commentary. Check out his earlier entries on this blog and tell him to stop talking so pretentiously in the third person for God's sake! 

Ideology overwhelms art: Dave Sim's Cerebus

In Cerebus # 265 (April 2001) Dave Sim wrote a notorious misogynist essay.

 

I always thought the irony of Sim's dull gender rhetoric was that it came from the emotion-driven divorce from Deni Loubert. 

Sim made the mistake of putting his inner angst on paper and his ideological focus trampled his artistic expression. I stopped reading Cerebus first because Sim overloaded on text at the expense of drawn art and story (Sim is a much better comics artist than prose writer) and second because of his misogyny.

We all suffer in relationship break-ups. It doesn't mean that the other party, in this case a woman or women, is bad. It just means that it didn't work out. Be angry yes, go through the grief cycle. But don't hate and turn inward. 

Cerebus became boring because Sim couldn't let go of personal issues. I hope with age, he has let go of enough of the past to enjoy the present and see women differently. 

You're not wrong, Flash!:).

There is a certain inexorable logic to the way early 60s DC comics are written. You can almost hear the editor's voice saying, 'plug in every gap of understanding and take the reader through every step of the way!' Flash isn't wrong when he says 'The elaborate costumes of my foes are always superbly tailored! Yet they aren't tailors!....I've wondered if there isn't some real tailor....". Incredible deductive reasoning Flash! Batman would be proud of you!:). From Flash # 141, December 1963.

A 38 year old surprise

Back in 1982 I had my first letter published in X-Men # 161. An English fan wrote to me having seen my LOC and his letter got to me before the comic got to New Zealand (all comics sea mail in those days, the on sale date mirrored the cover date so  the September X-Men on sale in September).

 I've lost the letter he wrote me but I kept a copy of the letter I wrote which I marked up at the time to show how Marvel improved my 16 year old expression...:).

Inside story: the strange yet sweet Lois Lane # 106

Can anyone really understand someone else? Can you see the world from where I sit? Do you know who I am? 

It takes empathy, patience, curiosity to answer these questions, qualities which are in short supply now in a divided world and a divided States. Fifty years ago today Robert Kanigher, of all people, posed and tried to answer these questions in the strange yet sweet Lois Lane # 106 (cover dated November 1970, publication date 24 September, 1970), in the story “I Am Curious (Black)!” 

Nine years after John Howard Griffin had his skin temporarily darkened to pass as a black man for his book ‘Black Like Me’, Bob Kanigher, at a time of huge protest against racism by groups such as the Black Panthers and against sexism by the burgeoning second wave feminist movement, decided to use Superman’s ‘plastimold machine’ to turn Lois black.

Angela Davis, Time Magazine, 31 August 1970, page 12

Even at the time, perhaps particularly at the time, writing a story like this risks trivialising the lives and experience of black people. Ideally, a black writer and artist, people who have experienced racism, would communicate directly to the audience, unmediated by a 55- year old white guy (Kanigher was born in 1915). You wonder how someone like the Black Panthers’ Angela Davis, on the run at the time of publication, accused of (abetting) murder, would have viewed this comic.

So how could a superhero comic book aimed at 12 years olds ever hope to even come close to a treatment of racism that’s going to help? Yet in its own simple, relevant, way, ‘I Am Curious Black’ deals directly with racism in a way which modern mainstream comics don’t really attempt, even while we live in sadly, similar, times.

The story is confrontational from the get-go splash page where a black Lois asks Superman if he would marry her ‘just the way I am?’, now that she is black and he is white. Right away you understand that this story is aimed at a white readership. Kanigher had introduced DC’s first black character Jackie Johnson in Our Army at War # 113 (December 1961, publication date 3 October 1961) and then (with Nick Cardy) Mal Duncan (Teen Titans # 26, Mar/April 1970, publication date 15 January 1970). DC was only just starting to introduce black characters and the vast majority of its readership would have been white*.

At a time when DC Editorial Director Carmine Infantino objected to the scene above in Teen Titans # 26 where a black Mal Duncan kissed a white Lilith Clay goodbye, reputedly the first inter-racial kiss in comics (and editor Dick Giordano coloured it blue to draw less attention), Lois Lane # 106 surely sent shockwaves through the readership and parents alike. Years of pent-up desire for equality delivered a dialectical slap in the face to the big red S and to us as readers. An unrestrained antithesis to the dominant thesis of the times about race. When racist views were so entrenched and unexamined, Kanigher deliberately shocked so a new voice could be heard.

He sends Lois on a journey of transformation from carefree, comfortable, complacent white journalist to becoming someone who understands just a little bit of what it is like for others, by becoming other. She feels the rejection, the distrust, the confusion when her well-intentioned attempts to talk to black people for a patronising little feature on ‘Metropolis’ Little Africa’, are rebuffed. A blind black woman walks away because she ‘hears’ Lois is white. Lois listens to a black man speak angrily about the roles white people will ‘accept’ black people having while they resist true equality. Lois begins to see the world though another’s eyes.

Now transformed to being black for a day by the Plastimold machine, Lois feels the rejection, distrust, confusion, she felt as a white woman all over again, as a black woman.

She meets a black woman and is invited into her apartment and sees how others live. She is touched by someone who has very little but who still wants to give.

Lois re-meets the black man she met earlier and experiences his sexism. When he is shot by gangsters, Lois provides the blood transfusion he needs to live.

The effect of the story is uplifting. It ends on a simple moment of hope and unity, one personal connection by two imperfect people who have been transformed just enough to begin to hear each other. You could never pretend that Lois Lane # 106 is a sophisticated commentary on racism but neither is it just a dated time capsule. The difficult, reportedly egotistical, tyrannical Kanigher, who could be abusive to his National/DC colleagues managed to display the very personal qualities he lacked, in his art, empathy, patience, curiosity. The world of the young National/DC reader of 1970 was the better for it. Fifty years later, so are we.

* Demographic studies of black readership of comics are hard to find. I did find a 2017 Bleeding Cool report (see below) quoting NPD Bookscan’s breakdown showing that in the US African-American readers made up 13 per cent of the market (61 per cent were white) and worldwide, 14 per cent of readers are black (71 per cent are white). Given the relative paucity of black creators and characters in 1970 compared with relatively greater diversity now, I think it’s a safe assumption to make that in 1970, the number of black readers was even smaller as a percentage of overall readers of comics. If you have links to studies of comic book reader demographics please post them in the comments field below.

Research this article: 

Eury, Michael (2003). Dick Giordiano: Changing Comics, One Day at a TimeTwoMorrows Publishing. pp. 51–52. ISBN 9781893905276

Hudson, Laura, Wired, It’s Time to Get Real About Racial Diversity in Comics

Johnston, Richard, Bleeding Cool, Report: 63 % Of Comics Bought By Men, 37 % By Women

Michael Mead is a 54 year old New Zealand comic book collector, who likes to think he can do "contextual" commentary reviews of old comics, asking: "where does this story come from?", looking at the social, political, cultural times it came from, the state of the comics industry, the personal and creative journey of the writer or artist, the personal journey of the reader as a child and as an adult. 

Golden memories from a Golden Age

The 1980s were the Golden Age of DC  anniversary issues. I have all of these except for the Adventure and the World's Finest. Being able to consistently buy new, original DCs was still a new feeling in the early to mid 80s, with comic shops just starting in NZ, after years of mostly only KG Murray black and white Aussie reprints.

I sent away for Justice League # 200 to Donald Whyte of Buffalo, New York after seeing his ad in the first price guide I bought, the 1982-3 edition. The thrill of receiving what was my first overseas parcel and reading that comic featuring my favourite superhero team was just overwhelming. I read it so many times and Gerry Conway delivered a great story with fantastic art by Perez.

https://13thdimension.com/the-top-13-dc-comics-bronze-age-anniversary-issues-ranked/

Friends don't give up on you: X-Men # 137

40 years ago this month, I bought X-Men # 137 off the stand from a Willis St Wellington newsagent, just down from where Unity Books is now. I had yet to discover the place in Manners Mall which placed price stickers on the covers instead of writing the NZ price on the front.

I read # 137 over and over, I even exhorted it to my mother. It filled my 14 year old world with wonder, excitement and emotion. When Jean died, it hit me in the gut. The refusal of a group of friends to give up on each other and the ultimate self-sacrifice.

I later learned that Jim Shooter had overruled writer Chris Claremont who wanted Jean to survive. No hero nor heroine or villain is ever truly dead of course but this was one of the few creative decisions I think Shooter got right.

X-Men # 137 cost me 90 cents, a fair proportion of my pocket money for doing chores around the house. It delivered far more value than that to me and today it is a priceless memory:).

Man breaks Laws of Comics, redeems himself after 28 years

I've finally secured one of my five Grails: All-Star Western # 10, first appearance of Jonah Hex!:). It cost me a limb and I could have had it for $5 if only I'd been a little smarter 28 years ago...

In 1992 as a callow, OK very callow, 25 year old Kiwi, more interested in comics than girls, I went to the US and attended all kinds of comics conventions meeting Dave Sim, Neal Adams, Mike Kaluta, David Mazzuchelli, the guy who played the Lone Ranger on the 50s TV show, etc, etc.

By the time I got to the Atlanta con I'd spent uncountable dollars on many comics I'd dreamed of having since I was a child. Leafing through a long box, my heart rate quickened as I spotted a long seam of Jonah Hexes. And then I saw it! All-Star Western # 10 (1972) in VF for $5!!! (Issue # 11 was there too and a run up to the end of Weird Western Tales).

I took it out of the box and thought 'Wow! I'm having this!' But then, Comics Doubt clouded my mind like the Shadow in a swirling pier pub and I thought '...but I've only got $20 left and I need to get the Red Sonja Conan in VF!' So I put the ASW # 10 back. I put it back. Even now I can see myself placing it in the box, thinking 'Jonah isn't popular. It'll still be there when I get back.' It is possible friends, to break multiple Laws of Comics simultaneously.

I go and buy the Conan. Then I rush out to the money machine, my Hex sense tingling as i start to worry. Quick, quick, get the money. Get the Hex!  I zoom past many buxom cosplay girls in revealing costumes. They were simply not important. I arrive sweating in the Southern 35C humid heat back into the con hall and there I see, I see....Noooooo! It's a small fat kid (OK!. Rotund!!) and he's buying ASW # 10!!!! And # 11!!!!!!! Coises!!!!

I glare at him with an admittedly very untimidating stare. He completely ignores me. I console myself by buying the rest of the run and thinking 'oh well, Jonah isn't popular. I'll find it again soon.' Remember what I said about breaking comics laws.

The years go by. I meet a girl. She likes comics:). We get married and have a son. He likes comics:). I get all sorts of other back issues including the highly important Jovian attack squid issue of the Legion of Super Heroes:). And then I turn my attention back to Jonah and discover that ASW # 10 costs hundreds of dollars US.

Older now, I simply roll my eyes at myself and then quietly bring alms to the Comics Gods. For I have broken the Comics Laws, I have not bought a comic as soon as I saw it, I have assumed that an obscure comic will not go massively up in price and I have been distracted by buxom cosplay girls in revealing  costumes (I wasn't quite telling the truth before).

So now in 2020, as a middle-aged man with a son almost the age I was in 92, I took the plunge and splurged the cash and threw in an arm for the postage to NZ. I have to say it was all worth it to hold that baby, very carefully, with my remaining arm and complete a 28 year journey:). I have redeemed myself and Jonah was my saviour.

KIds, don't make the mistakes I did! I mean except for Walking Dead of course, that'll never be popular...

Hear me!: Jack Kirby’s 4th World rebellion

By 1970 Jack Kirby was angry and so was the world. The dissolution, distrust and despair of youth politics in the US with the Movement to End the War in Vietnam cowed by the Kent State and Jackson State killings, Charles Manson on trial in Los Angeles, the secret bombing of Cambodia, the break-up of the Beatles, the Weathermen (Weather Underground) ‘bringing the war home’ through domestic terrorism. If ever there was a year of modern American revolution and ferment, it was 1970. Into this turbulence stepped Jack Kirby with a rebellion of his own, the Fourth World, beginning in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen # 133 (October 1970, on sale date, 25 August, 1970).

Kirby had been stewing at Marvel for sometime before his 1970 move to National. He grew increasingly irritated with the way Stan Lee misrepresented his creative contributions, took too much credit and then took away characters that Kirby really cared about, most tellingly the Silver Surfer in 1967. Lee’s straight ahead drive to create a commercial juggernaut jibed against Kirby’s unrestrained urge to explore the outermost limits of his imagination.

Almost gone in 1966 with a similarly dissatisfied Steve Ditko, Kirby conceived the Fourth World but withheld it from Marvel. He, like the world around him, wanted to escape into a place which he could call his own and where he could find freedom, recognition, reward, response. The Fourth World of New Genesis for Kirby was a new birth. When National’s publisher Carmine Infantino asked Kirby at a face-to-face meeting in 1969 in California to ‘save Superman’ Kirby had been ready to jump at something for a long time.

What is striking about Jimmy Olsen # 133 is the multiple shocks that it generates. Jack Kirby leaving Marvel?! Coming to National??!! Superman’s Ex-Pal???!!! Jimmy in a motorcycle gang running over Superman????!!!!! It can’t be! When I read this story as a child I’d been used to Jimmy as a foppish, dependent, Weisinger dilettante. Now, here he is as a rebellious, muscular, fighter, an independent leader. Where was patrician parent Superman’s protégé pal? Where did all this come from?

Suddenly I saw someone else. I saw me. When a character or a reader separates themselves from their parents, when they choose their own way outside the establishment, they become themselves. Kirby was clearing space, not just for Superman, for Jimmy but for the reader and for himself. This is the moment when a work of art becomes real, all the energy bursting in Kirby’s head doesn’t exist until it is experienced by someone else. Until a reader responds.

Kirby’s exploration of the waning youth counter-culture of 1970 is key to this. His own concern to be creatively ‘relevant’ is more about writing and drawing things he cares about than political relevance but as a 53 -year old man he still understands what being young feels like. It’s a big part of his own story. Jacob Kurtzberg was an outsider in WASPish America, a Jewish man doing outsider art in comic books, held down by larger forces. In the cultural period of what we call the Sixties, 1965 – 1973, where so much was questioned and tossed aside, Jack Kirby wanted to run something over but he also wanted to get to someplace better.

His world in Jimmy Olsen # 133 is not the nihilistic world of those who wanted to tear down everything in society and replace it with anarchy, it is the world of someone who wants people to just hear his voice. It is a world where younger voices matter, where readers can imagine being ‘free to do their own thing’, with the technology, the power of the WhizWagon to go anywhere they please, even to a Wild Area Woodstock which their parents don’t understand.

At a time when hope seemed in short supply, when the power of the parent State seemed to know no limits, Kirby offered us a vision of what could be different. In his own way, he drew from his own pain, gave it his best Sunday punch and took us to another world.

This is the first of a series of commentaries/reviews on Jack Kirby’s 4^th World comics (Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, New Gods, Mister Miracle). Each blog will come out on the 50^th anniversary of an issue’s publication e.g. Jimmy Olsen # 133 (publication date 25 August 1970) will be live on 25 August 2020.

Research this article: the indispensable Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! (Jack Kirby Collector # 75: TwoMorrows), There’s A Riot Going On (Peter Doggett, Canongate, 2007) and Mike’s Amazing World of Comics website.   

Michael Mead is a 54 year old New Zealand comic book collector, one year older than Jack Kirby when he unleashed the 4th world. This fact is no doubt the first of many terrifically humbling facts that will become apparent in these commentaries/reviews of Jack Kirby's comics.